Mary

Rose
 Mary
Rose
Tudor princess,
Queen of France,
the extraordinary life of
Henry VIII’s sister

DAVID
LOADES

AMBERLEY
 First published 2012
Amberley Publishing
The Hill, Stroud
Gloucestershire, GL5 4EP
www.amberley-books.com
Copyright © David Loades, 2012
The right of David Loades to be
identified as the Author of this work has
been asserted in accordance with the
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1988.
ISBN 978-1-4456-0622-4 (PRINT)
ISBN 978-1-4456-1040-5 (e-BOOK)
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A catalogue record for this book is
available from the British Library.
 CONTENTS
Genealogical Table
Preface
Introduction: Historiography &
Background
1 The Infant Princess
2 The Princess of Castile
3 The Politics of Marriage
4 Mary as Queen of France
5 Mary & the Duke of Suffolk
6 Mary, Suffolk & the King
7 The Duchess & Her Children
8 The Last Days
9 The Legacy
Picture Section
Appendix 1: Verses Greeting Mary on
Her Entry into Paris
Appendix 2: A Suffolk Garland
Notes
Bibliography
List of Illustrations
 PREFACE
Royal princesses are always interesting,
and those who lived in the days of strong
personal monarchy especially so. Mary
Tudor was Henry VIII’s younger, and
favourite, sister; the fifth child and third
daughter of Henry VII and Elizabeth of
York. Little is known of her childhood
and upbringing, except that it was
heavily influenced by her paternal
grandmother, Margaret, Countess of
Derby. Her father seems to have shown
little interest in her, except to deploy
her, along with her sister Margaret, on
the international marriage market, but
that was the common experience of
kings’ daughters. At the age of thirteen
she was betrothed to the eight-year-old
Charles of Ghent, and seems to have
enjoyed the prospect of being Princess
of Castile. She grew up to be beautiful,
intelligent and emotional, but not at all
intellectual, and her usefulness to her
brother was abruptly terminated early in
1515 by her impulsive marriage to
Charles Brandon, Duke of Suffolk,
Henry’s closest friend. This was a direct
result of having been wedded against her
will to the elderly Louis XII of France
by the terms of the Anglo-French treaty
of 1514, and was the subject of
fascinated speculation at the time – and
since. Thereafter she continued to be
known as ‘The French Queen’ as well as
by her proper title as Duchess of
Suffolk, but her political role was at an
end, so she became an ornament around
the court, and a great lady on the Duke’s
estates.
Her life has attracted a certain
amount of attention, including a French
biography published in 1749, and a more
studious attempt by Mary Croom Brown
in 1911; however, most of the interest
has been fictional, or popular like Maria
Perry’s recent Sisters of the King . The
best scholarly study published within the
last half century is W. C. Richardson’s
Mary Tudor: The White Queen , which
appeared in 1970. A lot of research has
appeared since 1970, including a study
of her letters published in 2011, and this,
although directed only partly at Mary, is
nevertheless relevant to her context, so a
further biography is therefore justified.
She lived in interesting times, and her
support for Catherine of Aragon,
Henry’s first wife, cast a shadow over
relations with her brother in the last
years of her life. He nevertheless
remained fond of her, and of her rather
dim-witted husband, and continued to
include them in his social round. For that
reason alone she is worth another study,
because very few crossed Henry and
retained his regard. It was a unique
achievement which has been too little
thought about.
A lifetime of working on the
Tudors, and recently an investigation
into Mary’s arch-enemies the Boleyns,
lie behind this work, and obligations too
numerous to list have been incurred.
However, mention should be made of the
Oxford University History Faculty,
which has given me a base, and access
both to graduate seminars and to the
Bodleian Library, for all of which I am
profoundly grateful. I am also grateful to
Jonathan Reeve of Amberley Publishing,
who accepted it as a worthy project, and
to my wife Judith, who provides
unfailing support.
David Loades
INTRODUCTION:
HISTORIOGRAPHY
& BACKGROUND
Mary has always been of more interest
to the purveyors of fiction than to
historians. This was as true of the author
of the Suffolk Garland as it was of Jean
de Prechac in the seventeenth century,
Marguerite de Lussan in the eighteenth,
or Russell Garnier in the twentieth. Her
story was always good for romantic
reconstructions, and the real woman has
been largely lost sight of among these
stories and legends. Typically Mabel
Cleland, writing in The American Girl
in the winter of 1932/33, called her
piece ‘The Laughing Princess’, a name
which Mary would scarcely have
applied to herself. 1 In fact the
historiography of the French Queen is a
thing of shreds and patches, with a heavy
concentration on the circumstances of
her two marriages, to Louis XII of
France in November 1514, and to
Charles Brandon, Duke of Suffolk, in
March 1515. Before that she was
betrothed to Charles of Ghent, the future
Emperor Charles V, and she
consequently plays an important, though
largely passive, role in the diplomatic
history of the period 1508–15. It is in
such a guise that she appears in all the
standard histories of the period, most
notably in J. J. Scarisbrick’s biography
of Henry VIII (1968), where an attempt
is made to assess her importance. She
also features largely in S. J. Gunn’s
study of Charles Brandon (1988), which
not only examines the details of her two
marriages using some new material, but
also considers her role as Duchess of
Suffolk, both at court and on his
extensive estates. 2 Her support for
Catherine of Aragon he considers to
have been very influential in determining
the Duke’s political role between 1529
and 1533. She is considered briefly in
Mary Anne Green’s Lives of the
Princesses of England (1855), and
rather more fully in Agnes Strickland’s
Lives of the Tudor Princesses (1868),
both of them based largely on Hall’s
Chronicle . 3
The first modern biography, making
extensive use of the calendars of state
papers, published in the late nineteenth
century, is that by Mary Croom Brown,
which appeared in 1911. This quotes
lavishly from the Venetian despatches,
and contains complete accounts of all the
ceremonies in which Mary was
involved. It is full and accurate in its
descriptions of the costumes and
jewellery which were deployed, and on
the pageants which accompanied her
entry into Paris after her wedding in
November 1514. The woman encased in
all this ritual appears from time to time,
but Brown regarded her as a largely
ornamental creature, asserting herself
only occasionally. Her determination
over her union with Brandon is treated
as being largely emotional in its
inspiration, and an attempt to escape the
attentions of Francis I. 4 Much more
satisfactory to the critical historian is the
study by W. C. Richardson, Mary
Tudor: The White Queen (1970), which
makes a serious attempt to assess the
importance of the King’s sister in the
politics of the period. This means a
heavy concentration on the period before
1520, and considerable reliance on
contextual analysis. The first-hand
personal evidence relating to Mary
herself being notably scanty, Richardson
makes extensive use of contemporary
views on the role of women, and on their
education and training, applying these to
his subject in general terms. His
discussion of her character and career is
one of the best so far produced, but a lot
of research has been conducted since
1970, most notably by Stephen Gunn
(1988) and by Michael Jones and
Malcolm Underwood in their study of
Lady Margaret Beaufort (1992). 5 Very
recently has also appeared a new and
original study, based largely on Mary’s
surviving letters, The French Queen’s
Letters: Mary Tudor Brandon and the
Politics of Marriage in Sixteenth-
Century Europe , by Erin Sadlack. In so
far as this is a biography rather than a
literary study, it argues that Mary was a
shrewd and manipulative operator, well
versed in the political functions and
limitations of her position. While not
questioning the importance of her
emotional reactions, Dr Sadlack
presents a well-read and thoughtful
young woman, who took risks and
assessed the consequences. It was not
her fault that her French revenues were
cut off by the war of 1522–25, and her
attempts to recover her income thereafter
were sensible and pragmatic. However,
the emphasis is very much on the written
word, and on the influence of the courtly
cult of chivalry rather than upon the
historical context of her life. 6 So the
time has probably come for another look
at Mary Tudor, and at her relations with
the men in her life – not only her
husbands but also her brother.
Unavoidably Henry VIII features largely
in the investigation which follows.
In April 1483 Henry of Richmond
was in exile at the court of Francis II,
Duke of Brittany. He had been there
since 1471, when, as a fourteen-year-old
escorted by his uncle Jasper, he had fled
from the advancing armies of King
Edward IV. He had been born in 1457,
and was the only son of Edmund Tudor,
Earl of Richmond, and of Margaret
Beaufort, the daughter of John, Duke of
Somerset, who had died in 1444. John
having been a grandson of John of Gaunt,
the third son of King Edward III, Henry
had a remote claim to the Crown of
England. 7 He was in fact the last male
heir of the Lancastrian line, and Edward
IV made periodic attempts to have him
extradited, using all sorts of
blandishments without success. In exile
he had gathered round him a small
‘court’ of Lancastrian diehards, but as
Edward had two healthy young sons to
succeed him, Henry’s prospects of ever
ascending the throne seemed remote.
This also was the view of his mother,
married since 1472 to her fourth
husband, Thomas Lord Stanley, who was
doing her best to protect his interests in
England. Margaret’s marriage had given
her a link to the powerful Woodville
clan, and consequently a place within the
Yorkist establishment. These contacts
she used in an attempt to reconcile her
son with the King, and in the summer of
1482 she seemed to have succeeded. In
an agreement which was drawn up in the
King’s presence on 3 June, the estates of
Margaret’s mother, the Duchess of
Somerset (who had died in May), were
so disposed as to give Henry an
inheritance worth 600 marks a year,
provided that he returned from exile and
submitted to the King’s grace. 8 More
was expected, and a marriage between
Henry and Elizabeth, Edward’s eldest
daughter, was discussed. They were
within the prohibited degrees of affinity
and that would require a dispensation,
but such things could be arranged. The
King also appears to have been
considering restoring the exile to his
earldom of Richmond. However, all this
was conditional upon Henry returning to
England, and that he was reluctant to do,
in spite of his mother’s assurances.
Although Edward now appeared to be
conciliatory, there was too long a history
of mutual suspicion and distrust to be
overcome quickly. 9
Then on 9 April 1483 Edward IV
died. At first this did not seem likely to
make much difference, because his
young son was proclaimed as Edward V,
and preparations for his coronation were
pressed ahead. However, on 6 July the
young king’s uncle, Richard of
Gloucester, who had been Lord
Protector, was crowned instead as King
Richard III on the pretext that Edward V
was illegitimate. 10 Edward and his
brother Richard disappeared into the
Tower of London, and the Queen
Dowager took sanctuary at Westminster.
Richard’s coup had been ruthless and
not without bloodshed, but Margaret’s
first reaction seems to have been to
accept it, and she played a prominent
part in the coronation celebrations. She
seems at first to have been disposed to
seek a deal with Richard similar to that
which she had made with Edward IV.
However, Lord Stanley’s Woodville
connections made him suspect to the new
king, and Queen Elizabeth herself
remained in sanctuary, so Margaret took
a calculated and highly dangerous risk.
Abandoning Richard, she threw in her
lot with those conspirators who were
fomenting rebellion against him.
Negotiations for a Tudor–Plantagenet
wedding were resumed with Elizabeth,
using Margaret’s physician Lewis
Caerleon as an intermediary, while
communications were maintained with
Henry in Brittany. Several of Margaret’s
servants were involved in the Duke of
Buckingham’s rebellion in the autumn of
1483, and Buckingham wrote to Henry in
September, inviting his participation in
the revolt. He started by claiming to act
in the name of Edward V, but apparently
convinced that Edward was dead, then
switched his allegiance of Henry of
Richmond, a move undoubtedly
motivated by the latter’s mother. 11 When
the rebellion collapsed and Buckingham
was executed, Lady Stanley therefore
stood in considerable danger, and
although she escaped attainder in the
parliament of 1484, her estates were
confiscated. With them went Henry’s
inheritance, and any prospect of
reconciliation with Richard’s
government. However, there were
compensations. In the first place, the
Yorkist party had been split down the
middle by Richard’s actions, and
several prominent members of the
Woodville affinity, including the
Marquis of Dorset, joined Henry in
Brittany, implicitly recognising his title
to the throne. Secondly, in the cathedral
at Rennes on Christmas Day 1483,
Henry solemnly swore to marry the
younger Elizabeth, when he had regained
his kingdom. This was the result of a
renewed agreement between the two
dowagers, and was to be of the highest
significance for the future. 12 Richard
recognised the threat, and renewed his
brother’s attempts to secure Henry’s
person. Taking advantage of the illness
of Duke Francis II, he almost succeeded,
and drove the fugitives over the border
into France, where the Regency Council
of Charles VIII considered his appeal
for support. More positively, Richard
patched up his relations with Elizabeth,
and persuaded her to withdraw her
consent to her daughter’s marriage, a
success which his own fate in 1485
rendered nugatory.
At the beginning of 1484, Richard
was riding high. The parliament which
met on 23 January dutifully attainted not
only Henry and his uncle Jasper, but also
those numerous Yorkists who had joined
his cause, including the bishops of Ely,
Salisbury and Exeter. 13 Margaret’s
estates were transferred to her husband,
Lord Stanley, for life, in what was
probably a conciliatory gesture. Before
the parliament was over, the King
secured the oaths of all the Lords
spiritual and temporal for the
recognition of his son, Prince Edward,
as his heir, and came to terms with the
Queen Dowager, as we have seen. He
must have seemed secure. However in
early April his son died, leaving him in
a dynastic wilderness, and Henry of
Richmond began to assume a more
serious role in his calculations. Duke
Francis was a sick man, and with only
his daughter Anne as his heir, a French
takeover of Brittany seemed likely. This
the Duke’s council was determined to
prevent, and Richard seized the
opportunity to offer military support in
return for the surrender of his attainted
fugitive. A deal was done on 8 June, but
Henry got wind of the plot and, by a
subterfuge which involved disguising
himself as a servant, managed to slip
over the border into Anjou. 14 When the
Duke discovered what had happened, his
indignation was reserved mainly for his
own council, which had sold Henry so
unworthily, and he generously allowed
the rest of the English exiles to join
Henry in France. They were afforded an
honourable welcome, but the Regency
Council put the question of supporting
any bid against Richard on hold for the
time being. The minority government
was not attracted by the idea of war with
England. 15 Nevertheless, in the latter
part of 1484 Henry’s stock began to rise.
He was joined by the Earl of Oxford, a
Lancastrian stalwart who had been
imprisoned in the castle of Hammes,
near Calais, but who now broke out and
brought most of the garrison with him.
This was seen as an indication of
increasing support, and the Council
began to take his royal pretensions
seriously. Then on 16 March 1485
Richard suffered another blow with the
death of his queen, Ann. Whereas the
death of his son had been seen by his
enemies as a divine judgement, the death
of the Queen was laid at Richard’s own
door, because it was thought that he had
poisoned her in order to marry his niece,
Elizabeth, a rumour fuelled by her
mother’s improved relations with the
King. There was much talk of this
marriage, but no serious evidence that it
was ever entertained. 16 What did
happen was that Richard felt compelled
to issue a formal denial that he had been
responsible for his wife’s death. As
Henry’s credit was rising in France, so
Richard’s was declining in England, and
at about the time of Ann’s death, the
Regency Council, headed by the King’s
sister Anne of Beaujeu, decided to back
the former’s bid for the Crown of
England.
Henry, meanwhile, had begun to
assume the name and style of King, and
further recruits joined him, notably
Richard Fox, who had been studying in
Paris. Communications with his
supporters in England, which had
continued intermittently throughout his
period of exile, now began to assume a
more purposeful air. Messengers went
surreptitiously to and fro, with his
mother, with Lord Stanley, with John
Morgan with Walter Herbert and several
others, soliciting their support. In return
word came out of Wales that Rhys ap
Thomas and Sir John Savage were
wholly committed to him, and that
Reginald Bray was collecting funds on
his behalf. Margaret urged him to come
to Wales as soon as possible in order to
capitalise on this fund of goodwill. 17
Throughout May and June 1485 Henry
struggled to raise enough ships and men
to make his attempt viable, knowing that
a powerful appearance would encourage
others to declare themselves. Eventually,
with the somewhat grudging support of
the French Council, and by borrowing
money on the credit of his prospects, he
managed to assemble about 2,000
mercenaries, and accompanied by some
300 or 400 English exiles, set out from
the Seine on 1 August. He landed at
Milford Haven on the 7th, encountering
no resistance, and set off via
Haverfordwest to march through what is
now Ceredigion and Powys into
England. His march was beset with
anxieties because, in spite of the lack of
opposition, he had so far recruited very
few new followers, and it was only on
the 12th that his worst fears were
allayed when he was joined by Rhys ap
Thomas with a force which just about
doubled his numbers. The powerful
Welshman had been as good as his
word. 18 Messages of support came in
from his mother, Lord Stanley, Lord
Stanley’s brother Sir William, and from
Gilbert Talbot. The latter actually joined
him with 500 men. However, the
Stanleys had not moved, and without
them his army looked very small to
encounter the host which Richard had by
them assembled against him. In the
event, when the two forces encountered
near Market Bosworth in Leicestershire
on the 21 August, it transpired that
Richard’s much larger army was riddled
with disaffection, and a large part of it
did not engage. That, and the fact that the
Stanleys turned up in the nick of time,
turned the fortunes of battle Henry’s way
and he won a decisive victory. 19
Richard was killed in the fighting, and
Henry was proclaimed as king on the
field. It is even alleged that the crown
from Richard’s helmet was used in an
impromptu coronation ceremony. The
fact that the King had died childless,
leaving only a nephew as his heir, meant
that Henry’s victory was generally
accepted as the will of God, and his
reign began forthwith. Within a few days
he had issued letters announcing his
accession, secured the person of
Edward, Earl of Warwick, the fifteen-
year-old son of the Duke of Clarence
(and a potential rival for the throne), and
set off for London. Edward was
incarcerated in the Tower, and Elizabeth
restored to her mother with the warmest
commendations for her safekeeping.
Lord Stanley and his wife accompanied
the new king to his capital, where he
immediately issued writs for the
convening of a parliament, and fixed his
coronation for 30 October. 20 In spite of
his inexperience in such matters, it was
essential that Henry should appear to
know what he was about, and he quickly
assembled a council consisting very
largely of those who had served Edward
IV in the same capacity. He swiftly
rewarded with titles, grants and offices
those who had served him in exile, or
had smoothed his path to the throne,
particularly his uncle Jasper, who
became Duke of Bedford, and his
stepfather Lord Thomas Stanley, who
became Earl of Derby, but most of his
councillors were drawn from those
Yorkist loyalists who had rejected
Richard, many of whom, like John
Morton, had joined him in Brittany after
1483. 21
Henry, meanwhile, was crowned in
style. No expense was spared to make
the occasion as glittering as might be,
and the traditional ceremonies and
rituals were strictly observed. The Great
Wardrobe spent a fortune (over £1,500)
on trappings for the occasion. On 27
October the King dined with the
Archbishop at Lambeth, and followed
this with a procession through London to
the Tower, where he spent the next two
nights before the ceremony itself.
Archbishop Bourchier anointed him, and
was assisted by the bishops of Durham
and Bath and Wells. The new Duke of
Bedford acted as Steward for the
occasion, and places of honour were
reserved for the King’s mother the Lady
Margaret, and for his intended bride,
Elizabeth of York. Henry had made no
move in the direction of marriage, partly
because he did not want to make it
appear that his title to the throne
depended in any way upon her, and more
importantly, because a dispensation
would be needed because of the degree
of affinity which existed between them.
22 Such a dispensation could only be

obtained from Rome, and the Pope had

not yet recognised him as king, so that
situation needed careful and thoughtful
handling. The parliament which
convened on 7 November, perhaps
deliberately, gave him his cue by
petitioning him to remember his promise
to the Lady Elizabeth, and thus
reinforced his intention by the will of the
estates, representing the realm of
England. Henry might be newly crowned
and only twenty-eight years old, but the
succession was never far from his
subjects’ minds, and such a marriage
would be an ideal way to heal the long
breach between the houses of York and
Lancaster. It may be significant that the
petition was only offered after the
parliament had declared the King’s title,
‘To the pleasure of All mighty God, the
wealth, prosperity and surety of this
realm of England’, reversed the
attainders of his followers, and made
financial provision for the new reign. In
other words it took its place in a
calculated order of priorities. 23 This
gave the King some breathing space, and
an opportunity to get to know the young
lady, whom he had probably never set
eyes on, and to accustom her to the idea
of wedding a man she did not know.
Moreover, at the time that the parliament
met, Elizabeth was still stigmatised as a
bastard by an unrepealed Act of Richard
III, and that had to be reversed before
any question of marriage could be
entered into. So there were good reasons
for the delay, quite apart from the
susceptibilities involved.
The dispensation was probably
applied for in early December, perhaps
even before the petition was received,
but these things took time and in this
case the testimony of eight witnesses.
Realising the urgency of the matter, Pope
Innocent VIII allowed the Apostolic
Delegate to England and Scotland,
James Bishop of Imola, to issue an
interim dispensation on 16 January, just
two days before the ceremony took
place. Henry must have known in
advance that the decision would be a
favourable one, because more than two
days would have been needed for the
preparations. 24 Indeed the prompt
arrival of Prince Arthur in September
suggests that the couple were sleeping
together before they were married,
although no one commented upon that
fact at the time. Not very much is known
about the wedding itself; even the
participation of Archbishop Bourchier is
little more than speculation. Despite the
fact that it was celebrated by chroniclers
and commentators as marking the
triumphant end of the feud of York and
Lancaster, no proper account of it
survives, and it must have been
celebrated in some haste. The papal bull
of confirmation was dated 2 March
1486, describing the circumstances of
the Bishop of Imola’s action, giving the
degrees of kindred dispensed, and
stating that it had been in response to the
petition of the magnates and people of
the realm. Finally on 23 July a decree
was issued, setting out a notarial copy of
the process before the Apostolic
Delegate, and threatening the sentence of
excommunication against anyone denying
the validity of Henry’s claim to the
throne. 25 The full decree had taken time,
but it had been worth waiting for. Not
only was it retrospective in its effect, but
it carried the full weight of papal
recognition for his title, which was
essential for the negotiations which were
by then under way with other European
rulers. Queen Elizabeth fell pregnant at
once, and bore a son on 19 September,
confirming in the eyes of all but the most
recalcitrant that Henry’s triumph was the
will of God.
One of those recalcitrants was John
de la Pole, Earl of Lincoln. John had
been Richard’s designated heir, but had
at first made no show. Early in 1487 he
fled to Flanders and countenanced (if he
did not inspire) the imposture of
Lambert Simnel, who claimed to be the
true Earl of Warwick. Recognised and
supported by his ‘aunt’ Margaret of
Burgundy, Simnel secured a coronation
in Ireland and, with a mixed band of
Irish kerns and German mercenaries,
invaded England in pursuit of his claim.
He was defeated and captured at the
Battle of Stoke on 16 June, and the Earl
of Lincoln died in the battle. 26 This was
the end of any immediate challenge to
the King’s position, and he now felt it
safe to crown his queen. On 10
November he issued a commission to
Jasper, Duke of Bedford, to discharge
the office of Steward of England at this
coronation, and the ceremony was held
at Westminster on the 25th. Elizabeth
was a loving and dutiful wife, and was
later described as being beloved of the
people ‘because she is powerless’.
Henry certainly trusted her, and early in
1487 transferred to her her mother’s
jointure. This was probably voluntary on
the Queen Dowager’s part, and may well
have been connected with her declining
health. She retired to the convent at
Bermondsey with an annual pension of
200 marks, which Henry paid with every
sign of filial affection until her death in
1492. 27 Elizabeth may well have been
pregnant again by the end of 1487, but if
so she had a miscarriage because there
is no official record of her condition,
and it was November 1489 before she
produced a second child – a daughter
who was named Margaret. Margaret’s
christening was overshadowed by the
creation of her brother Arthur as Prince
of Wales, which occurred on the 29th,
and not very much is known about her
upbringing. She later married James IV
of Scotland and died in 1541. 28 She
would have been taught to read and
write, and subsequently had a
reasonable command of French. These
skills were imparted by tutors, but she
seems not to have shared lessons with
her brothers, and was spared the strict
regiment of classical reading which was
imposed upon them. Instead her
education would have been that thought
suitable to a royal or aristocratic girl,
and consisted largely of piety,
needlework and household management.
There are some indications that she read
widely, but her reading matter seems to
have consisted of Chaucer, Froissart and
Malory rather than anything more
substantial. 29 In other words, she was
trained to be a wife or consort, and her
intellectual ambitions, if she had any
such, would have been largely
frustrated.
By the beginning of 1491 Elizabeth
was pregnant again and on 28 June gave
birth to her second son, who was named
Henry. Whereas Arthur had been
recognised as Duke of Cornwall from
his birth, Henry had no title until he was
created Duke of York in 1494 at the age
of three. Unlike Arthur, Henry was
robust child, and grew into a youth of
great stature and athleticism, eventually
succeeding his father as King Henry VIII
in 1509. 30 At some time in 1492 a
second daughter was born to the Queen,
and named Elizabeth; however, she did
not survive infancy, dying in 1495,
shortly after the birth of a third girl, who
was called Mary, and is the subject of
this study.
1
 THE INFANT
PRINCESS
Mary was apparently born on 18 March
1495/96, according to a note in her
mother’s psalter which there is no good
reason to doubt. 1 Like the other royal
offspring she would have been put to a
wet nurse until she was weaned, and
then placed under the care of a dry
nurse, because royal ladies did not
suckle their own infants, and it is
uncertain how much Mary would have
seen of her mother as she left infancy
behind. Arthur, as Prince of Wales, had
his own household and was not normally
resident in the court, but the girls,
although they had their own attendants,
were not similarly indulged and their
nursery remained within the household,
travelling with it from place to place.
This involved quite a lot of movement
because even the greatest palaces
became insanitary after several weeks of
occupation and the court seldom stayed
in one place for more than a month. The
main base was Eltham, but journeys
downriver to Greenwich were frequent,
while upriver lay Westminster,
Richmond and Windsor, less often
visited but still important residences. 2
Meanwhile the nursery at Eltham was
washed and fumigated, ready for fresh
occupancy. The children’s world was
circumscribed, because although there
was a constant stream of distinguished
visitors who came to inspect them, and
they were occasionally paraded for that
purpose, they would have had little or no
contact with such men, and their
exposure to the normal life of the court
was minimal. It is unlikely, for example,
that two-year-old Mary was even aware
of the celebrations in London in 1497
which marked the arrival of the sword
and cap of maintenance from Pope
Alexander VI, which entitled her father
to style himself ‘Protector and defender
of the Church of Christ’. 3 Her own
vision of God at that point would have
been rather more limited. It is possible
that she did remember the fire which
destroyed much of Richmond Palace on
22 December in the same year, because
the court was in residence at the time,
and the blaze is alleged to have started
in the King’s apartments. It was
principally the old buildings which
suffered, and the fire was extinguished
after three hours. 4 No lives were lost,
but the hurried evacuation may well
have remained in her mind. Normally,
however, trips up and down the river
between Greenwich and Westminster
would have been the limit of the young
royals’ exposure to the outside world.
Although we know next to nothing
about how Mary spent her time during
the first few years of her life, thanks to
the survival of the Wardrobe accounts
we are rather better informed about how
she was dressed. Silks and damasks
were issued which would have been
made up into baby clothes by her
attendant ladies. Stiff and wholly
inappropriate for a small child as these
may now appear, they would have been
the normal garb for a noble infant of that
period, which insisted on cramming its
children into scaled-down versions of
adult costume at the earliest opportunity.
5 Blankets, bedding, napkins and

handkerchiefs were also provided

regularly, and ribbons of coloured silk
or gold for the princesses. At the age of
three or four Mary was wearing
voluminous long-sleeved dresses, with
full kirtles and tight-fitting bodices,
hopelessly encumbering for an active
child. Play in the modern sense was
clearly not on the agenda, but she seems
to have grown up without any ill effects
from this type of deprivation. Perhaps
more suitable clothing was permitted
within the confines of the nursery. By the
time that she was four, in 1499, Mary
had a whole collection of dresses,
including purple satin and blue velvet –
and eight pairs of soled shoes. Clearly
she lacked for nothing which would have
made her presentable. 6 Unfortunately the
records are silent on how often she
would have been shown off in these
splendid garments. How much Elizabeth
herself was involved in the rearing of
her daughter is an open question. The
lack of reference to her in this
connection would suggest not very much.
There are, for instance, only two
allusions to Mary in the Queen’s Privy
Purse expenses for 1502. One is for
twelve pence for a papal pardon during
the jubilee year of 1501, which must
have been a mere gesture because it is
hard to see what sins a six-year-old
could have committed, and the other is
for 12 s 8 d paid to a tailor for making
her a gown of black satin. 7 Apart from
these there is nothing. That does not
necessarily imply neglect, because her
expenses may have been differently met,
but it does suggest that the Queen was
too busy with public and household
duties to supervise the lives of her
children. Nevertheless, when she died
early in 1503 they all seem to have felt
the loss keenly, so perhaps she had other
ways of making her presence known.
Some time later Thomas More imagined
the dying Queen taking leave of her
children; ‘Adieu my daughter Mary,
bright of hue, God made you virtuous,
wise and fortunate’, although He did not
make More a very good prophet.
The person who seems to have
taken her duties most seriously in
connection with their upbringing was the
children’s paternal grandmother,
Margaret Beaufort. Margaret was a
woman of extraordinary toughness and
determination, whose influence over her
son is known to have been profound.
Margaret’s properties were restored to
her as soon as Henry was accepted as
king, and various other houses were
granted to her, including the mansion of
Coldharbour in London, to use when she
was not resident at court. Politically
sensitive wardships were conferred on
her, and she was at first given the
custody of the Earl of Warwick before
the King decided that he would be safer
in the Tower. 8 Elizabeth stayed with her
in the weeks before her marriage, and
she played a leading part in both
coronations. In 1488 both she and the
Queen were issued with liveries of the
Order of the Garter, which was an
especial mark of favour. No woman
could be a member of that chivalric
order, but this grant enrolled them as
associates, and gave them a part in the
Garter ceremonies. It has been remarked
that her role was very similar to that
which Cecily, Duchess of York, had
discharged at the beginning of Edward
IV’s reign. 9 She frequently joined the
King and Queen on their progresses, and
her proximity to the royal couple seems
to have been taken as a matter of course.
Although she had no theological training,
her piety was austere and diligent, and
contributed significantly to the high
moral tone which Henry liked to impose
upon his court. Her education had been
rudimentary. She had married at thirteen
and borne her son before her fourteenth
birthday. Consequently she had no Latin,
nor any other language apart from
French, but she was very appreciative of
the learning of others, and became a
notable patron of the humanists. She was
particularly close to John Fisher, who
became Bishop of Rochester in 1504,
and with him founded the college of St
John in Cambridge, for the specific
purpose of promoting the new learning.
10 It was almost certainly her influence

which dictated the appointment of

Bernard Andre as tutor to Prince Arthur,
and later John Skelton from her favourite
university of Cambridge, and these
appointments in turn guaranteed a
curriculum of strict classicism for both
him and his younger brother, Henry. By
1500, when their accomplishments were
brought to the attention of Erasmus, they
were the best-educated princes in
Europe. It may also have been she who
insisted on them being ‘bible learned’ in
a manner never seen before, and quite at
odds with the prevailing ethos of
aristocratic education. She was not, of
course, a member of the Council, and
politically her influence was limited, but
culturally she reigned supreme. It was
perhaps characteristic of her that she did
not attach the same importance to the
education of her granddaughters as she
did of the boys. In both cases her attitude
was pragmatic. Arthur certainly and
Henry possibly were being trained as
rulers, and for them a knowledge of
history and philosophy were essential if
they were to govern well. The girls were
being brought up for a more domestic
role, and their priorities were good
appearance, piety and chastity. It was
highly unlikely that either of them would
find themselves in the kind of position
which Margaret herself occupied. There
are occasional slight signs that Elizabeth
resented this intrusion into her proper
realm of responsibility, but she was no
match for Margaret when it came to
strength of personality, and in any case
the King would have it so. In spite of her
royal blood the Queen was by nature
passive, even submissive, so the pair
appeared together in public on numerous
occasions with every outward sign of
harmony. Perhaps Elizabeth was
relieved that so forceful a person was
prepared to take over the demanding task
of supervising so lively a brood, while
she got on with the essential task of
giving birth. However, in that respect
fortune had deserted her. She may have
had an abortive pregnancy in 1497, but
her next live birth was of Edmund, who
was born in 1499. For a while Henry
had three living sons, but Edmund did
not survive infancy, dying in 1500. 11
Arthur, the golden hope of both his
parents, succumbed to consumption in
1502, and it was in an effort to repair
that damage that the Queen again became
pregnant later in that year. She died in
childbirth on 11 February 1503, and the
child, a daughter named Catherine,
swiftly followed her to the grave.
Margaret’s reaction is not recorded, but
she would have been sufficiently
occupied in consoling her son, who was
devastated by his loss. 12
The royal nursery was at first
presided over by Elizabeth Denton, but
she left not long after Mary’s birth to
become a lady-in-waiting and was
replaced by Anne Cromer, about whom
nothing is known apart from her name.
Unlike Arthur, Mary was given no
separate establishment, but by 1501 she
had her own staff of attendants, which
was paid out of the Chamber account.
This included a physician and a
schoolmaster, along with the wardrobe
keeper and gentlewomen of the chamber,
but it was not large, and nothing very
much is known about it – not even who
the schoolmaster may have been. The
King’s thinking in this respect can be
seen in his order of 1502 that his
daughter was to be attended on the same
scale as his recently widowed daughter-
in-law, Catherine of Aragon, for whom
an allocation of £100 a month was made,
which was enough for six to eight
servants – adequate for Mary, but mean
for the Dowager Princess of Wales. 13 In
1498, when Margaret was nine and
Mary three, a French maiden was
imported, partly to keep them company,
but more importantly to teach them
French by the painless method of daily
conversation. Neither the age nor the
name of this young lady are known, but it
is reasonable to suppose that it was Jane
Popincourt, who would have been about
seven at that point. 14 Jane was certainly
a member of the Chamber shortly
afterwards, and much later created a
scandal when she became the mistress of
the Duc de Longueville while he was in
England in 1513. At what point Jane’s
morals may have begun to stray is not
known, but it cannot have been until
about 1503, and if she had any influence
over Mary at that time it has escaped the
record. It is highly unlikely that the
Countess of Derby would have tolerated
her continued presence if she had been
under any suspicion, because the
princess’s chastity was a jewel beyond
price.
By 1499 two of King Henry’s
surviving children were spoken for in
marriage. Arthur had been committed
since 1496 to Catherine, the youngest
daughter of Ferdinand and Isabella of
Spain, who was a year older than
himself, while Margaret was on offer to
the twenty-eight-year-old King of Scots,
James IV. This negotiation had been
suspended in 1497 when James briefly
supported Perkin Warbeck in his
impersonation of Richard of York, but
had been resumed two years later when
the truce of Ayton was signed between
the countries. 15 The former marriage
took place in November 1501 and the
latter in August 1503, just as soon as the
parties were old enough to cohabit.
Whether Henry ever considered
betrothing his younger daughter as a
baby we do not know, but in November
1498 there came an offer which he had
no difficulty in refusing. The party
concerned was Ludovico Sforza, the
Duke of Milan, who was looking for
allies to confront a threatened French
invasion, and he sent to London a
special envoy with a threefold request.
Firstly he sought an alliance with
England, in order to fend off the
advances of Louis XII, who had picked
up French ambitions in Italy where
Charles VIII had laid them down. But
Henry replied that he was at peace with
France, and had no intention of
disrupting that situation. Secondly, in
order to seal the alliance, he wanted a
marriage between Mary, who was then
three, and his own son Massimiliano,
who was about the same age. To this the
King answered politely but firmly that
there was no way in which he would
consider betrothing his daughter until she
reached the age of seven. If Ludovico
was still interested in four years’ time,
he would be happy to give the matter
serious consideration. The Duke’s third
request was the Order of the Garter for
himself. However, it was breach of
etiquette to solicit such an honour, and
the King responded by pointing out that
since the King of France was already a
knight, it would not be possible to
gratify him. ‘The knights of old who
bore this badge swore to be friends of
friends and foes of foes’, and therefore it
would be impossible to admit any enemy
of Louis as a member. 16 Henry loved
prevarication, and kept the Milanese
envoy Raimondo de Raimondi waiting
almost forty days for this unsatisfactory
response, by which time Raimondo had
long since come to the conclusion that
Henry preferred French gold to anything
that the Duke had to offer. It may be
significant that the Venetian report of
these exchanges did not come until 1
April 1499, and the Venetians were
usually well informed. 17 In fact
Ludovico sought in vain for allies, not
only in England but in Italy and the Holy
Roman Empire as well, and was
overthrown by the anticipated French
invasion later in the same year. On 6
October Louis made a solemn entry into
Milan, which had been conquered in a
series of campaigns.
Not long after the Milanese envoy
had been dismissed, Mary had an
encounter which she may well have
recalled later, although it is unlikely to
have made much impact at the time. She
met Desiderius Erasmus. The great
scholar had been persuaded to come to
England by William Blount, Lord
Mountjoy, who had been a pupil of his in
Paris, and while staying with Mountjoy
in Greenwich he was taken by Thomas
More to visit the royal schoolroom at
Eltham. Erasmus later recalled the
event:
In the midst stood Prince Henry,
now nine years old, and having
already something of royalty in his
demeanour, in which there was a
certain dignity combined with a
singular courtesy. On his right was
Margaret, about eleven years of
age, afterwards married to James,
King of Scots, and on his left
played Mary, a child of four.
Edmund was an infant in arms …
18

