The Tudor Brandons

by Sarah-Beth Watkins

  The next year was one of mixed emotions for Mary. The war effort was building and Charles Brandon would soon be caught up in preparations for the invasion of France. On 2 March 1522, jousts were held in honour of Imperial ambassadors sent by Charles V to further discuss the French raid and negotiate Princess Mary’s wedding. Her betrothal to the Dauphin of France had been called off and instead negotiations proceeded to see her married to the Emperor, sixteen years her elder.

  As Charles had taken a mistress, so too had Henry or at least he was trying. At the joust, he rode out on a horse whose caparisons were embroidered with a wounded heart and the motto – elle mon coeur a navera – she has wounded my heart. Mary Boleyn had captured his attention. Later at York Place, the pageant The Chateau Vert would be staged with eight ladies defending a towered green castle against eight lords. Mary, the king’s sister, played the part of Beauty, Mary Boleyn was Kindness and Anne Boleyn was Perseverance. Mary Boleyn had been one of Mary’s ladies when she first married King Louis but it was Anne who would live up to her name in the pageant and cause Mary much distress in time to come.

  More celebrations were held in May when Charles V arrived in England. Wolsey greeted him at Dover whilst Henry, with Charles Brandon in tow, surprised him in the evening with an impromptu visit. After showing the Emperor his fleet and his pride of joy, his flagship Henry Grace a Dieu, they travelled on to Canterbury before continuing onwards to Gravesend from where they would sail up to Greenwich; ‘All ships in the Thames are to be laid between Greenwich and Gravesend, adorned with streamers and with ordnance ready to fire as the Emperor passes’.1

  The Emperor had travelled with 2,044 people in his retinue and 1,126 horses so progress towards the city was slow. At Greenwich, Charles V was greeted by his aunt Queen Katherine, and his intended bride, his cousin, the Princess Mary. Katherine was delighted at this union with Spain and gave the Emperor her blessing.

  On 6 June ‘the king and the Emperour with all their companies, marched toward London, where the citie was prepared for their entrie, after the maner as is used at a coronation, so that nothing was forgotten that might set foorth the citie. For the rich citizens well apparelled stood within railes set on the left side of the streetes, and the cleargie on the right side in rich copes, which censed the princes as they passed, and all the streetes were richlie hanged with clothes of gold, – siluer, veluet, and arras, and in euerie house almost minstrelsie’.2

  The Emperor’s visit was a resplendent one with Henry ever wanting to impress. There was feasting at Bridewell Palace, jousts in which both kings competed and a sumptuous feast arranged by Mary at the newly refurbished Suffolk Place, after which hunting was arranged in the Tudor Brandon’s park. The Emperor was then taken on a tour of Henry’s favourite and most magnificent palaces, Richmond, Hampton Court and Windsor. Here they signed a new treaty and the Princess Mary was formally betrothed to her new husband.

  But for Mary all the activity of the past months were tinged with sadness when her first son Henry died at the age of five. It is not known exactly when or why but Charles and Mary must have been devastated. Mary threw herself into the remodelling of the gardens at Westhorpe where she retired in her sorrow. Mary ‘having imbibed a taste for the quaint conceits of the French mode of gardening by her brief sojourn in France’3 took great pleasure in her gardens. Perhaps grief drew the Tudor Brandon’s together as by the end of the year or early 1523, Charles was forgiven for his earlier indiscretion and Mary was pregnant again. Another son Henry was born, named after his dead brother, as was quite common in the Tudor age. This child would take his place in line for the throne as his brother had done. Henry still only had one legitimate female child and his sister Margaret’s two surviving children were next in line – but they were Scottish. Henry Brandon was the only legitimate English male Tudor child throughout his lifetime.

