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Being the mistress of the King of England seemed to be a growing trend during Henry’s complicated and difficult marriage to Catherine of Aragon, but it was the claim of bearing the King’s illegitimate child that also appeared to be popular amongst many ladies within the royal court and even those who were distant from the court but still amongst the higher ranks of society.
Henry’s alleged mistress, Mark Berkeley, seems to be a part of the small group of women that claimed to have produced illegitimate children of the King’s. Of course, the word ‘claimed’ is very important to mention here.
After all, the Tudors did not have the advantages of the modern technology that we take for granted every day.
There were no paternity tests for a man to take to assert his claim as the biological father of the child nor was there any of the medications or medical assistance for women to utilise when carrying their unborn child or raising them, hence why the child mortality rate was so unbelievably high during the Tudor era.
Therefore, the Tudors would have to go off their own forms of evidence, with the most popular one being similarities between the child in question and the alleged father. For Henry, if he had illegitimate female bastards, there would hardly have been any care on the court’s behalf of whether or not this child was his. Girls were not as important to men than male heirs, sad to say.
Girls were easier to produce whilst boys were considered a rarity, and a blessing from God.
If Henry had fathered illegitimate sons, the child would then be compared to Henry in all forms of his life; did he look like him? Did he share the same interests, the same hobbies? Was he as active as the King?
All this and more would be how the court would determine if a bastard son was really the King’s or not.
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In the case of Mary Berkeley, it is quite difficult to conclusively prove or even say if the two sons that she supposedly claimed to have had with the King were actually his.
But let us look at the facts first, shall we?
Unfortunately, as it stands, we know very little about Mary Berkeley as there are limited records of her life and any of the information contained within these documents are considered to be very ‘sketchy’ as the dates and events are not very precise and get rather muddled up.
A common effect of the Tudor era, I’m afraid. Some of the records about Henry’s own life contain very confusing and rather mixed-up facts which makes it difficult to even conclusively provide 100% truthful information about the King himself.
As it were, Mary Berkeley’s date of birth is believed to have ranged between 1495 to 1500, which would have made her only a few years younger than Henry, but one source claims her precise date of birth was 1511, meaning that she would have been around ten years his junior. Regardless of this, Mary Berkeley was the daughter of a courtier called James Berkeley of Thornbury, Gloucestershire, and Susan Fitzalan, who would have been present at court from the very start of Henry’s reign and watched the King paraded his mistresses or flaunt his illegitimate bastard son in the Queen’s face.
It might be suggested that James Berkeley was well aware of this when he had his daughter placed in the Queen of England’s household as a lady-in-waiting but there is not enough evidence to support this nor do we fully know if Mary was indeed a lady-in-waiting or if she just happened to be within the royal court when the affair is alleged to have happened.
Either way, because of the lack of evidence, many historians and authors alike have given their own opinion on how the affair between Mary Berkeley and the King supposedly took place. But before we look into that, let us look into what history records give us as the ‘precise facts’ of the affair.
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The first piece of information that the history books give us is that the affair supposedly took place between the years of 1525 and 1527, towards the end of Henry VIII’s marriage to Catherine of Aragon and just shy of the time where he began his long-time affair with his future second wife; Anne Boleyn.
If we take a closer look at the facts, it’s very possible that this affair might have taken place during this time as Henry was definitely still taking advantage of his good looks and his youth with the ladies of the court. But, if I may offer an opinion, I would say that the affair might have lasted from 1525 to the late months of 1526 as Henry would have cast aside any other female lovers in favour of Anne Boleyn, who ‘bewitched’ him beyond all reasoning and was always on his mind, meaning his other lovers stood no chance against her.
Here is where we take a look at the opinions offered to us by noted historians, in this case, we shall be looking at three.
. . .
Philippa Jones is the first opinion of which we shall be examining in closer detail. In her version of events, it is when Mary Berkeley married her first husband, Sir Thomas Perrot, that the King first took notice of her and led to the birth of her two sons, Thomas Stucley and John Perrot.
But here is where the confusion comes in; her son John Perrot is considered to be her third son, but records claim he was born before his brother Thomas.
What boggles historians even more is that records confuse who Thomas Stucley’s real mother was. In some documents, Mary is stated as his mother but in others, Thomas is the son of another of Henry’s mistresses, Jane Pollard, further making it difficult to conclusively appoint Henry as the biological father of Thomas.
