[LADY ELEANOR BRANDON, AND HER HEIRS]
The reader may be interested to know something of the story of the Lady Eleanor, Countess of Cumberland, younger sister of the Lady Frances Brandon, Duchess of Suffolk, and another of the many claimants to Elizabeth’s succession, whose name has been frequently mentioned in these pages.
The queen-duchess, Mary Tudor, it will be remembered, had only two daughters who survived her, the Ladies Frances and Eleanor, by her second husband, Charles Brandon, Duke of Suffolk. Many considered the Lady Eleanor’s claim to the Throne superior to that of her elder sister, because at the time of her birth, Lady Mortimer, Suffolk’s second wife,[141] was dead; whereas she was still living, and clamouring for her rights, when the Lady Frances came into this world. Henry VIII’s will, however, mentioned the Lady Frances and her children, for he had long since refused to question the validity of his sister’s marriage with Charles Brandon, or in any way to recognize the position of the Lady Mortimer, who, it should be remembered, remarried with a certain Mr. Hall—according to Dugdale—and thus placed herself out of court.
The Lady Eleanor Brandon was a better-looking woman than her sister Frances. When her tomb in Skipton Church was disturbed, in the seventeenth century, her skeleton, which was in perfect condition, proved her to have been “very tall and large boned,” whereas the Lady Frances was of medium stature. Lady Eleanor, if we may judge by her portrait, which hangs at Skipton Castle, was pretty, rather than beautiful. The writer confesses that the portrait at Skipton did not impress him as that of one who could have put forward the slightest pretensions to good looks; the cheeks are high, the forehead abnormally broad, the eyes, however, are fine, and the hair, fair; but the complexion, according to this venerable picture, must have been quite ghastly. The portrait is very badly painted—a poor thing, worth little as a work of art, but none the less interesting.
On the same day that her sister Lady Frances married Henry Grey, Marquis of Dorset, in March 1533, occurred the betrothal of the Lady Eleanor to Lord Henry Clifford, the eldest son of the Earl of Cumberland, who was remotely related to Henry VIII; his grandmother, Anne St. John of Bletsoe, being cousin once removed to Margaret, Countess of Richmond, the king’s grandmother. The marriage took place in the summer of 1537 at Suffolk Place, probably in the Church of St. Mary Overies—now incorporated in the recently created Cathedral of Southwark—and in the presence of Henry VIII and his court. In honour of the wedding, the Earl of Cumberland built two towers and a gallery at Skipton Castle; and we are told that these additions to the princely old mansion were completed in less than four months—a surprisingly short time, when the exceeding roughness of the implements and machinery then used for building purposes, is taken into consideration. This ancient mansion is still in existence and happily in excellent preservation.
The bride and bridegroom spent most of the early part of their married life at Skipton; but during the disturbances that accompanied the “Pilgrimage of Grace,” the Lady Eleanor, with her attendants and one of her children, a boy, were removed to Bolton Abbey, some ten miles distant from Skipton, a beautifully situated monastery, which had been presented to the young Earl of Cumberland shortly after its suppression. Here the Lady Eleanor was in sore danger, for the insurgents, having attacked the castle, informed the young earl that they would hold the Lady Eleanor and his child—who were entirely without defence at Bolton—as hostages if he did not surrender. They even threatened to place them in front of the storming party, and if the attacks on the castle were repelled, to hand them over to the lowest camp-followers. Luckily, however, assistance arrived in time, and the danger was thereby averted. Both Clifford and his wife owed their safety to young Christopher Aske, brother to Robert Aske, one of the leaders of the rebellion. This brave youth succeeded in passing, almost single-handed, through the rebel camp, and contrived, thanks to his knowledge of the country, to bring relief to the earl at the castle, and, going on to Bolton, carry the ladies out of the abbey and conduct them, in the dead of night, to a place of safety some miles off.
On the death of the old Earl of Cumberland, in 1542, his title passed to Eleanor’s husband, but very shortly after this accession of rank, he successively lost both his sons; the eldest, christened Henry after his father, died when he was two or three years of age, and was buried in the Clifford family vault in Skipton Church, near his brother Charles, who also died in infancy. The inconsolable young mother did not long survive her loss. She retired to Brougham Castle, and died there in November 1547, being buried at Skipton Church. The most interesting fact connected with her brief and (for those days) uneventful history, is that her husband took his bereavement so much to heart, that “on learning he was a widower, he swooned and lay as one dead.” His attendants, believing he had really passed away, stripped his body, and were preparing to embalm it, when, to their consternation, he suddenly revived and struggled into a sitting position in his coffin. Although the attendants were terribly frightened, they soon realized what had happened, and very sensibly placed him in a warm bed, gave him a strong cordial to drink, and fed him, for some days, on a diet of warm bread and milk. He recovered his health, and, a few years later, married a second time. He died in 1570 and is buried in Skipton Church, between his two wives, the Lady Eleanor Brandon and the Lady Anne Dacres.
The Lady Eleanor is mentioned as the frequent recipient of Henry VIII’s New Year and other holiday gifts, which leads one to presume that she was perhaps a greater favourite than her sister. She seems to have had little or nothing to do with the Greys, but there is mention in the Leicester archives of her visiting Bradgate in 1546; and, if we may credit Burke, there was an intimacy between her kinswoman, the Lady Philippa Clifford, and Lady Jane Grey.[142] With her step-mother, the wily Katherine, Duchess of Suffolk, she was evidently on good terms.
The eldest daughter of Henry Clifford and the Lady Eleanor Brandon was the Lady Margaret Clifford, who survived her parents and had a very troubled career.