Arthur was not there, having an

establishment of his own, and Mary,
absorbed by her game, was not much
impressed by the great man. Erasmus
was mainly interested in Henry, with
whom he later entered into a Latin
correspondence, and had difficulty in
believing that the Prince’s letters were
really of his own composition. Mary he
noted as being ‘divinely pretty’, but had
no other comment to make. It would have
been difficult for the scholar to relate to
a child of that age, and there is no reason
to suppose that he spoke to her at all. He
had little English and Mary’s French
would have been rudimentary at that
stage. He saw Henry as a potential
patron, with justification, but there
would have been no expectation of such
a benefit from conversing with either of
the girls, let alone one who was not
much more than an infant. Although she
learned some Latin as well as French,
Mary’s schooling was not intellectually
demanding, and may well have frustrated
a girl of her natural intelligence. Only in
music was she stretched, and learned to
perform well on several instruments,
under the guidance of professionals who
are only identified in the accounts by
their Christian names. 19 She also seems
to have learned the techniques of
composition, although nothing by her is
known to have survived. Above all, like
most Tudor gentlewomen, she was
diligent with her needle, learning the
embroidery at which she was later to
excel, and probably the arts of plain
sewing as well. Margaret Beaufort was
a proficient apothecary, and it is likely
that she transmitted some of these skills
to her granddaughter, because in
addition to managing the household
ministering to her servants’ ailments was
part of a lady’s responsibilities. In the
event, although not learned in the sense
that her nieces were later to be, Mary
grew up well balanced and cultivated,
possessing at least a superficial
knowledge of the humanities. 20 Not
enough to have impressed Erasmus, but
sufficient to give her the edge over her
attendants, and to convince the
gentlemen of the court. We know that she
did not share her brothers’ schooling,
and her sister would have been rather
too old, so the chances are that a small
group of aristocratic damsels formed a
schoolroom for her, although apart from
Jane Popincourt we do not know who
they might have been.
King Henry VII was not
intellectually trained himself, and may
have felt at a loss in the company of his
well-educated sons, but he appreciated
that the world was changing and that his
successor would need to be learned in a
sense that he was not. He therefore
patronised scholars and allowed his
tastes to be guided by them. Knowing
that expensive tastes were status
symbols, he spent lavishly on buildings,
jewels and magnificent hospitality. He
also insisted that his whole court be
splendidly attired, both the women and
the men, and his daughters grew up
surrounded by luxury. ‘There is no
country in the world,’ wrote the Spanish
ambassador de Puebla, ‘where Queens
live in greater pomp than in England,
where they have as many court officers
as the King.’ 21 This may mean no more
than that Elizabeth was indulged by a
loving husband, but she certainly had a
large retinue, and they were all
splendidly dressed when de Puebla paid
a call, which may not have been as
unexpected as he believed. Mary was
thus given a high standard to live up to,
which explains the satins and brocades
referred to in the accounts, and she grew
up with a love of fine clothing which
never diminished. By the time that she
was about ten, with her sister married in
Scotland, Mary was the third lady of the
court after her mother and grandmother,
and lived in some style. She may even
have had her own musicians, over and
above her tutors, because every member
of the royal family entertained some
instrumentalists, but these were no doubt
paid for by her father, and would not
have counted against her allowance.
From 1504 onwards, Henry had his own
establishment as Prince of Wales, and
after his accession the Chapel Royal,
which included all the musicians as well
as the choristers and Gentlemen,
numbered 114 men and boys and cost
nearly £2,000 a year. 22 Certainly under
Henry VIII, and probably under his
father, the Tudor court was the finest
musical centre in Europe, and Mary
would have learned to dance, which she
did with great enthusiasm, to the finest
accompaniment available. We do not
know whether she had a good singing
voice, but given her brother’s
accomplishment in that direction, it is
probable that she had.
In spite of her patronage of
humanist scholars, Lady Margaret’s
views on the education of girls appear to
have been distinctly old-fashioned. She
was proud and austere, and seems not to
have thought that the reading prescribed
for the boys was at all suitable to a
modest maiden. Latin was all very well,
but it did not need to extend much
beyond the offices of the church, and the
works of Ovid, recommended for Arthur
and Henry, were particularly unsuitable.
A regime of unremitting chastity was
laid down, which was all very well for
an eight- or nine-year-old, but became
irksome with the onset of puberty.
Margaret was wedded and bedded at the
age of fourteen, but for fourteen-year-old
Mary, protected alike by her
grandmother and by her attendants from
the sexual adventures normal for a girl
of that age, it must all have been rather
oppressive. We do not know what she
thought, but she was a lively child, and
the strictly chaperoned dances which
was all she could expect at court can
hardly have been satisfactory, so she
seems to have grown up with an
unsatisfied sexual curiosity, which was
blandly ignored by those about her.
Ideas were changing, but not soon
enough to have been of any benefit to
Mary. Insofar as the old standards were
laid down in writing, they were
embedded in the Ancren Riwle and the
Garmond of Gude Ladeis , and could be
summed up as homemaking, chastity and
salvation – not necessarily in that order.
23 Even Chaucer had little more to offer

to the frustrated teenager of the early

sixteenth century. It was not until 1523,
when Mary was already a mother, that
Luis Vives wrote De Institutione
Feminae Christianae for the guidance of
Catherine of Aragon. Vives believed that
girls should be taught good Latin, and
plenty of it, so that they might study the
wisdom of the ancients. Even Greek
might be appropriate, given the aptitude,
but the purpose of this learning remained
depressingly familiar: ‘that which doth
instruct their manners and inform their
living, and teacheth them the way of
good and holy life’. The means were
enlightened, but the objective had not
advanced very much beyond Margaret
Beaufort. 24
Vives, who never suggested that a
woman might have the intellectual
capacity of a man, was nevertheless
highly controversial in his day. Many of
those who wrote on the subject were
sceptical of the need of girls for any
academic training, and equally doubtful
of the effect which such a training might
have. Women were, they argued, frail by
nature, both physically and morally,
‘inclined by their own courage unto
vice’ as one of them put it. 25 In reading
they would incline to that which was
‘sweet’ rather than to that which was
‘wholesome’, and classical literature
would ‘inflame their stomachs a great
deal more to that vice’. In other words
the ancient authors would ‘set forward
and accomplish their forward intent and
purpose’, giving them ideas above their
naturally humble station in life. Vives by
contrast believed that women had an
innate tendency to virtue, which would
be encouraged by such studies. His ideas
were received both earlier and more
sympathetically in his native Spain than
they were in the north, and Catherine of
Aragon had been one of the earliest
recipients of these ideas. She had been
thoroughly trained in the humanities, and
wanted to make sure that her own
daughter was similarly advantaged. So
she brought Vives to England, and
encouraged him to write his book. He
was never actually tutor to the young
princess, but he drew up a scheme of
studies for her guidance, and dedicated
t h e Institutione to Catherine. 26 The
Queen of England was not the only royal
lady with advanced ideas. Her near
contemporary Louise of Savoy, who
became the Queen Mother of France in
1515, went further and promoted the
idea of equality in education between the
sexes, a more radical notion than
Catherine ever held, and one which she
practised in the bringing up of her own
children, with the result that Margaret of
Angouleme was one of the best-educated
ladies of her generation. Although
Louise was practising and Vives was
preaching while Mary Tudor was still in
the schoolroom, no such notions were
allowed to penetrate the shield which
surrounded her. The reading which was
prescribed for her – and we do not know
exactly what it was – would have been
designed to make her pious, to love
good, hate evil and above all embrace
chastity. ‘There is nothing that Our Lord
delighteth more in than virgins,’ as one
preacher remarked. All women were
supposed to go to their husbands on their
wedding nights as virgines intacta , and
their prospects of a good marriage
would be ruined if that were thought not
to be the case. God, declared St Jerome,
could do anything, but not restore
virginity. 27 So wealth, and even royal
status, paled into insignificance by
comparison with chastity, and a
princess, even if she were allowed to
read the classics, could expect to be
guarded day and night. It is therefore not
surprising that as she neared the
marriageable age Mary’s sexual
curiosity remained unsatisfied, and the
changes which were affecting her body
continued to be dark and uncomfortable
mysteries.
Meanwhile, she had lost her
mother. When Arthur married Catherine
in November 1501, he had been far from
the lusty swain that he was made to
appear. His health had been suspect for
some time, and it is probable that he was
suffering from the early effects of
consumption. Henry VII, however,
following the fiction rather than the fact,
had permitted the couple to live together
from the start. This was partly because
they were both legally of full age, and
partly because he wanted Arthur to keep
a court at Ludlow in order to reinforce
the royal authority in the Marches of
Wales. In spite of some adolescent
boasting on Arthur’s part, it is probable
that the marriage was never
consummated, and his health continued
to deteriorate. Less than six months later,
in April 1502, he died. 28 Henry was
devastated, and made his own grief
worse by blaming himself for allowing
the couple to cohabit. Although it is
highly unlikely that that had anything to
do with his death, it was believed at the
time that premature or excessive sexual
activity could have a fatal effect upon
the young. Having dutifully comforted
her husband in his grief, Elizabeth then
gave way to her own emotions, and
promised him that the damage could be
repaired. They were both young enough
to try again. Sure enough, the Queen
conceived promptly, but she was now
thirty-six and this was her eighth or ninth
pregnancy. All seemed to be going well,
and after Christmas 1502 she retired, as
was customary, in the royal apartments
of the Tower of London. There, at the
beginning of February, she was
delivered of a child. Unfortunately it
was not the hoped for prince, but another
girl, who was named Catherine, but who
lived only a few days. Elizabeth then
succumbed to puerperal fever, that
scourge of early modern childbirth, and
also died, as we have seen, on 11
February. Henry ‘privily departed to a
solitary place, and would no man should
resort unto him’. 29 It had been a deeply
affectionate marriage, and the King was
never to be quite the same man again.
After lying in state for several days, the
Queen’s body was carried through
London for burial at Westminster. ‘She
was a woman,’ wrote Polydore Vergil
‘of such character that it would be hard
to judge whether she displayed more of
majesty and dignity in her life than
wisdom and moderation.’ 30 Over 600
masses were said for the repose of her
soul, as she would have wished, and she
was generally mourned. We know
nothing of Mary’s reaction to this
bereavement. She does not appear to
have attended the funeral, in spite of
receiving the same mourning clothes as
other members of the family, but her
apparent absence may be due to the
incompleteness of the records. She had
not been particularly close to her
mother, and may have blamed her for the
strict regime to which she was
subjected. However, she was barely
eight at the time, and speculation is
probably pointless. What we do know is
that the mourning weeds were soon
rejected, and that shortly after she was
appearing in dark blue damask. For
whatever reason she did not share her
father’s extreme grief, and her life must
have continued much as before under the
watchful eye of her grandmother.
2
 THE PRINCESS OF
CASTILE
Between 1502 and 1505, Henry turned
his foreign policy around. Before 1502
his main concerns had been to secure a
peace with Scotland and a firm alliance
with Ferdinand and Isabella. The former
he had achieved by the Peace of Ayton
in January 1502, whereby he also
undertook to marry his daughter
Margaret to the King of Scots as soon as
she reached the canonical age of
cohabitation. The latter had been
concluded by the proxy marriage of
Prince Arthur with Catherine of Aragon
in July 1499, and by their personal union
which was solemnised at Westminster
on 4 November 1501. 1 Margaret and
James were married on 8 August 1503,
and thereafter Scotland ceased to be a
serious concern. However, with Spain it
was otherwise. Arthur died in April
1502, and the question of what was to
happen to Catherine became important.
Ferdinand was keen to maintain the
English alliance, and for that reason did
not make haste to reclaim his daughter.
At first Henry seemed equally amenable
to continued friendship, and proposed
that Catherine should be transferred to
his second son, Henry, a move which
was particularly favoured by Isabella.
Unfortunately the Duke of York was only
eleven years old, which meant that the
seventeen-year-old Catherine would
have to wait. However, she could wait
in England, and that did not appear to
pose any problems. 2 However, in
February 1503 Elizabeth of York died,
and after a decent interval that put the
King of England himself onto the
marriage market, a fact which he could
not ignore, little as his appetite may have
been for such an adventure. A formal
treaty for the marriage of Catherine and
Henry was drawn up on 23 June 1503,
and ratified by Ferdinand and Isabella
on 30 September. The fact that such a
marriage was within the degrees of
consanguinity, and was forbidden by the
canon law, meant that a dispensation
would be necessary, but that was not
expected to present great difficulties.
Indeed it would probably not have done
so except that Pope Alexander VI died in
August 1503, and it took his successor
Julius II some eighteen months to get
around to issuing it. 3 By that time Henry
had gone cold on the whole idea, and
complications had arisen in Spain,
because on 26 November 1504 Isabella
had also died. This not only removed the
principal advocate of the marriage, it
also created problems over the Castilian
succession. Isabella’s heir was not her
husband, but her daughter Juana, married
to the Archduke Philip of Burgundy, and
if Juana’s claim was upheld, Philip
would secure the Crown Matrimonial of
Castile, and Ferdinand’s usefulness as
an ally would be drastically reduced. In
July 1505, as soon as he had achieved
his fourteenth birthday, Henry caused his
son to repudiate the marriage agreement
on the grounds that it had been entered
into without his consent. 4 This left
Catherine stranded, because the King of
England had no further use for her, and
her father did not want her back in
Spain, confusing the question of the
succession still further. She stayed in
England, unhappy and neglected.
Henry, meanwhile, was hedging his
bets, because in the summer of 1505 he
expressed an interest in wedding
Ferdinand’s niece, the recently widowed
Juana of Naples. In June he sent envoys
to Valencia to interview her, and their
report leaves little to the imagination.
Her physical charms were considerable,
but her financial situation was much
more doubtful, and nothing came of the
initiative. 5 Ferdinand expressed himself
strongly in favour of the match, but it is
obvious that Henry was trying to
understand the Castilian situation, and
the likely impact of the arrival of Philip
and Juana. The King of Aragon was
probably being less than honest in his
desire for the marriage, because he
seems to have concluded soon after that
France would offer a better prospect of
support than England. He made a treaty
of alliance with Louis XII in October
1505, and married Louis’ niece,
Germaine de Foix on 18 March 1506. 6
This undoubtedly freed Henry from any
lingering sense of obligation to his
former ally, and left him free to pursue a
new relationship with Philip and Juana.
Such a relationship had begun in a sense
as far back as 1496, when he had signed
the so-called Magnus Intercursus with
Philip. He was keenly aware of the
importance of Low Countries trade to
the economic well-being of London, and
was always anxious to keep on good
terms with all his neighbours. This was
followed up with a meeting between the
two rulers at Calais in 1500, when amid
much festivity they got down to the
serious business of negotiating a new
treaty of friendship. This was duly
signed in early June, and included
provision for a twofold marriage bond.
The nine-year-old Henry was to wed
Philip’s eldest daughter Eleanor, and
five-year-old Mary was pledged to
Charles, who at four months old was in
no position to object. 7 How seriously
these commitments were taken on either
side may be doubted. Henry’s was not
allowed to stand in the way of his
betrothal to Catherine just two years
later, and Mary’s was conveniently put
into cold storage until the diplomatic
revolution of 1505–06 brought it back to
life.
No treaty of this kind would last
any longer than the mutual advantage of
the contracting parties, and in 1502
Philip thought that he spotted a greater
benefit in a treaty with France. Because
Louis had no sons, his daughter Claude
was the heir, through her mother, to the
Duchy of Brittany. She was not the heir
to France because of the Salic Law, but
no such law applied to the duchy, and it
seemed likely that the personal union of
Brittany with France, which had resulted
from the marriage of the Duchess Anne
with the French King would terminate
with the life of whichever of them died
fi r s t. 8 This made Claude a very
desirable match, far more so than Mary,
who had no such inheritance prospects.
So Philip signed a new treaty of
friendship and marriage with Louis,
which effectively annulled his agreement
with Henry. However, Louis proved
equally slippery, and towards the end of
1505 renounced his understanding with
Philip by bestowing his daughter upon
the eleven-year-old Francis of
Angouleme, who was his kinsman and
next heir to the Crown of France. His
desire to maintain the union of Brittany
and France clearly took precedence over
the prospects of the young Charles,
glittering though they might be. 9 Philip
had also moved on since 1502. Thanks
to Isabella’s death he was now King of
Castile in the right of his wife, as well
as Lord of the Netherlands and
Burgundy, and potentially a more
powerful player on the European scene
than his father the Emperor. This brought
him into a natural rivalry with France,
and more inclined to look favourably
upon a renewed understanding with
England. Then on 16 January 1506, fate
intervened to push him in the same
direction, because in setting sail for
Spain to establish his position there, a
winter storm forced the royal couple to
take refuge in an English haven. Some of
his ships were lost, and the remainder
scattered. 10 Taking advantage of this
fortuitous development, Philip notified
Henry of his arrival, and sought the
hospitality of the English court. Although
he may well have been irritated by the
delay to his main plan, he was quite
astute enough to play the distinguished
guest, and to take his opportunity to
improve relations. Juana was also given
the chance to visit her younger sister
Catherine, whom she had not seen since
1496, but it is not clear that she
displayed much enthusiasm for the
reunion. Anxious to make a good
impression, Henry surpassed himself in
hospitality. He sent Prince Henry, with a
distinguished escort of nobles, to
Winchester to welcome his royal guests,
and they arrived in London on 31
January to face almost three months of
parties and entertainment. In spite of her
sister’s indifference, Catherine enjoyed
these celebrations a good deal, because
they represented a welcome break from
the normal tedium of her life on the
fringes of the court. The ten-year-old
Mary seems also to have welcomed the
opportunity to enjoy herself, and may not
have been indifferent to the fact that
these were the parents of her one-time
intended. Perhaps if she made a good
enough impression, she might become
again the Princess of Castile! 11
Early in February the royal guests
were escorted by their host to Windsor,
where Philip was entertained with some
hunting in the great park, and the royal
apartments were lavishly decorated in
their honour, with:
great and rich beds of estate,
hangings of rich cloth of gold
[and] rich and sumptuous cloths of
Arras with divers cloths of estate
 both of the kings’s lodgings and in
the king of Castile’s lodging, so
many chambers, hall, chapel,
closet galleries with other
lodgings so richly and very well
appointed … as I think hath not
been seen. 12
All this generosity of course had a
purpose, and served as a cover for those
serious diplomatic discussions which
Philip must have been anticipating. The
King of Castile was formally invested
with the Order of the Garter, a gesture
which he reciprocated by bestowing the
Toison d’Or on the Prince of Wales, and
on 9 February the secret Treaty of
Windsor was signed. This basically
committed Henry to the Habsburg cause
in Spain. He recognised Philip as King
of Castile, and pledged himself to assist
him with military aid should anyone seek
to invade his realms either in Spain or
the Netherlands. Although Philip was to
meet the costs of such assistance, this
effectively gave him what he wanted,
and completed the political realignment
of Western Europe. Henry, Philip and
Maximilian now stood against Louis and
Ferdinand. 13 The Emperor’s inclusion
was a filial piety on Philip’s part,
because he was not likely to be an active
player in any conflict which might result.
In return Henry secured the surrender of
the White Rose, Edmund de la Pole, Earl
of Suffolk, who had taken refuge at
Philip’s court in 1497. This rather
insubstantial Yorkist pretender was
handed over at Calais on 16 March and
promptly disappeared into the Tower. 14
Within a few days the King of England
had also committed himself to a
marriage with Philip’s widowed sister,
Margaret of Savoy, an arrangement made
with the Emperor’s consent. How
serious he may have been about this is
not known; the lady herself was
unwilling, and he seems not to have
pursued it with any enthusiasm. Finally,
just before he departed on 23 April,
Philip authorised his agents to conclude
the commercial treaty known in the Low
Countries as the Malus Intercursus
because it was so favourable to English
interests. Perhaps the King of Castile
thought that it was a price worth paying
for so much hospitality received, but if
so he had second thoughts because he
never ratified it. 15
Mary cannot have been far from her
father’s thoughts during these exchanges,
but we have no record of what was said,
or of whether the earlier suggestion of a
marriage for her was followed up. We
only know that no agreement was
entered into at this time. Mary danced
and sang for the entertainment of the
visitors, and played on the lute and the
clavichord, performances which
attracted much admiration, and earned
for her a kiss from Philip, and a place
among the royal guests under the canopy
of state. 16 This was no doubt a welcome
break from the schoolroom, but in the
majority of the adult entertainments she
would have had no part. In a sense Mary
was the first lady of the court, following
the death of her mother and Scottish
marriage of her sister Margaret, so she
was allowed to present some of the
prizes at the jousts or feats of arms
which took place during the visit.
However, she was too young to
participate in the hunting which
occupied the guests at Windsor, and
whether she watched any of this pastime
we do not know. In June 1506 the
Venetian ambassador reported that an
envoy had arrived to discuss a marriage
between the King’s daughter and ‘Don
Carlo, the son of the king of Castile’,
which certainly suggests that the topic
had been discussed during the visit.
Other reports in July declare that the
negotiations were well advanced, but
before the end of September all such
plans were thrown into doubt by the
unexpected death of Philip in Spain. 17
This not only raised questions as to the
validity of the treaties which he had
agreed with Henry, but also caused
confusion in Castile. In theory he had
been only the King Consort, and
sovereignty remained vested in his
widow Juana. However, Ferdinand
succeeded in raising doubts about her
fitness to rule, and eventually had her
confined as a lunatic, taking over the
throne himself, a move in which he was
supported by a significant section of the
Castilian nobility which had no appetite
for an unmarried queen, however sane
she may have been. In respect of the
Low Countries, Margaret took over her
brother’s obligations, but politely
declined the suggestion of a marriage
with Henry, and did not ratify the Malus
Intercursus . Instead she seems to have
raised the possibility of a union between
the English King and Philip’s widow,
who in spite of her uncertain mental
health was deemed to be strong and
capable of bearing sons. 18 Henry toyed
with the idea, but did not pursue it.
However, the suggestion of a marriage
between Mary and Charles was a
different matter, and was followed up
vigorously. In September 1507 de
Puebla wrote to Ferdinand that an
ambassador from Flanders had brought
such a proposal, which presumably
represented an advance in the
negotiations, and on 5 October he wrote
again reporting not only that Margaret
had written a ‘very loving’ letter to the
King, confirming the treaties which
Philip had signed during his visit to
England, but that ‘A marriage between
the Prince of Spain and a princess of
England has been concluded, and that all
things … had been settled according to
his [Henry’s] wishes.’ 19 Meanwhile, in
May and June 1507, to demonstrate her
arrival in the adult world, the eleven-
year-old Mary had presided at the jousts
and given away the prizes. This was
undoubtedly a part of her political
education, because she was learning the
culture of chivalry in practice as well as
in the schoolroom, where she seems to
have been reading Christine de Pisan,
Petrarch’s Griselda , Boccaccio, and
other works appropriate to her status in
the court. 20
She was being groomed as a royal
bride, and on 21 December a treaty was
signed between Maximilian, King of the
Romans, Prince Charles of Spain and
Henry VII, confirming the espousals of
the young couple. This treaty was to be
ratified by Charles within two months of
his achieving his fourteenth birthday, that
is to say by the end of April 1514. The
other agreements signed by King Philip
were to be ratified in the same way, but
this was the one which was ultimately to
matter. Another document of the same
date declared that a proxy marriage was
to take place within forty days of the
same birthday, and that a dowry of
250,000 crowns was to be deposited
with the merchants of Bruges in
anticipation of that happy day. 21 When
he heard this news, Ferdinand was
rather less than delighted. He had been
included in the terms of the treaty as a
matter of courtesy, but had not been
consulted. He professed himself in
favour of the marriage, but wished to
make his ratification dependent upon a
similar union between the Prince of
Wales and his daughter Catherine, a
marriage which, as we have seen, Henry
had repudiated in the summer of 1505. In
the event Ferdinand’s reservations did
not matter; the treaty of perpetual peace
with the Emperor was specific enough to
satisfy even the English, accustomed as
they were to Maximilian’s slippery
ways. Mary’s jointure of towns in the
Low Countries was to be the same as
that allocated to her great aunt Margaret,
Edward IV’s sister, when she had
married Charles the Bold, and heavy
bonds were exchanged to ensure the
completion of the contract. 22 Henry was
delighted at having pinned Maximilian
down, and at Christmas ordered ‘all
possible demonstrations’ of rejoicing to
take place in London and the other cities
of the kingdom. Bells duly rang out,
bonfires were lit and hogsheads of free
wine distributed. However, the treaty
remained unratified, and the Emperor
continued to flirt with the French. It took
a timely loan of 100,000 crowns and a
couple of prodding missions before
Maximilian finally confirmed the
agreement at Brixen on 22 February
1508. Charles added his assent on 26
March, but it was not until 1 October
that Margaret sent a special mission to
London to complete the process. 23 She
had not been a party to the original
treaty, but would play a vital part in its
implementation.
 By this time Mary was thirteen, and
it was decided to anticipate the treaty by
holding a proxy ceremony at once, in
spite of the fact that Charles was only
eight. Given the changeable nature of
renaissance politics, it was probably
wise not to wait another five years for
his formal ratification, which did not, in
any case, come within the specified time
limit, as we shall see. At this point, the
Emperor made a great show of
enthusiasm, and sent over an honourable
embassy on 1 December 1508 to conduct
the wedding. This was headed by the
Sieur de Berghes, who was to act as
proxy for Charles, and Jean de Sauvaige,
the President of Flanders. They were
sumptuously received, first at Dover and
later by the King himself at Greenwich.
Ten days later, on 17 December, Mary
was married, and the event was
recorded for posterity by Pietro
Carmeliano, Henry’s Latin Secretary:
… the king’s highness being under
his cloth of estate, the ambassador
of Aragon and the Lords Spiritual
sitting on his right hand
downward, and my Lord the
Prince [of Wales] with the other
Lords Temporal sitting in like
wise on the left hand, and the said
ambassadors [of the Emperor]
sitting directly before his Grace,
the President of Flanders
proposed a proposition containing
the cause of their coming, which
 was for the perfect
accomplishment of all things
passed and concluded for the said
amity and marriage at the town of
Calais … 24
The Archbishop of Canterbury then
began the proceedings with an address
in Latin on the dignity of holy
matrimony, and the significance of this
particular union from which ‘many great
and notable effects’ were intended to
spring. De Sauvaige replied in kind, and
Berghes then joined the Princess on the
dais and avowed the loyalty and undying
affection of the absent bridegroom. He
repeated his authority to represent the
Prince in the vows which were to be
exchanged, and Mary took his hand,
repeating in French the formula:
I, Mary, by you John Lord of
Berghes, commissary and
procurator of the most high and
puissant Prince Charles, by the
Grace of God Prince of Spain,
Archduke of Austria and duke of
Burgundy, hereby through his
commission and special
procuration, presently read,
explained and announced,
sufficiently constituted and
ordained, through your mediation
and signifying this to me, do
accept the said Lord Charles to be
my husband and spouse, and
consent to receive him as my
 husband and spouse. And to him
and to you for him, I promise that
henceforth during my natural life, I
will have, hold and repute him as
my husband and spouse, and herby
I plight my troth to him and to you
for him … 25
The whole ceremony was conducted per
verba de praesenti , in words of the
present tense, and therefore should have
constituted a complete and binding
marriage. The use of proxies was
common in royal weddings, and was not
deemed to detract from the binding
nature of the exchange of vows.
However, it could be argued – and was
to be later – that the absence of
subsequent consummation made this less
than a perfect union. That was
debateable in the canon law, and
Charles’s status as a minor also called
its legality into question, which was why
the original treaty had specified
confirmation after he had reached the
canonical age of consent. Meanwhile
Berghes placed a gold ring on the
middle finger of her left hand, and
‘reverently’ kissed her, while the court
musicians played the company into the
mass which followed. There then ensued
a state banquet and three days of
jousting, dancing and other festivities. 26
Mary watched the sports from a richly
adorned gallery, but was allowed to
work off some of her natural exuberance
in the dance. She appears to have
enjoyed her enhanced status as Princess
of Castile, but it is not obvious that it
made any difference to her normal
lifestyle, which continued to be that of a
pupil and dependent.
Carmeliano’s tract, entitled
Solennes ceremoniae et triumphi , was
translated into Castilian and Catalan,
and John Stiles, Henry’s ambassador in
Spain, presented a copy to King
Ferdinand, who appears to have been
less than delighted. He was no doubt
looking ahead to the time when Charles
might hold the Crowns of Spain, and
Henry’s successor would have a
legitimate interest in Castile through the
right of his sister. It may be significant
that Gonsales Fernandez of Cordoba, the
Great Captain of Castile, was alleged to
be delighted by the news, ‘and many
with him’. 27 No doubt their agenda was
rather different from the King’s. On 18
December, Charles wrote to his bride,
as etiquette required, addressing her as
‘ma bonne compaigne’ and sending her
three ‘goodly and right rich’ jewels as
tokens of his affection. The first of these
was a balas ruby, garnished with pearls,
which actually came from the
Archduchess Margaret; the second, from
Maximilian, was a brooch with a large
diamond; and the third, from Charles
himself, a monogrammed ring garnished
with diamonds and pearls, which was
inscribed Maria optimam partem elegit
que non auferetue ab ea – an ironic
comment on what was to follow. 28
These were personal gifts, but the
ambassadors had also brought other
jewels with them as collaterals for
Henry’s loan to the Emperor, notably the
‘Rich lily’ or fleur de lys, which was an
arrangement of gold and precious stones
weighing no less than 211½ ounces troy.
Years later, in 1529, it was to be
returned to Charles V as a part of the
settlement following the Peace of
Cambrai, when it was described as
being so heavy that it required a pack
horse to carry it. 29 The ambassadors
departed, just before Christmas, loaded
with rich gifts which expressed Henry’s
satisfaction with the results of his
diplomacy, and Carmeliano lauded his
employer to the skies:
Rejoice England, and to thy most
noble victorious and fortunate
sovereign lord and king give
honour, praise and thanks … Thy
flourishing red rose be so planted
and spread in the highest imperial
gardens and houses of power
[that] all Christian regions shall
hereafter be united and allied unto
thee, which honour until now thou
couldst never attain. 30
In the last few months of his life, Henry
was at peace with the world. With
France, and with Ferdinand, relations
were uneasy but peaceful; with Scotland,
the Empire and the Low Countries,
friendly. However, there was unfinished
business, notably the marriage of his
son, and it may have been for that reason
that on his deathbed he urged Henry to
wed his long-neglected ex-fiancée,
Catherine – if, indeed, he said any such
thing. He had been anxious to secure
Ferdinand’s support for Mary’s
marriage to Charles, and this may have
been intended as a late bid for that. 31
Catherine herself had never ceased to
believe that such would be her destiny,
and she remained in England partly for
that reason, not pressing her father for a
return to Spain. Her marriage also
became the focus of much earnest
prayer, and her belief in it became an
aspect of her religious life. Ferdinand
meanwhile decided to take advantage of
her place in the English court, and gave
her an enhanced purpose in life by
accrediting her as an additional
ambassador during the summer of 1507.
He was at that time dissatisfied with the
efforts of his regular representatives. Dr
de Puebla had fallen out with Catherine,
and lacked the status to sustain his
mission, although his information
continued to be useful, and his
replacement, Don Gutierro de
Fuensalida, was an aristocratic bungler
who got everything into a mess. 32 So the
use of Catherine in this connection was
not only shrewd but wise. It gave her an
additional entrée into the royal presence,
and improved her English remarkably. It
also gave her some much-needed
resources. She was nothing if not frank
with her father, and on 9 March 1509
she wrote to him complaining of the
impossibility of working with
Fuensalida and of the unkindness of the
King, ‘especially since he has disposed
of his daughter in marriage to the Prince
of Castile, and therefore imagines he has
no longer any need of your Highness’. 33
She may have been wrong about Henry’s
attitude towards Ferdinand, but it did not
greatly matter as the King died on 21
April, and the political situation was
transformed, along with her own
prospects.
Henry VII died at Richmond, and
there his body lay in state until 8 May,
when it was borne in solemn procession
to St Paul’s, where the obsequies
commenced with a sermon by Bishop
Fisher of Rochester, and a requiem mass
was sung. The following day the cortège
proceeded to Westminster, where the
interment took place and the officers of
his household cast their broken staves of
office into the grave. The total cost of
these ceremonies was about £8,500, and
formed a fitting send-off for a king who,
although not loved, was deeply
respected and very rich. 34 Henry’s will
made suitable provision for his younger
daughter, setting aside £50,000 for her
dowry and marriage, over and above the
costs of her transport into the
Netherlands, ‘furnishing of plate, and
other her arrayments for her person,
jewels and garnishings for her
Chamber ’. 35 This was to be equally
available if the marriage to Charles was
not completed, because he was only too
aware of the conditions which still
applied to that union. In that event, Mary
was to be at the disposal of Henry VIII
and his Council, although the hope was
expressed that ‘she be married to some
noble Prince out of this our realm’,
because he was only too aware of the
factional implications of a domestic
marriage. In the meantime, she was an
adornment at her brother’s court. At
about this time she was described to
Margaret of Austria as having
the most gracious and elegant
carriage in conversation, dancing,
or anything else that it is possible
to have, and is not a bit
melancholy, but lively. I am
convinced that if you had ever
seen her you would not cease until
you had her near you. I assure you
that she has been well brought up,
and she must always have heard
Monsieur [Charles] well spoken
of, for by her words and manner,
and also from those who surround
her she lives him wonderfully.
She has a picture of him … and
they tell me that she wishes to see
him ten times a day, and if you
want to please her you must talk of
 the Prince. I should have thought
that she had been tall and well
developed, but she will only be of
medium height, and seems to me
much better suited both in age and
person for marriage than had
heard tell before I met her … 36
However, for the time being the
consummation of this union was on hold,
and Henry VIII was more concerned
with his own glory than he was with the
well-being of his sister. As soon as the
regulation days of mourning were past,
the court threw itself into an orgy of
celebration for its magnificent new
sovereign. Jousts, feasts and dances
followed one another, and for the time
being policy remained in the hands of his
Council, which continued substantially
as his father had left it. There was soon
another cause for rejoicing, because
Henry married his sister-in-law
Catherine in a low-key ceremony at the
Franciscan church in Greenwich on 11
June. Whether he did this out of respect
for his father’s dying injunction, or out
of any desire to mend fences with
Ferdinand, we do not know. It seems
more likely that he simply fancied her,
because although at twenty-four she was
six years his senior, she was very
attractive and not otherwise committed.
37 Her commission as an envoy had

come to an end with the old king’s death,

and he may well have given her some
indication of his intention before that.
Catherine was triumphant, because this
represented the answer to all her anxious
prayers during the lean years of her
exclusion, and she was soon to write to
her father of the ‘endless round’ of
celebrations in which the young couple
were engaged. Fuensalida was
astonished, because several days after
Henry VII’s death he was still being told
that the young king was free to marry
where he chose – and no indication was
given as to where that choice might fall.
38 On 21 June, just ten days after their

wedding, the King and Queen rode into

London to resounding acclamations, to
take up residence at the Tower, as was
customary before a coronation. The
following day twenty-six ‘honourable
persons’ joined the royal couple for
dinner, and on Saturday the 23rd were
made Knights of the Bath. The
coronation ceremony itself was held at
Westminster on 24 June, which was
Midsummer’s Day, with Archbishop
Wareham presiding. The Queen was
crowned alongside her husband, and
both the city of London and the nobility
of England strove to be worthy of the
occasion.
If I should declare [wrote the
chronicler Edward Hall] what
pain, labour and diligence the
tailors, embroiderers and
goldsmiths took to make and
devise garments for lords, ladies,
 knights and esquires and also for
the decking, trapping and adorning
of coursers, jennets and palfreys,
it were too long to rehearse; but
for a surety, more rich, nor more
strange, nor more curious works
hath not been seen than were
prepared against this coronation.
39

As soon as the ceremony was over, the

entire company retired for a magnificent
banquet in Westminster Hall, and for a
tournament which lasted until dark.
Many days of jousts and feastings
followed, in which the King’s young
companions distinguished themselves,
and Henry himself spent long days in the
saddle, following his hawks and hounds.
He did not, however, take part in the
tournaments himself, apparently heeding
the advice of his Council that it would
be a disaster if he should be injured (or
worse still killed) in an accident to
which the sport was prone. Catherine
was a happy onlooker, no doubt sharing
the Council’s reservations, and Mary
appears to have been her constant
companion. In spite of the ten-year
difference in their ages, they were firm
friends, and the younger woman no doubt
took advantage of the opportunity to ask
discreetly about the pleasures of the
marriage bed.
Henry, meanwhile, was set on
fighting the French. This was partly the
natural bellicosity of youth, because his
head was full of chivalric dreams and he
idolised his predecessor Henry V, but
also partly a shrewd calculation. In the
first place he knew that the quickest
route to the glory which he craved was
via the battlefield, and that Louis XII
was getting old and might well lack the
stomach for such an encounter, but he
also knew that his nobles were fretting
against his father’s regime of peace.
They still saw their service to the Crown
primarily in military terms, and the
younger ones in particular had never
seen service of that kind. 40 If he was to
avoid domestic trouble once the round of
entertainments had ended, he would be
well advised to give them some
congenial employment. Consequently
although he renewed his father’s treaty
with France, he made it clear that this
was on the advice of his Council, and he
insulted the French ambassador by
declaring that Louis dared not look him
in the face. 41 He knew perfectly well,
however, that he could not fight a war
against France single-handed. He needed
allies, and that was where Ferdinand,
Maximilian and Charles came in. The
former was gratified that his daughter’s
marriage had at last taken place, and
kept up a friendly but non-committal
correspondence with his son-in-law, but
Maximilian proved even harder to pin
down. There was no reason to suppose
that the marriage agreement would not
be fulfilled, but Charles seems to have
been unimpressed by the eulogies of his
bride which reached his ears, muttering
(with some exaggeration) that he needed
a wife and not a mother. 42 How the
fifteen-year-old Mary reacted to being
described in such a fashion – if she ever
found out – we do not know. Henry did
his best to keep the treaty in mind, in the
summer of 1511 sending a force to assist
the Archduchess in her small war with
the Duke of Gueldres, reminding the
‘noble lady’ that there was ‘a
communication hanging … between the
young Prince Charles [Margaret’s
nephew] and the lady Mary his sister’. 43
In the meantime he had signed a new
treaty with Spain in May 1510, which
effectively annulled that with France
which had been renewed only two
months earlier. Divisions in the Council
were now becoming obvious, and it was
time for the King to assert himself. His
assistance to the Archduchess was a step
in that direction.
The European situation was also
moving in his favour. The League of
Cambrai, which Julius II had formed
against the Venetians in 1508 was
breaking up, as the focus of the Pope’s
anxiety moved from Venice to France. In
1510 he began to prepare a new league,
directed this time against Louis, and the
King of France responded by calling a
council of the French bishops to make
traditional Gallican noises. He then went
further and attempted to call a schismatic
General Council to meet at Pisa in May
1511, for the specific purpose of
deposing Julius. 44 The council never
met, but the result was a full-on
confrontation between the Pope and the
King of France, and the former now
began to call his alliance a ‘Holy’
League, designed to defend the unity of
the Church. This League was duly signed
at Rome in October 1511, the original
signatories being the Pope, the Emperor
and the King of Spain. Within a month
Henry had persuaded his Council to
abandon a neutral position, and to take
advantage of the opportunity which the
League presented. War with France was
decided upon, and was formally
declared at the end of April 1512. 45
Preparations had been under way for
some time, and Henry’s navy was at sea
within days of the declaration being
made. At the beginning of June, in
accordance with a prearranged strategy,
the Marquis of Dorset also led an
expeditionary force of some 12,000 men
to Guienne, to co-operate with
Ferdinand’s proposed invasion of
southern France. The result was a fiasco,
because the King of Spain provided
none of the logistical back-up which he
had promised, and when Dorset
proposed to advance from San Sebastian
to attack Bayonne, Ferdinand declined to
co-operate. Instead he used the English
presence as a cover for an attack on
Navarre, a move in which the English
had no interest. Without action and
marooned in a hostile environment,
Dorset’s men became sick and mutinous;
the council of officers was rent with
quarrels, and the Marquis himself
became ill. Eventually, in October, the
surviving men commandeered ships and
returned to England, a sad remnant of the
proud host which had set forth only four
months earlier. 46 Dorset had no option
but to return also, and might have
expected a rough reception. However all
Henry’s anger was directed against
Ferdinand, who had so conspicuously
failed to honour his obligations. For the
time being the alliance held, but it was
greatly weakened.
One of the results of this failure
was that it became easier for the King to
keep his alliance with Maximilian
separate from that with Spain, and to
maintain friendly relations with the
elusive Emperor. He even advanced him
100,000 crowns with which to hire
Swiss mercenaries on the understanding
that Maximilian would invade France as
a part of his obligation to the League.
However, at the end of 1512 he had
done nothing, and it was not until 5 April
1513 that a further treaty was signed,
binding the Emperor (in return for
another 125,000 crowns) to make war
upon Louis at the head of 30,000 men.
As a result of this, when Henry himself
arrived in Picardy at the head of an
Army Royal in July 1513, Maximilian
did actually join him in the campaign,
although with far fewer men than he was
committed to. 47 Meanwhile Margaret
had been doing her best to keep his
attention focussed on the marriage,
which she saw as offering a more
binding commitment than any treaty of
friendship. During the summer of 1509
she persuaded Charles to send a jewel
as a further token of his affection, and
Mary sent him a ring in return. By the
end of the year she had suggested a visit
to the Low Countries to enable her to
meet her intended husband and to learn
something of German fashions. 48 This
did not happen, but in February 1510 she
persuaded the Emperor to appoint a
gentlemen-in-waiting to her. This
gentleman did not apparently come to
England, but in the autumn of 1511 she
tried again, this time sending a Fleming
named John Cerf over to serve her.
Henry accepted this initiative and gave
Cerf an annuity until such time as the
marriage was consummated, which he
was clearly still expecting to be in the
near future. 49 He was not alone in that
expectation. Margaret was puzzled by
Mary’s failure to respond to her
invitation, but did not think that that
affected the contract, and Erasmus wrote
on 6 February 1512, ‘happy is our
Prince Charles to have such a spouse.
Nature never formed anything more
beautiful, and she excels no less in
goodness and in wisdom …’ Over a
year later, on 13 April 1513 Mary wrote
a letter to Margaret, which she signed as
‘Princess of Castile’, and it was being
rumoured at that time that Henry would
bring his sister with him when he
invaded France later in the summer. 50
The Princess seems to have believed
these rumours herself, because in the
letter mentioned to her ‘bonne tante’ she
expressed the hope that she would learn
of Flemish fashions and would be able
to introduce them in England. However
the Army Royal arrived at the end of
July, and Mary was not with it. The
victory celebrations which followed the
capture of Therouanne on 24 August
were conducted without her, much to
Margaret’s regret. However, once Henry
had returned to England she did succeed
in extracting from him a joint declaration
that the marriage would take place
before 15 May 1514 – in other words
within the forty days of Charles’s
fourteenth birthday, as specified in the
original treaty. 51
Meanwhile the war effort stuttered.
In March 1512 Julius II had stripped
Louis of his title to France, and
conferred it on Henry. This was less
significant than might appear, because it
was made clear that the grant was
conditional upon the King of England
actually conquering France, which he
was in no position to do. In fact it was a
mere gesture, intended rather to express
the Pope’s deposing power than to bring
about any change in the military
situation. More importantly, early in
1513 Ferdinand signed a one-year truce
with Louis, and thus effectively
withdrew from the League. At about the
same time, in February 1513 Julius II
died, and his successor Leo X had no
desire to continue his predecessor’s feud
with the French. There was even talk of
a defensive alliance between Spain and
France, which could have brought
Ferdinand into the war on the other side.
That did not happen, but by the time that
Henry and Maximilian were conducting
their campaign in Picardy in the late
summer, they were doing so without
Spanish support, and the possibility of a
southern front against France had
evaporated. 52 At the same time James
IV of Scotland intervened on the French
side. He had no particular quarrel with
his brother-in-law, but the opportunity
created by the King’s absence in France
seemed too good to miss. His adventure
came to a bloody and fatal end at
Flodden on 9 September, but not before
it had caused considerable anxiety to the
regency government of Catherine of
Aragon, who had been left to ‘mind the
shop’ in Henry’s absence. 53 All these
considerations meant that when a nuncio
from the new pope arrived early in 1514
to persuade him to make peace, he was
disposed to listen. He was also moved
in that direction by his new chief
adviser, Thomas Wolsey. Wolsey had
made his mark in 1513 when he had
organised the logistics of the Tournai
campaign, and had managed to get men
and supplies where they were needed in
time to be of use – no mean achievement
in sixteenth-century conditions. He was
hugely efficient, and the King was most
impressed, but he was also disposed to
follow the Pope’s lead and argue for
peace in the difficult circumstances of
1514. Consequently although
arrangements for the marriage were
pressed ahead, and by the middle of
February had got as far as the lodging
provision for Mary’s train, an air of
uncertainty was beginning to prevail on
both sides. On the 25th of that month
Margaret inquired rather belatedly what
would happen to the English succession
if Henry were to die without a son.
Perhaps she was unable to believe that
the King would risk giving his sister to a
Habsburg, who notoriously extended
their territories by matrimony. 54 At the
beginning of April the Prince’s health
was giving cause for concern, and Mary
was warned to be careful because all the
arrangements were in the hands of his
entourage. At the end of April the ever-
optimistic Margaret wrote to the
Emperor that all the preparations were
complete, and that Mary would be
arriving on 2 May. 55 Where she got her
information from is not clear, because on
4 June she received a letter from Henry,
excusing his sister, and wanting both the
timetable and the place altered. He
regretted that the marriage could not go
ahead as planned. On 23 July the King
was reported to be angry with the
Emperor for the delay over the marriage,
but by that time it was effectively dead.
Since early April Henry had been toying
with the idea of sealing a peace with
France by marrying his sister to Louis,
and on 30 July she formally renounced
her engagement to Charles, citing as a
reason the fact that he had not ratified the
treaty of which it had been a part within
two months as had been agreed in 1508.
56
The Prince’s reaction to this
rejection is hard to gauge. Although he
had written to her in December 1513 as
‘votre bon mari’, that appears to have
been out of a sense of duty (or perhaps
on instruction) rather than from any real
conviction. Whereas Mary’s professions
of affection for him were numerous, he
is not known to have reciprocated.
Ferdinand, similarly, although he
professed himself in favour of the
marriage was privately gratified because
he did not want any move which would
strengthen his grandson in his claim on
Castile. He still had hopes of issue by
Germaine de Foix. Maximilian was
affronted, but he had only himself to
blame, because he had blown hot and
cold on the project, and was seeking
delays right up to the last minute. The
person who was most genuinely upset
was Margaret of Savoy, who had
worked tirelessly to bring the marriage
about, seeing it as the surest way to
cement an alliance between England and
the Low Countries. However, Margaret
was at odds with her Council over this
issue, most of the latter favouring a
settlement with France. Henry, got in
first, and was self-righteous about his
choice. He had been deceived by both
Ferdinand and Maximilian, and felt
perfectly entitled to take his revenge. He
did not see, he told the Venetian
ambassador, ‘any faith in the world save
in me, and therefore God Almighty, who
knows this, prospers my affairs.’ 57 He
might also have added that he had found
in Thomas Wolsey a diplomat whose
skill and lack of scruple more than made
up for his own innocence, but it was
typical of him that he should reserve the
credit for himself.
3
 THE POLITICS OF
MARRIAGE
On 9 January 1514 Anne of Brittany, the
queen of Louis XII, died. In a very
important sense she had failed in her
royal duty, because she had borne him
no son, but only two daughters, Claude
and Renee, the former of whom was her
heir in respect of the Duchy of Brittany.
At that time the failure of male heirs was
always deemed to be the fault of the
woman, and deeply though Louis may
have mourned her, he still believed
himself capable of repairing that
omission. St Thomas Aquinas had
written:
As regards the individual nature,
woman is defective and
misbegotten, for the active force,
the male seed, tends to the
production of a perfect likeness in
the masculine sex; while
production of woman comes from
defect in the active force … 1
In spite of his age (he was fifty-two) and
uncertain health, he was therefore keen
to marry again. Meanwhile, in order to
secure the personal union of Brittany and
France he married Claude to his
prospective heir and kinsman, Francis of
Angoulême, in a quiet ceremony at St
Germain-en-Laye on 18 May. The
twenty-year-old Francis, who was a
notorious womaniser, was consoled for
his sweet-natured but physically
unattractive bride by being able to
assume the title of Duke in the right of
his wife. In June 1515 Claude made over
her rights in Brittany to her husband, and
he continued to administer the duchy
after her death in 1524 in the name of
their son Francis, who was a minor. It
was not until August 1532, and with the
consent of the estates, that he finally
issued the decree which annexed the
duchy in perpetuity to the Crown of
France. 2 If Louis had succeeded in
begetting a son in the winter of 1514/15,
and the child had lived, Francis would
therefore presumably have remained
Duke of Brittany and the institutional
union would never have taken place.
Such is the importance of royal fertility
in the politics of the renaissance.
Meanwhile the allied war effort
had petered out. At the New Year of
1514 Henry was talking of his new
campaign, preparing his navy and
collecting munitions. Then, at the end of
February, suspicious rumours began to
emerge from both Spain and the Low
Countries that both Ferdinand and
Maximilian were thinking of opting out.
A week or two later these fears were
confirmed. Ferdinand had signed another
truce with France, not only in his own
name, but in those of the Emperor and
the King of England also. 3 He justified
this extraordinary action with a story
about an elaborate conspiracy by the
Pope and others to drive both him and
Maximilian out of Italy, and alleged that
the initiative had come from the
Emperor. Maximilian would, he
claimed, have consulted Henry as a
matter of course before adding his name
to the signatories. Only the Emperor had
done no such thing, and the King was left
bitterly chagrined by this act of betrayal.
4 For the time being, Henry continued to

