© Lucas Horenbout - Henry Fitzroy, Duke of Richmond and Somerset (1519-36)
© Unknown Artist - Mary FitzRoy, Duchess of Richmond and Somerset
The year was 1519 during the reign of Henry VIII of England, the second King of the Tudor dynasty.
The place, Blackmore, Essex.
A young woman named Elizabeth Blount had just given birth to a healthy baby boy whose existence would forever change history and act as a catalyst for a King deserting his Queen for another woman.
Elizabeth Blount was the daughter of Sir John Blount and Catherine Peshall of Kinlet, Shropshire. Her father had gone with the King to France in 1513 in the midst of his ruffles with French King Louis XII. The family was not noble nor had any big importance at court up until the 15th of June of 1519 when young Bessie, around seven years younger than him, gave birth to the only illegitimate son acknowledged by King Henry VIII.
She had been working as maid-of-honour to the King's wife, Catherine of Aragon, as she is reported to have been really gay and joyous, the King’s preferred dancer, a nice singer as well as an overall beautiful woman. It was during one of the many confinements of Queen Catherine that the pair started the affair that ended in childbirth.
One of the reasons King Henry might have legitimised little Henry Fitzroy could be all those confinements, precisely, as none of them had led to a surviving heir for his throne. He had been the first peaceful ascension to the crown after the torment of the Wars of the Roses so he felt the urgent need to secure another easy transition through a son. Maybe he also wanted to make clear to everyone that the issue was not in his body but in his wife’s. The birth of Elizabeth’s son meant that he could indeed father boys so the idea to change wives was sparked with Henry Fitzroy’s existence if it was not already there.
While the liaison ended immediately after with King Henry choosing a new lover in Mary Boleyn, the relationship between Bessie and him was not tarnished and he chose a husband for her a couple of years later. In 1522, she entered an arranged marriage with Gilbert Tailboys, 1st Baron Tailboys of Kyme, with whom Blount would go on to have three more kids in spite of the rumours that his family was prone to insanity.
Whatever the case, the truth is the first few years of Henry Fitzroy’s life remain foggy to us and we cannot be sure of anything up until 1525, when he entered Bridewell Palace. It is highly unlikely that the boy stayed put in one place during those years, as noble children usually moved from house to house, just like his siblings Mary, Elizabeth and Edward did. By 1519 he only had one sister, Catherine’s only daughter Mary, who was three years old. As for his education, John Palsgrave reported somewhat begrudgingly that young Henry had been taught to say his prayers in a "barbarous" Latin accent and angrily dismissed the man who had instructed him before as "no clerk”. He might have spent his early life with his mom and siblings but amongst the court officers he was known as “my lord Henry,” making it clear as day that his existence was not a well-kept secret.
All in all, the situation in 1525 was this: Queen Catherine was 40 and had had no surviving son, only a 9-year-old daughter. The Tudors had reigned for only 40 years and the only boy born to Henry (at least recognised by him) was Henry Fitzroy, who was around six years old. There were no King’s brothers or nephews or any male issue close to his kin that could potentially take the throne in a peaceful manner after his passing. The King's chief minister, Cardinal Thomas Wolsey, had taken an interest in his monarch's only son. In a letter dated June 1525, the Cardinal refers to the King's son as "Your entirely beloved sonne, the Lord Henry FitzRoy", and other nobles at court started to toy around with the idea of the child becoming King someday, surpassing Princess Mary’s claims to the throne.
In 1525 then, he was given his own residence in London: Durham House on the Strand. All the obscurity that surrounded his first years of infancy ended abruptly on the 18th of June 1525 when the six-year-old Lord Henry FitzRoy travelled by barge from Cardinal Wolsey's mansion near Charing Cross, down the River Thames, accompanied by a group of knights and gentlemen. Fitzroy was created Earl of Nottingham, attended by Henry Percy, 5th Earl of Northumberland, John de Vere, 14th Earl of Oxford, and William FitzAlan, 18th Earl of Arundel. Young Henry knelt before his father as Sir Thomas More read out the patents of nobility and just like that, it was the first time since the 12th century that an illegitimate son had been raised to the peerage, when Henry II, King of England had created his son William Earl of Salisbury. He would once again kneel before his father, but this time he would rise as Duke of Richmond and Somerset. Some believe all of this was King Henry VIII grooming the kid to rule someday in case he did not have a chance to father a legitimate male heir, but there is no sure way to know where his thoughts were at that moment. The former Henry FitzRoy was referred to in all formal correspondence as the "right high and noble Prince Henry, Duke of Richmond and Somerset" after that point.
Happy days for the boy and his parents, indeed but what about Queen Catherine?
