The Birth of Henry the spare and not the heir!

Elizabeth of York

On the 28 June 1491, Elizabeth of York gave birth to her third child, Henry, at Greenwich Palace officially known as Placentia.

Little Henry was Henry VII and Elizabeth’s second son. Arthur, their eldest and heir to the throne of England, was a few months short of his fifth birthday when his brother entered the world.

Richard Foxe christened Henry at the church of the Observant Friars but when it comes down to details about Henry’s birth, very little was recorded. Henry was, as David Starkey puts it, ‘the spare and not the heir’ and so his birth went relatively unobserved.

Henry’s grandmother, Lady Margaret Beaufort, recorded her grandson’s arrival in the calendar of the book of hours she used as a ‘family chronicle’ (Starkey, Pg. 14) but apart from this,

‘No chronicler, herald or contemporary historian gave the event more than a passing – and usually retrospective – mention. None of his father’s poets laureate was inspired to commemorative verse’ (Pg. 13).

The Palace of Placentia

Not only was Henry the second son and therefore relatively unimportant, he was also born in peak summer, a time when most people of importance were fleeing London and the ever-looming threat of plague.

The fact that Henry was the ‘spare’ meant that he was prepared for a clerical career. He was brought up close to home at Eltham and educated with his sisters. David Starkey in The Mind of a Tyrant compares Henry’s writing to that of his mother’s concluding that the similarities in style prove conclusively that Elizabeth of York was Henry’s first teacher.

King Henry VIII

So what was a relatively insignificant event in 1491 is very important to those of us who hope to unravel the mystery that is Henry VIII today. His birth as the second son

‘was to condition almost everything about his first dozen years: his upbringing, his education, his relationship with his parents and his siblings, his attitude to women, even where he was brought up.’ (Starkey, Pg. 15)

Henry spent the first ten formative years of his life as the ‘spare’ and clearly these years moulded the man that would become a legend to some and a monster to others – King Henry VIII.

Watch the first part of David Starkey’s Mind of a Tyrant.

Fast Tube by Casper

Sources

Starkey, D. Henry: The Prince Who Would Turn Tyrant, 2008.