Mary Rose (15 page)

However, all this was a burden in theory rather than practice as long as the Duke remained in favour. In July 1518 it was admitted that the indenture signed in 1517 had not been adhered to because of their ‘especyall sute made unto his grace’. He was away from the court and the Council from May 1516 to February 1517, and this was widely interpreted as a sign of disfavour. However it appears not to have been the case, and probably represents an attempt by Wolsey to prevent him from interfering in the delicate state of Anglo-French relations. Henry visited the Duke at Donnington during his summer progress, and in August 1516 conferred on him (at a preferential rate) the wardships of the two sons of Sir Thomas Knyvett, who had died aboard the
Regent
four years earlier.
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Both of these were unmistakable signs of approbation, as was the fact that Mary shared the top table with the King, the Queen and the Cardinal at a special banquet held in honour of the Emperor’s ambassadors in July 1517. Mary must have understood the political significance of the occasion, but was not going to have scruples about accepting so honourable an invitation. The fact that Suffolk was active in the Council both before and after his absence, and that Henry chose to invite the Suffolks to court at Easter 1516, reinforces the view that it was Wolsey who was responsible for the Duke’s absence.
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However, by 1518 the political wind had changed direction, and the Cardinal was secretly negotiating a rapprochement with France. This made the Duke’s presence in the Council desirable, and although Wolsey seems to have kept him in the dark over the progress of the negotiations, in that respect he was in no worse a condition than the majority of his colleagues. It may also have been for that reason that Wolsey apparently arranged for the Suffolks to spend the Easter of 1518 at the court, which kept the feast at Abingdon in that year. On 27 March Richard Pace, the King’s secretary and the Cardinal’s man of business, wrote to say that they were expected before Easter, which fell on 4 April that year, and they arrived on the 1st.
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It suited the Cardinal very well to have the Duke at Abingdon while he got on with his business in London, and when Suffolk wrote to him on 30 April to say that their departure would have to be delayed because his wife had an ague, he was no doubt pleased enough. It may be that the Duke had earned his exclusion from the negotiations by intimating to the French ambassador that his master would be willing to surrender Tournai. If this was the case, it would have seriously undermined Wolsey’s bargaining position, and would account for the coolness between them. Suffolk denied to the King that he had ever made any such suggestion, but found the Cardinal harder to persuade, and during their enforced stay at Abingdon wrote several times to plead his case.
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He kept this bombardment up during June and July, and it was not until the end of the latter month that he was reassured that Wolsey was again his ‘good lord and friend’. He had travelled from Bury St Edmunds to Enfield to confirm this news, and found the Cardinal, who had now secured his treaty with France, in a forgiving mood. He had in any case sold Tournai back to the French, so the point of his former indignation would have been rather lost. In order to confirm their renewed friendship, Wolsey negotiated a settlement between Suffolk and the Earl of Surrey, probably over the de la Pole estate, which seems to have thoroughly restored the former’s peace of mind.
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While this was still going on, as though to demonstrate their continued closeness to the royal couple, the French Queen and the Duke of Suffolk were admitted along with the King and Queen, into the Order of the Canons Regular of St Austin in a Chapter held at Leicester on 16 June. Apart from being a sign of their accepted piety, this had no particular significance beyond obliging them from time to time to act as patrons of the order, an obligation which they do not seem to have discharged with any enthusiasm.
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It may also have been that their admission was arranged by the King, in order to demonstrate his continued favour, because Suffolk was undoubtedly finding it difficult to maintain good relations with both Henry and Wolsey, especially when they were apart and apparently pursuing separate policies. In late July 1518 the King stayed at Wanstead, of which Suffolk was still the Keeper, and enjoyed the Duke’s hospitality, a circumstance which constrained Brandon to reject an invitation from Wolsey to visit him in London. Uneasy is the position of a man who serves two masters! The renewal of Anglo-French friendship undoubtedly relieved the pressure on Suffolk’s resources, because it led to the regular payment of his wife’s dower ‘in which restith much of her honour and profit, and mine also’, as he confessed.
