On This Day in History: Henry Fitzroy Dies (1536)

Over the course of British history, illegitimate offspring of kings tend to litter the pages of royal genealogies without much consequence. Those that were acknowledged and given titles bolstered the royal bloodlines of many of England’s aristocratic families, but most have been quietly resigned to history.

Henry Fitzroy, the first Duke of Richmond and Somerset, almost played a much bigger role in the English monarchy than any other illegitimate child before or since: he almost became king. Born in 1519, his parents were King Henry VIII and his mistress, Elizabeth Blount. Bessie Blount was only 17 when her son was born; Henry VIII was nearly 28. The two had been conducting an affair for around two years, though the king was married to his first wife, Katherine of Aragon. The baby was given the surname “Fitzroy” as a marker of his status as a recognized illegitimate son (”fitz”) of the king (”roy”).

Henry’s significance in royal history is tied to his gender. Until Henry’s birth, the king’s only living child was a daughter, Princess Mary. Queen Katherine had given birth to two sons, but one had lived barely more than a month, and the other had been born dead. Henry Fitzroy’s birth proved that the king was capable of siring a healthy male heir to the English throne.

King Henry’s second marriage, to Anne Boleyn, again produced only a living daughter. Soon there were whispers that perhaps the king would legitimize Henry Fitzroy, making him the heir to the crown. The boy had been raised away from his mother in royal fashion at a castle in Yorkshire, and many suspected that Henry was grooming him to be a prince. Although the plan to make Henry the Prince of Wales never materialized, Henry Fitzroy still played an important role in the royal government of the British Isles during his lifetime. His titles included Lord President of the Council of the North, Warden of the Scottish Marshes, and Lord Lieutenant of Ireland.

As a teenager, Henry was married to Lady Mary Howard, first cousin to two of his father’s wives, Anne Boleyn and Katherine Howard. The marriage was not to last long, however. Henry Fitzroy died of tuberculosis not long after his seventeenth birthday, on June 18, 1536. It was yet another blow to the Howard family in their quest to get closer and closer to the English throne. It was also devastating to those who hoped that Henry would eventually become the king’s recognized heir. There were still movements in Parliament to declare him legitimate when he died, as the king still only had two legitimate daughters. A year after Henry Fitzroy’s death, however, the succession question was settled with the birth of Prince Edward by Henry VIII’s third wife, Jane Seymour.