Katherine Brandon, Duchess of Suffolk
Katherine Willoughby | |
---|---|
suo jure Baroness Willoughby de Eresby Duchess of Suffolk | |
Parham Old Hall, Suffolk, England | |
Died | 19 September 1580 Grimsthorpe Castle, Lincolnshire, England | (aged 61)
Noble family | Willoughby |
Spouse(s) | Charles Brandon, 1st Duke of Suffolk Richard Bertie |
Issue | Henry Brandon, 2nd Duke of Suffolk Charles Brandon, 3rd Duke of Suffolk Susan Bertie, Countess of Kent Peregrine Bertie, 13th Baron Willoughby de Eresby |
Father | William Willoughby, 11th Baron Willoughby de Eresby |
Mother | María de Salinas |
Katherine Brandon, Duchess of Suffolk,
An outspoken supporter of the English Reformation, she fled abroad to Wesel and later the Grand Duchy of Lithuania during the reign of Queen Mary I, to avoid persecution.
Family
Katherine Willoughby, born at
Katherine had two brothers, Henry and Francis, who died as infants.[1]
Early life
According to Goff, Katherine likely spent her early childhood at Parham, as her mother was in almost constant attendance on Henry VIII's Queen, Catherine of Aragon.[1] On 14 October 1526, when Katherine was seven years of age, Lord Willoughby died after falling ill during a visit to Suffolk[3] and was buried at Mettingham.[4][5] As his only surviving child, Katherine inherited the barony. Her father held some thirty manors in Lincolnshire, and almost the same number in Norfolk and Suffolk, worth over £900 per annum,[6] and Katherine is said to have been 'one of the greatest heiresses of her generation'.[7] However, her inheritance became a subject of dispute for many years, as there was doubt as to which lands had been settled on the heirs male and which on the heirs general, and the matter was further complicated by a deed which Lord Willoughby had drawn up before leaving for France to campaign in Henry VIII's wars in 1523.[8] In 1527 Katherine's uncle, Sir Christopher Willoughby, accused his sister-in-law, Katherine's mother, María de Salinas, of withholding documents from him which established the title to various estates, and of having kept him out of possession of estates which rightfully belonged to him.[9]
At her father's death, Katherine's wardship fell to the king, who on 1 March 1528[10] sold it to his brother-in-law Charles Brandon, 1st Duke of Suffolk. On acquiring Katherine's wardship, Suffolk immediately intervened in the family quarrel with a letter to Cardinal Wolsey, and his intervention appears to have cowed Sir Christopher Willoughby, who wrote to Wolsey that the Cardinal's anger was 'worse to him than death'.[11]
Katherine is said to have been betrothed to
On Sunday next the Duke of Suffolk will be married to the daughter of a Spanish lady named Lady Willoughby. She was promised to the Duke's son, but he is only ten years old, & although it is not worth writing to your Majesty, the novelty of the case made me mention it'.
Although Suffolk was forty-nine and Katherine only fourteen, the marriage was a financially successful one.
The Duke and Duchess had two sons,
Personality and beliefs
Noted for her wit, sharp tongue, and devotion to learning, by the last years of Henry VIII's reign the Duchess of Suffolk was also an outspoken advocate of the English Reformation. She became a close friend of Henry's last queen, Catherine Parr, particularly after the Duke died in 1545, and was a strong influence on the queen's religious beliefs. In 1546, as these views grew controversial, the king ordered the queen's arrest, though his wife managed to cajole him into cancelling this.
The Duchess of Suffolk once gave a banquet and during a party game afterwards named Bishop Gardiner as the man she loved least. She named her pet spaniel "Gardiner", provoking much amusement when she called her dog to heel.[20] Several years later when Gardiner was imprisoned during the reign of King Edward VI, she is quoted as saying, "It was merry with the lambs when the wolf was shut up."[20]
Suffolk died 22 August 1545,
After Henry VIII's death
The
In 1551 both the Duchess's teenage sons, Henry Brandon, 2nd Duke of Suffolk and Charles Brandon, 3rd Duke of Suffolk, already students at Cambridge, died within an hour of each other of the sweating sickness. Four months afterwards, attempting to reconcile herself to this tragedy, Katherine wrote to Sir William Cecil that “truly I take this [God's] last (and to the first sight most sharp and bitter) punishment not for the least of his benefits, in as much as I have never been so well taught by any other before to know his power, his love, and mercy, my own wickedness, and that wretched state that without him I should endure here”.[25] In recovering from this misfortune and its severe test to her faith, Katherine built a new life. In this period she employed Hugh Latimer as her chaplain.[6]
She married her second husband,
After their return to England, they lived at Katherine's estate, Grimsthorpe in Lincolnshire, and at court.
