Henry and his privy councilor had much in common. Both were complex, quick-witted, able to command respect and loving obedience from others. ("If he bade me dance a hornpipe," Erasmus said of More, "I should do it at once just as he bade me.") More made the king an ideal foil, valuable and in time indispensable. Despite his pleas for a quiet life Henry would not part with him, and as the years went by he came to rely on More so heavily that he scarcely let him out of his sight. ^^
Eighth Henry ruling this land,
He had a sister fair,
That was the widow'd Queen of France,
Enriched with virtues rare;
And being come to England's Court,
She oft beheld a knight,
Charles Brandon nam'd, in whose fair eyes.
She chiefly took delight.
One man stood even above More in the king's affections: Charles Brandon. Closer to Henry than his roistering minions, Brandon shared his sovereign's innermost life and concerns in a way the king's scholarly companions could never do, and to a degree that Wolsey, no matter how powerful he became, could never approach. The things Henry cared about most—manly things such as his military ambitions, his jousting and his love life—were the things he shared with Brandon. Theirs was the special, unaccountable bond of friendship, a bond no hindrance or breach of faith could sever for long.
A gentleman by birth, Brandon became one of the two highest peers of the realm in 1514, when Henry made him duke of Suffolk. The title rewarded his valor in the French campaign, where as marshal of the army he had been Henry's second in command and had taken possession of one of the city gates at Toumai unaided. It also made him eHgible to marry a highborn woman, overlooking the minor drawback that he already had three wives.
Henry had rewarded Brandon by giving him wardship of an heiress, Elizabeth Grey, in 1512. Elizabeth was the only child of the late John Grey, Viscount Lisle, and Brandon lost no time in laying claim to her title and fortune. A marriage contract bound her to marry him when she came of age—she was only eight years old when the contract was signed—and in 1513 letters patent were issued naming Brandon Viscount Lisle and referring to Elizabeth as his wife. But in Henry VII's reign he had acquired two earlier wives, one of whom, Anne Browne, had borne him a daughter. A church court had declared his marriage to the second wife, Margaret Mortimer, invalid, but even so his marital status was by no means beyond dispute. None of this prevented Brandon from claiming the title of Viscount Lisle in right of his child bride-to-be, however, and the king had even higher aspirations for him.
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During the French campaign Henry had prepared the way for two royal marriages. One was the long-awaited union of his sister Mary with Queen Katherine's nephew Charles, the future Emperor Charles V. The other was to join Brandon with the emperor Maximilian's daughter Margaret of Savoy, regent of the Netherlands for Charles. The first betrothal had been arranged years earlier; all that remained was to schedule the wedding. A new treaty called for Mary and Charles to marry no later than May of 1514, with heavy money penalties to be exacted from the imperialists if it were delayed.' The second proved more difficult to conclude, and showed Henry's ineptitude as a matchmaker. It was not that Margaret found Brandon displeasing. On the contrary, she much approved of ''the virtue and grace of his person, the which me seemed that I have not much seen [any] gentleman to approach it." Seeing how much Henry favored him she went out of her way to pay attention to Brandon, but could hardly take seriously Henry's half-playful, half-earnest hints at a betrothal.
Could she not give Brandon some ''promise of marriage," he coaxed, "seeing that it was the fashion of the ladies of England, and that it was not there holden for evil." Such a thing was impossible, she told him, as "it was not here the custom, and 1 should be dishonored, and holden for a fool and light." Neither her father nor her subjects would permit such a promise, she said, adding that she had no inclination to marry anyone ever again, having been unfortunate in her past husbands.
