The Tudor Rose, page 23
The Pope’s representative, Cardinal Lorenzo Campeggio, listened impassively. Finally, on 23 July, he announced that he was referring the whole matter to Rome, as he had been secretly instructed to do by the Pope. A horrified silence greeted his announcement. As the King strode out in a fury, Brandon thumped his fist on the table and yelled 'By the Mass, now I see that the old said saw is true, that never cardinal or legate did good in England!’1
Wolsey, aghast, conscious that he faced ruin, replied with great dignity: ‘Of all the men in this realm, ye have least cause to dispraise or be offended with cardinals. For if I, a simple cardinal, had not been, ye should have at this present no head upon your shoulders!’
This was a sharp reminder that he had saved Brandon’s bacon in the matter of the secret marriage in Paris. He advised Brandon to behave himself and hold his peace, ‘for ye know best what friendship ye have received at my hands, the which yet I never revealed, to no person alive before now, neither to my glory, nor to your dishonour.’
Henry had already stormed from the room. Brandon followed him in silence.
Brandon’s outburst against Wolsey may well have been provoked by two characteristically high-handed actions of the Cardinal’s: the first was the ‘Amicable Grant’, the forced loan of 1525 levied on property and goods to enable Henry to finance yet another military campaign. Brandon had resented having to impose the levy on his tenants and then endure obloquy for an unpopular policy not of his devising. Open resistance had obliged the use of force and soured relationships.
Secondly, Brandon was among those who had suffered for Wolsey’s determination to leave a legacy of educational memorials. His desire to found a college at Oxford and a preparatory school for it in his native Ipswich had entailed the seizure of land in the area, including three valuable properties belonging to the Brandons: Snape Priory in Suffolk and the manors of Sayes Court and Bickling in Kent. The Brandons, now realising that Wolsey’s assistance in securing Mary’s French revenues had not been free of self-interest, had reminded Henry gently that, without Brandon’s efforts and his cordial relationship with Francis, negotiations with France would be much more precarious.
Throughout August and September, no-one moved against Wolsey. There remained a faint hope that he would by some miracle succeed in outmanoeuvring the alliance of Pope, Emperor and Queen of England.
After his return from France, Brandon’s usually robust health suffered a setback. Enforced rest allowed him to spend part of the summer in East Anglia with Mary and their family. Now that their daughters were of marriageable age, they at last took the necessary steps to have Brandon’s own divorce papers notarially attested before witnesses. The bull, signed the previous year at Orvieto by Pope Clement VII, was presented to the Bishop of Norwich on 20 August. Now unquestionably legitimate, Mary’s daughters, Frances and Eleanor, had suddenly become highly desirable brides on the aristocratic marriage market. In 1530, a marriage was discussed between Frances and the Norfolks’ eldest son, Henry Howard, Earl of Surrey. It seemed the ideal arrangement, in view of the proximity of their estates. At this point the rivalry between the two dukes was in abeyance and their co-operation in council was relatively amicable. But although thirteen-year-old Frances was the King’s niece, in Norfolk’s eyes her royal birth was insufficient to compensate for her meagre dowry.
Brandon returned to court in the autumn to find Wolsey’s enemies in full cry. Anti-clerical feeling was running high. Against his own inclinations, through his loyalty to the King Brandon found himself drawn into the increasing circle of Boleyn supporters and in opposition to the Cardinal.
Wolsey’s fall was sudden and dramatic. On 6 October he chaired the Council Meeting. On 9 October, he was charged in the Court of the King’s Bench with the offence of praemunire: in allowing the legatine court to be set up he had broken the law of England by introducing an illegal foreign body into the land2. Wolsey knew his enemies had triumphed. He made no attempt to refute the charges. On 19 October, Norfolk and Suffolk called on him formally to remove the seals of office. Du Bellay wrote: ‘Wolsey has been put out of his house and all his goods taken into the King’s hands. Beside the robberies of which they charge him between Christian Princes, they accuse him of so many other things that he is quite undone. The Duke of Norfolk is made chief of the council, Suffolk acting in his absence and at the head of all, Mademoiselle Anne.’3
The great Cardinal was sent to a modest dwelling in Esher, and later in the autumn retired to his see of York. The moment he left York Place, Henry and Anne Boleyn, aware that Wolsey had ordered his officers to conduct an inventory of his goods, hurried over to pick over the spoils. The word on the street was that Wolsey would be sent to the Tower. Agog for drama involving their betters, the good citizens of London clustered at the riverside to witness the great man’s arrest. A thousand craft were said to be scouring the river, but Wolsey foiled pursuit by embarking on his barge from his own private steps, surrounded by his own attendants. He sailed to Putney, where he had arranged to be met by his attendants, with horses to transport him to Surrey.
