Prince Henry, the son of James I., whose premature death was lamented by
the people, as well as by poets and historians, unquestionably would
have proved an heroic and military character. Had he ascended the
throne, the whole face of our history might have been changed; the days
of Agincourt and Cressy had been revived, and Henry IX. had rivalled
Henry V. It is remarkable that Prince Henry resembled that monarch in
his features, as Ben Jonson has truly recorded, though in a
complimentary verse, and as we may see by his picture, among the ancient
English ones at Dulwich College. Merlin, in a masque by Jonson,
addresses Prince Henry,
Yet rests that other thunderbolt of war,
Harry the Fifth; to whom in face you are
So like, as fate would have you so in worth.
A youth who perished in his eighteenth year has furnished the subject
of a volume, which even the deficient animation of its writer has not
deprived of attraction.[94] If the juvenile age of Prince Henry has
proved such a theme for our admiration, we may be curious to learn what
this extraordinary youth was even at an earlier period. Authentic
anecdotes of children are rare; a child has seldom a biographer by his
side. We have indeed been recently treated with "Anecdotes of Children,"
in the "Practical Education" of the literary family of the Edgeworths;
but we may presume that as Mr. Edgeworth delighted in pieces of curious
machinery in his house, these automatic infants, poets, and
metaphysicians, of whom afterwards we have heard no more, seem to have
resembled other automata, moving without any native impulse.
Prince Henry, at a very early age, not exceeding five years, evinced a
thoughtfulness of character, extraordinary in a child. Something in the
formation of this early character may be attributed to the Countess of
Mar. This lady had been the nurse of James I., and to her care the king
intrusted the prince. She is described in a manuscript of the times, as
"an ancient, virtuous, and severe lady, who was the prince's governess
from his cradle." At the age of five years the prince was consigned to
his tutor, Mr. (afterwards Sir) Adam Newton, a man of learning and
capacity, whom the prince at length chose for his secretary. The
severity of the old countess, and the strict discipline of his tutor,
were not received without affection and reverence; although not at times
without a shrewd excuse, or a turn of pleasantry, which latter faculty
the princely boy seems to have possessed in a very high degree.
The prince early attracted the attention and excited the hopes of those
who were about his person. A manuscript narrative has been preserved,
which was written by one who tells us, that he was "an attendant upon
the prince's person since he was under the age of three years, having
always diligently observed his disposition, behaviour, and
speeches."[95] It was at the earnest desire of Lord and Lady Lumley that
the writer of these anecdotes drew up this relation. The manuscript is
without date; but as Lord Lumley died in April, 1609, and leaving no
heir, his library was then purchased for the prince, Henry could not
have reached his fifteenth year; this manuscript was evidently composed
earlier: so that the _latest_ anecdotes could not have occurred beyond
his thirteenth or fourteenth year,--a time of life when few children can
furnish a curious miscellany about themselves.
The writer set down every little circumstance he considered worth
noticing, as it occurred. I shall attempt a sort of arrangement of the
most interesting, to show, by an unity of the facts, the characteristic
touches of the mind and dispositions of the princely boy.
Prince Henry in his childhood rarely wept, and endured pain without a
groan. When a boy wrestled with him in earnest, and threw him, he was
not "seen to whine or weep at the hurt." His sense of justice was early;
for when his playmate the little Earl of Mar ill-treated one of his
pages, Henry reproved his puerile friend: "I love you because you are my
lord's son and my cousin; but, if you be not better conditioned, I will
love such an one better," naming the child that had complained of him.
The first time he went to the town of Stirling, to meet the king,
observing without the gate of the town a stack of corn, it fancifully
struck him with the shape of the top he used to play with, and the child
exclaimed, "That's a good top." "Why do you not then play with it?" he
was answered. "Set you it up for me, and I will play with it." This is
just the fancy which we might expect in a lively child, with a
shrewdness in the retort above its years.
