Of course, the real Henry Tudor is far more complicated. This book looks beyond Henry VIII’s six wives, examining the women with whom the King had, or is believed to have had, affairs and the illegitimate children he is believed to have fathered. Beyond the limits of policy and diplomacy, it presents the King as a serial monogamist, a man who spent his life searching for the one, perfect woman he was destined never to find.
Henry was born a second son: he spent his childhood in the shadow of an elder brother who would one day be his king and master. In the space of less than a year, however, he had lost both his brother and his mother. He became the adored and vital eldest son, the Prince of Wales, the future king – and everyone around him suddenly treated him as such. He was expected to be stronger, wiser and more talented than anyone else. That Nature endowed Henry with a beautiful face, an admirable body and a quick and receptive mind led him eventually to believe all those who told him he was the best and worthy of the best.
While he did not lack male role models in his childhood and youth (his father; brother Arthur; great-uncle Jasper Tudor, who died when he was four; his mentor William Blount, Lord Mountjoy; companions such as Charles Brandon, John St John and Edward Neville), Henry lacked close female company. He had two sisters, but Margaret, two years older, was never a friend and Mary, five years younger, was too much the baby to be of interest. The most formidable lady in Henry’s world was his grandmother, Margaret Beaufort, a woman devoted to the point of obsession to her only son, Henry VII (see plate 3). A woman of strong character, Margaret was already well past middle age, religious, a widow, obsessed with family, monarchy and wealth – Margaret, in fact, was the real power behind the throne. Elizabeth of York (see plate 2), Henry’s mother, was not allowed to play a significant part in his life as his father and grandmother ruled his household. Mother and son only met on the occasions when Henry VII and Elizabeth visited the young Henry or he was brought to Court (in 1494, aged three, Henry came to London to be made a Knight of the Bath and Duke of York, for example). He also knew of Elizabeth from ballads sung about her:
In a glorius garden grene
Sawe I syttyng a comly queen
Among the flouris that fressh byn.
She gaderd a floure and set betweene;
The lyly-whighte rose methought I sawe … 1
Elizabeth of York embodied perfection to Henry, a view endorsed by everyone at Court. She was beautiful, elegant, serene, gentle, loyal, loving – everything that a wife and queen should be. Thus, Elizabeth became the ideal against which all the ladies in Henry’s life were to be measured, and those that pleased him most invariably resembled her. Catherine of Aragon, his first wife and arguably Henry’s true love, probably came closest. She was every inch a queen, Henry’s intellectual equal, lover, friend, companion and counsellor. Catherine became to Henry what he perceived his mother had been to Henry VII.
There was a strong element of subservience in Elizabeth’s relationship with Henry VII. Her motto was ‘Humble and Reverence’ and when Henry VII set Margaret Beaufort up as Elizabeth’s superior in matters of state or, indeed, their personal life, Elizabeth appears to have said nothing. She bowed to her husband in every way, striving to serve him as the perfect wife and mother to his children. There is no record that she ever spoke out against him or contradicted him. Henry VIII similarly expected his ladies to treat him with humility and reverence. His favourites were those who followed his lead, made his opinion their own and sought to please him. Jane Seymour, first mistress and then queen, was a case in point; a large part of her charm was her total acquiescence to Henry’s personality (this is discussed further in Chapter 10). Anne of Cleves, his wife, earned his friendship by giving in to him; on the other hand, Catherine of Aragon earned his enmity when she stood up against him. Anne Boleyn was beloved until she started arguing; and his last queen, Catherine Parr, almost lost everything when Henry believed that she was trying to influence him – to be the teacher in the relationship rather than the pupil (this is discussed further in Chapter 12). But where did this pattern begin?
The centre of attention from an early age, Henry became Prince of Wales at 11. By the time he was 14, he had started to take an interest in girls – to put it in context, the minimum age for marriage was 12 for a girl and 14 for a boy at the time. Life expectancy in the 16th century was about 35 and infant mortality was high and so it was not uncommon for a young couple to start their family in their mid to late teens. Henry was 19 when he came to the throne and he quickly married Catherine of Aragon, but it is highly unlikely that he was a virgin. Elizabeth Denton, a lovely lady and a servant of his family, was probably the first in what was a romantic, but stage-managed love affair organised by Henry VII and Margaret Beaufort (this is discussed in Chapter 2). However, when Henry became king, his only thought was to marry Catherine, his brother Arthur’s widow, and set her on the throne at his side.
Perhaps one obstacle to Henry and Catherine enjoying a fairytale union was that they belonged to an age and to a social class that considered extramarital affairs for men as perfectly normal. The king was practically expected to take a mistress. Henry’s grandfather, Edward IV, had been incredibly promiscuous; his great-grandfather, Owen Tudor, had a bastard son through a sexual liaison, as had his great-uncle Jasper Tudor. Henry VII, despite a reputation for fidelity, also had an illegitimate son, Sir Roland de Velville. It was, therefore, almost inevitable that Henry VIII would follow suit. He was, after all, extremely handsome and sexually desirable. The wealthiest and most powerful man in England, Henry was a leader of fashion and the focus of a Court that lived for pleasure. Women, often with the support of their families, quite simply threw themselves at him. Lord Herbert of Cherbury summed this up when he wrote, ‘One of the liberties which our King took in his spare time was to love … so it must seem less strange if amid many fair Ladies, which lived in his Court, He both gave and received temptation.’2
One of Henry’s earliest mistresses, Anne Hastings, became the object of his attention while Catherine of Aragon was pregnant for the first time, and Henry was excluded from her bed. The affair was light-hearted, and would most probably have passed without incident but for the Duke of Buckingham, Anne’s brother, who made the matter public and caused a scene. For a while after that, Henry returned to connubial bliss, although Catherine lost her baby, but when he took his armies to France in 1513, on his quest to conquer French territory, he fell in love with Etionette de la Baume, a lady of the Court of Margaret of Austria. Their affair was passionate, but brief – an amusing interlude on his part and a political manoeuvre on hers (this is discussed in Chapter 3). On Henry’s return to England, with his wife pregnant again, Henry enjoyed another brief fling, this time with Jane Popincourt. These relationships were primarily harmless and fun.
If one looks at Henry’s affairs