talk as though he intended to fight on. It

would be, he alleged, ‘a very great
dishonour’ to hold back because his
allies had defected. Troops were
mustered and warships put to sea. In
June an English force ravaged the French
coast near Cherbourg, in revenge for
French attacks on Brighton earlier in the
year, and as late as the beginning of
August a league was entered into with
the Swiss for putting an army into the
field against France at English expense.
5 Yet there was an air of unreality about

these warlike posturings, because at the

end of January Gianpietro Caraffa had
arrived as a papal nuncio in England in
an endeavour to persuade Henry to make
peace. His reception was at first
ambivalent, but he was assisted in his
efforts by the Duc de Longueville, who
under the guise of negotiating his own
ransom became an unofficial
representative of the French King. He
had been taken prisoner at the Battle of
the Spurs but was always treated more
as guest than a captive and was allowed
a good deal of freedom. His efforts for
peace were ably seconded by Fox and
Wolsey, who, in spite of the strenuous
opposition of some members of the
Council, gradually persuaded the King
of the validity of their point of view. 6
Wolsey was only slightly exaggerating
when he claimed later, ‘I was the author
of this peace.’
Having freed himself from the
hostility of the Empire and Spain, Louis
was anxious to bring the English conflict
to an end, and was kept well informed of
developments in London. In early April
it was being reported in Paris that he had
two aims in mind; the first was to seal
peace with England by marrying the
King’s sister and the second was to
match his younger daughter, Renee, with
Ferdinand, Maximilian’s ten-year-old
grandson. 7 This appears to be the first
mention of his sister in this context. The
idea obviously appealed to Henry, who
had become increasingly exasperated by
the Emperor’s efforts to put off Mary’s
union with Charles, and at the end of
May Louis wrote to Henry as though the
deal was done. On the 31st he thanked
the King for agreeing to the match,
expressing the pious hope that the union
would be ‘of great benefit to
Christendom’. 8 Leo X, anticipating
success, had sent Henry his sword and
cap of maintenance, which the latter
received in a ceremony at St Paul’s on
21 May. Just before the treaty was
signed, Leo sent word to Wolsey that he
would like to be included, since the idea
of marriage had been his in the first
place. Presumably he had planted the
suggestion in Louis’ mind, from whence
it was communicated to Henry via
Longueville. On 7 August what was
clearly a long period of detailed
bargaining was brought to an end, when
the treaty of peace and friendship was
signed, committing Mary to a marriage
with Louis, and Louis to the payment of
a million gold crowns at the rate of
50,000 a year. Her dowry was to be
200,000 crowns, which the King
presumably intended to take from the
250,000 crowns which had been
deposited at Bruges for just such a
purpose. Tournai was to be retained by
England, and Scotland was included in
the treaty. Mary was to be delivered to
Louis at Abbeville at her brother’s
expense. 9 The treaty, which was not
popular in England because of its
implications for trade with the Low
Countries, was proclaimed in London
without any sign of celebration.
Margaret was mortified, and so
was Charles, in spite of his share in the
responsibility for what had happened.
He taxed his councillors with having
deprived him of a desirable bride, and
their response was equally mortifying.
They pointed out that the King of France
was not only his elder, but was the most
powerful king in Christendom; and since
he was a widower, was entitled to pick
the most eligible woman to be his queen.
His response, according to a Venetian
report, was to observe chillingly that
they had plucked him because he was
young, ‘but bear in mind for the future I
shall pluck you’. 10 He was to be as
good as his word. Henry, on the other
hand, was delighted. He had secured
peace with honour in the retention of
Tournai, which had been one of his
principal war aims, and in
communicating the tidings formally to
the Pope, expressed the hope that
England and France together would be
able to protect the interests of the Holy
See in Italy. Mary, who by this time was
nineteen, does not appear to have been
consulted, or if she was, expressed no
recorded opinion. The news can hardly
have come as a surprise to her once she
had repudiated her contract to the
Archduke. She was in no position to
bargain with her brother, and in any case
the prospect of being Queen of France
was irresistibly attractive. As Marino
Sanuto later noted, ‘The queen does not
mind that the king is a gouty old man …
and she herself a young and beautiful
damsel … so great is her satisfaction at
being Queen of France …’ 11 She may
already have realised that her tour of
duty was not likely to be protracted.
Meanwhile Louis was not disposed to
wait; he issued his proxy to the Duke of
Langueville on 8 August, and a week
after the treaty was signed, on 13
August, the wedding took place per
verba de praesenti at Greenwich. Henry
and Catherine led the English delegation,
which consisted of all the dignitaries of
the realm as well as Mary and her
ladies. The French were represented by
Longueville, and by two of Louis’
ministers who had been sent over
especially for the negotiations, John de
Silva the President of Normandy and the
soldier Thomas Boyer. Papal envoys
were also present, but the Spanish and
Imperial ambassadors absented
themselves, as a gesture of disapproval.
12
 Archbishop Warham presided,
assisted by Wolsey as Bishop of
Lincoln, and a number of other prelates,
and he opened the proceedings with a
Latin address on the sacredness of
marriage – very similar to that which he
had used at Mary’s previous proxy union
in 1508. On this occasion de Silva
replied in the same language, but
confined himself to intimating his
master’s intentions. Longueville’s
authorisation was then read by the
Bishop of Durham, and the proxy
marriage followed, the Duke holding
Mary by the right hand and speaking
Louis’ vows in French. Mary duly
responded, the ring was placed on her
finger, and the ritual kiss given. It must
have been uncomfortably reminiscent of
her wedding to Charles, but nobody
commented to that effect. What
followed, however, was different,
because once the ceremony was over
Mary changed out of her bridal gear into
a discreet nightdress and lay down on a
bed which had been provided in an
adjacent room. Longueville then bared
one leg and lay down beside her for long
enough to enable his leg to encounter her
body, whereupon Warham, who together
with others had witnessed this odd
encounter, pronounced the marriage
consummated. 13 What the lady may have
thought of this play-acting is not
recorded! When she was dressed again
the whole company proceeded to High
Mass, Longueville walking with Henry
and Mary accompanied by Catherine.
After mass, a banquet followed, with
music and dancing which went on for
about two hours, during which both the
bride and her brother demonstrated their
exceptional talents, to universal
applause. Mary was showered with
congratulations and wedding presents
from all over Europe, the most splendid
of which came from her husband. Two
coffers of plate and jewels arrived under
the conduct of the Sieur de Marigny. One
of these jewels was a diamond ‘as large
as a man’s finger’, with a pendant pearl
‘the size of a pigeons egg’, which was
known as the Mirror of Naples and was
valued at 60,000 crowns. Louis was
nothing if not generous. 14 Part of
Marigny’s brief was also to familiarise
the new queen with the customs of the
French court, and he brought with him an
artist, one Jean Perreal, whose job it
was to paint a portrait of Mary and to
advise on the planning of her wardrobe.
The news from France was that Louis
longed for her coming, and that may well
have been true, but his letters to her at
this time are stilted and conventional,
probably dictated to a secretary. In reply
she was diplomatic and correct, but no
warmer in tone. It was a political
marriage in every sense of the term.
The one person who was
unfeignedly pleased was Henry VIII,
because it put him one step ahead of his
former ally, Ferdinand. Having been
betrayed three times by the King of
Spain, Henry was thirsting for revenge,
and this marriage gave him the
opportunity. It was even rumoured at the
end of August that he was planning to
leave his present wife, on the grounds
that she was his brother’s widow and
consequently that he could have no
children by her. 15 Nothing came of these
rumours at this time, but relations
between the royal couple were certainly
chilled by his hostility to her father.
Ferdinand was under no illusions as to
what the Anglo-French entente might
mean for him. Only Margaret of Savoy,
preoccupied with her own concerns,
thought that he might favour it as being a
blow against the Emperor, with whom
his relations were hostile. It was
certainly unpopular in Flanders, and Sir
Edward Poynings, writing to Wolsey
from the Low Countries on 7 September,
expressed concern about the security of
Tournai because it depended for its
supplies upon the goodwill of the local
p e o p l e . 16 Nothing, however, was
permitted to disrupt the preparations for
Mary’s departure. Oaths for maintaining
the treaty of peace were exchanged on
14 September, and on the 23rd an
embassy was instructed to escort the
Queen as far as Abbeville, where she
was scheduled to meet the King about
the end of the month. The Duke of
Norfolk headed this mission, and he was
accompanied by several of the Lords of
the Council, including the Marquis of
Dorset and the Earl of Worcester. The
only slight shadow cast on these
proceedings was the prudent English
insistence that if Mary outlived her
husband and returned to England, then
the cost of her journey to Abbeville was
to be refunded and her personal
possessions returned. 17 On the French
side her jointure was generous, equal in
income to that received by Anne of
Brittany, amounting to some 300,000
crowns, and a second proxy ceremony
was held. This took place in the church
of the Celestine Order in Paris on 14
September, when the Queen was
represented by the Earl of Worcester,
only the gesture of consummation being
omitted! The following day Louis bound
himself to the payment of the million
crowns provided in the treaty, under
penalty of excommunication for default.
18 Bearing in mind the promises which

had been made and broken in the past,

Henry and Wolsey now felt that they had
every cause for satisfaction.
Mary’s own preparations had been
equally thorough. In addition to being a
guest at many entertainments and
celebrations in her honour, she had put
together a personal wardrobe which cost
her brother about £43,000, much of it in
the French fashion, thanks perhaps to
Perreal’s advice. Liveries for her
servants, the trappings of her chapel, and
the possession of Great and Privy Seals
all proclaimed her royal status. 19 On 22
September Louis left Paris to journey to
Abbeville for their meeting, and on the
28th a tournament was held in her
honour, but still she did not come. This
was partly due to the foul weather,
which all the glitter of her cavalcade
could not alter. She left London on the
29th, accompanied by the King and
Queen and, according to Lorenzo
Pasqualigo, four earls, 400 knights and
barons, and all their ladies travelling in
great wagons. In spite of the weather the
Queen of France looked quite ravishing;
her equal ‘was not to be found in
England’ in the words of the enthusiastic
Venetian. 20 Meanwhile the storms made
assembling the fleet which was to
accompany her exceptionally hazardous,
and one ship, the Great Elizabeth , a
900-ton hulk which the King had
recently purchased from Lubeck, was
wrecked near Sandgate with heavy loss
of life. Nevertheless a fleet of fourteen
‘great ships’ was assembled at Dover to
escort her crossing, and on 2 October a
lull in the gales persuaded the King that
it was safe for them to set off. They bade
farewell to Catherine at the Castle, and
Henry walked with his sister down to
the waterside. It was at this point, as she
later reminded him, that the King had
promised to let her chose her second
husband for herself if, as they both
suspected, Louis might not last very
long. 21 Meanwhile, having embarked,
the journey proved exceptionally
hazardous because they were caught in
mid-Channel by a fresh storm which
scattered the convoy, dispersing its ships
along the coast from Calais to Ostend.
Only four, including the one in which the
bride was travelling, succeeded in
making it to the official destination,
which was Boulogne. However, having
gained the harbour, the Master was
unable to dock her, and instead ran her
aground, leaving his seasick passenger
to be conveyed ashore in a rowing boat.
Eventually Mary was carried through the
breakers by Sir Christopher Garnish, a
knight of her household, and arrived
drenched and wretched at the dock
where a royal reception awaited her. 22
It is to be hoped that the Duke of
Vendome and the Cardinal d’Amboise
were sufficiently sympathetic to her
wretched plight. The ceremonies were at
all events cut short so that she was able
to change into dry clothes. Gradually,
over the next few days, the scattered
ships arrived, and her wardrobe could
be reassembled. It transpired that only a
minimum of plate and property had been
lost in the wreck of the Elizabeth , and
the main damage inflicted by the storm
was psychological. For a day or two it
wrecked Mary’s self-confidence, and
was later recalled by the superstitious as
being an ill omen for the marriage,
which lasted barely three months. On
Thursday 5 October she reached
Montreuil, 24 miles from Boulogne,
where she was able to spend a couple of
days recuperating at the hospitable home
of Madame de Moncaverel. On the 7th
she was able to set out, with dignity
restored, on the 25-mile journey to
Abbeville, where her destiny in the
shape of Louis XII awaited her with
what patience he could muster. 23
At each stop along the way she was
greeted with pageants and eulogies,
which must have caused her to forget the
miseries of the crossing. At Montreuil
she was escorted into the town by a
delegation of dignitaries, led by Francis
of Angoulême in his capacity as
Governor of Picardy, and welcomed
with a flattering song, praising the peace
between England and France. As their
procession entered it was entertained
with a number of pageants at intervals
along their route, some classical and
some biblical, but all symbolic of
Mary’s forthcoming marriage – Perseus
and Andromeda, Solomon and the Queen
of Sheba, the Virgin and the
Annunciation. 24 Like her brother, Mary
loved these manifestations of loyalty.
She had seen many similar on the streets
of London, and never seemed to tire of
them. In this context, their therapeutic
effect was remarkable. After this, the
journey from Montreuil to Abbeville
was taken with becoming dignity, until in
the early afternoon she was met by
Francis of Angoulême, who had ridden
ahead to warn Louis of her coming. He
hinted darkly at a surprise that might be
awaiting her, and late in the afternoon it
turned up in the form of Louis himself,
theoretically out with his hawks, who
had chanced upon her party, greatly to
his own surprise! He should not have
seen her until the official reception, but
his curiosity got the better of him, and
this ‘coincidental’ encounter was his
way of circumventing the strict etiquette
of such matters. Nobody was deceived,
least of all Mary, but honour was
satisfied. 25 Louis had taken the trouble
to find out what his bride was wearing,
so that he could appear in a matching
outfit. He duly appeared, riding a
magnificent hunter, caparisoned in gold
and black, and Mary, pretending to be
taken aback by her royal visitor, doffed
her hat and prepared to dismount from
her palfrey, but he would permit no act
of homage, so she blew him a kiss from
the saddle. Unfamiliar with this English
custom, he nevertheless returned her
gesture then threw his arms around her
neck ‘and kissed her as kindly as if he
had been five and twenty’. If she was
surprised by this reaction, Mary was too
well bred to show it, and they chatted
together for a few minutes, after which
he returned to Abbeville by a different
route. Nothing must detract from the
honour of her solo entry. 26
The Duke of Norfolk had organised
this as a ceremonial procession, led by
fifty esquires. There then followed the
lords, barons and ambassadors,
splendidly clad and riding two by two,
and the heralds and trumpeters, led by
Garter King of Arms and Richmond
Herald. Two liveried grooms leading
spare palfreys came ahead of the
princess, who rode alone, and was
followed by about thirty female
attendants, some mounted and some
conveyed in gaily decorated wagons. 27
The remaining wagons, carrying her
Wardrobe equipment followed behind,
and the handsome royal litter, empty on
this occasion, wherein she sometimes
chose to travel. Bringing up the rear
were two hundred archers, on foot in
three companies. Before this entourage
reached the town a delegation from
Abbeville joined them, consisting of the
mayor, chief justice, magistrates and
clergy, escorted by liveried soldiers,
which preceded them in their march and
brought the total number in the
procession to between two and three
thousand. Unfortunately before they
reached their destination a sharp shower
of rain necessitated a change of apparel
for some of the dignitaries, including
Mary, who rode into the town in a dress
of stiff gold brocade and under the
protection of a canopy borne by four of
Abbeville’s officials. 28 Whether they
volunteered for this duty or not is not on
record! The citizens greeted them with
amazement. Never before had they been
treated to such an ostentatious display of
wealth as the English exhibited on this
occasion. One commentator explained
that he could only express himself in
superlatives ‘for the reality exceeds my
description, to the great glory of this
Queen’. 29 On the outskirts of the town,
at the church of Notre Dame de la
Chappelle, she transferred from her
palfrey to the litter, as more becoming to
her dignity, and entered Abbeville
through its great gate at about five
o’clock in the afternoon, not long before
dark at that time of the year. She was
greeted by a salvo of artillery and the
efforts of a hundred musicians. Un-
dampened by the returning rain, the
decorated streets were interspersed with
several pageants, elaborately prepared
in her honour, and showing the familiar
mixture of classical and biblical themes.
In the centre of the town the
procession dispersed, the local men
returning to their homes and the English
to the lodgings which had been prepared
for them. Mary heard mass at the church
of St Vulfran, and paid her homage to its
patron saint, before being escorted to her
first official meeting with the King. This
took place at the Hotel de la Gruthose,
and was dignified with all the ceremony
of a state reception. It was not, however,
prolonged, and the Duke of Norfolk
having carried out the formal
presentation, Mary was taken by Claude,
the King’s daughter and the wife of
Francis of Angoulême, to her apartment
in the Rue St Giles, which was actually
an annexe to the King’s quarters. 30
Claude, who was only a few years
younger than her stepmother, seems to
have been immediately attracted to this
dazzling English beauty, who had so
many of the qualities which she herself
lacked. She was a good-natured soul,
and jealousy never entered her mind.
That evening a state banquet was given
by Louis, and a grand ball followed
hosted by the Duke and Duchess of
Angoulême. In spite of what must have
been a very long and tiring day, Mary
delighted the company with her charm
and poise. The omens for the marriage, it
was generally decided, were very good.
However, that night a fire consumed a
substantial part of the lower town, and
although this was not permitted to
interfere with the King’s amusements,
some who were not of the court, decided
that maybe the omens were not so good
after all. Fortunately the loss of life was
small, but many houses were burned and
families lost their scanty possessions. 31
The following morning, which was
9 October and the feast of St Denis,
Anne and her entourage were early astir.
The wedding ceremony was set for nine
o’clock in the great hall of the Hotel de
la Gruthose, just across the garden from
her lodgings. The procession would be
short, but if possible it had to be more
magnificent than that of the previous day.
This meant that, having broken their fast,
the English lords and ladies had to spend
a great deal of time on their apparel and
appearance. Mary’s gown was of gold
brocade, cut in the French fashion and
trimmed with ermine. She was
overloaded with jewels, partly out of
deference to French taste, partly to
display her brother’s wealth, and
accompanied by a dozen ladies of her
personal staff, all splendidly dressed but
taking great care not to outshine their
mistress. Twenty-six knights headed her
brief entrée, followed by heralds and
musicians, although the latter had little
time in which to display their talents.
Mary walked between the Duke of
Norfolk and the Marquis of Dorset, who
were to give her away in the name of
Henry VIII, and she was followed by a
miscellany of the ladies who had
accompanied her to France for just this
purpose. ‘If the pomp of the Most
Christian Queen was great yesterday at
her entry … it was yet greater at her
wedding,’ as one impressed spectator
reported. 32 Louis, meanwhile, and his
guests were waiting for her in the hall.
The King, dressed in gold and ermine to
match his bride, was actually outshone
by some of his nobles, who had stopped
at nothing to be more splendid than the
English. One courtier’s gown was
alleged to have cost 2,000 crowns (more
then £400), because a Frenchman’s
wealth was measured by the costliness
of his attire, just as the Englishman’s
was measured by the weight of the gold
chain which he wore round his neck.
Some of the latter were claimed to be so
heavy that they encumbered their
wearer’s movements. 33 As the English
entered the great hall, the King doffed
his bonnet, and the Queen dropped him a
deep courtesy, whereupon Louis kissed
her and seated her beside him on the
dais under a canopy borne by four of the
greatest peers of France. Somehow the
King managed to find among her
jewellery the room to clasp another
necklace around her neck, which
consisted of a diamond and a ruby
valued, as the Earl of Worcester later
claimed, at 10,000 marks, almost as
much as the Mirror of Naples. Whether
all these jewels were given to the Queen
ex officio , or whether they were
personal gifts was later to be a matter of
great controversy, but for the time being
the spectators were duly impressed by
his generosity. 34 The wedding then
proceeded, performed by the Bishop of
Bayeux, who also sung the nuptial mass,
and the royal couple then communicated,
sharing the wafer between them. Once
the marriage was performed, after
another kiss and another courtesy, Mary
was escorted back to her own quarters
to prepare for the state banquet which
was to follow.
For this purpose the King and
Queen were again separated, he
presiding over his lords in his Privy
Chamber, while she sat at the head of the
‘ladies table’ in her own apartments, an
arrangement which must have taken her
aback because such was not the custom
in England, where the lords and ladies
dined together. That same evening there
was another ball at the Hotel de la
Gruthose, with the whole court supping,
dancing and ‘making good cheer’.
However, at eight o’clock the
proceedings were terminated by the
ceremonial bedding of the royal couple.
This was something which Louis by all
accounts had been looking forward to
immensely – so much so that he had
difficulty in keeping his hands off her,
even during the formalities of the day.
The bed was duly blessed, and the bride
was led to her fate by the ever-solicitous
Claude. What she thought of the
prospect, no one asked or wanted to
know. 35 The following day by custom
she remained in seclusion, while Louis
‘seemed very jovial and gay’. One
reporter reckoned from his face that he
was ‘very much in love’, and he claimed
to have ‘crossed the river’ three times in
the course of the night. All this is
reminiscent of Prince Arthur’s boast in
similar circumstances, except that Louis
was not an adolescent.
One of the dignitaries who had so
far been conspicuous by his absence
from these events had been Charles
Brandon, Duke of Suffolk. He had been
kept back, because Henry had a special
mission in mind for him, and probably
did not want him too closely associated
with his sister, with whom his name may
already have been linked. Instead he was
sent across in mid-October, ostensibly to
represent the King at Mary’s coronation,
which was scheduled for 1 November,
and to help organise the ensuing
tournament, but really to propose a
meeting between Louis and Henry at
some time in the following spring to co-
ordinate a strategy against Ferdinand. 36
This might take the form of a joint
campaign for the recovery of Navarre,
which the King of Spain had seized in
1512, or, far more ambitious, a bid by
the King of England for the Castilian
succession in the right of his wife. The
possibility of such a claim had been
raised about eight years earlier, when
Henry VII had been contemplating the
newly widowed Juana as a possible
wife. It could be argued that Juana’s
subsequent incapacity (if that was taken
seriously) had devolved her claim upon
Catherine, and that Henry had a duty to
pursue it. 37 The King was so anxious for
revenge upon his former ally that the
incongruity of such an action at a time
when relations with his wife were
strained does not seem to have occurred
to him. The idea was probably
impracticable, and if Louis poured cold
water on it, as he was very likely to do,
Suffolk was to ask for his suggestions
for an appropriate form of joint action.
The French King pretended to be
impressed by his brother’s zeal, and
played Suffolk along, but in truth he was
interested only in a campaign for the
recovery of Milan. Henry’s assistance in
such a action would be welcome, but
was not what Suffolk had in mind, and
since that campaign was due to start in
March, he did not make much progress
in arranging a meeting either. April was
suggested, somewhere between Calais
and Boulogne, but nothing firm was
agreed. Ferdinand’s ambassador in
England was gratified by these tidings
when they reached him, but did not
deceive himself into thinking that they
made much difference to the bad
relations between Henry and his master.
38 He compared himself with a bull ‘at
whom everyone throws darts’, and the
King of England to a colt in need of a
bridle. Ferdinand, however, was in no
position to apply such restraint, and
Louis, who could have done so, was
now unlikely to try.
Suffolk had his first audience with
the King at Beauvais on about 25 or 26
October. Louis had travelled there with
Mary, who was with him at the time of
Brandon’s reception, but his gout was
troubling him, and he received the Duke
lying down, the Queen sitting beside
him. 39 Fortunately the King was well
enough to travel the following day, and
they set off again for Paris, a distance of
some 50 miles. Suffolk, as an accredited
ambassador, followed as a member of
the court, although whether he got any
opportunity for further conversation with
Louis is not recorded. In each town they
passed through, the Queen exercised her
ancient prerogative of freeing the
prisoners, which must have caused
headaches for the local magistrates,
although it made her popular with the
people. They also passed the travelling
time talking about the King’s
forthcoming Italian expedition, on which
his wife became keen when he promised
to take her to Venice. It was not very
often that royal ladies got an opportunity
to accompany their menfolk on
campaign. 40 By the time they reached St
Denis, just outside Paris on the 31st,
Louis appeared to have forgotten all
about his gout, and was reported to be in
fine fettle. The first two days at St Denis
being All Saints’ Day and All Souls’
Day, were passed quietly in religious
observances, and the King proceeded to
Paris. Mary, by custom, was not
permitted to enter the City before being
crowned, and that ceremony was duly
performed in the abbey church on 5
November, witnessed not only by the
whole travelling court, but also by the
King and numerous lords and ladies who
had ridden out from Paris for the
occasion, including the Duke of Suffolk
and his companions who had travelled
with Louis in order to discuss the setting
up of the tournament which was to
follow the coronation. 41 The actual
crowning was a relatively simple event,
performed by the Bishop of Bayeux, who
invested her with the ring, sceptre and
rod of justice. She was then conducted to
a throne set in the sanctuary, where she
heard high mass and received the
sacrament. All this while Francis held
the heavy crown over her head, lest its
weight should prove too much for her.
Once the ceremony was over the whole
company joined the King for dinner,
after which Louis left again for Paris to
make quite sure that everything was in
place for the Queen’s entry, which was
to take place on the following day. 42
 Below the surface, however, the
relationship was not quite as harmonious
as it appeared. On the morning of 10
October, the day after their wedding,
Louis had dismissed many of his wife’s
English attendants, including her Chief
Gentlewoman, Lady Jane Guildford. The
reason for this was partly political – a
French queen should be attended by
French servants – but also partly
personal. He felt that Lady Guildford
was interfering in his relations with his
wife, and this may have been justified
insofar as she was Mary’s chief
confidante, and had been engaged as a
kind of chaperone. Mary was mortified,
and on 12 October wrote to her brother,
lamenting that she had been left ‘all
alone’, and commending Lady Guildford
to explain the circumstances. On the
same day she wrote to Wolsey, begging
him to find some means whereby her
Chief Gentlewoman could be reinstated.
43 Both these letters demonstrate the skill

which she had acquired in this medium,

and do not lay any of the blame for what
had happened upon Louis. They both
made soothing responses, but neither of
them did anything directly to remedy the
situation, although Wolsey did suggest to
Suffolk that he might raise the issue with
the King. Henry clearly felt that Louis
knew his own business in such matters.
Nor was Mary’s plea entirely justified,
because although the men and several of
the ladies in her household had been sent
packing, a core of English gentlewomen
remained in her service, including Mary
Boleyn and her sister Anne, who seems
to have joined her from Margaret of
Savoy’s court at some time between her
wedding and coronation. 44
Mary’s entry into Paris was an
affair of the greatest magnificence.
Despite the miserable November
weather, the citizens had decked the
streets with lilies and roses, some in
silk, others painted upon arras, or on the
giant billboards which marked out the
route. Paris was one of the great cities of
Europe, far larger than London, where
all kinds of people mingled in a violent
and turbulent environment, where
learning, brigandage and trade rubbed
shoulders. It was in English eyes a
centre of vice, of whoredom and of
murder, and Mary must have shared her
countrymen’s prejudices. Nevertheless
all such thoughts were set aside as she
enjoyed the pageants which the Parisians
had organised in her honour. The first
was at the St Denis gate, by which she
was bound to enter the medieval walled
city, and consisted of a ship in full sail,
complete with real mariners climbing
the rigging. Ceres and Bacchus were at
the helm, symbolising the wine and corn
trades of the city. The allusion was to
Mary’s crossing the Channel, and peace
was the main theme. 45 The civic and
university dignitaries met her at this
gate, and escorted her to the Palais
Royale, where the King awaited her. At
the same time a choir sang songs of
welcome.
Noble Lady, welcome to France
Through you we now shall live in
joy and pleasure,
Frenchmen and Englishmen live at
their ease,
Praise to God who sends such a
blessing … 46
Many of these verses were written by
the humanist Pierre Gringore, who was
appointed to make the official record of
the entry, and he presented her with a
handsome souvenir programme, lavishly
illustrated. Mary had chosen to show
herself to the best advantage, and was
riding in her litter, wearing a crown
studded with diamonds which had been
made for the occasion, and preceded by
Francis together with the dukes of
Alençon, Bourbon and Vendôme. On the
way from the St Denis gate she was also
met by a delegation of the French clergy,
thought by one optimist to number 3,000,
but probably only a fraction of that
number. 47 The second tableau showed a
fountain playing, out of the bowl of
which grew lilies and roses, lovingly
entwined, while the third represented
Solomon and the Queen of Sheba, in
overt reference to Louis’ alleged
wisdom. Passing on to the church of the
Holy Innocents, she was confronted by a
scaffold bearing a figure of God the
Father holding a large heart over images
of the King and Queen. The fifth tableau,
however, was the most ingenious,
because it showed a walled city,
enclosing a garden wherein grew a bush,
and out of the bush sprouted an
enormous rosebud which ascended by
means of hidden machinery to a balcony
whereon grew a lily of equal size. When
the rosebud had completed its ascent, it
opened to reveal a damsel, who recited
the most complimentary of all
Gringore’s verses, comparing Mary to
the ‘rose vermeille’, which had grown in
the gardens of Jericho. This rose
featured in many contemporary
romances, and signified that to Parisians
their king’s bride was love incarnate. 48
Moving on to the Chastellet, she was
confronted by the images of Justice and
Truth, and by an orator who compared
Louis to the sun and Mary to the moon.
Finally at the Palais Royale itself there
was a double stage showing the angel of
the annunciation addressing the Virgin
Mary in a thinly veiled reference to
hopes of an heir, while rustic shepherds
sang of the Mary of heaven and the Mary
of earth. It was late in the afternoon
before the Queen, who was bearing up
remarkably well, arrived at Notre Dame
for a reception prepared by the
University, where after mass she was
welcomed by the Archbishop of Paris.
At about six, she returned from Notre
Dame to the Palais Royale for the
obligatory state banquet at which,
unsurprisingly, she is alleged to have
fallen asleep and been borne off to her
rooms. 49 Louis, not as robust as he
would like the spectators to believe, had
long since retired from the fray. It had
been a very long day, and it was only
after a suitable rest for all concerned
that the celebratory tournament began on
13 November. Mary was now wedded,
bedded and crowned as Queen of
France.
4
 MARY AS QUEEN
OF FRANCE
The afternoon following their strenuous
night, on 7 November, the royal couple
retired to the Hotel des Tournelles,
where they rested until the great
tournament in the Queen’s honour, which
began on the 13th. It would be difficult
to say which of them was in more need
of the respite. The tournament was
Francis’s idea, and had originally been
intended as a friendly encounter between
English and French nobles to celebrate
the royal wedding at Abbeville.
However, it was decided that so exciting
a spectacle deserved a grander setting,
and so it was deferred, taking place
eventually after Mary’s coronation and
entry into Paris in the splendour of the
capital city. 1 It also lost some of its
original purpose, becoming instead a
great renaissance spectacle, and a trial
of strength between the nations. In
assuming the aspect a great sporting
encounter, like a modern football or
rugby match, it developed a slightly
sinister side, because it became
Francis’s intention to use the encounters
as a means of demonstrating his own
skill, and hopefully lowering the colours
of the English jousters, at that time
reputed the finest in Europe. Local
interest was intense, and patriotic pride
became engaged, so that it assumed an
overriding importance in the long
calendar of celebrations. Francis was
responsible for the French team, and
took it upon himself and the other nine
‘challengers’ to meet all the English
‘answerers’, both on foot and horseback.
2
The English, for their part, were
equally concerned for their team’s
success, realising perfectly well what
Francis was about. Their representatives
were chosen by Henry, who must have
regretted that Louis’ incapacity meant
that he was unable to take part himself,
because in the circumstances for him to
have appeared would have been an
abuse of hospitality. The team was led
by the Duke of Suffolk and the Marquis
of Dorset, and consisted of Sir Edward
Howard, Sir Edward Neville. Sir Giles
Capell, Sir Thomas Cheyney, Sir
William Sidney and Sir Henry
Guildford. All of them were expert
lancers, and Suffolk had the reputation of
being the finest in Europe (after King
Henry, of course). 3 The list had been set
up in the Parc des Tournelles, and large
stands erected for the spectators, who
were expected to be numerous and
partisan. The whole court was there.
Louis, troubled with recurrent gout,
reclined on a couch, with Mary and
Claude supporting him. Unfortunately it
rained remorselessly, and ten days were
needed to get through five full days of
fighting. The procedure was
complicated, because each participant
was required to run numerous courses
over three days; these were the jousts
proper and consisted of individual
combat on horseback with spears.
However, these courses were followed
by fighting on foot with swords, and by a
general melee, in which many knights,
organised in groups, engaged
simultaneously. Altogether over 300 men
took part, and there appear to have been
a few fatalities which ‘were not spoken
o f ’ . 4 In the midst of this organised
chaos, public interest was focussed on
the principals, Francis and his brother-
in-law the Duke of Alençon on the
French side, and Suffolk and Dorset on
the English.
On the first day Alençon
distinguished himself by running ten
courses, and shattering a spear in each,
but it was Suffolk who carried off the
day’s honours, running no fewer than
fifteen courses, thirteen of them as
challenger, which was the more
demanding role. Remarkably, there
appears to have been only one death,
although we are told that several horses
were slain, presumably by misdirected
lances. On the second day also, Suffolk
received the most commendation,
actually unhorsing his opponent (a very
difficult feat to accomplish) in three
successive rounds. These bouts were
fairly clinical, but the melee which
followed was rough. Dorset wrote later
that the fighting was as furious as he had
ever experienced. He and Suffolk, he
explained, had
put our aids thereto because there
was no nobleman to be put unto
us, but poor men of arms and
Scots, many of [whom] were hurt
on both sides, but no great hurt,
and of our Englishmen none
overthrown nor greatly hurt …’ 5
The climax was reached on the 21st,
when the courses on foot began, fighting
at the barriers. Because he had injured
his hand, Francis felt unable to take part,
but so arranged matters that Suffolk and
Dorset, whom he described as his
‘aides’ for the whole tournament, were
set to fight alone against all comers. By
elevating them to this place of honour, he
seems to have hoped to bring about the
Englishmen’s defeat, and so to reduce
the prestige which they had gained from
the jousting of the first two days. If so,
he miscalculated, because Suffolk was
victorious in all his encounters,
including one with an enormous German
who had been infiltrated into the ranks of
the French challengers specifically to
humiliate him. The German was
immensely strong, and came at him
fiercely, so that the Duke was almost
beaten down. However, he was also
relatively unskilled, and did not know
how to take advantage of his
opportunity. Suffolk rallied, and
defeated his opponent, pummelling him
about the head until the blood gushed out
of his nose. 6 The unfortunate fellow was
immediately removed before his identity
could be discovered. Far from being
diminished by this encounter, the
Englishman’s reputation was enhanced,
and Francis became jealous. Dorset
withdrew after losing his spear, but his
place was taken by his nineteen-year-old
brother, Lord Edward Grey, who also
fought with distinction, overthrowing
another giant – only this time a
legitimate Frenchman! Only in their
accoutrements did the French clearly
excel. Francis, the Duke of Bourbon and
the Count of St Pol all appearing in
stunning armour, changing their tabards
each day in a rich variety of colours –
purple velvet and cloth of silver. By
comparison the English were soberly
clad, each man displaying a cross of St
George on some part of his apparel. 7
There were clowns and trick riders to
enliven the scene between bouts, and the
crowd obviously enjoyed the spectacle,
in spite of their disappointment at the
English success. Suffolk and Dorset both
wrote to Wolsey after the event, being
suitably modest about their triumph;
news of that, Suffolk alleged, would best
come from others.
Meanwhile, Brandon’s mission had
been more than a response to Francis’s
challenge in the lists, because he had
also been entrusted with a secret mission
to Louis XII. This was secret because
there were divisions in the English
Council over the desirability of a French
alliance, and Henry had so far acted
upon his own initiative. The
‘bedchamber crisis’ over the sacking of
Jane Guildford had brought this to the
surface, because Suffolk blamed his
rival the Duke of Norfolk for this
development, claiming that Norfolk, who
was in France at the time, had
sanctioned it in order to weaken the
Anglo-French friendship, which he
distrusted. 8 There was no reason to
suppose that this was so, but Brandon
hastened his journey to Paris, to conduct
his business with the King before the
Howards could stop him – as he alleged.
His business was to suggest to Louis a
meeting between the kings in the spring
of 1515 to concert a strategy against
Ferdinand of Aragon. Hence the need for
secrecy, because if the Howards had
gained information to that effect, they
would undoubtedly have informed the
Queen, and thus warned the King of
Spain. In spite of his lack of diplomatic
experience, and his preoccupation with
the forthcoming tournament, this mission
was reasonably successful. He secured
Louis’ agreement to the meeting, and
even began to put some possible
strategies in place. He also succeeded in
delaying the Duke of Albany’s passage
to Scotland, which Henry would have
regarded as an unfriendly act, given the
delicate state of politics in that kingdom
and his sister Margaret’s role in them. 9
Louis thought well of his efforts and
expressed the opinion to Henry that ‘no
prince christened hath such a servant for
peace and war’. The Marquis of Dorset
thought that his diplomatic mission had
been at least as fruitful as his
appearance in the lists, which was
commendation indeed. 10 After the
tournament and its accompanying
celebrations, Suffolk returned home, to
be warmly welcomed by Henry, and by
Wolsey, who was the true architect of
the Anglo-French alliance, and in view
of the King’s reaction, his opponents in
the Council kept a low profile for the
time being.
The day following the tournament,
24 November, was marked by a banquet
given for the Queen at the Hotel de Ville
by the University of Paris. This signalled
the end of the court season, and on the
27th the King and Queen removed to St
Germain-en-Laye for a three-week break
before returning to Paris for Christmas.
At the dinner there were many speeches,
and the orators competed with one
another in their flattery of the Queen of
France, and of the coming together of the
kingdoms, with France being given the
benefit of the comparisons. No king of
France, it was alleged, since the days of
Clovis, had ever been killed in battle,
exiled or murdered by his own people –
a clear allusion to the fate of Edward II
and Richard II of England, which was a
country ‘naturally prone to revolution’.
11 Mary’s husband, it was implied, was

