Hello, friend, and welcome to this member's only, patron-only mini-cast for the Renaissance English History podcast.

If you are listening to this, that means you are either a YouTube member or a

patron. And I am so grateful to you either way. Thank you so much for being here and thank you for

your support. So today we are talking about a very controversial tutor, Sir John Perrault. He is often thought of as potentially Henry

the 8th's illegitimate son. He was Lord Lieutenant in Ireland. He was an incredibly

controversial figure. So let us get into it. His life begins November 7, 1528,

near Pambrockshire, and Perrault was the only son of Thomas Perrault and Mary Berkeley.

Despite a lineage steeped in Welsh gentry, what distinguished John early on was not just his noble birth, but the rumors of his possible royal paternity.

His robust stature and fiery temperament often drew comparisons to Henry VIII, fueling speculation that he might be an illegitimate son of the monarch.

This rumor has been dismissed by many modern historians, but it was rooted in observations made by contemporaries,

and later commentators like Sir Robert Norton, who relied on secondhand

accounts to draft their narratives. So why did people think that he could have been Henry's son?

Well, there's a couple of things. Like we said, first, he had a very strong resemblance to Henry

and shared temperamental characteristics. Then the idea that his mother,

Mary Barkley, who was married to Thomas Pro, she was a lady of some standing and the theory

posits that she could have had access to the royal court and had an opportunity to have an

encounter with Henry the 8th. However, detailed evidence linking her directly to the king

at crucial times does not exist, but just because it doesn't exist doesn't mean it's not there.

It's just we can't find it, right? Then there's later court gossips, like we said,

these contemporaries and people a generation later said that it was the case. And then there's

an anecdotal report from Perrault himself that he might

have claimed royal dissent. Apparently, he was in the Tower of London. We'll talk about that in a

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