This should have settled the matter, but both Brandon and the king were persistent. One night at a banquet at Toumai Brandon went down on his knees before Margaret, took her hands in his, and so distracted her with his amorous conversation that he was able to slip a ring off her finger without her noticing it. When he showed it to her later and refused to return it she was dismayed, for the ring was easily recognizable as hers and might be misinterpreted as a pledge of love. At another time, when she was entertaining Henry and his friend in her chamber late at night, Margaret was again pressed to give Brandon her hand. No argument would satisfy the king this time—not the imminent departure of the English for home, not Brandon's lowly status, not her determination "not to again never to put me where I have had so much of unhap and infortune," in a state of matrimony. In the end Henry forced out of her a promise not to marry anyone until the English returned the following year; Brandon, for his part, vowed not to marry without Margaret's consent, and the agreement was reiterated on another day.
Margaret had all but forgotten this bargain when she suddenly found herself the object of international gossip the following spring. Brandon received his ducal title in February; in the first week of March Henry was busy stirring up rumors about his friend's impending marriage in Flanders. Brandon proudly displayed Margaret's ring to substantiate the rumors, and before long the "unhappy bruit" of their betrothal had spread throughout the Low Countries and the German principalities. Wagers were made on the date of the wedding, jokes were made about the difference in their ages—Brandon was still in his twenties, while Margaret
was a twice-married, matronly thirty-four—and there was nothing Margaret could do to correct the false impression Henry was doing his best to create. "I have had one marvellous sorrow," she wrote to the English ambassador Wingfield, and in her humiliation she fled into the country, ostensibly for a pleasure trip with her nieces and nephew but in fact to escape all the talk.^
In the end a sudden shift in English diplomacy put a stop to the rumors, though Brandon's marital prospects were not dimmed for long. As it turned out he was to wed still higher.
In 1514 Henry's sister Mary was a glowingly beautiful girl of eighteen, with the fairest of complexions and delicate, perfect features. She was short in stature but very graceful, and in her lively disposition she was very like her ebullient brother. "There is nothing gloomy or melancholy about her," as a Flemish diplomat wrote, and indeed Mary was not only high spirited but strong willed, and when she agreed to accommodate Henry by making a marriage of state it was on condition that she could choose her next husband herself. And it was no secret her choice would fall on Charles Brandon.
The marriage Henry arranged for her in the spring of 1514 surprised everyone. The imperial alliance was abandoned; the coalition against France had dissolved and, if Henry's personal belligerence remained strong, his diplomatic interests called for a rapprochement with his former enemy. The aged, gouty widower Louis XII still reigned in France, and he had no son. He needed a wife. Mary Tudor's engagement to Prince Charles was broken off and she dutifully became queen of France, taking with her forty new gowns and a household of several hundred officers and servants.
Though he suffered from flux and gulped his spittle when he talked Louis was a generous husband to her. He showered her with gifts, and spoke of taking her to Venice, which she had always wanted to see. The jewels he gave her were magnificent. Before she left England he sent her a matchless diamond "as large and as broad as a full-sized finger," known as the Mirror of Naples. With its pendant pearl, the size of a pigeon's egg, the jewel was estimated at sixty thousand crowns in value. There were others nearly as splendid: table diamonds, a "marvellous great pointed diamond" worth ten thousand marks, a ruby two and a half inches long.^
After less than three months of marriage Mary's pampered life as queen of France ended abruptly when Louis collapsed and died. All at once the court revolved around Louis' son-in-law and successor Francis I,
who made no secret of his interest in the beautiful young queen dowager. For the time being at least Mary was his captive, and could not count on any of her English friends for aid. Wolsey sent her a heartening letter, swearing "to the effusion of his blood and spending of his goods" that he would never forsake her, but all he could do was to warn her not to allow herself to be forced into a hasty second marriage, and to urge her to wait patiently until her future was arranged. She found the waiting painful. Rumor had it she would be forced to enter a convent, or to marry a French nobleman, or that she was to be taken to Flanders to fulfill her
124 , GREAT HARRY
original contract to Prince Charles. More agonizing still, the man she really wanted was at the French court on a diplomatic mission. Charles Brandon's arrival could not have been more opportune. Mary determined to stake her future on his chivalry and affection.