more secure than her brother, a hint that

the Queen was too diplomatic to take
exception to. She may also have been
too pleased with the adulation to notice,
because such a crowd had gathered
around the banqueting hall that the
official party had been unable to enter by
the front door. Instead they had been
obliged to make a detour via the porter’s
lodge and the back stairs. Once inside,
she was received by the elite of the City
and the University, and treated to a meal
of the utmost magnificence. No action or
gesture on her part was unobserved, and
she earned special commendation for
asking that a portion of the specially
prepared dessert should be sent to the
royal nursery at Vincennes for her four-
year-old stepdaughter, Renee. 12 One
observer, who was not inexperienced in
such matters, declared that he had never
seen so many distinguished guests so
sumptuously attired at any comparable
occasion. 13 The politics of the court
were complicated at this juncture by the
King’s attitude. That he admired and
respected Mary is obvious, and she used
that favour to help the Duke of Suffolk in
his negotiations, because he lacked not
only experience but also subtlety, which
it was the Queen’s job to present to her
husband as ‘plainness’, a virtue which
he appreciated. So successful was she in
this that Louis came to favour the Duke
above his own cousin Francis, whose
ambition he obviously distrusted. During
these weeks Mary’s behaviour won
plaudits all round, except for Francis’s
family, who could not stand her. She
also flattered his Council by discreetly
seeking their advice as to how to deal
with her husband. As Suffolk reported
she wanted to know
how she might best order herself
to content the king whereof she
was most desirous, and in her
should lack no goodwill, because
she knew well that they were the
men that the King loved an trusted
 … 14
Louis was pleased at the pains she was
taking, and Henry and Wolsey were
delighted to receive such positive
reports. On the eve of her departure for
St Germain, Dorset declared that she
‘continued her goodness and wisdom’,
and consequently increased in favour
both with the King and with his Council.
She was showing an acute political
sensitivity, and a maturity and discretion
well beyond her years, because she was
only nineteen at this time.
The King chose St Germain for the
court’s retreat because it was near to
Paris, and because (although he would
not admit it) he was finding travel both
painful and fatiguing. He seems to have
intended enjoying some hunting, but was
too sick to indulge in such a strenuous
pastime. Part of the time he was
confined to bed, and his wife sat by him,
becoming daily more accustomed to the
role of sick-nurse. 15 Nevertheless they
managed to return to the Hotel des
Tounelles in December, whereupon
Louis took to his sickbed permanently,
and began to prepare for the end, which
he realised could not be long delayed.
The great household continued to
function with apparent normality, and
Christmas was duly kept, but without any
of the festivities normally associated
with the season. Meanwhile Mary sat by
her husband’s bedside and talked to
Francis, or rather he talked to her. She
felt that he showed insufficient concern
for his father-in-law’s situation, and
rather too much for hers, and although
his behaviour was outwardly correct,
she began to be disturbed. His
conversation was sophisticated, and
interspersed with personal observations
that alarmed her, so that she began to
feel that he could become a problem if
(or rather when) Louis’ protection was
removed. She confided her anxieties by
letter to both Dorset and Suffolk, and
may have been prompted to take some of
the French Council into her confidence
in case it should be necessary at some
time in the future to restrain the Duke of
Angoulême’s ardour. 16 It was well
known in the court that Francis was of an
amorous disposition, and considered
himself irresistible to women. If he had
been less conceited, her off-putting
responses would have been sufficient to
deter him. Whether he would have been
prepared to cuckold his liege lord is
another matter, but for the time being
Mary’s best defence lay in absolute
loyalty to her husband. She could not,
however, afford to alienate her admirer,
who for all his innuendos was gracious
and witty, and when Louis died, he
would be king. It would be an
exaggeration to say that he could then
dispose of her as he thought fit, but his
position would obviously be much
strengthened, while hers would become
weaker. 17
Gossip circulated about the King’s
sickbed, most of it unflattering to the
Queen, who was given singularly little
credit for her continence. Much of it
probably emanated from the anti-English
faction at court, which was led by
Louise of Savoy, but it is hard to trace to
its source. There was clearly another
side to the popular perception of her
beauty and graciousness, because as
represented in these stories, she was
flirtatious, light-headed and
irresponsible, ‘giddy in six languages’
as one author put it. She is supposed to
have regarded her marriage as a joke,
and the Italians in particular circulated
salacious stories about her, even before
Louis’ final illness deprived him of all
capacity to please her. One
contemporary historian, Robert de la
Marck, Seigneur de Fleuranges, put the
derogatory case succinctly. ‘The king,’
he observed, ‘did not feel very strong,
because he had desired to be a pleasing
companion with his wife, but he
deceived himself, as he was not the man
for it …’ 18 He had abandoned the strict
diet which his doctors had prescribed
for him, and they warned him that if he
continued he would die of his pleasure.
It is from these stories that the image of a
flirtatious and impetuous Mary derive. In
fact during Louis’ last illness she
behaved with admirable restraint and
discretion, and Henry and Wolsey were
well advised of the fact. If it had not
been so, Henry, who was something of
prude, would have made his displeasure
known, and the Queen’s position would
have become even more precarious. The
records do not say very much about
Louis’ last weeks, and the traditions are
probably deceptive. They represent the
King as abandoning all restraint,
indulging in rich foods and late nights in
an effort to charm his youthful bride.
Louise of Savoy, who was prepared to
believe anything to the discredit of the
royal couple, recorded in her journal
that ‘ces amoureuses noces’ had been
fatal to him. 19 There may have been an
element of truth in all this, because
overindulgence and unaccustomed
activity, both of which were features of
his attempts to please her, would
probably have hastened his death.
However, to blame the Queen for this
seems altogether irrational, and on the
other side of the coin, his marriage had
undoubtedly revived his wish to live.
The Earl of Worcester, who had
remained behind when his fellow
ambassadors had returned home at the
beginning of December, wrote to
Wolsey that he ‘hath a marvellous mind
to content and please the Queen’. Apart
from banning Jane Guildford and Jane
Poppincourt from his wife’s entourage
he had been the very model of a
solicitous husband. 20
Christmas was quiet at the French
court in 1514, because the King was
growing progressively weaker, and his
death was clearly only a matter of time.
On 28 December he rallied his fading
energies to write to his ‘good brother’
the King of England. It was a letter full
of expressions of contentment with his
wife, who
has hitherto conducted herself, and
does still every day, towards me
in such a manner that I cannot but
be delighted with her, and love
and honour her more and more
each day; and you may be assured
that I do, and ever shall so treat
her as to give both her and you
perfect satisfaction … 21
Clearly none of the defamatory rumours
which were circulating had reached
Louis ears, or if they had, then he had
treated them with the scorn which they
deserved. His letter went on to praise
the Duke of Suffolk, commending him for
his ‘virtues, manners and good
conditions’ which deserved the highest
respect. Happy indeed is the king who
has such servants! It was to be Louis’
last effort, and three days later he was
dead. 22 Mary, who was clearly not with
him at the end, is alleged to have fainted
at the news. Whether she did or not, as a
childless royal widow she now faced an
uncertain future, and much would depend
upon the support which she received
from England. For the time being she had
to wait at Cluny until it was determined
whether or not she was pregnant by her
late husband. She herself was sure that
she was not, but it was necessary to be
as certain as the medical science of the
period permitted, because the future of
the French monarchy might depend upon
it. 23
Meanwhile it was an established
principal that the King never dies, so
Francis succeeded Louis without a
break, and immediately began to make
his dispositions as king. This was not
unconstitutional and would have become
so only if Mary had born a son, and
Francis had refused to step down. 24
That remained a hypothetical possibility
for about a month, but no one took it very
seriously, and Francis was duly and
solemnly crowned at Rheims on 25
January. Although not in theory obliged
to do so, he had by then agreed to honour
Louis’ obligations, including his
friendship with England, and accepted
responsibility for his predecessor’s
debts. On 2 January he had confirmed
the members of the Parlement of Paris in
their places, and did the same with the
other sovereign courts. Over the next
couple of weeks he confirmed most of
the other officers who were in post
throughout the kingdom, and made new
appointments to the positions of
Chancellor and Constable, both of which
were vacant at the time of his accession.
The former post, which had been empty
since 1512, was filled by Antoine
Duprat, the President of the Parlement of
Paris, and the latter by Charles III, Duke
of Bourbon, the King’s most powerful
vassal. 25 The big gainer by the regime
change was however the new King’s
mother, Louise of Savoy, who was given
the Duchy of Anjou and all the money
obtained from the confirmation of office
holders, who of course paid a fee for
their recognition. This was bad news for
Mary, because the new Queen Mother
regarded her, as we have seen, with
deep suspicion, seeing her as vamp who
had her claws into her son, which was a
total misrepresentation of the situation.
Louis was buried at St Denis on 12
January 1515, but the Queen did not
emerge from her seclusion to attend the
ceremony. By custom she remained at
Cluny, and wore the traditional white
which was the royal mourning of France.
For this reason she was known thereafter
as ‘la reine blanche’ – the white queen.
She had been married just eighty-two
days, and the period of mourning was
forty days, so the designation was not an
unfair one. 26
Meanwhile, she was exchanging
letters with Henry and with Wolsey.
Anticipating Louis’ demise and her own
incipient widowhood, the latter had
written to her on 1 or 2 January, warning
her to be careful in everything she said
or did, and in no circumstances to
entertain suggestions for her remarriage.
This was scarcely advice that she
needed, and on the 10th she replied with
some indignation, ‘I trust the king my
brother and you will not reckon in me
such childhood …’ She had conducted
herself honourably and with great
discretion since her coming into France,
and trusted that no reports to the contrary
had reached England. 27 What reports
Wolsey had heard we do not know, but
the problem now was to retrieve Mary,
and as much of her property as might be
feasible. With this in mind, he advised
the King to send the Duke of Suffolk
back to France as his special envoy to
negotiate her repatriation, and the Duke
arrived in Paris on 31 January. He saw
the Queen the same day, and
immediately reported formally that she
wished to come home ‘as shortly as may
be’; she could, he said, ‘never be merry’
until she saw her brother face to face.
She begged to be excused from writing
personally as she had a toothache, which
was probably a result of the stress she
was under. 28 Difficulties were to be
expected, because although Louis’
councillors had confirmed that in the
event of her widowhood she would be at
liberty to return to England ‘with her
servants jewels and effects’, and that the
French would reimburse the costs of her
travel to Abbeville, there remained the
question of her dowry. This could be
offset against the million crowns which
Louis had acknowledged that he owed
the King of England, provided that
Francis was willing to accept that debt.
There was also the problem of the
jewellery which the late king had so
generously given to her. Had he
bestowed these upon her as his queen, in
which case they should remain to her
successor, or as personal gifts, in which
case she was entitled to take them with
h e r ? 29 The question of the travel
expenses had already been resolved
before Suffolk’s arrival, to the tune of
£1,470, and this relatively small success
boded well for the outcome of his
mission, but he and his colleagues,
Wingfield and West, expected to have to
bargain hard for the greater sums. The
situation was complicated by Francis’s
unwillingness to let her go. This was not
because he found her attractive (although
he may have done so) as because she
represented a major political asset. A
beautiful royal widow, not yet twenty
years old, was obviously ripe for
remarriage, and Francis was very
unwilling to surrender that advantage to
the King of England. As Sir Thomas
Spinelly reported to Henry VIII on 6
February, the Dukes of Savoy and
Lorraine were already being proposed,
and although Mary was rejecting all such
overtures, as long as she remained under
his control she was vulnerable. 30
Francis seems to have been particularly
concerned that once she was back in
England, Henry would revive the
marriage with Charles of Ghent, which
had been abandoned in the previous
July, and which he would have been
forced to interpret as a hostile move. It
was for that reason that he was prepared
to welcome the news that she had
secretly bestowed herself on the Duke of
Suffolk. As late as 10 February, the
Duke was still reporting to Henry that
his sister would be married to the Duke
of Lorraine, but he also reported that
inventories of her goods, her wardrobe,
jewels and stables, were being
prepared, and that an early settlement
could be anticipated. 31 Eventually
Francis agreed to all that was asked of
him, although not without a lot of
haggling, and kept up his payments until
the outbreak of war in 1522.
Mary’s state of mind at this juncture
is hard to assess. Immediately after
Louis’ death two friars had been sent
from the English court, ostensibly to
commiserate with her on the loss of her
husband, but in reality to pursue a party
agenda. One of them, Bonaventure
Langley, was the same man who had
taken Catherine’s condolences to
Margaret in Scotland after the death of
James IV, and it is natural to suppose
that she was again responsible for his
despatch. The circumstances were
similar, and it is reasonably certain that
they had not been briefed by the King or
Wolsey. 32 They apparently knew about
Henry’s ‘waterside promise’ to allow
her to choose her own mate the second
time around, and set out to persuade her
that he had no intention of keeping it.
They also knew that Suffolk was on his
way, and tried to persuade her that his
instructions were to bring her back so
that the King could renegotiate her
marriage to Charles. Their mission left
her unpersuaded, but in a state of
considerable distress. When Suffolk
arrived and discovered what had
happened, he had no hesitation in
blaming the Howards, whom he knew
were in alliance with Catherine to
attempt the resurrection of the Imperial
connection and the overthrow of the
continuing relationship with France
which both he and Wolsey favoured. 33
Mary meanwhile had decided to take an
initiative. If she remained in France, the
chances of her being married to a French
nobleman were very high. It is probable
that she exaggerated Francis’s own
interest, because he would have had to
divorce Claude in order to marry her,
and there is no suggestion that he
contemplated such a course. If, on the
other hand, her brother was successful in
his bid to recover her, there seemed
every likelihood that he would marry her
to a partner of his own choosing. His
relations with Francis, although
outwardly cordial, were in fact
suspicious. They were too much alike in
their youth and ambition to be anything
other than rivals, and the Queen
Dowager looked suspiciously like a
hostage for Anglo-French relations. So
she raised with Brandon the possibility
of acting upon Henry’s earlier promise
before he had any chance to renege, and
of marrying him secretly while still in
France. It is very unlikely that this was
an emotional or impulsive decision, and
was probably discussed long and hard
over many days. 34 Francis, at any rate,
got wind of what was afoot, and in
welcoming Suffolk as an envoy,
declared that he was pleased to learn
that he had come to marry the Queen
Dowager, an intention which at that time
the Duke disowned. 35 Such a marriage
was an acceptable compromise as far as
the French King was concerned, because
it would enable him to release Mary
without running the risk that she would
be used against him.
5
MARY & THE DUKE
OF SUFFOLK
The origins of the relationship between
Mary and Charles Brandon went back
some way. He certainly had an eye for a
pretty girl, and she may well have been
attracted by her brother’s dashing friend.
He had been the King’s chosen jousting
companion since Henry had first entered
the lists in public in 1510, and was well
known for his gallantry, in both senses of
the word. Whether there had been any
discussion of the possibility of marriage
between them we do not know, but
Polydore Vergil, writing many years
later, thought that there had, and
attributed Brandon’s promotion to the
dukedom of Suffolk to that
consideration.
Many people considered it very
strange that Charles should be so
honoured as to be made a Duke
[Vergil wrote] … the dignity was
intended, as was apparent
afterwards, to enable him more
properly to be related to the king
in marriage, this future
development having already been
decided upon by the King … 1
This is almost certainly wrong, because
she was firmly betrothed to Charles of
Castile at that point, and also because it
implies a gift of foresight on Henry’s
part that he could not possibly have
possessed. It may well have been that
the possibility had been raised, in which
case it would have been raised by the
Princess, who may well have been
looking for a way out of her commitment
to the Prince. It would have been
unthinkably presumptuous for Brandon to
have broached such a topic to the King.
In any case, whatever understanding they
thought that they had was set aside when
peace with France was on the agenda.
Henry apparently dropped hints that his
sister was available, and that he
favoured a foreign marriage for her, the
implication being that he found her
existing betrothal unsatisfactory. 2 ‘This
coming to King Louis’ ears, he sought
both peace and marriage,’ wrote Vergil,
and he added truthfully enough that Pope
Leo, who was the leader of the war
alliance, was also determined upon
peace, ‘so there was no gainsaying it’. 3
So Mary repudiated her engagement to
Charles, and was betrothed instead to
Louis, a man almost old enough to be her
grandfather. She was undoubtedly
motivated by the thought of becoming
Queen of France, but we do not know
what other inducements Henry may have
offered, or whether Charles Brandon
featured in them. What we do know is
that when the King went to the waterside
in Dover to see his sister off to France,
he then promised that in the event of the
ailing Louis not lasting long, she would
be free to choose her own partner
thereafter. 4 Brandon’s name does not
seem to have been mentioned, but in
view of the discussions which had
already been held, we may presume that
he could be taken for granted.
During the Duke’s embassy to
France in November 1514, no mention
was made of this relationship, for
obvious reasons. Suffolk’s secret
mission was to the King, and Mary was
not involved in any of the negotiations.
When he distinguished himself in the
lists, it was in her honour, but that was
because she was the Queen, and he does
not seem to have worn her favour. By the
time that he arrived the ‘bedchamber
crisis’ had already been resolved by the
Earl of Worcester, and there is no
record of them having any private
meetings. When he returned to England
at the beginning of December, he
reported her general well-being and
happiness, but nothing more intimate. At
the same time he was clear that Louis
was a sick man, and although the Duke
had secured his agreement to a meeting
with Henry in the spring, it was by no
means certain that he would last that
long. 5 So anxious was Wolsey at this
that he actually anticipated the news of
the King’s death by writing to Mary
early in January, urging her not to
commit herself to any further marriage if
Louis should die, a letter to which she
replied on the 10th, as we have seen.
I pray you as my trust is in you for
to remember me to the King my
brother for such causes and
business as I have to do for as
now I have no other to put my trust
in but the King my brother and
you, and as it shall please the king
my brother and his council, I
would be ordered, and so I pray
you my Lord to show his grace
saying that the king my husband is
departed to God of whose soul
God pardon … I trust I have so
ordered myself since that I came
hither that I trust hath been to the
honour of the king my brother and
me since I came hither and so I
 trust to continue … 6
It is a very self-possessed letter, and one
which shows that she knew very well
what she was about. In an exchange of
letters with the King and with Wolsey,
she nevertheless revealed the extent of
her anxiety. Trapped in the Hotel de
Cluny, she felt isolated and vulnerable,
cut off from her own people. Her
English servants had been dismissed
after Louis’ death, and replaced with
French women, whom she did not trust.
This action had presumably been taken
by the Council, or by Louise of Savoy
without Francis’s knowledge, because
when she retaliated by dismissing her
French attendants and reinstating the
English, he did not object. 7 Her
surviving letters from this period present
something of a problem, because they all
appear to be drafts, full of rewritings
and corrections. She certainly used
Wolsey as an intermediary with Henry,
and sent the Archbishop her thoughts,
which he then put into a form which he
knew would be acceptable to the King,
so these must be her rough versions. 8
Henry then responded with smooth
reassurances of support. On 14 January
he wrote to Francis, expressing his
regret for Louis’ death, and
congratulations upon his accession. He
would, he intimated, shortly be sending a
mission consisting of Brandon,
Wingfield and West to sort out relations
between the kingdoms in the new
circumstances, and to negotiate Mary’s
future. Francis, whose ambitions were
focussed on Italy, was keen to renew the
alliance with England, but reluctant to
allow Mary to depart for fear that Henry
would renew her betrothal to the
Archduke Charles, or find some other
equally unacceptable partner for her. 9
The King may have had some such
thought in mind, but Mary was at pains
to remind him of his ‘waterside
promise’, which she was now insistent
that he should honour. Since it would
have been inconsistent with his chivalric
code to have broken his promise to a
lady, Henry now faced a dilemma. He
discussed the matter with the Duke of
Suffolk before his departure, and he
seems to have agreed that he would
accept some level of commitment to her
on the Duke’s part; enough to persuade
Francis to release her, but short of a full
marriage. Indeed he extracted a promise
from Suffolk that he would not marry her
until after their return, perhaps intending
to keep his options open in that
direction. 10 Polydore Vergil’s account
of what happened reveals a level of
misunderstanding which was generally
shared in the court:
The envoys came to Paris and
explained to Francis the orders
they had been given by Henry.
Francis agreed with the greatest
 alacrity to perform all that was
asked, except that it was quite
clear that the departure of the girl
seemed to be regarded by him
with displeasure. Henry had
anticipated this and ordered
Charles to marry her; this was
done in accordance with a
decision taken before her French
marriage … Francis rejoiced
greatly at this since he had feared
that she might be given to Charles,
King of Castile. So Mary, having
lost her first husband, yet returned
home a wife … 11
The French King’s ‘alacrity’ to pay the
sums demanded may be doubted, as
there was considerable wrangling over
this before an agreement was finally
thrashed out, and Suffolk had certainly
not been ‘ordered … to marry her’.
However an understanding of some kind
had been reached, and it was not as
secret as it should have been, because
when Suffolk reached Paris towards the
end of January he was welcomed by
Francis on the grounds that he had come
to marry the King’s sister, an ambition
which the Duke was constrained to deny.
However, when he met Mary, perhaps
later that same day, he found that her
mind was made up. She would ‘have
none but me’ as he confessed to the King
a few days later, and was quite prepared
to accept the responsibility for her own
actions. She had, he alleged, besought
him with floods of tears, but it is
unlikely to have happened in such a
fashion. 12 Mary was a champion weeper
when the occasion demanded, but this
was no emotional decision, let alone a
‘hysterical’ one as has been claimed. It
was a rational course of action, designed
to placate Francis and to secure her
release from Cluny. Nor was it a sudden
decision, as Suffolk claimed. It was
earnestly discussed between them over
several days, as the risks of incurring
Henry’s displeasure were weighed
against the advantages of the French
King’s favour. It remains something of a
mystery what had passed between Mary
and Francis that persuaded her into this
drastic course of action. She knew, of
course, that he was proposing several
French noblemen as her prospective
husband, but she also knew that he
would be unable to force such a choice
upon her without fatally disrupting his
relations with Henry VIII. He had visited
her at Cluny several times both before
and after his coronation, and on one of
his early visits she had assured him that
she was not pregnant. Louise of Savoy
did not trust her assurances, but the King
apparently did, and went ahead with the
plans for his crowning on that
understanding. 13 On a later visit,
according to Mary, he made some
suggestions ‘not conducive to her
honour’, which presumably means an
offer to make her his mistress. It seems
that he felt he owed this to himself, and
was not too disconcerted when she
rebuffed his advances; indeed they may
not have been very seriously intended.
On 15 February, some two weeks after
her commitment to Suffolk, she wrote to
her brother:
Pleaseth it your grace, the French
King on Tuesday night last came
to visit me, and had with me many
divers [discourses], among the
which he demanded me whether I
had made any promise of marriage
in any place, assuring me upon his
honour, upon the word of a prince,
that in case I would be plain
[with] him in that affair he would
do for me therein to the best of his
power, whether it were in his
realm or out of the same.
Whereunto I answered that I
would disclose unto him the secret
of my heart in humility as unto the
prince of the world after your
grace in which I most trust, and so
declared unto him the good mind
which for divers considerations I
bear to my Lord of Suffolk, asking
him not only [to grant] me his
favour and consent thereunto, but
[also] that that he would of his
own hand write unto your grace
and pray you to bear your like
favour upon me. The which he
granted me to do, and so hath done
 … Sir I most humbly beseech you
to take this answer which I have
made unto the French King in
good part, the which I did only to
be discharged of the extreme pain
and annoyance I was in by reason
of such suit as the French King
made unto me not according with
mine honour, the which he hath
clearly left off … 14
This is slightly less than explicit in that
it does not actually confess that the
marriage had taken place, still less been
consummated. Somewhat alarmed at his
failure to respond, she reminded him of
his promise, and threatened that if he did
not approve of her action, she would
take herself off to ‘some religious
house’, and thus remove herself from the
dynastic equation altogether. Eventually
it was left to the Duke to explain to
Wolsey what had actually happened.
Writing on 5 March, about a month after
the event, he declared that on his arrival
in Paris he had heard many things which
put him and the Queen in great fear,
and the queen would never let me
be in rest till I had granted her to
be married; and so, to be plain
with you, I have married her
heartily, and have lain with her in
so much as I fear me but she be
with child. 15
He begged Wolsey to break this news to
the King as gently as possible, lest he
find out by some other route and be
displeased. It seems that the Archbishop
did not fully comply with this request
because it was apparently after that (the
letters are undated) that Henry wrote to
Suffolk, treating his marriage as a
hypothetical possibility, and saying that
its successful consummation would
depend upon the Duke’s success in
getting a favourable financial settlement
out of Francis. 16 Since her jewels, and
particularly the Mirror of Naples, were
bones of fierce contention between the
English and French negotiators, this was
no mere rhetorical reservation. Just
when the King actually found out that his
consent had been taken for granted, we
do not know, but ‘displeased’ would be
an understatement of his reaction. He
was very annoyed, not so much by the
fact of the marriage, which can hardly
have come as a surprise to him, as by the
manner in which it had come about.
Brandon had promised him that he
would do nothing in that connection until
the couple were safely back in England,
and he had broken his word. It did not
matter that Mary had solicited him; the
responsibility was his. He was a man,
and the man was always responsible for
the political actions of any woman with
whom he might be associated; equally
important, by breaking his promise he
had broken trust and betrayed the code
of honour which he shared with the
K i n g . 17 Wolsey was even more
disconcerted by Suffolk’s confession,
because to marry a blood relation of the
King without explicit consent was a
treasonable offence, no matter what the
mitigating circumstances. He wrote
condemning the Duke with the full
weight of his archepiscopal authority,
but at the same time offering a possible
way out. Suffolk had no option; faced
with the King’s indignation he remitted
his case ‘wholly to your [grace’s]
discretion’, agreeing in advance to do
whatever might be required. 18 At about
the same time Mary wrote to Henry
complaining of ‘her greatest discomfort
sorrow and desolation’ at being
advertised ‘of the great and high
displeasure which your grace beareth
unto me and my Lord of Suffolk for the
marriage between us’, and protested that
it was only the ‘great despair’ brought
by the two friars out of England which
had persuaded her to that course. 19
Meanwhile she had smuggled out the
Mirror of Naples as a peace offering to
her indignant brother, and accepted
whatever financial penalties he might
choose to impose. In spite of his anger,
Henry did not really want the Duke’s
head; he had too high a regard for him,
and therefore proved equally amenable
to Wolsey’s proffered solution. On 9
March Mary signed a document
assigning her whole dowry to Henry as
part of a financial settlement with the
King of France which was fully
satisfactory to the English. Francis had
come good on his offer of support, and
his negotiators had given way on a
whole range of topics. As Mary put it in
another letter, ‘The French king speaketh
very kind words unto me [because] he
hath a special mind to have peace with
your grace before any Prince of
Christendom.’ 20
The success of Suffolk’s diplomacy
compensated to some extent for his faux
p a s over the marriage. In addition to
paying the balance of the English King’s
pension, as Louis had earlier agreed,
Francis accepted an obligation to pay
Mary £40,000 a year as her dower, and
to repay the 200,000 crowns which she
had brought with her in dowry. He also
allowed her to take back to England all
the jewels and plate which she had
brought with her on her arrival in
France, although not those which had
been given to her subsequently. The fact
that the Mirror of Napes had already
been sent to England remained as a bone
of contention, and nothing was said
about the future of Tournai, which the
French King had been keen to recover. 21
These matters being settled, it was
intimated to the Duke and his wife that
the King’s anger was sufficiently
mitigated to allow them to return to
England, and they left Paris on 16 April.
Before going, Mary signed receipts for
20,000 crowns in travelling expenses,
200,000 crowns for her dowry, and for
the Mirror of Naples. The fact that she
was required to sign a separate receipt
for the latter indicates its importance as
an unresolved issue. By this time Mary
and Suffolk had undergone a second and
more public wedding in Paris on 31
March, and Louise of Savoy noted in her
journal that the Duke, ‘homme de bonne
condition’ whom Henry had sent as
ambassador to Francis, had wedded
Mary, the widow of Louis XII. 22 There
could now be no denying the fact of their
union, and Louise, no doubt with a sense
of relief, noted their departure for
England just over a fortnight later. Mary,
however, was still sore that she had
been required to seek the King’s
forgiveness for an action which she
believed he had sanctioned in advance.
On 30 April, just before leaving Calais,
she had written to her brother with some
indignation, reminding him again that she
had been ‘contented and agreeable’ to
her marriage with Louis only on the
condition that should she chance to
outlive him ‘I might with your good will
freely choose and dispose myself to any
other marriage at my liberty’ without
incurring his displeasure, ‘wherunto ye
condescended and granted as you well
know’. Whatever promises Suffolk had
made, Mary clearly felt that the King
was equally bound, and that his
indignation was not conducive to his
honour. 23 Whether he was moved by her
reprimand or not, when the couple
landed at Dover on 2 May, the King
awaited them at nearby Birling House,
with a great and honourable retinue, and
he graciously accepted her explanation
that she had been entirely responsible
for what had happened in France. The
Howards, who had hoped to seize the
opportunity created by the King’s rage to
break Suffolk’s special relationship with
Henry, were disappointed of their prey,
and constrained to feign friendship,
which probably deceived no one but
was necessary to the harmony of the
court. 24
Wolsey, meanwhile, was anxious to
take the credit for having smoothed the
ruffled feathers of his indignant master.
He had played on Henry’s greed, and set
up a financial settlement with the
Suffolks which placed them at the King’s
mercy for the foreseeable future. Mary
was required to pay £2,000 a year for
the next twelve years, or until the sum of
£24,000 had been discharged, while the
Duke had to forfeit the wardship of
Elizabeth Lisle, and they were jointly
bound in the huge recognisance of
£100,000 to give up all the plate and
jewels which the Queen Dowager had
received. 25 The jewels were indeed
surrendered, but the repayments of the
debt were but slackly enforced.
According to one account only £1,324
had actually been paid by 1521, which
suggests that Wolsey was satisfied with
having made his point, and was not
anxious to pursue them. 26 These matters
being settled to the King’s satisfaction,
the couple were then married for a third
time in a formal ceremony held at
Greenwich on 13 May in the presence of
the King and Queen. Mary was now, in
the sight of the court and of the world,
the Duchess of Suffolk.
The man to whom she had
committed herself had risen through the
ranks of the aristocracy. His grandfather,
Sir William Brandon, had been the first
of his line to emerge from the obscurity
of a Norfolk merchant family. He had
done so in the service of John de
Mowbray, Duke of Norfolk, who had
died in 1476. The Duke had rewarded
him with local offices, with a seat in
Parliament, and with a marriage to
Elizabeth Wingfield, the daughter of a
more senior Mowbray servant. Before
the Duke died, and presumably with his
blessing, Brandon secured a place in the
service of the Crown, first of Henry VI
and subsequently of Edward IV. 27 After
Mowbray’s death, he remained in the
royal service, and like most of the
Duke’s affinity, did not move on to serve
the Howards. Like many of Edward’s
household retainers, he gambled on the
overthrow of Richard III and his eldest
son, another William, died fighting for
Henry at Bosworth. Sir William himself
enjoyed a trusted place in the local
government of Suffolk until his death in
1491, when his second son, Sir Robert,
inherited his East Anglian lands and
influence. 28 Charles, who was born in
1484, was the son of that William who
had died at Bosworth, but thanks to the
accidents of mortality inherited virtually
no lands. His uncle Robert, who was by
all accounts a quarrelsome individual,
was little help to him beyond giving him
an introduction into Suffolk gentry
society. His mother had been an heiress,
but her property passed on her death to
her son by a previous marriage, and
Charles’s attempts to recover that small
proportion which should have come to
him were unsuccessful. Neither in 1504
nor 1509 did he hold that £40 a year in
lands which would have required him to
seek the honour of knighthood. Charles
owed his introduction to the court to his
younger uncle, Sir Thomas, who had
followed his father in the royal
household. Thomas had become an
Esquire of the Body by 1489, and in the
1490s had been an extremely active
courtier, taking part in jousts and in the
King’s revels. He became Master of the
Horse in 1501, and in that capacity
commanded quite a lot of patronage. 29
One of the beneficiaries of this was his
nephew, Charles, who attended on
Prince Arthur in some unnamed capacity
at his wedding, and shortly afterwards
appears as a sewer in the royal
household. By the time he was twenty-
one, in 1505, he had become Master of
the Horse to the Earl of Essex who was
a prominent courtier, and played a
leading part in the jousts which were
organised in 1506. He was made an
Esquire of the Body in 1507, and seems
to have become friendly with the Prince
of Wales at that point. 30 Perhaps
because of this, as well as his
connection with Essex, when Henry VIII
established his band of spears in
October 1509, with Essex as Lieutenant,
Charles Brandon became a member.
This in itself was of no great
significance, but by that time he had
become close to two of Henry’s other
favourites, Thomas Knyvett and Edward
Howard, and the three of them featured
prominently in the numerous court jousts
which were organised between 1509
and 1511, usually jousting on the King’s
side. 31 By the time that his uncle Sir
Thomas died in January 1510, Charles
was well established in the King’s
favour in his own right, and the death of
his one-time patron made no significant
difference to him.
The martial ardour of this trio
probably encouraged the King in his
pursuit of war with France in 1512, and
certainly did nothing to restrain him, but
the actual development of hostilities did
not correspond with the chivalric dream.
At the beginning of August 1512
Brandon and Sir Henry Guildford were
entrusted with the command of troops for
Sir Edward Howard’s attack on
Brittany. However, the ship in which
they were placed was unable to
intervene when Sir Thomas Knyvett’s
Regent was grappled by the Cordeliere
out of Brest. The Cordeliere ’s magazine
exploded, and Knyvett, along with most
of his crew were killed. 32 He had been
granted that command as a special mark
of royal favour, and his death affected
his companions deeply. Howard indeed
vowed that he would never look the
King in the face again until he had
avenged him, a vow which led indirectly
to his own death in action in the
following year. He tried, with
inadequate support, to take out the
French galleys which were defending the
Breton coast, and was thrust over the
side and drowned. 33 Henry was deeply
distressed by the loss of two of his three
chosen companions, but the
consequences for the survivor were
wholly beneficial. In the short term he
was equally distressed, acting as
executor for his ‘special trusty friend’
and receiving the chain which had held
the Lord Admiral’s whistle until he had
cast it away shortly before his death.
However, with the departure of Howard,
Charles had also lost the only man who
consistently outshone him both in the
court and in war, and it was natural that
in consequence he should become the
King’s closest friend. From 1512 to
1514 he took on the distinctive role
which that position implied. No one took
part in more disguisings or jousts than he
did, and no one was so closely matched
with Henry in apparel. It is significant
that both Howard and Brandon were
elected to the Order of the Garter on 23
April 1513, but because of the former’s
continued absence at sea, he did not
receive his award, and on account of his
death in early May never achieved it. 34
In both April and May Brandon received
important grants from the King, and set
the seal upon his now unique position. It
would appear that he had already
secured supremacy in the lists, because
Howard’s failure to return to the court
after Knyvett’s death had left him
without a serious rival. On 1 June 1512
he and Henry challenged alone together
for the first time, and this was to be
repeated on numerous occasions over
the next two years. 35
Charles Brandon had first entered
the lists as soon as he entered the court.
In 1501 he was noted as performing well
in the splendid tournament of that year.
At seventeen, he must have been just
about the youngest participant, and
thereafter he went from strength to
strength. The only esquire among the six
challengers at the coronation jousts in
1509, thereafter he was a regular
member of the team of three or four
challengers led by the King, and was
always at the centre of the allegorical
displays which characterised these
performances. 36 So how good a jouster
was he? Good enough, it would seem, to
beat every opponent who came against
him, except the King. Contemporary
accounts need to be treated with caution,
because their usual purpose was to
glorify Henry, and Brandon seems not to
have jousted against Sir Edward
Howard, perhaps for good reason.
Jousting is a sport in which the
contestants need to be evenly matched,
and in which it is quite possible for the
skilful to fake a result. So we should
probably conclude that Charles was
adept enough to let the King win without
sacrificing any of his credibility. 37 This
appears to have happened in February
1511, when in the last two runs he failed
to score, leaving Henry with a victory
which was apparently hard fought, and
the glory which he always sought.
During celebratory jousts at Tournai in
October 1513, the King and Brandon
wore identical costumes, ‘a remarkable
thing’ as one commentator noted, and a
clear indication that Charles now
reigned supreme as Henry’s favourite. 38
Another indication of the same thing was
the number of well-paid and significant
offices which he collected. As early as
November 1511 he had been granted the
position of Marshall of the Household,
jointly in survivorship with Sir John
Carew, and when Carew was killed
alongside Sir Thomas Knyvett in 1512,
Brandon was left in sole possession. A
lucrative position, this also carried with
it considerable influence in Southwark,
where the Marshalsea court was
situated, and a principal responsibility
for the King’s personal security, a matter
for which a good personal relationship
with the monarch was essential. 39 In
April 1512 he was also given a life
grant of the office of Ranger of the New
Forest, and took part in the King’s hunts
whenever his pleasure took him in that
direction. This was also a position
which carried a number of valuable
perquisites. The following month
Charles became Keeper of Wanstead in
Essex, where the King also hunted, and
his sister Mary was in residence from
time to time, although how much
advantage Brandon took of that
circumstance we do not know. Then, on
6 October 1512, he was granted the
prestigious office of Master of the
Horse, his uncle’s old position which
had been held since 1510 by Sir Thomas
Knyvett. This carried with it the right to
appoint to all the inferior posts within
the stables, but only when they fell
vacant, which tended not to happen very
often as these were desirable
appointments. 40 Although not the most
important of household positions, the
Mastership carried with it special rights
of access to the King, and a place close
behind Henry when he rode in
procession, which was frequently. The
Master of the Horse was the King’s
esquire, and this carried particular
prestige in the Low Countries because
the Burgundian equivalent was a much
more magnificent personage.
Brandon’s prominence was
reflected in May 1513 in his
appointment to command an expedition
against Brittany designed to revenge the
death of Sir Edward Howard. Because
of divided councils and administrative
mismanagement the raid never actually
took place, and Lord Thomas Howard,
who had succeeded his brother Sir
Edward as Lord Admiral, blamed
Brandon. This was an unfair
simplification of a very complex
situation, but it led to a falling out
between the two men which was to be of
lasting significance. 41 Howard was,
however, right in one respect; that
Charles Brandon had neither the status
nor the experience for such a senior
command, which carried with it
authority over such seasoned warriors as
Sir William Sandys and Sir Maurice
Berkeley. These had, admittedly, blotted
their copy books during the Guienne
campaign of the previous summer, and
the need to redeem themselves may have
made them amenable, but the fact
remained that Brandon was a tyro. 42 It
was partly to compensate for this fact
that Henry created him Viscount Lisle on
15 May, when his appointment was
announced, but his ‘fire new stamp of
honour’ would hardly have been current
during the campaign, if it had ever
happened. It stood him in good stead,
however, during the expedition in which
he did take part: the Army Royal which
Henry led in person to Picardy at the end
of July. There was no question of
Brandon being in overall command on
this occasion, but he did lead the
vanguard of the King’s ward – a little
over 3,000 men – and was High
Marshall of the whole army, with
responsibility for its discipline. His
court sat thrice a week throughout the
campaign, and had jurisdiction over all
ranks, being particularly concerned with
disputes between captains and their men.
In this capacity he performed well, and
the good discipline of the army was
much commented upon. 43 When he
commended himself to Henry’s ally,
Margaret of Austria, Brandon was
described as the ‘second man’ of the
army, and when Tournai was captured,
Henry briefly handed it over to his
friend to search and guard the city and to
be responsible for law and order until
Sir Edward Poynings took over as
Lieutenant. 44
By the autumn of 1513 Viscount
Lisle was clearly Henry’s leading
courtier, yet he was living from hand to
mouth because of the expensiveness of
life at court. He had owed Henry VII
£70 on the latter’s death, and had to
exploit the offices he held for all they
were worth – £300 a year from his
Welsh holdings, £100 a year from the
Mastership of the Horse, and so on,
down to £6 13 s 4 d as an annuity on part
of his ward Elizabeth Grey’s estate. Of
course his proximity to the King brought
him patronage, and encouraged
inducements from potential suitors, even
extending as far as a ‘retainer’ of £100 a
year from the Countess of Salisbury.
However, most of these gifts were
unpredictable assets, and Brandon’s
regular income was never quite
sufficient to cover his increasing
commitments. 45 The fact is that he did
not command a large and coherent
landed inheritance, and the lands that he
did hold were on insecure tenures or the
result of wardships which would soon
come to an end. Henry gave him 20
marks a year when he created him
Viscount Lisle, but that was an
insignificant sum, and for some reason
the King was not generous with grants of
real estate. Many were therefore
surprised, and indeed shocked, when
Viscount Lisle was raised to the
dukedom of Suffolk on 1 February 1514.
The King gave him an additional annuity
of £40, but that was little enough to
support his new dignity, and it may well
be that the Earl of Surrey, created Duke
of Norfolk at the same time, regarded
him with a certain contempt. Surrey had
been elevated as a reward for his
victory at Flodden, and Suffolk
ostensibly for his role in the King’s
victory in France, but there was no
comparison between their resources.
Norfolk was a peer of the old school,
with lineage and wide estates; Suffolk
was a creation of a different kind, for
services to the King in his personal
capacity as a friend and companion. 46 It
is highly unlikely that Henry had
considered repairing his friend’s fortune
by marrying him to his sister, whatever
the popular voice may afterwards have
said. His power, moreover, remained
that of a courtier and confidant, very
much to the fore in ceremonies, but not
conspicuous for his attendance at the
council. That aspect of service he was
content to leave to Thomas Wolsey, who
had risen spectacularly in the King’s
confidence as a result of his handling of
the logistics in 1513. This division of
responsibility suited both of them very
well, and in spite of disagreements over
the Tournai campaign, they apparently
worked in close co-operation. This
relationship was to prove very useful to
both of them when Brandon was sent in
embassy to France in the autumn of
1514. 47
Meanwhile the Duke of Suffolk’s
matrimonial history was colourful and
complicated; indeed it was not entirely
clear that he was free to marry Mary
when the opportunity presented itself.
He had set off in this direction in 1503,
when at the age of nineteen he had
confessed his love for Anne Browne, the
daughter of Sir Anthony Browne.
Charles and Anne were betrothed before
the council of his then patron the Earl of
Essex, and she became pregnant. A
marriage so entered into and
consummated should have been binding,
but within months Brandon had
abandoned his bride and married Dame
Margaret Mortimer, a woman twenty
years his senior and well endowed with
property. On 7 February 1507 he had
licence to enter upon her lands, which he
promptly began to sell. 48 Having
apparently got what he wanted out of this
relationship, he then had the marriage
annulled on the grounds of
consanguinity, and returned to Anne, by
that time the mother of his daughter. He
married her secretly early in 1508, but
her family were not satisfied that he
would not take advantage of this secrecy
to use her as he had before, and insisted
upon a public ceremony. This was held
after Easter at St Michael’s Cornhill in
the presence of a substantial number of
responsible witnesses – just to be on the
safe side. Anne bore Brandon a second
daughter, but died of the after-effects in
the summer of 1510. Charles then
entered into a contract of marriage, per
verba de futuro , with Elizabeth, Lady
Lisle, whose wardship he had been
granted. 49 However, Elizabeth was only
eight, and it seems unlikely that the
twenty-seven-year-old Brandon intended
to wait for her to grow up, so the
contract between them was not binding.
When the army was in Picardy in the late
summer of 1513, he commenced a
flirtation with no less formidable a lady
than the Regent of the Netherlands,
Margaret of Austria. This was taken
seriously by some continental observers,
who noted that he had proffered his
services to her, without explaining
exactly what that meant. She spent
lavishly in entertaining him; they danced
all night and exchanged rings in the
classic mode of the courtly love ritual.
On one occasion he filched a ring from
her, and declined to return it, which was
another courtly love device. Although
she was only slightly older than
Brandon, she was a tough widow and
never had the slightest intention of
marrying him. 50 However, their games
were widely misinterpreted, much to her
embarrassment, and the anger of her
father, the Emperor Maximilian. Henry
was forced to threaten death to anyone
who spread such rumours in England,
and cancelled Brandon’s commission to
raise troops in the Low Countries in
1514. What he was not prepared to do
was to order Charles to honour his
contract with Lady Lisle, in spite of
having conferred the viscountcy on him
in her name. 51 It may be that by early
1514 he had a different matrimonial
destiny in mind for his friend.
By the time that Suffolk married
Mary in February 1515, his power was
great, and his influence greater still, but
its base was fragile. He controlled
relatively little land, and most of that
was linked to Elizabeth Lisle’s
wardship which he had to surrender as
part of his deal with the King. Nor was
he in any position to create an affinity,
being seriously short of manred . His
position in Wales was strong in theory,
but only in the marches did he hold any
effective authority. His offices paid
well, but gave him no gravitas in
council, and his influence in government
depended entirely upon his relationship
with the King, and that favour was a
mixed blessing. His success as a
courtier had raised jealousy and enmity,
and he needed good marriage to
consolidate his position. That, for a
variety of reasons he had managed to
obtain by May 1515. Unfortunately one
of Mary’s last actions as Queen
Dowager before she left France had
been to seal an instrument transferring
all her jewels and other possessions to
her brother, which left her in theory
penniless. 52 In practice it made her
dependent on Francis for the payments
from her dower lands, which for the time
being he maintained in full, making her
husband dependent upon her for the bulk
of his income, which was not a situation
conducive to his peace of mind. For a
while, following their third wedding, the
couple kept a relatively low profile,
perhaps as a result of emotional
exhaustion, as much as by conscious
choice. However, Mary was twenty
years old, and by nature resilient, while
the Duke needed to demonstrate the
extent to which he had recovered the
King’s favour. So before the end of the
year their chief concern was to resume
their normal position in the life of the
court. 53 This they largely succeeded in
doing, Brandon taking his accustomed
place in the lists in October and
November, and Mary decorating the
revels as she had been wont to do before
her French adventure. Henry’s attitude
towards his favourite was curiously
ambivalent, because in spite of the
severity of the financial settlement, and
the very evident signs of his anger, in
February 1515 he had granted him
almost the whole of the de la Pole
estates, and made no attempt to cancel
that grant when the fact of his marriage
became known. 54 In fact this meant
mainly reversionary rights, because the
King had already granted many of the
manors for terms of lives or years, and if
Brandon wanted to gain immediate
access, this meant buying out the
holders. This his agents had begun doing
before he returned from France,
borrowing heavily in the process, so that
he was forced to slow down on this
acquisitive process after he came back.
However, establishing himself as a
magnate in the place of the de la Poles
became a major concern of Brandon’s
during the summer of 1515, and he took
advantage of the fact that Henry was
hunting in Suffolk in July, both to visit
the court and to conduct a personal
progress around East Anglia. 55 In this he
was accompanied by his wife, who
made something of a triumph of the tour,
being met with royal honours at Butley
Priory, and a receiving a huge array of
presents at both Norwich and Great
Yarmouth. The Duke’s status was further
enhanced when Nicholas West, the
Bishop of Ely made him Steward of the
estates of the diocese in December
1515. Suffolk deliberately set out to
replace the de la Poles and by early
1516 was well on his way to success. 56
He featured regularly on royal
commissions in East Anglia, and may
well have felt that time spent away from
the court in the autumn of 1515 had not
been wasted. Whether the French Queen
shared this sentiment is not known, but
within a year of their return to England
in virtual disgrace, Mary and Brandon
had settled down in London as before,
and had resumed their life at court as
though they had never been away.
‘Henry,’ as was commented at the time,
‘loved a man’, and no one reflected the
King’s glory as efficiently as the Duke of
Suffolk. On 9 September 1516 Mary
wrote to her ‘Right dear and right
entirely beloved brother’ expressing her
pleasure that the King was planning to
visit the Duke’s manor of Donnington,
and that he had willed the Duke and
Duchess to be there to receive him,
‘much comforted that it hath pleased
your grace to be pleased’ to show them
that especial mark of his favour. The
clouds of the previous year had been
thoroughly dispersed, and the sun shone
again on Henry’s favourite sister. 57
6
MARY, SUFFOLK &
THE KING
Suffolk’s marriage to Mary brought
about significant changes in his life. Any
child born to the couple would have a
claim to the throne, and that inevitably
enhanced his status. It also carried with
it the automatic right to be housed in the
court, wherever that was located,
including Henry’s temporary palace at
the Field of Cloth of Gold. 1 However,
there were disadvantages in being
consistently outshone by his wife.
Technically, she needed his
authorisation to dispose of her goods,
but in their joint agreement with the
King, it was her name which appeared
first, and her seal was twice the size of
his. When her jointure was determined
by Act of Parliament, it included not
only all of the de la Pole manors which
had been granted to Suffolk, but also a
number which he held only in reversion.
2 Between 1515 and 1519 his landed

