Free Bastard Prince by Beverley A. Murphy Page B

subjects. Also her dowry should follow within four months. The terms were unreasonable and intended to be rejected. Charles was already well advanced with his own plans to marry Isabella, Infanta of Portugal and needed Henry to release him from his obligation to Mary. Yet the claim that Richmond’s elevation was set in hand ‘immediately after the news reached England that Charles meant to break his engagement’, 13 rests on two assumptions. Firstly that Henry had not intended to raise Richmond to such high honour prior to the breaking of this news and secondly, that the king had come to rely on the union between Charles V and Mary as being the best means of securing her, and England’s, future.
    In fact, whatever Katherine might have hoped, there is nothing to suggest that Henry viewed this match as anything other than another diplomatic alliance. In 1518, the two-year-old princess had already been engaged to the infant Dauphin of France and no one was surprised when that betrothal did not endure until the children were adults. In the treaty it had been acknowledged that this betrothal would ‘not prevent the Emperor from marrying any woman of lawful age before our daughter comes to mature years’. It had always been unlikely that Charles V, who was already twenty-five and eager for an heir of his own, would wait for Mary to grow up. 14
    Also, Charles’s conduct towards his mother, as Queen of Castile, ought to have given Henry pause for thought. Juana had succeeded as Queen as Castile after her mother’s death in 1504. When Charles V assumed the title of King of Castile from 1516, he did so in complete disregard of his mother’s prior claim. Even if she was eventually deserving of the epitaph ‘Juana the mad’, and her virtual solitary confinement at Tordesillas Castle can only have contributed to her decline, legally Charles should have continued to rule as regent in her name. Such conduct did not speak well of his attitude towards the rights of ruling queens.
    Certainly, Mary’s betrothal had not stopped Henry negotiating for her possible marriage to James V of Scotland in 1524. Nor did it prevent him from considering the offer of a French match in March 1525. The manner in which Charles repudiated the betrothal was hardly designed to mollify the king, but his action cannot have been entirely unexpected.
    In any case, the plans for Richmond’s elevation seem to have begun well in advance of this particular disappointment. The first indication of Fitzroy’s impending honours is generally taken from an undated note of Wolsey’s to the king, usually assigned to May 1525:
    Your grace shall also receive by this present bearer, such arms as your highness hath devised . . . for your entirely beloved son, the Lord Henry Fitzroy. 15
    These included two heraldic beasts: a white lion representing the dukedom of Richmond and a silver yale symbolising the dukedom of Somerset. An escutcheon in the centre completed the honours with its chief design a castle and two bucks’ heads for the earldom of Nottingham. Significantly, the arms of France and England, as borne by the king, were crossed with a ‘baton sinister argent’ a silver band which proclaimed his illegitimacy to the world. His motto ‘Duty binds me’ stressed his obligation to Henry VIII – his king and father.
    A list of the ‘wardrobe stuff appointed for my Lord Henry’ gives some indication of the scale of these plans. There were hangings for six chambers, a closet, a chapel and a hall. The various furnishings included twenty-five different carpets and twenty-one assorted beds, each with their own pillows, sheets and counterpanes. Richmond’s bed, with its canopy and a scarlet counterpane, was decidedly grand. 16 When the necessities for his household were finally assembled it would require a chariot and seven horse-draughts to transport them. Although the young duke’s