and take afore you the Cross of Christ,
and in your hearts His faith,
the restitution of the Church,
the suppression of these heretics and their opinions,
by all the holy contents of this book.13
The Duke of Norfolk and the Earl of Shrewsbury were sent by Henry to meet with over 30,000 agitators near Doncaster. The king’s army was vastly outnumbered and to avoid the potential for mass slaughter, Norfolk promised the crowd that all would be pardoned if they dispersed. Aske agreed, if the king would address their demands, including that a parliament should be held at York or Nottingham, that the Princess Mary should be declared legitimate, suppressed monasteries be restored to their former state, Papal authority re-established and Cromwell removed from power. Henry promised to summon a new parliament in York to look at all their issues (which he had no intention of doing) and on the 9 December, the rebels were pardoned.
By February 1537, another rising, Bigod’s Rebellion, occurred mainly due to Henry ignoring the demands made by the ‘pilgrims’. He had had no intention of letting a band of rebels dictate to him how to rule his country. He had previously told them ‘and we, with our whole council, think it right strange that ye, who be but brutes and inexpert folk, do take upon you to appoint us who be meet or not for our council; we will, therefore, bear no such meddling at your hands, it being inconsistent with the duty of good subjects to interfere in such matters.’14
Henry had had enough. He informed the Duke of Norfolk to end the rebellion in the North ‘you must cause such dreadful execution upon a good number of the inhabitants, hanging them on trees, quartering them, and setting their heads and quarters in every town, as shall be a fearful warning’.15 Over two hundred rebels were executed and the risings finally ended.
During the Northern rebellions, Henry had told Charles to stay in Lincoln as an agent of control. Through his marriage to Katherine Willoughby, he was now a landowner there and would become more and more involved in the county. Whilst Norfolk was suppressing the rebels, Charles held Lincoln and with 3,600 men ‘arranged an impressive system of defence’16 around the area including the blocking of roads to Yorkshire. During the months he was there he lay the foundation of his future relationship with the local gentry. Even in the midst of a rebellion, Charles’ genial personality commended him to others.
Charles had lost several estates after Mary’s death and now Henry wanted him to consolidate his position in Lincolnshire. He was ordered to make his permanent home there and in April 1537, Henry gave Charles Tattershall Castle near Sleaford. It had belonged to Henry’s illegitimate son, the Duke of Richmond, who had died the previous summer. Charles began the process of reestablishing himself in a different county but a county that was loyal to his new wife’s family. Katherine would return to her family homes at Eresby and to Grimsthorpe which they would extensively renovate with stone from the nearby Vaudey Abbey.
Charles became a father again in 1537 with the birth of his second son by Katherine, also named Charles. Henry too was to have the boy he had so long waited for. Queen Jane gave birth to their son, Edward, on 12 October at Hampton Court Palace after three days of labour. Charles was godfather at his christening ceremony on the 15th and Katherine was also present. England rejoiced. Bonfires were lit, guns sounded and feasting and carousing in the streets carried on for days. But the joy of the birth of an heir to the throne was tainted with sadness when the queen died on 24 October of puerperal fever. Henry had finally got his son but at a price. He wrote to the King of France ‘Divine Providence has mingled my joy with the bitterness of the death of her who brought me this happiness’.17 Whilst the country was plunged into sorrow, Henry shut himself away from his court and friends. He had genuinely cared for Jane, their relationship never had the chance to sour and she had done her duty to her king.
Charles could not help the king in his grief, no one could, and while Charles’ new family settled down to life in Lincoln, his thoughts turned to his old family. His daughters with Anne Browne in particular. Lady Anne, Baroness Grey of Powys, Charles’ eldest daughter created a scandal by running away with her lover, Randal Haworth. Her marriage to Baron Grey had been an unhappy one and her husband had already taken up with a mistress, Jane Orwell, who would have four children by him. Charles, with Thomas Cromwell’s help, forced Grey to support his wife with an annuity of £100. In June 1537 he wrote to Cromwell from Grimsthorpe to ask him to continue his goodwill to Anne especially if she would heed his advice. He promised to be a good lord and father so that she would ‘live after such an honest sort as shall be to her honor and mine’.18 Whatever Cromwell’s advice, Anne did not give up her lover. Her husband later petitioned the Privy Council to punish her for adultery implying that Anne and Haworth were also trying to murder him but nothing became of his accusations and Anne continued her affair, as did he.
