Henry VIII Ordered His Only Son Buried In Secret — Then Blamed The Duke Who Obeyed

Henry FitzRoy, the only son Henry VIII had acknowledged, left London at seventeen on a wagon under straw, with two men in green following at a distance. His father-in-law, Thomas Howard, Duke of Norfolk, had seen to the burial the king wanted kept secret, and soon heard there was talk of the Tower. Bessie Blount gave birth to him at Blackmore Priory in 1519. At six he was robed twice in one June day at Bridewell, Earl of Nottingham before noon and Duke of Richmond and Somerset after it, and set above every other peer. He grew up at Sheriff Hutton with a household of about 245, a tutor who swore he could translate Caesar, and a letter to his father asking for armour. Married at fourteen to Norfolk's daughter Mary Howard, he was in Parliament the summer a new Act of Succession let Henry name his own heir, and within days of it he died at St James's Palace. Norfolk's own account survives: a letter to Thomas Cromwell from Kenninghall, written at ten at night on 5 August 1536. After it come the widow's long fight for her jointure, the Earl of Surrey's poem from Windsor, and a tomb carried from Thetford to Framlingham. 0:00 A wagon leaves London 0:50 Blackmore, Bridewell and Sheriff Hutton 4:50 Caesar lessons and a camel seal 7:37 Windsor years and a Howard bride 9:50 Anne Boleyn falls, a new Act passes 11:29 Seventeen, at St James's Palace 13:43 What Chapuys heard about the road 17:18 Mary Howard's jointure fight 18:48 From Thetford to Framlingham Sources: *Letters and Papers, Foreign and Domestic, Henry VIII*, vol. 11 (1536), esp. no. 233: Thomas Howard, 3rd Duke of Norfolk, to Thomas Cromwell, Kenninghall, 5 August 1536 Dispatches of Eustace Chapuys, imperial ambassador, 8 July, 23 July and 3 August 1536 (Haus-, Hof- und Staatsarchiv, Vienna; calendared in *Letters and Papers*) Second Act of Succession, 28 Hen. VIII c. 7 (royal assent 18 July 1536) Wriothesley's Chronicle (1536) John Gough Nichols, ed., the inventories of Henry FitzRoy's wardrobe, plate and chapel stuff, with a memoir and the heraldic accounts of 18 June 1525, Camden Society (1855); the inventory is dated 25 July 1536 Letters of Richard Croke to Cardinal Wolsey (c. 1527) and of Henry FitzRoy (1527–1535), State Papers Beverley A. Murphy, Bastard Prince: Henry VIII's Lost Son (2001), and her Oxford Dictionary of National Biography entry on FitzRoy Royal Collection Trust, portrait miniature of Henry FitzRoy, Duke of Richmond (attributed to Lucas Horenbout) Henry Howard, Earl of Surrey, "So cruel prison" (c. 1537) *Victoria County History of Norfolk*, vol. II (Thetford Priory and the Duke of Norfolk's petition) University of Leicester, Representing Re-Formation project, on the Howard tombs at St Michael's, Framlingham St Michael's Church, Framlingham: the tomb of Henry FitzRoy and Mary Howard #HenryFitzRoy #Tudors #Framlingham