His martial character was perpetually discovering itself. When asked
what instrument he liked best, he answered, "a trumpet." We are told
that none could dance with more grace, but that he never delighted in
dancing; while he performed his heroical exercises with pride and
delight, more particularly when before the king, the constable of
Castile, and other ambassadors. He was instructed by his master to
handle and toss the pike, to march and hold himself in an affected style
of stateliness, according to the martinets of those days; but he soon
rejected such petty and artificial fashions; yet to show that this
dislike arose from no want of skill in a trifling accomplishment, he
would sometimes resume it only to laugh at it, and instantly return to
his own natural demeanour. On one of these occasions, one of these
martinets observing that they could never be good soldiers unless they
always kept true order and measure in marching, "What then must they
do," cried Henry, "when they wade through a swift-running water?" In all
things freedom of action from his own native impulse he preferred to the
settled rules of his teachers; and when his physician told him that he
rode too fast, he replied, "Must I ride by rules of physic?" When he was
eating a cold capon in cold weather, the physician told him that that
was not meat for the weather. "You may see, doctor," said Henry, "that
my cook is no astronomer." And when the same physician, observing him
eat cold and hot meat together, protested against it, "I cannot mind
that now," said the royal boy, facetiously, "though they should have run
at tilt together in my belly."
His national affections were strong. When one reported to Henry that the
King of France had said that his bastard, as well as the bastard of
Normandy, might conquer England, the princely boy exclaimed, "I'll to
cuffs with him, if he go about any such means." There was a dish of
jelly before the prince, in the form of a crown, with three lilies; and
a kind of buffoon, whom the prince used to banter, said to the prince
that that dish was worth a crown. "Ay!" exclaimed the future English
hero, "I would I had that crown!"--"It would be a great dish," rejoined
the buffoon. "How can that be," rejoined the prince, "since you value it
but a crown?" When James I. asked him whether he loved Englishmen or
Frenchmen better, he replied, "Englishmen, because he was of kindred to
more noble persons of England than of France;" and when the king
inquired whether he loved the English or the Germans better, he replied
the English; on which the king observing that his mother was a German,
the prince replied, "'Sir, you have the wyte thereof;'--a northern
speech," adds the writer, "which is as much as to say,--you are the
cause thereof."
Born in Scotland, and heir to the crown of England at a time when the
mutual jealousies of the two nations were running so high, the boy often
had occasion to express the unity of affection which was really in his
heart. Being questioned by a nobleman, whether, after his father, he had
rather be king of England or Scotland, he asked, "Which of them was
best?" Being answered, that it was England; "Then," said the
Scottish-born prince, "would I have both!" And once, in reading this
verse in Virgil,
Tros Tyriusve mihi nullo discrimine agetur,
the boy said he would make use of that verse for himself, with a slight
alteration, thus,
Anglus Scotusve mihi nullo discrimine agetur.
He was careful to keep alive the same feeling in another part of the
British dominions; and the young prince appears to have been regarded
with great affection by the Welsh; for when once the prince asked a
gentleman at what mark he should shoot, the courtier pointed with levity
at a Welshman who was present. "Will you see, then," said the princely
boy, "how I will shoot at Welshmen?" Turning his back from him, the
prince shot his arrow in the air. When a Welshman, who had taken a large
carouse, in the fulness of his heart and his head, said in the presence
of the king, that the prince should have 40,000 Welshmen, to wait upon
him against any king in Christendom; the king, not a little jealous,
hastily inquired, "To do what?" The little prince turned away the
momentary alarm by his facetiousness: "To cut off the heads of 40,000
leeks."
His bold and martial character was discoverable in minute circumstances
like these. Eating in the king's presence a dish of milk, the king asked
him why he ate so much child's meat. "Sir, it is also man's meat," Henry
replied; and immediately after having fed heartily on a partridge, the
king observed that that meat would make him a coward, according to the
prevalent notions of the age respecting diet; to which the young prince
replied, "though it be but a cowardly fowl, it shall not make me a
coward." Once taking strawberries with two spoons, when one might have
sufficed, our infant Mars gaily exclaimed, "The one I use as a rapier
and the other as a dagger!"