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During the period of tension he had been constrained to entrust a confidential plea over this to Sir Thomas Boleyn, the ambassador in France, but such secret dealings were now needed no longer. The French Queen and the Duke were at the centre of the Anglo-French ceremonies and festivities. He reappeared as a leading councillor, and provided a lavish banquet for the whole French embassy. As far as Suffolk was concerned, it was back to the situation of 1514–15, and although Wolsey’s position was now far stronger than it had been then, the King still chose to convey his instructions relating to the French hostages (or guests) to the Cardinal via the Duke of Suffolk in January 1519, a circumstance which may have taken the Lord Chancellor aback.
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Suffolk had not been entirely ignored by powers other than France. At a time of Anglo-French tension in 1516, when there had been rumours of war, the Emperor Maximilian had communicated with him, and seems to have envisaged him commanding an army against France. However, nothing came of the overtures, and when Maximilian’s successor Charles V considered with his council the desirability of offering pensions to Englishmen, in December 1519, they agreed on Wolsey, Norfolk and Worcester, but not the Duke of Suffolk.
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However, when relations with France cooled again in 1521, the Duke was assiduous in looking after the Imperial ambassadors, and in May 1522 was one of that select band of courtiers who accompanied Henry to meet Charles at Canterbury. On 9 June both sovereigns dined at Suffolk Place, and hunted in the park there. In that same year he secured an Imperial pension to replace the one which he had lost out of France on account of the war, and succeeded to a remarkable degree in placing his dependants on the same pension list. Half of Charles’s English pensioners were Suffolk protégés, who had little to commend them except their service to the Duke.
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By the skilful deployment of his position as a courtier, the Duke had succeeded in convincing the Emperor that his clientage was worthy of support. This was a remarkable turnaround in the space of three years, and must reflect Brandon’s growing international reputation as a friend and confidant of Henry VIII. He was a man whom it was no longer safe to ignore.

His household was not particularly large, although a number of these clients were not household servants. It expanded greatly on his marriage, and his establishment became almost indistinguishable from that of his wife. Almost, but not quite, because Mary brought with her a substantial number of young ladies and gentlemen who had been nurtured in her retinue, and various kinsmen and women who had served her in France, notably Elizabeth and Anne Grey, George Brook the son of Lord Cobham, and Humphrey the bastard son of Lord Berners.
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By 1524 Brandon had fifty-one servants who were earning more than 26
s
8
d
each, and Mary may have had twice as many. A little earlier an old-fashioned noblemen like the Earl of Oxford would have had more than a hundred at that level, so given their status the Suffolks were not over-endowed with servants.
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Nor did the Duke at this stage use his household to build a regional affinity. Most of his estates were in East Anglia, but there is a notable lack of East Anglian gentry among his senior servants, his two principal officers, Sir Thomas Wentworth and Sir John Burton, both coming from the West Riding of Yorkshire. As usual with a major household, there was steady throughput of servants, a number going on after a few years to other preferments, some, as in the case of Richard Long, entering the royal service, and others that of Sir Richard Lovell with whom Brandon had close connections. It was also a social beehive, with a number of Mary’s young ladies finding their marriage partners among their fellows in the same establishment, or in related households such as that of John Gurney.
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In the early 1520s Suffolk’s household was costing him about £1,000 a year in wages, liveries and subsistence. This was about the same proportion of his income as that deployed by the Duke of Buckingham, but was less grand in scale because his resources were smaller. Mary paid her own servants, which was why she was in such extreme difficulties when her French revenues did not arrive, and why the accumulated debt of the couple continued to rise. The Duke’s council, which should have formed the core of his household, is elusive. Sometimes it seems to have worked in London, keeping him informed about events in the capital when he was not there, but equally it appears as an executive body in Suffolk, acting as a contact between the Surveyor and the Auditor on the one hand and the local bailiffs on the other.
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Sometimes the Duke appears to have sent an individual with executive powers rather than working through the council, and even its membership is shadowy.

In all this tangle of international commitments and domestic management, however, the most important of Brandon’s tasks, and the one on which all else depended, was to keep his place by the King’s side. Henry’s confidence and friendship were essential to him, and in spite of the King’s affection for his sister, this was an area in which he was essentially on his own. This produced occasional outbursts of acute anxiety, particularly over the renegotiations of his debt, and when he was absent from the court he feared that his place in the King’s jousts might even be in jeopardy. During these absences, notably in July 1516, he occasionally wrote to Wolsey, asking him to keep the King in mind that he ‘daily … desireth to see his grace’.
