In 1524 the queen-duchess gave birth to her second daughter, the Lady Eleanor, who in due time became Countess of Cumberland.
All this long while, Brandon’s discarded wife, the Lady Mortimer, nursed her grievance (which she held to be supported by an ecclesiastical dispensation in her possession) against the Duke of Suffolk, so that, justly incensed as she was at his marriage with the ex-queen of France, she endeavoured to force him to recognize her as his legitimate wife; which he steadfastly refused to do. Possibly, in a sense, she blackmailed him, knowing full well the parlous position in which he had placed himself. Some time in 1524, therefore, just before the birth of the Lady Eleanor, Lady Mortimer must have clamoured so loudly for the return of her recalcitrant husband to his conjugal duties, as to make herself very unpleasant, for Brandon was once more fain to have recourse to the law to obtain an official absolute dissolution of his connection with her. He appealed to the ecclesiastical and to the civil courts, and received a favourable verdict from both, the marriage between himself and the Lady Mortimer being declared null and void. This decision, however, did not satisfy Wolsey as a sufficient protection for the queen and her children against the humiliating aspersions persistently cast on them by Lady Mortimer and her friends. In 1528 a mission, headed by Stephen Gardiner and Edward Fox, was sent to Orvieto, where Clement VII was then residing,[40] with the object of inducing His Holiness to despatch Cardinal Campeggio to England to represent the pope on the Commission for the matter of the divorce of Queen Katherine of Aragon. Wolsey availed himself of this mission to forward an account, written by Suffolk and endorsed by himself, of the reasons why the duke petitioned the Pontiff for the dissolution of his marriage with the Lady Mortimer. In this document Suffolk declared that, “although a lapse of time had passed, instead of diminishing, it only increased his crime, and hence his seeking this divorce from a woman with whom he was too closely allied.” Clement, after due investigation, and on the strength of Wolsey’s assurance, issued a bull dissolving the marriage with Lady Mortimer, and declaring the children of Anne Browne, alias Brandon, the second wife, legitimate. This bull, dated Orvieto, May 12, 1528, was not, however, published in England until August of the following year, when Bishop Nix of Norwich read it from the pulpit of his cathedral, to a no doubt highly interested and gossiping congregation. This successful appeal to Rome apparently settled the matter, even in the eyes of Lady Mortimer herself, for she presently took a third husband,[41] Robert Horn, Esq., with whom she lived in peace for the rest of her life, which, however, was not long, for the invaluable Baronagium informs us that she died before the marriage of Suffolk’s second daughter, the Lady Eleanor Brandon, which took place in 1537.
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LADY MONTEAGLE
(Younger daughter of Charles Brandon, Duke of Suffolk)
(From an engraving after Holbein)
Anne and Mary, the two daughters of Brandon by his second wife, Anne Browne, became respectively Baroness Powis and Viscountess Monteagle. After her mother’s death, the first-named lady, in accordance with the custom of those days, was sent abroad for her education and placed in the household of Suffolk’s faithful friend, Margaret of Savoy, Governess of the Netherlands. Among the State Papers is a letter written by Suffolk, and dated May 13, 1515, in which he thanks the duchess for her kindness to his daughter Anne, and begs she will allow her to return to England “at the request of the queen dowager, my wife.” He sent Sir E. Guildford and Mr. William Woodale to escort the young lady home. Both Miss Strickland and Miss Green, in their respective lives of Mary Tudor, and Mr. Howard, in his Life of Jane Grey, state that Lady Powis, in the thirteenth year of Elizabeth, charged Frances, Duchess of Suffolk, and her sister Eleanor, Countess of Cumberland, with bastardy. This is an error, since an entry in Machyn’s Diary proves that Lady Powis died in 1557,[42] during the reign of Mary. That the affaire Mortimer was revived in the thirteenth year of Elizabeth is true, for among the State Papers we find documents relative to the matter; but it was probably put forward at the instigation of Elizabeth herself, merely as a test case, to settle, once and for all, the validity of the claims of the Ladies Katherine and Mary Grey and their heirs to the succession. The verdict then given confirmed the decision arrived at, forty-two years previously, and the document containing it is endorsed in Burleigh’s own hand.
Lady Monteagle,[43] Brandon’s second daughter, enjoyed the rare distinction of being limned by Holbein, and her portrait is one of the most magnificent in all the collection of drawings of the nobility of the court of Henry VIII, now in the possession of His Majesty the King. She is represented as an exceedingly handsome woman, and wears some fine pearl ornaments, one of them being a medallion in the shape of the letter “M,” composed of very large gems. There was some doubt, at one time, as to whether this particular portrait represented the first or second Lady Monteagle, but the fashion of the gown and the coif, in conjunction with the discovery of the exact date of Holbein’s death, settles the question beyond dispute, and in this drawing we have an undoubted presentment of Brandon’s younger daughter by his second wife.