Mary Rose (18 page)

By the time that this happened, Margaret had in any case departed. She left on 18 May to rejoin her husband, who by that time had decided to cast in his lot with the Duke of Albany. Albany was no friend to England, and Henry had anticipated this, but found it more expedient (and cheaper) to let her go. She had been entertained for over a year at a cost exceeding £2,000, and left loaded with presents to resume her frugal lifestyle. In return for these gifts the King had extracted from her a promise that she would not become involved in the current government of Scotland. However, Margaret was temperamentally incapable of adhering to such a commitment, and within a few months was deeply mired in intrigue, with the result that she was just as unhappy as she had been before her flight into England. ‘I had liever be dead than live my life in Scotland,’ she wrote to Lord Dacre, but Henry did not take the hint, broad though it was.
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She was eventually divorced from Angus, much to the King’s disgust, and found refuge with Henry Stewart, Lord Methven, but she did not return to England and Mary never saw her sister again. That may have been no hardship to the French Queen, as in spite of the rejoicings which accompanied their reunion, there is no sign that they were particularly fond of each other. Henry certainly seems to have found her difficult, both politically and personally; and that reinforced his affection for his younger sister, so Margaret’s visit may well have been indirectly beneficial to the Suffolks.

Meanwhile Mary had given birth to her second child. Burgundian ambassadors had visited the court in July 1517, had signed a treaty of friendship in general terms, and had been lavishly entertained. Mary had appeared at these festivities in spite of her advanced state of pregnancy, but the culmination was again the jousts, which were held on the morrow of St Peter’s Day, 2 August. These were held in front of a large crowd of spectators, which one commentator estimated at 50,000 (a huge exaggeration) in a specially walled tiltyard which had been built for the occasion.
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The objective, as always, was to glorify the King, and he was only with difficulty persuaded to limit himself to a single antagonist, who was of course the Duke of Suffolk. They ran eight courses, to the great delight (we are told) of the spectators and the contest lasted four hours, at the end of which time Henry did a spectacular dismount for the benefit of Queen Catherine and her attendant ladies. By that time Mary had been compelled to withdraw owing to the imminence of her time and, apparently neglecting the usual custom of confinement, had set out on a pilgrimage to Walsingham, presumably to pray for a safe delivery. While she was on her way, labour again came upon her unawares, so while her husband was doing his duty at the court, and keeping the King amused, Mary was taking refuge in the house of an old friend, Bishop West of Ely, at Hatfield, where, early in the morning of 16 July, she was safely delivered of a daughter, who was named Frances after the saint of the day.
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The christening, which must have been hastily prepared, took place in the local parish church two days later, in the presence of about eighty people. The godmothers, who must have been arranged in advance, were Queen Catherine and her daughter, the infant Princess Mary. The latter, who was only just over a year old, was probably recruited at the last minute when it was clear that the child was female. Because of this, and because of the shortness of the notice, neither was present in person. The Queen was represented by Lady Boleyn, who may have been Elizabeth, the wife of Sir Thomas, or possibly Anne, the wife of Sir Edward, who was a favourite of Catherine’s. The Princess was represented by Elizabeth Grey, who as a member of Mary’s household would have been present anyway. The godfather was the Abbot of St Albans, who would have been the nearest senior clergyman available.
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Altogether the christening was a low-key affair, by comparison with the pomp which had attended that of the Lord Henry, but then Frances was not thought to be dynastically significant. How long it was before the Duke saw his infant daughter is not clear, but presumably he made haste to see his wife as soon as his tour of duty at the court was completed, about the end of the first week of August. By the end of August they had retired to Westhope, which by good fortune had escaped the plague, and there they appear to have spent the winter in comparative peace.

Mary bore Brandon two more children: Eleanor, who was born some time in 1519, and a second Henry, born in 1522.
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Nothing is known of the circumstances of these births, nor of the christenings which followed. Eleanor is supposed to have been named as a compliment to the Emperor, whose sister bore that name, in which case the Imperial ambassador may well have stood godfather, but no record says so. Henry was a replacement for their firstborn, who had died in that same year at the age of six, but so little is known about him that the standard biography of Mary ignores him altogether, treating that Henry Brandon who was created Earl of Lincoln in 1525 as the child who had been born in 1516.