Brandon described their interview afterward in a letter to Henry. Mary was beside herself, he said. She seemed not to know whom to trust and whom to fear. Two English friars had recently been to see her bringing frightening news and a dark warning. Though Henry had given his word that she could marry freely, they said, he would never keep it; furthermore, she must stay away from the duke of Suffolk, who was known to have traffickings with the devil. In her frustration Mary accused Brandon of coming to France to betray her.
"You are come to take me home to the intent that I may be married into Flanders," she said, "which I will never, to die for it." She would rather be torn in pieces than make another diplomatic match, Mary added, and burst into tears.
"Sir, 1 never saw a woman so weep," Brandon wrote to Henry. No reassurances, no endearments could dam the flood of her tears. There was only one way he could convince her he was truly on her side, and that was to marry her himself.
Moved by her tears and befuddled by her arguments, Brandon hedged. She must get Henry's written consent first, he said. He had his own conscience to reckon with, after all. Before leaving England he had met with the king at Eltham, and in the gravest possible manner, with Wolsey as witness, he had sworn he would not act on impulse once he got to France and marry his sweetheart. Henry promised in turn that, "with good order and saving of his honor," Brandon could have her after a suitable delay.^
None of this had the slightest effect on Mary. She became more and more unreasonable, until in the end she risked all. Either he married her right away, she told him, or he could "look never after this day to have the proffer again." "And so," he confessed, "she and I was married."^
Six weeks later the newlyweds found the courage to inform Henry of what they had done. Brandon explained himself by making it look as though his wife had put him in an indefensible position; Mary, in letters edited by her good friend Wolsey before they reached the king, took full responsibility on herself. She addressed Henry as "the King's grace, me brother," but assured him she had always found him to be "both a father and a brother" to her. She trusted to his clemency; she reminded him of his promise to her, and of his well-known reputation for keeping his word. And to soften his anger she sent him a diamond and a huge pearl from among her French jewels, vowing to give him first choice from among them all as soon as Francis returned them to her.®
The king took the news "grievously and displeasantly." Mary's irresponsible behavior might be put down to womanly hysteria, but Brandon's was hard to forgive. "He would not believe he would have broken his promise had he been torn with wild horses," Henry told Wolsey. Together the couple had disappointed and embarrassed him, and
k
cost him a good deal of money as well. Her marriage to an English husband had given Francis the legal right to confiscate Mary's dowry: even the gifts Louis had given her. including the much coveted Mirror of Naples, were now his. Mary had cost him the expense of her royal wedding, Henry reasoned, while Brandon still owed him the three thousand pounds he had borrowed as a loan on his plate to pay for his mission to the French court."
But the king's displeasure was mild compared to the reaction of his Council. To a man (Wolsey excepted) they called for Brandon's execution, or imprisonment at least. For a gentleman's son to marry the king's sister was outrageous, even if he had been made a duke.® The French were equally angry. It was said Brandon hardly dared to walk the streets of Paris for fear he would be mobbed as the hated Englishman who had married Mar- Tudor.^ Finally Marv' and Brandon struck a bargain with Henry, and once he was placated the irate councilors had to swallow their wrath. The erring couple bound themselves to pay the enormous sum of twenty-four thousand pounds in yearly installments, and even though Henry gave them estates and lands enough to earn in rents what they owed him. still the burden was a heavy one. Long after the scandal had died down the king continued to look for these payments, complaining loudly when they were overdue yet conspicuously squandering the money once he received it. Each year he took the purses of coins to Katherine's apartments and poured them out into the eager hands of her waiting maids, leaving enough to distribute to his minions to play with at cards. It was ransom money, he told them, paid in token of his domination of France.^"^
After his marriage observers looked in vain for Brandon's standing with the king to change. Henry indicated his full approval of what had happened by attending a second wedding ceremony of his sister and brother-in-law in Grey Friars Church, and by accepting the compliment graciously when the couple named their first child after him. The Venetian ambassador thought in the summer of 1516 that Brandon was '*not in so much favor with the king as heretofore." but the minor shift in influence was only temporary, and was part of a broader political alteration. Power in the royal Council was becoming concentrated in the hands of Wolsey, Ruthal and Norfolk: along with the other councilors. Brandon was eclipsed for a while.
