Henry Frederick Stuart, first child of King James VI of Scotland (later King James I of England) and Anne of Denmark, was born on February 19, 1594, at Stirling Castle in Scotland. The pride of his parents, the heir apparent was groomed for kingship from the beginning. Henry was created Prince of Wales at Westminster in June 1610, the paragon of a prince: he was intelligent, well read, an excellent swordsman, an avid patron of the arts, and possessed of a strict sense of morality.

Henry was also a stout Protestant—when his father proposed a French marriage, he answered that he was 'resolved that two religions should not lie in his bed.'¹  He was very approving of his sister Elizabeth's proposed match to the Protestant Frederick, Elector Palatine.   Henry was the great hope of the Protestants, who saw in him a Protestant Henry V who would lead troops to the continent on a crusade against Catholic Spain.  Others thought that a fertile time in the arts would take place at the court of the future King Harry.

These dreams were shattered in November 1612, when Henry suddenly took ill and died, probably of typhoid fever, though rumors circulated that the Prince was poisoned.  Always most fond of his little sister Elizabeth, his last words on his deathbed are said to have been “where is my dear sister?” Henry's untimely death occasioned national mourning.

It is difficult to gauge the extent to which English and European history would have been different, had Henry lived.  It is possible that the well-informed Protestant prince, once king, would have adopted policies agreeable to the Parliament, keeping it in voluntary submission to the Crown, thereby preventing entirely the English Civil War, in which Henry's younger brother, as King Charles I, lost his head.




¹  Trevelyan, George Macaulay.   History of England.
    New York: Longmans, Green and Co., 1927.  389.

• Henry, Prince of Wales, from Drayton's Polyolbion
  
• Letters patent of King James I creating Henry Prince of Wales
  
• Engraving of James I and His Family
  
  
• King James I
  
• Anne of Denmark
  
• King Charles I
  

• The Life and Death of Henry Stuart - National Portrait Gallery
  
• The Pacific King and the Militant Prince? - Catriona Murray
  
• Thesis Abstract and "Prince Henry, In memoriam" - Michael Ullyot
  
• Portraits of Prince Henry - National Portrait Gallery
  

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