At one time this gentleman was on very intimate terms with the renowned Sir John Paston, whose Letters throw so much light on the manners and customs of the age in which he lived; but the cronies fell out over some matter of business connected with Paston’s claim to the possession of Caistairs Castle, in which transaction, Paston declares, Brandon behaved like a blackguard—indeed, King Edward, to whom appeal was made, listed him as a “lyre.” During their intimacy, Paston, possibly over a tankard of ale at a merry dinner or supper party, had made some irreverent and coarse remarks about her grace of Norfolk, in the presence of Lady Brandon, who was the duchess’s grand-daughter. He had poked fun at the poor lady’s appearance when on the eve of adding her tribute to the population. Paston has recorded what he said, and it must be confessed, that if Lady Brandon did repeat his vulgar jest to her august relation, that lady had every reason to feel indignant at such familiarity.
Whether it was repeated or not has never transpired, so perhaps we may suppose Lady Brandon was a prudent woman and kept her counsel. But Paston wrote to his brother to ask if he thought she might be trusted, or whether she was likely to have made mischief by repeating his ill-timed remarks to the duchess, her mother, adding a “lye or two of her own to help it out.”
Sir William Brandon, eldest son of the first William, and father of Charles Brandon, was never knighted, although usually styled by courtesy “Sir.” He married, when he was very young, Elizabeth, daughter and co-heir of Sir Henry Bruyn, or Brown,[12] by his wife, Elizabeth Darcy.[13] Sir William Brandon was standard-bearer to Henry VII at Bosworth Field, and there lost his life at the hand of Richard III, whilst gallantly defending his royal patron. Henry proved his gratitude by educating his only son, Charles, who, by his marriage with Mary Tudor, became the grandfather of Lady Jane Grey and her sisters Katherine and Mary. Some historians have confused King Henry’s standard-bearer with a younger brother, Thomas Brandon, who married Anne Fiennes, daughter of Lord Dacre and widow of the Marquis of Berkeley, but had no children. He looms large (in every sense of the word, being of great height and bulk) in all the tournaments and jousts held in honour of the marriage of Katherine of Aragon with Prince Henry. He died, a very wealthy man, at his London house, Southwark Place, in 1502.
At four years of age the child Charles Brandon became playfellow to Arthur, Prince of Wales; but on the birth of the future Henry VIII, he was transferred to the younger prince as his companion. He may even have received his education with Henry, from Bernard André, historian and poet, or perhaps from Skelton, poet-laureate to Henry VII, who, with Dr. Ewes, had a considerable share in the instruction of the young prince. But there is reason to believe that Brandon, as a lad, did not spend so much time at court as has been generally stated, for his letters, phonetically spelt, in accordance with the fashion of his time, prove him to have spoken with a broad Suffolk accent; he must, therefore, have passed a good deal of his youth at Brandon, on the borders of Suffolk and Norfolk, where, according to tradition, he was born. His letters, although the worst written and spelt of his day, are full, too, of East Anglianisms, which could only have been picked up by a man in his position through contact, in boyhood, with yokels and country-folk in general.
Charles, who grew up to be a remarkably fine youth, tall and “wondrous powerful,” began life virtually as an attendant in the royal household, though, as already stated, in due time he became Henry’s principal favourite and confidant. When little over twenty, he distinguished himself in a sea-fight off Brest, and was sent by Wolsey to join Henry VIII in his adventurous campaign to Therouanne. At the famous battle of the Spurs, he proved himself as brave a soldier as he had already shown himself to be a doughty sailor; but for all this merit he can scarcely be described as an honest gentleman, especially where ladies are concerned, and his matrimonial adventures were not only strange and complicated, but also exceedingly characteristic of the times in which he lived. In 1505/6, Charles Brandon became betrothed,[14] per verba de præsenti, to a young lady of good family, Anne Browne, third daughter of Sir Anthony Binyon Browne, K.G., governor of Calais, and of his wife, the Lady Lucy Nevill, daughter and co-heiress of John Nevill, Marquis of Montagu, brother of the “Kingmaker,” Richard, Earl of Warwick. In 1506/7 this contract was set aside and the young gentleman married Margaret, the mature widow of Sir John Mortimer of Essex[15] (will proved, 1505). And now came trouble. The Lady Mortimer, née Nevill (probably rather a tedious companion for so youthful a husband), was none other than the aunt of his first fiancée, Anne Browne, her sister being the Lady Lucy Nevill, who, as stated above, was the wife of Sir Anthony Browne and mother of Anne. Brandon, therefore, probably with the aid of Henry VIII, about 1507, after having squandered a good deal of her fortune, induced the Archdeacon of London (in compliance with a papal bull) to declare his marriage with Lady Mortimer null and void, on the grounds that: Firstly, he and his wife were within the second and third degrees of