Lady Eleanor Brandon

Posted on November 21, 2015 by JuliaH

Brandon,Eleonor01 The Act of Settlement in 1701 ensured a Protestant succession upon the deaths of King William III (That’s the William in William and Mary) and his niece Princess Anne who would become the last Stuart monarch dying in 1714. Since then, the title of princess has been clearly designated. The daughter of a monarch is a princess. The daughter of a prince is a princess. The daughter of a princess on the other hand is not a princess unless her father is one of the above.

Before the advent of the Hanoverians the title was less regularly used and it was not always clear how diluted royal blood was deemed to have become. Mary Tudor was undoubtedly a princess being the daughter of King Henry VII of England. She was also the Dowager-Queen of France having been married off for political reasons to the elderly Louis XII of France who expired three months after the wedding – the moral here being don’t marry a bride more than thirty years your junior… perhaps. However, although Mary was known throughout her life as ‘The French Queen,’ and whilst her daughters Francis and Eleanor were important in terms of the Tudor dynasty they were not, by Hanoverian standards princesses because their father was neither a prince nor a king.

After Louis XII died Mary batted off a number of suitors and married the man she’d fallen in love with whilst she was a princess back at home in England. Charles Brandon was the Duke of Suffolk. His father had been Henry VII’s standard-bearer at the Battle of Bosworth. Following the death of his father at Bosworth Charles was raised at court. He was a favourite of young Henry and was described in one letter as a ‘second king.’ Even so the pair of star struck lovers had enough common sense to undergo a private ceremony in France before returning home and then to get Cardinal Wolsey to break the news to Henry VIII that his sister, whom he had promised could marry whosoever she wished, was married to Brandon. He was not amused. The pair ended up giving the grasping Henry all her dowry and plate as well as agreeing to pay £1000 each year for the next twenty-four years.

Eleanor was their second daughter and at that time was so unimportant that her birth was not recorded accurately – so sometime between 1518 and 1521. In 1533 she was contracted to marry, Henry Clifford, First Earl of Cumberland who was also a second cousin through the maternal line. An account is given in that same year of Eleanor and her sister Frances as mourners at their mother’s funeral.

The marriage between Eleanor and Henry Clifford, like most noble matches was about land and power. The pair, who spent much of their married life at Brougham Castle, seem to have been genuinely fond of one another – she refers to him as “dear heart” in her letters. As for Henry Clifford, he celebrated his marriage into the Tudor family by extending Skipton Castle with the addition of a tower and a gallery. After all, its not everyday you marry into royalty.

In 1536, Eleanor acted as chief mourner at Catherine of Aragon’s funeral, as her cousin the Princess Mary was refused permission to attend because of her intransigence in the matter of her personal beliefs and her determination to uphold her mother’s wishes. It suggests that Eleanor was as close as her mother had been to Catherine of Aragon. This is confirmed by the circumstantial evidence that she does not seem to have had any role in the households of any of Henry’s queens apart from Katherine Parr – perhaps it was the northern link.

Alternatively it may be that Eleanor was not in robust health. We know that she bore three children – two of whom, Henry and Charles, died young. There are letters from her father, her husband and one from her which contain information about her own poor health:

Dear heart,
After my most hearty commendations, this shall be to certify you that since your departure from me I have been very sick and at this present my water is very red, whereby I suppose I have the jaundice and the ague both, for I have none abide [no appetite for] meat and I have such pains in my side and towards my back as I had at Brougham, where it began with me first. Wherefore I desire you to help me to a physician and that this bearer my bring him with him, for now in the beginning I trust I may have good remedy, and the longer it is delayed, the worse it will be. Also my sister Powys Anne Brandon is come to me and very desirous to see you, which I trust shall be the sooner at this time, and thus Jesus send us both health.

At my lodge at Carlton, the 14th of February.
And, dear heart, I pray you send for Dr Stephens, for he knoweth best my complexion for such causes.
By your assured loving wife, Eleanor Cumberland

In the same year that Catherine of Aragon died Eleanor was staying in Bolton Priory with her infant son, when the Pilgrimage of Grace erupted around her. Skipton Castle was besieged and the pilgrims threatened to use Eleanor as a hostage. To ensure that Henry Clifford did what they wanted of him – the message, according to Stickland, was that if Clifford failed to comply with the pilgrims demands then Eleanor would be handed over to ‘ruffians.’ Being a Victorian lady writer Agnes Strickland passes over the terror of that particular fate. Fortunately for Eleanor there was a knight errant at hand. Robert Aske, leader of the Pilgrimage of grace, had a brother called Christopher. It was he who offered Eleanor protection. Along with the Vicar of Skipton he escorted Eleanor and her son through the camp and across the moor to safety under cover of darkness.

The religious uncertainites of the period seem to have haunted Eleanor once more at a later stage of her life when she was mentioned as having a connection to Anne Askew. Fortunately for Eleanor it would appear that Anne approached her but nothing came of it.

Henry VIII died in 1547 as did Eleanor who passed away whilst residing in Brougham Castle. She was buried in Holy Trinity Church, Skipton. It is interesting the at the wording of Eleanor’s epitaph gives her the title “Grace” – a reminder, perhaps, that to her family and to her people she was a princess. Henry Clifford was, apparently, bereft for months afterwards to the point that his household thought that he had died and set about laying him out. He recovered sufficiently to remarry. Henry VIII, as might be expected of a man who turned his kingdom upside down, wrote a will which identified the order in which his children would inherit the throne. If they did not survive he identified the children of Lady Frances Grey, Countess of Dorset and then those of Lady Eleanor, Countess of Cumberland to follow after him- bypassing the children of his other sister , Margaret Tudor, completely. It was perhaps fortunate that Eleanor did not live long enough to know the fate that befell her niece Lady Jane Grey or the difficulties that her only surviving child, Margaret, would face as a result of their Tudor blood and Henry VIII’s will.

