Happy Anniversary to Mary and Charles

Mary Tudor  and Charles Brandon, Viscount Lisle and future Duke of Suffolk, wed for a third and final time on 13 May 1515. The Tudor princess seems to have loved Brandon since she was a girl, and she was as determined as the rest of her siblings to marry for love. Since she was as headstrong and brave as any other member of her bloodline, she made it happen.

Like her sister Margaret, her first marriage was at the behest of her family, the human marker of a political alliance. She dutifully sallied forth across the English Channel in October of 1514 and married the 52 year old King of France, Louis XII, when she was only 18 in order to seal a peace treaty with her nubile young body. Nevertheless, she warned Henry up front that the next time she married it would be to a man she wanted … not one HE wanted.

The French king, considered to be elderly by the standards of his time, found Mary to be his Dream Teen Queen. Alas for Louis, he only got to enjoy his connubial felicity for a few weeks. In mid-December he began to experience a crippling case of gout, and he passed away on 1 January 1515. Rumour had it that he killed himself by his excessive frolics with his gorgeous young bride, but he died from stuffing himself at the table, not stuffing Mary in bed.

Mary was now a widow, and being carefully watched by the king-to-be, Francis I, to see if she would produce a son to replace him. When it became apparent that Mary was not gravid, Francis took the throne and Henry sent Charles Brandon to go get the young widow and bring her home. This was sending the fox to guard the hen-house, but Henry thought it was safe because he made Charles swear not to propose. Henry had just made Brandon the Duke of Suffolk — and therefore a potential match for a queen — but Brandon wouldn’t dare risk his neck by marrying Mary against his old friend’s wishes would he?  Henry assumed Suffolk would be too deterred by the idea of being hanged, drawn, and quartered for him to risk meeting Mary at the altar. Additionally, Brandon was already pre-contracted to wed his 10 year old ward, Elizabeth Grey, Viscountess Lisle. Henry no doubt felt safe sending Suffolk to get the widowed queen.

Henry must have forgotten that his own grandfather was the result of a queen marrying a squire. It also didn’t occur to the king that Mary had plenty of fortitude and was willing to drag Charles to the altar, proposal or not. Her warnings she would choose her own husband had not been heeded.

When Suffolk got to France he found Mary determined to make him her husband. He would later tell Henry that she twisted his arm to get him up the aisle, but I suspect there wasn’t that much of a struggle. To prevent anyone from tearing asunder what God had joined together, Mary and Charles Brandon were married — first in a small, secret ceremony at the beginning of February, then more publicly  on 31 March 1515 — and promptly consummated the union to make it binding.

King Henry was LIVID. His sister had been an invaluable pawn in the international marriage game and she had thrown herself away on his low-born friend.  Scuttlebutt had it that Henry was already trying to negotiate a marriage between Mary and Prince Charles, heir of the Holy Roman Emperor and the current ruler of Burgundy and the Low Countries, when he found out his sister had wed Suffolk. It was touch and go weather Brandon would lose his head, so that the again-widowed Mary could once more be shopped around to potential political allies. However, after the couple promised to pay Henry an arm and a leg for their flouting of his will, the king forgave the pair. He was then gracious enough to hold another wedding for them at his court.

The most interesting thing about Mary’s wedding is that the groom’s first wife was alive and kicking when he married the widowed queen. Suffolk had been engaged to Anne Browne when he jilted her to marry a wealthy widow named Margaret Neville Mortimer. Once he had secured Margaret Mortimer’s monies, he had their marriage annulled and wed his first choice Anne Browne. Although Anne Browne died in 1511, years before her husband would become Suffolk, the elderly Margaret Mortimer was still above ground. It wasn’t until  1528 that a Papal Bull by Pope Clement VII finally made Suffolk and Mary’s union officially legitimate.

When Mary died in 1533 Suffolk would wed his 14 year old ward Katherine Willoughby a few weeks later. The girl had been betrothed to his son, but rumour had it that Suffolk was sniffing around Katherine’s pretty skirts even before his wife died. It was a bit of a scandal, even in a time when 49 year old men routinely married young women in their teens.