Marguerite was now thirty-three. A portrait of her at Hampton Court shows that she was a fine-looking, if not, strictly speaking, a beautiful woman. The face is oval, the hair, showing from underneath the rather picturesque widow's headdress of the sixteenth century, is brown, the eyes are dark and expressive, the nose Grecian, the lips somewhat full. The hands, resting upon a balcony, are beautiful, with long, tapering fingers.
Brandon is described as "a large man, tall and elegantly proportioned, with dark brown eyes and hair: he was handsome in his countenance, courtly in his manners, and extremely prepossessing in his address."
For the next few months, the soul of Marguerite of Austria was struggling in deep waters. The facts, as clearly as they can be made out through the misty perspective of centuries, seem to be these: Marguerite loved Charles Brandon, then Viscount Lisle and afterward the Duke of Suffolk. He asked her hand in marriage, wooing her passionately. The young and powerful king, Henry VIII., favored Suffolk's suit, even to the point of making several personal appeals to Marguerite, whose pride and her fear of causing a political catastrophe made her hesitate to accept Suffolk. Gossiping rumors concerning the love affair were spread broadcast, and Maximilian, hearing them, became enraged. Marguerite drew back. Henry VIII. pretended to the emperor that he knew nothing about the matter except by hearsay. Brandon accepted the situation and later consoled himself by marrying the youngest sister of the king, the bride first selected for Charles, Mary Tudor.
To give reality and color to the above bare outline of a story that once throbbed with life, a few descriptions and quotations may be permitted.
Henry VIII., with his suite, including Brandon, visited Marguerite at Lille. She in return "accompanied by her young nephew Charles and divers other nobles," visited Henry in his camp at Tournay. Henry met them outside the gates and "brought them in with greate triumphe." The chronicler adds: "The noys went that the Lord Lysle made request of marriage to the Ladye Margurite, Duchess of Savoy, and daughter to the Emperor Maximilian. But whether he proffered marriage or not, she favored him highly."
An evening banquet following, a day of tournaments is thus described:
"This night the King made a sumptuous banket of a. c. dishes to the Prince of Castell and the Lady Margarete, and to all other Lords and ladies and after the banket the ladies daunsed; and then came in the king and a XI in a maske, all richly appareled with bonnettes of gold, and when they had passed the time at their pleasure, the garments of the maske were cast off amongst the ladies, take who could take."
That handsome Charles Brandon and stately Marguerite of Austria "took" each other is proved by the following extracts, made from two letters signed "M" among the Cottonian manuscripts now in the British Museum. The epistles are evidently translations from French originals. They are addressed to "Sir Richard Wingfield, Ambassadour," and are labelled on the outside, in Sir Richard Wingfield's handwriting: Secrete Matters of the Duke of Suffolk. The letters were delivered to Wingfield by Marotin, a confidential servant, whom it is known Marguerite dismissed for having "evile kept" her secrets. As Marotin was at once taken into Maximilian's service it is probable that he was the emperor's informant concerning the Suffolk love affair. For nearly a year afterward, intercourse between the emperor and his daughter was confined to the coldest formalities.
In the case of a few words, liberties have here been taken with Sir Richard Wingfield's spelling in order to make the letter intelligible to modern readers:
"The Archduchess Marguerite to Sir Richard Wingfield.