THE LAST DAYS OF SUFFOLK AND OF THE QUEEN-DUCHESS

Notwithstanding Mary Tudor’s exalted rank, her husband neglected her. The Chronicles and State Papers of the period frequently allude to this sad fact. The death of her only son, the young Earl of Lincoln, of the “sweating sickness,” which occurred in 1527, when he was only twelve years old, affected her health, so that she retired from London, and spent nearly all her time at Westhorpe Hall, a grand Tudor mansion near Bury St. Edmunds, which remained intact until the beginning of the last century, when it was pulled down to make room for the present ugly and uninteresting structure. The ancient furniture, some of which had evidently belonged to the queen-duchess, was sold in 1805, and amongst the other miscellaneous lots put up to auction was a lock of Mary Tudor’s fair hair, which was purchased by a Suffolk antiquary for seven shillings.

Mary espoused, as far as she dared, the cause of her unhappy sister-in-law, Katherine of Aragon, and it is not surprising, therefore, that though in London at the time, she did not attend the coronation of Anne Boleyn, where her husband figured so conspicuously as Lord High Constable of England. He behaved abominably to Queen Katherine, and even insulted her grossly when he was sent by Henry to Bugden to visit her, just before her removal to Kimbolton; so coarsely, indeed, that the queen ordered him out of her presence, reminding him, at the same time, of the many favours she had heaped upon him when she was in power.

The royal grandmother of the unfortunate sisters of the House of Grey seems never to have enjoyed good health. As far back as 1518, Suffolk wrote to Wolsey to inform him that the queen-duchess, his wife, was ill of a “anagu” [an ague], the cure of which gave the king’s “fuesesune” plenty of good occupation. The word “physician” was apparently an orthographic stumbling-block to both the duke and his consort. Early in February 1533, Mary Tudor wrote from Westhorpe Hall to the king, informing him that she intended coming to London to consult “Master Peter, her fesysyon”; as her health was failing, she felt it wise to seek other advice. Accordingly, towards the middle of April, she arrived, with her two daughters, at Suffolk Court; here preparations were at once made for the marriage of the elder of these young ladies with the youthful Marquis of Dorset, and for the betrothal of the younger, the Lady Eleanor, to Lord Henry Clifford, eldest son of the Earl of Cumberland. These combined ceremonies were solemnized in the first week of May, most likely in that stately parish church which is now Southwark Cathedral. Henry VIII attended the function, but whether he was accompanied by Anne Boleyn, who was already queen, though not as yet crowned, we know not.[46]

A few days later, on May 19, Queen Anne Boleyn passed in triumph through the streets of London from the Tower to Westminster Abbey, to be crowned. On either side of her open litter, sumptuously hung with silver tissue, and borne by two milk-white palfreys draped in white brocade, rode the Duke of Suffolk and Henry, Marquis of Dorset, who bore the sceptre. Cecily, dowager Marchioness of Dorset, was with the old Duchess of Norfolk in a chariot that followed the litter conveying the queen, who in glittering robes of cloth of gold and with a circlet of magnificent rubies crowning her raven tresses, “freely exposed the beauty of her person to the gaze of the people.” But the populace, even as it gazed upon her loveliness, did not forget the good “old queen” it had worshipped, who was even then lying sick unto death at Bugden Hall in Huntingdonshire. Anne was received in dead silence, throughout the whole line of the procession: not a cap was raised in her honour.

On June 26, of this same year (1533), the queen-duchess—who had returned with Lady Dorset, the bride, and her younger daughter, the Lady Eleanor, to Westhorpe, none the better for consulting the Court “fesysyon”—died somewhat suddenly, in the presence of her two children; her husband and son-in-law being still in London. Her body was embalmed and carried to Bury Abbey on July 20, nearly a month after her decease. Garter King at Arms and other heralds preceded the hearse, which was followed by a procession of lords and ladies on horseback, among whom, as chief mourners, the Ladies Frances and Eleanor rode pillion on the same black steed, caparisoned with violet cloth. They were supported on either side by the Marquis of Dorset and the young Lord Clifford, who had been summoned from London to attend the funeral. A strange incident occurred during the ceremony, at which the Duke of Suffolk was not present. The Ladies Powis and Monteagle, the duke’s daughters by his second wife, appeared uninvited, and assisted at the Mass, on perceiving which intrusion, the Lady Frances and the Lady Eleanor rose, and left the church, without waiting for the conclusion of the office. The unbidden guests had evidently determined to assert their position in the family by appearing at their step-mother’s obsequies, an act which was openly resented by the rest of the family,[47] since it was intended to prove the Ladies Powis and Monteagle’s legitimacy, and, moreover, insinuate that the queen-duchess’s daughters were bastards.

