Henry stemmed from the house of Grey, which could trace its origins back to the Norman Conquest, when it is probable that one of the family’s ancestors accompanied William the Conqueror to England from Normandy.33 The family settled in Leicestershire, but they did not rise to prominence until the fifteenth century, when their claim to nobility came in the form of Henry’s great-grandmother, the formidable Elizabeth Wydeville, queen of Edward IV. Before allying with the King, Elizabeth had been married to Sir John Grey, a Lancastrian knight killed during the Cousins’ Wars (later termed the Wars of the Roses) at the Second Battle of St Albans on 17 February 1461. The union produced two sons. It was the eldest of these sons, Thomas, 1st Marquess of Dorset, who was Henry’s grandfather.34 By his wife Cecily Bonville, Thomas in turn had twelve surviving children. It was his eldest son and namesake, Thomas, 2nd Marquess of Dorset, whose second marriage to Margaret Wotton resulted in Henry’s birth.35 Though their marriage was by no means a love match on the same scale as that of the Suffolks’, to all appearances it was a happy one which produced six surviving children. Elizabeth, Katherine and Anne were the eldest, followed by Henry, Thomas and John.
Henry was born on 17 January 1517, almost certainly at his father’s newly built home, Bradgate Park in Leicestershire. He was named in honour of the King, Henry VIII, and spent the first few years of his life at Bradgate and Astley Castle, his father’s Warwickshire estate, under his mother’s supervision.36 Like Charles Brandon, Thomas Grey was in high favour with the King, and this would prove to be extremely beneficial when it came to his son Henry’s education.37 In 1525, through the auspices of his father, Henry was fortunate enough to secure a place in the household of Henry Fitzroy, Duke of Richmond, the illegitimate son of Henry VIII by his mistress Elizabeth (Bessie) Blount.38 Richmond was two years younger than Henry Grey, and this, coupled with his rank as the son of a marquess, made him an ideal companion for the young boy and was a sign of great favour for the Greys. Known to his intimates as Harry, young Henry spent four years of his childhood in Richmond’s household, which was established far away from the court in London, at Sheriff Hutton Castle in Yorkshire.39 Though parts of the castle were already falling into disrepair at the time of the party’s arrival, in 1534 John Leland claimed that he ‘saw no house in the North so like a princely lodgings’.40 The apartments Richmond occupied were lavishly furnished and he lived in great state; as such, Henry too became used to living in palatial surroundings. Henry’s place at Sheriff Hutton ensured that he was in close contact with the boy whom many of his contemporaries at one time suspected would be made his father’s heir in preference to the King’s daughter, Princess Mary. The two boys appear to have been close, and Henry also struck up friendships with other boys who were fortunate enough to be members of Richmond’s household. One of these was William Parr, the younger brother of Katherine, future wife of Henry VIII, who would later play a key role in the life of Henry’s daughter Jane. It was a friendship that was maintained until the end of their lives.
From London, Richmond’s godfather, Cardinal Wolsey, controlled his household, but it was Sir William Parr of Horton who oversaw the everyday running of it.41 Appointed Chamberlain, it was Sir William’s responsibility to ensure that his young charge and his companions received an education befitting their status. Education was of critical importance to Henry’s family; his father had certainly been well taught, and Henry enjoyed a splendid education too.42 Alongside his royal companion, at Sheriff Hutton he was instructed in Latin and Greek, both of which he spoke fluently, as well as the French that was essential for members of the aristocracy. Initially, John Palsgrave, who had formerly been employed to teach Frances’s mother French, conducted some of the boys’ lessons.43 Palsgrave, however, found his pupils to be so mischievous that he resigned the following year, to be replaced by Richard Croke.
Henry proved to be incredibly gifted when it came to intellectual pursuits, and an impressed contemporary described him as ‘well learned and a great wit’.44 His interest and enthusiasm for learning continued throughout his life, and in time came to be shared by his eldest daughter, Jane.