Her sister, Lady Mary, Baroness Monteagle, had been one of Queen Jane’s favourite ladies-in-waiting and also had a troubled marriage. She spent most of her time at court but when with her husband he was known to be abusive. Charles intervened and made Baron Monteagle promise ‘from henceforth from time to time [to] honourably handle and entreat the said lady Mary as a noble man ought to do his wife, unless there be a great default in the lady Mary and so affirmed by the council of the lord Monteagle’.19 His promises came as part of a restructuring of his finances. At one point he owed thirty-one creditors for his debts and Charles felt obliged to help bail him out but on the condition that he adhered to Charles’ instruction regarding his estate and household management. Taking control, Charles made Monteagle agree to debt management, reduced expenditure and allowed the couple an allowance to live by.
With that relationship sorted, there was another, more pressing one. The king could not put off remarrying for much longer. After a long search for which Henry had little enthusiasm, she was found. Charles was sent with other nobles to greet the king’s next wife, Anne of Cleves, when she arrived on English soil at Deal. Their marriage was conducted on 6 January 1540 and by the beginning of July, Charles had been instrumental in negotiating their divorce. Three weeks later, Henry married again on the same day that Thomas Cromwell was executed. Yet another one of his trusted advisors had succumbed to Henry’s wrath. Publicly Cromwell was denounced as an heretic and traitor, privately Henry blamed him for the Cleves marriage.
His next bride, Katherine Howard was young and beautiful and Henry was delighted with her. She was his blushing rose without a thorn, lighting up the court with her vivacity and vitality, in stark contrast to plain and unprepossessing Anne. But by 1542, Charles was escorting the fair Katherine from Syon Abbey to the Tower for execution. Whereas Anne Boleyn had been executed on trumped up charges of adultery, Katherine herself confessed to her relationship with Francis Dereham before her marriage to the king, but damning evidence had come to light about her recent affair with Thomas Culpeper – a letter she had written to him entreating him to come to her. She wrote ‘I never longed for anything so much as to see you’.20 Henry had hoped to forgive her for her relationships before they had wed but he could not forgive an adulterous queen. At just twenty-one, she was executed on 13 February at the Tower of London. Charles was to attend but had been too ill.
Charles was entering the last years of his life. He had bouts of ill health but was by no means failing. He attended the Privy Council regularly and was always on hand to exert the king’s will. In August 1542, Henry sent his army into Scotland following the breakdown of their continuing unstable relationship. He had asked the King of Scotland, James V, his nephew, to meet with him at York to discuss Scotland’s fealty to England but James had refused. Henry reacted by sending his men into Scotland to their defeat. The battle of Haddon Rig was fought and won by the Scots on 24 August. It seemed that a truce might be negotiated but in October, Henry ordered Charles and his men from Lincoln and Warwick to guard the Scottish borders while Norfolk and the king’s army retaliated. The battl
e of Solway Moss defeated the Scots in November. Just 3,000 English troops overcame 18,000 Scots with only seven English deaths.
Henry’s lust for war was once more inflamed. As he grew older, his thoughts returned to his passionate hatred of France. He had never quite had the glorious victory that he had so lusted after. The sieges of his youth had been his triumphs but they were not the celebrated battles of old, the tales of which he had been raised on. Now here was a king that was no longer youthful. He was a grotesque parody of the young, athletic man he had once been. His waist now measured fifty-four inches, his chest fifty-seven inches and he needed help to even move from one room to the next. He was in no state to lead an army but he began making plans for England’s next move. Charles was recalled from the North where he had been stationed ready for another Scottish invasion. The two men were set to relive their youthful years together.
