Two of England’s best remembered kings, Henry VIII and Charles I, stand in the shadow of lost princes. Each had an elder brother who was Prince of Wales and expected to succeed. Had Prince Arthur and Prince Henry lived the Reformation and the Civil War would have followed different courses or might not, it is sometimes suggested, have taken place at all. In the case of Prince Henry, the son of James I who died in 1612 at the age of 18, romantic counterfactual possibilities began to gather round his memory almost at once. Those who found King James unsatisfactory for his reluctance to enter the Thirty Years’ War or opposed his plan to marry Charles, now heir, to a Spanish princess, found in the figure of the dead prince a once and future hero, a Protestant warrior who would have redeemed Britain’s honour.

‘Prince Henry on Horseback’ by Robert Peake the Elder (c.1606-08).

LRB 6 December 2012 | PDF Download