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However, it seems that his anxiety was misplaced, because when Suffolk was not at court, the King’s martial feats were scaled down, and he took to challenging alone rather than finding a substitute companion in arms. The Duke’s role in these entertainments certainly changed, but that was not due to any loss of favour – rather the reverse. On 29 January and 19 and 20 May 1516, Suffolk was Henry’s first aid, or fellow challenger, but by 7 July 1517 he had become the leader of the answerers. The reason for this seems to have lain in the events of 20 May, when Suffolk had scored excellently and the King’s performance by comparison was feeble. Henry blamed his failure on the poor quality of his adversaries, and promised never to joust again ‘except it be with as good a man as himself’.
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The only man who certainly answered that description was the Duke of Suffolk, who thereafter became the leader of the King’s opponents. So the pattern changed, and Henry’s team came to consist of the younger members of the Privy Chamber, such as Sir Francis Bryan, while the Duke’s aids consisted of established court nobles such as the Marquis of Dorset and the Earl of Essex. However, this was an endorsement of Suffolk’s position rather than the reverse, and on 7 July the spectators were particularly impressed by the titanic battle between him and the King. Hector and Achilles were invoked as precedents, and at the end of the combat the two contestants rode out of the ring together, their struggle ended symbolically in renewed brotherhood, like that of Lancelot and Tristram.
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This pattern continued for the jousts of the next seven years until, following an accident which could have caused Henry serious injury, the Duke vowed never to run against the King again. By that time he was forty years old, and his jousting days were in any case virtually over. Henry’s confidence in his friend’s ability was shown by his selection, along with the Marquis of Dorset, to be the King’s chief aids in the international jousts at the Field of Cloth of Gold in 1520. Suffolk might be outshone in the disguisings and other court revels of the period, but never in the lists. His role in these revels was usually confined to dancing, although he occasionally appeared with the King disguised as ‘an ancient person’, to emphasise the youth of Henry’s new companions. Mary also took part in these celebrations, and in other banquets and state occasions, her beauty adding lustre to the scene, but her role was essentially passive, except when she led the dancing. However, her presences at court served as a counterpoint to those of her husband, and a reminder to the King (if he ever needed it) that his favourite jouster was also his brother-in-law.

Wolsey’s great diplomatic triumph, the Treaty of London of 1518, had included a clause committing Henry and Francis to a personal meeting in the summer of 1519.
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However, the death of the Emperor Maximilian in March necessitated an election, and since both monarchs were candidates this meant the postponement of the meeting until 1520. By that time, however, the election of Charles of Castile as the Emperor Charles V had somewhat changed the political agenda. Henry, always a shade suspicious of Francis, decided that his interests might be better served by an understanding with the new Emperor, and took advantage of the latter’s intended voyage from Spain to invite him to England. He duly arrived at the beginning of May, and was lavishly entertained, with hunting and banquets at which the ‘beautiful Lady Mary, the King’s sister, late Queen of France and now consort of the Duke of Suffolk’ featured prominently.
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The proceedings were also graced by the appearance of Queen Germaine, the widow of the King of Aragon, and now the wife of the Marquis of Brandenburg, who shared the same status as Mary, and her husband and the Duke of Suffolk feasted together. However, it was Queen Mary rather than Germaine or Catherine who led the dancing on these occasions, and her gracefulness was much commented upon. The meetings were friendly and a good understanding was reached. It was arranged that the pair would meet again following Henry’s encounter with the French King, which was clearly expected to be competitive rather than amicable. Meanwhile Wolsey had been busy arranging for that encounter, and making sure that his master’s honour was satisfied.
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A site had been identified between Guisnes and Ardres, and a lavish temporary palace built to host the English events of the encounter. Workmen had been imported in large numbers and provisions of every kind laid on both for men and horses. No expense had been spared. Meanwhile the Emperor had almost outstayed his welcome, and when he eventually parted from the King at Canterbury on 30 May, he went to Sandwich to embark, and Henry, Catherine and Mary went the same day to Dover for the same purpose.
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