That’s something that’s debated by scholars. While it’s entirely possible that Henry did have syphillis, there’s not much evidence for it.
Henry’s doctors kept relatively good records, and there’s no mention of any of the current treatments for syphillis, such as the “mercury cure.” Had Henry taken any of these potions, there should have been some mention.
Add to this is the fact that when it came to the King’s person, there were no secrets. When a monarch fell ill, the whole world knew about his ailment. Henry just wouldn’t have had the privacy necessary to hide the signs of syphillis. There would have been more contemporary discussion.
I think that the insistance by some scholars that Henry was infected stems from their personal reactions to his increasingly erratic behavior. No normal, healthy man would have behaved the way that Henry did, according to the logic of some. But I think the answer lies in the simple fact that Henry was an ass-- brutish, egotistical and cold.
Aside from his behavior, the only other thing that points toward syphhilitic infection is the loss of so many children. I think in Henry’s case, we can chalk it up to simple bad luck. Katherine of Aragon may have had any number of medical problems that were undiagnosable at the time. Anne Boleyn wasn’t given much of a chance. (Alison Weir puts forward an interesting theory in * The King and His Court. * She claims that it’s possible than Anne Boleyn was pregnant when she went to the scaffold.) Jane Seymour might have produced more children if she hadn’t died of childbed fever. Henry couldn’t even bear to try with poor Anne of Cleves. By the time he married Katherine Howard, his age and health might have seriously affected his potency. (After all, the next wife, Henry’s widow Katherine Parr, became pregnant quickly by her next husband.)
Capt. Robert Fitzroy was a descendant of King Charles II, like so:
King Charles II-> Henry Fitzroy, 1st Duke of Grafton-> Charles Fitzroy, 2nd Duke of Grafton-> Augustus Fitzroy-> Augustus Henry Fitzroy, 3rd Duke of Grafton and Prime Minister-> General Lord Charles FitzRoy-> Captain Robert Fitzroy
Just a FYI.
As for Big Hank’s bastards, his most famous illegitimate son, Henry Fitzroy, died as a teenager. Yes, it’s true daddy plotted to marry him to his half-sister Mary, but fortunately that never came to pass.
He had a bastard daughter, too, named Etheldreda, whose mother was a royal laundress. Her father gave her great tracts of… land, and she got married but died without issue. Her husband seems to have been on good terms with her half-sister Queen Elizabeth, who stood as godmother to one of his sons by a second marriage.
Another probable illegitimate son of Henry VIII was John Perrott, who certainly resembled him and referred to himself as Queen Elizabeth’s brother on numerous occassions. He was created K.B. for the coronation of Edward VI and served Elizabeth as Deputy of Ireland, but was accused of high treason and imprisoned in the Tower. He died leaving seven children and his descendants are probably legion by now.
While more guys do die than women, there are a lot of factors that define the exact ratio of boy to girl births. Currently, I believe there are a few percent higher female than male births.
If one accepts that Perrot (d. 1592) and Thomas Stukeley (d. 1578) were Henry’s sons, then he did have two sons who reached maturity. This compares favourably with the three daughters (including Ethelreda Tudor) who did so. This would also mean that four of the sons survived infancy against three of the daughters.
The only reason for thinking that there might have been some imbalance is that, of the children whose sex is known, nine were boys and five were girls. So Henry did not have any problem producing boys, but this does mean that only two of nine boys reached adulthood against three of the five girls. One possible explanation might be that the greater mortality among boys reflected the extra-special treatment they were accorded in infancy, but then the difference in death rates in infancy was actually not that much - slightly more than half the boys died against slightly less than half the girls. It was the fact that Richmond and Edward VI died as teenagers that made the real difference. As everyone else has pointed out, there is nothing here that cannot be explained by chance.
“speculate that the numerous miscarriages suffered by Henry’s wives could be explained if the king’s blood carried the Kell antigen. A Kell negative woman who has multiple pregnancies with a Kell positive man can produce a healthy, Kell positive child in a first pregnancy but the antibodies she produces during that first pregnancy will cross the placenta and attack a Kell positive fetus in subsequent pregnancies.”
Just to clear this up (ten years too late) Henry Carey (Lord Chamberlain to Queen Elizabeth) lived to 70 years and was probably not only the Queen’s cousin but her half-brother as well! There is much circumstantial evidence for this and even an explicit “deathbed” statement. Wikipedia still shows Henry VIII’s fathering of Carey as “speculative” but most experts AFAICT accept it.
There is a specific reason Henry could never acknowledge his children by Ann Boleyn’s sister: it would make his marriage to Ann illegal on the same grounds he used to annul his marriage to Catherine of Aragon.
On another matter, while the surname FitzRoy implies bastard descent, AFAIK there is no bastardness connotation in other usages of FitzWhatever. Recall that King Henry II sometimes used the surname FitzEmpress.
Some couples have bad luck with children, especially in the olden days. Three centuries later Abraham and Mary Lincoln had four sons. Only Robert lived to adulthood. Wolfgang and Constanze Mozart had seven cildren. Two lived to adulthood.