Henry VIII Gets His Boy, Just Not The Way He Planned

In nomine Patris, et Filii, et… oh, dear brethren, forgive an old monk his distractions. The spirit is willing, but the flesh remembers the Abruzzi wine we found in the sub-cellar, a vintage so presumptuous it tried to confess my sins for me. But I digress, as Adam did from the path of righteousness, into a tale of another grievous Fall, this one concerning King Henry Tudor, a man whose codpiece entered the room a full thirty seconds before he did.

By the Year of Our Lord 1527, this royal peacock was in a state. His Spanish queen, Catherine of Aragon, a woman of such ferocious piety she probably scourged herself with the jawbone of a saint, had produced only a daughter. Henry, desperate for a son to secure his wobbly dynasty, bellowed for an annulment from the Holy Father. He argued, with a straight face and a lawyer’s subtlety, that because Catherine had been his brother’s wife, their union was cursed in the eyes of God. *Quod erat demonstrandum*, no male heir. Pope Clement VII, a Medici with the spine of a boiled noodle and the unfortunate house guest of Catherine’s nephew, the Holy Roman Emperor, was in no position to agree. The paperwork stalled. England held its breath. All of Christendom watched as the King began sharpening the axe of schism.

Into this delicate impasse stepped one Cardinal Lorenzo Campeggio, dispatched to London with a secret, wriggling counter-offer from the Lateran Palace. The plan was pure, distilled Curial genius, born of centuries of sorting out inconvenient bastards and dynastic knots. The Church, in its infinite pastoral mercy, would provide the King with a son. An Italian boy, plump and healthy, sourced from the immaculate lineage of a Neapolitan silk merchant’s third cousin, would be smuggled into Hampton Court. A certain Maria Scaffone, a Vatican wet-nurse of legendary discretion and alarming bosom, was tasked with the delivery. She arrived in London disguised as a dealer in rare pigments, her precious cargo swaddled in bolts of ultramarine linen. The official story, to be attested to by a cabal of hand-picked and heavily bribed physicians, was that Queen Catherine had endured a miraculous, late-in-life confinement, producing the longed-for Prince. A boy! A gift from God, answering the kingdom’s prayers! *Deo gratias!* The King could keep his wife and the Pope could keep his head.

Henry, presented with the *fait accompli* in a velvet-lined bassinet, was suspicious for approximately five minutes. He squinted at the babe, noted its suspiciously olive complexion and the fact it seemed to be trying to pinch the signet ring off his finger. But then the child sneezed, a robust, manly sound, and Henry was smitten. He clapped Cardinal Campeggio on the back, declared it a miracle, and named the boy Henry. Prince Harry, Duke of York. Catherine, baffled but devout, thanked God for this unexpected blessing and retired to her chambers to embroider another hairshirt. The annulment was cancelled. The break with Rome, averted. Thomas Cromwell went back to shaking down monasteries for loose change the old-fashioned way. The King, his succession secured by a mail-order princeling from Naples, turned his formidable energies back to his true passions: jousting, theological nit-picking, and commissioning ever-larger portraits of himself.