By Richard Bertie, Katherine was the mother of:
- Sir John Wingfield, a nephew of Katherine's friend, Bess of Hardwick. Katherine was successful in persuading Elizabeth I to restore the Kent earldom to Reginald (sometimes known as Reynold), her son in law, after it had been in abeyance for 47 years following the death of Richard Grey, 3rd earl of Kent, whose half brother Sir Henry Grey was Reynold’s grandfather.[27][28]
- Peregrine Bertie (1555 – 1601) (named for their peregrinations in exile), who married Mary de Vere, only sister of the whole blood of Edward de Vere, 17th Earl of Oxford,
Literary tributes
Katherine and Richard Bertie's exile became the basis of a ballad by Thomas Deloney (1543–1600), The most Rare and Excellent History, Of the Duchess of Suffolks Calamity, and of Thomas Drue's play, The Life of the Duchess of Suffolk, published in 1624. It may also have been the subject of an unpublished play from 1600 by William Haughton, The English Fugitives. Katherine's second marriage to one of her servants and subsequent persecution also present parallels to the plot of John Webster's The Duchess of Malfi.
Issue
By her first marriage, she had two sons:
- Henry Brandon, 2nd Duke of Suffolk (18 September 1535 – 14 July 1551), died of the sweating sickness
- Charles Brandon, 3rd Duke of Suffolk (1537/38 – 14 July 1551), died of the sweating sickness an hour after his older brother.
By her second marriage, she had a daughter and a son:
- Susan Bertie, Countess of Kent (1554 – unknown), married, firstly, in 1570, Reginald Grey of Wrest, 5th Earl of Kent and, secondly, on 30 September 1581, John Wingfield by whom she had two sons Peregrine Wingfield and Robert Wingfield.
- Peregrine Bertie, 13th Baron Willoughby de Eresby (12 October 1555 – 1601), married 1577 Mary de Vere, daughter of John de Vere, 16th Earl of Oxford and Margery Golding.[29] They had seven children.
In fiction
- Katherine's story is very fictionalised in The Sixth Wife: A Novel by Suzannah Dunn
- Her character is played by Rebekah Wainwright in the historical fiction series Catherine Brooke, and much of her story has been changed.
- Katherine and her second husband Bertie appear in Stanley Weyman's 1891 novel The Story of Francis Cludde. It covers the period 1555–58, when the eponymous hero helps them escape Mary's agents and reach safety in Germany; he also is made godfather to their son Peregrine. As with most of Weyman's novels, the historical detail is accurate and well researched.
Notes
- ^ a b c Goff 1930, p. 9.
- ^ Goff 1930, pp. 2–3.
- ^ According to Goff, he died at Hertford in Suffolk.
- ^ Harder 2008, p. 28.
- ^ Goff 1930, p. 13.
- ^ a b c d Wabuda 2004.
- ^ Harris 2002, p. 66.
- ^ Goff 1930, p. 15.
- ^ Goff 1930, pp. 10, 15–16.
- ^ Wabuda dates Suffolk's acquisition of the wardship to February 1529.
- ^ Goff 1930, pp. 17–18.
- ^ Goff 1930, pp. 23–4.
- ^ Goff 1930, p. 20.
- ^ Goff 1930, p. 23.
- ^ Goff 1930, p. 28.
- ^ Goff 1930, pp. 61, 83.
- ^ Goff 1930, pp. 7, 85.
- ^ Goff 1930, p. 37.
- ^ Anthony Martienssen, Queen Katherine Parr
- ^ a b Anthony Martienssen, Queen Katherine Parr, p. 195.
- ^ Richardson I 2011, p. 299.
- ^ The Mistresses of Henry VIII by Kelly Hart
- Francis van der Delft, Imperial ambassador)
- ^ a b c d e f g Linda Porter. Lady Mary Seymour: An Unfit Traveller, History Today Volume: 61 Issue: 7 2011.
- ^ Harris 2002, p. 109.
- OCLC 808762
- ^ O'Rourke, Kirsty (21 March 2023). "A Forgotten Elizabethan Noblewoman: Katherine Bertie, Dowager Duchess of Suffolk and Baroness Willoughby de Eresby". The History of Parliament. Retrieved 17 January 2024.
- ^ "GREY, Reginald or Reynold (d.1573), of Wrest, Beds. | History of Parliament Online". historyofparliamentonline.org. Retrieved 17 January 2024.
- ^ The Peerage.com
References
- Goff, Cecilie (1930). A Woman of the Tudor Age. London: John Murray.
- Harder, Melissa Franklin (2008). Women, Reform and Community in Early Modern England. Woodbridge, Suffolk: The Boydell Press. ISBN 9781843833659. Retrieved 31 May 2013.
- Harris, Barbara J. (2002). English Aristocratic Women 1450–1550. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
- Wabuda, Susan (2004). "Bertie, Katherine, duchess of Suffolk (1519–1580)". doi:10.1093/ref:odnb/2273. (Subscription or UK public library membershiprequired.)
- ISBN 978-1449966379.)
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: CS1 maint: location missing publisher (link - Works related to Catharine Bertie at Wikisource: Dictionary of National Biography, 1885–1900, Volume 4, p. 403.
Further reading
- My Lady Suffolk: A Portrait of Catherine Willoughby, Duchess of Suffolk by Evelyn Read (1963) ASIN B000JE85OK
- Queen Katherine Parr by Anthony Martienssen, McGraw-Hill Book Company, New York 1973
- Women, Reform and Community in Early Modern England: Katherine Willoughby, Duchess of Suffolk, and Lincolnshire's Godly Aristocracy, 1519–1580: 19 (Studies in Modern British Religious History) by Melissa Franklin Harkrider
- The Mistresses of Henry VIII by Kelly Hart