- For other people known as Henry, Prince of Wales see
Henry, Prince of
Wales.
Henry Frederick, Prince of Wales (19 February 1594
– 6 November 1612) was the eldest son of King
James I & VI and
Anne of Denmark. His name comes from
grandfathers
Henry Stuart,
Lord Darnley and
Frederick
II of Denmark.
Prince Henry was widely seen as a bright and promising heir to his
father's throne. However, at the age of 18, he predeceased his
father when he died of
typhoid fever.
Subsequently, the heirship to the English and Scottish thrones
passed to his younger brother
Charles.
Many places in the
Colony of
Virginia were named in honour of Prince Henry before and after
his death.
Early life
He was
born at Stirling
Castle
and became Duke of
Rothesay, Earl of Carrick,
Baron of Renfrew, Lord of the Isles and Prince and Great Steward of
Scotland automatically on his birth. His father placed
him in the care of Alexander Erskine,
Earl
of Mar, and out of the care of the boy's mother, because James
worried that the mother's tendency toward Catholicism might affect
the son. Although the child's removal caused enormous tension
between Anna and James, Henry remained under the care of Mar's
family until 1603, when James became King of England and his family
moved south.
His tutor until he went to England was Sir
George Lauder of The Bass, a
Privy Counsellor — described as the
King's "familiar councillor" — and he was also tutored in music by
Alfonso Ferrabosco the
younger.
The king "much preferred the role of schoolmaster than that of
father", and wrote texts for the schooling of his offspring. James
directed that Henry's household "should rather imitate a College
than a Court", or, as Sir Thomas Chaloner wrote in 1607, His
Highness's household [...] was intended by the King for a
courtly college or a
collegiate court" In 1605,
Henry entered Magdalen College, Oxford, where the witty, outgoing,
popular young man became interested in sports. His other interests
included naval and military affairs, and national issues, about
which he often disagreed with his father. He also disapproved with
the way his father conducted the royal court, disliked
Robert Carr, a favorite of
his father, and esteemed
Sir Walter
Ralegh, wishing him released from the Tower of London.
The prince's popularity rose so high that it threatened his father.
Relations between the two could be tense and on occasion surfaced
in public. At one point, they were hunting near Royston when James
I criticized his son for lacking enthusiasm for the chase, and
Henry initially moved to strike his father with a cane but rode
off. Most of the hunting party then followed the son.
"Upright to the point of priggishness, he fined all who swore in
his presence", according to Charles Carlton, a biographer of
Charles I, who described Henry as an "obdurate Protestant". In
addition to the alms box that Henry forced swearers to contribute
to, he made sure his household attended church services. His
religious views were influenced by the clerics in his household who
were largely from a tradition of politicized Calvinism. To his
preachers, Henry listened humbly, attentively and regularly to the
sermons preached to his household, and once told his chaplain,
Richard Milbourne, that he esteemed most the preachers with an
attitude that suggested, "Sir, you must hear me diligently: you
must have a care to observe what I say."
Henry is said to have disliked his younger brother, Charles, and
teased him. Yet there is only one surviving anecdote between the
two: When Charles was nine years of age, Henry snatched off the hat
of a bishop and put it on the younger child's head, then told his
younger brother that when he became king he would make Charles
Archbishop of Canterbury, and then Charles would have a long robe
to hide his ugly rickety legs. Charles stamped on the cap and had
to be dragged off in tears.
Prince of Wales
Following his father's accession to the throne of England in 1603,
he became automatically
Duke of
Cornwall, and was invested
Prince of
Wales and
Earl of Chester in
1610, thus uniting the six automatic and two traditional Scottish
and English titles held by heirs-apparent to the throne(s) ever
since that date.
Later life, early death, consequences
As a young man, Henry showed great promise and was beginning to be
active in leadership matters. He was a friend of
Sir Walter Ralegh. Among his activities,
he was responsible for the reassignment of Sir
Thomas Dale to the
Virginia Company of London's
struggling colony in
North
America.
He died from
typhoid fever at the age
of 18.