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In view of the fuss which had been made over the original, it may well be that the King and the Cardinal again stood as godfathers, but no record of his christening appears to have survived. Nor do we know anything about the upbringing of these children, who presumably grew up in the Brandon household alongside their elder half-sisters, Anne and Mary, Charles’s children by Anne Browne. Frances had a nurse called Anne Kyng, but nothing is known about her. The young Earl of Lincoln was later taught by Peter Valens, a friend of John Palsgrave, who had been Mary’s tutor, but that arrangement would not have begun until about 1528, and we do not know whether any of his sisters shared his lessons.
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It is more likely that they were taught their letters rather earlier by one of the chaplains on the Duke’s staff. Education was not Brandon’s strong point, and their mother (or stepmother) would have supervised the upbringing of the girls, all of whom grew up literate, but with a limited command of French and no other language as far as we are aware. When the time came, the Duke found honourable marriages for all his daughters. Anne was married in 1525, at the age of nineteen, to Edward Grey, Lord Powis, who had been a ward of the Crown and whose marriage Suffolk had purchased for £1,000 sometime in 1517. His revenues were given in his livery indenture as £409 a year, which would have been adequate for a minor peer without courtly ambitions.
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Mary was married in late 1527 or early 1528 at the age of about eighteen to Thomas Stanley, Lord Mounteagle, over whose wardship there had been a good deal of skirmishing. He was the son of Edward Stanley, Lord Mounteagle, who had died in 1523, and his lands were the subject of a dispute between his father’s estate officers and Lord Darcy, who had purchased his wardship. Perhaps uncertain of the outcome, Darcy had then sold Thomas’s marriage (over which he had undoubted control) to Suffolk for an undisclosed sum. Thomas obtained livery of his father’s lands, to the value of £605, in 1529, and by then Mary had borne him a son, but the Duke was to have endless trouble with his son-in-law.
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In September 1529 one of Mounteagle’s servants wrote to Thomas Cromwell, who was still in Wolsey’s service at that point, asking him to speak to Suffolk about the bad influence which one of the young lord’s intimates was having upon him. Presumably the Duke was expected to play the heavy father, but the outcome is unknown. Thomas seems to have acquired spendthrift habits, although whether that was the cause of the anxiety at this time we do not know. By 1533 he was compelled to intervene in Lord Mounteagle’s financial affairs, because the latter’s debts had risen to £1,450, and the Duke was forced to bail him out.
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These young ladies had been simply the daughters of a senior peer, but his daughters by the French Queen were a different proposition, because they carried the Tudor bloodline and might confer on their offspring a claim to the throne. This meant that it was desirable to secure a papal confirmation of his marriage to Mary, which had not been thought necessary at the time. This was negotiated by Sir Gregory Casales, the English agent in Rome, who no doubt welcomed it as a relief from the King’s own matrimonial tangle. The bull was issued in May 1528, and although vague about the birthdates of Brandon’s existing daughters, was quite unequivocal on the main point. The Duke and Duchess were lawfully married.
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In August 1529 Humphrey Wingfield, acting on the Duke’s behalf, presented it to Bishop Nix of Norwich for local confirmation. The Duke of Norfolk may have been unpersuaded by this show of ecclesiastical force, because in 1530 he turned down Frances, then aged thirteen, as a bride for his son Henry, Earl of Surrey, aged about fourteen, on the ground that her dowry was not big enough.
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Fortunately an alternative soon became available, because Thomas, Marquis of Dorset, died in October 1530, leaving his son Henry under age. The Earl of Arundel bid for his wardship, and proposed a marriage alliance with his own daughter. However Henry refused the alliance, and Arundel withdrew his bid. Suffolk then secured the approval both of the King and of the Dowager Marchioness, and purchased the wardship himself. This time the young Marquis was amenable, and the couple were married in 1531.