Charles left England early in July 1544 for the Pale of Calais where 40,000 men of the king’s army were mustered. They were split into two troops; one to follow the Duke of Norfolk to Montreuil, the other commanded by the sixty-year-old Charles Brandon to lay siege to Boulogne. Henry joined him later in the month to oversee weeks of heavy bombardment. Boulogne lay in two parts, lower and upper. The lower section fell with ease but the upper and its castle took a debilitating amount of time. To breach the castle, tunnels were dug under its stone foundations and Boulogne surrendered on 13 September to Henry’s delight and his troops relief. ‘And so…the duke of Suffolke rode into Bullein, to who in the kynges name, they deliuered the keyes of the toune’.21
Henry returned to England at the end of September 1544 leaving Charles and the Duke of Norfolk, who had abandoned the siege on Montreuil, to defend Boulogne. With a large French force arriving in the area, the English army withdrew to Calais against the king’s wishes, leaving only 4,000 men for its defence. Henry was furious and it prompted Charles to write:
As the King showed him special favour and credit, he had rather spend his life than be driven to make any excuse why he did not as commanded. Nothing has grieved him more than this departure from Boleyne (Boulogne) and he saw none here but were ready to tarry at Boleyne if the case would have suffered it. Begs Henry to accept the doings here, and not to show displeasure to the rest, whereby people and captains might be discouraged hereafter.22
Henry’s displeasure did not last long. He had had his foray into France and was now back with his sixth and last queen, Katherine Parr, whom he had married in 1543. He asked Charles to stay on in Calais to await further orders but told him to have ‘a good respect’ to his own health. By November, Henry was yet again negotiating a peace deal with the French and Charles returned home to continue serving Henry, reviewing England’s coastal defences and organising the fortification of Portsmouth.
On 19 August the Spanish ambassador reported that Charles was ill although his attendance is marked at Privy Council meetings up until the day before he died on 22 August 1545 at Guildford. No one expected his sudden demise nor knew what had caused it. His wife was distraught, his king was utterly devastated. Henry told his council that ‘for as long as Suffolk had served him, he had never betrayed a friend or knowingly taken unfair advantage of an enemy’23 which was more than he could say for those present.
Charles had written his will before the siege of Boulogne and wanted to be buried at Tattershall but Henry was insistent that his true friend had a magnificent send off. The king organised and paid for Charles’ internment at St George’s Chapel in Windsor on the 9 September. The king’s oldest and most dear companion had done his duty till the end – and survived. As Henry’s moods became more unstable and more and more of his closest advisors were executed, Charles always remained. Even marrying the king’s sister had not broken their relationship but cemented it further. Charles was Henry’s lifelong friend and his loss was greatly mourned. Henry would die just eighteen months later.
The Execution of Lady Jane Grey by Paul Delaroche
Chapter Ten
1545–1559
Family Matters
When Charles Brandon, Duke of Suffolk, died in 1545, he left behind his young sons by Katherine Willoughby, his illegitimate children, one of his daughters by Anne Browne and his two daughters by Mary Tudor. It would be through Mary’s daughter Frances that their line continued to a very royal and tragic end.
The Tudor Brandon daughters, Frances and Eleanor, were Henry VIII’s nieces and as such were written into the third Act of Succession passed in 1544 as the mothers of possible future successors. The king’s son, Edward, was Henry’s heir followed by Mary and Elizabeth but Henry had not legally re-legitimised his own two daughters, which would cause problems in the future. Before his death he was still hoping for another male heir with his last wife, Katherine Parr. We know this child was never born and the Act of Succession made provision that if the direct line from Henry was to fail then the crown would go ‘to the heirs of the body of the Lady Frances our niece, eldest daughter to our late sister the French Queen lawfully begotten; and for default of such issue of the crown … shall wholly remain and come to the heirs of the body of the Lady Eleanor, our niece, second daughter to our late sister the French Queen’.1
Lady Eleanor only outlived her father by two years and died in the same year as Henry VIII. She had two sons that died young but her daughter, Margaret Clifford, lived to adulthood. Lady Eleanor had a happy marriage and a quiet life. She was rarely at court spending her time at Skipton Castle where her husband had built her an octagonal tower and a great gallery for her pleasure and at Brougham Castle. It was here that she died in 1547 and was buried at the Holy Trinity church at Skipton, Yorkshire.
