Lord Thomas Howard (1511-1537), son of the 2nd Duke of Norfolk Thomas Howard by Agnes Tilney, apparently by some sources had an affair with Margaret Douglas, niece of Henry VIII and daughter of his sister Margaret.
Due to this they were both sent to the Tower and Thomas died there. However, Margeret was released to Scion House in London. Was she pregnet with Thomas's child (Robert) as supposedly there was a Robert Howard born at the Scion house in 1537?
I cannot find any substantial historic reference to this. Various on-line trees have it but their source seems to be other people's trees.
The archives of the Dukes of Norfolk in England would not confirm it so I don't know the original source of this birth (myth?).
There was a succesion problem which caused their imprisonment as Henry had just bastardized his 2 daughters after his marriage to Jane.
2 comments:
I don't know of any contemporary evidence for a child at all; indeed, Chapuys wrote that he had heard that "copulation had not taken place" between Margaret and Thomas. I suspect the report of a child arose from someone trying to fabricate a royal descent.
Henry was very jittery over not having a male heir (yet) and Mary and Elizabeth were out of favour for being their mothers’ daughters, so he was suspicious of anyone making a play for such a near relative as his niece Margaret Douglas.
Agnes Tilney was the second Duke of Norfolk’s second wife and their son Lord Thomas Howard (1511–1537) was imprisoned in the Tower with Margaret, but she was moved to more congenial conditions because of recurring illness. Lord Thomas died in the Tower of illness the following year.
Howard men must have held some sort of fatal attraction for Margaret Douglas, as she was in trouble again in 1541 for a similar affair with her late lover’s half-nephew Charles Howard, and had a severe warning not to let it happen again. Charles’s father, Lord Edmund Howard, was from the Duke’s first marriage to Agnes’s cousin Elizabeth Tilney, so Edmund and Thomas were half-brothers. Charles was a full brother of Queen Katherine.
I agree with Susan that this birth at Syon House looks a bit suspicious. I have been working on Agnes Tilney’s involvement with her step-granddaughter Katherine Howard in Lambeth for a long time and have not come across the birth of this supposed grandson of hers at Syon. Are you able to let us know what your source is?
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