On June 26, of this same year (1533), the queen-duchess—who had returned with Lady Dorset, the bride, and her younger daughter, the Lady Eleanor, to Westhorpe, none the better for consulting the Court “fesysyon”—died somewhat suddenly, in the presence of her two children; her husband and son-in-law being still in London. Her body was embalmed and carried to Bury Abbey on July 20, nearly a month after her decease. Garter King at Arms and other heralds preceded the hearse, which was followed by a procession of lords and ladies on horseback, among whom, as chief mourners, the Ladies Frances and Eleanor rode pillion on the same black steed, caparisoned with violet cloth. They were supported on either side by the Marquis of Dorset and the young Lord Clifford, who had been summoned from London to attend the funeral. A strange incident occurred during the ceremony, at which the Duke of Suffolk was not present. The Ladies Powis and Monteagle, the duke’s daughters by his second wife, appeared uninvited, and assisted at the Mass, on perceiving which intrusion, the Lady Frances and the Lady Eleanor rose, and left the church, without waiting for the conclusion of the office. The unbidden guests had evidently determined to assert their position in the family by appearing at their step-mother’s obsequies, an act which was openly resented by the rest of the family,[47] since it was intended to prove the Ladies Powis and Monteagle’s legitimacy, and, moreover, insinuate that the queen-duchess’s daughters were bastards.
Mary Tudor’s death[48] may well have been hastened by anxiety about the calamities that had overwhelmed her sister-in-law, Queen Katherine, and by the certainty that her own husband had been Henry’s most active confederate in maligning the luckless queen. Suffolk’s behaviour to Katherine of Aragon was, in fact, infamous and ungrateful in the extreme. In the early stages of his career she had given him a helping hand, she had accepted entertainment at his house, and had stood godmother to his elder daughter; yet, in the hour of misfortune, he turned against her, and became her “unjust judge” and bitterest foe. He treated Anne Boleyn in the same fashion. When that ill-fated woman’s star reached its zenith, the craven duke was one of her most obsequious courtiers, but no sooner did the shadow of her impending doom darken the horizon, than Suffolk deserted her, went over to her enemies, urged his master to hasten her destruction, and outraged decency—even the decency of those callous times—by appearing at her execution. He was also present as one of the Privy Council when, some hours before her death, she was compelled to hear the sentence: That her marriage with the king was “invalid, frustrate, and of none effect.” So, too, when poor Anne of Cleves displeased the king by her Dutch homeliness, Suffolk was overheard offering his advice as to the best means of getting rid of her. Katherine Howard fared no better at his hands. He was her flatterer in her brief hour of success, but it was he who escorted her as a prisoner from Sion House to the Tower, who judged her, and who, but for sudden indisposition, would have feasted his eyes on her mangled form when her head was struck off at one blow by the skilful Calais headsman who had already proved his dexterity at the execution of Anne Boleyn.
In November 1534 the duke took a fourth wife, his deceased consort’s ward, the Lady Katherine Willoughby d’Eresby, a child of fifteen, whose rich dower had evidently excited his rapacity; for, notwithstanding his vast landed possessions, he was in constant want of ready money, Mary Tudor’s income having been very scanty, and most irregularly paid. Katherine was the only child of the lately deceased William, Lord Willoughby d’Eresby by his second wife, Doña Maria de Sarmiento y Salinas, a Spanish noblewoman and a faithful and tried attendant upon Queen Katherine. It seems incredible that such a pious woman should have approved of so unnatural an alliance, but in Tudor times the voice of Nature herself was often hushed, and that of personal and political interest alone heard. Katherine, Duchess of Suffolk, of whom we shall see more anon, developed into a very handsome and cultured woman, and was the authoress of quite the most brilliant and witty letters in the English epistolary literature of the period. She had the distinction of being sketched by Holbein, and her portrait is one of the most beautiful in the king’s collection. By this lady, Suffolk had two sons, who survived him and became successively Dukes of Suffolk. They were reputed to be exceedingly clever lads, and were educated with Prince Edward. Both died at an early age, on July 6th, 1551, of the “sweating sickness,” at Bugden, in Huntingdonshire, within a few hours of each other and in the same bed.[49]
Shortly after his fourth marriage, Suffolk wrote to his mother-in-law, the dowager Lady Willoughby, that he had been ordered to proceed to Bugden Hall to reduce the household of the “Princess Dowager,” as the divorced queen was now called, and to induce her to remove to Fotheringhay Castle. He adds that he wishes “an accident might befall him” to prevent his undertaking so unpleasant an expedition. Notwithstanding this heroic desire, Suffolk arrived at Bugden Hall late in December[50] 1534/5, and behaved so abominably that the poor queen, stung to the quick by the repeated humiliations and insults heaped upon her and her handful of faithful retainers, rose and swept haughtily from his presence. She resolutely refused to go to Fotheringhay, which, she had heard, was “damp,” but after much more trouble she submitted to being sent to Kimbolton, where she arrived early in the following January.
[To face p. 74
KATHERINE WILLOUGHBY, DUCHESS OF SUFFOLK
(From an engraving, by Bartolozzi, after Holbein)
On January 7, 1535/6, the sorely tried and persecuted queen passed quietly away at Kimbolton Castle, in the arms of Lady Willoughby, and in the presence of Eustache Chapuys, the imperial ambassador; being “done to death by cruelty,” as her Spanish chronicler quaintly and faithfully puts it.[51]