Wolsey was banished. Anne’s star had risen. Henry was lavishing priceless gifts on her. On 9 December 1529, at the banquet held to celebrate her father’s elevation to an Earldom, Anne, ablaze with jewels and radiant with triumph, occupied the seat of honour next to the King. She took precedence over Mary Rose, who, as Dowager Queen of France, had the right to be treated as a queen. On this occasion, Mary Rose forbore to comment but no doubt she was infuriated by the interloper’s presumption, both on her own account and on behalf of her friend Queen Katherine.
Suddenly, in November 1530, the Earl of Northumberland – the former Lord Henry Percy whose affair with Anne Boleyn had been curtailed by Wolsey’s intervention – appeared at Cawood and arrested Wolsey for high treason in the King’s name. Wolsey travelled south with his captors. He knew he faced the block. He was to be spared this final humiliation. At Leicester Abbey, where the company were to spend the night, Wolsey collapsed and died. His recorded last words were: ‘If I had served my God as diligently as I have done my King, He would not have given me over in my grey hairs’.4
When the news of Wolsey’s death reached London, a troop of players funded by Anne Boleyn’s father staged a distasteful comedy ‘of the descent of the Cardinal into Hell’. Norfolk, Anne Boleyn’s uncle, ordered the text to be published, treating it as a huge jest.
Privately, the King registered the magnitude of his loss, sighing: ‘Every day I miss the Cardinal of York more and more.’5 Henry had good reason for his regret. For the next two years, he found ruling England alone a heavier burden than he had imagined possible. Initially, he tried to assign the blame to Wolsey for leaving affairs in a mess. But it soon became clear just how many and how diverse were the tasks that had been shouldered by the Cardinal, and how subtly and how brilliantly he had performed them.
Wolsey’s fall was a political victory in which Brandon had played no significant part. Although he had not actively supported Wolsey and had gone along with the power play of the Boleyn faction, he had never actively joined the conspiracy against a minister who had never really harmed him and who, in respect of the secret marriage to Mary Rose, had shown him vital support. Nevertheless, he shared in the spoils when the great man fell: Wolsey’s prize mules came to his stables, Wolsey’s kitchen clerk entered his service, and the manor of Sayes Court in Deptford was returned to him. The office of president of the Council was revived for him and for Norfolk, with whom he shared it.
Brandon had also been Henry’s first choice as Lord Chancellor of England, but a jealous Norfolk opposed the appointment, protesting that Brandon was already too powerful: he objected to the Seal being given into ‘such high hands’. Brandon himself may not have wished for such a responsibility. He had a realistic view of his own abilities, and knew his skills and interests lay elsewhere. In consequence, the post went to an initially reluctant Thomas More, who recognised that his views regarding the Great Matter differed from the King’s, and anticipated the inevitable clash.
Meanwhile the Divorce trial proceeded seamlessly. Eager to curry favour with the King, most people fell into line and spouted prearranged testimony. Brandon, who had always shared Mary’s respect and affection for the Queen, was outwardly courteous to Anne, suppressing his personal feelings out of loyalty to the King. It was for that unwavering loyalty that Henry so valued him. On the surface, their friendship remained unchanged. They continued to exchange gifts. Brandon gave the King greyhounds and a gold-bound book containing a clock. Henry visited Ewelme in 1531, 1532 and 1535, and the two men continued to play tennis and gamble together, and relax by listening to Mary Rose’s sackbut players. When members of the Privy Council urged the King to seek reconciliation with Charles V, an indignant Henry snarled at them all except for Brandon.
