CLOTH OF FRIEZE

It is a remarkable fact that, although Charles Brandon, Duke of Suffolk, was, after Thomas More, Wolsey and the king himself, the most conspicuous personage at the court of Henry VIII, no authoritative biography of him exists, unless indeed it be a short, but very unimportant, monograph (written in Latin, at the end of the sixteenth century) now in the King’s Library at the British Museum. Suffolk outlived nearly all his principal contemporaries, except the king and the Duke of Norfolk, and his career, therefore, runs almost parallel with that of Henry VIII, whom he attended in nearly every event of importance, from boyhood to death. Brandon predeceased the king by only a few months. In person, he bore so striking a resemblance to Henry, that the French, when on bad terms with us, were wont to say that he was his master’s bastard brother. The two men were of the same towering height, but Charles was, perhaps, the more powerful; at any rate, King Henry had good cause, on one occasion, to admit the fact, for Brandon overthrew and slightly injured him in a wrestling match at Hampton Court. Both king and duke were exceedingly fair, and had the same curly, golden hair, the same steel-grey eyes, planted on either side of an aquiline nose, somewhat too small for the breadth of a very large face. In youth and early manhood, owing to the brilliancy of their pink-and-white complexions, they were universally considered extremely handsome, but with the advent of years they became abnormally stout, and vainly tried to conceal their fat, wide cheeks, and double chins, with beards and whiskers. A French chronicler, speaking of Charles Brandon at the time that he was in Paris for the marriage of Mary Tudor to Louis XII, says he had never seen so handsome a man, or one of such manly power who possessed so delicate a complexion—rose et blanc tout comme une fille. And yet he was not the least effeminate, for of all the men of his day, he was the most splendid sportsman, the most skilful in the tilt-yard, and the surest with the arrow. He danced so lightly and so gracefully that to see him was a sight in which even Henry VIII, himself an elegant dancer, delighted.

Unfortunately, so many physical advantages were not allied to an equal number of virtues; and here again, the resemblance between King Henry and his bosom friend is extraordinary. Both were equally cruel, selfish and unscrupulous, and both entertained the same loose ideas as to the sanctity of marriage—with this difference, however, that whereas King Henry usually divorced one wife before he took another, Charles had two wives living at one and the same time, from neither of whom was he properly divorced! What is most singular, too, is that he ventured to marry the king’s sister whilst his first wife was still living, and not as yet legally separated from him, whereby he might easily have been hauled before a justice as a bigamist, and his offspring by a princess of the blood royal of England, and dowager queen of France to boot, been declared illegitimate.

In addition to his great strength and exceptional ability as a commander, both on land and sea, Suffolk possessed a luxuriant imagination, which delighted in magnificent pageantry. In the halcyon days of Henry’s reign, long before the fires of Smithfield had shed their lurid glow over the city, Suffolk and his master devised sports and pastimes, masques and dances, to please the ladies.[9] Once he entered the tilt-yard dressed as a penitent, in a confraternity robe and cowl of crimson velvet, his horse draped in cardinal-coloured satin. Assuming a humble attitude, he approached the pavilion in which sat the king and Queen Katherine, and in a penitential whine, implored her grace’s leave to break a lance in her honour. This favour being granted, he threw back his cloak, and appeared, a blaze of cloth of gold, of glittering damascened armour and sparkling jewels, to break sixteen lances in honour of the queen. Again, when Queen Mary was his bride, and the court went a-maying at Shooters Hill, he devised a sort of pastoral play, and with Jane Grey’s paternal grandfather, Thomas, Marquis of Dorset, disguised himself and his merry men as palmers, in gowns of grey satin with scallop-shells of pure gold and staves of silver. The royal guests having been duly greeted, the palmers doffed their sober raiment and appeared, garbed in green and gold, as so many Robin Hoods. They then conducted their Majesties to a glade where there were “pastimes and daunces,” and, doubtless, abundant wine and cakes. Much later yet, Brandon went, in the guise of a palmer, with Henry VIII, to that memorable ball given by Wolsey at Whitehall, at which Anne Boleyn won the heart of the most fickle of our kings.

