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 Brandon at court, and Suffolk rose again into favour. But the most marvellous thing is that he should have escaped so easily when other circumstances are taken into account, to which little or no allusion seems to have been made at the time, even by his enemies. Either the facts were unknown, or, what is more probable, they were not severely censured by the spirit of the times. Whatever be the explanation, it is certain that Suffolk when he married Mary had already had two wives, and that the first was still alive. Some years later he applied to Clement VII for a bull to remove all objections to the validity of his marriage with Mary, and from the statements in this document it appears that his early history was as follows: As a young man during the reign of Henry VII he had made a contract of marriage with a certain Ann Brown; but before marrying her he obtained a dispensation and married a widow named Margaret Mortymer, alias Brandon, who lived in the diocese of London. Some time afterwards he separated from her, and obtained from a church court a declaration of the invalidity of the marriage, on the grounds, first, that he and his wife were in the second and third degrees of affinity; secondly, that his wife and his first betrothed were within the prohibited degrees of consanguinity; and thirdly, that he was first cousin once removed of his wife's former husband. These grounds being held sufficient to annul the marriage, he actually married the lady to whom he had been betrothed, Ann Brown, and had by her a daughter, whom, after his marriage with Mary, he for some time placed under the care of his other love, Margaret of Savoy. Years afterwards the bull of Clement was required to defeat any attempt on the part of Margaret Mortymer to call in question either of his succeeding marriages. When all this is considered, together with the fact that he had the same entanglements even at the time he proposed to make Lady Lisle his wife, we can understand pretty well what a feeble bond matrimony was then considered to be. Suffolk's father had been a grossly licentious man (Paston Letters, iii. 235). So were most of Henry VIII's courtiers, and so, we need not say, was Henry himself. The laxity of Suffolk's morality was certainly no bar to his progress in the king's favour. He went with Henry in 1520 to the Field of the Cloth of Gold. He was one of the peers who sat in the year following as judges upon the Duke of Buckingham. In 1522, when Charles V visited England, he received both the king and the emperor at his house in Southwark, and they dined and hunted with him. In 1523 he commanded the army which invaded France. From Calais he passed through Picardy, took Ancre and Bray, and crossed the Somme, meeting with little resistance. His progress created serious alarm at Paris; but the end of the campaign was disgraceful. As winter came on, the troops suffered severely. Suffolk, though brave and valiant, was no general, and he actually, without waiting for orders, allowed them to disband and return home.

On the arrival of Cardinal Campeggio in England in 1528, Suffolk's house in the suburbs (probably the house in Southwark already mentioned) was assigned him as a temporary lodging. Suffolk undoubtedly was heartily devoted to the object for which Campeggio came, or was supposed to come the king's divorce from Catherine of Arragon. Nor did he scruple to insinuate that it was another cardinal, his old benefactor Wolsey, who was the real obstacle to the gratification of the king's wishes. With an ingratitude which shrank from no degree of baseness he had been carefully nourishing the suspicions entertained by the king of his old minister upon this subject, and being sent to France in embassy while the divorce cause was before the legates, he actually inquired of the French king whether he could not give evidence to the same effect. So also, being present when Campeggio adjourned the legatine court in England from July to October, and probably when everyone was convinced even at that date that it would not sit again, Suffolk, according to the graphic account in Hall, 'gave a great clap on the table with his hand, and said: " By the mass, now I see that the old said saw is true, that there was never legate nor cardinal that did good in England!"' But Hall does not give us the conclusion of the story, which is supplied by Cavendish. 'Sir,' said Wolsey to the duke in answer, 'of all men in this realm ye have least cause to dispraise or be offended with cardinals; for if I, simple cardinal, had not been, you should have had at this present no head upon your shoulders wherein you should have had a tongue to make any such report in despite of us, who intend you no manner of displeasure.' And after some allusions, of which Suffolk well understood the meaning, he concluded: 'Wherefore, my lord, hold your peace and frame your tongue like a man of honour and wisdom, and speak not so quickly and so reproachfully by your friends; for ye know best what friendship ye have received at my hands, the which I yet never revealed to no person alive before now, neither to my glory ne to your dishonour.'

But Suffolk rose upon Wolsey's fall. The old nobility, which had once been jealous both of him and Wolsey as upstarts promoted by the king, had now freer access to the council