Bessie Blount: Mistress to Henry VIII

by Elizabeth Norton

Beautiful, young, exuberant, the amazing life of Elizabeth Blount, Henry VIII's mistress and mother to his first son who came tantalizingly close to succeeding him as King Henry IX.

Genres: History, Tudor Period, Biography, Nonfiction, Royalty, Historical, Biography Memoir

384 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 2011

About the author

Elizabeth Norton is a British historian specialising in the queens of England and the Tudor period. She obtained an Master of Arts in Archaeology and Anthropology from the University of Cambridge in 2003 and a masters degree in European Archaeology from the University of Oxford in 2004.

Elizabeth Norton is the author of five non-fiction works: She Wolves, The Notorious Queens of England (The History Press, 2008), Anne Boleyn, Henry VIII's Obsession (Amberley, 2008), Jane Seymour, Henry VIII's True Love (Amberley, 2009), Anne of Cleves, Henry VIII's Discarded Bride (Amberley, 2009) and Catherine Parr (Amberley, 2010).[2]' She is also the author of two articles: Anne of Cleves and Richmond Palace (Surrey History, 2009) [3] and Scandinavian Influences in the Late Anglo-Saxon Sculpture of Sussex (Sussex Archaeological Collections, 2009)

Reviews

[Claire Ridgway · Rating 5 out of 5]

I was eager to read this biography of Bessie Blount, Henry VIII's mistress, after the controversy caused by The Daily Mail's article "Henry VIII had a secret daughter who should have taken the throne before Elizabeth I, historian claims". That intrigued me as although I had heard of Bessie's daughter, Elizabeth Tailboys, I had never linked her to Henry VIII.

The main part of the book is 288 pages and so is a full, detailed biography, and when the Notes and Bibliography run from page 289 to 344 it is clear that Norton has meticulously researched her subject. The book is divided into four parts - Bessie Blount of Kinlet c. 1498-1512; Bessie Blount, the King's Mistress, 1512-1522; Lady Tailboys of South Kyme, 1522-1530; and Bessie the Widow and Bessie the Wife, 1530-c.1539 - and each part has a number of chapters in it, twenty chapters in all. There is also a section of genealogical tables so the reader can see how everyone links together.

I must admit to finding Chapter 3: Bessie Blount of Kinlet hard going but this was simply because of the genealogy, all of the names. It wasn't the style of writing that made it tough, it was simply the detail and the amount of names. I really wanted to understand the family so I kept re-reading it. As soon as that background information was out of the way, the book really took off and I thoroughly enjoyed getting to know Bessie and her story. Bessie is usually such a shadowy figure, the beautiful mistress who gave Henry VIII a son and then was married off to a nobleman and forgotten, but this book brings her to life and follows her right through to her death. It is a fascinating read for any Tudor history buff.

As for the claim made in The Daily Mail, well, Elizabeth Norton makes a convincing argument for Elizabeth Tailboys' paternity and backs it up with solid primary sources. It's no empty claim and Norton has convinced me.

So, if you like a biography which is meticulously researched, fully referenced (joy!) and is also an interesting read, then I would say that this book would suit you. The excellent referencing and bibliography means that you can double check the sources and do your own digging, something that I often do. I would say that this is Elizabeth Norton's best book to date.

[Girl with her Head in a Book · Rating 5 out of 5]

Review published here: http://girlwithherheadinabook.co.uk/2...

I read Bastard Prince a few weeks ago, detailing the short life and untimely death of Henry Fitzroy Duke of Richmond, illegitimate son to Henry VIII. Despite having been so thoroughly forgotten since, he still feels like real ‘What If’ within history so I decided to try and find out more. First stop was this biography of his mother written by Elizabeth Norton. Even more so than her son, Bessie Blount has faded from her history. The bare facts of her life are shadowy, her thoughts and feelings nowhere to be found, so it is a brave effort on Norton’s part to try and reconstruct this long-vanished woman and attempt to grant her a voice. Who exactly was Bessie Blount?