The last half of the fourteenth century witnessed the beginning of the decline of feudalism in England. The advance of education, and consequently of civilization, had by this time largely developed the commercial and agricultural resources of the country, and the yeoman class, with that of the country gentry, had gradually come into being. At the Conquest, the majority of the lands owned by the Saxons—rebels to Norman force—were confiscated and handed over to the Conqueror’s greater generals: to such men as William, Earl of Warren, or Quarenne, who seated himself in East Anglia, having, as his principal Norfolk fortress, Castleacre Castle, on the coast, not far from East Dereham. Its picturesque ruins still tower above those of the magnificent priory that the great William de Warren raised, “to the honour of God and Our Lady,” for monks of the Cluniac branch of the Benedictine Order. This Earl of Warren, who was overlord of a prodigious number of manors and fiefs in East Anglia, numbered, among the bonny men who came out of Picardy and Normandy in his train, two stalwart troopers: one haled from Boulogne-on-the-Sea, so tradition says—and is not tradition unwritten history?—and was known as “Thomas of Boulogne”; he settled at Sale, near Aylsham, in Norfolk, and was the progenitor of the Boleyns or Bullens, whose surname is an evident corruption of de Boulogne; the other dropped his French patronym, whatever it was, and assumed the name of Brandon, after a little West Suffolk border town, in the immediate vicinity of the broad and fertile lands he had acquired.

These Brandons, then, had lived on their farm near Brandon for about four centuries, deriving, no doubt, a very considerable income from the produce of their fields and from their cattle. It is certain that they sent several members of their family to the Crusades; that one of them followed the Black Prince to Poitiers, and that yet another, a trooper, it is true, died on the field of Agincourt.[10] Somewhere in the last quarter of the fourteenth century, William, the then head of the family, apprenticed his son Geoffrey to a rich mercer of Norwich, a great commercial centre in those days, next to London and Bristol in importance, and doing what we should now call a “roaring trade” with Flanders, and through Flanders, with Venice and Florence, and even with the East. This Norwich Brandon having made a fortune, was seized with an ambition to attain still greater wealth and station for his son and heir William; and hence it came about, that near the time King Henry VI ascended the throne, young Brandon arrived in London, apprenticed to a firm of mercers established near Great St. Helen’s, Bishopsgate Street. He was a pushing, shrewd, energetic, and very unscrupulous knave, who soon acquired great influence in the city and amassed corresponding wealth. Finally, he became sheriff, and was knighted by Henry VI. He purchased a large property in Southwark, and built himself a mansion, later known as Suffolk Court. During the Wars of the Roses he allied himself at first with the Yorkists, and lent Edward IV considerable sums of money, which, according to Paston, that monarch dishonestly refused to repay. This drove William to cast his fortunes with the Lancastrians and largely assist Henry VII, then simply Earl of Richmond, both with money and men, and so was held in high esteem by that monarch till his death, in the twelfth year of Henry’s reign. William Brandon married Elizabeth, daughter of Sir Robert Wingfield of Letheringham, whose mother was the daughter and co-heir of Sir Robert Goushall, the third husband of the dowager Duchess of Norfolk, widow of the first duke, who, dying in exile in Venice, was buried in the magnificent church of San Giovanni e Paolo. Even thus early, we see a Brandon, the great-grandson of a Suffolk farmer, connecting himself with the noble houses of Wingfield, Fitzalan and Howard.[11]

At one time this gentleman was on very intimate terms with the renowned Sir John Paston, whose Letters throw so much light on the manners and customs of the age in which he lived; but the cronies fell out over some matter of business connected with Paston’s claim to the possession of Caistairs Castle, in which transaction, Paston declares, Brandon behaved like a blackguard—indeed, King Edward, to whom appeal was made, listed him as a “lyre.” During their intimacy, Paston, possibly over a tankard of ale at a merry dinner or supper party, had made some irreverent and coarse remarks about her grace of Norfolk, in the presence of Lady Brandon, who was the duchess’s grand-daughter. He had poked fun at the poor lady’s appearance when on the eve of adding her tribute to the population. Paston has recorded what he said, and it must be confessed, that if Lady Brandon did repeat his vulgar jest to her august relation, that lady had every reason to feel indignant at such familiarity.

Whether it was repeated or not has never transpired, so perhaps we may suppose Lady Brandon was a prudent woman and kept her counsel. But Paston wrote to his brother to ask if he thought she might be trusted, or whether she was likely to have made mischief by repeating his ill-timed remarks to the duchess, her mother, adding a “lye or two of her own to help it out.”