income was around £3,000 a year, but he

lost the lands of the Lisle wardship by
1519, and those of Corbet and Sayle in
1522, reducing his income by about half.
Of course he also enjoyed the income
from his various offices, but this is hard
to calculate and would not have been as
much as £1,500. His financial affairs
were complicated by the fact that he
borrowed £12,000 from the Crown in
1515 and 1516. For this he managed to
secure the backing of Italian bankers on
the strength of his royal connections, and
he seems to have used those connections
to ensure that he was not pressed for
repayment. He stalled on other creditors,
and between 1513 and 1523 borrowed
an additional £3,000 from the revenues
of North Wales, to which he had access
by virtue of his offices. From all this it
appears that Suffolk was living beyond
his means, or would have been if it had
not been for the £4,000 a year which
derived from Mary’s dower lands in
France, and the fact that her repayments
to the King were not strictly enforced
either. For these and other reasons, the
Duke felt himself deeply indebted to the
King of France, and consistently argued
for the meeting between the monarchs
which came to fruition in 1520. 3 This
was all very well when relations
between them were good, but when they
became strained in 1516 and 1517,
Suffolk became something of an
embarrassment.
Mary kept her own establishment,
complete with ladies and gentlewomen
of the Privy Chamber, and various
chamber servants to the number of about
100, which must have absorbed a fair
amount of her income, but rather
surprisingly only a handful of them
appear to have been French. One who
was was Martin Dupin, who had been an
English denizen from 1512, and who
appears to have been a double agent. In
1515 he was in Suffolk’s service in
Paris, ostensibly buying wines for
Wolsey, but in 1517 he was in receipt of
a French pension of 300 crowns a year
for some undisclosed service, so that
suspicions which focussed on the
Suffolks’ establishment appear to have
had some justification. 4 Mary’s English
servants were also often in France, and
William Fellowe was actually there
attempting to sell off some of the 200 or
more judicial offices which were at her
disposal through her dower lands, when
the outbreak of war forced his hasty
retreat. For his part, Suffolk made no
secret of his Francophilia, and cut his
links with Margaret of Austria
immediately after his marriage, recalling
Anne, his twelve-year-old daughter,
from her service. In his new
circumstances he was naturally keen to
draw a line under the rumours of a
liaison with the Archduchess which his
behaviour in 1513 had provoked. 5
Francis naturally used him as a point of
contact within the English Council, and
the Duke seems to have undertaken this
role willingly enough. When the news of
the Battle of Marignano arrived in
September 1515, Henry was furious at
having been so comprehensively
upstaged, but Suffolk assured the
messenger that he was ‘as glad of the
prosperity of the king my master as any
man in the kingdom of France’, and
invited him to his house in Southwark.
There he assured the envoy that the
English threats of war were a sham, and
in other ways undermined the King’s
foreign policy, to Wolsey’s acute
indignation. 6 He was not excluded from
the Council when it was discussing anti-
French policies, and was even critical of
the French on some occasions, but when
he began to interfere in Scottish affairs
he did find himself cut out of the
decision-making process. By the autumn
of 1515 the pro-French Duke of Albany
was established as Regent there, and
Mary and Suffolk wrote to him jointly to
encourage a peaceful settlement of the
troubled affairs of that kingdom. This
was innocuous enough, but Albany took
to sending his envoys into England to
visit them first, and even informed
Wolsey that he should seek the truth of
border disputes from the Suffolks rather
than from the English officials there. 7
The Cardinal objected to this
interference, and Brandon found himself
excluded. His wife’s role was simply
ignored, although it was probably
decisive in forming his attitude to
Scotland, no less than to France. The
fact that Mary’s dower payments out of
France were received erratically, even
before the outbreak of war in 1522,
necessitated the constant renegotiation of
the Suffolks’ agreement with Henry VIII.
Without a regular income of £4,000 from
her dower lands, there was no way in
which Mary could afford the £2,000
which was due. Consequently in
December 1516 the terms were
modified, so that the repayments were
reduced, and could cease altogether if
the dower were interrupted, in spite of
(or perhaps because of) the fact that
none of the original payments had yet
been made. 8 However, Wolsey clearly
used these regular renegotiations as a
means of political control, and in May
1517 he tightened up the arrangement.
Mary’s payments stayed at 2,000 marks
(assuming her dower had arrived), but
the Duke was now required to pay 500
marks towards his own debt,
irrespective of what was received from
France, and Mary was constrained to
bequeath all her jewels and plate to the
King in the event of her death, instead of
to her husband. Two thousand marks’
worth of jewels were handed over when
the agreement was sealed, in earnest of
good intentions, and the Suffolks’
indebtedness was subtly increased by
charging them £600 for lodgings at court,
although whether the King was aware of
this tariff on his hospitality remains
unclear. 9
However, all this was a burden in
theory rather than practice as long as the
Duke remained in favour. In July 1518 it
was admitted that the indenture signed in
1517 had not been adhered to because of
their ‘especyall sute made unto his
grace’. He was away from the court and
the Council from May 1516 to February
1517, and this was widely interpreted as
a sign of disfavour. However it appears
not to have been the case, and probably
represents an attempt by Wolsey to
prevent him from interfering in the
delicate state of Anglo-French relations.
Henry visited the Duke at Donnington
during his summer progress, and in
August 1516 conferred on him (at a
preferential rate) the wardships of the
two sons of Sir Thomas Knyvett, who
had died aboard the Regent four years
e a r l i e r. 10 Both of these were
unmistakable signs of approbation, as
was the fact that Mary shared the top
table with the King, the Queen and the
Cardinal at a special banquet held in
honour of the Emperor’s ambassadors in
July 1517. Mary must have understood
the political significance of the
occasion, but was not going to have
scruples about accepting so honourable
an invitation. The fact that Suffolk was
active in the Council both before and
after his absence, and that Henry chose
to invite the Suffolks to court at Easter
1516, reinforces the view that it was
Wolsey who was responsible for the
Duke’s absence. 11 However, by 1518
the political wind had changed direction,
and the Cardinal was secretly
negotiating a rapprochement with
France. This made the Duke’s presence
in the Council desirable, and although
Wolsey seems to have kept him in the
dark over the progress of the
negotiations, in that respect he was in no
worse a condition than the majority of
his colleagues. It may also have been for
that reason that Wolsey apparently
arranged for the Suffolks to spend the
Easter of 1518 at the court, which kept
the feast at Abingdon in that year. On 27
March Richard Pace, the King’s
secretary and the Cardinal’s man of
business, wrote to say that they were
expected before Easter, which fell on 4
April that year, and they arrived on the
1st. 12 It suited the Cardinal very well to
have the Duke at Abingdon while he got
on with his business in London, and
when Suffolk wrote to him on 30 April
to say that their departure would have to
be delayed because his wife had an
ague, he was no doubt pleased enough. It
may be that the Duke had earned his
exclusion from the negotiations by
intimating to the French ambassador that
his master would be willing to surrender
Tournai. If this was the case, it would
have seriously undermined Wolsey’s
bargaining position, and would account
for the coolness between them. Suffolk
denied to the King that he had ever made
any such suggestion, but found the
Cardinal harder to persuade, and during
their enforced stay at Abingdon wrote
several times to plead his case. 13 He
kept this bombardment up during June
and July, and it was not until the end of
the latter month that he was reassured
that Wolsey was again his ‘good lord
and friend’. He had travelled from Bury
St Edmunds to Enfield to confirm this
news, and found the Cardinal, who had
now secured his treaty with France, in a
forgiving mood. He had in any case sold
Tournai back to the French, so the point
of his former indignation would have
been rather lost. In order to confirm their
renewed friendship, Wolsey negotiated a
settlement between Suffolk and the Earl
of Surrey, probably over the de la Pole
estate, which seems to have thoroughly
restored the former’s peace of mind. 14
While this was still going on, as
though to demonstrate their continued
closeness to the royal couple, the French
Queen and the Duke of Suffolk were
admitted along with the King and Queen,
into the Order of the Canons Regular of
St Austin in a Chapter held at Leicester
on 16 June. Apart from being a sign of
their accepted piety, this had no
particular significance beyond obliging
them from time to time to act as patrons
of the order, an obligation which they do
not seem to have discharged with any
enthusiasm. 15 It may also have been that
their admission was arranged by the
King, in order to demonstrate his
continued favour, because Suffolk was
undoubtedly finding it difficult to
maintain good relations with both Henry
and Wolsey, especially when they were
apart and apparently pursuing separate
policies. In late July 1518 the King
stayed at Wanstead, of which Suffolk
was still the Keeper, and enjoyed the
Duke’s hospitality, a circumstance
which constrained Brandon to reject an
invitation from Wolsey to visit him in
London. Uneasy is the position of a man
who serves two masters! The renewal of
Anglo-French friendship undoubtedly
relieved the pressure on Suffolk’s
resources, because it led to the regular
payment of his wife’s dower ‘in which
restith much of her honour and profit,
and mine also’, as he confessed. 16
During the period of tension he had been
constrained to entrust a confidential plea
over this to Sir Thomas Boleyn, the
ambassador in France, but such secret
dealings were now needed no longer.
The French Queen and the Duke were at
the centre of the Anglo-French
ceremonies and festivities. He
reappeared as a leading councillor, and
provided a lavish banquet for the whole
French embassy. As far as Suffolk was
concerned, it was back to the situation of
1514–15, and although Wolsey’s
position was now far stronger than it had
been then, the King still chose to convey
his instructions relating to the French
hostages (or guests) to the Cardinal via
the Duke of Suffolk in January 1519, a
circumstance which may have taken the
Lord Chancellor aback. 17
Suffolk had not been entirely
ignored by powers other than France. At
a time of Anglo-French tension in 1516,
when there had been rumours of war, the
Emperor Maximilian had communicated
with him, and seems to have envisaged
him commanding an army against
France. However, nothing came of the
overtures, and when Maximilian’s
successor Charles V considered with his
council the desirability of offering
pensions to Englishmen, in December
1519, they agreed on Wolsey, Norfolk
and Worcester, but not the Duke of
Suffolk. 18 However, when relations
with France cooled again in 1521, the
Duke was assiduous in looking after the
Imperial ambassadors, and in May 1522
was one of that select band of courtiers
who accompanied Henry to meet
Charles at Canterbury. On 9 June both
sovereigns dined at Suffolk Place, and
hunted in the park there. In that same
year he secured an Imperial pension to
replace the one which he had lost out of
France on account of the war, and
succeeded to a remarkable degree in
placing his dependants on the same
pension list. Half of Charles’s English
pensioners were Suffolk protégés, who
had little to commend them except their
service to the Duke. 19 By the skilful
deployment of his position as a courtier,
the Duke had succeeded in convincing
the Emperor that his clientage was
worthy of support. This was a
remarkable turnaround in the space of
three years, and must reflect Brandon’s
growing international reputation as a
friend and confidant of Henry VIII. He
was a man whom it was no longer safe
to ignore.
His household was not particularly
large, although a number of these clients
were not household servants. It
expanded greatly on his marriage, and
his establishment became almost
indistinguishable from that of his wife.
Almost, but not quite, because Mary
brought with her a substantial number of
young ladies and gentlemen who had
been nurtured in her retinue, and various
kinsmen and women who had served her
in France, notably Elizabeth and Anne
Grey, George Brook the son of Lord
Cobham, and Humphrey the bastard son
of Lord Berners. 20 By 1524 Brandon
had fifty-one servants who were earning
more than 26 s 8 d each, and Mary may
have had twice as many. A little earlier
an old-fashioned noblemen like the Earl
of Oxford would have had more than a
hundred at that level, so given their
status the Suffolks were not over-
endowed with servants. 21 Nor did the
Duke at this stage use his household to
build a regional affinity. Most of his
estates were in East Anglia, but there is
a notable lack of East Anglian gentry
among his senior servants, his two
principal officers, Sir Thomas
Wentworth and Sir John Burton, both
coming from the West Riding of
Yorkshire. As usual with a major
household, there was steady throughput
of servants, a number going on after a
few years to other preferments, some, as
in the case of Richard Long, entering the
royal service, and others that of Sir
Richard Lovell with whom Brandon had
close connections. It was also a social
beehive, with a number of Mary’s young
ladies finding their marriage partners
among their fellows in the same
establishment, or in related households
such as that of John Gurney. 22 In the
early 1520s Suffolk’s household was
costing him about £1,000 a year in
wages, liveries and subsistence. This
was about the same proportion of his
income as that deployed by the Duke of
Buckingham, but was less grand in scale
because his resources were smaller.
Mary paid her own servants, which was
why she was in such extreme difficulties
when her French revenues did not
arrive, and why the accumulated debt of
the couple continued to rise. The Duke’s
council, which should have formed the
core of his household, is elusive.
Sometimes it seems to have worked in
London, keeping him informed about
events in the capital when he was not
there, but equally it appears as an
executive body in Suffolk, acting as a
contact between the Surveyor and the
Auditor on the one hand and the local
bailiffs on the other. 23 Sometimes the
Duke appears to have sent an individual
with executive powers rather than
working through the council, and even its
membership is shadowy.
In all this tangle of international
commitments and domestic management,
however, the most important of
Brandon’s tasks, and the one on which
all else depended, was to keep his place
by the King’s side. Henry’s confidence
and friendship were essential to him,
and in spite of the King’s affection for
his sister, this was an area in which he
was essentially on his own. This
produced occasional outbursts of acute
anxiety, particularly over the
renegotiations of his debt, and when he
was absent from the court he feared that
his place in the King’s jousts might even
be in jeopardy. During these absences,
notably in July 1516, he occasionally
wrote to Wolsey, asking him to keep the
King in mind that he ‘daily … desireth to
see his grace’. 24 However, it seems that
his anxiety was misplaced, because
when Suffolk was not at court, the
King’s martial feats were scaled down,
and he took to challenging alone rather
than finding a substitute companion in
arms. The Duke’s role in these
entertainments certainly changed, but that
was not due to any loss of favour –
rather the reverse. On 29 January and 19
and 20 May 1516, Suffolk was Henry’s
first aid, or fellow challenger, but by 7
July 1517 he had become the leader of
the answerers. The reason for this seems
to have lain in the events of 20 May,
when Suffolk had scored excellently and
the King’s performance by comparison
was feeble. Henry blamed his failure on
the poor quality of his adversaries, and
promised never to joust again ‘except it
be with as good a man as himself’. 25
The only man who certainly answered
that description was the Duke of Suffolk,
who thereafter became the leader of the
King’s opponents. So the pattern
changed, and Henry’s team came to
consist of the younger members of the
Privy Chamber, such as Sir Francis
Bryan, while the Duke’s aids consisted
of established court nobles such as the
Marquis of Dorset and the Earl of Essex.
However, this was an endorsement of
Suffolk’s position rather than the
reverse, and on 7 July the spectators
were particularly impressed by the
titanic battle between him and the King.
Hector and Achilles were invoked as
precedents, and at the end of the combat
the two contestants rode out of the ring
together, their struggle ended
symbolically in renewed brotherhood,
like that of Lancelot and Tristram. 26
This pattern continued for the jousts of
the next seven years until, following an
accident which could have caused Henry
serious injury, the Duke vowed never to
run against the King again. By that time
he was forty years old, and his jousting
days were in any case virtually over.
Henry’s confidence in his friend’s
ability was shown by his selection,
along with the Marquis of Dorset, to be
the King’s chief aids in the international
jousts at the Field of Cloth of Gold in
1520. Suffolk might be outshone in the
disguisings and other court revels of the
period, but never in the lists. His role in
these revels was usually confined to
dancing, although he occasionally
appeared with the King disguised as ‘an
ancient person’, to emphasise the youth
of Henry’s new companions. Mary also
took part in these celebrations, and in
other banquets and state occasions, her
beauty adding lustre to the scene, but her
role was essentially passive, except
when she led the dancing. However, her
presences at court served as a
counterpoint to those of her husband, and
a reminder to the King (if he ever
needed it) that his favourite jouster was
also his brother-in-law.
Wolsey’s great diplomatic triumph,
the Treaty of London of 1518, had
included a clause committing Henry and
Francis to a personal meeting in the
summer of 1519. 27 However, the death
of the Emperor Maximilian in March
necessitated an election, and since both
monarchs were candidates this meant the
postponement of the meeting until 1520.
By that time, however, the election of
Charles of Castile as the Emperor
Charles V had somewhat changed the
political agenda. Henry, always a shade
suspicious of Francis, decided that his
interests might be better served by an
understanding with the new Emperor,
and took advantage of the latter’s
intended voyage from Spain to invite
him to England. He duly arrived at the
beginning of May, and was lavishly
entertained, with hunting and banquets at
which the ‘beautiful Lady Mary, the
King’s sister, late Queen of France and
now consort of the Duke of Suffolk’
featured prominently. 28 The proceedings
were also graced by the appearance of
Queen Germaine, the widow of the King
of Aragon, and now the wife of the
Marquis of Brandenburg, who shared the
same status as Mary, and her husband
and the Duke of Suffolk feasted together.
However, it was Queen Mary rather than
Germaine or Catherine who led the
dancing on these occasions, and her
gracefulness was much commented upon.
The meetings were friendly and a good
understanding was reached. It was
arranged that the pair would meet again
following Henry’s encounter with the
French King, which was clearly
expected to be competitive rather than
amicable. Meanwhile Wolsey had been
busy arranging for that encounter, and
making sure that his master’s honour was
satisfied. 29 A site had been identified
between Guisnes and Ardres, and a
lavish temporary palace built to host the
English events of the encounter.
Workmen had been imported in large
numbers and provisions of every kind
laid on both for men and horses. No
expense had been spared. Meanwhile the
Emperor had almost outstayed his
welcome, and when he eventually parted
from the King at Canterbury on 30 May,
he went to Sandwich to embark, and
Henry, Catherine and Mary went the
same day to Dover for the same purpose.
30
There is some doubt how many
attendants Mary took with her to France.
The Duke of Suffolk was limited to
seventy, so we may assume that the
Queen took rather more, but no list
survives. The royal lists include the
Duke as attendant upon the King, but not
the French Queen, who presumably had
her own establishment. She does not
feature on the Queen’s ‘side’, which
includes only the Duchess of
Buckingham among fifty-seven
noblewomen and gentlewomen.
Catherine’s total entourage numbered
1,260 persons, including servants, while
Henry’s totalled a magnificent 4,544,
including 133 knights and noblemen. It
was reckoned that 3,223 horses would
be needed to mount and transport this
multitude and their goods. 31 Shortly
after their arrival in France it was noted
that the royal family rode in a
procession, with the Queen following
the King, and her ladies, who numbered
twenty in all, including the Queen of
France attendant upon her. Her English
contingent (slightly seasick) arrived at
Calais on 31 May to find the French
awaiting them with some impatience.
They should have been at Guisnes by 1
June, but Henry pleaded for some delay,
and they eventually arrived on the 7th, at
which point the kings ceremoniously
met, with much spurious bonhomie. 32
They then proceeded to the ‘feats of
arms’, the challenge for which had been
issued in mid-April and the site chosen a
month later. This had been most
carefully prepared, ‘appareled, ditched,
fortified and kepte of the one and of the
other partie by equall number’ so that
neither side could claim an advantage.
On the ‘tree of honour’ which dominated
the tiltyard, the kings’ shields were
placed tactfully side by side, and in the
jousts which followed each rode the
same number of courses, and broke the
same number of lances, a feat which
must have required great skill on both
sides. 33 The Duke of Suffolk, who had
been the leading English delegate in the
setting up of this tournament, did not,
apparently, distinguish himself as much
as had been expected. Some believed
that this was out of a desire not to
outshine his king, but in fact he had
sustained a minor injury to one of his
hands. There was also the consideration
that this was an occasion which
belonged to his wife, who was borne in
state to the tiltyard on 11 June in a litter
of cloth of gold, emblazoned with
monograms of L and M, supported by
Louis’ emblem of the porcupine. The
French welcomed their own Reine
Blanche, a genuine French
Englishwoman, to be preferred to
Henry’s Spanish wife, and so much more
beautiful than their own Queen Claude, a
sad little creature by comparison, 34
although magnificently attired. More
imposing on the French side was the
Queen Mother, Louise of Savoy, who
was supported by an ‘infinite number of
ladies’ all clad in crimson velvet and
cloth of gold. There was clearly an
unofficial beauty competition between
the ladies, because Mary was similarly
supported, and this was taken as
seriously as the martial emulation of the
gentlemen by the spectators. The
Italians, who may not have been
impartial observers, awarded the palm
to the French, but Mary was always
excepted from this generalisation. She
was beyond comparison the most lovely
lady on view. 35 Catherine might win
admiration for her exotic Spanish
headdress, because a fashion show was
all part of the fun, but because there was
no distinctive English style, the French
again carried off the palm, and Mary in
cloth of gold was again the exception.
On Saturday 16 June Francis went
to Guisnes to be entertained to dinner by
Catherine, and on the 17th Henry
returned the compliment, going to Ardres
to the hospitality of Queen Claude.
Beyond the fact that Francis was
accompanied by his mother, and was
clad in cloth of gold, we do not know
much about his advent, but at dinner he
sat opposite the Queen at a table which
was shared by Cardinal Wolsey and
Mary, the French Queen. 36 The company
was entertained by musicians drawn
from the King’s Musik and the Chapel
Royal, although it is doubtful whether
Francis (who was tone deaf) was as
appreciative as he should have been.
This entertainment was not held at
Guisnes Castle, which was too small,
but at the King’s temporary palace just
outside the town, and was a sumptuous
occasion, several banquets proceeding
simultaneously. The great hall was
occupied by tables hosting some 130
ladies, waited on by 20 gentlemen, a
custom which seems to have been
peculiar to the English. Elsewhere 200
gentlemen were feasted, while in yet
another room were entertained those
French nobles who had accompanied
their king – the Admiral, the Duke of
Bourbon and others. 37 When Henry went
to dine with Claude, he was
accompanied by his sister, her husband,
and by a party of masquers, nineteen
gentlemen in elaborate disguises. It was
apparently intended that the King should
dine alone, as an especial mark of
honour, but it is not clear that he did so,
since he summoned several French
nobles to keep him company. The Queen,
and the Duke and Duchess of Suffolk
meanwhile dined at a separate table,
both women, it was noted, wearing the
most sumptuous pearls. Presumably the
subject of the Mirror of Naples was not
raised! 38 Other banquets were held
elsewhere for the respective retinues,
and afterwards there was dancing, led
by Mary as the principal female guest,
and also, probably, the most
accomplished performer. The King then
led his gentlemen in a masque of youth
and age to entertain his hosts, which was
followed by more dancing and the
company returned to Guisnes still in
their masquing apparel, with their
minstrels playing them through the
streets. It is not known how Henry
performed in the dances, but if his
reputation is anything to go by, it would
have been boisterously. After a mass of
peace, at which Wolsey preached, and
an exchange of costly presents, on 25
June the English withdrew to Calais,
most of their overlarge retinues were
disbanded, and the King’s temporary
palace was demolished. 39 Henry waited
at Calais until 10 July, and then went to
his second scheduled meeting with the
Emperor at Gravelines. In spite of the
expressions of goodwill, nothing had
transpired at the Field of Cloth of Gold
which had changed his mind about the
desirability of a deal with Charles. In
fact the competitive edge which he had
been constrained to maintain had
probably reinforced his desire for an
understanding with this unassuming but
tough young man.
There had been some serious
political discussion at the Anglo-French
meeting, conducted mostly by Wolsey
with Francis’s council, which had
resulted in the confirmation of the
existing treaties between the countries,
and an agreement that the King’s
daughter Mary, then aged five, should in
due course marry the newly born
dauphin, Francis, an understanding
which sealed a friendship, but nothing
more. 40 Henry, in other words had been
faithful to the undertakings which he had
made at the Treaty of London. Nor was
he to break that faith in the discussions
which now ensued. This time he realised
that Charles would be accompanied by
his aunt, Margaret of Austria, and
decided to take his sister with him. That
he chose Mary rather than Catherine for
this role is curious, because Charles was
equally his wife’s nephew, while the
Duchess of Suffolk could command no
blood tie at all. It may have been that
what he really wanted was the
companionship of his friend, Charles
Brandon, and that Mary was invited as
an ‘accompanying person’, but it does
not look that way. 41 What happened was
that she met for the first time that ‘dear
aunt’ with whom she had corresponded
as Princess of Castile, and the man who
had almost become her first husband. It
must have been a curious meeting, but
we know nothing very much about it.
Henry stayed in Gravelines barely forty-
eight hours, time for some serious
talking, but not much time for
entertainment; nor is there any record of
the ladies putting on a show, as might
have been expected with Mary on the
scene. On 12 July he returned to Calais,
accompanied by the Emperor and his
aunt. This time an opportunity was found
for at least one banquet, held in the
newly built hall of the palace, but again,
apart from diplomatic discussions we do
not know what transpired. Since
Catherine was in Calais at the time,
presumably Mary faded into the
background. There was no treaty as a
result of these meetings, but a good
working relationship had been
established which was to bear fruit in
the following year. Meanwhile King
Henry was ostensibly on good terms
with both his powerful neighbours, a
situation which was not likely to endure
in face of the fact that Francis and
Charles were already squaring up to
each other in Italy, and that the
Emperor’s territories virtually
surrounded France. 42 The Gravelines
and Calais meetings had, however, made
it more likely that Henry would side
with Charles, a situation which the
Francophile Duke and Duchess of
Suffolk can only have regarded with
trepidation.
Mary was the better educated of the
two, and may well have been the more
intelligent. While the Duke maintained a
pro-French stand in the Council, when
he bothered to attend, his wife was a
channel for French cultural influences.
She dressed in the French fashion, and
patronised French artists and scholars,
notably ‘Master Ambrose’, who was a
painter in the service of Cardinal
Duprat. Ambrose produced some of the
finest work ever seen in England, and
that probably stimulated the King to
patronise Lucas Horenbout and Hans
Holbein, not wishing to be outshone by
his sister’s protégé. 43 The gardens at
Suffolk Place in Southwark and at
Westhorpe were laid out in the French
fashion under Mary’s influence and the
houses were among the best decorated of
any in England. Such a style was not
always popular, and it should be
remembered that it was for their ‘French
touches’ that the King’s minions were
disciplined in 1519, a move which used
to be attributed to Wolsey, but is now
thought to have been the work of the
whole Council. 44 There were certainly
many councillors, including the Duke of
Norfolk, who were opposed to Wolsey’s
pacific policy with regard to France, and
who welcomed the King’s decision to
ally with the Emperor which was
negotiated in August 1521. The Cardinal
was entrusted with the negotiation, not
because he sympathised with the
intention but simply because he was by
far the most experienced international
diplomat that England possessed, and
because he would always do the King’s
bidding once that had been made clear to
him. One of the features of this
agreement was that Charles agreed to
marry the King’s five-year-old daughter,
who was thus transferred from the
Dauphin to the Emperor. In view of the
age difference between them, it is
unlikely that Charles took this
commitment very seriously, although
Henry did (or pretended to). 45 The idea
of the Treaty of Bruges was the
Emperor’s, but Henry accepted it and
Wolsey had no option. At first its true
purpose was disguised under a screen of
mediation, but this was abandoned when
Charles paid another visit to England in
May 1522. Again there were lavish
entertainments and banquets, and when
he reached London on 6 June, he was
received by the King and it was noted
that places of honour were reserved for
the Duke of Suffolk and Marquis of
Brandenburg, both of whom were the
husbands of Queen Dowagers. Mary
played her usual part in the courtly
entertainments which accompanied the
visit, and her namesake the princess
danced, although Charles’s entourage
does not seem to have included any
women on this occasion. The Emperor
stayed for just over a month, and by the
time that he left Henry had committed
himself to war with France, a
commitment which was to be fulfilled in
the following year because it was
already too late for a campaign of
sufficient scale to be prepared during
that season. 46 Wolsey, who had
maintained the peace against the King’s
intermittent bellicosity for eight years,
had at last been overpowered by the
logic of events, and the Duke of Suffolk
found himself committed to a leading
military role against his old friends.
Mary faced the suspension of her dower
payments, and must have been
profoundly relieved by the let-out clause
in her agreement with the King, because
there was no way in which she could
have maintained her repayments in the
absence of her principal source of
revenue. It would be difficult enough to
manage her regular expenditure, and
further indebtedness loomed.
It was June 1523 before Henry was
sufficiently convinced by the Duke of
Bourbon’s threatened rebellion against
Francis I to commit an army to the field,
and the end of July before a fresh treaty
was signed between the King, the
Emperor and the Duke for a joint attack.
47 Despite his poverty and the lateness of

the season, it was therefore the end of

August when Henry launched 10,000
men, commanded by the Duke of Suffolk
from Calais, into Normandy. At first the
strategy was to capture Boulogne, but by
the middle of September Wolsey had
changed his mind, and began to urge
upon the King a direct attack on Paris.
This was because Bourbon had
convinced him of the feasibility of a co-
ordinated assault, involving himself,
Suffolk and the Emperor, which would
settle the issue at a single blow, rather
than the ‘dribbling war’ which had
hitherto been envisaged. 48 Eventually
Wolsey convinced Henry, and on 26
September the siege of Boulogne was
called off, and Suffolk was ordered to
lead his men direct to Paris. At first all
went well, and they advanced 75 miles
in three weeks, encountering only light
resistance. The King was enthusiastic,
and started to organise reinforcements to
keep the campaign going through the
winter. Margaret of Austria was pleased
because her southern borders were
protected while she annexed Friesland.
And then things started to go wrong. A
Spanish force had indeed crossed the
Pyrenees, but were so demoralised that
the French had no difficulty in containing
them. The Imperial thrust from the east
did not materialise at all, and Bourbon’s
rebellion collapsed in a matter of days.
49 As a result Paris was strengthened

