‘Henry Prince of Wales and England’s Lost Renaissance’ by Roy Strong

Sir Roy Strong, who was born in 1935 and is still very much with us, has had a long career as a senior museum director (he led the National Portrait Gallery and the V&A) and author. He also has the great good fortune to be instantly recognisable with his trademark round glasses, floppy hair-do and big bushy moustache.

Most of his books relate to art history and the history of gardens and gardening, but occasionally he writes more conventional biographies like this one. It is very well sourced and fairly straight forward, aiming I think to myth-bust somewhat while exploring in great detail the short life of a significant figure who might, had he had the opportunity, have gone on to be a rather impressive monarch.

Henry Stuart (1594 - 1612) was the eldest son and undisputed heir of James I (James VI of Scotland). He was enormously respected in his lifetime. Brought up from birth to succeed to the throne, like all eldest royal sons, he was well-educated, first in Scotland then in London, for that purpose. He died aged just eighteen, having contracted typhoid, and left a huge gap which was so unsatisfactorily filled by his much less impressive younger brother Charles.

This biography draws on reminiscences about him written at or after his death, as well as all available documentary evidence about his interests, his views, his collections of art and books, as well as the advisors he surrounded himself with. There is a wonderful long chapter about the week of celebrations – festivals and pageants etc – which followed Henry’s investiture as Prince of Wales in the summer of 1610.

Henry was very bright, energetic, socially confident and, most importantly, a great admirer of Elizabeth I and all that she stood for. He modelled his fledgling courts at St James's Palace and Richmond on hers and took advice from those who had served her.

A running theme is a growing division between Henry and his father on questions of foreign policy. James I was, admirably in many ways, a great peacemaker. He looked to keep England and Scotland out of continental military entanglements – notably the Thirty Years War – but in doing so he could legitimately have been accused of appeasing the major catholic powers of France and Spain, which had major negative consequences in the future. Henry was a committed protestant and not so interested in maintaining peace at all costs.

At the time of his death minds were beginning to turn towards who he should marry, and it appears that he was resisting diplomatically helpful attempts to hook him up with a French or Spanish princess. He might have considered some offspring of an Italian princeling, but would much have preferred a northern European bride on grounds of religious compatibility.

The book is subtitled ‘England’s Lost Renaissance’, the argument being that in time both as a mature Prince of Wales and later as King Henry IX, English (indeed British culture) would have flourished. Henry would have promoted intellectual enquiry as well as artistic excellence, giving London a much more central place in evolving European cultural movements. The point is made well.

What Porter avoids, as I rather wish he hadn’t, is wider speculation about how history might have turned out differently more broadly had Henry succeeded James in 1625 instead of Charles I. He would have been in his early thirties and well-placed to reign more wisely. ‘What if’ analyses of this kind are of course inevitably debatable and often flawed, but I would love to have read a final chapter that at least gave it a go.

Surely under a putative King Henry IX, England and Scotland would not have stood aside from active involvement in European wars of the time, but would have been an active and potentially decisive participant on the northern European side. The result might well have been a long-term degradation of French power and a much less dominant Louis XIV later in the century.

He would in all likelihood have had children and would have governed a great deal more prudently and thoughtfully than his brother ever managed to do. It is plausible to argue that there would have been no Personal Rule, no French Catholic queen, no refusal to accommodate puritan sensibilities, no Long Parliament, no English civil war, no Oliver Cromwell, no Merry Monarch, no Exclusion Crisis, no Glorious Revolution in 1688 and no Whigs and Tories to battle it out for supremacy in the Eighteenth Century.

Of all our dozen or so ‘lost kings’, Henry’s demise was perhaps the most tragic for the country.