Sir William Brandon, eldest son of the first William, and father of Charles Brandon, was never knighted, although usually styled by courtesy “Sir.” He married, when he was very young, Elizabeth, daughter and co-heir of Sir Henry Bruyn, or Brown,[12] by his wife, Elizabeth Darcy.[13] Sir William Brandon was standard-bearer to Henry VII at Bosworth Field, and there lost his life at the hand of Richard III, whilst gallantly defending his royal patron. Henry proved his gratitude by educating his only son, Charles, who, by his marriage with Mary Tudor, became the grandfather of Lady Jane Grey and her sisters Katherine and Mary. Some historians have confused King Henry’s standard-bearer with a younger brother, Thomas Brandon, who married Anne Fiennes, daughter of Lord Dacre and widow of the Marquis of Berkeley, but had no children. He looms large (in every sense of the word, being of great height and bulk) in all the tournaments and jousts held in honour of the marriage of Katherine of Aragon with Prince Henry. He died, a very wealthy man, at his London house, Southwark Place, in 1502.

At four years of age the child Charles Brandon became playfellow to Arthur, Prince of Wales; but on the birth of the future Henry VIII, he was transferred to the younger prince as his companion. He may even have received his education with Henry, from Bernard AndrÉ, historian and poet, or perhaps from Skelton, poet-laureate to Henry VII, who, with Dr. Ewes, had a considerable share in the instruction of the young prince. But there is reason to believe that Brandon, as a lad, did not spend so much time at court as has been generally stated, for his letters, phonetically spelt, in accordance with the fashion of his time, prove him to have spoken with a broad Suffolk accent; he must, therefore, have passed a good deal of his youth at Brandon, on the borders of Suffolk and Norfolk, where, according to tradition, he was born. His letters, although the worst written and spelt of his day, are full, too, of East Anglianisms, which could only have been picked up by a man in his position through contact, in boyhood, with yokels and country-folk in general.

Charles, who grew up to be a remarkably fine youth, tall and “wondrous powerful,” began life virtually as an attendant in the royal household, though, as already stated, in due time he became Henry’s principal favourite and confidant. When little over twenty, he distinguished himself in a sea-fight off Brest, and was sent by Wolsey to join Henry VIII in his adventurous campaign to Therouanne. At the famous battle of the Spurs, he proved himself as brave a soldier as he had already shown himself to be a doughty sailor; but for all this merit he can scarcely be described as an honest gentleman, especially where ladies are concerned, and his matrimonial adventures were not only strange and complicated, but also exceedingly characteristic of the times in which he lived. In 1505/6, Charles Brandon became betrothed,[14] per verba de prÆsenti, to a young lady of good family, Anne Browne, third daughter of Sir Anthony Binyon Browne, K.G., governor of Calais, and of his wife, the Lady Lucy Nevill, daughter and co-heiress of John Nevill, Marquis of Montagu, brother of the “Kingmaker,” Richard, Earl of Warwick. In 1506/7 this contract was set aside and the young gentleman married Margaret, the mature widow of Sir John Mortimer of Essex[15] (will proved, 1505). And now came trouble. The Lady Mortimer, nÉe Nevill (probably rather a tedious companion for so youthful a husband), was none other than the aunt of his first fiancÉe, Anne Browne, her sister being the Lady Lucy Nevill, who, as stated above, was the wife of Sir Anthony Browne and mother of Anne. Brandon, therefore, probably with the aid of Henry VIII, about 1507, after having squandered a good deal of her fortune, induced the Archdeacon of London (in compliance with a papal bull) to declare his marriage with Lady Mortimer null and void, on the grounds that: Firstly, he and his wife were within the second and third degrees of affinity; secondly, that his wife and the lady to whom he was first betrothed (Anne Browne) were within the prohibited degrees of consanguinity—i.e. aunt and niece; thirdly, that he was cousin once removed to his wife’s former husband. After these proceedings, he married, or rather re-married, in 1508/11, in “full court,” and in the presence of a great gathering of relations and friends—and not secretly, as usually stated—the aforesaid Anne Browne, by whom he had two daughters, the eldest being born so soon after wedlock as to give rise to unpleasant gossip, probably started by Lady Mortimer. Anne, Lady Brandon, did not long survive her marriage, for she died in 1511/12; and in the following year (1513) her widower made a third attempt at matrimony, by a contract with his ward, the Lady Elizabeth Grey, suo jure Baroness Lisle, who, born in 1503/4, was only ten years of age; but the negotiations failed, though Brandon had been granted the viscounty of Lisle, which title he assumed (May 15, 1513). As this lady absolutely refused him, he surrendered the patent of the title of Lisle in favour of Arthur Plantagenet, illegitimate son of Edward IV and husband of Lady Elizabeth Lisle, the aunt and co-heiress of the young lady he had wished to make his bride, and who, being free, gave her hand to Courtenay, Earl of Devon, who presently became Marquis of Exeter. This above-mentioned aunt, the other Lady Elizabeth, had married, in 1495, Edmund Dudley, the notorious minister of Henry VII, and became, about 1502, mother of that John Dudley, Duke of Northumberland, who proved so fatal to Lady Jane Grey and her family.

