Agnes Blewett - Mary Boleyn: The Mistress of Kings

Alison Weir, Mary Boleyn: The Mistress of Kings (2011), p. 168:
http://books.google.com/books?id=VLPcySmwMOQC&printsec=frontcov...

“According to a tradition maintained by his descendants [83], the poet and playwright Richard Edwards (or Edwardes) is supposed to have been Henry VIII’s son by Agnes Blewitt, born in the early 1520s, possibly around 1523-25[84]. Agnes is said to have been permitted to display the Tudor rose in her coat of arms. She was the wife of William Thomas Edwards of North Petherton, Somerset, and she herself hailed from Holcombe Regis, Devon. It is claimed she was at court before she became pregnant—which seems unlikely—and that Henry VIII provided a stipend for Richard’s upbringing, gave Agnes land in Scotland (even more unlikely, as he did not own any in that kingdom), where the boy was brought up, and paid for him to be educated at Oxford University, where he studied law. Edwards did not practice as a lawyer, but entered the Church of England, and later wrote such plays as Palamon and Arcite, which were performed before Elizabeth I. He died in 1566.

Agnes is said to have stayed with Henry VIII at the royal hunting lodge at Huntworth in Somerset. Her son was born at North Petherton. The family’s claim that Edwards was the King’s son rests solely on the fact that he received a university education that his family could never have afforded[85], but that could be explained any number of ways.

The first problem with this tale is that, as has been noted, Henry VIII only ever visited the West County in 1535, and the second problem is that there is no contemporary whatsoever on which to base Henry’s paternity.”