against any possible attack, and Suffolk

was isolated and exposed. Margaret was
unable to provide either money or the
horsemen which had been promised, and
the Burgundian forces under van Buren,
upon whom the Duke had been heavily
dependent for strategic advice, began to
melt away. Suffolk was left with no
option but to retreat, and a spell of
freezing cold weather in November
completed his misery. With his men
dying of disease and frostbite, his
disciplinary system, which up until then
had functioned well, broke down, and it
was a disorganised rabble that arrived
back at the Channel ports in early
December. 50 Henry was mortified by
this news, and would not at first accept
it, until confirmatory detail persuaded
him of its truth. Suffolk had done his best
in impossible circumstances, and in the
wake of Margaret’s failure to support
him had declined to place garrisons in
her border fortresses to protect her
against French reprisals. Until the
November frosts ruined his control, he
had been a wise and responsible
commander, and the King did not blame
him for the failure. Generous rewards
would not have been appropriate, but the
Duke emerged from his French
adventure with his reputation for loyalty
and generalship undiminished, and his
martial enthusiasm undimmed. 51
This last was important, because
Charles V and Margaret were keen for
Henry to try again, and looked to
Brandon to lead any such attack.
However, English councils were
divided, and neither the Emperor nor his
niece had the money to pay for such a
expedition. Henry wavered. Early in
1524 he was bellicose, talking of
leading an army to France in person, and
of enforcing his claim to the French
throne, but by the spring as the financial
realities began to become apparent, his
ardour cooled. By the summer Wolsey
was conducting secret peace
negotiations with emissaries of Louise
of Savoy, and welcoming overtures from
Clement VII. He must have done this
with Henry’s knowledge, but by the late
summer the King was blowing hot again.
In August he was planning another army
of 9,000 foot and 1,500 horse, which
Suffolk was to command, and the Duke
set about making preparations. 52 He
chose councillors and captains, and
discussed arrangements for supplies and
the recruitment of mercenaries. All this
came to nothing, again because the
money was simply not available, and
there are signs that the Duke and
Duchess of Suffolk were moving in
different directions. Desperate to
recover her dower revenues, she was
supporting the peace initiative, and there
were rumours of lavish gifts to induce
her to intervene with her brother. If she
did so, her intercessions were of no
lasting effect. The Duke, on the other
hand, was an Imperial pensioner, and his
payments were up to date, so he had less
to lose by continuing the war, and more
to gain by shadowing the King as he
changed his mind. His appearances at
the Council in 1524 and 1525 were
erratic, but on the whole his interests lay
in continuing the conflict, and that was
what his continental friends in the
Imperial camp expected. 53 At the
beginning of 1525 Henry had virtually
given up; then came the news of the
Battle of Pavia. On 14 February
Francis’s army had been destroyed, and
the King himself captured. His kingdom
now appeared to be open to attack as
never before, and Henry’s enthusiasm
for forceful intervention was
immediately revived. ‘Now is the time,’
he said to an embassy from the Low
Countries, ‘for the Emperor and myself
to devise the means of getting full
satisfaction from France. Not an hour is
to be lost.’ 54 The Great Enterprise was
to be revived. Unfortunately, Charles
was unmoved. He had his own agenda
for exploiting his victory, and replied
that if Henry wanted a piece of France,
he was welcome to conquer it for
himself. This, it soon transpired, was
beyond the King’s means. Wolsey had
succeeded in getting a very grudging
subsidy out of Parliament in 1523, but
that was nowhere near enough to cover
the costs of a large military expedition,
and an attempt at a new exaction, called
the Amicable Grant, in 1525 failed
completely. 55 Disappointed by the
Emperor’s response, and frustrated of
his purpose by lack of means, the King
veered round again and accepted
Wolsey’s proposal to resurrect the
peace negotiations of the previous year.
In the present circumstances, any such
initiative was bound to be welcomed by
Louise of Savoy, acting as regent during
her son’s captivity. John Joachim, her
envoy of the previous year, returned to
London in June, and on 30 August a
solemn treaty was signed at the More,
Wolsey’s residence in Hertfordshire. 56
The Cardinal’s policy at this juncture
was complicated, but seems to have
been aimed at restoring a balance of
power between France and the Empire,
which meant putting together an anti-
Imperial alliance. The papacy and
several Italian states were involved in
this plan, which eventually took shape in
the form of the League of Cognac in
1526. This involved taking advantage of
Henry’s disillusionment with the
Emperor, and hopefully restoring him to
the kind of mediating position which he
had enjoyed in 1518. Such a bait was
necessary because by the terms of the
Treaty of the More, France had ceded no
territory to England, and that had been
one of Henry’s declared war aims. The
King’s honour required significant
concessions, and Louise agreed to
restore his pension, originally conceded
by Louis XII in 1514, together with the
payment of Mary’s dower. On 22
October Lorenzo Orio, a Venetian envoy
in London, reported that his colleague
Giovanni Giaochino had gone to Calais
to fetch the 50,000 ducats which were
due on the pension, together with 10,000
‘for Madame Mary, the King’s sister,
Queen Dowager of France’, to whom
also were restored her dower lands. The
latter were farmed to Giovanni, in an
arrangement which had still to be
confirmed, for 29,000 ducats a year. If
this worked, and there is good reason to
suppose that it did, this would have
given Mary an income of almost £10,000
a year. 57 Even with the necessary
deductions, this would have made her
one of the wealthiest peers in England,
significantly richer than her husband,
whose debt repayments she was now in
a position to assist. It is not surprising
that Suffolk, for all his military
ambitions, should have been an
enthusiastic supporter of the Treaty of
the More.
7
 THE DUCHESS &
HER CHILDREN
Despite the rumours of her pregnancy,
and the fears of the Duke in that respect,
it was 11 March 1516 before Mary gave
birth to her first child. 1 This suggests
conception in June or July of 1515, well
after their final marriage, and given the
passion of their early relationship,
indicates that she may have had some
contraceptive knowledge, which no
well-brought-up young lady was
supposed to possess. The birth put her in
good company, because her sister
Margaret, the Dowager Queen of Scots
and now the wife of Archibald, Earl of
Angus, although estranged from her
husband and a fugitive in England, had
been delivered at Harbottle Castle in
Northumberland on 8 October 1515; and
Queen Catherine, after years of
stillbirths and cot deaths, had at last
produced a healthy infant on 16
February. 2 Mary had the advantage,
however, because whereas both
Margaret and Catherine had borne
daughters, the Duchess of Suffolk had
borne a son, who, given the fact that
Henry had no male heir, might one day
stand in the succession to the throne. The
birth took place, not at Suffolk Place, but
in a house belonging to Cardinal Wolsey
just outside Temple Bar, called Bath
Place, which suggests that labour may
have come upon her unexpectedly. She
and the Duke were understandably
elated. Mary had now justified her
existence in the most traditional fashion,
and he was able for the time being to
forget the mounting burden of debt which
would one day have to be faced.
The child was christened Henry,
after the King, and the fact that he was
pleased to accept that indicated another
stage in the reconciliation between
brother and sister. The ceremony was
performed by John Fisher, Bishop of
Rochester, assisted by Thomas Ruthall
of Durham, and the King and Cardinal
Wolsey stood as godfathers. Catherine,
the Dowager Countess of Devon, and a
daughter of Edward IV, was godmother,
completing the royal credentials of this
most welcome addition to the family. 3
The christening took place in the hall at
Suffolk Place, with all the splendour of a
state occasion, and the Duke was
immensely gratified by this unmistakable
sign of his rehabilitation. The font was
specially warmed for the occasion, and
torches lit up the wall hangings with
their motif of red and white Tudor roses.
The only absentee from this splendid
occasion was Mary herself, who had not
yet been churched and who sat in the
nursery to receive her baby and his
presents, together with the
congratulations which were appropriate.
When the ceremony was over, the
procession moved from the hall to the
nursery along a specially fenced and
gravelled path, with various members of
the Suffolk household carrying the basin,
chrisom and other impedimenta. Lady
Anne Grey, suitably attended, bore the
infant himself, and Sir Humphrey
Banaster, Mary’s vice-chamberlain, his
train. Spices and wine were then served
by the Duke of Norfolk and other
attendant peers, and the sponsor’s gifts
were presented. The King gave a salt
cellar and a cup of solid gold, and Lady
Catherine two silver gilt pots, which
were none the less welcome for not
being of the slightest interest to the
young prince, who presumably slept
soundly through this part of the
proceedings. 4
The Duke could ill afford the
expense of a London season, but Mary
had her own resources, and in any case
he could hardly deny her the pleasure of
a reunion with her sister, who was due
to visit the court at the end of April.
They had not met since 1503, when they
had both been children, and their
meeting was expected to be the cause of
much celebration. In fact they might have
had difficulty in recognising each other,
because although Mary was still
exceptionally beautiful, thirteen years
and several pregnancies had coarsened
Margaret, who had never matched her
sister for looks, and now retained little
of her youth beyond her passionate
nature. She was vain, and inconsiderate
of others, with a fierce temper – more
like her brother, in fact. Her vanity took
the form of an extraordinary fondness for
fine apparel, and Henry was told that the
dresses which he had sent as a present to
Northumberland after the birth of her
daughter had done her health more good
than all the medical attention which she
had received. 5 Altogether she had
collected more than forty fine gowns for
her visit to the court, which she was
eagerly anticipating. Margaret travelled
south in easy stages during April 1516,
spending Ascension (1 May) with the
Duke and Duchess of Norfolk at Enfield,
and reaching the capital the following
day. Henry rode out as far as Tottenham
to meet her and escorted her to the
temporary lodgings which had been
provided at Baynard’s Castle. Her
reception began with a state dinner,
hosted by William Warham at Lambeth,
and was followed by a succession of
entertainments provided by the King
either at Westminster or Greenwich. 6
Both Mary and Catherine were pleased
to see her, and they had thirteen years of
gossip to catch up on, to say nothing of
their babies which must have formed a
basis of common interest. Given her
estrangement from her husband, and the
complex political situation in Scotland,
neither the King nor Wolsey expected
Margaret’s present marriage to survive,
and no sooner had she arrived in London
than the latter was hinting that she might
be available on the international
marriage market. He even went so far as
to suggest to the Imperial ambassador
the possibility of a match with the
Emperor Maximilian, who conveniently
happened to be a widower. 7 The Queen
Mother of Scotland was not consulted
about these proposals, which remained
just that. She was concerned to gain her
brother’s support to re-establish her
position in Scotland, and would not have
been interested in any alternative
partner. Wolsey’s suggestion was in fact
more to do with his desire to secure
control of the Council than with any
destiny for the Queen of Scots. He was
concerned at this stage to balance
England’s relations with the Emperor
against those with France, and was
concentrating on persuading the King of
the wisdom of this course. He therefore
did not want men with strong views, like
the Duke of Suffolk, confusing the issue
in Council. 8
Suffolk was not out of favour with
the King. He had challenged with him at
the jousts held at court on 19 and 20
May, and distinguished himself as usual.
Altogether there were thirty-five
contestants at this celebration, all
gorgeously dressed, and on the second
day Henry and the Duke ran at all
comers, ‘which was a pleasant sight to
see’. Margaret, Mary and Catherine
presided together and Catherine
presented the prizes. However,
Wolsey’s desire to have a clear run at
the Council, together with his own
straitened circumstances, dictated that
Suffolk found it prudent to withdraw to
his estates after the tournament, and he
remained away for the rest of the year.
As we have seen, Henry visited them at
Donnington in the course of his summer
progress, and conferred various other
marks of favour on the Duke, but he did
not summon them back to court. He also
seems to have ignored Mary’s fulsome
letters, in which she expressed her
devotion to him and his interests. ‘I
account myself as much bounden,’ she
wrote,
unto your grace as ever sister was
 to brother, and according
thereunto I shall to the best of my
power during my life endeavour
myself as far as in me shall be
possible to do the thing which
shall stand with your pleasure. 9
For the time being his pleasure was that
they should remain in the country caring
for their infant son, but that was
probably more out of consideration for
the Duke’s finances than out of any
reluctance to see him. Before the end of
the year he had been chosen to lead a
possible expedition against France, and
ironically enough, was being accused
with Wolsey of exercising undue
influence on the King, ‘whether by
necromancy, witchcraft or policy no man
know eth’. 10 By the end of 1516
Suffolk’s personal debt to the King stood
at more than £12,000, but at about that
time he was given an extension, and the
terms were favourably renegotiated as
we have seen in the spring of 1517.
Meanwhile Mary’s much larger debt
stood respited until her French revenues
were resumed. If this was being out of
favour, then the Suffolks could clearly
have done with more of it. The Duke and
Duchess were never unwelcome at
court, and their failure to appear had
more to do with the need for economy
than any coldness on Henry’s part. It
was probably due to subtle changes in
the Cardinal’s foreign policy that he
reappeared at Council meetings in
February 1517. Wolsey was clearly
confident that he could stall their debt
indefinitely if the need arose, and in
effect did so later in the year.
In the spring of 1517 Catherine
made a pilgrimage to the shrine of Our
Lady at Walsingham, and the Suffolks,
who were in Norfolk at the time,
accompanied her, entertaining her on the
return journey. So generous was their
hospitality that the Queen felt bound to
return it in the following month.
However, during Catherine’s brief stay
with them occurred an incident which
Brandon feared might well ruin his
credit with the King. Ann Jerningham, an
attendant of the Queen’s, who must have
been appealed to by one or other of the
parties, brokered a betrothal between
John Berkeley, one of Suffolk’s wards,
and Lady Anne Grey, of Mary’s Privy
Chamber. This was a technical offence
without the King’s consent, and the Duke
was properly alarmed. He wrote hastily
to Wolsey, ‘I had lever have spent a
thousand pounds than any such pageant
should have been within the Queen’s
house and mine.’ He disclaimed all
responsibility, and the Cardinal
succeeded in nipping the engagement in
the bud, which seems to indicate that
there had been no personal falling out
with Wolsey during the previous year, or
at least that it had been repaired by
April 1517. 11 For the rest of that year,
Charles and Mary divided their time
between the country and the court. Mary
was highly decorative, and it was at
about this time that she attracted the
compliment from Guillaume de Bonnivet
that she was the ‘rose of Christendom’
and should have remained in France to
be admired. 12 Brandon meanwhile
resumed his role in the jousts and the
revels as though he had never been
away. At the end of April they visited
the court, which had removed to
Richmond on account of the plague, a
regular migration because of Henry’s
intense fear of the disease. While they
were there the Evil May Day riots
erupted in the city, spreading fear and
confusion among the foreign community.
This demonstration of xenophobic fury
attracted swift retribution, and a dozen
of the chief offenders were quickly tried
and condemned. The story then runs that
it was the three queens, acting together,
who interceded for them with the result
that only one offender was executed. 13
This may have been so, because they
were all within reach at the time, and
Henry was susceptible to the pleas of
women, especially as two of them
(Catherine and Mary) were pregnant at
the time, and the King was hoping
desperately for a male heir. He might
well have felt that mercy would be
pleasing to God. It was later when
Henry pardoned the 400 delinquents on
the intercession of Cardinal Wolsey, and
there is no mention of Catherine or Mary
being present, in spite of the legend
which attaches to that occasion. ‘Then
were all the gallows within the city
taken down, and many a good prayer
said for the king,’ as one chronicler
observed. The fact that many gallows
had been necessary indicates that far
more than the original victim had been
hanged. We do not know the actual
number, but it seems to have been
around forty or fifty. 14
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. 15 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. 16 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.
17 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. 18 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. 19 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. 20 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. 21 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. 22 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-
l a w . 23 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. 24
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. 25
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. 26 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. 27 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. 28
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. 29 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. 30 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. 31 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. 32 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. 33 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. 34
As we have seen, the Treaty of the
More restored Mary’s dower payments.
After an interval of three years and nine
months, they were duly paid in
November 1525, and thereafter every six
months. The Queen, however, was not
satisfied with the farming arrangement,
and tried through Wolsey to gain full
control of her dower lands, including the
right to appoint her own officers, which
seems to have been the main point.
Without that right she had no patronage
in France, and had a number of French
clients whom she wished to reward. 35
One of these was Nicholas de St Martin,
who had been her secretary until 1520,
when he had been persuaded to enter the
service of Francis I. In 1526 Mary got
her brother to write to Louise of Savoy
asking that he return to her service, and
that eventually happened. However St
Martin came back to England to his
original post, and her attempts to secure
control of her lands appear to have come
to nothing. Attempts to induce Francis to
give the administration of the dower to
her servant George Hampton came to
nothing, and Hampton was reduced to
travelling backwards and forwards on
this business, which was quite
considerable owing to the extent of the
lands. 36 By 1528 he and Mary were
working increasingly through Anne de
Montmorency, the constable, who was
the dominant influence there, but her lack
of real influence was exposed by the
case of Antoine du Val, who was a clerk
in her household, whom she tried
unsuccessfully for several months to
place in the service of Francis.
Montmorency replied politely, but his
mind was not on the job, and nothing
happened. Du Val turned elsewhere for
the necessary patronage, but it is not
clear that he succeeded. 37 Mary never
entirely got the message, but her attempts
to exercise influence in France were
thereafter conducted through Cardinal
Wolsey, and ceased after his fall in
1529.
Through the summer months of each
year, when they were not at court, the
Suffolks tended to be peripatetic,
visiting their manors in Suffolk, Essex
and Oxfordshire on a regular basis. They
also visited various towns in East
Anglia, such as Great Yarmouth and
King’s Lynn, where they were received
with generous gifts, and royal honours
for her. 38 Suffolk in addition undertook
occasional and somewhat fleeting trips
to his more remote manors in Cheshire
and Yorkshire, which were not always
welcomed by the men on the spot, but
which were necessary to prevent a
terminal decline of revenue. They spent
weeks at a time at Butley Priory near
Bury St Edmunds, enjoying the
hospitality of the canons there in what
looks suspiciously like a cost-cutting
exercise, because Butley is only a few
miles from their principal residence at
Westhorpe. Sometimes, when the Duke
was about his business, Mary stayed
there alone. They put in a regular
appearance at the Bury St Edmunds
Easter fair every year, bringing prestige,
and no doubt additional business while
they received the hosts of hopeful clients
who invariably followed them there. The
Duchess was noted as being particularly
gracious on these occasions. 39 All this
was necessary for the Duke to maintain
his status as a local magnate, and a
means of keeping in touch with the
gentlemen who formed his natural
affinity. It also helped him when he
discharged his duty by sitting on county
commissions, although his service as a
Justice of the Peace was more honoured
in the breach than in the observance. In
1524 he was named to the commissions
for Middlesex, Berkshire and
Oxfordshire as well as for Suffolk, but
given his other commitments it is
unlikely that he was active in any of
them. 40 Because of his position at court,
men (and women) appealed to him for
help from all over the country, but he
seems to have felt a particular obligation
to those from his home county. His
increasing honour is reflected in the
titles accorded to him in the Norwich
Episcopal registers. In 1517 he was just
‘the Duke of Suffolk’, but by 1524 he
had become ‘the man of vigour, Charles,
Duke of Suffolk’. In June 1527 he was
‘the most powerful man, Charles Duke
of Suffolk, great marshal of England’,
and by September of that year ‘the noble
and most powerful prince, Charles Duke
of Suffolk and great marshal of
England’. 41 These commitments meant
that he was often apart from his Duchess,
who occupied herself with bringing up
her children, running her own clientage
network, and undertaking pilgrimages to
Walsingham.
Most of this time she spent at
Westhorpe, which was an agreeable
country retreat where the Duke joined
her when he could. There he bred
horses, ran a herd of mules, and hunted
assiduously in the park, or in nearby
Haughey Park. He had purchased the
house in 1515, perhaps with a view to
his wife’s comfort or convenience, and
decided in 1527 to rebuild it on a grand
scale. It became a brick courtyard house,
decorated with terracotta figures and
impressive (although totally ornamental)
battlements. Work started in that year,
and was still not finished in 1538, but
the house seems to have been in use
throughout, and was managed by Mary,
who no doubt filled her days in
residence there with the multifarious
tasks of a large household. 42 It may have
been the pressures of this lifestyle, to
say nothing of the need to dodge the
building workers, which caused her to
take herself off to Butley Priory from
time to time. When the subsidy
commissioners visited Westhorpe in
1526 they credited Mary with fifty
servants, forty-three men and seven
women, but these appear to have been
the domestic staff only, exclusive of the
officers. If Wolsey’s comparable
assessment is anything to go by, it was a
considerable underestimate, and the true
figure should have been nearer 100. 43 It
was necessary for any early Tudor
nobleman to be careful about the number
of servants he declared, because of the
livery legislation, and although Mary’s
retinue posed no threat to anyone, she
would have been scrupulous to observe
the law. Nor would such a list have
included the young ladies and gentlemen
being brought up in the household. Some
of these, like George Heveningham and
William Tyrell, were kindred of the
Duke, while others such as Elizabeth and
Anne Grey had served Mary since her
time in France. Altogether there were
probably about a dozen of these at any
one time, of various ages, some of the
younger ones acting as ‘schoolfellows’
for the Brandon’s own children. The
Duke himself was credited in 1524 with
fifty-one servants, but this was also an
underestimate for the same reason. At a
time when the Earl of Northumberland
kept 166 servants in his livery, and the
Duke of Buckingham claimed that it was
reasonable for him to travel with an
escort of 400, it is unlikely that the Duke
of Suffolk retained fewer than 200,
which would have included his chapel
staff, and the grooms of his stables, as
well as the more strictly domestic
establishment. 44 In the early 1520s the
Duke’s household was costing him
£1,000 a year in wages and food, which
also points to a substantially larger
number than the fifty-one declared. It is
unlikely that even a great house such as
Westhorpe could have accommodated
more than a small proportion of this
multitude, particularly during the
building works, so presumably the rest
were either stood down or billeted out
in the surrounding villages – which are
not numerous in that part of Suffolk.
No inventory survives for
Westhorpe, and the only one for Suffolk
Place dates from 1535, so it is not easy
to judge the style of their housekeeping,
but Mary would have found it necessary
to retain something of the regal
splendour of her days in France, which
would not have come cheaply and helps
to explain her desperation when her
French revenues were suspended. The
operational costs of lesser manors, such
as Ewelme, were much lower because
only a skeleton staff would have resided
normally, and the ducal couple would
have brought their ‘stuff’ with them
when they visited. Nevertheless,
expenditure was not negligible, because
gifts and rewards were expected from
the Lord and Lady whenever they were
there; the neighbours expected to be
entertained and the local churches
anticipated charitable donations. 45
Hospitality was particularly onerous,
because on it depended the Lord’s
influence in that part of the country, and
if the manor was seldom visited, the
expectation would have been so much
higher. Consequently it only needed a
report of the Duke and Duchess’
appearance to attract a horde of the
expectant and the needy. Figures do not
survive for the Suffolks, but their
situation would have been similar to that
of the Duke of Norfolk at Framlingham
in 1526 when he entertained 244 people
to dinner, 200 of whom were ‘persons of
the country’. 46 Life away from the court
may have been less stressful, but it was
not necessarily much cheaper, and the
extravagant lifestyle required by the
honour of such a couple constantly
outran their resources. When Mary’s
French revenues arrived on time, they
could manage, but at other times their
only recourse was to borrow from the
King or from the bankers at a rate which
neither of them could afford. Hence the
constant recourse to Wolsey to
renegotiate their agreements with Henry,
who preferred to keep them dependant in
this fashion rather than granting the Duke
adequate lands to provide him with
sufficient income. It is not surprising that
they welcomed invitations to attend the
court, because that provided them both
with opportunities to keep their favour
bright and fresh, and to remind the King
how fond he was of them both.
Another use of Westhorpe was as a
house of refuge from the plague and the
sweating sickness. Plague was endemic,
and many years saw the court on the
move to escape its attentions, the King
taking his ‘riding household’ as far
afield as Wallingford, Abingdon and
Woodstock, because of his deadly fear
of infection. 47 The sweat was less
lethal, but caused almost equal panic,
being particularly severe in 1517 and
1528. ‘Multitudes are dying all around
us,’ Thomas More wrote to Erasmus in
the former year; ‘almost everyone in
Oxford, Cambridge and London has been
ill lately’. 48 Nor was the King’s fear
unreasonable. In 1528 the disease
invaded the court, carrying off William
Carey and Sir William Compton, the
latter as Groom of the Stool, being
particularly close to Henry. The medical
profession was baffled, and the King
came up with his own strange nostrum.
Take a handful of sage of virtue,
and handful of herb grace, and
handful of elder leaves and a
handful of red briar leaves, and
stamp them together, and strain
 them in a fair cloth with a quart of
white wine, and then take a
quantity of ginger and mingle them
all together, and drink of that
medicine a spoonful every day …
49

Whether anyone was protected or cured

by this concoction we do not know, and
it was more usual to resort to prayer or
to the offices of the church. Hence
perhaps the Duchess of Suffolk’s
constant visits to Walsingham. However,
rural Westhorpe appears to have lived a
charmed life, and although the King did
not visit it, as far as we know, it
provided a safe refuge for the Duke and
Duchess. The latter’s ill health, which
became increasingly obvious after 1525,
had nothing to do with these epidemics,
the only description which we have of it
attributing it to ‘her old disease in her
side’, which could have been a heart
condition. 50 The agues from which she
also suffered from time to time have
been diagnosed as malaria, which clung
to the low-lying areas of the Thames
valley, but was not usually fatal. The
Duke seems not to have suffered from
any of these ailments, but he was still not
welcome at court when the fear was on.
Only Cardinal Wolsey worked through
these epidemics, often falling ill, but
always recovering in a manner which the
King can only have envied.
8
 THE LAST DAYS
After the reception of the French
ambassadors in 1527, Mary no longer
attended formal public occasions. The
Anglo-French treaty in May of that year,
and the betrothal of her namesake the
princess to the Dauphin, marked her last
appearance at a major political event.
This was partly due to her health, but
had more to do with disillusionment
with her brother, who, having expressed
the most rigorous disapproval of their
sister Margaret’s divorce from the Earl
of Angus in 1528, was set upon
repudiating his own wife. 1 This last was
more or less public knowledge after
Henry had confronted Catherine in June
1527, and although it was not similarly
known that he was intending to replace
her with Anne Boleyn, the latter’s
position was already causing scandal
and concern around the court. Mary had
been close friends with Catherine since
before her marriage to Henry, when they
had shared many girlish secrets, and that
friendship had not waned over the years.
Until 1531 Henry maintained a correct
attitude to his wife, dining with her from
time to time, while she accompanied him
on formal occasions such as the
Christmas and Shrovetide celebrations.
As long as that situation appertained, the
Suffolks continued to appear
occasionally together at the court, and
were lodged on the Queen’s side. 2
However, in 1531 Henry announced that
he never wished to see Catherine again;
she was banished to Buckden and the
Queen’s side of the court was effectively
discontinued. When the Duke appeared
on his own, he had always been lodged
on the King’s side, and that continued,
but Mary’s infrequent appearances were
now made from Suffolk Place, or from
one of the Duke’s other houses if the
court was not at Westminster. 3
Paradoxically this chill in the
relations between brother and sister
does not seem to have affected Suffolk’s
position at all. He had formed an
alliance of convenience with the
Boleyns and Norfolk in order to get rid
of Wolsey, but he did not share their
aspirations for Anne’s future, and
quickly distanced himself from Viscount
Rochford (Anne’s father) as soon as the
Cardinal had been dismissed in October
1529. A more scrupulous man might
have withdrawn from the Council while
that attack was in hand, because he had
much to be grateful to Wolsey for, but he
seems to have fallen out with Lord
Chancellor over the latter’s failure to
eliminate his debt repayments, and may
indeed have been hoping to take his
place. Such a move was rumoured in
diplomatic circles before Sir Thomas
More was appointed on 26 October. 4 So
instead of withdrawing, or expressing
his dissent from the prevailing intention
of the Council, he worked closely with
the Duke of Norfolk to bring about the
desired result. It was the two dukes who
went to recover the Great Seal from
Wolsey, and the latter does not seem to
have been surprised or particularly
resentful at the role which he had chosen
to play. Norfolk was the senior partner
in these manoeuvres, but when the office
of President of the Council was revived
at this time, it was conferred on the Duke
of Suffolk, and this may have been on
account of his amicable relations with
the French. 5 Norfolk would have
preferred an Imperial alliance, but,
given Charles’s hostile attitude towards
the King’s annulment proceedings, that
was an unrealistic aspiration. The
Emperor was Catherine’s nephew, and
had no intention of permitting such a slur
on his family’s honour, so given the
power structure of contemporary
Europe, the assistance of France was
more or less essential. Thanks to his
marriage, Suffolk had all the right
connections in the French court, and
given her dependence upon French
dowry payments to maintain her standard
of living, Mary was in no position to
object to his using them in the King’s
service. When Parliament met on 3
November, the strength of the Duke’s
position soon became apparent, because
many of those elected had links with
him, more than was the case with any
other senior peer, although only Sir John
Shilston, who sat for Southwark, was a
direct client. 6 He had taken his share of
the spoils after Wolsey’s fall; some
manors came to him, and the Cardinal’s
prize train of mules, but he resisted the
temptation to urge any expropriation of
the Church, and in that the King
supported him rather than listening to the
voices of the Boleyns, whose influence
in that direction was to be delayed for
several years. By 1530 the Duke of
Suffolk and his influence were
everywhere to be seen, but his actual
power remained problematical, perhaps
due to a lack of ambition – or perhaps to
a lack of ability for government at the
highest level.
He was present everywhere, but it
is hard to pinpoint what he actually did.
For example, he was a prominent
member of the court which tried Wolsey,
but made no distinctive contribution to
its deliberations, and although he was
present at Lord Rochford’s elevation to
the earldom of Wiltshire in December
1529, his role was purely that of a
spectator. In December he helped, as a
member of the Council, in the
entertainment of the French and Imperial
envoys, and was privately, but
somewhat ineffectually, courted by the
former, who of course knew about his
connections. When Wolsey began
scheming to regain favour in the early
part of 1530, he bypassed the Duke
altogether, preferring to deal directly
with his real antagonists, Norfolk and
the Boleyns. 7 Since the Cardinal was a
shrewd judge of political realities, we
must assume that Suffolk was not an
important cog in the machinery of
government. It was not that he had
become a nonentity. Petitioners from the
country continued to approach him with
small bribes and requests for help, but
he had no personal or ideological axe to
grind, and may well have found the
politics of 1530 and 1531 baffling.
Whenever called upon to do so, he made
supportive noises in the King’s cause,
promoted his policy with ambassadors,
and was suitably rude about the Pope.
However, there is no sign of real
conviction about any of these activities,
and his conversations were more likely
to be held at dinner or in the Privy
Chamber rather than in the Council, at
which his attendance was so erratic that
his nominal presidency never really took
effect. 8 He sat on the commissions
which examined and tried Fisher and
More in 1535, but did not ask pertinent
questions, and although he was
commissioned to oversee the tricky
matter of a peacetime subsidy in the
country, the only outcome was the
receipt of the Stewardship of Oxford
town in that same year. In March 1534
the Venetian ambassador did not think
that he was worth bribing, and did not
name him among those leading
personages whom the King most trusted
to negotiate a new marriage alliance
with France. 9 It may well have been that
his own lack of energy and application
were responsible for this situation,
because his friendship with Henry
appears to have remained intact. They
played bowls and gambled together, but
when the King wanted serious business
discharged, he now looked to Thomas
Cromwell, and the Duke became one of
Cromwell’s many clients.
It may even have been that he found
his role in the court distasteful, torn as
he was between loyalty to the King and
disagreement with his policies. On 16
June 1531 Eustace Chapuys wrote to the
Emperor:
 Suffolk and his wife, if they dared,
would offer all possible
resistance to this marriage
[between Henry and Anne], and it
is not two days since he and the
Treasurer [the Duke of Norfolk],
talking of this matter, agreed that
now the time was come when all
the world should try to dissuade
the king from his folly … 10
Chapuys is not an altogether reliable
witness, because of his commitment to
Catherine and his tendency to hear what
he wanted to hear. For instance, in 1530
he reported that Suffolk was out of
favour because he had drawn to Henry’s
attention that Anne had had an affair with
Sir Thomas Wyatt in the 1520s, for
neither of which statement is there any
corroboratory evidence. However, the
above observation is sufficiently
consistent with what else we know about
the Brandons’ attitude to carry
conviction. Suffolk found his role in the
progressive demotion of Catherine
uncongenial. In April 1533 he was
entrusted with the task of informing her
that she was no longer Queen, following
Cranmer’s decision on her marriage, and
the following December was ordered to
relocate her to Somersham, and to
dismiss some of her servants, because
she was now the Dowager Princess of
Wales, and could not maintain a regal
establishment. 11 In fact Henry was not
ungenerous to his ex-wife, and her
reconstituted household cost him some
£3,000 a year, but Suffolk was not to
know that, and Lady Mary Willoughby,
by then his mother-in-law, told Chapuys
that he had confessed and communicated
before setting off on this mission, hoping
for some accident to prevent its
completion – or at least that is what the
ambassador said. 12 When Catherine
died in January 1536, Suffolk’s youngest
daughter Eleanor was the chief mourner,
supported by his new Duchess,
Catherine Willoughby. Understandably
Anne Boleyn was consistently hostile to
the couple. In July 1531 she actually
accused the Duke of having sexual
relations with his own daughter, a
charge which only the King’s
intervention prevented from escalating
into a major quarrel. There was an
actual affray within the court in April
1532, which resulted in the death of one
of Suffolk’s gentlemen, and the Venetian
report of the incident went on:
It is said to have been caused by a
private quarrel, but I am assured
that it was owing to opprobrious
language uttered against Madame
Anne by his Majesty’s sister, the
Duchess of Suffolk, Queen
Dowager of France … 13
However, Anne herself could only
swallow her indignation when the King
decided to ignore these slights, and visit
the Suffolks at Westhorpe, which he did
towards the end of July 1532.
Presumably she did not accompany him
on this visit! On 1 September, when he
conferred on Anne the title of Marquis of
Pembroke, Mary was conspicuous by
her absence. On 7 September Carlo
Capello, the Venetian envoy, reported
that when Henry crossed to Calais to
meet with King Francis, he would be
accompanied by ‘Madame Anne’ and
thirty of the chief ladies of the realm, led
by the Duchess of Norfolk, but that the
King’s sister, the widow of King Louis
of France, had ‘stoutly refused to go’. 14
Her absence was intended, and was
construed as, a snub to Anne, but it was
also a reflection on the King’s honour,
which he chose to ignore. Mary’s health
by that time was so uncertain that
excuses were easy to make, and in any
case he was so pleased by the outcome
of his meeting that he probably chose to
overlook the slight.
At the Treaty of the More it had
been agreed that the payment of Mary’s
dower revenues would be resumed, and
that appears to have happened, because
at the end of 1526 an indenture was
drawn up between the King and his
sister ‘with her husband the Duke of
Suffolk’ for the repayment of their
outstanding debt. This was assessed at
£19,333 for the expenses of Mary’s
marriage to Louis, and £6,519 for
various sums lent to the Duke, and for
revenues received and not accounted for.
They agreed to pay £1,000 a year in half
yearly instalments, two-thirds being for
her debt and one-third for his. 15 If she
died, her outstanding debt would be
cancelled, but her jewels and hangings
were to be returned to the King. If there
were to be any further interruption to her
revenues from France, then her
repayments were to be suspended until
they were resumed. For the time being
the payments were being made at the rate
of 17,300 livres (about £3,000) per
year, but at some time early in 1531
Montmorency, with Francis’s agreement,
apparently promised an increase to
20,000 (£3,800). On 18 April Suffolk
wrote to Montmorency to remind him of
this promise, and was assured that the
increase would take effect in the
following financial year, it being too late
to make the adjustment to current
payments. 16 Negotiations continued, and
at the end of July de la Barre, the
Provost of Paris, sent the Bishop of
Amiens to the Duchess ‘touching her
dowry’, presumably to reassure her that
it would be paid. This was not a regular
diplomatic mission, and according to
Chapuys the Bishop went straight to the
Duchess’s lodgings, and then returned
immediately to France, without paying
his respects at the court. 17 There may
have been other such private visits
which have gone unrecorded. It was a
sensitive issue, and one of vital concern
to the Suffolks, so that the Duke kept up
his contacts with Montmorency for that
purpose. For that reason, Brandon was
sent on various missions to France
during these years, in which he no doubt
combined official business with his own
private concerns.
At New Year 1533 the Brandons as
usual exchanged gifts with the King,
although Mary was by then a sick
woman. Nevertheless she kept up her
intercessions for those who appealed to
her for help, writing several time to
Lord Lisle, the Governor of Calais, for
places which were within his gift. The
last such letter was written on 30 March
in favour of one John Williams. It was
written, as usual, by a secretary, but was
signed in what the calendar notes as ‘a
very shaky hand’. 18 On the whole she
had more success with her pleas than the
Duke did. Only those whose information
was inadequate or outdated tended to
appeal to him directly by this time.
Admittedly the Earl of Cumberland was
one who requested his intercession with
the King, but the Duke thought it wise to
pass the letter to Cromwell, whose
influence with Henry was now markedly
greater than his own. His relations with
the Secretary were surprisingly good,
perhaps more a sign of Cromwell’s tact
than his own flexibility, and his
dependants frequently appealed to
Cromwell for help, with Brandon’s
approval. When they clashed over
patronage, the Duke was firm but
apologetic, and this seems to have been
acceptable to the chief minister. They
occasionally hunted together, but were
never personally close, and Suffolk
reacted angrily in 1532 when Cromwell
passed on to the King some slanderous
rumours which were circulating about
h i m . 19 Theirs was a working
relationship because the minister knew
perfectly well that it would take more
than a few rumours to unseat the Duke
from a relationship which went back
before the beginning of the reign. On 1
June 1533 Anne Boleyn was crowned,
and Suffolk was once again called upon
to perform an uncongenial duty. He was
High Steward and Constable for the day,
and since the Duke of Norfolk was away
on a diplomatic mission, he had the
highlight pretty much to himself – after
the Queen, that is, whom no effort was
spared to make appear rather more than
mortal. He presided over the Court of
Claims which preceded the coronation,
and over the table of peers at the
subsequent banquet. 20 The Duchess did
not appear, but given her state of health
no one was surprised by that, no doubt to
the Duke’s relief. The princess Mary
(now the Lady Mary) also did not
appear at the celebration of her mother’s
rival, and that was not commented upon
either, but several observers noted the
absence of the Duchess of Norfolk, who
in the absence of the French Queen
should have led the peeresses. Suffolk,
however, had one thing on his mind
which was not connected with the day’s
events, because before he departed on
his mission the Duke of Norfolk had
requested that he hand over his office of
Earl Marshall. Only the King could
effect such a change, and Henry accepted
Norfolk’s case, requesting Suffolk to
stand down in terms that could not be
denied. He innocently declared himself
pleased that Brandon had shown ‘zeal to
nourish kindness and love’ with the
senior duke, knowing perfectly well that
he had no option. 21 The evidence
suggests that Suffolk surrendered his
position with an ill grace, and that the
change did nothing to increase the
‘kindness and love’ between them, as
Norfolk was warned during June. The
office conferred no status that the Duke
did not already possess, and the fee was
minimal, but it did stand at the head of
the chivalric hierarchy in England, and
of the heralds and Kings of Arms, and
that conferred a prestige which Suffolk
took seriously, hence his disgruntlement
over his forced resignation.
During the last years of her life,
Mary spent most of her time at
Westhorpe, while her family steadily
dwindled around her. Anne was married
in 1525 and Mary in 1527 or 1528, and
although they remained in sense
dependent upon the Duke, their
membership of the Duchess’s household
ceased at that point. Frances was
married in London in 1531, an event
which tempted Mary out of her
seclusion, and only fourteen-year-old
Eleanor remained at home when she
succumbed to her final illness. 22 In spite
of her disillusionment over Henry’s
treatment of Catherine, her affection for
her brother was clearly undimmed.
Several months earlier she had written
to him as her ‘Most dearest and best
beloved brother’.
I humbly commend myself to your
grace … I have been very sick and
ill at ease, for which I was fain to
send for Master Peter the
physician for to have holpen me of
 this disease which I have, howbeit
I am rather worse than better,
wherefore I trust surely to come to
London with my Lord. For if I
should tarry here I should never
asperge the sickness [and] I would
be glad to see your grace the
which I do think long for to do.
For I have been a great while out
of your sight [which is] the
greatest comfort to me that may be
possible … 23
Whether she realised her ambition on
that occasion is not known, nor whether
it produced any amelioration in her
condition. By May 1533 it was clearly
too late for any such therapy. Early in the
month the Duke made a hasty visit to
Westhorpe to see her, but it was to be
the last time that he would do so.
Preoccupied with the coronation and its
aftermath, and perhaps sceptical of the
alarming reports emanating from
Westhorpe, he did not appear again
before she died on 25 June. As far as we
know, only Eleanor and Henry were
with her at the time, and we have no
evidence of the details. 24 She had been
in a fragile state for some time, but there
is no indication that her condition was
thought to be terminal. Nor do we know
anything of the competence of the
physicians who attended her, although
they were presumably in the Duke’s
employment. The Spanish Chronicle
attributed her death to grief over Henry’s
behaviour, ‘the sight of her brother
leaving his wife brought on an illness of
which she died’, but that was voice out
of Catherine’s camp, willing to attribute
every ill to Anne Boleyn, and need not
be taken seriously. 25 Perhaps the most
likely explanation is angina. In spite of
her relative youth (she was thirty-eight)
it was several years since she had cut a
dash on the courtly scene, and her
political opinions, although well known,
were important only insofar as they
influenced those of her husband. Henry
seems to have been genuinely although
briefly distressed, and the court went
into official mourning, but no one else
apart from her family was particularly
concerned. A French envoy, writing to
Francis I, reported her death on the 27th,
and wrote again on the 30th, commenting
that she was ‘much beloved in the
country and by the common people of
[London]’. 26 This no doubt had
something to do with the generosity of
her largesse, but was probably more on
account of her well-known sympathy
with Queen Catherine, who had a large
popular following.
Mary’s body was embalmed, and
lay in state in the chapel at Westhorpe
for over three weeks before burial. Her
passing bell had been heard just before
eight o’clock on the morning of her
death, but the rituals had to be carefully
observed for one of her status, and the
length of the delay was probably caused
by the time which it took for a delegation
to come from France. 27 Meanwhile a
wax chandler had ‘sered and
trammelled’ the body with spiced cloth,
which was then sealed in a leaden box
covered with black velvet and adorned
with a cross of white damask. While it
was still in the chapel the coffin was
covered with an embroidered pall of
blue velvet, many tapers burned day and
night and a continuous vigil was kept by
the members of her household. A
detailed account of her funeral is
preserved among the manuscripts of the
College of Arms, which shows that all
the preparations were complete by 20
Jul y. 28 English heralds arrived from
London to accompany the French
pursuivants, and black gowns, hoods and
trains had been issued to all the
aristocratic participants. Neither the
King nor the Duke were present, the
chief mourner being her daughter
Frances, who was escorted by her
husband the Marquis of Dorset, and by
her brother the Earl of Lincoln. Ladies
Powis and Mounteagle were also
present, Eleanor, and Catherine
Willoughby the Duke’s ward who had
been living in the house. The interment
was to be in the abbey church at Bury St
Edmunds, and for the journey thither the
coffin was placed on a hearse draped in
black velvet emblazoned with Mary’s
arms, and covered with a pall of black
cloth of gold, betokening the wealth of
the deceased. On this lay Mary’s effigy,
representing her as Queen of France,
complete with robes of state, a gold
crown and a golden sceptre as a symbol
of her (supposed) power. It is not known
whether this effigy was of wax or carved
wood, and in any case it has long since
disappeared, but it was presumably
designed by a well-known artist of the
time, possibly the King’s Sergeant
Painter, Andrew Wright. 29 The hearse
on its journey was drawn by six horses,
trapped in black cloth, while over it was
a canopy borne by four knights of the
Duke’s affinity. Alongside it were more
standard bearers carrying the insignia of
the Brandon and Tudor families. The
whole cortège was led by a hundred
torch bearers, who were local country
folk recruited for the occasion, given
coarse blacks and few pence for their
trouble, and who were followed by the
clergy bearing the chapel cross. Next
came the household staff, heralds and
officials suitably mounted, followed by
the hearse, and then the knights and
nobles in attendance. After them came
another hundred taper bearers, only in
this case they were the Duke’s yeomen,
which must have left the Duke, who
remained at Ewelme, ‘but thinly
attended’. The cortège was completed
by the female mourners, led by the
Marchioness of Dorset, the mounted
ladies, two mourning wagons or coaches
containing those unable or unwilling to
ride, and Mary’s waiting women and
other servants on foot. Along the way,
we are told, others joined the
procession, because Mary was well
thought of in the county, and many
wished to pay their respects.
Representatives of neighbouring
parishes met the procession at intervals,
were given torches and money, and
followed on behind. Bury St Edmunds
was reached at about two o’clock in the
afternoon, and the body was received by
the abbot and monks of the abbey. 30 The
coffin was placed on a catafalque before
the high altar, and surrounded by the
mourners in strict order of precedence.
The dirge was then sung, and the French
pursuivant commended the soul of the
‘right high excellent princess, and right
Christian Queen’ to the prayers of the
assembled company.
That completed the proceedings for
that day, and everyone moved to the
monastic refectory, where a supper had
been ‘plenteously prepared’. There was
food and drink for everyone, but the
abbey could only accommodate so many
guests, so whereas the nobles and
officials were provided for, presumably
the rest either went home or found such
lodgings as might be available in the
town. Eight women, twelve men, thirty
yeomen and a number of clergy were
appointed to watch about the corpse
during the night, probably in shifts, and
accommodation was no doubt provided
for those, either within the abbey or
nearby. Early the next morning breakfast
was served, in the refectory for
important visitors and elsewhere for the
others, and the ceremonies were
resumed at about seven o’clock. A
requiem mass was sung, and the six
leading mourners, the four Suffolk
daughters, Catherine Willoughby and her
mother, offered their palls of cloth of
gold at the altar. The funeral oration was
delivered by William Rugg, at that time
Abbot of St Benet’s at Hulme in
Norfolk, and soon (June 1536) to be
Bishop of Norwich, who may well have
been a client of Mary’s at an earlier
stage in his career. 31 It was a long and
wearying address, and so exhausted
were Frances and Eleanor after listening
to it that they were excused attendance at
the actual inhumation. This, which took
place within the abbey church as became
her rank, was attended by the other
mourners and by all Mary’s officers,
who broke their staves into the grave, as
the custom was. On the following day,
which was 23 July, the funeral party
dispersed, the family returning to
Westhorpe. Mary was long remembered
in Suffolk as a gracious lady, and the
memory was reinforced by the great dole
which was distributed after the final
funeral dinner on the 22nd, when meat
and drink had been available to all, and
every poor person had received four
pennies. An alabaster monument was
erected in the church, but was destroyed
at the dissolution just a few years later,
and the details and cost of its
construction have also disappeared. 32
At that time the coffin was also removed
to the neighbouring church of St Marys,
where it still is. It has been twice
opened, and fragments of her hair
removed, but in 1784 it was reinterred
in the chancel at St Mary’s, and the
grave covered with the original slab of
Petworth marble which had marked her
altar tomb in the abbey church. Since the
end of the eighteenth century she has
been allowed to rest in peace.
While Mary still lay in state at
Westhorpe, her brother and husband had
solemnised another funeral service for
her at Westminster Abbey. 33 It was
presumably by her own wish that she
had been buried at Bury St Edmunds,
and neither the King nor the Duke had
found it possible to be present, but she
had been a great lady, with a high profile
at court, and a proper tribute to her rank
and virtue was called for. It took place
on 10 and 11 July with all the
ostentatious formality accorded to
royalty. That had not been a feature of
the ceremony at Bury, in spite of its
magnificence, her royal status only being
recognised in the presence of the French
heralds. At Westminster the Earl of
Essex led seven delegated mourners,
with the Kings of Arms, heralds and
pursuivants all performing their official
duties, and the ceremony was the same
except that it did not have an actual body
to focus upon. Presumably the breaking
of staves was also omitted as there
would have been no grave, and in any
case Mary’s officers were all in Suffolk
at the time. The London obsequies were
presumably paid for by the King, who
observed that Mary was a queen worthy
of such expenditure, but the Suffolk
funeral expenses were met by the Duke.
34 In the absence of any household