  And he was nearly a step closer to the throne when early the next year an incident at the jousts at Greenwich almost had devastating consequences for the king. Charles’ joust against Henry was reported by Wolsey’s gentleman-usher, Cavendish, and is worth repeating:

  On 10 March the king, having a new armor made to his own design and fashion, such as no armorer before that time had seen, though to test the same at the tilt, and ordered a joust for the purpose. The lord marquis of Dorset and the earl of Dorset and the earl of Surrey were appointed to be on foot: the king came to one end of the tilt and the duke of Suffolk to the other. Then a gentleman said to the duke: ‘Sir the king is come to the end of the tilt.’ ‘I see him not,’ said the duke, ‘by my faith, for my headpiece blocks my sight.’ With these words, God knows by what chance, the king had his spear delivered to him by the lord Marquis, the visor of his headpiece being up and not down or fastened, so that his face as quite naked. The gentleman said to the duke: ‘Sir the king is coming.’

  Then the duke set forward and charged with his spear, and the king likewise unadvisedly set off towards the duke. The people, seeing the king’s face bare, cried hold, hold; the duke neither saw nor heard, and whether the king remembered his visor was up or not few could tell. Alas, what sorrow was it to the people when they saw the splinters of duke’s spear strike the king’s headpiece. For most certainly the duke struck the king on the brow right under the guard of the headpiece on the very skull cap or basinet piece to which the barbette is hinged for strength and safety, which skull cap or basinet no armorer takes heed of, for it is always covered by the visor, barbette and volant piece, and thus that piece is so protected that it takes no weight. But when the spear landed on that place there was great danger of death since the face was bare, for the duke’s spear broke into splinters and pushed the king’s visor or barbette so far back with the counter blow that all the King’s head piece was full of splinters. The armorers were much blamed for this, and so was the lord marquise for delivering the spear blow when his face was open, but the king said that no one was to blame but himself, for he intended to have saved himself and his sight.

  The duke immediately disarmed and came to the king, showing him the closeness of his sight, and he swore that he would never run against the king again. But if the king had been even a little hurt, his servants would have put the duke in jeopardy. Then the king called his armorers and put all his pieces of armor together and then took a spear and ran six courses very well, by which all men could see that he had taken no hurt, which was a great joy and comfort to all his subjects present.4

  The king had barely escaped serious injury and Charles would have been held responsible for any harm that came to the king. Henry was nonplussed, shrugging off the incident and carrying on with no ill feeling towards Charles. He would soon be needed to use his jousting skills on a real battlefield.

  In July, plans were made for the invasion of France. Henry signed a new treaty with the Emperor and the Duke of Bourbon which committed them to the attack. Charles Brandon was given command of the English army, some 10,000 men. In September, they marched from Calais through Normandy to capture Boulogne, another sea port that the English hoped to command as they did Calais. But Henry was convinced to call off the siege and aim for a larger prize. Charles was ordered to head for Paris, the capital and Francis’ seat of power. The army covered seventy-five miles in three weeks stopping at Compiegne, fifty miles short of Paris. The Emperor’s forces were otherwise engaged in fighting the French, the Duke of Bourbon’s men failed to arrive and Charles was faced with attacking Paris in a freezing cold winter with no support and his men suffering. For a time Charles was still hopeful and Henry thought that there was a ‘good likelihood of the attaining of his ancient right and title to the crown of France to his singular comfort and eternal honour’.5 But Charles was losing men, one hundred had died of frostbite in two days and when the thaw came it turned all to mud and mire. The troops were sickening and Charles couldn’t bear to see them suffer any more. Henry did not want to lose his prize and arranged for 6,000 more men under Lord Moulsey’s command to swell Charles�
�� ranks. He was firm that ‘in no wise the army should break up’6 but Charles, looking at the bedraggled and exhausted men around him, decided to turn back for England.

  It was said that Henry was so embarrassed at the failed attempt to take Paris that he banned Charles and his captains from court. The king was already making plans for a fresh assault early in 1524, even to the point of heading the army himself but Charles had conducted himself and the army as best he could given the circumstances and proved himself a worthy leader. In August, he was told to make preparations for a further foray into France, but the need to commence fresh hostilities fizzled out. England had no more money in the coffers to finance a further war and there were those that wished for peace, Mary included. She desperately needed the resumption of her dower payments and only peace with the French would see her income resumed.