A piece of text from an Oxford DNB entry on John Perrot, Mary Berkeley’s son, contests the idea that John or any of Mary’s sons were fathered by the King at all! Furthermore, it goes on to tell us a little bit about how the marriage of Mary Berkeley and Sir Thomas Perrot came to be;
'Contrary to the popular and oft-quoted myth (the origin of which may be attributed to the work of Sir Robert Naunton*), Perrot's mother was never a mistress of Henry VIII and he, consequently, was not the king's bastard son. His parents' marriage was arranged at great cost by Maurice, Lord Berkeley, who had purchased the wardship and marriage of both Mary, his niece, and Thomas Perrot two years after the death of Thomas's father, Sir Owen, in December 1521. Upon their marriage, sometime after Thomas came of age in August 1526, and contingent on the will of Maurice, Lord Berkeley, the considerable sum of 500 marks was settled on the young couple. Like his father (Sir Owen died aged forty-one) and elder brother (Robert died aged eighteen in 1522), Thomas died tragically young, aged twenty-six years, on 19 September 1531'. ~ Oxford DNB entry on John Perrot. {1}
This is also a third version of events which is mentioned briefly within a text held within the Royal Library of Wales stating that Perrot was knighted when he married Mary—a rather odd thing to happen since Perrot is not noted as having achieved anything worthy of being knighted. Perhaps this could act as evidence that the King was honouring Perrot as a Knight as a way of paying him off to keep his illegitimate children with Mary a secret and for Perrot to claim them as his own?
Who knows?
Nonetheless, as you can see, there is clearly a lack of defining evidence to truly determine whether or not Mary Berkeley was the King’s mistress or whether her children were actually fathered by the King or not. On the other hand—there is plenty of information about her two sons (there is possibly a third, but we are focusing on these two), Thomas Stucley and John Perrot which we will just briefly mention, so we do not go too much on a tangent.
. . .
Mary Berkeley’s two sons, Thomas Stucley and John Perrot appeared to lead very opposing lifestyles.
John would later become Lord Deputy of Ireland after 1571 during the reign of Queen Elizabeth I (Good old Queen Bess!) and marry a total of two times to Ann Cheyney (who died in 1553) and Jane Prust (who died in 1593). Quick fact—did you know that John’s son, Sir Thomas Perrot (named after his brother), went on to marry Dorothy Devereux who was the daughter of one of Elizabeth I’s ladies-in-waiting and granddaughter to Mary Boleyn; Lettice Knollys? Lettice Knollys was the daughter of Catherine Carey, who was the only daughter of the great Mary Boleyn, making Catherine Carey the first cousin and Lettice Knollys the second cousin of Queen Elizabeth I.
BUT that’s not the end of it—as we explain, it is commonly believed that both of Mary Boleyn’s children are the illegitimate children of her lover, Henry VIII, which would mean that Dorothy would be the great-granddaughter of Henry VIII, and that she married another descendant of Henry VIII through one of his many mistresses. Fascinating, isn’t it?
The only comparison that one might draw between John Perrot and his alleged father Henry VIII is that they both could not keep it in their pants! John Perrot had a large number of children, both legitimately through his two wives and (yep, you guessed it) illegitimately through a large succession of mistresses, all of his children being born after King Henry’s death. It might be note-worthy to mention that neither one of John’s wives were mistresses of the King—could this mean that John was his illegitimate son, and this was the reason why Henry didn’t take one of his wives as his mistress?
Possibly.
As for Thomas, he was not a very—popular man, shall we put it?
In fact, he did not impress or act very gentlemanly within any of Henry’s three legitimate children’s courts during their reigns, with all three of them having to deal with him in some way!
Henry’s youngest child but only son King Edward VI imprisoned him after Thomas made false claims that the French were planning an invasion upon Calais. Naughty Thomas, you should never lie to a King.
The next ruler of Henry’s children to deal with him was his eldest child and daughter Mary I (or Bloody Mary as history believes she has the right to be called). Being that his ‘crime’ was minimal, she sought to have him released but his troublesome ways did not stop there as he soon began committing other crimes (of which he was never punished by Mary for) which included, counterfeiting coins, engaging in piracy and running up huge debts of which he made no effort to pay. Mary I died before she could ever punish him for his crimes.
The last of Henry’s children to have a hand in Thomas’ life was Elizabeth I; who controversially was ‘outraged’ by Thomas’ piracy (although she commissioned men like Sir Francis Drake to pirate against the Spanish so why she reacted this way is beyond my level of reasoning) and sought to have him arrested in 1565 but later offered him a full pardon.
Seems rather odd, doesn’t it?
Perhaps the claim that he was Henry’s son might have reached her ears or (quite possibly) the Queen actually believed it and did not want to imprison or execute her half-brother?
Having almost been killed by her older half-sister Mary I, you could understand why she might have chosen against this.
Either way, Thomas did not receive the ‘happy ending’ that his brother John did as he is believed to have been killed in battle whilst fighting for Portugal against Moroccan forces, as author Kelly Hart claims.
Not a very royal way to go, is it?
Perhaps he let the rumour that he was the King’s bastard son go to his head?
Well, we’ll never know…
. . .
Join us next time here on The Ill-Fated Wives of Henry VIII as we take our last look on the mistresses of Henry VIII during his marriage to Catherine of Aragon with the final alleged mistress; Joanna Dingley (Dobson).
Though I doubt she would have been the last one, but one can only assume with the King’s infatuation with Anne Boleyn that he learned how to be a little bit faithful.
- Have a ‘Tudor-fic’ week!
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