In fact the friendship between Brandon and Henry was far too strong to be interrupted for long, and there was something else too that bound them together. Since boyhood Brandon had been Henry's preferred jousting partner. Next to warfare, tourneying was Henry's principal arena of personal glory. And if jousting was indispensable to Henry's reputation. Brandon was indispensable to the joust.
For a decade and more Brandon and the king had ridden side by side at every tournament, often wearing identical suits of cut velvet or cloth of gold, alike in strength and valor. Chroniclers described again and again how the two men dominated the field, fighting at the barriers or defending at the tilt against all comers until they won the prize. When they fought
126 . GREAT HARRY
against one another it was a battle of titans. The Venetian ambassador Giustiniani witnessed one such combat toward the end of his stay in England. The skill and resilience of both jousters was magnificent, and they were so well matched they stretched each other's abilities to the limit. All who saw them, the ambassador wrote, imagined they were watching, not the king and his duke, but Hector and Achilles.'^
Giustiniani omitted to record who won the contest, but very likely it was the king. It was among Brandon's most valuable qualities that he enhanced Henry's celebrity without overshadowing him. Other jousters who possessed more skill than Brandon lacked this essential attribute. Nicholas Carew, for example, perfected himself in the joust by constant practice. A special tilt was kept for him at Greenwich, and a shed to arm in; he ran there daily, preparing the unique feats he often performed to complement the traditional exercises at a joust of honor. His stunts were prodigious. Once, after all the courses had been run, Carew entered the lists alone. Both he and his tall horse were covered entirely in blue satin, and the horse was blindfolded to prevent him from rearing in terror at what his master was about to attempt. Three men then carried onto the field a young tree nine inches around and twelve feet high, and fastened it into Carew's lance rest with forked poles. He rode steadily forward, bearing the weight of the tree "most stoutly" without flinching and keeping it upright, until he nearly reached the opposite end of the lists, ''to the extreme admiration and astonishment of everybody."^^
That he was able to shatter many lances, to hurl his opponent to the ground, mount and all, to fight equally well with battle-axe or sword or hand to hand Henry's admirers had known for years. That he made as splendid a figure on horseback as any king living or dead no one doubted; he looked "like Saint George in person," one man wrote who saw him at the tilt in 1515.
But his great distinction was his Italianate riding, and in this art, new to England and cultivated with enthusiasm by the king and his horse masters, Henry surpassed even the spectacular Nicholas Carew.
The Italian art of the manage, or handling, called for highly skilled riding and highly trained horses. Using his calves, his voice and a wand or rod to touch the horse on his shoulder or flank—the best riders rarely used their spurs—the rider put his mount through a variety of maneuvers. The horse came suddenly to a full stop from a full gallop. He made half turns, full turns, and double turns in place, "keeping his body in one staye, writhing neither head, neck, nor any part of his body." He wove at a gallop in and out of barriers, in a serpentine pattern. And he reared up on his hind legs, jumped in place, and performed the "goat leap," or capriole, raising his forelegs together and then bounding up with his rump, kicking out with his hind legs before his forelegs touched the ground.
A gorgeously clad rider exercising such perfect control over a magnifi-
cent horse was a beautiful sight, and Henry knew how to vary his mount's turns and leaps to create endless enjoyment. Both he and his horses were trained by the finest riding masters he could recruit in Italy, and by Englishmen who had studied the manage at Naples or Ferrara or Mantua where the best riders were. Horses brought to the English court from Italy were accompanied by grooms who were skilled riders and trainers; in 1519 several horses arrived with their groom, Giovanni Scaticia, esteemed by the Ferrarese who chose him to be "the most skilled rider in Italy."^^ At every joust Henry exhausted many horses in the rigors of the manage, tiring out one after another by making them perform "a thousand jumps in the air," until they were worn down and delighting his audience with his horsemanship.
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