C:Scratchpad�001 129
Is this Bessie?
Norton’s view differs from that of Murphy, author of Bastard Prince in a number of areas. Unlike the latter, Norton believes that Blount and Henry VIII enjoyed more than just a casual dalliance and that their relationship was likely of several years standing. She admits that she is somewhat challenged by the total lack of evidence – but Henry VIII does seem to have been discreet in his extra-marital relationships, so that is no surprise. Norton speculates that Bessie’s good friend Elizabeth Carew had a relationship with the King first and that Bessie caught his attention afterwards, some time around the marriage of Mary Tudor to the King of France. Of course, the book’s main point of interest comes from Norton’s assertion that Bessie was not merely the mother of the King’s bastard son, but also of his illegitimate daughter.

The book is quite heavy going, with Norton plumbing the depths of the genealogies of all the families involved in her search for evidence to base her claims. This is a piece of thorough scholarship and has the feel of more a more academic work rather than a piece of popular history. It was difficult to keep track of all of the competing branches of family and their respective lands and wardships and counter-claims. It felt like something of a leap to acclaim Bessie as one of the most accomplished women of her age and I did have the feeling that Norton had fallen in love with a creature of her own creation. Nevertheless, Norton’s claim that the affair between Bessie and Henry VIII produced two children rather than one was convincing.

Elizabeth Tailboys was given the name of her mother’s husband Gilbert Tailboys but appears to have been born around two years before the likely date of their marriage. Norton points out that a bastard daughter did not have the same political cache as her equally illegitmate brother. Gilbert Tailboys seems to have been richly rewarded for marrying his monarch’s discarded mistress and Norton speculates that he likely thought that Elizabeth would pose no threat to his prospective legitimate heirs that the obviously fecund Bessie would shortly produce. Of course, Gilbert went on to die young in his mid thirties and although Bessie did give him sons beforehand, they all seem to have died by their mid-teens, leaving their elder sister Elizabeth to inherit. Gilbert’s mother Lady Tailboys, who had already had to fight for her rights when her husband succumbed to insanity, launched a lengthy law-suit attempting to claw back the inheritance from her ‘granddaughter’ – she does not appear to have had a problem with female inheritance in other circumstances but here she seems to have taken it very personally. On another dispute, Henry VIII sat in to pass judgment on Elizabeth Tailboys’ case – matters always seemed to be arranged to the girl’s benefit, and it is not hard to give credence to Norton’s case that this Elizabeth was most likely Henry Fitzroy’s full-blooded sibling.

elizabeth nortonThe point that has always interested me is that when Henry VIII finally recognised that Catherine of Aragon was not going to have any more children, he did not decide to legitimise his relationship with Bessie. She had already proved herself fertile and there was a clearly a liking between the two. Instead, Henry pursue Anne Boleyn and pursued and pursued for years. Norton records a conversation between an English ambassador and a French noble, with the latter confidently asserting that Henry VIII was about to leave his wife to marry his bastard’s mother. When the Englishman explained awkwardly that actually no, the King wanted to marry another, the Frenchman was mystified. Why would a man with a bastard child leave his wife for anyone but the mother of his child? Was Anne Boleyn more beautiful than Bessie? The Englishman conceded that she was not. More sweet of temper? No, not that either. So what on earth? This is most likely a conundrum which puzzled more than a few people, particularly as the years rumbled on and Anne Boleyn still failed to produce the promised prince. The truth is that Henry does seem to have been moved by true passion.

Did Bessie want to be queen? Did she want to be a Margaret Beaufort, to set her son astride the throne? Norton makes much of her involvement with her son’s life, listing all the various pieces of outgrown clothing that she requisitioned for her younger sons. Bessie does seem to have been a regular visitor to the miniature court that was built around the young Duke. Yet for all that, it is hard to see that she was anything other than content in her life. Her second marriage was to a much younger man and she produced regular children throughout her life. Norton is able to collate compelling evidence that Bessie met her end in childbirth, something her mother appears to have seen as redemptive after her wicked life as mistress. Bessie Blount was known to the world as the king’s whore, the mother of his son. I am not sure that Norton was able to get close to the real woman but she did show that there was a lot more to her than that.