The Shepherd Lord – part deux

Posted on March 8, 2015 by JuliaH

Henry Tudor’s victory at Bosworth saw a change in fortune for the House of Lancaster and its supporters. Henry Clifford emerged from skulking in the shadows and in a matter of weeks was established as one of Henry VII’s great lords possibly because the good folk of Yorkshire had a soft spot for Richard III so didn’t take too kindly to the man who’d usurped his throne. As for the Earl of Northumberland, he was doing a shift in the chokey for not arriving to support Henry in time at Bosworth. Consequently there were few people for Henry Tudor to trust so Henry Clifford with his family history and the role that his brother had played on the continent was in the right place at the right time.

Clifford swiftly took on a series of administrative roles as well as touring the countryside punishing Yorkists. Eventually the role the king allotted to him became more representative of the traditional role of sheriff – administering the law and collecting taxes. It was a job that was to keep Henry out of mischief for the rest of his life along with showing his loyalty to the king every time a pretender to the crown showed his head and attacking the scots as deemed appropriate by the rules of border warfare.

In 1487 Henry got married. Anne was a distant relation of his own as well as being related to Henry VII ( a cousin of some kind) which just goes to show that medieval family trees are complicated things. Henry acquired more lands in the north, acted on behalf of the king and developed an interest in astronomy and alchemy. According to legend he was illiterate which is possible but unlikely. The one thing we can be sure of is that he valued learning. He supported scholars in Oxford and also provided places for children at Giggleswick. He also supported the monasteries at Shap, at Bolton and at Gisborough.

To all intents and purposes Henry seems to have been very pious – presumably he made confession about the number of mistresses he is supposed to have kept at various times. Lady Anne complained about the number of baseborn children he’d fathered. Gossip was ratcheted up a gear after the death of his first wife and his marriage to Lady Florence, Marchioness Pudsey who was considerably younger than him. He also seems to have conducted pretty unneighbourly warfare with his neighbour who responded in kind.

The next time wider history clapped eyes on Henry Clifford was in 1513 at the Battle of Flodden. He even made an appearance in a ballad of the same name in which he is portrayed as a heroic captain. At home things were less of a story and more of a nightmare. He was almost estranged from his son whom he kept on such short pursestrings it caused Henry VIII to tell Henry Clifford to be more generous. He also seems to have had a bit of a tempestuous relationship with his second wife Lady Florence who brought a lawsuit against her spouse for not letting her live with him. On the other hand Henry publicly accused Florence of having an affair with one of his household servants Roger Wharton – presumably Florence felt that what was good for the gander was also good for the goose! It was definitely not a happy family.

When Henry Clifford died in 1523 and was buried in Bolton Abbey the Cliffords had survived the medieval period and were rising ever further in the Tudor world but who would have thought that less than twenty years later Henry Cliffords final resting place would be dissolved along with all the other monasteries in England and Wales. Times were changing in more ways than one.

The Battle of Solway Moss

Posted on May 13, 2013 by JuliaH

The Battle of Solway Moss took place about six miles north-east of Carlisle between the English army of Henry VII and the Scottish army of James V (pictured here). Henry wasn’t keen on his nephew’s alliance with the French for one thing or his failure to become Protestant for another. The Duke of Norfolk was commanded north where he made himself really popular by burning Roxburgh and Kelso. Foiled by lack of supplies and enraged Scots, Norfolk fell back but James V couldn’t get his nobles to fight the English because they were fairly grumpy about the French element of the equation as well. James raised another army with a bit more loyalty to him and set off to wreak vengeance on the English – certainly on the English West March and hopefully out of reach of the Duke of Norfolk.

The Deputy Warden of the English West March at that time was Sir Thomas Wharton who found himself facing approximately 10,000 Scots, though Edward Hall’s Chronicle says there were 15,000 of them. They’d kicked the party off by setting fire to property on the English side of the border. Wharton probably had mixed feelings about that as the area around Arthuret was a predominantly Graham stronghold- not a surname known for its law-abiding tendencies- and in addition he only had 3,000 men.

However, on the 24 November 1542 according to Hall again Wharton took on the Scots and left them “wonderfully dismayed, either thinking that the Duke of Norfolk, had been come to the West Marches.” For whatever reason the Scots fled leaving twenty-four guns behind and several wealthy prisoners to be ransomed off.

Wharton also commented on the confusion of the Scots. Apart from the confusion about the size of the English army and who might be commanding it there was the small matter of the Scots themselves – they were being commanded by Sir Oliver Sinclair who was one of James’ favourites. The Scots really didn’t have any heart for fighting, or so it would appear. In addition there was the fact, that as the name suggests Solway Moss is a marshy boggy terrain and the Scots deserted their horses in order to gain safety.

The effect of this battle, which all things considered, was quite a small one, resulted in James V dying within the month after a decline. He left an infant daughter on the throne. What followed next has become known in history as the ‘Rough Wooing’.

Sir Thomas Wharton was rewarded with a title. He became the First Baron Wharton and carried on with business as normal including a raid on Jedburgh.