Brandon, Charles, 1st Duke of Suffolk

Person

Brandon, Charles, 1st Duke of Suffolk

c. 1484-1545

Charles Brandon was a magnate, courtier, and soldier, and a member of King Henry VIII's privy council.
He was the only surviving son of Sir William Brandon (d. 1485) and his wife, Elizabeth Bruyn (d. 1494) of South Ockendon.
By about 1503 Charles Brandon waited on King Henry VII at table and became well-known for his skill at jousting. He became close to the young Prince Henry (who succeeded Henry VII as King of England), and although he was some seven years older than Henry VIII, and eventually predeceased him, he remained his lifelong intimate.
At Brandon's uncle's death in January 1510 he became marshal of the king's bench and in November 1511 he added the parallel post of marshal of the king's household. In October 1512 he became master of the horse. He was knighted on 30 March 1512, elected a knight of the Garter on 23 April 1513, created Viscount Lisle on 15 May 1513. Then, on 1 February 1514 he was named Duke of Suffolk.
As Cardinal Wolsey fell from power in 1529, Suffolk was appointed president of the king's council. But as the new regime settled down from 1530, his attendance in council and parliament was erratic, his influence limited, and his position uncomfortable. He did, however, serve on the increasingly well-defined privy council. In the household reforms of 1539 he was appointed to the great mastership of the household, an upgraded version of the lord stewardship. He led both the party which met Anne of Cleves on her arrival in 1539 and the team which negotiated with her the terms of her divorce from the king in 1540.

He had a varied military career, including leading a successful assault in the siege of Tournai (1513). He was also instrumental in suppressing the Lincolnshire Revolt and the Pilgrimage of Grace in 1536. The king commanded him to move his home to Lincolnshire, and Suffolk eventually became the greatest landowner in Lincolnshire, with a dense belt of estates spread across the centre of the county.
In the 1540s he took a major part in Henry's last wars against France and Scotland, while between campaigns he sat more regularly in the privy council, as a senior statesman and military expert. In October and November 1542 he guarded the northern English border while Norfolk and others invaded Scotland. From January 1543 to March 1544 he was the king's lieutenant in the north. Based mostly at Darlington, from there he supervised regional government and border warfare and planned for a major invasion which he never had the chance to command. Nevertheless, his work laid the basis for the capture of Edinburgh by Edward Seymour, in May 1544. By then Suffolk had been called away to France, where he led the siege of Boulogne with conspicuous bravery and skill, from July to November 1544 commanding the king's ward in the huge army which eventually captured the town.
Charles Brandon was married four times. Firstly to Dame Margaret Mortimer in 1507 and her niece Anne Brown in 1508 who died in 1510. He then married in secret (later in public) Henry VIII’s sister Mary (1496–1533) who had been recently widowed by the death of Louis XII of France. Mary died on 25 June 1533 and Suffolk married again in September 1533: his fourth wife was the fourteen-year-old Katherine Willoughby, originally intended as his son's bride. His son Henry, earl of Lincoln, died on 8 March 1534.
When Charles Brandon died of unknown causes at Guildford, on 22 August 1545, the king decreed that he should be buried at St George's Chapel, Windsor. Charles Brandon left two sons, Henry Brandon (1535–1551) and Charles Brandon (1537/8–1551), successively second and third dukes of Suffolk.

Brandon, Katherine, 4th wife of 1st Duke of Suffolk (1519-1580)

GB-1859-SJCA-PN202

S. J. Gunn, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (2004): https://www.oxforddnb.com/view/10.1093/ref:odnb/9780198614128.001.0001/odnb-9780198614128-e-3260#odnb-9780198614128-e-3260-headword-3