accounts we have no idea how much it

cost, but in view of the quantities of food
and drink consumed, to say nothing of
the doles, and the amount of black cloth
which needed to be provided, it must
have run to many hundreds of pounds. 35
The Duke as usual was hard up and
heavily in debt, and the termination of
Mary’s dower payments must have been
a real headache to him. Inevitably he
stood down most of her household, but
he still had two unmarried children and
his ward to support, as well as the
regular expenses of his own household.
Fortunately Henry again came to the
rescue, remitting £1,000 of his debt to
the Crown, and granting him the fruits of
the vacant see of Ely for the year
1533/34, which would have amounted to
over £2,000. 36 Brandon was also
capable of helping himself in this
situation, and within three months he had
remarried, his bride being his ward
Catherine Willoughby, who had been
originally purchased for his son. Henry,
however, was only eleven, which would
have meant a wait of three years, and
Suffolk’s problems were pressing.
Catherine was fourteen and apparently
willing to become the next Duchess of
Suffolk, so they were married on 7
September. Mary had been in her grave
only seven weeks, and many
disapproving observations were made,
but the Duke urgently needed a source of
revenue to replace that which his
deceased wife had provided, and
Catherine was well endowed both in
Lincolnshire and in East Anglia.
He commenced his new married
life with a series of legal tussles with
his wife’s uncle, Sir Christopher
Willoughby, tussles which were fronted
by the Dowager Lady Willoughby. The
two of them, acting in collusion,
obtained a writ of supersedeas to
prevent Sir Christopher having
inquisitions held on all the late Lord
William’s estates, and the issue was
eventually resolved by an arbitration
before the King which resulted in
Suffolk retaining his control over the
bulk of the Lincolnshire lands in his
wife’s name. 37 However, Mary’s death
necessitated a fresh financial settlement
between the King and the Duke, and
Henry (or Brian Tuke on his behalf)
pulled no punches. By the summer of
1535 it had been agreed that the Queen’s
outstanding debt should be cancelled,
but that left Suffolk to pay £6,700. He
handed over jewels to the value of
£4,360, and agreed an unfavourable
exchange of lands with the King. He lost
all his Oxfordshire and Berkshire
manors, including Ewelme, valued at
£480 a year, in return for ex-Percy land
in Lincolnshire worth £175 a year,
£2,333 in cash and the cancellation of
his remaining debts. 38 He was also
forced to surrender the reversion of his
new house at Westhorpe for a Percy
manor in Essex and £850 in cash. It was
not until November of that year that this
settlement was complete, his title to the
Lincolnshire lands secured, and his and
the Queen’s debts finally written off.
Even then he had to give up Suffolk
Place in Southwark in return for a
London house recently surrendered by
the Bishop of Norwich as a part of the
price for his installation. 39 When he
took stock of his financial situation early
in 1535, apart from his debt to the
Crown, which was still alive at that
point, he had liabilities of £2,415 and
assets of £2,210 in the form of debts due
from sundry creditors. His income from
all sources at this time can be roughly
gauged from a subsidy assessment of
1534, which shows it at £2,000 ‘clear’,
that is after allowances and deductions.
40 Since it was customary for peers to be

under-assessed, this probably indicates

a real revenue of between £2,500 and
£3,000, which would be about right for a
peer of his status.
Mary’s death of course led to the
sequestration of her French revenues,
which was ordered by Francis I on 7
July 1533, as soon as news of the event
reached him. It remained only to tidy up
her accounts by paying to Suffolk such
arrears as were still outstanding. 41
George Hampton busied himself with
this until his death late in 1534, after
which the Duke was compelled to rely
on Nicholas de St Martin, with the result
that by September 1535 the payments
were four months overdue. Suffolk did
his best to keep up pressure via
Montmorency, but this was not effective
and his contacts with the French court
gradually languished. 42 His French
pension was only half that of the Duke of
Norfolk, and Anne Boleyn’s French
contacts discouraged his further efforts.
He had been in receipt of an Imperial
pension since 1529, and by 1536
Chapuys detected clear signs of
movement on his part in favour of an
Imperial alliance. 43 Such a move was of
course facilitated by the death of
Catherine of Aragon in January, and
even more by the fall of Anne Boleyn in
May, an event not a little connected with
Thomas Cromwell’s pro-Imperial
policies. By July the Duke was voicing
the opinion that there was no greater a
Turk than the King of France, a sentiment
prompted by the Franco-Ottoman
understanding of that year. Suffolk’s
influence in court and in Council was
recovering by the summer of 1536 on the
basis of his Imperial connections after
the setback marked by the King’s harsh
dealings over his financial affairs. Also,
following the death of the Earl of
Lincoln on 1 March 1534, which had left
him without a male heir, his new
marriage proved fruitful. On 18
September 1535 Catherine gave birth to
a son, who was again hopefully named
Henry, and to whom the King and
Thomas Cromwell stood as godfathers.
44 In the two years which followed the

French Queen’s death, her husband had

re-orientated himself completely. Gone
was his pro-French stance in the
Council, and his dependence on French
money. Gone too, was his local
influence in Oxfordshire and Berkshire,
to be replaced by a move to Lincolnshire
following the rearrangement of his
estates. He had also settled his financial
differences with the King and formed an
alliance of convenience with Thomas
Cromwell, with the result that his
friendship with Henry revived. It was
based now on bowls and cards rather
than on tennis and jousting, but above all
it was based on long memories. The
King did not have many friends as
opposed to servants, and his affection
for Brandon blossomed in the new
circumstances.
9
 THE LEGACY
The Willoughby lands in Lincolnshire
had been divided by Lord William’s
death, part going to Suffolk with
Catherine’s wardship, and part
remaining as the dower lands of his
widow, Lady Mary. The Duke
consequently did not control the latter
until Lady Willoughby died in 1539,
although he worked in close
collaboration with her to fend off the
assaults of Sir Christopher, the late
lord’s brother. 1 In fact, observing the
terms of Lord William’s will, and
paying the Crown £100 a year for his
outstanding debts, can have left her little
to contribute to Catherine’s well-being –
nor is there any evidence that she did so.
Suffolk, however, controlled several
manors in Lincolnshire apart from his
wife’s inheritance, and was reckoned to
be ‘a great inheritor in those parts’, a
description which he might not have
recognised in 1535. In 1535 also he
negotiated a successful marriage for his
younger daughter by the French Queen
when the seventeen-year-old Eleanor
was wedded to Henry Clifford, the son
and heir of the Earl of Cumberland. 2 If
this reduced his outgoings it was only
briefly, because on 18 September of the
same year his new wife bore him a son,
which necessitated the establishment of
a fresh nursery with its complement of
staff. The child was named for the King,
who as we have seen stood godfather, so
what was lost in financial terms was
gained in honour.
When rebellion broke out in
Lincolnshire in October 1536, it was
therefore natural for Henry to turn to his
friend Charles Brandon to act as his
lieutenant in those parts, although he
could hardly be described as a locally
based magnate. After careful
consultations with the Duke of Norfolk
and the Earl of Oxford, he decided that
the urgency of the situation required
immediate action, and set off with only
his riding household. 3 It may be that he
was already aware that most of the so-
called gentry leaders of the rebels were
at best half-hearted about their cause,
and had decided to play on their
reluctance in negotiation. He used a
stick-and-carrot technique, agreeing to
intercede for their pardons on the
condition that they advanced no further.
If they persisted on the other hand, he
would have no option but to fight. This
attempt to buy time was successful. By
the time that the rebels had agreed to
disperse and sue for pardon, he had been
joined by Sir John Russell and Sir
William Parr with 3,000 fighting men
and sixteen guns. 4 In these
circumstances when the Earl of
Shrewsbury sent a herald to Lincoln,
there was no will to resist, and the
gentlemen rode to Stamford to submit to
the Duke. Suffolk’s commission now
required him to investigate the
circumstances of the Lincolnshire revolt,
and this he did by interrogating some of
the surrendered gentlemen, who
naturally blamed the intransigence of the
commons, a few of whose leaders they
actually handed over. When he entered
Lincoln, suitably guarded, on 16
October, the reaction of the crowd
appeared to vindicate this explanation. 5
He was also instructed to support
Shrewsbury further north in Yorkshire,
and that was not altogether consistent
with what he was expected to do at
Lincoln, because to have denuded
himself of troops would have been to
invite renewed disturbances, a point
which the King took when he instructed
him to proceed to ‘severe justice’
against the guilty parties. The situation in
the county remained confused. On 17
October it was reported that the beacons
were burning again in Louth, but ten days
later Sir John Russell entered the town
without resistance and disarmed the
inhabitants, who were nevertheless
described as ‘very hollow’. Suffolk
proceeded cautiously in disarming the
other towns, first receiving the
submissions of the gentry and civic
leaders, and imprisoning whoever they
presented. Contingents of troops were
sent to collect the surrendered arms. 6
The Duke moved with similar caution in
conducting his enquiries. He filled
Lincoln Castle with prisoners, but very
few of them were subsequently executed,
and he was constantly distracted by
developments in Yorkshire. Once
Norfolk’s and Shrewsbury’s armies had
withdrawn under the terms of the
Doncaster truce of 27 October, the north
of Lincolnshire had to be properly
defended, and by late November he had
3,600 men deployed for that purpose.
Meanwhile Suffolk, who was not bound
by the Doncaster truce, maintained an
army of spies in Yorkshire, and planned
to mobilise 5,000 men for an attack upon
Hull which never materialised. 7 On 16
November his work in Lincolnshire
culminated in the issue of the expected
royal pardon, and on the 27th he
mustered the whole county under the
leadership of its gentlemen to go against
the Yorkshire rebels, a contingency
which did not arise owing to the
Pontefract agreement of 4 December. 8
Suffolk’s role in these events firmly
established him as the new leader of
Lincolnshire society, and restored his
intimate relations with the King, with
whom he exchanged letters more
fulsome than any which had been seen in
recent years. The Pontefract pardon took
effect; the Pilgrims dispersed and the
Duke’s troops were disbanded. He and
the Duchess were invited to spend the
Christmas at court. It is not certain that
he got there for the festive season
because it was 24 December before his
deputy arrived to take over, and 18
January 1537 before we have any clear
evidence of his presence with the King.
When he left the court in April, Henry
instructed him to make his main
residence in Lincolnshire, and gave him
Tattershall Castle for that purpose. 9 As
a result of the traumatic events of the
Pilgrimage of Grace, Suffolk had been
transformed from an East Anglian
magnate into a Lincolnshire one, to be at
the King’s command as he had been
previously. Once there, he wasted no
time in mobilising his affinity, and
incorporating into it the existing
Willoughby clientage, with the full co-
operation of Lady Willoughby, who
realised which side her bread was
buttered. Perhaps because her health
was failing, Suffolk appears increasingly
to have been managing her affairs during
1538, appointing to church livings in her
gift and mobilising the Willoughby
affinity for his own purposes. Mary kept
nominal control, signing a court roll as
late as 7 May 1539, but by the 20th she
was dead and the Duke was suing for
livery of her lands. These were formally
granted to him in July 1540, and that
gave him another £900 of income. 10 In
addition his favour with the King led to
significant grants of ex-monastic
property. He sued for these lands in the
customary fashion, and they were given
to him in two tranches in December
1538 and March 1539. A few years later
they were bringing in £1,650 a year, and
must have increased his revenue by
about 30 per cent. Such lands were
mostly in Lincolnshire also, and those
that were outside the county he sold or
exchanged. These transactions, together
with his existing holdings, made him the
greatest landowner in the county, and
gave him a special role in its
government, a role which his good
relations with Thomas Cromwell merely
served to reinforce.
Meanwhile his family was causing
problems. Not, it should added, the
Duchess Catherine, who discharged her
duties, both at court in attendance on
Anne of Cleves and Catherine Howard
and as lady bountiful in Lincolnshire
with impeccable fortitude. She also
presented Charles with a second son in
1537 who was named for his father and
about whose early years virtually
nothing is known. 11 The trouble was
with his two elder daughters, Anne,
Lady Powis and Mary, Lady Mouteagle.
Anne took a lover, who was violently
ejected from her lodgings by Lord Powis
in a night raid. A legal separation
inevitably followed for which Cromwell
negotiated the maintenance agreement.
Rather surprisingly, Lady Powis
continued to be persona grata at court,
borrowing the necessary cash from
Cromwell or from her father. Lord
Powis died on 2 July 1551, and his
widow (as she still was) remarried
Randolph Hayward, although whether he
was her earlier lover is not known. 12
Tensions between Lord and Lady
Mounteagle also exacerbated their
problems, but these were basically
caused by Thomas’s incompetence. In
February 1538 he still owed the Duke
over £1,000, and in order to cancel this
debt Suffolk arranged to take over the
custody and marriage of his son William
in return for £100 worth of land. This
was not the only problem and in July
1540 Lord Mounteagle was bound to
keep the terms of an arbitration between
himself and the Duke which had been
negotiated by the Crown surveyor, and
which may well have related to the same
lands. 13 Fortunately the marriages of his
two younger daughters seem to have
worked out well. They were beautiful,
like their mother, but this seems to have
caused no problems. So, apart from the
fact that Suffolk believed that Lord
Clifford and Eleanor were living in an
unhealthy house, there were no issues
between them. There is no reason to
suppose that her death at the age of
twenty-eight in 1547 was connected with
this particular concern. It is much more
likely to have been caused by
childbearing. Both marriages were
fruitful, but the sons died young, leaving
a problem with which Edward VI had to
deal in due course. Outside the
immediate family, the move from Suffolk
to Lincolnshire seems to have caused
some fellow nobles to hesitate before
placing their daughters in such a
remotely located household. Lady Lisle,
for instance, although on good terms
with the Duchess, and in spite of the best
efforts of the Earl of Shrewsbury,
eventually declined the honour. 14 The
Suffolks themselves, however, seem to
have taken to northern society with
aplomb, but then they were spending a
considerable amount of time at court,
where the Duke had been created Lord
Great Master of the Household in 1539.
This was a new office, intended by
Cromwell to replace both the Lord
Steward and the Lord Chamberlain,
which it did for a few years, until the
Lord Chamberlainship was reinstated in
1543. 15
In the government of the realm, as
distinct from the locality, Suffolk was
reasonably assiduous during these years.
He attended about 80 per cent of the
meetings of the House of Lords, and in
the absence of both Norfolk and Audley
took the Chancellor’s place as the
director of business. He was prominent
on ceremonial occasions, was a leading
judge in the treason trials of 1538 and
1539, and was careful always to reflect
the King’s opinion on any issue of
controversy. 16 As Lord Great Master he
disposed considerable patronage within
the Household, and a number of his
clients found places in the newly
constituted band of Gentlemen
Pensioners, which was formed also in
1539. He was a leading negotiator with
Anne of Cleves, and her tame surrender
owed a good deal to his tactful handling
of what could have been a very difficult
situation. He was not a party to the
overthrow of Thomas Cromwell in the
summer of 1540, and did not challenge
Norfolk for the primacy in Council
which followed the chief minister’s fall.
His relations with Cromwell had always
been good, but he was not foolish
enough to rush to his defence, having
read the King’s mind accurately. His
power was private rather than public,
and depended once again upon his
relationship with Henry, but it increased
considerably between 1536 and 1540,
largely because of his successful
handing of the Lincolnshire revolt. When
he did return to the public arena, it was
in a military capacity. A proposed
expedition to defend Calais in August
1542 came to nothing, but in October
and November of that year he defended
the Anglo-Scottish border while Norfolk
carried out the harrying raids which
resulted in the Scottish defeat at the
Battle of Solway Moss in November,
and from January 1543 to March 1544
served as the King’s Lieutenant in the
North of England. 17 In that capacity he
worked closely with John Dudley,
Viscount Lisle, who was Lord Warden
of the Marches, and to whom it fell to
conduct the difficult relations with the
Scottish regency government which
followed the death of James V in
December. There is some evidence to
suggest that Suffolk resented being used
in an administrative capacity, and that he
would dearly have loved to lead an
invasion of Scotland himself, but such
was the King’s will, and he had to be
satisfied, perhaps having been reassured
that he would be given a suitable
command when the King invaded
France, which he was planning to do
once the Scottish situation had been
resolved.
As war with France grew closer,
Suffolk’s assiduity in Council increased
because Henry relied increasingly upon
his advice, and from July to November
1544 he commanded the King’s own
ward in the Army Royal which he led to
the siege of Boulogne. 18 Although he
was by this time sixty years of age, his
health seems to have been bearing up
remarkably well, and he was given the
whole responsibility for setting up the
siege. This was potentially a tricky
assignment, because it was intended as a
public relations exercise as well as a
military one, and had to be so laid that
once the King himself appeared on the
scene he would be assured of a swift
victory and a triumphant entry into the
conquered town. Rather surprisingly, it
all worked according to plan, and while
Norfolk and Russell were bogged down
in the siege of Montreuil, Boulogne
surrendered. On 14 September the King
was able to take possession of his
conquest. 19
Suffolk had been far more than a
nominal commander of this operation.
He had personally and at some risk
supervised the placement of the
batteries; he had taken the outlying
defences and commenced mining
operations, and his retinue had been
heavily involved in the skirmishing
which had accompanied these
operations. Until the King’s arrival he
also presided over the council of war,
and dealt with ambassadors and
messengers, working closely with the
King’s secretary William Paget. 20 After
Henry had carried out his state entry and
returned home, Suffolk was appointed to
go to the relief of Norfolk and Russell.
However, before he could do so,
Charles V had abandoned his ally and
signed a separate peace with France,
which meant that all the Imperial troops
and most of the mercenaries withdrew
from the campaign, leaving the two
dukes to extricate themselves as best
they could. The French advance on 1
October precluded a return to Boulogne,
and they beat an undignified retreat to
Calais. This was done with the
agreement of Viscount Lisle, who had
been left in charge of the conquered
town, but Henry was furious, mainly
with the Emperor for abandoning his
campaign, but temporarily with Norfolk
and Suffolk as well, until their
predicament was explained to him. 21 He
then asked Suffolk to stay on at Calais,
and return to the relief of Boulogne if
necessary. However, the French
retreated and by the end of November
the Duke was back in London. In spite of
Henry’s brief discontent, the 1544
campaign brought Suffolk honour and
profit, the latter in the form of the lands
of Tattershal College which he was
permitted to purchase at a concessionary
rate. At £2,666 the price was less than
eight years’ value, whereas the standard
rate was twenty years. 22 However, he
can have spent but little time in
Lincolnshire because in 1545 he was
named as the King’s Lieutenant in the
South and South East of England, and
busied himself both with assembling
troops to resist the threatened French
invasion and in preparing a counter-
strike across the Channel. He continued
active almost to the last, sitting in
Council just a week before his death,
which occurred at Guildford Manor on
22 August 1545. At the time of his death
his estates were valued at a little over
£3,000 a year. In spite of the financial
problems which he had encountered
over the years, thanks to the King’s
patronage he still contrived to die a rich
man. 23
His religious beliefs appear to have
been on the conservative side, but he
played no active part in the disputes
which divided the court and Council on
that issue in the 1540s. The six chaplains
who appeared at his funeral went in
different directions over the next few
years, and his will is ambiguous.
However, it does seem that he employed
and patronised men of more radical
views than his own, and he was mourned
as a supporter of the gospel by the
religious exiles who had taken refuge
from the Act of Six Articles on the
Continent. 24 It seems that this was partly
due to his well-known dislike of Bishop
Stephen Gardiner, and partly to the
evangelical tendencies of his Duchess.
Catherine was conventionally pious, as
he was, but increasingly from 1540
onwards filled their houses at
Tattershall and Grimesthorpe with
protestant sympathisers, one of whom,
Alexander Seton, was disciplined for a
radical sermon in 1541. 25 Her close
association with Queen Catherine Parr
after 1543 moved her further in the same
direction, and the death of the Duke
seems to have freed her from whatever
inhibitions that relationship had imposed
upon her. In June 1546 she was accused
of supporting the imprisoned Protestant
Anne Askew, and at the beginning of the
following year was named by Chapuys
as one of the Queen’s most dangerous
fr i ends . 26 She was said to rule
Lincolnshire through her clientage
network, but most of her time when not
at court must have been spent in bringing
up her two sons, both of whom died as
adolescents in Cambridge in 1551. At
that point the Brandon Suffolk title
became extinct, and the dignity was
conferred on Frances’s husband, Henry
Grey, Marquis of Dorset, in October of
that year. In 1552 the thirty-three-year-
old widowed Duchess married her
Chamberlain, Richard Bertie, and the
pair of them went into exile as soon as
the papal authority was restored at the
beginning of 1555. After a somewhat
traumatic journey through North
Germany, they ended up as guests of the
King of Poland, and their son (the
appropriately named Peregrine) was
born during their exile. 27 They returned
on Mary’s death, and seem to have
enjoyed good relations with William
Cecil. On the other hand their increasing
Puritanism distanced them from the
Queen, and Catherine never became
intimate with Elizabeth. Instead she
confined her attentions increasingly to
Lincolnshire, where she and her husband
enjoyed significant influence in spite of
the fact that he held no office beyond that
of Justice of the Peace. Her latter years
were increasingly affected by bad health
and she died on 19 September 1580,
being buried at Spilsby church near her
home. Richard died in 1582. 28
Peregrine, of course had no claim
to the throne, and neither did Henry or
Charles, his half-brothers, because their
parents transmitted none, but it was
otherwise with the children of the
French Queen. The Earl of Lincoln
having died in 1534, that meant Frances
and Eleanor, and the former of these was
included in the extraordinary provision
for the succession which Henry made by
Act of Parliament in 1544. This statute
(35 Henry VIII, cap. 1) declared Edward
to be his father’s heir, but then went on
to say that in default of the birth of
further sons to either of them, the Crown
should pass to his natural daughters,
Mary and Elizabeth, in that order, the
only condition being that neither of them
should marry without the consent of the
Council. 29 They were not legitimated,
and this was quite without precedent,
because the common law had always
forbidden the inheritance of bastards,
and it was questionable whether statute
could override the law in such a fashion.
30 Should all of his children die without

progeny, the throne was to go to the

children of his sister Mary, which meant
Frances because Eleanor had died in
1539. This was remarkable in that it
ignored the children of his elder sister,
Margaret. These in 1544 consisted of
her granddaughter by James V, Mary,
who was already Queen of Scotland in
her own right, and her daughter by her
second marriage, Margaret Douglas, by
then married to the Earl of Lennox.
These children were unquestionably
legitimate, and the only reason for their
exclusion could have been that they were
‘alien born’, that is born outside the
realm of England, but if that was the
reason, then that was equally
unprecedented. It seems more likely that
the real reason for ignoring them was
Henry’s instinctive dislike of the Scots;
however, none of this was specified in
the Act. What was specified was that the
arrangements so made could be altered
or confirmed by the King’s last will and
testament, thus placing them firmly with
the field of the royal prerogative, and
opening the way for his son to do the
l i ke. 31 For the time being this was
simply accepted, and Frances can have
had little expectation of it becoming
controversial.
Henry begot no more children after
1544, and in the summer of 1553
Edward was dangerously ill, a minor
and still unmarried. However, he had a
will of his own, and was determined not
to be bound by his father’s settlement.
Above all he was determined to prevent
any female from succeeding to the
Crown. Before his illness became
serious he had addressed the
hypothetical question of what would
happen if he were to die childless, and
come up with a school exercise known
as his ‘Device’. 32 By the terms of this
both Mary and Elizabeth were excluded
as illegitimate, and Frances simply for
being female. The Crown was to pass to
any son whom she might bear, and
failing that to the son of any daughter of
hers. This was thinking long-term,
because Frances had lost her only son as
an infant and had not conceived for a
number of years. Her eldest daughter,
Jane, was fifteen and unmarried, while
Catherine and Mary were younger still.
As Edward’s health deteriorated, the
Device was simply not real politics,
providing as it did for a regency in the
event of no eligible male having been
born. Something had got to be done, and
either Edward or the Duke of
Northumberland, who was his mentor at
that stage, came up with the idea of
including Jane Grey herself in the order
of succession. 33 This could be done
simply by amending the wording to read
‘the lady Jane and her heirs male’ as
opposed to ‘the heirs male of the Lady
Jane’. It meant overcoming the King’s
prejudice against female rulers, but that
was done. He liked Jane, and approved
of her godliness, so if a woman had got
to succeed, better her than the
notoriously conservative Mary. The
device was passed to the law officers as
the King’s will, to be translated into
Letters Patent. 34 There were a number
of problems with this. In the first place
Frances had not resigned her right to her
daughter, and should undoubtedly have
taken precedence, and in the second
place it was not clear that Edward, as a
minor, could even make a valid will.
Above all, there was Henry’s
unrepealed Act of Parliament making a
totally different dispensation. Frances,
however, did not press her claim, and it
seems that nobody could stand the idea
of the Duke of Suffolk as King Consort,
so that when Edward died on 6 July,
Jane was duly proclaimed. She was by
then safely married to Guildford Dudley,
the Duke of Northumberland’s fifth son,
so no question of consent arose and the
Protestant succession seemed to be
guaranteed for the foreseeable future. Or
it would have been, had it not been for
Mary, who rallied the aristocracy to her
lawful cause, and overturned Jane’s
government in a matter of days. 35 The
unfortunate Jane was consigned to the
Tower, and executed the following
February following Sir Thomas Wyatt’s
rising which was deemed to be aimed at
replacing her on the throne. Her father,
the Duke of Suffolk, who was most
unwisely involved in the rebellion, was
executed at the same time, and his lands
forfeited to the Crown. 36 His widow,
Frances, retreated to her dower lands
and played no further part in public life
before her own death in 1559.
Meanwhile the King’s last
succession Act continued in force, and
when Mary’s marriage to Philip of Spain
failed to produce any offspring,
Elizabeth became the heir, much to
Mary’s disgust. 37 It was, however, by
popular acclaim that Henry’s younger
daughter succeeded her sister in
November 1558, and that inevitably
raised the Suffolk claim to the
succession again. If the succession Act
were ignored, then the next in line was
Mary, Queen of Scots, a Catholic and
married to the Dauphin of France; but in
that event some would argue that she had
a better claim than Elizabeth herself,
since her legitimacy had never been
questioned. This meant that the 1544 Act
remained very much alive, and as the
Queen evaded pressure to marry,
Catherine Grey’s claim was widely
canvassed. 38 Most extraordinarily she
became an object of interest to Philip II
of Spain, who believed her to be a good
Catholic, and who was desperate to
prevent Mary of Scotland from
succeeding to England and thus creating
an Anglo-Scottish bloc under French
protection. At the very beginning of
Elizabeth’s reign there were plots and
rumours of plots, involving Catherine’s
abduction from England and marriage to
a Habsburg prince – perhaps Don
Carlos. 39 These rumours began to die
away after the death of Francis II
returned Mary to Scotland in August
1561, and in any case Catherine herself
pre-empted them by a clandestine
marriage in November of December
1560 to Edward Seymour, Earl of
Hertford, the twenty-year-old son of
Protector Somerset, a marriage which
incidentally confirmed her Protestant
credentials for the next round of the
succession dispute. In 1561 she became
pregnant and the secret of her wedding
was revealed. Elizabeth was furious
because one so close to the royal family
should have obtained the Queen’s
consent to such a union, which
manifestly she had not done. Elizabeth
had no time for Catherine anyway, and
committed her to the Tower, where she
was joined a few weeks later by her
unfortunate husband, who seems to have
been an innocent party to the deception.
40 Edward, Lord Beauchamp, was born

in the Tower in 1562, and an inquiry

instituted into the lawfulness of the
marriage. Given the Queen’s attitude this
inevitably found against the couple, and
Catherine remained in confinement until
she was released into house arrest in
1563. This dampened the enthusiasm of
some of her supporters, but by no means
all and her claim to the succession
continued to be advanced in Protestant
quarters down to her death in 1568,
particularly in the parliament of 1566. 41
Thereafter the Suffolk claim faded
in to the background. Lord Beauchamp
was considered to be illegitimate, and
was in any case outlived by his father,
while Thomas, who had been born after
his mother emerged from the Tower,
was both a younger son and a bastard.
Mary, Catherine’s sister, lived until
1578 but never inherited her sister’s
pretensions. She married humbly, again
without the Queen’s consent, and spent
some time in prison as a result, but she
was deformed and no one took her
seriously as a claimant to the throne. 42
Eleanor’s daughter, Margaret, was
married suitably to Henry Stanley, the
fourth Earl of Derby, and presumably
obtained Elizabeth’s consent to that
union because she was not punished for
failing to do so. Neither she nor her son
ever put forward any claim, and no one
did so on their behalf. Apart from some
notional speculations in the 1590s, when
the issue was very much alive owing to
the Queen’s failure to marry, the Suffolk
line effectively died with Catherine.
This left an embarrassing situation,
because Henry’s Act had simply
specified that the Crown was to pass to
the next lawful heir in the event that the
Suffolk line failed. The most
conspicuous claimant was Mary, Queen
of Scots, whom Elizabeth persistently
refused to exclude until she was
eventually executed for conspiring
against the Queen’s life in 1587. 43
However, it was clear long before that
that Mary was unacceptable to the
Protestant elite, and after Catherine’s
death various alternatives were
canvassed. The Howards had a claim,
going back through the female line to
Thomas of Woodstock, the sixth son of
Edward III, and the Earl of Huntingdon a
rather less remote one derived from his
grandmother, Margaret, Countess of
Salisbury, the daughter of George, Duke
of Clarence (Edward IV’s brother).
Margaret Tudor’s second marriage to the
Earl of Angus was represented at this
stage by Arabella Stuart, the
granddaughter of Margaret Douglas, and
the most remote claim of all was that
proposed on behalf of the Infanta of
Spain by Robert Parsons, which derived
from a marriage by John of Gaunt,
Edward III’s fourth son, in the fourteenth
century. 44 Of these the Infanta, the Earl
of Huntingdon and Arabella Stuart were
seriously supported by different interest
groups, but the front-running contender
was Mary’s son, James VI of Scotland,
whose father was Henry, Lord Darnley,
Arabella’s uncle, who had died in 1567.
45 James had been brought up as a

Protestant, and thereby avoided his

mother’s fatal weakness, was
unquestionably legitimate, and was an
adult of proven competence. Elizabeth
had made it clear that she did not
consider his mother’s fate a bar to his
claim, and although she would not
explicitly recognise him, by 1600 he
was in touch with Robert Cecil, the
Queen’s powerful secretary, who had
undertaken to smooth his passage. 46 So
when Elizabeth died in 1603, James
succeeded peacefully, and the long-
running Tudor succession drama had
finally come to an end. The 1544 Act
was never repealed, because that would
have raised questions about Elizabeth’s
own right to the throne, but it was quietly
forgotten about. By the time that Edward
Seymour’s son, William, succeeded his
grandfather as Earl of Hertford in 1621,
it was no longer an issue and Mary
Tudor’s ghost was at last laid to rest.
2. Alleged to be the wedding portrait of Mary
and Charles Brandon, it is probably later in
date. By an unknown artist.
3. Mary Tudor as a young girl. By an unknown
artist.
4. Mary as Queen of France, drawn in late
1514. This is the only authentic likeness.
5. Anne Boleyn, the second Queen of Henry
VIII, from a drawing by Hans Holbein. Mary
was deeply suspicious of her ambitions, and
those of her family.
6. Catherine Willoughby, the second Duchess
of Suffolk. A drawing by Hans Holbein.
A rather more complete study of Catherine,
also by Holbein.
7. Elizabeth of York, Henry VII’s queen, and
Mar’s mother.
8. Mary’s brother, Henry VIII, effaces his
father, Henry VII; from Holbein’s celebrated
cartoon in the National Portrait Gallery.
9. Catherine of Aragon, Henry’s first Queen,
and a particular friend of Mary.

10. The English pavilion at the Field of Cloth

of Gold, Henry’s 1520 meeting with Francis I
of France.
11. Westminster, from the panorama of
London by Antony van Wyngaerde (c.1550).
The following six pictures are all taken from
the same panorama, which represents London
as Mary would have known it.
12. Whitehall Palace.
13. London, from Westminster to the Strand.
14. Old St Pauls.
15. London Bridge.
16. The Tower of London.
17. Cardinal Wolsey. From a drawing by
Jacques le Boucq.
 APPENDIX 1
VERSES GREETING
MARY ON HER
ENTRY INTO PARIS
A ship represented Mary crossing the
Channel, guided on its true course by the
City of Paris. The sailors in the rigging
sang her praises.
Noble Lady, welcome to France,
Through you we now shall live in
joy and pleasure,
Frenchmen and Englishmen live at
their ease,
 Praise to God, who sends us such
a blessing!
To which an orator responded:
Most illustrious, magnanimous
princess,
Paris reveres and honours you
And presents this ship to your
nobility,
Which is under the King’s
governance.
Grains, wines and sweet liqueurs
are therein,
Which the winds propel by divine
ordinance.
All men of good will
Receive you as Queen of France.
In the last tableau before the Palais
Royale, the angel Gabriel presided over
the Garden of France, where shepherds
sang.
As the peace between God and
man,
By the intervention of the Virgin
Mary,
Once was made, so now we,
The French bourgeois are relieved
of our burdens;
Because Mary has married with
us.
Through her justice and peace join
In the fields of France and in the
countryside of England;
Since the bonds of love hold in
restraining arms,
 We have acquired for ourselves
equally,
Mary in heaven and Mary on
earth.
(Taken from Charles Read Baskervill
(ed.) Pierre Grigore’s Pageants for the
Entry of Mary Tudor into Paris , 1934.
From BL Cotton MS Vespasian B.ii.)
 APPENDIX 2
A SUFFOLK
GARLAND
Eighth Henry ruling this land,
He had a sister fair,
That was the widowed Queen of
France,
Enrich’d with virtues rare;
And being come to England’s
Court,
She oft beheld a knight,
Charles Brandon nam’d in whose
fair eyes,
She chiefly took delight
And noting in her princely mind,
His gallant sweet behaviour,
She daily drew him by degrees,
Still more and more in favour;
Which he perceiving, courteous
knight,
Found fitting time and place,
And thus in amorous sort began,
His love-suit to her grace.
Brandon (quoth she) I greater am,
Than would I were for thee,
But I can as little master love,
As them of low degree.
My father was a king, and so
A king my husband was,
My brother is the like, and he
Will say I do transgress.
But let him say what pleaseth him,
His liking I’ll forego,
And chuse a love to please
myself,
Though all the world said no:
If ploughmen make their
marriages,
As best contents their mind,
Why should not princes of estate
The like contentment find?
But tell me, Brandon, am I not
More forward than beseems?
Yet blame me not for love, I love
Where best my fancy deems.
And long may live (quoth he) to
love,
Nor longer live may I
Then when I love your royal
grace,
And then disgraced die.
But if I do deserve your love,
My mind desires dispatch,
For many are the eyes in court,
That on your beauty watch:
But am I not, sweet lady, now
More forward than behoves?
Yet for my heart, forgive my
tongue
That speaketh for him that loves.
The queen and this brave
gentleman
Together both did wed,
And after sought the king’s
goodwill,
And of their wishes sped:
 For Brandon soon was made a
Duke,
And graced so in court,
And who but he did flaunt it forth
Amongst the noblest sort.
And so from princely Brandon’s
line,
And Mary did proceed
The noble race of Suffolk’s house,
As after did succeed:
And whose high blood the lady
Jane,
Lord Guildford Dudley’s wife,
Came by descent, who with her
lord,
In London lost her life.
(From the Suffolk Garland; or a
Collection of Poems, Songs, Tales,
Ballads, Sonnets, and Elegies,
Legendary and Romantic, Historical
and Descriptive, Relative to that
County , 1818. The reader will observe
that the poet’s chronology in somewhat
adrift!)
 NOTES

Introduction: Historiography &

Background
1. The Suffolk Garland is printed by W. C. Richardson
in Mary Tudor: The White Queen (1970), pp. xiv–xvi.
Jean de Prechac , La Princesse d’Angleterre, ou la
Duchesse Reyne (Paris 1677), translated into English
1678. Marguerite de Lussan, Marie d’Angleterre.
Reine-Duchesse (Amsterdam, 1749). Russell M.
Garnier, The White Queen (London, 1899).
2. J.J. Scarisbrick, Henry VIII ( London, 1968). S. J.
Gunn, Charles Brandon, Duke of Suffolk, 1484–
1545 (Oxford, 1988). See also D. Loades, Henry VIII
(Stroud, 2011).
3. Green, Lives of the Princesses , Vol. V. Both drew
heavily on The Union of the Two Noble Families of
Lancaster and York (edited by Richard Grafton in
1548), in the 1809 edition by Henry Ellis.
4. Mary Croom Brown, Mary Tudor, Queen of
France (London, 1911). On the theoretical possibility
of Mary’s pregnancy, and the attentions of Francis,
see also R. J. Knecht, Francis I (Cambridge, 1982),
pp. 11–13.
5. M. K. Jones and M. G. Underwood, The King’s
Mother. Lady Margaret Beaufort, Countess of
Richmond and Derby (Cambridge, 1992)
6. Erin A. Sadlack, The French Queen’s Letters:
Mary Tudor Brandon and the Politics of Marriage
in Sixteenth-Century Europe (London, 2011).
7. John’s father (also John) had been born to
Katherine Swynford while she was still John of
Gaunt’s mistress. Their subsequent marriage had
legitimated him, and this was confirmed by the Pope,
but he was barred from any claim to the throne by
Henry IV in 1407. Margaret’s claim to the Crown
depended upon whether this ban was accepted or not.
This was controversial at the time, and since.
8. Jones and Underwood, The King’s Mother , p. 61.
9. S. B. Chrimes , Henry VII (1972), p. 18.
10. Charles Ross, Richard III (1981). Edward had
been betrothed to one Eleanor Butler before he had
married Elizabeth, and this was alleged to have created
a pre-contract, thus making all his children illegitimate.
This was an old and discredited story, resurrected for
the occasion.
11. The King’s Mother , pp. 62–5.
12. Chrimes, Henry VII , pp. 22–3.
13. John Morton, Lionel Woodville and Peter
Courtenay.
14. For the agreement, see T. Rymer, Foedera,
Conventions, etc. (London, 1704–35), XII, p. 226. By
some means unknown, John Morton got wind of this
intention, and warned Henry in time. Chrimes, Henry
VII , p. 29.
15. Anne of Beaujeu was effectively Regent for her
brother Charles VIII, and was concerned to avoid a
confrontation with England during the minority.
16. These rumours seem to have been prompted by the
thought that he would want to prevent her marriage to
Henry, but that aim had been achieved by his
agreement with the Queen Dowager over a year
earlier.
17. R. A. Griffiths, Sir Rhys ap Thomas and His
Family (1993)
18. Ibid. Chrimes, Henry VII , p. 43. Cambrian
Register (1796), p. 83.
19. R. A. Griffiths and R. S. Thomas, The Making of
the Tudor Dynasty (1985) is particularly good on the
Bosworth campaign.
20. Materials for a History of the Reign of Henry
VII , ed. W. Campbell (Rolls Series, 1873), I, p. 6.
21. No fewer than twenty-nine of his councillors had
served Edward or Richard in the same capacity. J. R.
Lander, ‘The Yorkist Council and Administration,
1461–1485’, English Historical Review , 72, 1958, pp.
27–46.
22. Chrimes, Henry VII , Appendix D, pp.330–1.
23. Rotuli Parliamentorum (Records Commission,
1767–1832), VI, pp. 268–70.
24. S. Anglo, Spectacle, Pageantry and Early Tudor
Policy (Oxford, 1969), pp. 18–21.
25. Chrimes, Appendix D, p. 330.
26. Richard Rex, The Tudors (Stroud, 2002), p. 16.
27. Materials for a History of the Reign of Henry
VII , II, pp. 148 et seq.
28. After James was killed at Flodden, she married
Archibald Douglas, Earl of Angus, and engaged in a
long struggle for the control of her son, James V. She
divorced Angus in 1527 and married Henry Stuart. Her
last years were spent peacefully at the Scottish Court.
29. Erin A. Sadlack, The French Queen’s Letters , p.
4.
30. J. J. Scarisbrick, Henry VIII .

