[10] These facts concerning the Brandons and the Bullens are derived from notes supplied me many years ago by the eminent Norfolk historian, my old and valued friend, A. Carthew, whose history of the hundred of Launditch is one of the most extraordinary volumes of its sort in existence.
[11] Elizabeth, Duchess of Norfolk, was the daughter and heiress of Richard Fitzalan, Earl of Arundel and Surrey. Her first husband was Robert, Duke of Norfolk, who died in Venice; her second, Sir Gerald Ufflete. A year after his death she took, for a third husband, Sir Robert Goushall, by whom she had a daughter who became the wife of Sir Robert Wingfield of Letheringham; it is this lady’s second daughter, Elizabeth, who married Sir William Brandon, the grandfather of Charles Brandon, Duke of Suffolk.
[12] Sir Henry Bruyn was a son of Sir Maurice Bruyn and of Elizabeth Radford.
[13] Elizabeth Darcy was the daughter of Sir Richard Darcy and Alice Fitzlangley, daughter and heiress of Henry Fitzlangley.
[14] Cott. Coll. Julius, vols. ii. and vi.
[15] The origin of this Lady Mortimer, who, for her sins and sorrows, yielded at a mature age to the blandishments of the very youthful Charles Brandon, has hitherto baffled the researches of historians. Quite by chance the writer discovered her identity. Happening one day to turn over the pages of Blomefield’s invaluable History of Norfolk, under the heading “Inglethorpe” in the Lynn district, he found, included in the pedigree of the ancient family which gives its name to this manor, that of the Lady Mortimer. It appears that Sir Edmond de Bellasis, Lord of Inglethorpe or Ingaldesthorpe, who died, seized of that manor, in the thirty-sixth year of Henry V’s reign, was the last of his line. He had, by his wife, the Lady Joan de Boase, a daughter and heiress, Isabel, who married John Nevill, Marquis Montagu or Montacute, brother to the famous “Kingmaker,” Richard Nevill, Earl of Warwick. This lady had two sons and five daughters. Her eldest son died in infancy, and the second, George, eventually followed the fortunes of his uncle, the Earl of Warwick, and rose, under Edward IV, to be Duke of Bedford, but was deprived of this title and of his estates by Richard III. He died without issue, bequeathing what remained of his fortune amongst his five sisters, one of whom, the Lady Margaret Nevill, married Sir John Mortimer, who, dying on the field of battle at Bosworth without issue, left her very richly dowered. Being considerably over forty when Charles Brandon was in his nineteenth year (it will be remembered that he was a mere child at the time of the battle of Bosworth), she fell a victim to the youth’s fascinations, and married him, to the amazement of the Venetian ambassador, who comments upon the affair in a note to his government, saying: “In this country [England] young men marry old ladies for their money, and here, for instance, is the Duke of Suffolk, who, at nineteen, married a lady, for her wealth, in whose house he dwelt, and who is old enough to be his grandmother.” This Lady Mortimer had a sister, the Lady Lucy Nevill, who married Sir Anthony Browne, governor of Calais, and who was the mother of that Anne Browne, to whom Brandon was betrothed at the time of his marriage with the Lady Mortimer. To add to the confusion, it seems that Brandon’s grandmother, Elizabeth Wingfield, had a youngest sister who married Robert Mortimer, brother to the above-named Sir John, and was therefore sister-in-law to the Lady Margaret Mortimer and Brandon’s great-aunt. These alliances, at a time when not only consanguinity, but spiritual affinity, was taken into consideration in matters matrimonial, rendered it exceedingly easy for certain thoughtlessly undertaken marriages to be annulled by the ecclesiastical tribunals.
There is in this pedigree another curious fact which tells indirectly upon the tragic history of the three sisters Grey, since it proves that there existed a connecting link between the Brandons and the Greys as far back as the beginning of the fifteenth century. The Lady Joan, widow of the last Lord Inglethorpe, married the first Lord Grey de Ruthen, and thereby became the immediate ancestress of that Henry Grey who married Brandon’s daughter by the French queen, the Lady Frances, and was the father of the three unfortunate sisters, Jane, Katherine and Mary Grey. This connection very probably led to the choice of Henry Grey as consort for the Lady Frances Brandon, Mary Tudor’s eldest daughter.
[16] Reginald de la Pole, head of this great house, was beheaded on June 30, 1513, for an alleged treasonable correspondence with his brother, then in the service of Louis XII, who, it was said, had threatened to assist in placing the “heir of the White Rose” (Perkin Warbeck) upon the English throne.
[17] Other lands and mansions assigned to Charles Brandon from time to time were: the manors of Austin’s and Gerard’s in the parish of Darsham (Suffolk), given at the Dissolution; Leiston Abbey (Suffolk), granted in 1536—it is said that the patronage of this abbey had been in the Brandon family for generations, but Charles exchanged it with the Crown for Henham Hall; properties at Laxfield and Middleton in Suffolk, attached to Leiston Abbey, granted to Brandon at the Dissolution; the Priory of St. Mary of Mendham (Suffolk), which came to Brandon through his fourth wife, Catherine, Lady Willoughby of Eresby, she being lineally descended from a sister of Sir William de Ufford, on whom it had been settled—Brandon conveyed it to one Richard Freston for an annual rent of forty pounds; the estate of Combs, which was an inheritance in the right of Catherine, Lady Willoughby, and eventually passed to her second husband, Richard Bertie, Esq.; Haughley Castle, manor and estate (Suffolk), an apanage of the de la Poles; and Cavenham, granted to Suffolk on the attainder of the Duke of Buckingham. Strange to say, Suffolk rarely visited any of his numerous castles and manor-houses. He lived in London. His favourite country house was Westhorpe Hall; but he died at Guildford Castle, which did not belong to him. The estate in Southwark came to him in 1502 on the death of his uncle Thomas, who had inherited it in his turn from his grandfather, who died in 1497. Charles so enlarged the house that it became a palace, second only in size and magnificence to the royal palace at Kennington. These facts prove—the majority of the historians of London to the contrary notwithstanding—that Suffolk Place was not a gift to Brandon from the king, but an inheritance from his forefathers.
[18] British Museum, Titus B.I. 142; also, the Chronique de Calais, 71.