Whilst he was still plodding through the labyrinth of his matrimonial difficulties, early in 1513, Charles Brandon was entrusted with a diplomatic mission to Flanders, to negotiate a marriage between Mary Tudor, the king’s youngest sister, and the young Archduke Charles of Austria, Infante of Spain, the most powerful and richest prince in Europe. On this occasion he displayed his majestic and graceful figure to such advantage in the tilt-yard, that the demonstrative expressions of admiration which escaped the proposed bridegroom’s aunt, Drayton’s “blooming duchess,” the most high and mighty Princess Margaret, Archduchess of Austria, dowager Duchess of Savoy, and daughter of the Emperor Maximilian, evoked sarcastic comment from the illustrious company.

On Brandon’s return, Henry VIII, probably with a view to facilitating a possible alliance between his favourite and the dowager of Savoy, to universal surprise and some indignation, created his “well-beloved Charles Brandon,” Duke of Suffolk, a title until quite recently held by the semi-regal, but dispossessed house of de la Pole,[16] and further presented him with the vast territorial apanage of that family, which included Westhorpe Hall, near Bury St. Edmunds; Donnington Castle, the inheritance of Chaucer’s granddaughter, the first Duchess of Suffolk; Wingfield Castle, in Suffolk; Rising Castle in Norfolk; and Lethering Butley in Herefordshire.[17]

In the summer of 1513, while the king was sojourning at Tournay, he received a visit from the Archduke Charles of Castile and Austria, and his aunt, the Dowager Duchess of Savoy, Regent of the Netherlands. These august personages came to congratulate the English monarch on the capture of Tournay from their mutual enemy, Louis XI of France. At this time the Austro-Spanish archduke still hoped to secure the hand of the King of England’s handsome sister, Mary Tudor, who had accompanied her brother to France. Henry did his best to ingratiate himself with the regent, a handsome lady with a foolish whimpering expression, who, if we may judge her by her portrait in the Museum at Brussels, was most apt to credit anything and everything that flattered her fancy. The king and his favourites, indeed, to amuse her, behaved less like gentlemen than mountebanks. Henry danced grotesquely before her and played on the giltrone, the lute and the cornet for her diversion, and his boon companions followed their master’s example and exhibited their accomplishments as dancers and musicians. The contemporary Chronicle of Calais contains a most amusing account of the way Henry and Charles made game of the poor dowager, who betrayed her too evident partiality for the latter. Brandon actually went so far on one occasion as to steal a ring from her finger; “and I took him to laugh,” says Margaret of Savoy, describing this incident,[18] “and said to him that he was un larron—a thief—and that I thought the king had with him led thieves out of his country. This word larron he could not understand.” So Henry had to be called in to explain it to him. His Majesty next contrived a sort of love-scene between the pair, in which he made Duchess Margaret a very laughing-stock, by inducing her to repeat after him in her broken English the most appalling improprieties, the princess being utterly ignorant of the meaning of the words she was parroting. To lead her on, Suffolk, who was not a good French scholar, made answer, at the king’s prompting, to the princess’s extraordinary declarations, in fairly respectable French. At last, however, the good lady realized the situation, and, rising in dudgeon, declared Brandon to be “no gentleman and no match for her,”[19] and thus he lost his chance, though he never lost, as we shall presently see, the great lady’s friendship.

This silly prank on the English king’s part was, no doubt, the final cause of the rupture of the proposed alliance between Mary Tudor and the Archduke Charles of Castile. Be this as it may, it was at Tournay that Mary was reported to have first fallen a victim to the blandishments of Suffolk, who, while fooling the regent, was covertly courting his dread patron’s sister. He flattered himself that the king, loving him so tenderly as a friend, would readily accept him as a brother-in-law. In this he was mistaken. Henry had other views for Princess Mary’s future; and no sooner was the Austro-Spanish match broken off,[20] thanks to certain political intrigues too lengthy and intricate to recapitulate here, than he set to work to arrange a marriage between Mary and King Louis XII,[21] who, although generally described as “old,” was at this time not more than fifty-three years of age. His appearance, however, was most forbidding; he suffered from the deformity of elephantiasis, and was scarred by some scorbutic disease, “as if with small-pox.”[22]