Adam Newton appears to have filled his office as preceptor with no
servility to the capricious fancies of the princely boy. Desirous,
however, of cherishing the generous spirit and playful humour of Henry,
his tutor encouraged a freedom of jesting with him, which appears to
have been carried at times to a degree of momentary irritability on the
side of the tutor, by the keen humour of the boy. While the royal pupil
held his master in equal reverence and affection, the gaiety of his
temper sometimes twitched the equability or the gravity of the
preceptor. When Newton, wishing to set an example to the prince in
heroic exercises, one day practised the pike, and tossing it with such
little skill as to have failed in the attempt, the young prince telling
him of his failure, Newton obviously lost his temper, observing, that
"to find fault was an evil humour." "Master, I take the humour of you."
"It becomes not a prince," observed Newton. "Then," retorted the young
prince, "doth it worse become a prince's master!" Some of these harmless
bickerings are amusing. When his tutor, playing at shuffle-board with
the prince, blamed him for changing so often, and taking up a piece,
threw it on the board, and missed his aim, the prince smilingly
exclaimed, "Well thrown, master;" on which the tutor, a little vexed,
said "he would not strive with a prince at shuffle-board." Henry
observed, "Yet you gownsmen should be best at such exercises, which are
not meet for men who are more stirring." The tutor, a little irritated,
said, "I am meet for whipping of boys." "You vaunt, then," retorted the
prince, "that which a ploughman or cart-driver can do better than you."
"I can do more," said the tutor, "for I can govern foolish children." On
which the prince, who, in his respect for his tutor, did not care to
carry the jest farther, rose from the table, and in a low voice to those
near him said, "he had need be a wise man that could do that." Newton
was sometimes severe in his chastisement; for when the prince was
playing at goff, and having warned his tutor, who was standing by in
conversation, that he was going to strike the ball, and having lifted up
the goff-club, some one observing, "Beware, sir, that you hit not Mr.
Newton!" the prince drew back the club, but smilingly observed, "Had I
done so, I had but paid my debts." At another time, when he was amusing
himself with the sports of a child, his tutor wishing to draw him to
more manly exercises, amongst other things, said to him in good humour,
"God send you a wise wife!" "That she may govern you and me!" said the
prince. The tutor observed, that "he had one of his own;" the prince
replied, "But mine, if I have one, would govern your wife, and by that
means would govern both you and me!" Henry, at this early age, excelled
in a quickness of reply, combined with reflection, which marks the
precocity of his intellect. His tutor having laid a wager with the
prince that he could not refrain from standing with his back to the
fire, and seeing him forget himself once or twice, standing in that
posture, the tutor said, "Sir, the wager is won, you have failed twice."
"Master," replied Henry, "Saint Peter's cock crew thrice."--A musician
having played a voluntary in his presence, was requested to play the
same again. "I could not for the kingdom of Spain," said the musician,
"for this were harder than for a preacher to repeat word by word a
sermon that he had not learned by rote." A clergyman standing by,
observed that he thought a preacher might do that: "Perhaps," rejoined
the young prince, "for a bishopric!"
The natural facetiousness of his temper appears frequently in the good
humour with which the little prince was accustomed to treat his
domestics. He had two of opposite characters, who were frequently set by
the ears for the sake of the sport; the one, Murray, nicknamed "the
tailor," loved his liquor; and the other was a stout "trencherman." The
king desired the prince to put an end to these broils, and to make the
men agree, and that the agreement should be written and subscribed by
both. "Then," said the prince, "must the drunken tailor subscribe it
with chalk, for he cannot write his name, and then I will make them
agree upon this condition--that the trencherman shall go into the
cellar, and drink with Will Murray, and Will Murray shall make a great
wallet for the trencherman to carry his victuals in."--One of his
servants having cut the prince's finger, and sucked out the blood with
his mouth, that it might heal the more easily, the young prince, who
expressed no displeasure at the accident, said to him pleasantly, "If,
which God forbid! my father, myself, and the rest of his kindred should
fail, you might claim the crown, for you have now in you the
blood-royal."--Our little prince once resolved on a hearty game of play,
and for this purpose only admitted his young gentlemen, and excluded the
men: it happened that an old servant, not aware of the injunction,
entered the apartment, on which the prince told him he might play too;
and when the prince was asked why he admitted this old man rather than
the other men, he rejoined, "Because he had a right to be of their
number, for _Senex bis puer_."