1. The Infant Princess

1. This psalter remains in Exeter College Library in
Oxford. Mary C. Brown, Mary Tudor, Queen of
Fra n ce (1911). The date of Mary’s birth is also
indicated by the authorisation of a payment of 50 s by
Privy Seal bill to the child’s nurse, Anne Shenan, at
Michaelmas 1496, suggesting that she was engaged in
the spring. Camden Miscellany , 9, 1895.
2. The main nursery seems to have been at Richmond
until the fire of 1497, at which point it was moved to
Eltham.
3. W. C. Richardson, Mary Tudor: The White Queen
(1970), p. 12.
4. H. M. Colvin, The History of the King’s Works
(1963–82), IV, ii, pp. 222–34.
5. Richardson, Mary Tudor , pp. 14–15.
6. Privy Purse Expenses of Elizabeth of York , ed.
N.H. Nicolas (1830).
7. Ibid.
8. Jones and Underwood, The King’s Mother (1992),
p. 67.
9. Ibid.
10. St. John’s College Archive D.4.10, notes 216–50.
11. Chrimes, Henry VII , p. 67, n. 3.
12. A. F. Pollard, The Reign of Henry VII from
Contemporary Sources (1913/67), III, p. 231.
13. Chrimes, Henry VII , p. 295.
14. Richardson, Mary Tudor , p. 23.
15. Ian Arthurson, The Warbeck Conspiracy, 1491–
1499 (1994), pp. 146–161.
16. Raimondo de Raimondi, Milanese envoy in England
to the Duke, 17 November 1498. Calendar of State
Papers, Milan, 1385–1618 , I, p. 358.
17. Cal. Ven , I, p. 790. ‘News from London’, 1 April
1499.
18. Erasmus, Opus Epistolarum , ed. P. S. and H. M.
Allen (12 vols, 1906–58), I, no. 1.
19. Such as ‘Giles the Luter’ or ‘The Welsh harpist’.
Richardson, Mary Tudor , p. 24.
20. Ibid., pp. 27–8.
21. De Puebla to Ferdinand and Isabella, 15 July 1488,
Calendar of State Papers, Spanish , I, p. 5.
22. G. Reese, Music in the Renaissance (1954), pp.
769 et seq.
23. Richardson, Mary Tudor , p. 27.
24. De Institutione Feminae Christianae (1524), in
Opera Omnia , IV, pp. 65–301.
25. Rychard Hyrde’s translation of Vives, A Very
Frutefull and Pleasant Boke (1540).
26. Garrett Mattingly, Catherine of Aragon (1942),
pp. 141–2.
27. Richardson, Mary Tudor , p. 30.
28. Chrimes, Henry VII , p. 93.
29. R. L. Storey, The Reign of Henry VII (1968), p.
62.
30. Polydore Vergil, Anglica Historia , ed. D. Hay
(Camden Society, n.s., 74, 1950), pp. 142–3.

2. The Princess of Castile

1 A. H. Thomas and I. D. Thornley, The Great
Chronicle of London (1938), pp. 312–15. S. Anglo,
Spectacle, Pageantry and Early Tudor Policy
(1969), pp. 100–3.
2. Mattingly, Catherine of Aragon , p. 55.
3. There was from the start dispute within the College
of Cardinals as to the propriety of this dispensation,
which partly at least accounts for the delay. Chrimes,
Henry VII , p. 286.
4. The text of the declaration made by Prince Henry to
Bishop Fox is printed in G. Burnet, History of the
Reformation , ed. N. Pocock (1865), vol. 4, in the
Collection of Records, pp. 17–18.
5. The report of these envoys is printed in Memorials
of King Henry VII , ed. J. Gairdner (1858), pp. 223–
39.
6. Memorials , p. 278.
7. Richardson, Mary Tudor , p. 34.
8. Anne had been the heir of Duke Francis II, who had
died in 1488. She had been married originally to
Charles VIII, and after his death in 1498 transferred
(after a diplomatic divorce on his part) to his successor
Louis XII.
9. This was a betrothal; the actual marriage did not
take place until May 1514. The purpose, however, was
to preserve the personal union in the event of Louis
having no son.
10. Chrimes, Henry VII , p. 289. A partial account of
the visit, written by an unknown contemporary, is
printed in Memorials , pp. 282–303.
11. According to one chronicle, Mary and Catherine
both enjoyed ‘great cheer’ during this visit. Charles
Wriothesley, A Chronicle of England , ed. W. D.
Hamilton (Camden Society, n.s., vol. XI, 1875).
12. Richardson, Mary Tudor , p. 36.
13. Thomas Brady et al. A Handbook of European
History, 1400–1600 (1994), pp. 446–54.
14. Where he remained until he was executed as a
precaution by Henry VIII before his French campaign
of 1513. His brother Richard was serving in the French
army, and this is thought to have sealed his fate. J. J.
Scarisbrick, Henry VIII (1968), p. 32.
15. This may have been because he did not get around
to it before his death in September. The treaty was
subsequently confirmed verbally (but not formally
ratified) by Margaret of Savoy.
16. Memorials , pp. 282–303.
17. Cal. Ven., 1202–1509 , pp. 883, 886. Vincenzo
Quirini to the Signory, 25 June, 23 July 1506.
18. Cal. Span ., I, p. 502.
19. Ibid., p. 437. De Puebla to Ferdinand.
20. Sadlack, The French Queen’s Letters , p. 16.
21. Ibid., p. 444. It is not clear that this clause was
ever honoured.
22. Richardson, Mary Tudor , p. 39.
23. A. F. Pollard, The Reign of Henry VII from
Contemporary Sources (1913/67), III, p. 128.
24. Petrus Carmelianus, The solempnities &
triumphes doon & made at the spousells and
mariage of the kynges daughter, the ladye Marye ,
ed. James Gairdner (Camden Miscellany, 9, no. 53 (2),
1893), p. 10.
25. Richardson, Mary Tudor , pp. 42–3.
26. Carmellianus, loc. cit.
27. Pollard, The Reign of Henry VII , III, p. 128.
28. Richardson, Mary Tudor , pp, 43–4.
29. Ibid.
30. Carmellinus, The solempnities , p. 15.
31. The only evidence for Henry’s dying wish is
contained in a letter written by Henry VIII to Margaret
of Savoy on 27 June. Letters and Papers … of the
reign of Henry VIII , ed. J. S. Brewer et al. (1862–
1910), I, no. 84.
32. On Fuensalida’s incompetence, see Mattingly,
Catherine of Aragon , pp. 79–95. See also Pollard,
The Reign of Henry VII , I, p. 317.
33. Pollard, loc. cit.
34. John Leland, De Rebus Brittanicus Collectanea
(1715), IV, pp. 303–9. Richardson, Mary Tudor , pp.
57–8.
35. Chrimes, Henry VII, pp. 311–13. The Will of
Henry VII , ed. T. Astle (1775).
36. Mary C. Brown, Mary Tudor, Queen of France
(1911), p. 73.
37. On Catherine’s appearance at this time, see
Mattingly, p. 97.
38. Gutierre Gomez de Fuensalida, Correspondencia ,
ed. El Duque de Alba (1907), p. 518.
39. Edward Hall, Chronicle (ed. 1806), p. 507.
40. D. Loades, The Fighting Tudors (2009), pp. 40–
59.
41. Cal. Ven ., II, p. 11. Letters and Papers , I, no.
156.
42. Richardson, Mary Tudor , p. 63.
43. Ibid. The Duke was acting ‘by the aid and comfort
of the French King’. Pollard, The Reign of Henry VII
, p. 143.
44. Scarisbrick, Henry VIII , p. 26.
45. Letters and Papers , I, no. 1182. Cal. Span ., II,
p. 131.
46. The naval campaign had not fared much better. A
fleet had gone to Brest, but the only result of the
campaign had been the loss of the Regent in dramatic
circumstances. Alfred Spont, The French War of
1512–13 (1897), pp. 49–50.
47. Rymer, Foedera , XIII, p. 354 . Letters and
Papers , I, nos. 1750, 1884. Charles Cruickshank,
Henry VIII and the Invasion of France (1990), p.
82.
48. Letters and Papers , I, no. 276. The idea seems to
have come originally from Maximilian.
49. Richardson, Mary Tudor , p. 67.
50. Letters and Papers , I, no. 1777.
51. Ibid., no. 2366, Declaration of 15 October 1513.
52. Cruickshank, Invasion of France , p. 163.
53. Polydore Vergil, Anglica Historia , p. 221.
Scarisbrick, Henry VIII , pp. 37–8.
54. Letters and Papers , I, no. 2682.
55. Ibid., no. 2849
56. Ibid., no. 3101. This document also includes an
oath by Louis XII to observe the peace between the
realms.
57. Richardson, Mary Tudor , p. 75.

3. The Politics of Marriage

1. Richardson, Mary Tudor , p. 76.
2. R. J. Knecht, Francis I (1982), pp. 242–3.
3. Cal. Span ., II, p. 164.
4. Ibid., pp. 159, 170.
5. Calendar of State Papers, Milan , pp. 686, 708–9.
Letters and Papers , I, no. 2997.
6. Cal. Ven ., II, nos. 635, 695. Scarisbrick, Henry
VIII , p. 53.
7. Message from Paris, 7 April 1514. Letters and
Papers , I, no. 2791.
8. Ibid., no. 2957.
9. Rymer, Foedera , XIII, p. 413 et seq. Letters and
Papers , I, no. 3131.
10. This response was accompanied, apparently, by
Charles plucking a young hawk alive, to the
consternation of his councillors. Richardson, Mary
Tudor , p. 79.
11. Marino Sanuto, Diarii , ed. R. Fulin, F. Stefani et
al. (1879–1903, Vol. XIX).
12. Letters and Papers , I, no. 3134. Richardson,
Mary Tudor , p. 81.
13. Letters and Papers , I, no. 3146. Ibid.
14. Cal. Ven ., II, no. 500. Henry sent it to the
jewellers of ‘the Row’ to have it valued, which was
probably Middle Row near Staple Inn. This is close to
Hatton Garden, the centre of the present diamond
market. M. Perry, Sisters to the King , p. 129.
15. Venetian notes, 28 August 1514 . Letters and
Papers , I, no. 3206.
16. Ibid., no. 3247.
17. Perry, Sisters , p. 130.
18. Richardson, Mary Tudor , p. 84.
19. Ibid., p. 85.
20. Cal. Ven ., II, no. 500.
21. Hall, Chronicle , p. 570.
22. Ibid. Perry, Sisters , p. 133.
23. Richardson, Mary Tudor , p. 90.
24. Ibid., p. 91.
25. Cal. Ven ., II, no. 207.
26. Louis seems to have conducted himself in a
remarkably youthful fashion throughout this encounter,
not even dismounting in order to embrace her. Les
Memoires de Martin et Guillaume Du Bellay (1753),
VII, p. 184.
27. Carriages in the later sense were not known in the
sixteenth century. These wagons were un-sprung, and
drawn by anything from two to six horses. When
carrying people, as here, they were normally highly
decorated.
28. Richardson, Mary Tudor , p. 94.
29. Cal. Ven ., II, no. 511.
30. Ibid.
31. Ibid. Perry, Sisters , p. 139. Richardson, Mary
Tudor , p. 95. The alarm bells were not rung, for fear
of disturbing the King.
32. Cal. Ven, II, no. 511.
33. Ibid. Perry, Sisters , p. 138.
34. Du Bellay, VII, p. 187.
35. None of the numerous accounts of these events
make mention of any expression of opinion on Mary’s
part. Presumably actions spoke louder than words. Du
Bellay, VII, p. 187.
36. Hall, Chronicle , p. 571. Letters and Papers , I, ii,
no. 3580. S. J. Gunn, Charles Brandon, Duke of
Suffolk (1988), pp. 32–5.
37. Cal. Span ., II, p. 192. Letters and Papers , I,
nos. 3472, 3476.
38. Ibid., p. 201.
39. Letters and Papers , I, ii, no. 3387.
40. Richardson, Mary Tudor , p. 114.
41. Hall, Chronicle , p. 571.
42. Du Bellay, VI, p. 184
43. Letters and Papers , I, no. 3355. Sadlack, The
French Queen’s Letters , p. 15.
44. D. Loades, The Boleyns (2011), p. 67. The exact
date when Anne joined Mary’s household is not
known.
45. Perry, Sisters , p. 147.
46. Pierre Gringore, ‘De la reception en entrée de la
illustrissime dame et princesse Marie d’Agleterre …
dans le ville de Paris le 6 Novembre 1514’. BL Cotton
MS Vespasian B.II.
47. Hall, Chronicle, p. 571.
48. BL Cotton Vespasion B.II, f. 10.
49. Richardson, Mary Tudor , p. 118.

4. Mary as Queen of France

1. Richardson, Mary Tudor , pp. 119–20.
2. Ibid., p. 118.
3. Not all the continental observers would have agreed
with this reservation, but in English accounts it is
always the King who takes precedence. Perry, Sisters
to the King , p. 149.
4. Jean de Autun, Chroniques de Louis XII , ed. R.de
Maulde La Claviere (1889–93).
5. Dorset to Wolsey, 18 November 1514, Letters and
Papers , I, ii, no. 3449.
6. Hall, Chronicle , p. 572.
7. Ibid., p. 573.
8. S. J. Gunn, Charles Brandon , pp. 32–5.
9. Letters and Papers , I, ii, no. 3472.
10. Ibid., nos. 3430, 3472, 3485. II, i, 1.
11. Richardson, Mary Tudor , p. 121.
12. Ibid.
13. This observer was the future Cardinal Jerome
Alexander, who was quite accustomed to such
occasions.
14. Suffolk to Wolsey, 7 November 1514, Letters and
Papers , I, ii, no. 3424
15. Knecht, Francis I , p. 12.
16. Richardson, Mary Tudor , p. 124.
17. Francis’s attitude to Mary at this juncture is a
matter of some controversy. He may, or may not, have
made improper suggestions – it depends on which
source you read!
18. Robert de la Marck Fleuranges, Histoire des
choses memorables en France , printed in Les
Memoires de Martin et Guillaume du Bellay (1753).
19. Louise de Savoie, Journal, in J-A. C. Buchon,
Choix de chroniques et memoires relatif a
l’Histoire de France (1778–80), IV, pp. 457–64.
20. Jane had been banned by Louis on the ground of
bad moral character (she had been the mistress of the
Duke de Longueville) in spite of the fact that she had
been Mary’s childhood companion. The Queen was
most upset.
21. Hall, Chronicle , p. 586.
22. Perry, Sisters to the King , p. 151.
23. The French crown was not strictly hereditary, ‘for
the new king is not the heir of his predecessor, and
does not succeed in the possession of his goods …’
The King succeeded by blood in accordance with the
Salic Law. If Mary had borne a posthumous son to
Louis XII, Francis would not have been the heir. Du
Moulin, quoted by R. Doucet, Les institutions de la
France au XVIe siècle (2 vols, 1948), I, p. 81.
24. Knecht, Francis I , p. 13.
25. Doucet, Institutions , I, 104–9. A. Lebey, Le
connetable de Bourbon (1904), pp. 31–43.
26. Perry, Sisters to the King .
27. Letters and Papers , II, i, no. 46. BL Cotton MS
Vespasian F.XIII, f. 281.
28. Letters and Papers , II, i, no. 80. BL Cotton MS
Caligula D.VI. f. 179.
29. For a discussion of these negotiations, see Gunn,
Charles Brandon , pp. 36–7.
30. Letters and Papers , II, i, no. 124.
31. Perry, Sisters to the King , p. 155.
32. BL Cotton MS Caligula D.VI, ff. 246–7.
33. Letters and Papers , II, i, no. 367. BL Cotton MS
Vespasian F.XIII, f. 80.
34. Sadlack, The French Queen’s Letters , pp. 101–
10.
35. Richardson, Mary Tudor , p. 167.

5. Mary & the Duke of

Suffolk
1. Polydore Vergil, Anglica Historia , ed. Hay, pp.
222–4.
2. Ibid.
3. Leo Had succeeded the warlike Julius II in March
1513.
4. Sadlack, The French Queen’s Letters , p. 99.
5. Richardson, Mary Tudor , pp. 109–10.
6. Sadlack, p. 91.
7. Richardson, Mary Tudor , p. 132.
8. Sadlack, p. 98, which includes an exhaustive
discussion of these drafts. Perry, Sisters to the King ,
p. 153.
9. Letters and Papers , II, i, nos. 85, 113.
10. Ibid., II, i. no. 227. TNA SP1/10, f. 79.
11. Vergil, Anglica Historia , pp. 228–9.
12. Letters and Papers , II, i, no. 80. BL Cotton MS
Caligula D.VI, f. 186.
13. Perry, Sisters to the King , p. 153.
14. Sadlack, p. 178.
15. Letters and Papers , II, i, no. 222. BL Cotton MS
Caligula D.VI, f. 176.
16. Letters and Papers , II, i, no. 203. Richardson, p.
180.
17. Perry, Sisters to the King , p. 154.
18. Letters and Papers , II, i, no. 223.
19. Sadlack, p. 178.
20. Ibid., pp. 180–1.
21. Letters and Papers , II, i, no. 436. Perry, Sisters
to the King , p. 159.
22. Du Bellay, Memoires , VI, p. 185.
23. Cal. Ven . II, p. 618. This was in the process of
admitting her own fault.
24. Gunn, Charles Brandon , p. 38.
25. Letters and Papers , II, i, nos. 224, 436. TNA,
C54, 383.
26. Sadlack, p. 121.
27. Gunn, Charles Brandon , p. 2.
28. Calendar of Inquisitions Post Mortem, 1485–95
, pp. 337–9.
29. Materials for a History of the Reign of Henry
VII , ed. W. Campbell (1873–77), II, p. 495. Gunn,
Charles Brandon , pp. 2–3.
30. TNA C24/28, 29. His aunt, Mary Redyng, was a
gentlewoman to the Prince.
31. Gunn, Charles Brandon , pp. 6–7.
32. A. Spont, The French Wars of 1512–13 (1897),
pp. 145–53. Edward Echyngham to Wolsey, 5 May
1513.
33. Ibid., p. 147.
34. J. Anstis, The Register of the Most Noble Order
of the Garter (1724), i, p. 275.
35. Hall, Chronicle , pp. 533, 566, 568.
36. Gunn, Charles Brandon , p. 9.
37. Letters and Papers , I, i, no. 698; ii, App. No. 9.
Hall, Chronicle , pp. 510–12, 516, 518.
38. Ibid., p. 566, Letters and Papers , I, ii, no. 2575.
39. Hall, Chronicle , p. 526. Gunn, Charles Brandon ,
pp. 11–12.
40. A Collection of Ordinances and Regulations for
the Government of the Royal Household (1790), p.
206. The personnel of the stables numbered 137 during
Brandon’s tour of duty, and its turnover was about
£1,500 a year.
41. Letters and Papers , I, ii, nos. 1965, 1971, 1976,
1978, 1992.
42. The Guienne campaign had been a disaster
because of the breakdown of discipline, something for
which all the captains shared the responsibility. Letters
and Papers , I, ii, no. 2575.
43. Gunn, Charles Brandon , p. 17
44. C. G. Cruikshank, The English Occupation of
Tournai, 1513–1519 (1971), pp. 7–8.
45. BL Harley Charter 43E8. Descriptive Catalogue
of Ancient Deeds in the Public Records Office , V,
A13349.
46. Helen Miller, Henry the Eighth and the English
Nobility (1986).
47. Gunn, Charles Brandon , p. 33.
48. Cal. Pat., 1494–1509 , p. 533. Calendar of the
Close Rolls, 1500–1509 , p. 316.
49. Letters and Papers , I, ii, nos. 2654, 2941.
50. The Chronicle of Calais , ed. J. G. Nichols
(Camden Society 35, 1846), pp. 71–4. Hall, Chronicle
, p. 566.
51. Elizabeth Grey was daughter and heir to Sir John
Grey, Viscount Lisle; she was therefore Baroness
Lisle in her own right when Brandon entered into his
dubious contract with her, and he was granted the title
on that consideration.
52. Sadlack, Letters , p. 182.
53. Richardson, Mary Tudor , pp. 183–5.
54. Gunn, Charles Brandon , pp. 42–3.
55. Ibid., pp. 39–40.
56. By 1516 he had been granted or had purchased 41
per cent of the total De la Pole holdings.
57. In East Anglia a queen attracted far more attention
than a duke, and she received many presents and
tributes. However the real test came at court, where
their liveries were fully restored by 1519, and probably
a good deal earlier. Letters and Papers , III. i, no.
491.

6. Mary, Suffolk & the King

1. Cal. Ven ., III, no. 88. Rutland Papers , ed.
William Jerden (Camden Society, 21, 1842), pp. 28–49.
Later, in January 1526 it was laid down that the Duke
should always be lodged on the ‘king’s side’ if the
Duchess was not present. If they were both at court,
they were to be lodged on the ‘Queen’s side’. Letters
and Papers , III, no. 1939.
2. Statutes of the Realm , IV, I, p. 194. Approved on
20 December 1515. Lords Journals , Vol. I, p. 56.
3. Gunn, Charles Brandon , pp. 61–2.
4. Letters and Papers , II, ii, no. 4567.
5. Ibid., I, nos. 180, 197. J. de Iongh, Margaret of
Austria (1954), p. 167.
6. Letters and Papers , II, ii, nos. 4061, 4134.
7. Ibid., II, I, nos. 834, 913, 1025, 1026, 1030. Gunn,
Brandon , pp. 57–8.
8. Letters and Papers , Addendum I, no. 171. TNA
SP1/232, ff. 6–8.
9. Gunn, Brandon , p. 61.
10. S. T. Bindoff, The House of Commons, 1509–
1558 (1982), II, p. 482. TNA IND 10217/1, f. 2.
11. Letters and Papers , II, i, no. 2170.
12. Gunn, Brandon, p. 58
13. Letters and Papers , II, ii, nos. 4061, 4134.
Addendum, I, no. 210.
14. Ibid., II, ii, nos. 4303, 4346. TNA SP1/232, f. 81.
15. BL Cotton MS Vespasian D.I, f. 63. Letters and
Papers , II, ii, Appendix, no. 48.
16. Ibid., no. 4448. TNA SP1/17, f. 67. Gunn,
Brandon , p. 59.
17. Letters and Papers , III, i, nos. 14, 15.
18. Ibid., II, ii, no. 3872.
19. BL Harley Charter 43B1. BL Cotton MS Galba
B.VI, f. 211. Letters and Papers , III, i, no. 926.
Gunn, Brandon , p. 62.
20. Bod. MS Wood F.33, f. 45. TNA E179/69/4, 5.
Chronicle of Calais , pp. 76–7. BL Egerton MS 985,
ff. 61–4.
21. Gunn, Brandon , p. 63.
22. Ibid., p. 65.
23. Bod. MS Top. Berks . b.2, f. 13. TNA
LR12/21/636.
24. Letters and Papers , II, i, no. 2170.
25. Ibid., no. 1935. E. Lodge, Illustrations of British
History (1791), I, p. 17.
26. Cal. Ven ., II, p. 818. T. Malory, The Works of
Sir Thomas Malory , ed. E. Vinaver (1947), II, pp.
568–70.
27. T. Rymer, Foedera , XIII, p. 624 et seq.
28. Cal. Ven ., III, p. 16.
29. For a full account of Wolsey’s involvement in these
arrangements, see J. G. Russell. The Field of Cloth
of Gold (1969), pp. 16–21.
30. Cal. Ven , III, no. 61. Surian to the Doge and
Senate, 3 June 1520. Scarisbrick, Henry VIII , pp. 77–
8.
31. Rutland Papers , pp. 28–49.
32. Russell, Field of Cloth of Gold , pp. 95–104.
33. Ibid., p. 120.
34. Cal. Ven ., III, nos. 80, 84, 85.
35. Some thought that Anne Browne, the sister of Sir
Wistan, outshone her, but this was not the general
opinion. Cal. Ven ., III, nos. 50, 69.
36. Ibid., no. 78.
37. Russell, Field of the Cloth of Gold , pp. 160–4.
38. Ibid., p. 167.
39. Cal. Ven ., III, nos. 50, 90. A ‘Chapel of Peace’
was supposed to be erected on the site where the
mass was held.
40. Scarisbrick, Henry VIII , p. 80. D. Loades, Mary
Tudor (1989), p. 16.
41. Perry, Sisters to the King , p. 212.
42. Knecht, Francis I , pp. 105–6. England, which
occupied the fourth side, thus assumed a
disproportionate strategic importance.
43. Richardson, Mary Tudor , p. 277. Letters and
Papers , V, pp. 750, 758.
44. Greg Walker, ‘The Expulsion of the Minions in
1519 Reconsidered’, Historical Journal , 32, 1989.
45. Perry, Sisters to the King , p. 212.
46. Cal. Span ., Further Supplement, pp. 195 et seq.
47. S. J. Gunn, ‘The Duke of Suffolk’s March on Paris
in 1523’, English Historical Review , 101, 1986.
48. Letters and Papers , IV, i, no. 61. Gunn, Charles
Brandon , p. 76.
49. Gunn, ‘The Duke of Suffolk’s March’.
50. Gunn, Charles Brandon , p. 76.
51. Letters and Papers , IV, i, nos. 680, 841.
52. Cal. Span ., Further Supplement, pp. 388–9. Gunn,
Charles Brandon , p. 77.
53. Cal. Span ., III, p. 315; Further Supplement, pp.
304, 348.
54. Ibid., III, p. 82.
55. G. W. Bernard, War, Taxation and Rebellion in
Early Tudor England: Henry VIII, Wolsey and the
Amicable Grant of 1525 (1986), pp. 110–30.
56. Scarisbrick, Henry VIII , pp. 140–1.
57. Cal. Ven ., III, no. 1141.
7. The Duchess & Her
Children
1. Richardson, Mary Tudor , p. 199.
2. Mattingly, Catherine of Aragon , pp. 131–2.
3. Richardson, p. 200. She was the widow of William
Courtenay, who had been created Earl of Devon in
May 1511, but had died a month later.
4. Although no one says so! Richardson, loc. cit.
5. Perry, Sisters to the King , p. 186.
6. Richard Grafton, A Chronicle at Large (ed. 1809),
p. 288.
7. Letters and Papers , II, i, nos. 834, 913, 1025, 1026,
1030.
8. Gunn, Charles Brandon , p. 58.
9. Sadlack, Letters , p. 184. BL Cotton MS Caligila
B.VI, f. 119
10. Richardson, p. 203.
11. Letters and Papers , II, ii, no. 3018. TNA SP1/15,
f. 33.
12. Richardson, p. 205.
13. Grafton, Chronicle , p. 293.
14. Ibid., p. 294. Grafton gives no figures, but this is a
rough estimate.
15. Letters and Papers , II, ii, no. 3712. BL MA
Cotton Caligula B.I, f. 244. Grafton noted that all her
expenses in England had been ‘of the kings purse’.
16. Cal. Ven , II, pp. 918, 920. Letters and Papers ,
II, no. 1510.
17. ODNB . Richardson, Mary Tudor , pp. 210–11.
18. Hatfield was close to St Albans, and the Abbot no
doubt well known to Nicholas West.
19. Gunn, Charles Brandon , p. 78. J. G. Nichols,
‘Inventory of the Wardrobe, plate etc., of Henry
Fitzroy, Duke of Richmond and Somerset’, Camden
Miscellany , 3, 1855, pp. lxxxiv–v.
20. Walter Richardson ignored this child completely.
Mary Tudor , p. 311.
21. Beyond the name of his tutor, nothing is known
about Henry Brandon’s schooling, nor whether it was
any memory of her childhood that prompted Frances
later to induce her husband to provide a first-rate
education for their daughters.
22. Letters and Papers , III, ii, nos. 2927, 2944, 2960,
3276. TNA C54/398, m. 14.
23. TNA C54/392, m. 26 Letters and Papers , IV, ii,
no. 4350. Addendum , I, no. 653.
24. Gunn, Charles Brandon , p. 131.
25. Letters and Papers , IV, ii, nos. 4246, 4257; IV, iii,
no. 5859.
26. Gunn, Charles Brandon , p. 95.
27. ODNB .
28. A. G. Dickens, The Clifford Letters of the
Sixteenth Century (Surtees Society, 1962), p. 24.
29. TNA WARDS9/149, f. 7. Letters and Papers ,
IV, iii, no. 5336 (12).
30. Gunn, Charles Brandon , p. 96.
31. Hall, Chronicle , p. 674.
32. Cal. Ven . IV, i, no. 965. Hall, p. 719.
33. Gunn, Charles Brandon , pp. 98–100
34. Ibid., p. 98.
35. Letters and Papers , IV, ii, nos. 2980, 4615, 4616.
Knecht, Francis I , p. 186.
36. Ibid., IV, i, no. 2256; IV, ii, nos. 4392, 4615, 5064.
37. Gunn, Charles Brandon , p. 92.
38. R. Flenley, Six Town Chronicles of England
(1911), p. 195. Historical Manuscripts Commission:
The Manuscripts of the Corporations of
Southampton and Kings Lynn (1887). p. 173.
39. BL Cotton MS Titus B.I, f. 71. Letters and
Papers , II, i, no. 1605.
40. Gunn, Charles Brandon , pp. 78–82.
41. Norfolk Record Office, Register 14, ff. 135, 186,
210, 212. Translated by S. J. Gunn.
42. Richardson, Mary Tudor , pp. 213–4.
43. Ibid., p. 215. For the size of Wolsey’s household,
see P. J. Gwyn, The King’s Cardinal (1990).
44. Gunn, Charles Brandon , pp. 78–83. For the Duke
of Buckingham see Carole Rawcliffe, The Staffords
Earls of Stafford and Dukes of Buckingham (1978),
pp. 232–43.
45. Richardson, Mary Tudor , pp. 217–18.
46. Ibid.
47. Henry was annoyed with Suffolk on one occasion
when he warned him not to pass through Woodstock,
because one of the Duke’s servants had died of the
plague there. His annoyance was caused, however, by
the thought that Suffolk should have warned him
sooner. Letters and Papers , IV, ii, no. 2047.
48. Richardson, Mary Tudor , p. 119.
49. Ibid.
50. Brandon refers on a number of occasions to this
ailment, without further elaboration, and the medical
evidence of Mary’s last illness is non-existent.

8. The Last Days

1. Perry, Sisters to the King , pp. 199–200.
2. Letters and Papers , IV, ii, no. 1939.
3. Richardson, Mary Tudor , pp. 213–14.
4. Gunn, Charles Brandon , p. 113.
5. J. A. Guy, The Public Career of Sir Thomas More
(1980), p. 116.
6. Shilston died shortly after his election and his will
was witnessed by ducal servants. TNA PROB11/24/3.
Gunn, Brandon , p. 114.
7. Letters and Papers , IV, iii, nos. 6225, 6262, 6436,
6575, 6738.
8. Ibid., V, nos. 40, 45, 70, 564, 864, 932.
9. Ibid., VII, no. 296; VIII, no. 342.
10. Ibid., V, no. 287.
11. Mattingly, Catherine of Aragon , p. 271.
12. Cal. Span ., IV, ii, pp. 892–3, 895–9.
13. Carlo Capello to the Doge and Signory, 23 April
1532. Cal. Ven ., IV, no. 761.
14. Ibid., no. 802.
15. Letters and Papers , IV, i, no. 2744.
16. Ibid., V, no. 199. There are various calculations of
these rates of payment, and the actual sum received
appears to have depended upon what deductions were
made for collection and other expenses.
17. Ibid., no. 361.
18. Ibid., VI, no. 293.
19. Gunn, Charles Brandon , p. 120. Suffolk seems to
have got his own back by passing some derogatory
comments on Cromwell to the French ambassador.
Letters and Papers , VI, no. 1372.
20. E. W. Ives, The Life and Death of Anne Boleyn
(2004), pp. 172–83. ‘The Noble Triumphant
Coronation of Queen Anne’, in A. F. Pollard, Tudor
Tracts (1903), pp. 9–28.
21. Letters and Papers , VII, no. 1498 (37). TNA
SP1/75, f. 245.
22. Richardson, Mary Tudor , pp. 252–3.
23. Letters and Papers , VI, no. 693. BL Harley MS
6986, f. 11. Sadlack, Letters , p. 154.
24. Richardson, Mary Tudor , pp. 254–5.
25. Chronica del rey Enrico de Inglaterra (The
Chronicle of King Henry VIII of England), translated
by M. A. S. Hume (1889).
26. The Baillie of Troyes to Francis I, 30 June 1533.
Letters and Papers , VI, no. 723.
27. Richardson, Mary Tudor , p. 257.
28. Royal College of Arms, Heralds’ MSS. Francis
Ford, Mary Tudor: A Retrospective Sketch (1882)
pp. 38–45.
29. Richardson, Mary Tudor , p. 260.
30. Ibid., p. 261.
31. It is suggested that she may have helped him to the
abbacy three years earlier. ODNB .
32. The abbey church was gutted at the dissolution.
33. As Edward Foxe reported to Lord Lisle. Letters
and Papers , VI, no. 797.
34. When a similar celebration was suggested for his
own ex-Queen, Catherine, the King observed ‘that it
should be more charge than was either requisite or
necessary’.
35. The cost can only be guessed at, but in 1579 Sir
Thomas Gresham’s burial cost £800, and in 1588 the
Earl of Leicester’s nearly £3,000. Mary’s obsequies
probably cost the Duke about £1,000, over and above
what was spent in London.
36. Cal. Span ., IV, ii, p. 1123. Felicity Heal, Of
Prelates and Princes (1980), p. 108.
37. Gunn, Charles Brandon , pp. 132–3.
38. Statutes of the Realm , IV, i, p. 295. 27 Henry
VIII, c. 39. Lincolnshire R.O. 2Anc3/B/5.
39. For a brief account of the property manipulations
attendant upon changes in the incumbents of sees, see
Heal, Prelates and Princes , pp. 134–5.
40. Letters and Papers , IX, no. 139.
41. Catalogue des Actes de Francios Ier (1887–
1908), II, 6074, VII, 29115, 29203.
42. Letters and Papers , VI, no. 1434. Catalogue des
Actes , II, 6426, 6604, 6618. Gunn, Charles Brandon ,
pp.?140–1.
43. Cal. Span ., V, i, p. 114.
44. M. St Clare Byrne, The Lisle Letters (1981), IV, p.
164, n. 1. Letters and Papers , IX, nos. 217, 386.

9. The Legacy
1. J. A. Guy, The Public Career of Sir Thomas More
, p. 59. TNA STAC2/17/399; 19/241.
2. The Clifford Letters of the Sixteenth Century , ed.
A. G. Dickens (Surtees Society, 1962), pp. 24, 141.
‘The Clifford Letters’, ed. R. W. Hoyle ( Camden
Miscellany , 44, 1992, pp. 102–14). Statutes of the
Realm , IV, i, p. 587. 27 Henry VIII, c. 36.
3. M. H. and R. Dodds, The Pilgrimage of Grace,
1536–1537, and the Exeter Conspiracy, 1538
(1915), I, pp.?119?20. Gunn, 119–20. Gunn, Charles
Brandon , p. 144.
4. Letters and Papers , XI, nos. 600, 661, 680, 808.
5. Ibid., nos. 716, 756, 773, 808.
6. Gunn, Charles Brandon , p. 147.
7. State Papers , I, p. 522.
8. For the terms of the Pontefract agreement see R.
W. Hoyle, The Pilgrimage of Grace and the Politics
of the 1530s (2001), pp. 460–3.
9. Letters and Papers , XII, i, nos. 636, 1284.
10. Ibid., XV, no. 942 (52). Lincoln R.O. 2Anc 1/5.6,
3/A/ 48, 49.
11. Gunn, Charles Brandon , pp. 154–6.
12. Letters and Papers , XIV, ii, no. 342. Addendum,
ii, no. 1414.
13. TNA C54/425. Lincolnshire R.O. 1Anc.11/C/1a.
14. Lisle Letters , IV, nos. 845a, 874–5, 880, 901.
15. D. Loades, The Tudor Court (1986), p. 204. Gunn,
Charles Brandon , pp. 178–9.
16. C. Wriothesley, A Chronicle of England , ed. W.
D. Hamilton (Camden Society, 1875), I, pp. 80, 96.
17. State Papers , V, p. 306.
18. Letters and Papers , XIX, ii, no. 483.
19. Ibid., nos. 5, 222, 236, 276, 424.
20. Gunn, Charles Brandon , p. 193.
21. Letters and Papers , XIX, ii, nos. 353, 365, 374,
377, 383, 395, 402, 415.
22. Only half of this purchase price was paid in cash.
TNA E318/20/1079, mm. 3–5.
23. TNA SC12/23/29, ff. 4–5. Lincoln R.O.
2Anc3/A/49.
24. D. MacCulloch, Suffolk and the Tudors (1986),
p. 159.
25. Susan Brigden, ‘Popular Disturbance and the Fall
of Thomas Cromwell and the Reformers, 1539–40’,
Historical Journal , 24, 1981, p. 266. J. Foxe, Acts
and Monuments (ed. 1583), p. 1206.
26. Gunn, Charles Brandon , pp. 198–9.
27. C. Garrett, The Marian Exiles (1966), pp. 87–9.
Foxe, Acts and Monuments pp. 2078-80.
28. ODNB .
29. Statutes of the Realm , IV, i. pp. 955–8.
30. E. W. Ives, ‘Tudor Dynastic Problems re-visited’,
Historical Research , 81, 2008.
31. Ibid.
32. Inner Temple MS Petyt xlvii, f. 316. Printed and
edited in J. G. Nichols (ed.) The Literary Remains of
King Edward VI (Roxburgh Club, 1857), II, pp. 571–
2.
33. D. Loades, John Dudley, Duke of
Northumberland (1996), pp. 240–1. E. W. Ives, Lady
Jane Grey (2009), pp. 151–4.
34. This was done, but the patent never passed the
Seals, so it had no status in law. The force of the
Device therefore depended entirely upon Edward’s
prerogative power. Ives, Jane Grey , pp. 166–8.
35. D. Loades, Mary Tudor: A Life (1989), pp. 171–
82.
36. D. Loades, Two Tudor Conspiracies (1965), p.
115.
37. Mary had made it clear before her marriage that, in
the event of her leaving no heir of her body, she did not
wish Elizabeth to succeed. Cal. Span ., XI, p. 393.
38. For a full exploration of Catherine’s claim and its
supporters, see Mortimer Levine, The Early
Elizabethan Succession Question (1966).
39. Ibid., pp. 14–15.
40. If the marriage had been conducted in the
presence of witnesses (as this was), it would have
constituted a binding contract per verba de praesenti
until the law was changed in 1753. Ibid., p. 27.
41. Ibid., pp. 165–98.
42. Cecil to Sir Thomas Smith, 21 August 1565. Ellis,
Original Letters , II, ii, p. 299.
43. W. MacCaffrey, Queen Elizabeth and the
Making of Policy, 1572–88 (1981), pp. 480–1.
44. Parsons (writing as ‘R. Dolman’), A Conference
about the Next Succession to the Crowne of
England (1594).
45. G. R. Elton, England under the Tudors (1955),
genealogical tables.
46. David Loades, The Cecils (2007), pp. 219-223.
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 LIST OF
ILLUSTRATIONS
1. Author’s collection.
2. From a private collection.
3. © Jonathan Reeve JR2516b11p7 15001550.
4. © Josphine Wilkinson.
5. © Elizabeth Norton.
6. © Elizabeth Norton, © Stephen Porter.
7. © Ripon Cathedral.
8. © Elizabeth Norton.
9. © Ripon Cathedral.
10. © Jonathan Reeve JR1151b66p1 15001550.
11. & 12. © Jonathan Reeve JR1872b46fp16
13001350. © Jonathan Reeve JR1884b46fp192
15001550.
13. © Jonathan Reeve JR1873b46fp22 15001550.
14. © Jonathan Reeve JR1874b46fp28 15001550.
15. © Jonathan Reeve JR1875b46fp34 15001550.
16. © Jonathan Reeve JRCD3b20p1025 15501600.
17. © Jonathan Reeve JR1169b2p7 15001550.