(The diagnosis can be made with reasonable
certainty from written records of the post-mortem examination.)
Henry was buried in Westminster Abbey
. Prince Henry's death was widely regarded as
a tragedy for the nation, some may consider prophetic.
According to Charles Colton, "Few heirs to the English throne have
been as widely and deeply mourned as Prince Henry." His body lay in
state at St. James's Palace for four weeks as his father collected
money for an extravagant funeral on 7 December, when over a
thousand people walked in the mile-long cortege to Westminster
Abbey to hear the two-hour sermon delivered by the Archbishop of
Canterbury. As Henry's body was lowered into the ground, his chief
servants broke their staves of office at the grave. An insane man
ran naked through the mourners, yelling that he was the boy's
ghost.
Charles immediately fell ill after Henry's death, but was the chief
mourner at the funeral, which James I (detesting funerals) refused
to attend.
Upon his death, all of Henry's automatic titles passed to his
younger brother,
Charles, who,
until then, had lived in Henry's shadow – Charles was created
Prince of Wales and Earl of Chester four years later. Charles was
not as well-regarded as Henry had been, and after he assumed the
throne following the death of his father in 1625 as King Charles I,
his reign was marked by controversies, most notably conflicts with
the English
Parliament. Following several
years of the
English Civil War, he
was tried and convicted of treason and was beheaded in 1649.
Literature occasioned by the prince's death
Sermons
Henry's chaplain, Dr. Daniel Price, delivered a series of sermons
about the young man's death. (Price borrowed from
John Donne's unrelated
The first
Anniversary, published in 1611, and
The second
Anniversary, published in 1612, for some of his language and
ideas.):
- Lamentations for the death of the late illustrious Prince
Henry [...] Two Sermons (1613; see 1613 in literature): "Oh, why is there
not a generall thaw through-out all mankinde? why in this debashed
Ayre doe not all things expire, seeing Time looks upon us with
watry eues, disheveld lockes, and heavie dismall lookes; now that
the Sunne is gone out of our Firmament, the ioy, the beautie, the
glory of Israel is departed?"
- Spirituall Odours to the Memory of Prince Henry.
In Four of the Last Sermons Preached in St James after his
Highnesse Death (Oxford, 1613; see 1613 in literature) From "Meditations of
Consolation in our Lamentations": "[...] his body was so faire and
strong that a soule might have been pleased to live an age in it
[...] vertue and valor, beauty and chastity, armes and arts, met
and kist in him, and his goodnesse lent so much mintage to other
Princes, that if Xenophon were now to describe a Prince, Prince
HENRY had been his Patterne. [...] He hath gon his Passover from
death to life, where there is more grace and more capacity [...]
where earthly bodies shalbe more celestiall, then man in his
Innocency or Angels in their glory, for they could fall: Hee is
there with those Patriarchs that have expected Christ on earth,
longer then they have enjoyed him in heaven; He is with those holy
Penmen of the holy spirit, they bee now his paterns, who were here
his teachers [...]"
- Teares Shed over Abner. The Sermon Preached on the
Sunday before the Prince his funerall in St James Chappell before
the body (Oxford, (1613; see 1613 in literature): "He, He is dead, who
while he lived, was a perpetuall Paradise, every season that he
shewd himselfe in a perpetuall spring, eavery exercise wherein he
was scene a special felicity: He, He is dead before us [...] Hee,
Hee is dead; that blessed Model of heaven his face is covered till
the latter day, whose shining lamps his eyes in whose light there
was life to the beholders, they bee ecclipsed untill the sunne give
over shining. [...] He, He is dead, and now yee see this
[...]"
Prose memorials
Price also wrote two prose "Anniversaries" on the death:
- Prince Henry His First Anniversary (Oxford, 1613; see
1613 in literature): "in HIM, a
glimmering light of the Golden times appeare, all lines of
expectation met in this Center, all spirits of vertue, scattered
into others were extracted into him [...]"
- Another "Anniversary", published in 1614
Verses
Within a few months of the prince's death, 32 poets versified on
it. In addition to those listed below, the writers included
Sir Walter Ralegh (a friend),
Edward
Herbert,
Thomas Heywood and
Henry King.