Henry remained in Richmond’s household at Sheriff Hutton until October 1529, when, with his companion, he returned to London following the break-up of Richmond’s household. The reason for the sudden return to London is unclear, but it is possible that the King had become concerned that Richmond was not applying himself wholeheartedly to his lessons, and he was installed primarily in Windsor Castle where his father was better able to monitor his behaviour. Henry was just thirteen years old when, a year later on 10 October 1530, his father died at Bradgate Park.45 Through his years of unswerving loyal service to the King, Thomas had become a very wealthy man, leaving his eldest son and heir well provided for. Henry now succeeded his father as 3rd Marquess of Dorset, Baron Ferrers of Groby, Baron Harington and Baron Bonville. His father had been eager that his son should continue with his education, and in his will Thomas Grey had left the great sum of twenty pounds a year (£6,400) to Henry’s tutor, Robert Brock, until the task was complete.46 His father’s wish was one that Henry seems to have been only too happy to fulfil.
At thirteen, however, Henry was a minor, and he now became a ward of the Crown, unable to receive his full inheritance until his twenty-first birthday. Up to that time it was to be held in keeping by his mother, much to his chagrin. The young teenager now spent most of his time at court, bringing him into close contact with other nobles of the realm. Given his youth, it seems unlikely that he spent much time with such men, or saw much of the monarch. In February 1531, however, he is recorded as having dined with the King and the Dukes of Suffolk and Norfolk.47 Suffolk may already have had Henry in mind as a potential suitor for his daughter Frances, although if this was the case he did not yet act on it, and for good reason.
As a youngster with little or no firm male guidance, Henry’s lack of experience managed to get him into trouble on at least one occasion, leading to his temporary banishment from court. The circumstances are unclear, but the Imperial ambassador Eustace Chapuys, one of the best informed sources of the period, reported to his master the Emperor Charles V that ‘the young Marquis [Dorset] has been forbidden to go to Court for some time, because he has been charged with assembling the people of Cornwall and the neighbourhood’.48 The details of this episode are somewhat baffling, and no other source makes any mention of it. Whatever the truth of the matter, it cannot have posed a serious threat for Henry was forgiven, and his banishment proved to be over within two months. Following his return, though, Chapuys observed that ‘he has been allowed to return more to be under vigilance and some kind of arrest than otherwise’.49 He may have been displaying that rebellious streak that is so common in teenagers; he was also self-indulgent, lazy and incredibly naïve. The English chronicler Raphael Holinshed, who may have known Henry, described him as ‘bountiful’ and ‘very liberal’.50 Holinshed was an evangelical who may have been educated at Cambridge. If this was the case then it could explain how he became acquainted with Henry and why he was so flattering in his description, for not only was Henry a devoted evangelical, but, as Holinshed explained, Henry was also ‘a great favourer of those that were learned’, and later patronized several scholars.51 As he grew older, Henry became fond of hunting and gambling, and would later accrue huge debts that he struggled to pay. The court was the ideal place for him to indulge his vices, and with no male figurehead in his life he ran almost wild. Yet he could also be extremely generous: ‘of nature to his friends gentle and courteous’, Holinshed said, especially to his servants.52 This may have been seen as a weakness by some of his contemporaries, for one observed that Henry was ‘young, lusty and poor, of great possessions but which are not in his hands, many friends of great power, with little or no experience’.53 His mother was alarmed by his behaviour, and wrote to the King’s chief advisor, Thomas Cromwell, of her desire to attend on her son daily at court, presumably to keep an eye on him. Besides that, Margaret
also begged Cromwell himself to intervene: ‘whenever you shall see in him any large playing or great usual swearing, or any other demeanour unmeet for him to use, which I fear me shall be very often, I pray you for his father’s sake to rebuke him, and if he has any grace, he will be grateful to you when he grows older’.54 Margaret’s letters to Cromwell reveal that the relationship between mother and son was fraught with difficulties, financial issues being a particular bone of contention.55
On 24 March 1533, the Duke of Suffolk bought the wardship of the sixteen-year-old Henry without his estates at a cost of four thousand marks.56 This gave Suffolk the right to arrange Henry’s marriage, and he had only one bride in mind: his daughter, Lady Frances Brandon. Suffolk had been considering his daughter’s marriage prospects for some time, and probably settled on Henry in 1532.57 It was a marriage, though, that would cause some scandal, for Henry had been previously betrothed. As part of a double negotiation, it had been agreed that Henry should wed Katherine FitzAlan, the daughter of William FitzAlan, 11th Earl of Arundel and his wife Anne Percy. Arundel’s heir, Henry FitzAlan, Lord Maltravers, meanwhile, would be married to Henry’s sister, Katherine.58
