[44] Dugdale. Brandon was jeweller to Elizabeth, and there are numerous references to orders given him by the queen, for plate and jewelry.
[45] In the register of St. Mary Matfellon, Whitechapel, is the record of the burial of Richard Brandon, “a man out of Rosemary Lane.” The entry is dated June 2, 1649, and to it is appended a note to the effect that “this Richard Brandon is supposed to have cut off the head of Charles I.” This man is said to have confessed that he received thirty pounds for the job, which was paid him in half-crowns within an hour after the execution had taken place; he took an orange stuck with cloves, and a handkerchief, from the king’s pocket, and sold the former article to a gentleman for ten shillings. Richard Brandon was the son of Gregory Brandon, and claimed the office of headsman by inheritance. His first victim was the Earl of Strafford. In a very old MS. on armorial bearings, dated 1692, lately in the possession of the author, is the marginal note in an antique handwriting: “Charles Brandon, who was cousin to Queen Elizabeth, had an ill-begotten son Gregory, whose son Richard beheaded Charles I.”
[46] State Papers, Henry VIII, Domestic Series.
[47] Estby’s History of Bury St. Edmunds.
[48] Mary Tudor, Queen Dowager of France and Duchess of Suffolk, was buried in a magnificent alabaster monument in Bury St. Edmunds Abbey, which was destroyed at the Dissolution. Although the abbey church was blown up with gunpowder, the townspeople carried the coffin, containing the queen’s body, to the parish church, where it was reinterred near the high altar, and covered with some altar slabs brought from the desecrated abbey. The alabaster monument was destroyed. In 1734 the remains of Mary Tudor were unearthed and her coffin was opened. The body, that of a large woman, with a profusion of golden hair adhering to the skull, was found to be in a perfect state of preservation. It was re-buried close to the right of the altar, where a modern inscription on a marble tablet, let into the wall, may still be read.
[49] There is an interesting account of the death of these “noble imps,” as contemporary chroniclers call them, in the Gentleman’s Magazine for Nov. 1825, vol. xcv. ii. 200.
[50] For an account of this visit, see State Papers, p. 453, a dispatch from the Earl of Sussex dated December 31, 1534. Suffolk had been to Bugden earlier in the year, in May, and had behaved with much unnecessary brutality.
[51] A chandler, who also exercised the calling of surgeon, opened the body of Queen Katherine, and found the heart black and dry, as he informed the Bishop of Llandaff; proving, although he was unaware of the fact, that she died of what is called melanotic sarcoma, or cancer of the heart.
[52] The venerated image was again destroyed during the French Revolution, only the left hand being saved; this is still carried in procession through the streets of Boulogne on August 14.
[53] There is a fine drawing of this lady, by Holbein, at Windsor Castle.