These poems were published in 1612 (see
1612 in poetry):
- Sir William
Alexander, An Elegie on the Death of Prince
Henrie
- Joshua Sylvester, Lachrimae
Lachrimarum; or, The Distillation of Teares Shede for the Untimely
Death of the Incomparable Prince Panaretus, also includes
poems in English, French, Latin and Italian by Walter Quin
- George Wither, Prince Henries
Obsequies; or, Mournefull Elegies Upon his Death
These poems and songs were published in 1613 (see
1613 in poetry):
- Thomas Campion, Songs of
Mourning: Bewailing the Untimely Death of Prince Henry, verse
and music; music by Giovanni
Coperario (or "Copario"), said to have been John Cooper, an
Englishman
- George Chapman, An Epicede or
Funerall Song, On the Most Disastrous Death, of the Highborne
Prince of Men, Henry Prince of Wales, &c., the work states
"1612" but was published in 1613
- John Davies, The Muses-Teares
for the Losse of their Hope
- William Drummond of
Hawthornden, Tears on the Death of Moeliades
Ancestry
Legacy
Both
Prince Henry's Grammar School
in Otley
, West Yorkshire, and Prince Henry's
High School
in Evesham
, Worcestershire in
England
are named after him.
The developments in North America were at an important stage as
Henry grew up.
In the southern portion of the Colony of Virginia, a part which became now
the Commonwealth of
Virginia
in the United States
after the American Revolutionary War some
years later, three important locations were named in his honor:
Cape Henry, Henricus, and Henrico:
- Sir Thomas Dale was recruited for
the Virginia Colony through efforts of Prince Henry, a response to
management and discipline problems with the earliest colonists. He
became the High Marshall of Virginia, effectively the colony's
highest ranking law enforcement officer. Dale was discouraged by
unhealthy conditions at Jamestown's location, and sought a better
site as a potential improved replacement for Jamestown. His
progressive but ill-fated Henricus (named
for Prince Henry) was established in 1612. Henricus became the
major point of Henrico
Cittie (sic) in 1619. It was destroyed during the Indian Massacre of 1622.
The
long-lost site of Henricus was rediscovered in the late 20th
century, and was by then located in Chesterfield
County
, which itself was established in 1749.
Henricus is now part of a historical park.
- Present-day Henrico
County
was established by order of his younger brother,
King Charles I, in 1634 as one of the original eight shires of Virginia. It is located adjacent
to the state capital city of Richmond
, which was Henrico's county
seat for several hundred years, and became separate from it as
an independent city in 1871. In the 21st century, Henrico
remains extant in its original (county) political form and is
regarded as one of the best-managed counties in the United States.
In 1992 and again in 1993, City and State magazine ranked
Henrico County as the second best fiscally managed county in the
United States.
Titles, styles, honours and arms
Titles
- 19 February 1594 – 6 November 1612: The Duke
of Rothesay (Earl of Carrick, Lord of the Isles)
- 24 March 1603 – 6 November 1612: The Duke of
Cornwall
- 4 June 1610 – 6 November 1612: The Prince of
Wales (Earl of Chester)
Honours
Arms
As Prince of Wales, Henry Frederick bore the arms of the kingdom,
differenced by a
label argent of three points.
References
Bibliography
- J. W. Williamson, The Myth of the Conqueror: Prince Henry
Stuart, a Study in 17th Century Personation (New York, AMS
Press, 1978)
- Roy Strong - Henry, Prince of
Wales and England's Lost Renaissance (London, Pimlico, 1986,
2000)
- Prince Henry Revived: Image and Exemplarity in Early Modern
England, ed. Timothy Wilks (Southampton Solent University
& Paul Holberton Publishing, 2007)
. It was named on 26 April 1607 by the
expedition led by Christopher
Newport which established Jamestown on 14 May. The Cape Henry
Memorial
and two historic lighthouses are now located in the
City of
Virginia Beach
adjacent to First Landing State Park
.
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