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kneel before his father. As Henry VIII raised his son to his feet, the voice of Thomas More echoed about the chamber, as he read the patent, which created the Lord Henry Fitzroy, Earl of Nottingham:
    and when it came to the words ‘Gladdii Cuituram’ then the young Lord kneeled down and the kings grace put the girdle about the neck of the young Lord the sword hanging bendwise over the breast of him when the patent was read the king took it to the said Earl and this Earl of Nottingham accompanied as before entered into the said Gallery. 3
    Not since the twelfth century, when Henry II had made William Longsword Earl of Salisbury, had a King of England raised his illegitimate son to the peerage. 4 Even now, the ceremony was far from complete. Before the assembled nobles and onlookers could catch their breath, the newly created Earl of Nottingham re-entered the chamber.
    This time his attire and the badges of office borne before him, were those of a duke. The Earl of Northumberland carried the robes. Behind him came Thomas Grey, Marquess of Dorset, carrying the sword, the Earl of Arundel, carrying the cap of estate with a circlet and the Earl of Oxford with a rod of gold. The only two existing dukes in England, Charles Brandon, Duke of Suffolk and Thomas Howard, Duke of Norfolk walked on either side of the child. Once again he came to kneel before his father. As the patent was read he was invested with the trappings of a duke. This time, when he rose to his feet, he was Duke of Richmond and Somerset.
    To be a duke was a significant honour. It was it the highest rank of the peerage and the office, originally devised by King Edward III for his son, Edward the Black Prince to be Duke of Cornwall, had retained its royal aura. The former Lord Henry Fitzroy was subsequently referred to in all formal correspondence as the ‘right high and noble prince Henry . . . Duke of Richmond and Somerset’. As if to compound this sense of Royal dignity and endow the child with as much respectability as possible, Henry VIII had granted his son the unprecedented honour of a double dukedom. While he is commonly referred to as Richmond, some pains were taken to see that he bore both titles with equal weight. The bulk of his lands came from possessions which had formerly been held by Margaret Beaufort, the king’s grandmother, as Countess of Richmond. These included estates which had been the rightful inheritance of King Henry VII when he was Earl of Richmond, and lands which had belonged to Margaret’s father, John Beaufort, when he held the title Duke of Somerset.
    Indeed, for all of those who strained to catch a glimpse of the new duke in the chamber at Bridewell, Henry’s use of the Somerset title would have struck a particular chord. It was widely known that John Beaufort, created Earl of Somerset in 1397, had been a royal bastard, who was subsequently legitimated. John Beaufort and his siblings were the children of Edward III’s son John of Gaunt and his mistress Katherine Swynford. The affair took place during his second marriage. After Katherine had borne him four children, Gaunt’s wife died and they were free to marry. However, due to the complexities of the affair, not least that the children had been conceived in adultery, they were not automatically legitimated. Instead, Gaunt and Katherine applied to the Pope for a special dispensation, which being granted was confirmed in England by Act of Parliament by Richard II. The Beauforts were henceforth to be considered legitimate ‘as fully, freely and lawfully as if [they] were born in lawful wedlock’. 5
    The church at Corfe Castle, a long-time Beaufort residence and now part of Richmond’s holdings, proclaimed for all the world to see this significant change in the family’s status:
    The coats-of-arms at the side of the north doorway reflected through heraldry the importance of the family’s legitimization. On the left the shield lay on