  At Christmas, the court relaxed into holiday festivities. A fabulous mock castle was built in the tilt yard at Greenwich – the Castle of Loyalty – that the king had given to four maidens and was protected by fifteen defenders. As the defenders arrived at the castle, there was a disturbance, two ladies led out two ancient knights, dressed in purple damask, their hair and beards flowing with silver. They were taken to Queen Katherine who was asked to give permission for these old souls to compete in the jousts. Once Katherine agreed, they threw back their robes and ripped off their wigs and beards to reveal the King and Charles, who continued to battle the defenders to the thrill of the crowd. Starkey posits that it was quite possible that one of the maidens was Anne Boleyn and Henry’s attack was all the more ferocious for it. Anne, the cause of much dissension in England, was in the king’s sights and would be the cause of Mary and Henry’s future estrangement. Mary is not recorded as being at the joust but she would soon come to know Anne and rue the day she came into their lives.

  In February 1525, at the Battle of Pavia, Charles V captured Francis I and told Henry that while he had the French king, France could be taken by an invading army. It was Henry’s chance to claim the realm he had always sought but the crown had no coin left in the coffers for amassing an army. Louise of Savoy, Francis’ mother, was made regent while Francis was imprisoned and she worked with Wolsey to negotiate a new peace deal. This included 50,000 crowns to be paid to the king, another payment as per the money King Louis had promised, Mary to receive 10,000 crowns and her rights to her dower lands resumed with a rental income of around 10,000 a year after. Mary was much relieved.

  And there was more cause for celebration later in the year when Mary and Charles’ son, Henry was created Earl of Lincoln on 18 June at Bridewell Place. At the age of two he was ‘so young that Sir John Vere was appointed to carry him’7 throughout the ceremony. The king’s illegitimate son, Henry Fitzroy was also created Earl of Nottingham and Duke of Richmond and Somerset the same day.

  While Mary returned to Westhorpe, Charles was needed to quell an uprising later in the year. Not wanting to give up on his eternal dream of an ensnared France, Henry needed ways of financing any further expedition across the water. In an attempt to raise money for a further foray into France, Wolsey came up with the amicable grant – a tax of 1/6 on goods and 1/3 of ecclesiastical possessions. The grant was essentially ‘gifts’ of money to the king to raise £800,000 but it came hard on the forced loans of previous years that people were still struggling to pay. On 11 April, Charles informed the king ‘Last week went through all Suffolk, except Ipswich, with the Commissioners, to induce the people to contribute to the grant for the King’s voyage to France. Notwithstanding divers “allegements” of many of them to the contrary, the people are now conformable to the King’s request.’8 But it was wishful thinking, some were able to pay, others either couldn’t or wouldn’t. The people of London refused outright to pay this new tax and discontent spread throughout the surrounding counties.

  Four thousand rebels met at Lavenham and the Dukes of Norfolk and Suffolk were sent to deal with them. Charles arrived first and was worried at the size of the rebellion. Waiting for the Duke of Norfolk and reinforcements, he ordered his men to destroy local bridges to contain the growing rabble. On 11 May, the dukes informed Wolsey that they ‘met two miles on this side of Bury, with a goodly company of 4,000 people. The inhabitants of Lavenham and Brante Ely came in their shirts, and kneeled for mercy, saying they were the King’s subjects, and had only committed this offence for lack of work. We aggravated their offence, declaring it to be high treason; finally, we selected four of the principal offenders, and let the rest depart. We charged them at their departing to warn the other towns to be with us tomorrow at 7, or to be held as rebels, and we hope by tomorrow to make an end.’9

  The four offenders were taken to London where Henry pardoned them. The amicable grant had caused far more discontent than expected. Henry denied that he had had anything to do with it, discontinuing the grant’s collection, and firmly placing the blame on Wolsey. It would be the beginning of the cardinal’s downfall.

  And the woman who would exacerbate his fall was now a firm fixture in Henry’s life. At the February joust in 1526, Henry rode out with his horse’s caparisons now embroidered with the words – ‘declare I dare not’. He was infatuated with Anne Boleyn, having spurned her sister, and was determined to make her his mistress. Anne on the other hand was determined to be far more than that.

