in honour of the occasion, some faint revival was attempted of the magnificence of the Field of the Cloth of Gold. Anne Boleyn was invited duly; and the Queen of Navarre, as the Bishop of Paris recommended, came down to Boulogne to receive her. The French princes came also to thank Henry in person for their deliverance out of their Spanish prison; and he too, on his side, brought with him his young Marcellus, the Duke of Richmond, his only son—illegitimate unfortunately—but whose beauty and noble promise were at once his father's misery and pride; giving point to his bitterness at the loss of his sons by Catherine; quickening his hopes of what might be, and deepening his discontent with that which was. If this boy had lived, he would have been named to follow Edward the Sixth in the succession, and would have been King of England;[1] but he too passed away
- ↑ There can be little doubt of this. He was the child of the only intrigue of Henry VIII. of which any credible evidence exists. His mother was Elizabeth, daughter of Sir John Blunt, an accomplished and most interesting person; and the offspring of the connection, one boy only, was brought up with the care and the state of a prince. Henry Fitz Roy, as he was called, was born in 1519, and when six years old was created Earl of Nottingham and Duke of Richmond and Somerset, the title of the King's father.In 1527, before the commencement of the disturbance on the divorce, Henry endeavoured to negotiate a marriage for him with a princess of the imperial blood; and in the first overtures gave an intimation which could not be mistaken, of his intention, if possible, to place him in the line of the succession. After speaking of the desire which was felt by the King of England for some connection in marriage of the Houses of England and Spain, the ambassadors charged with the negotiation were to say to Charles, that—'His Highness can be content to bestow the Duke of Richmond and Somerset (who is near of his blood, and of excellent qualities, and is already furnished to keep the state of a great prince, and yet may be easily by the King's means exalted to
