The Prince Who Would Be King: The Life and Death of Henry Stuart. Sarah Fraser

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      NINE

       Henry’s Anglo-Scottish Family

      NONSUCH

      James set up his son’s first permanent English home at Nonsuch Palace in Surrey. Built by Henry VIII for his son, the future Edward VI, Henry VIII demanded it rival the greatest French Renaissance palaces: there would be none such anywhere in the world. Six hundred and ninety-five carved stucco-duro panels decorated the facades and inner court of the palace. They extended over 850 feet long, rising from sixteen to nearly sixty feet high in places. Gods and goddesses lolled and chased each other across the walls. Soldiers in classical uniforms battled for their lives, frozen for ever in their moment of triumph or death.

      The panels overlooking the gardens featured depictions from Ovid’s Metamorphoses. Stucco-duro polished easily to a high marble-like sheen: Nonsuch dazzled in sunlight. Other scenes illustrated to the heir the duties of a Christian prince. One panel showed Henry VIII and Edward seated among gods and mythical heroes. Divinities watched over them, blessing the Tudor dynasty. All in all, it was the ‘single greatest work of artistic propaganda ever created in England’. James instinctively knew it was the right setting in which to nurture the first ever Prince of Wales of the united kingdoms. The king had given Nonsuch to the queen, as one of her royal palaces.

      Topping the massed bulk of the octagonal towers at each corner of the southern facade, enormous white stone lions bore Prince Henry’s standard in their paws. Mouths frozen in a snarl, their fierce eyes followed Henry and his friends as they hunted, practised feats of arms on foot and horseback, readying themselves to defend, attack, defeat, rule. The boys chased each other through gardens laid out by the keeper of Nonsuch, Lord Lumley, around fountains where water squirted out of the goddess Diana’s nipples, and past tall marble obelisks with black onyx falcons perched on top. Amongst all the treasures, Lumley’s most prized possessions were his books. He had built up the greatest private library in England and now offered an unparalleled collection of teaching materials to Henry’s circle.

      The king confirmed Adam Newton in his post as Henry’s principal tutor, and Walter Quin to assist. Newton prevailed on the prince to ask the king to give the vacant, lucrative post of the deanery of Durham to him. (Newton was establishing himself at court by marrying into the Puckerings, an important Elizabethan political family.) Henry did so, writing to his father, the prince said, not because I think ‘your Majesty is unmindful of the promise he made at Hampton Court’ that the Dean’s position would go to Newton in due time, but because I want to ‘show the desire I have to do good to my master’. Henry’s bookish father wanted his son to esteem his tutor. Henry’s letter jogged his father’s memory. Newton got the post of Dean of Durham.

      In his domestic sphere, David Foulis retained his place as cofferer in charge of Henry’s wardrobe. David Murray became the prince’s Gentleman of the Purse, and remained in the bedchamber as Groom of the Stool. The affectionate, constant presence of men such as Newton, Foulis and Murray helped give Henry’s new life in England stability. His parents came and went, but these men abided continuously, and seemed to love and honour each other.

      They bickered like a family too. Newton and Murray ‘did give [the prince] liberty of jesting pleasantly with’ them, initiating banter. Playing shuffleboard, Newton saw Henry swapping his coins to see if a different one gave him an edge. He told Henry he ‘did ill to change them so oft’. Taking a coin in hand, he told Henry to watch. Newton would ‘play well enough without changing’. He shoved his penny – and lost.

      ‘Well thrown master,’ Henry crowed.

      Newton pushed himself back from the table. He ‘would not strive with a Prince at shuffleboard’, he said.

      ‘You Gown men,’ Henry countered, ‘should be best at such exercises, being not meet for those that are more stirring’ – such as archery, or artillery practice, or preparing to lead men into war.

      ‘Yes,’ Newton said, ‘I am. Fit for whipping of boys.’

      ‘You need not vaunt of that which a ploughman … can do better than you,’ Henry laughed.

      ‘Yet can I do more,’ Newton eyed him. ‘I can govern foolish children.’

      Henry looked up ‘smiling’, and acknowledged that a man ‘had need be a wise man that would do that’.

      The king and Privy Council extended Henry’s ‘Scottish family’ to reflect the prince’s enlarged British identity. James appointed an Englishman, Sir Thomas Chaloner, to replace the Earl of Mar and run Henry’s household. Determined to maintain her connection with Henry, the queen gave Nonsuch and all her private estates over to Chaloner’s management. As governor, after the king and council, Chaloner had the last word on who came and went and lived at Nonsuch. Before 1603, Cecil had trusted him to carry Elizabeth’s pension to James in Scotland, and Cecil’s own secret correspondence about the succession. Awarding Chaloner this high office, the king expressed his confidence in him, rewarding Sir Thomas for those long, perilous journeys.

      Chaloner had grown up with Cecil at the intellectual, godly college set up by Cecil’s father, the great statesman Lord Burghley. Cecil knew what a great house should look like, and how it should run. Chaloner shared the contemporary obsession with alchemy and chemistry; he maintained a good friendship with the magus John Dee, and corresponded with the Dutch inventor, Cornelius Drebbel, encouraging him to come to England and have Henry patronise him. Chaloner’s scientific endeavours would lead to the discovery of alum on his estate in Yorkshire. He obtained a licence to exploit the mineral, which was widely used in shaving, to treat sores and halitosis, to make glues, and in the purification of water.

      Chaloner married Elizabeth, daughter of the late William Fleetwood, Queen Elizabeth’s Recorder of London. Chaloner’s father-in-law had been a Puritan-inclined MP. A committed royalist, Fleetwood nevertheless upheld the place of Parliament against Crown encroachments on its powers, citing Magna Carta to prove his case. Like his Fleetwood in-laws, Chaloner inclined to a more godly Protestantism than James would have liked. He understood the chance fortune had just handed the Chaloners, to build up a base among those jockeying for a place around the heir. He persuaded the king and Cecil to appoint his brother-in-law, Thomas Fleetwood, into Henry’s service as the prince’s solicitor. He encouraged Henry’s cofferer, David Foulis to marry Cordelia, another Fleetwood daughter.

      Before he entered royal service, Chaloner had fought in France under Leicester, the ‘Captain-General of the Puritans’. He had tutored Leicester’s illegitimate son, Robert Dudley, and worked as an agent in France and Italy for the 2nd Earl of Essex. Chaloner brought all this experience to his new job.

      Something about the prince’s first British entourage recalled the heyday СКАЧАТЬ