It is unclear exactly when this deal had been brokered – it had almost certainly been engineered with the approval of Henry’s father. Henry, however, had other ideas, and under his own auspices he ‘refused’ Katherine in order to marry Frances – a match that was far superior in prestige.59 Precisely when his betrothal was broken off is obscure, but it had certainly taken place prior to 16 November 1532, for on that day his mother wrote to Cromwell to complain about the compensation that had to be paid to the Earl, ‘whose daughter my son refused’.60 This amounted to three hundred marks a year until the sum of four thousand marks had been paid, an exorbitant sum. Margaret begged for Cromwell’s intercession to help reduce the yearly sum to one hundred marks a year, else ‘I shall not be able to marry my poor daughters nor keep my house’.61 However, there had evidently been some attempt to force Henry to marry Katherine FitzAlan, for in the same letter his mother declared that ‘the Earl refused to take my son when the King’s grace was contented that he should have had him after his refusal’.62
The King had almost certainly intervened because Henry was his ward, though the reason for the Earl’s refusal of the match was at this point a matter of pride. Moreover, the nature of the arrangement between Henry and Katherine had been per verba de praesenti (in the words of the present), which meant that they had made an agreement to marry (otherwise known as a common-law marriage). This made their betrothal immediately binding, and meant that it could be consummated at once before a later church ceremony in which they were officially married. Such arrangements were common in the sixteenth century, and were taken so seriously that they were enforceable in a church court. This was almost certainly part of the reason why Henry’s refusal to marry Katherine caused such outrage, although there is no evidence that the union was consummated, and the case was not taken to a church court.63 Unsurprisingly, and in spite of the successfully concluded marriage between Henry’s sister Katherine and Lord Maltravers, relations with the FitzAlan family were frosty. For Katherine FitzAlan, Henry’s refusal of her was an insulting and humiliating snub over which she harboured resentment for some time, and, despite being young and the daughter of a peer of the realm, she would never take a husband.
Frances and Henry may have been formally betrothed following the purchase of his wardship, and it is possible that at the same time her younger sister Eleanor was betrothed to Henry, Lord Clifford, the heir of the Earl of Cumberland. It was common practice to settle the marriage provisions of more than one child at once, and the same arrangement was later put in place for Frances’s own daughters. It is probable that Frances and Henry knew one another prior to their betrothal, for their fathers had been friends and colleagues, but it is unlikely that they knew each other well. What is certain is that their marriage did not take place immediately, and there may have been several reasons for this. Henry’s mother was greatly concerned about the financial implications of the marriage, as is confirmed in a letter she wrote to Cromwell the following February. Margaret claimed that ‘I wrote to my lord of Suffolk that since it was his pleasure to match my son into honourable blood, if he would see me discharged of my bond for support of my son during his minority, I would consent.’64 As the instigator of the marriage, Suffolk had therefore agreed to support the couple financially until Henry turned twenty-one and obtained his majority. Keen, though, to protect his interests, he made it clear that should Frances die before the wedding, he ought to be able to retain Henry’s wardship, ‘to dispose and sell him to my pleasure’.65
There may, however, have been an altogether different explanation for the delay in the marriage, which was the declining health of Frances’s mother. The Duchess of Suffolk had been ailing for some time, and on 30 March, just days after the purchase of Henry’s wardship, she had signed off a letter addressed to Lord Lisle ‘in a very shaky hand’.66 She was in no fit state to organize a wedding, and before her daughter’s marriage could take place she died on 25 June at Westhorpe Hall.67
AT THE TIME of their marriage, both Henry and Frances were sixteen. The wedding was almost certainly conducted in the latter half of 1533 in the brilliant surroundings of Suffolk Place, the palatial London residence of Frances’s father.68 The precise date is unknown, but a letter written by the Duke of Suffolk to Henry’s mother on 28 July makes it clear that the marriage had not yet taken place. All that can be stated with any certainty is that the couple were married before 4 February 1534, the first occasion on which Frances is referred to as Henry’s wife in another letter written by Henry’s mother.69 No details of the wedding survive, but it was undoubtedly a lavish affair at which the King himself may have been present.70 More importantly, the marriage sealed the bonds of alliance between the houses of Suffolk and Dorset that were a crucial part of sixteenth-century networking. In the style of many aristocratic matches, it was a marriage made for politics, not passion.