But their relationship was complicated. The disinheritance of Princess Mary, which would eventually be followed by that of Elizabeth, reinforced the claim to the throne of the Brandon children. The Brandons’ friendship with Katherine of Aragon was also problematic. Chapuys reported that the Brandons secretly deplored the divorce. At last one contemporary attributed Mary Rose’s early death to her grief over the treatment of her friend, Queen Katherine. Lady Willoughby, prospective mother-in-law of the Suffolks’ son Henry, Earl of Lincoln, Katherine’s former lady-in-waiting Maria de Salinas, remained devoted, rushing to Katherine’s side when she lay on her deathbed. Maria’s own daughter, Catherine, was second mourner at the ex-Queen’s funeral in February 1536. The first mourner was the Brandons’ younger daughter, Eleanor.
Brandon deplored the repeated missions to humiliate Katherine; so impressed was he by her dignity in May 1531 that for once he spoke out to his friend and sovereign, in an attempt to persuade the King to change his behaviour. Norfolk, Suffolk and 30 councillors held a conference with the Queen at Greenwich. Katherine insisted that she was Henry’s lawful wife and that the case must be heard in Rome. Norfolk told the King what he wanted to hear, but Brandon told Henry that, although the Queen was ready to obey him in all things, she recognised two higher authorities. Henry was about to explode; he demanded to know who these two authorities were, thinking them to be the Pope and the Emperor. Brandon said bluntly: ‘God and her conscience.’ Chapuys, relating the incident to Charles V, said Henry received Brandon’s remark in stony silence. ‘Suffolk and his wife’ the Ambassador added ‘if they dared, would offer all possible resistance to his marriage.’ Two days previously he had heard Brandon and the Treasurer saying ‘The time was come when all the world should strive to dismount the King from his folly’.6
As time passed, the antagonism between Norfolk and Suffolk increased. They clashed both in council and back on their own turf over local issues. Their henchmen began to form bands. In April 1532 matters came to a head. The Lady Anne’s dominance at court was now complete. Sharp-tongued, tough minded and clever, she flashed her black eyes, made cutting remarks in French or English, and flaunted the jewels lavished on her by the besotted monarch, in case anyone should dare to doubt that she held him in thrall. Henry planned to take his inamorata to France to meet Francis I, and had asked the Queen to hand over her jewels. Katherine indignantly declared that she would not give up what was rightfully hers to adorn ‘a person who is a reproach to Christendom and is bringing scandal and disgrace upon the King, through his taking her to a meeting such as this in France’.7But, she added, if the King sent for her jewellery, she would surrender it. As soon as she had relinquished her jewels, most of them, including four bracelets set with rubies and diamonds, were reset for Anne.
Relations between Brandon and the arrogant Boleyns were increasingly strained. Anne was bitterly hostile to Brandon. In July 1531, in retaliation for disrespectful remarks Brandon had made about her, according to the Imperial Ambassador, she went to the lengths of smearing his name with allegations of incest with his own daughter.8
In April 1532, at last, Mary Rose gave rein to her feelings. Up in London on business concerning her dowry, she openly criticised Anne.
The Venetian Ambassador Capello reported of the fatal brawl: ‘it was owing to opprobrious language uttered against Madame Anne by his Majesty’s sister, the Duchess of Suffolk, Queen Dowager of France. The affair of the divorce becomes daily more difficult.’9
The King’s sister’s insults were gleefully repeated, first at court and then, bandied about in taverns by the followers of the two great dukes, throwing the Court into an uproar, and resulting in murder. Richard Southwell and his brother, Norfolk’s henchmen, with a band of twenty heavies, goaded a group of Suffolk’s supporters until violence broke out in Westminster Abbey. Sir William Pennington, one of Suffolk’s gentlemen, sought sanctuary in the traditional way by throwing himself before the high altar. He was pursued and brutally cut down by Norfolk’s people in the aisle. Brandon, furious, rushed to the Abbey ‘to remove the assailants by force.’ The King sent Thomas Cromwell after him, ‘for the turmoil displeased him.’
Cromwell, Wolsey’s former servant, was a self-made man of humble origins who was to rank among the greatest statesmen and politicians of the Tudor age. The King, having lost Wolsey, was coming to rely upon him increasingly. Richard Southwell, one of Norfolk’s retainers, had been tutoring Cromwell’s son. The quarrels and the murder of Pennington caused a furore at court. Brandon and Mary Rose, disgusted, retired to their estates, but their retainers were still spoiling for a fight. The King and Thomas Cromwell had to intervene to prevent further outbreaks of violence. Shortly afterwards, Henry himself called on Brandon. It took all his powers of persuasion to convince Brandon to return to court. The murderers, Norfolk’s retainers, the notorious Southwell and his brother, were pardoned after paying a £1,000 fine.