Mary Tudor’s death[48] may well have been hastened by anxiety about the calamities that had overwhelmed her sister-in-law, Queen Katherine, and by the certainty that her own husband had been Henry’s most active confederate in maligning the luckless queen. Suffolk’s behaviour to Katherine of Aragon was, in fact, infamous and ungrateful in the extreme. In the early stages of his career she had given him a helping hand, she had accepted entertainment at his house, and had stood godmother to his elder daughter; yet, in the hour of misfortune, he turned against her, and became her “unjust judge” and bitterest foe. He treated Anne Boleyn in the same fashion. When that ill-fated woman’s star reached its zenith, the craven duke was one of her most obsequious courtiers, but no sooner did the shadow of her impending doom darken the horizon, than Suffolk deserted her, went over to her enemies, urged his master to hasten her destruction, and outraged decency—even the decency of those callous times—by appearing at her execution. He was also present as one of the Privy Council when, some hours before her death, she was compelled to hear the sentence: That her marriage with the king was “invalid, frustrate, and of none effect.” So, too, when poor Anne of Cleves displeased the king by her Dutch homeliness, Suffolk was overheard offering his advice as to the best means of getting rid of her. Katherine Howard fared no better at his hands. He was her flatterer in her brief hour of success, but it was he who escorted her as a prisoner from Sion House to the Tower, who judged her, and who, but for sudden indisposition, would have feasted his eyes on her mangled form when her head was struck off at one blow by the skilful Calais headsman who had already proved his dexterity at the execution of Anne Boleyn.

In November 1534 the duke took a fourth wife, his deceased consort’s ward, the Lady Katherine Willoughby d’Eresby, a child of fifteen, whose rich dower had evidently excited his rapacity; for, notwithstanding his vast landed possessions, he was in constant want of ready money, Mary Tudor’s income having been very scanty, and most irregularly paid. Katherine was the only child of the lately deceased William, Lord Willoughby d’Eresby by his second wife, DoÑa Maria de Sarmiento y Salinas, a Spanish noblewoman and a faithful and tried attendant upon Queen Katherine. It seems incredible that such a pious woman should have approved of so unnatural an alliance, but in Tudor times the voice of Nature herself was often hushed, and that of personal and political interest alone heard. Katherine, Duchess of Suffolk, of whom we shall see more anon, developed into a very handsome and cultured woman, and was the authoress of quite the most brilliant and witty letters in the English epistolary literature of the period. She had the distinction of being sketched by Holbein, and her portrait is one of the most beautiful in the king’s collection. By this lady, Suffolk had two sons, who survived him and became successively Dukes of Suffolk. They were reputed to be exceedingly clever lads, and were educated with Prince Edward. Both died at an early age, on July 6th, 1551, of the “sweating sickness,” at Bugden, in Huntingdonshire, within a few hours of each other and in the same bed.[49]

Shortly after his fourth marriage, Suffolk wrote to his mother-in-law, the dowager Lady Willoughby, that he had been ordered to proceed to Bugden Hall to reduce the household of the “Princess Dowager,” as the divorced queen was now called, and to induce her to remove to Fotheringhay Castle. He adds that he wishes “an accident might befall him” to prevent his undertaking so unpleasant an expedition. Notwithstanding this heroic desire, Suffolk arrived at Bugden Hall late in December[50] 1534/5, and behaved so abominably that the poor queen, stung to the quick by the repeated humiliations and insults heaped upon her and her handful of faithful retainers, rose and swept haughtily from his presence. She resolutely refused to go to Fotheringhay, which, she had heard, was “damp,” but after much more trouble she submitted to being sent to Kimbolton, where she arrived early in the following January.