affinity; secondly, that his wife and the lady to whom he was first betrothed (Anne Browne) were within the prohibited degrees of consanguinity—i.e. aunt and niece; thirdly, that he was cousin once removed to his wife’s former husband. After these proceedings, he married, or rather re-married, in 1508/11, in “full court,” and in the presence of a great gathering of relations and friends—and not secretly, as usually stated—the aforesaid Anne Browne, by whom he had two daughters, the eldest being born so soon after wedlock as to give rise to unpleasant gossip, probably started by Lady Mortimer. Anne, Lady Brandon, did not long survive her marriage, for she died in 1511/12; and in the following year (1513) her widower made a third attempt at matrimony, by a contract with his ward, the Lady Elizabeth Grey, suo jure Baroness Lisle, who, born in 1503/4, was only ten years of age; but the negotiations failed, though Brandon had been granted the viscounty of Lisle, which title he assumed (May 15, 1513). As this lady absolutely refused him, he surrendered the patent of the title of Lisle in favour of Arthur Plantagenet, illegitimate son of Edward IV and husband of Lady Elizabeth Lisle, the aunt and co-heiress of the young lady he had wished to make his bride, and who, being free, gave her hand to Courtenay, Earl of Devon, who presently became Marquis of Exeter. This above-mentioned aunt, the other Lady Elizabeth, had married, in 1495, Edmund Dudley, the notorious minister of Henry VII, and became, about 1502, mother of that John Dudley, Duke of Northumberland, who proved so fatal to Lady Jane Grey and her family.
Whilst he was still plodding through the labyrinth of his matrimonial difficulties, early in 1513, Charles Brandon was entrusted with a diplomatic mission to Flanders, to negotiate a marriage between Mary Tudor, the king’s youngest sister, and the young Archduke Charles of Austria, Infante of Spain, the most powerful and richest prince in Europe. On this occasion he displayed his majestic and graceful figure to such advantage in the tilt-yard, that the demonstrative expressions of admiration which escaped the proposed bridegroom’s aunt, Drayton’s “blooming duchess,” the most high and mighty Princess Margaret, Archduchess of Austria, dowager Duchess of Savoy, and daughter of the Emperor Maximilian, evoked sarcastic comment from the illustrious company.
On Brandon’s return, Henry VIII, probably with a view to facilitating a possible alliance between his favourite and the dowager of Savoy, to universal surprise and some indignation, created his “well-beloved Charles Brandon,” Duke of Suffolk, a title until quite recently held by the semi-regal, but dispossessed house of de la Pole,[16] and further presented him with the vast territorial apanage of that family, which included Westhorpe Hall, near Bury St. Edmunds; Donnington Castle, the inheritance of Chaucer’s granddaughter, the first Duchess of Suffolk; Wingfield Castle, in Suffolk; Rising Castle in Norfolk; and Lethering Butley in Herefordshire.[17]
In the summer of 1513, while the king was sojourning at Tournay, he received a visit from the Archduke Charles of Castile and Austria, and his aunt, the Dowager Duchess of Savoy, Regent of the Netherlands. These august personages came to congratulate the English monarch on the capture of Tournay from their mutual enemy, Louis XI of France. At this time the Austro-Spanish archduke still hoped to secure the hand of the King of England’s handsome sister, Mary Tudor, who had accompanied her brother to France. Henry did his best to ingratiate himself with the regent, a handsome lady with a foolish whimpering expression, who, if we may judge her by her portrait in the Museum at Brussels, was most apt to credit anything and everything that flattered her fancy. The king and his favourites, indeed, to amuse her, behaved less like gentlemen than mountebanks. Henry danced grotesquely before her and played on the giltrone, the lute and the cornet for her diversion, and his boon companions followed their master’s example and exhibited their accomplishments as dancers and musicians. The contemporary Chronicle of Calais contains a most amusing account of the way Henry and Charles made game of the poor dowager, who betrayed her too evident partiality for the latter. Brandon actually went so far on one occasion as to steal a ring from her finger; “and I took him to laugh,” says Margaret of Savoy, describing this incident,[18] “and said to him that he was un larron—a thief—and that I thought the king had with him led thieves out of his country. This word larron he could not understand.” So Henry had to be called in to explain it to him. His Majesty next contrived a sort of love-scene between the pair, in which he made Duchess Margaret a very laughing-stock, by inducing her to repeat after him in her broken English the most appalling improprieties, the princess being utterly ignorant of the meaning of the words she was parroting. To lead her on, Suffolk, who was not a good French scholar, made answer, at the king’s prompting, to the princess’s extraordinary declarations, in fairly respectable French. At last, however, the good lady realized the situation, and, rising in dudgeon, declared Brandon to be “no gentleman and no match for her,”[19] and thus he lost his chance, though he never lost, as we shall presently see, the great lady’s friendship.