Anne, who had played a clever waiting game and now felt sure of her triumph, continued to ride roughshod over everyone. Hell-bent on appropriating every honour and privilege of Queenship, she ordered her Chamberlain to seize the Queen’s barge, repaint it in her colours of blue and purple, burn off its coat of arms and replace it with her own. For her proposed State visit to France, she ordered stacks of gowns, furs and nightgowns.
Unfortunately, it appeared that no royal lady at the French court was willing to receive her. To Henry’s disgust, it was suggested that Francis’s current mistress, the Duchess of Vendôme, should do the honours. In the face of this unspeakable insult, Henry decided that Anne would remain in the English enclave of Calais while he travelled on into French territory to meet Francis.
Notwithstanding, there was a holiday atmosphere on 7 October when Henry and Anne left Greenwich with a 2,000-strong retinue, including the King’s bastard son, Richmond, the Duke of Norfolk, and an unenthusiastic Brandon. Mary Rose had flatly refused to participate in the charade. Even the deliberate snubbing by King Francis’s sister, Marguerite d’Angoulême, and his second wife, Queen Eleanor, did not set a damper on the festive air of the excursion. More conservative members of court deplored the unedifying spectacle of the King of England, setting off to France accompanied by his bastard and by the woman referred to by London commoners and Marguerite d’Angoulȇme alike as ‘the King’s Whore.’
There was speculation among the courtiers whether the King would follow Mary Rose’s example sixteen years earlier and simply wed secretly in France, returning to England to present the world with a fait accompli, and, if this happened, what the consequences of such a rash action would be for them all. When this rumour reached Anne’s ears, she hotly denied it, declaring that she would have no hole-and-corner ceremony, but a proper state wedding such as all queens of England had. Her arrogance unabated, despite her ambivalent situation.
In April 1533, Brandon was given the bitter task of informing Katherine that she was no longer Queen. In December, he was commanded to dismiss some of her attendants and move her into an insalubrious residence at Somersham. Katherine refused to budge and locked herself in her room. Lady Willoughby later told Ambassador Chapuys that Brandon had been to confession and communion before he could man himself up to embark on this distressing mission, and had wished some accident might befall him to relieve him of the odious duty. His motto ’Loyaulte me oblige’, by which he had conducted his life, had never been so hard to live up to.
13 - Notes
1. Hall, Chronicle, 1548, 758; Cavendish, 1557, 125
2. L&P Hen VIII vol 4 pt 3 5859
3. ibid.6019
4. Cavendish, 219
5. CSP Milan, 530
6. L&P Hen VIII vol 5
7. Martin A.S. Hume, The Wives of Henry the Eighth and the Parts They Played in History. 1905. Reprint. London, 1967
8. CSP Span vol ivpt l n.302
9. CSP Ven vol iv 761
14 THE FATAL INHERITANCE: LADY JANE
In the early summer of 1533, Charles Brandon, Duke of Suffolk, shrugged off his perpetual indebtedness and splashed out £1,666 on the celebrations to mark the marriage of his and Mary Rose’s older laughter, Lady Frances Brandon. The slim, good-looking sixteen-year-old daughter of one of society’s most glamorous couples starred in one of the most sumptuous weddings London had ever seen. It was typical of Mary Rose that she should defy her own poor health, repress her anxiety about her sickly son Henry, in order to grace with her presence the festivities at Suffolk Place. But this would be her last public appearance.
The wedding was not only a joyful occasion, but also something of a coup. It was sharpened with an edge of triumph. Three years previously, Frances had been ignominiously rejected as a bride by the ambitious Norfolks, unimpressed by her paltry dowry – Brandon’s finances, never very secure, having been yet further depleted by the demands of Lord Monteagle, the feckless husband of his daughter Mary. Moreover, the Duke of Norfolk and Brandon, although they had co-operated when obliged to do so by circumstances and their shared respect for the sovereign, had never warmed to each other. Mary Rose had never cared for Norfolk. She had complained, when a young bride in France, that the Duke displayed a lack of empathy.