On January 7, 1535/6, the sorely tried and persecuted queen passed quietly away at Kimbolton Castle, in the arms of Lady Willoughby, and in the presence of Eustache Chapuys, the imperial ambassador; being “done to death by cruelty,” as her Spanish chronicler quaintly and faithfully puts it.[51]

The public career of Jane Grey’s maternal grandfather was far more creditable than his private life. In early manhood, as we have seen, he distinguished himself as a naval commander, and he later became a skilful general, affording his master most efficient help against the popular rising known as the “Pilgrimage of Grace.” During that otherwise futile expedition into Picardy which resulted in King Henry’s only substantial French victory, the capture of Boulogne, Suffolk proved himself both bold and sagacious, and was able to present the keys of that city to the king. He was also of great service all through the intricate operations against the Scots, which occupied English diplomacy and arms from 1543 to 1544, and formed the first link in the chain of misfortunes marking the untoward career of Mary Stuart—since these certainly arose out of the attempt made by Henry VIII to affiance his son Edward to the infant Queen of Scots, and so secure the custody of her person. This effort, had it been crowned with success, would have united the Crowns of England and Scotland some fifty years before the union of the two kingdoms was finally accomplished, under James I.

In 1532-33, when Henry VIII and Francis I held a conference in the Church of Our Lady at Boulogne, such was the piety of bluff King Hal that he was well pleased to attend as many as three and four Masses every day before St. Mary’s shrine, whilst round him knelt the Dukes of Suffolk and Norfolk; the Marquises of Dorset and Exeter; the Lords of Surrey, Essex, Derby, Rutland, Huntingdon and Sussex; and a legion of other noblemen and knights. Boulogne was greatly edified at beholding the French and English Kings, the King of Navarre, the Dauphin, and the Princes of Orleans, AngoulÊme, VendÔme, and Guise, together with a glittering train of French and English peers, devoutly telling their rosaries, and following the cherished image in solemn procession through the streets. But in July 1544 all this was changed. Suffolk ordered the Church of Notre Dame to be desecrated and occupied by the English artillery. The sacred image, however, was carefully packed and sent over to England, where Henry, who had burnt the Lady of Walsingham and “her old syster of Ipswich,” preserved it in high veneration in his own bedroom. Edward VI, at the time of the restitution of Boulogne, consented to restore the treasure, and Louis de la Tremeuil, Prince of Talmont, was deputed to fetch it back to its time-honoured shrine.[52]

In August 1545 Suffolk died, after a long illness, at Guildford Castle, which had evidently been lent to him by Sir William Parr, who had it from the king. The duke’s illness seems to have been, in every phase, identical with that of the king, who died of a similar complication of diseases not two years later: Charles suffered from gout, heart failure, rheumatism, and dropsy. Henry VIII expressed great interest and anxiety concerning him, and sent constantly to Guildford to obtain news of his old friend and life-long companion. One of Suffolk’s portraits, painted in the last year of his life, represents him looking much older than he really was, and extremely like Henry VIII. He wears a dressing-gown and a silk skull cap, and his feet, much swollen with gout, are resting on a stool. During his last illness, the duke was attended by his wife and his two daughters, the Ladies Frances and Eleanor. He expired in their presence and in that of his grand-children, including Katherine Grey. Suffolk left instructions in his will that he was to be buried in an obscure Lincolnshire parish, without pomp, but Henry VIII ordered otherwise, and gave his accommodating brother-in-law and friend splendid obsequies at Windsor, where his tomb may still be seen, on the right-hand entrance to St. George’s Chapel. Requiem Masses for the repose of the soul of “the most High and Puissant Prince,” Charles, Duke of Suffolk, were said at St. Paul’s and at Westminster Abbey.

Suffolk left all his property to his widow and her children, with reversion to his daughters Frances and Eleanor Brandon, respectively Marchioness of Dorset and Countess of Cumberland, and to their heirs and successors, who are named. His widow retired to her lodging at the Barbican, where she was several times visited by the Lady Frances and her daughters, and by the Princesses Mary and Elizabeth, the latter being her sincere friend, whereas the former disliked her exceedingly, on account of her change of religion. When the duchess, some short time after the death of her first husband, took unto herself a second, in the person of her young secretary, Mr. Bertie, an aggressive Protestant, Queen Mary was exceedingly wroth at what she considered to be a mÉsalliance. Mr. Bertie and the Duchess fled from England, and after staying awhile in Germany and visiting Venice, succeeded, despite many romantic adventures, in reaching Poland. The duchess and her “unequal match” did not return to England until after Mary’s death.