[Rio (Lynne) · Rating 2 out of 5]

Besides the fact the author has a good argument on Elizabeth Tailboys being Bessie and Henry's daughter this book is a dud. This book covers more of Henry's reign and wives Catherine and Anne than it does Bessie. Henry had masques. Duh. Catherine had jewels, well yeah she was the Queen. Bessie may have done this and that and owned a book she may have or may not have read. The author took the subject of Bessie and tried to make a compete book without much evidence. She filled in the gaps with things Tudor fans already know. Boring.

To add, the kindle version doesn't show the pictures. It just gives the descriptions. I feel cheated.

[Maura Heaphy Dutton · Rating 3 out of 5]

Very well researched account of a fascinating subject, which is marred by a poor narrative strategy and dodgy editing.

I should begin by saying that I love facts. I love nothing better than historical minutiae, and following research threads down rabbit holes so obscure that others have long since let their eyes glaze over while they figure out their exit strategy. I read the footnotes for fun. So, trust me, I have nothing against facts, and details and .... digressions.

But even I have got to admit that, with Bessie Blount: Mistress to Henry VIII, I have met my match. It was at the point when author Elizabeth Norton devoted about three densely written pages to proving that Bessie Blount did NOT have a younger sister named Margaret (by, as I recall, cataloguing the birth and subsequent history of every woman named Margaret who was born in Shropshire between about 1500 and 1550 ...) that it dawned on me that this book is all footnotes. It's what you get when you take all of those minor digressions, and interesting asides, and nitpicky arguments, out of the safety of the small print at the back of the book, and drag them, blinking, into the main text. You get a lot of padding, a lot of confusing asides. And a lot of women named Elizabeth ...

I can understand why Norton felt that she had to do this: what is really, vertifiably known and documented about the life of Elizabeth Blount*, mistress of serial philanderer and prize-grade psychopath Henry VIII and mother of his only acknowledged illegitimate son, could be written comfortably on the back of a regular postage stamp (not even a commemorative ...) If Norton's book clearly demonstrates one thing, it's that the people of the 16th century were very different from us in their attitudes to what was worth recording, remembering and memorializing. So, births, marriages, deaths? Maybe, sometimes, perhaps. The number of children in a family, their names and ages? Nah. Work it out for yourself. The deepest thoughts and feelings of a teenage girl who is seduced -- or worse --and knocked up by her employer's husband? No way! The Tudors loved litigation, and long, rambling letters to their social betters, asking for favors. Sometimes, if they got around to it, they would put up memorials, with the odd name and date. Surprisingly often, as one or other of them was led to the block, they would dash off a poem. That’s about it.

So, I understand -- Norton has taken on a very difficult challenge, writing the biography of someone whose impression on history is all shadows and negatives. Elizabeth Blount couldn't have been born before such-and-such a date, because her parents were probably too young. (Probably. Get used to that word …) She might have become a lady-in-waiting to Queen Catherine of Aragon by such-and-such a date, because other young women of her rank took up the position at about that age. Her son must have been conceived around such-and-such a date, working backwards from known dates in the life of the boy and based on court records of Henry’s whereabouts at the time … There are very few facts – a lady-in-waiting, probably very young, named Elizabeth Blount, who is recorded as featuring in various court masques; a boy, acknowledged by Henry as his son, and created Duke of Richmond in 1526; assorted other children (one of whom, her oldest daughter, who might have also been Henry’s); two husbands. And then a sudden, deafening silence, when the lawsuits, wills and begging letters hint at the complete absence of Elizabeth Blount, some time before January 1540.

So – full credit – Norton’s research is staggering, and her detective work is … impressive. But I have three reasons why I can’t, in good conscience, rate this higher than 3-stars:

First, when “maybe” becomes “must.”
It is completely understandable, in a biography of someone whose life was as undocumented as that of Elizabeth Blount, that the biographer is going to have to trade in lots of “maybe,” and “we assume,” and “we can only surmise.” And Norton’s strengths as a researcher, and as a historical detective, connecting the blurred and easily misinterpreted dots, are at their best with the big ticket items: her arguments supporting her claims, first, that Blount gave birth to a second child father by Henry, a daughter, who was never officially acknowledged and, second, regarding the circumstances of Blount’s sad, early death, are really very interesting, and convincing.