Lady Frances however was very much at court, serving as a Lady of the Privy Chamber to Henry’s last queen. After her uncle’s death she retired to her mansion at Bradgate Park, near Leicester, an impressive Tudor manor surrounded by six miles of parkland, in which she and her husband, Henry Grey, Marquis of Dorset, enjoyed hunting and hawking. Her relationship with her half-siblings was an uneasy one especially with Anne Brandon, Charles’ eldest daughter.
Lady Anne stayed away from her unhappy marriage. She remained with her lover, Randal Haworth, until her husband’s death in 1552, when she was finally able to marry the love of her life. She was the spurned daughter, left out of her father’s will, which made matters worse. From barging past Frances and Eleanor at their mother Mary’s funeral, she progressed to an attempt to defraud Lady Frances’ husband, aided by a Chancery judge, Beaumont, who bought lands from her that she had no entitlement to. Anne used forged documents supposedly from her late father. Beaumont was later arrested but Anne seems to have avoided any repercussions.
By the time of their father’s death, Frances had three surviving children, Jane (named after Jane Seymour), Katherine and Mary. It was little Jane, her eldest daughter, who would go down in history as the queen of nine days. In the same year as her aunt Eleanor’s death, the nine-year-old Jane, was sent to join the household of Henry VIII’s queen dowager, Katherine Parr, at the insistence of the Lord High Admiral, Thomas Seymour. He wooed her mother and father with talks of marrying Jane to the young King Edward and the promise of £2,000 for her wardship. There she joined the thirteen-year-old Princess Elizabeth, someone that Seymour also wanted close at hand and the ability to control. Ever forward thinking, Seymour was powerful, ambitious and ruthless, seeing a time ahead where at least one of these girls would be a step closer to the throne and he planned to be right beside them.
But with Elizabeth, he became too enamoured, entering her bedchamber at inappropriate times and playfully chasing after her. He enticed her to kiss him and flirted with her shamelessly. His wife, Katherine watched on, perhaps thinking it was nothing more than affectionate game playing, or loath to upset the husband she had so yearned for, but her mood soon changed when she found her husband and the princess in a full embrace. The scandal would have repercussions for the princess but for now Elizabeth was asked to leave and
went to live with her father’s man, Sir Anthony Denny and his wife at Cheshunt. Jane stayed with the Seymours, travelling to Sudeley in Gloucestershire, where a pregnant Katherine wished to have her confinement. It was her first child and she was in her thirties but she was in good spirits with the little Jane to keep her company. Baby Mary was born on 30 August 1548 and mother and child were reported as being well but Katherine soon developed a fever, slipping into a delirium from which she never recovered. Katherine died eight days after giving birth and Seymour was at a loss, wondering what to do with his charge and his new daughter, but he soon rallied, asking his mother to take charge. He wrote to Jane’s father:
And therefore doubting lest your Lordship might think any unkindness that I should take occasion to rid me of your daughter, the Lady Jane, so soon after the Queen’s death, for the proof both of my hearty affection towards you, and my goodwill to her, I am minded to keep her until I next speak with your lordship.2
Seymour still had plans of grandeur but he hadn’t progressed any further with Jane’s possible marriage to her cousin, the new King Edward VI, and her parents decided it was time for Jane to come home. Both Frances and Henry wrote to Seymour thanking him for his care of their daughter but asserting that it was best that she returned to her mother. Jane duly travelled back to Bradgate for a while until Seymour once again convinced her parents that he would see her married to the king and she joined him at Seymour Place in London. But Seymour had overstepped his bounds in continuing his interest in the Princess Elizabeth even to the point of enquiring after her finances. To court the princess was treason, to look into her affairs was too much. On 17 January 1549 Seymour was arrested and was executed at Tower Hill on 20 March, 1549. His daughter Mary was taken in by Charles Brandon’s last wife, Katherine Willoughby, who had been a friend of her mother, Katherine Parr.
The Tudor Brandons Page 15