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This was not the end of the matter as far as the Duke was concerned, because he found himself forced to support the young couple at court until the Marquis attained his majority in 1538. Only the younger, Eleanor, was married without financial complications, because there the initiative came from the other side. As early as 1530 (when she was eleven) the Earl of Cumberland had bid successfully for the hand of the King’s niece for his son Henry. The arrangement was deferred, pending the King’s pleasure, but he confirmed it before Easter 1535, and the marriage was celebrated in the King’s presence in June.
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The marriage of his son, Henry, Earl of Lincoln, was another source of financial entanglement. A suitable heiress had become available with the death of Lord Willoughby de Eresby in October 1526. Suffolk had known the widowed baroness since, as Maria de Salinas, she had stood as godmother to his daughter Mary in 1510, and had been a feofee to the use of her husband, herself and her heirs in 1518. His bid for the wardship was presumably welcomed by Lady Willoughby, but resulted in a settlement of the estate which gave Brandon only a £40 pension to look after the heir. He was compelled to mortgage some of his Oxfordshire lands to meet a payment of 4,000 marks for this privilege, and secured a grant of the wardship in February 1529.
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Before that grant, however, Catherine’s inheritance appears to have been divided between the Crown, Lady Willoughby, and Sir Christopher, the late baron’s brother. The latter was aggrieved at not receiving the title, and in 1528 occupied Eresby House in Lincolnshire, which was in the hands of the Crown. Wolsey was called upon to arbitrate, and a solution was reached before Suffolk took over the Crown’s interest. His bid was in the air at that point, Sir Christopher was careful not to confront him on the issue, and Suffolk managed to avoid involvement in the dispute.
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The Duke’s careful planning was brought to nothing by the death of Henry in March 1534 at the age of twelve, before any marriage had taken place. However, Mary had also died on 25 June 1533, and the forty-seven-year-old Brandon married the heiress himself in September 1534, and thus secured his hold on her substantial lands in Lincolnshire and Suffolk.

After their return from the Field of Cloth of Gold the Suffolks were frequent but intermittent attenders at the court, dividing their time mostly between their house in Southwark and Westhorpe, which the Queen seems to have regarded as home. The Duke continued to be Henry’s chief jousting opponent until 1524, when on 10 March occurred an accident which put him off permanently. The King was trying out a new suit of armour of his own design, and forgot to lower his visor, with the result that when Suffolk’s lance shattered, his helmet was filled with splinters. Henry was unhurt, but the Duke was severely shaken and ‘sware that he would never run against the king more’, with the result that he reverted to his earlier role of being the King’s fellow challenger, the Earl of Devon replacing him as Henry’s chief opponent.
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The King and the Duke challenged together in December 1524, disguised in silver beards. However, thereafter they both appeared less frequently, because Henry only chose to run on important occasions, and Brandon appeared only if the King did. When the French ambassadors were to be impressed on 6 May 1527, Henry was due to take part, but did not eventually do so on account of an injury sustained playing tennis, with the result that the Duke did not appear either, and the whole event was scaled down.
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In spite of his advancing years, he was declared to be in robust health, and danced with the King in November 1527, when he wore three ostrich feathers in his cap, which was mark of especial favour as most of the dancers wore only two! Mary also graced the entertainments of the court, most famously appearing as ‘Beauty’ in the siege of the Chateau Verte on Shrove Tuesday 1522. On that occasion she had also led the dancing, but by 1527 her dancing days appear to have been over, perhaps on account of her uncertain health, because at thirty-three age can hardly have overtaken her. The new year’s gift lists show the couple as consistently in high favour throughout these years, although they were no longer constantly in attendance, and both seem to have resorted to the assiduous Wolsey when it came to promoting the careers of their clients.
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The Cardinal may have been involved in some grants to the Duke himself, for instance the stewardship of the Duchy of Lancaster in Northern England, which was granted in April 1525 and carried a fee of £100 a year, always welcome to the impecunious Suffolk. He was also an assiduous attender at Garter elections during these years, and even seems to have repaired his relations with the Duke of Norfolk, at least to the extent of reducing the tension over supremacy in East Anglia, which was a sensitive issue to both of them.
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