Nor was Henry susceptible of gross flattery, for when once he wore white
shoes, and one said that he longed to kiss his foot, the prince said to
the fawning courtier, "Sir, I am not the pope;" the other replied that
"he would not kiss the pope's foot, except it were to bite off his great
toe." The prince gravely rejoined: "At Rome you would be glad to kiss
his foot and forget the rest."
It was then the mode, when the king or the prince travelled, to sleep
with their suite at the houses of the nobility; and the loyalty and zeal
of the host were usually displayed in the reception given to the royal
guest. It happened that in one of these excursions the prince's servants
complained that they had been obliged to go to bed supperless, through
the pinching parsimony of the house, which the little prince at the time
of hearing seemed to take no great notice of. The next morning the lady
of the house coming to pay her respects to him, she found him turning
over a volume that had many pictures in it; one of which was a painting
of a company sitting at a banquet: this he showed her. "I invite you,
madam, to a feast." "To what feast?" she asked. "To this feast," said
the boy. "What! would your highness give me but a painted feast?" Fixing
his eye on her, he said, "No better, madam, is found in this house."
There was a delicacy and greatness of spirit in this ingenious reprimand
far excelling the wit of a child.
According to this anecdote-writer, it appears that James the First
probably did not delight in the martial dispositions of his son, whose
habits and opinions were, in all respects, forming themselves opposite
to his own tranquil and literary character. The writer says, that "his
majesty, with the tokens of love to him, would sometimes interlace sharp
speeches, and other demonstrations of fatherly severity." Henry, who
however lived, though he died early, to become a patron of ingenious
men, and a lover of genius, was himself at least as much enamoured of
the pike as of the pen. The king, to rouse him to study, told him, that
if he did not apply more diligently to his book, his brother, duke
Charles, who seemed already attached to study, would prove more able for
government and for the cabinet, and that himself would be only fit for
field exercises and military affairs. To his father, the little prince
made no reply; but when his tutor one day reminded him of what his
father had said, to stimulate our young prince to literary diligence,
Henry asked, whether he thought his brother would prove so good a
scholar. His tutor replied that he was likely to prove so. 'Then,'
rejoined our little prince, 'will I make Charles Archbishop of
Canterbury.'"
Our Henry was devoutly pious, and rigid in never permitting before him
any licentious language or manners. It is well known that James the
First had a habit of swearing,--expletives in conversation, which, in
truth, only expressed the warmth of his feelings; but in that age, when
Puritanism had already possessed half the nation, an oath was considered
as nothing short of blasphemy. Henry once made a keen allusion to this
verbal frailty of his father's; for when he was told that some hawks
were to be sent to him, but it was thought that the king would intercept
some of them, he replied, "He may do as he pleases, for he shall not be
put to the oath for the matter." The king once asking him what were the
best verses he had learned in the first book of Virgil, Henry answered,
"These:--
'Rex erat Æneas nobis, quo justior alter
Nec pietate fuit, nec bello major et armis.'"
Such are a few of the puerile anecdotes of a prince who died in early
youth, gleaned from a contemporary manuscript, by an eye and ear
witness. They are trifles, but trifles consecrated by his name. They are
genuine; and the philosopher knows how to value the indications of a
great and heroic character. There are among them some which may occasion
an inattentive reader to forget that they are all the speeches and the
actions of a child!