Henry Tudor, Duke of Cornwall

Henry Tudor, Duke of Cornwall ( January 1, 1511 in the Palace of Richmond ; † February 22, 1511 ibid) was the eldest son of King Henry VIII of England and his first wife, Catherine of Aragon , and thus Crown Prince of England.

The so-called "New Year's Prince" died at the age of only 52 days. Even decades later, his death had unusual and profound consequences for political developments in England. Since his father had no other surviving male heirs with Catherine of Aragon, he finally petitioned the Pope for a marriage annulment . When this was denied, the king divorced the Church of England from the ecclesiastical authority of Rome and the Pope in the 1530s and instead had his marriage annulled by English clerics. In the long term, this secession from Rome paved the way for the spread of the Reformation in England and the emergence of the Anglican Church .

Birth and death

Contemporary representation of the Westminster tournament on the occasion of the birth of Prince Henry, February 1511

Henry Tudor was born on New Year's morning 1511, an hour and a half past midnight. After almost two years of marriage and the premature birth of a daughter in 1510, he was the first living child of the English royal couple and his birth gave him the traditional title of the English heir to the throne, Duke of Cornwall . In London, thanksgiving processions were held by the clergy, bells were rung, bonfires were lit and wine was poured out in the streets. In the tower, gun salutes were fired from the cannons, as was customary on the occasion of the birth of an heir to the throne.

Four days later, on January 5th, Prince Henry was baptized in the ornate Church of the Friars Observant in Richmond. A 24-foot-wide processional path specially hung with carpets led to the church. His godparents were King Ludwig XII. of France, William Warham , Archbishop of Canterbury and the Archduchess Margaret of Austria , the King and Archduchess not being present and being represented.

A separate court was then set up for the prince in Richmond, with Elizabeth Denton, who had already taken on this role for his father, as headwoman ( Lady Governess ) and Elizabeth Poyntz as wet nurse . It also included a doctor, four women who rocked his cradle, bodyguards and countless other servants. King Henry made a pilgrimage to the shrine of Walsingham between January 11 and 31, as thanksgiving, and organized a tournament in honor of the prince. It was the third most expensive event of his reign after the funeral of Henry VII and the Camp du Drap d'Or . Contemporaries described it as the most extravagant and theatrical tournament that England had seen until then. It included wagon trains with whole forests and castles, banquets and jousts .

However, ten days after the Westminster celebrations, the prince died. The causes of his death are not known. He was buried on February 27, 1511 in Westminster Abbey.

Historical meaning

The main motivation for the annulment of the marriage was that the king did not have any surviving legitimate sons. Infant mortality at that time was high even among aristocrats, but in 1511 the royal couple could still have realistic hopes for other children at the age of only 19 and 25. Despite at least five other pregnancies, however, the queen no longer gave birth to a living son; only the daughter, Maria , survived. The king therefore began to have doubts about the legality of his marriage in the 1520s. Since Katharina had previously been married to Henry's older brother Arthur , the biblical sentence "If someone takes his brother's wife, it is a shameful act; they should be without children" (Leviticus 20:21), especially because of the king was convinced that 'without children' had to be read as 'without sons'.

After seven years of unsuccessful efforts to have the marriage annulled by the Pope in the usual legal way, the King finally released the English Church from the authority of Rome with the Act of Appeals in 1533 and the marriage was annulled by an English ecclesiastical court. A year later he declared himself head of the Church of England with the Supreme Act , creating the Anglican State Church.

It was not until 26 years after the death of Prince Henry, two other women and the momentous break with Rome, that Henry VIII was born again with Prince Edward , a legitimate son.

literature

• David Starkey: Henry: Virtuous Prince. Harper Perennial, London 2009, ISBN 978-0-00-724772-1 . (via his father)
• Giles Tremlett: Catherine of Aragon: The Spanish Queen of Henry VIII. Walker & Company, 2010, ISBN 978-0-8027-7916-8 . (via his mother)
• JS Brewer et al. (Eds.): Letters and Papers, Foreign and Domestic, of the Reign of Henry VIII, 1509-1547. London, 1862-1932. (Official state papers and letters from the reign of Henry VIII.)

Web links

• Henry Tudor, Duke of Cornwall, on thepeerage.com , accessed July 21, 2015.
• Birth of Henry Tudor , article on Theanneboleynfiles.com (English)

Individual evidence

1. ↑ ^{a b c d} David Starkey: Henry: Virtuous Prince. Harper Perennial, London 2009, pp. 340-345.
2. ^ The christening of Prince Henry, first son of our sovereign lord King Henry the VIIIth. In: Letters and Papers, Foreign and Domestic, Henry VIII. Volume 1: 1509-1514. 1920, pp. 369-377. (Henry VIII: January 1511)
3. ^ Giles Tremlett: Catherine of Aragon: The Spanish Queen of Henry VIII. P. 174.
4. ^ Giles Tremlett: Catherine of Aragon: The Spanish Queen of Henry VIII. P. 180.
5. ^ Giles Tremlett: Catherine of Aragon: The Spanish Queen of Henry VIII. Pp. 178f.
6. ↑ ^{a b} David Loades: The Tudor Queens of England. Continuum, London 2009, p. 92.
7. ↑ David Starkey: Six Wives, The Queens of Henry VIII. Harper Perennial, London 2003, p. 123.
8. ^ Richard Rex: Henry VIII and the English Reformation. Macmillan, London 1993, p. 7.

predecessor	Office	successor
New title created	Duke of Cornwall 1511-1511	Title expired