The Tudor Brandons Read online

  The Buckingham Rebellion of 1483 came as a shock to the new king. The Duke of Buckingham appeared loyal. He was instrumental in Richard’s king-making and had organised his coronation in July. Buckingham had been there when Edward’s sons, the two young princes, had been escorted to the Tower and seemed to truly be Richard’s man. He was richly rewarded for his loyalty by being made constable of England and chief justice and chamberlain of north and south Wales and it seemed he would have no cause to turn against Richard. Yet just months later, in October, he was involved in a well-organised plan to replace Richard with Henry Tudor.

  The rebels included Charles’ grandfather, Sir William, and Charles’ father, William the younger, as well as Uncle Thomas and cousin, John Wingfield. They refused to accept Richard’s reign and backed the young Henry Tudor’s claim to the throne. Henry’s father Edmund was the illegitimate son of Owen ap Tudor, once lover and husband of Katherine de Valois, the widow of Henry V. Through his mother Lady Margaret Beaufort, he was descended from John of Gaunt, the Duke of Lancaster and fourth son of Edward III and his third wife Katherine Swynford. All four of this couple’s children were born before they were married but legitimised by papal bull after their nuptials. The children were given the surname Beaufort but they were specifically excluded from the royal succession, as were their heirs. This did nothing to dissuade Henry’s mother, Lady Margaret, from raising her son in the absolute belief that he was the true king of England.

  The plan was that Henry Tudor would travel from his exile in France to land along the south coast of England with an army of Breton mercenaries, and meet up with Buckingham and his rebels who would travel from Wales to London gathering their forces from the West Country, Wiltshire and Berkshire. Meanwhile, men from Surrey, Kent and Sussex would descend on the capital to engage with Richard III, distracting him so that Buckingham and Tudor’s forces could amass and descend on London.

  But something went wrong. Some of the Kent men, probably inflamed by a rumour that Edward’s sons, the princes in the Tower, had been murdered, advanced on the city eight days too early and were met by the Duke of Norfolk (by now John Howard, after the 4th Duke died without male heir in 1476) and his men. Buckingham had not even left Wales. Richard, on finding out about the rebellion, had sent men to destroy any bridges over the Severn so that Buckingham and his men could not cross and join forces with Henry Tudor.

  Buckingham’s plan was falling apart. Henry had sailed for England but his fleet was buffeted by a colossal storm and his ships scattered. He reached Poole but sailed onto Plymouth. He was too wary to put ashore after being hailed by a band of soldiers who told him that Buckingham had triumphed and was waiting for him inland. Henry distrusted the men, sensing a plot to capture him, and he sailed back to Brittany, his conquest of England postponed.

  Buckingham’s army had also been besieged by the storm and as well as the bridges having been destroyed, the Severn was now too swollen and dangerous to cross in any other way. Buckingham’s men deserted and the duke was forced to hide in the house of one of his men, Ralph Bannister (or Banastre) of Lacon Hall, near Wem in Shropshire. Tempted by the £1,000 on his head, Bannister betrayed him to John Mytton, the Sheriff of Shropshire. He was arrested and taken to the Blue Boar Inn in Salisbury. On the 2nd November, All Souls Day, he was beheaded in the marketplace. Richard III had refused to see him or hear his pleas for mercy. It was a wise move. His son later claimed that his father had upon him a knife which he would have used to kill the king.

  Afterwards, Richard III wrote of Buckingham that he was ‘the most untrue creature living’.7 But it appears that Buckingham was really only the figurehead of the rebellion. True, he turned away from the man he had helped to make king, but rebels like the Brandons had been plotting and planning well before he became involved. It is hard to see why Buckingham took such a risk when he had so much to lose. The real ringleaders of the rebellion were more likely to have been Henry Tudor’s mother, Lady Margaret Beaufort and her ally Bishop Morton of Ely. The bishop had been Buckingham’s prisoner, albeit living quite comfortably in his household, and had had ample opportunity to enlist Buckingham to their cause.

  The rebellion had clearly ended badly and it was time for the Tudor faction to reconsider their plans. Henry Tudor was back in Brittany and many of his supporters, now outlawed, fled to join him. Sir William Brandon hid in Colchester while his sons William the younger and Thomas Brandon went on the run. It was now the sons’ turn to ally the Brandon family with Henry Tudor, but for those involved with the rebellion things were getting dangerous. Richard issued a proclamation in Kent offering 300 marks or £10 of land for the capture of rebel leaders, Sir John Gilford, Sir Thomas Lewkenor, Sir William Haute and others. In the case of William Brandon the younger, Charles’ father, John Wingfield and several others, £100 or 10 marks of land were offered for their capture.8 Charles’ uncle, Thomas, seems to have escaped notice. In December 1483, William the younger was required to relinquish his Essex estate, because of his rebel activities, to Thomas Tyrell, his wife’s brother-in-law from her first marriage, but he refused to give it up. Three hundred men were sent to turn him out of his house and home.