It’s the stuff in between where the leaps of faith we are asked to make begin to rankle:
Her overriding emotion, on realising that she had conceived, would therefore have been pleasure, as would the king’s. (Page 135)

OH REALLY? I am prepared to believe that their overriding emotion, when the child was born the all-important boy, was pleasure. But I can’t help but imagine that the overriding emotion of a very young, unmarried pregnant woman whose age, social status and religious beliefs put her at a serious disadvantage would have been terror. And Henry’s overriding “emotion,” as serial philander and a man who had already embarked on a long and illustrious career as user and discarder of women, would have been complete indifference.

This isn’t the only time that Norton tells us what the principal players “must have been” thinking and feeling, or even how two pieces of evidence lead inexorably to a (dubious) conclusion. (Blount must have had a close relationship with her oldest son -- in spite of the fact the custody was taken from her as soon as she was married off, when Henry was done with her – because she acquired the boy’s cast off clothes to pass on to her younger sons. Norton wants us to see a cosy, heartwarming scene, of a loving Mom, going through her son’s closet, pulling out the items he has outgrown, passing the hand-me-downs to grateful little half-brothers … and I just don’t buy it …)
Those are just two examples – my copy of the book turned in a veritable porcupine of post-it notes, as I marked “huh?” moments, large and small.

Second, I thought Norton was poorly served by her editor. There was serious (and seriously unnecessary) repetition. There were sentences that got away from her and got lost in a mish-mash of confused pronouns and misplaced modifiers. One of my favorites: … Eleanor married a local gentleman, William Banester, who …then married Eleanor’s sister, Olivia, presumably after her death. O-kay. From that, I’m not sure if there are hints of Tudor bigamy, or necrophilia…

Evidence is repeated, again and again, almost word for word the same each time, and as if the rote repetition simply makes it so. (Some used hose belonging to Richmond, and “gifted” to a retainer, makes regular reappearances to prove how well Richmond thought of him …) Three times, within the first 50 pages, Norton tells us that two documents, one referring to a woman called Elizabeth and the other referring to a woman called Isabel, must refer to the same woman because “… the names ‘Elizabeth’ and ‘Isabel’ share the same etymological origins …” I remembered, because I wasn’t convinced the first time.

But finally, I feel that Norton’s strategy in dealing with Blount’s life is flawed. I have, within the last year or so, read three biographies of individuals from approximately this period ** which are masterclasses in how to deal with the confusing lack of evidence/surfeit of confusing evidence, the alien assumptions and attitudes of the period, and the challenges of organizing all that hard-won material for the pleasure and enlightenment of your reader. All three books were dealing with very different people, in differ circumstances, with varying degrees of documentary evidence, but I think the one thing they had in common was that the authors confronted the difficulties head on, and brought the reader into their processes.

The way this worked for me – the reason I kept reading, in spite of the fact that I found it very frustrating, and the reason I give it 3-stars – is because the absence at the centre of a life of Elizabeth Blount provides a vehicle for a fascinating guided tour of the convoluted family lives of Tudor gentry – the litigation, the begging letters, the marriage negotiations, the widowers who marry their dead wives’ sisters, the orphaned children whose childhood (and inheritance, and marriage rights) are auctioned off to the highest bidder. Rather than trying to present a chronological account of the life of a woman for whom the chronology just isn’t there, it might have been better to embrace what happens anyway, and build up an outline of the ghostly Elizabeth Blount from the busy lives going on around her.

A couple of footnotes of my own ...
*Norton’s insistence on the overly familiar “Bessie” really began to annoy me: there is absolutely no evidence that Blount or her family used “Bessie,” and even if they did, using it in her biography feels disrespectful and belittling.

**Since you ask, the three very fine biographies are: “Young and Damned and Fair: The Life and Tragedy of Catherine Howard at the Court of Henry VIII” by Gareth Russell https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...

“The Brothers York: An English Tragedy” by Thomas Penn https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...

and “Thomas Cromwell: A Life” by Diarmaid MacCulloch https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...