A surviving letter from a venetian ambassador said: "It seems that the Queen resents the earldom and dukedom conferred on the King’s natural son and remains dissatisfied. At the instigation it is said of her three Spanish ladies her chief counsellors, so that the King has dismissed them from court, a strong measure but the Queen was obliged to submit and have patience". Catherine must have felt the blow as her husband’s mistress’ son was raised to the highest noblehood, risking her own daughter’s position and rights, while she was not able to provide a legitimate son for England. All of this must have been difficult to go through, even more so when her husband was not there for her and even blamed her for it. Anyway, from that day onwards, the little Duke was raised like a royal prince, to her dismay, at Sheriff Hutton Castle in Yorkshire, and his father took great interest in his upbringing as such.
On 22 June 1529, he was made Lord-Lieutenant of Ireland. There had even been a plan to crown him king of Ireland but Henry's counsellors opposed saying that making a separate Kingdom of said country with a ruler other than himself could potentially create another threat similar to what had been happening in Scotland. Moreover, after his son’s untimely death it was established through the Crown of Ireland Act 1542 a union between both crowns, making any English King the Irish one as well, with Henry VIII being the first to be handed the title.
In late 1532, however, Richmond would go on to spend some time in France as part of Henry and Anne Boleyn’s negotiations with the French King Francis I, getting to spend time with the Dauphin and the future monarch Henri III, until the following year, when he was called back home.
Around these dates, Fitzroy’s father was fighting to get divorced from his first wife, Catherine of Aragon, in order to marry Anne Boleyn. Over the arduous process princess Mary was demoted as a bastard, and one of the ideas that floated around was that she could marry her half-brother Henry to strengthen her claims to the throne and fall back in her dad’s graces. It did not go any further than mere speculations and at the tender age of 14, on 28 November 1533 the young Duke ended up marrying Lady Mary Howard, daughter of Thomas Howard, 3rd Duke of Norfolk and uncle to Anne Boleyn, in a discreet ceremony at Hampton Court Palace. The marriage would never get to be consummated due to their youth and his unfortunate death, leaving no heirs behind to succeed him.
It was apparently Henry VIII’s idea to wed the two although some argue that it was his new wife’s doing. The pair were somewhat related, sharing great-great grandparents in Richard and Jacquetta Woodville, but the issue was quickly dealt with thanks to one dispensation from a man named Richard Gwent, who was a papal agent in England. Once Mary was considered to be of age, the wedding plans took full force and Richmond was called back home from France.
Even though he had married Anne’s cousin, the boy did not get on well with her. Anne had gifted him a horse that was reported to be unfit to ride and he seems to have given it to someone else. After her spectacular fall from the throne, Richmond stood as a peer on her trial and possibly acted as a representative for his father at the execution. After this whole debacle, Henry VIII grew attached to his only surviving male issue, saying things like: “I ought to thank God for having escaped from the hands of that woman, who had planned (Fitzroy’s) death by poison.” The joyfulness would not be very long, though, as two months after Anne's death, Henry Fitzroy would pass away, aged seventeen, on 23 July 1536 at St James’s Palace, due to tuberculosis; something that his future sibling, Edward VI would suffer too.
It was his father-in-law who took charge of his burial. He ordered the body be wrapped in lead and then taken in a closed cart for secret interment but his servants put the body in a straw-filled wagon. Only two mourners attended and the teenage semi-prince was buried at Thetford Priory, burial place of members of the Howard family. Some years later, in the midst of Henry VIII’s dissolutions of monasteries, Thetford Priory found itself forced to oblige and close and it was once again Thomas Howard who petitioned for the priory to be spared on the grounds that both his first wife, Anne of York, and FitzRoy himself were buried there. King Henry did not even bat an eye but he did temporarily suspend the dissolution so that everyone who needed it had time to rebury and move the remains of their loved ones. Henry Fitzroy’s remains were finally laid to rest at the Church of St Michael the Archangel, Framlingham. One cannot even fathom the fact that a father cared so little about his own son’s resting place but Henry VIII was and always will be a man of questionable decisions. Richmond was lucky to have had a father-in-law so respectful as Thomas was, and it might be easy to wonder what could have they both become had the young boy lived a bit longer to see his dad’s death and even have his own children. But alas, it was not meant to be.
Following Anne Boleyn’s death, and only a month after the fact, Henry VIII married his third wife, Jane Seymour, with whom he had his much-desired legitimate heir, Edward, that would go on to succeed him only to succumb at the age of 15 at Greenwich Palace on 6 July 1553, after a long battle with a fever and cough that gradually worsened since that January.
Edward and Henry’s sister, Mary, would become the first female Queen to rule by her own right, gaining the sadly famous nickname of Bloody Mary.
In December 1557 Mary Howard died and was buried with Henry Fitzroy, where they have been peacefully laid to rest for eternity.
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