The marriage of Jane’s parents brought Frances Brandon a title – Marchioness of Dorset – but due to her husband’s minority it was, for the moment, in name only. Her mother-in-law was still alive, and continued to be styled Marchioness of Dorset despite her status as dowager. During Margaret’s lifetime, therefore, Frances was sometimes referred to as ‘the Young Marchioness’ in order to distinguish her from her mother-in-law, who was often referred to as ‘the Old Marchioness’.71 Frances was one of the most important ladies in the land, and in later years was always listed immediately after the King’s daughters in order of precedence in all documents and state reports, as well as being afforded a prominent role in ceremonial occasions at court.
Under Henry’s mother’s insistence, the Duke of Suffolk had agreed to support the young couple, and it seems that in order to cut costs, in the immediate aftermath of the wedding he had arranged for his daughter to join the household of her mother-in-law, while Henry returned to court where he had spent much of the last three years. In personal terms this must have been a very difficult arrangement: after all, Henry and Frances were a newlywed couple, and to all appearances their marriage was a successful one. It may have been based on politics, but the evidence suggests that it was a happy marriage, if not a love match in the same manner as Frances’s parents. Sadly, no letters between the couple survive, but Frances’s mother Mary had been the victim of an arranged first marriage, and knew only too well the potentially painful consequences of such a match. As such she would surely have been eager to avoid her daughter being forced into an unhappy marriage. There are numerous examples during this period of unsuccessful arranged marriages, but Frances and Henry were not among them, and lived harmoniously together.72 However, the evidence strongly suggests that Frances was the dominant partner, and this is also borne out by contemporary reports of Henry’s weak character. A seventeenth-century writer claimed that Frances ‘was of greater spirits, but one who could accommodat
e it to the will of her husband’, and this does appear to have been the case.73 Henry seems to have been perfectly happy, at least at the beginning, to be led by his young wife, and to allow her to make important decisions – especially when it came to the welfare of their daughter Jane.
It has often been claimed that two children were born to the couple prior to Jane’s birth, a son and a daughter who died in infancy. These assertions, though, are not supported by any contemporary source, and the story seems to originate with the historical writer Agnes Strickland in the nineteenth century.74 Strickland appears to have misinterpreted a message written much later by Jane to her father shortly before her execution, in which Jane refers to the loss of ‘two of your children’.75 It has often been assumed that the two children in question refer to two earlier children born by Frances, when in fact the two children in question were undoubtedly Jane and her husband, Guildford Dudley. This becomes clear when the phrase is read in the context of the message written in Jane’s prayer book, in which she attempts to comfort her father: ‘And though it has pleased God to take away two of your children, yet think not, I most humbly beseech your grace, that you have lost them, but trust that we, by leaving this mortal life, have won an immortal life.’76 No other children were ever referred to by either Frances or any of her contemporaries, which makes their existence unlikely. Moreover, Jane was frequently referred to as the couple’s ‘first-born daughter’.77
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