  While her brother was becoming enamoured with another woman, Mary was thinking about her finances. In March the King of France had been released from imprisonment in Madrid but only after signing a treaty that strictly curtailed his holdings. Charles V made him give up his claims to Naples and Milan, Flanders and Artois, as well as making him agree to Burgundy’s independence. Although the regent, his mother Louise of Savoy, had agreed to resume Mary’s payments, the dowager queen wanted to smooth over things with Francis to ensure their continuing relationship.

  Mary wrote ‘I have thanked the Almighty for the grace that he has given you to deliver you from this anxiety and to bring you back in good health into your kingdom where I find so much honesty and goodness in my lady and my cousin, your good mother, that I do not know how to thank you enough. I will always have need in my affaires of your good grace, to which very humbly I recommend myself…’10

  Mary returned to court to welcome the French and Italian ambassadors when they visited in May and she presided over an extravagant banquet with the king and queen at Greenwich. Almost every food imaginable (and some not) were cooked for the feast. Fish included congers, bream, tench and salmon. Meat and poultry included lambs, rabbits, veal, cranes, herons, pigeons, pheasants and peacocks with a nod to the ‘salads’ of lettuce, spinach and carrot tops. The sugar course included ‘a subtilty, with a dungeon and a manor place, set upon 2 marchpanes, garnished with swans and cygnets swimming about the manor’.11 Mary once more acted the consummate diplomat and entertained the ambassadors. Her attention firmly on ensuring their visit was a successful one. Henry, on the other hand, had his mind elsewhere. If Mary noticed her brother’s interest in Anne, for now at least it was of no consequence.

  But Henry was already thinking ahead. As the spring months of 1527 passed, he knew that Queen Katherine would not give him a male heir, not least because she was aging and her failed pregnancies had taken their toll on her body but he had also stopped sleeping with her. Henry used the Bible as his reasoning for why their marriage should be annulled and his excuse stemmed from her previous marriage to his brother. Leviticus says ‘if a man shall take his brother’s wife, it is an unclean thing he hath uncovered his brother’s nakedness; they shall be childless’. Henry believed they had committed a sin and were being punished by God – or at least that reasoning suited his mood and whim to replace his wife.

  For the time being though he had more pressing matters than his marital situation. On the 30 April, the Treaty of Westminster was signed between England and France. In another about face, the king was once more allied to Francis’ cause against Charles V. The marriage of Henry’s daughter Mary,
now to either Francis or the Duc d’Orléans, was included in the negotiations which continued over several days. On 23 May, Mary Tudor Brandon attended yet another banquet in Greenwich in honour of the French and Italian ambassadors. It was to be her last official engagement. Mortified, she watched on as her brother led Anne Boleyn in the dance. Disgusted, she withdrew from court.

  Mary would have been even more appalled had she known that Henry had ordered Wolsey to convene a secret ecclesiastical court to examine the validity of his marriage to Katherine but she must have heard in June that Henry had told Katherine that their marriage was a sin. Henry asked Katherine to retire from court to a house of her choosing while the king’s ‘great matter’ was being decided. Katherine wept uncontrollably at the news whilst Henry told her ‘by way of consolation, that all should be done for the best, and begged her to keep secrecy upon what he had told her. This the King must have said, as it is generally believed, to inspire her with confidence and prevent her from seeking the redress she was entitled to by right, and also to keep the intelligence from the public, for so great is the attachment that the English bear to the Queen that some demonstration would probably take place in her household’.12 Henry would fail to keep his intention to divorce Katherine quiet. She was loved by the people and had many supporters but Henry would not be dissuaded. Knowing this and believing in her right to remain queen, Katherine refused to acquiesce to his demands.

  Although her own husband had been divorced, Mary could not counter that her brother would desert his wife and a royal wife at that. Mary had grown up with Katherine. She was her friend at court, her confidant and her loyal companion. They had spent many hours together, attended many banquets and jousts, and shared their fears and hopes for their children. Her commitment to Katherine was the source of many arguments between herself and Charles. While Mary remained privately against her brother’s machinations, Charles publicly supported the king.