Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 06.djvu/233

 Brandon board, at which Suffolk took a position second only to that of Norfolk. The readers of Shakespeare know how he and Norfolk went together from the king to demand the great seal from Wolsey without any commission in writing. The fact is derived from Cavendish, who tells us that they endeavoured to extort its surrender to them by threats ; but Wolsey's refusal compelled them to go back to the king at Windsor and procure the written warrant that he required. Soon after this (1 Dec. 1529) we find Suffolk signing, along with the other lords, the bill of articles drawn up against Wolsey in parliament, and a few months later he signed with the other lords a letter to the pope, to warn him of the dangers of delaying to accede to Henry VIII's wishes for a divorce.

In 1532 Suffolk was one of the noblemen who accompanied Henry VIII to Calais to the new meeting between him and Francis I. This was designed to show the world the entire cordiality of the two kings, who became in turn each other's guests at Calais and Boulogne, and at the latter place, on 25 Oct., the Dukes of Norfolk and Suffolk were elected and received into the order of St. Michael at a chapter called by Francis for the purpose. In the beginning of April 1533 he was sent with the Duke of Norfolk to Queen Catherine, to tell her that the king had now married Anne Boleyn, and that she must not pretend to the name of queen any longer. Not long afterwards he was appointed high steward for the day at the coronation of Anne Boleyn. On 24 June, little more than three weeks later, his wife, 'the French queen,' died ; and after the fashion of the times he immediately repaired his loss by marrying, early in September, Katharine, daughter of the widowed Lady Willoughby, an heiress, whose wardship had been granted to him four years before (Calendar of Henry VIII, iv. 5336 (12), vi. 1069). That same month he was present at the christening of the Princess Elizabeth at Greenwich. At the close of the year he was sent, along with the Earl of Sussex and some others, to Buckden, where the divorced Queen Catherine was staying, to execute a commission which, it is somewhat to his credit to say, he himself regarded with dislike. They were to dismiss the greater part of Catherine's household, imprison those of her servants who refused to be sworn to her anew as 'Princess of Wales' and no longer queen, and make her remove to a less healthy situation Somersham, in the Isle of Ely. He and the others did their best, or rather their worst, to fulfil their instructions ; but they did not give the king satisfaction. They deprived Catherine of almost all her servants, but though they remained six days they did not succeed in removing her. Suffolk himself, as he declared to his mother-in-law, devoutly wished before setting out that some accident might happen to him to excuse him from carrying out the king's instructions (ib. vi. 1541-3, 1508,1571).

In 1534 he was one of the commissioners appointed to take the oaths of the people in accordance with the new Act of Succession, binding them to accept the issue of Anne Boleyn as their future sovereigns (ib. vii. 392). Later in the year he was appointed warden and chief justice of all the royal forests on the south side of the Trent (ib. 1498 (37) ). But his next conspicuous employment was in the latter part of the year 1536, when he was sent against the rebels of Lincolnshire and afterwards of Yorkshire, whom, however, he did not subdue by force of arms, but rather by a message of pardon from the king, who promised at that time to hear their grievances, though he shamefully broke faith with them afterwards. Within the next two or three years took place the suppression of the greater monasteries, and Suffolk got a large share of the abbey lands. It is curious that he obtained livery of his wife's inheritance only in the thirty-second year of Henry VIII, seven years after he had married her ; but the grant seems to apply mainly to reversionary interests on her mother's death.

For some years after the rebellion he took no important part in public affairs. He was present at the christening of the young prince, afterwards Edward VI, and at the burning of the Welsh image called Darvell Gadarn, in Smithfield. He was a spectator of the great muster in London in 1539, and was one of the judges who tried the accomplices of Catherine Howard in 1541. On 10 Feb. 1542 he and others conveyed that unhappy queen by water from Sion House to the Tower of London prior to her execution. That same year he was appointed warden of the marches against Scotland (Undated Commission on the Patent Rolls, 34 Hen. VIII). In 1544, the king being then in alliance with the emperor against France, Suffolk was again put in command of an invading army. He made his will on 20 June before crossing the sea. He was then great master or steward of the king's household, an office he had filled for some years previously. He crossed, and on 19 July sat down before Boulogne, on the east side of the town. After several skirmishes he obtained possession of a fortress called the Old Man, and afterwards of the lower town, called Basse Boulogne. The king afterwards came in person and encamped on the north side of the town, which, being terribly battered, after