Charles Brandon, 1st Duke of Suffolk, 1st Viscount Lisle KG was the son of Sir William
Brandon and Elizabeth Bruyn. Through his third wife Mary Tudor he was brother-in-law to Henry
VIII. His father was the standard-bearer of Henry Tudor, Earl of Richmond and was slain
by Richard III in person at the battle of Bosworth Field. Suffolk died of unknown causes
at Guildford.
Biography Charles Brandon was the second but only surviving
son of Sir William Brandon, Henry Tudor's standard-bearer at the Battle of Bosworth
Field, where he was slain by Richard III. His mother, Elizabeth Bruyn, was daughter
and co-heiress of Sir Henry Bruyn. Charles Brandon was brought up at the court
of Henry VII. He is described by Dugdale as "a person comely of stature, high of courage
and conformity of disposition to King Henry VIII, with whom he became a great favourite".
Brandon held a succession of offices in the royal household, becoming Master of the Horse
in 1513, and received many valuable grants of land. On 15 May 1513, he was created Viscount
Lisle, having entered into a marriage contract with his ward, Elizabeth Grey, suo jure Viscountess
Lisle. The contract was ended and the title was forfeited as a result of Brandon's marriage
to Mary Tudor in 1515. He distinguished himself at the sieges of
Thérouanne and Tournai in the French campaign of 1513. One of the agents of Margaret of
Savoy, governor of the Netherlands, writing from before Thérouanne, reminded her that
Lord Lisle was a "second king" and advised her to write him a kind letter.
At this time, Henry VIII was secretly urging Margaret to marry Lisle, whom he created Duke
of Suffolk, although he was careful to disclaim any complicity in the project to her father,
Maximilian I, Holy Roman Emperor. After his marriage to Mary, Suffolk lived
for some years in retirement, but he was present at the Field of the Cloth of Gold in 1520.
In 1523 he was sent to Calais to command the English troops there. He invaded France in
company with Floris d'Egmont, Count of Buren, who was at the head of the Flemish troops,
and laid waste the north of France, but disbanded his troops at the approach of winter.
After Wolsey's disgrace, Suffolk's influence increased daily. He was sent with Thomas Howard,
3rd Duke of Norfolk, to demand the Great Seal from Wolsey; the same noblemen conveyed the
news of Anne Boleyn's marriage to King Henry, after the divorce from Queen Catherine; and
Suffolk acted as High Steward at the new queen's coronation. He was one of the commissioners
appointed by Henry to dismiss Catherine's household, a task he found distasteful.
His family had a residence on the west side of Borough High Street, London, for at least
half a century prior to his building of Suffolk Place at the site.
Suffolk supported Henry's ecclesiastical policy, receiving a large share of the lands after
the dissolution of the monasteries. In 1544, he was for the second time in command of an
English army for the invasion of France. He died at Guildford, Surrey, on 24 August in
the following year. At Henry VIII's expense he was buried at Windsor in St George's Chapel.
Marriage to Mary Tudor Suffolk took part in the jousts which celebrated
the marriage of Mary Tudor, Henry's sister, with Louis XII of France. He was accredited
to negotiate various matters with Louis, and on Louis' death was sent to congratulate the
new King, Francis I, and to negotiate Mary's return to England.
Love between Suffolk and the young Dowager Queen Mary had existed before her marriage,
and Francis roundly charged him with an intention to marry her. Francis, perhaps in the hope
of Queen Claude's death, had himself been one of her suitors in the first week of her
widowhood, and Mary asserted that she had given him her confidence to avoid his importunities.
Francis and Henry both professed a friendly attitude towards the marriage of the lovers,
but Suffolk had many political enemies, and Mary feared that she might again be sacrificed
to political considerations. The truth was that Henry was anxious to obtain from Francis
the gold plate and jewels which had been given or promised to the Queen by Louis in addition
to the reimbursement of the expenses of her marriage with the King; and he practically
made his acquiescence in Suffolk's suit dependent on his obtaining them. The pair cut short
the difficulties by a private marriage on 5 March 1515. Suffolk announced this to Thomas
Wolsey, who had been their fast friend. Suffolk was saved from Henry's anger only
by Wolsey, and the pair eventually agreed to pay to Henry £24,000 in yearly instalments
of £1000, and the whole of Mary's dowry from Louis of £200,000, together with her plate
and jewels. They were openly married at Greenwich Hall on 13 May. The Duke had been twice married
already, to Margaret Neville and to Anne Browne, to whom he had been betrothed before his marriage
with Margaret Mortimer. Anne Browne died in 1511, but Margaret Mortimer, from whom he
had obtained a declaration of nullity on the ground of consanguinity, was still living.
He secured in 1528 a bull from Pope Clement VII assuring the legitimacy of his marriage
with Mary Tudor and of the daughters of Anne Browne, one of whom, Anne, was sent to the
court of Margaret of Savoy. Mary Tudor died on 25 June 1533, and in September
of the same year Suffolk married his ward Catherine Willoughby, suo jure Baroness Willoughby
de Eresby, then a girl of thirteen. She had been betrothed to his son Henry Brandon, Earl
of Lincoln, but the boy was too young to marry; Suffolk did not wish to risk losing Catherine's
lands, so he married her himself. By Catherine Willoughby he had two sons who showed great
promise, Henry and Charles, Dukes of Suffolk. They died of the sweating sickness within
an hour of each other. Family
Before 7 February 1507 he married Margaret Neville, widow of Sir John Mortimer, and daughter
of John Neville, 1st Marquess of Montagu, slain at the Battle of Barnet, by Isabel Ingaldesthorpe,
daughter and heiress of Sir Edmund Ingaldsthorpe, by whom he had no issue. The marriage was
declared void about 1507 by the Archdeaconry Court of London, and later by papal bull dated
12 May 1528. Margaret subsequently married Robert Downes, gentleman.
In early 1508 in a secret ceremony at Stepney, and later publicly at St Michael's, Cornhill,
he married Margaret Neville's niece, Anne Browne, daughter of Sir Anthony Browne, Standard
Bearer of England 1485, by his first wife, Eleanor Ughtred, the daughter of Sir Robert
Ughtred of Kexby, North Yorkshire and Katherine Eure, daughter of Sir William Eure of Stokesley,
Yorkshire, by whom he had two daughters: Anne Brandon, who married firstly Edward Grey,
4th Baron Grey of Powis, and after the dissolution of this union, Randal Harworth.