[Stephanie Kline · Rating 5 out of 5]

Being the huge Bessie Blount fan that I am, I was beyond excited when I found out that Elizabeth Norton was writing this book. I still don't know how I did it, but somehow I managed to buy this book about 2 months before it has been officially released - (it doesn't actually come out until March 19th, I believe). Although I don't know how that happened, I dove into this book with so much excitement, and it definitely did not disappoint me. I'm very pleasantly surprised that Norton had so much to say about Bessie, as she is a bit of an "out of the radar" Tudor figure, and the majority of details from her life are unknown. However, Norton did a wonderful job of piecing together the things she did know, to form a beautiful and extremely well-researched biography of such a fascinating woman in history. I love Bessie even more now than I did before, now that I know so much more about her family, husbands, and children. There is so much more to this woman than her dalliance with King Henry VIII - I encourage everyone to buy this book!

[Lauren · Rating 4 out of 5]

Very thorough, with lots of details on minor points. Unfortunately there isn't a lot of factual info available on the lady herself, so much has to be extrapolated from other occurrences, which leads to a lot of speculation and endless details on barely related family members. Who I found difficult to keep track of, since they all had the same names. Darn those traditional Brits, always honoring their parents and grandparents and influential nobility. But still fairly interesting, and filled with all kinds of trivia on life in the 1500s.

[Cynthia · Rating 4 out of 5]

Do not be fooled by the jacket illo on this book. Yes, it looks like another Phillipa Gregory type historical novel. But it is not. Elizabeth Norton is SERIOUS. Not one speculation, invented conversation, or any fictionalized attempts at all to tell this story. It is for real history, not historical fiction. As such it was interesting but seriously rough going. Not one statement is made without excruciatingly detailed notes. If the author is discussing the kind of management and financial outlay Bessie would have made for her estates there is a list of items purchased, lists of items gifted, lists of what similarly placed people would have purchased or gifted, with sources cited in full. Sometimes the trail goes so far afield and spans so much time (example but not really an example, just my attempt to make myself clear - would Bessie have given Henry VIII a Christmas gift? Is she on the list? No? That does not necessarily mean she didn't because back in 1234 somebody gave King Anciente Yore a New Year's gift that did not appear on his roster because somebody else spelled the name wrong, not to mention that in the future (not our future, Bessie's future) somebody gave Queen Elizabeth I a gift but it was accidentally cited twice with a misspelled name ... you get the idea. By the time Ms Norton tracks down every possible illustration of gifts given and recorded/not recorded/recorded incorrectly I have completely forgotten the original point she is making and it is too much trouble to go back. So I'm sure I missed a lot but I plowed on through and finished this book shew.

[Allie C · Rating 4 out of 5]

Really enjoyed learning more about the life of Bessie Blount and her family. For someone we don’t know much about (besides being mistress to the king), there were a lot of interesting snippets that detailed the unknown parts such as her married life, relationship with her children, and family politics. While I did learn more about Bessie, I didn’t enjoy reading about the hypothetical situations based on people in similar classes that she may or may not have known. Since we don’t have her letters, we don’t know how she felt, so the author turned to the hypothetical. Still a great read and highly recommend!

[Shawn Thrasher · Rating 3 out of 5]

Exhaustively detailed, Elizabeth Norton picks apart the tapestry of Bessie Blount's life, following each and every thread back beyond the spool. Although Bessie never quite comes alive, you come away from the book with a great appreciation for the complicated life of this woman who gave birth to Henry VIII's beloved son, as well as a greater knowledge of the time and place in which she lived. This is a dense book, but worth reading for Tudor fans.

[Carolyn Harris · Rating 4 out of 5]

Norton does a masterful job of interpreting documents pertaining to the Blount family, Henry Fitzroy, and other sixteenth century court women to restore Bessie Blount to her rightful place in Tudor history. In Bessie Blount: The King’s Mistress, Bessie comes alive as one of the most beautiful women at Henry VIII’s court, sharing the King’s literary interests and taste for court pageantry despite her comparatively humble origins as a member of the Shropshire gentry. The birth of Henry Fitzroy encouraged the King to blame Catherine of Aragon for the absence of surviving sons in their marriage and believe that it might be possible to have male heirs with another wife.

For full review, see http://www.royalhistorian.com/the-tud...