Mary Brandon, who married Thomas Stanley, 2nd Baron Monteagle.
He contracted to marry Elizabeth Grey, 5th Baroness Lisle. He was thus created 1st Viscount
Lisle of the third creation in 1513, but the contract was annulled, and he surrendered
the title before 1519 or in 1523. In May 1515 he married Mary Tudor, Queen Dowager
of France, by whom he had two sons who died young, and two daughters:
Lord Henry Brandon. Lady Frances Brandon, who married Henry Grey,
Marquess of Dorset, by whom she was the mother of Lady Jane Grey.
Lady Eleanor Brandon, who married Henry Clifford, 2nd Earl of Cumberland.
Henry Brandon, 1st Earl of Lincoln. On 7 September 1533 he married Catherine Willoughby,
12th Baroness Willoughby de Eresby, by whom he had two sons, both of whom died young of
the sweating sickness: Henry Brandon, 2nd Duke of Suffolk.
Charles Brandon, 3rd Duke of Suffolk. After Brandon's death his widow married Richard
Bertie. He had a number of illegitimate children
Sir Charles Brandon, who married Elizabeth Pigot, widow of Sir James Strangways.
Frances Brandon, who married firstly William Sandon, and secondly Andrew Bilsby.
Mary Brandon, who married Robert Ball of Scottow, Norfolk.
Fictional portrayals The romance between Mary Tudor and Charles
Brandon is fictionalised in When Knighthood Was in Flower, by American author Charles
Major writing under the pseudonym Edwin Caskoden. It was first published by The Bobbs-Merrill
Company in 1898 and proved an enormous success. At least three movies have been based on this
novel. A 1908 motion picture of the same name or under the title When Knights Were Bold
was directed by Wallace McCutcheon. This is considered a lost film. He is portrayed by
Forrest Stanley in the 1922 film adaptation When Knighthood Was in Flower, directed by
Robert G. Vignola, and by Richard Todd in The Sword and the Rose, an account of his
romance with Mary Tudor in 1515. The Reluctant Queen by Molly Costain Haycraft
presents another fictionalised version of the relationship between Brandon and Mary
Tudor. Brandon is briefly fictionalised in the historical
novel The Last Boleyn by author Karen Harper. Brandon is portrayed by actor Henry Cavill
in the Showtime series The Tudors. He is a character in the novel Mary, Queen
of France by author Jean Plaidy. He appears as a character in the novel The
Lady in the Tower by author Jean Plaidy. He also appears as a character in the Man
Booker Prize winning novel Wolf Hall by Hilary Mantel, and in its sequel, Bring Up the Bodies.
He is portrayed as an attempted rapist in the novel Dear Heart, How Like You This? based
on the life of Sir Thomas Wyatt In the novel The Serpent Garden by Judith
Merkle Riley, Brandon is portrayed as an immensely strong but rather dimwitted noble with a poor
sense of spelling. Ancestry
Notes
References Burke, John. A Genealogical and Heraldic History
of the Commoners of Great Britain and Ireland I. London: Henry Colburn. p. 205. Retrieved
18 July 2013. Cokayne, G.E.. The Complete Peerage edited
by Geoffrey H. White. XII. London: St. Catherine Press.
Gunn, S.J.. "Brandon, Charles, first duke of Suffolk". Oxford Dictionary of National
Biography. Oxford University Press. doi:10.10933260. Gunn, S.J.. Charles Brandon, Duke of Suffolk
c.1484-1545. Oxford: Basil Blackwell. pp. 46–7. ISBN 0-631-15781-6.
Richardson, Douglas. Everingham, Kimball G., ed. Magna Carta Ancestry: A Study in Colonial
and Medieval Families I. Salt Lake City. pp. 297–302. ISBN 1449966373.
Richardson, Douglas. Everingham, Kimball G., ed. Magna Carta Ancestry: A Study in Colonial
and Medieval Families II. Salt Lake City. pp. 359–60, 455. ISBN 1449966381.
Richardson, Douglas. Everingham, Kimball G., ed. Magna Carta Ancestry: A Study in Colonial
and Medieval Families III. Salt Lake City. pp. 225–6. ISBN 144996639X.
Further reading Perry, Maria. Sisters to the King: the tumultuous
lives of Henry VIII's sisters – Margaret of Scotland and Mary of France. London: Andre
Deutsch. ISBN 0233050906. Read, Evelyn. Catherine, Duchess of Suffolk:
a portrait. London: Jonathan Cape. "Charles Brandon, 1st Duke of Suffolk". Encyclopædia
Britannica Online. Encyclopædia Britannica. 2011. Retrieved 21 October 2011.
Pollard, A.F.. The Project Gutenberg EBook of Henry VIII.
Gairdner, James. "Brandon, Charles". In Stephen, Leslie. Dictionary of National Biography
6. London: Smith, Elder & Co. pp. 218–222.