  In Richard III’s one and only act of parliament in January 1484, William the younger was named several times as a rebel and traitor. He was attainted along with men such as Edward Poynings, John Fogge and Alexander Culpeper for they ‘intended, conspired, plotted and planned the death and destruction of the most royal person’ on 18 October 1483 at Maidstone, 20 October at Rochester, 22 October at Gravesend and 25 October at Guildford and various other places. They also ‘assembled and caused to be assembled a great number of people, equipped and arrayed in the manner of war’ and for this they were convicted and attainted for high treason with their lands forfeit and to be ‘unable henceforth forever to have, hold, occupy, inherit or enjoy any name of dignity, estate or pre-eminence’.9 Yet William was pardoned ‘of all offences committed by him’ on 28 March 1484.

  By November, Charles’ father, William, joined his brother Thomas in another uprising, this time across the channel, which saw the Brandon’s allegiance now change to a Lancastrian family, the de Veres. Richard III had ordered that John de Vere, the 13th Earl of Oxford, be moved from Hammes fortress in Calais to England, after he received word of an uprising and a plot to free the rebellious earl. De Vere managed to escape by enlisting his gaoler and the commander of the fortress, James Blount, to the Tudor cause. William boarded a ship at East Mersea in November and sailed for France, where he was joined by his wife, Elizabeth. Along with his brother Thomas, they fought in the relief of Hammes fortress in January 1485 when de Vere returned to the now besieged fortress to evacuate those loyal to Blount, including his wife who had held the fortress against troops led by Richard’s man, Lord Dynham.

  William may have been pardoned for his previous rebel activities, but several times in 1485 his lands and rents were given to other men. In April, Philip Constable was granted a yearly rent from the manor of Southcarleton, ‘late of William Brandon, rebel’. With his continuing allegiance to Lancaster and Henry Tudor, he would never be welcome in an England ruled by a Yorkist king. Charles was born into a country and family in political revolt – Richard III thought his father a rebel, Henry Tudor saw him as a loyal man.

  Henry Tudor eventually returned to England, landing at Mill Bay near Milford Haven on 7 August 1485 with his small army. He took Dale Castle and moved on to Haverfordwest. From there he travelled through Llanbadarn and Cardigan before being joined by Rhys ap Thomas, Lieutenant of West Wales, and his men at Newton. Five hundred more men met them at Newport, thanks to Sir Gilbert Talbot, as the Tudor army continued its march through Shrewsbury towards London in Henry’s bid to seize the crown.

  Henry’s men were a mix of Welsh, French and Scottish soldiers. Although the young Tudor was inexperienced in battle and had never fought before, he was surrounded by men who had years of experience. Richard III by contrast was battle tried, and had an
army of around 8,000 men. He is said to have welcomed Henry’s coming and a chance to be rid of this pretender. With his show of superior force, he intercepted Henry’s troops close to Market Bosworth in Leicester. As the sun rose, men and horses readied for the battle to come. The standards of Henry’s red dragon and Richard’s white boar were held high. The horses fretted and gnashed at their bits while the archers prepared for the first onslaught.

  According to Jean Molinet, the French chronicler, Richard’s army fired on Henry’s troops as soon as they were in range. Pikes were used by the French troops, and the typical slash and stab warfare of the age commenced with ferocity. The fighting was intense and up close. There was barely room to wield a sword. Steel crashed against steel, screams of the dying rent the air and the Stanleys, the family that Lady Margaret Beaufort had married into, watched on from their vantage point taking neither side but with much needed extra troops who would swing the battle,

  As the battle continued, Henry moved away from the main fight with his close bodyguard – some think to reach the Stanleys to exhort them to fight in their favour. Richard III, astride his charger, watched as the group split off and instantly led a charge after them. Vergil wrote ‘King Richard understood, first by espials (observation) where Earl Henry was far off with a small force of soldiers about him, then after drawing nearer he knew it perfectly by evident signs and tokens that it was Henry, wherefore all inflamed with ire he struck his horse with spurs and runneth out of the one side without the vanwards against him’.10 Richard III charged for Henry and his bodyguard. Charles’ uncle Thomas was spared but his father, William, Henry Tudor’s standard-bearer, was cut down, a move to lower the flag and demoralise Henry’s troops. The pennant of St Georges Cross and the Red Dragon lay trampled in the mud and blood of Bosworth Field. Charles would never know his father.

  Richard continued to try and reach Henry to end the battle. The Stanleys, seeing Richard now separated from his troops, took the opportunity to finally rally to the Tudor cause. Vergil seems to think that Richard could have saved himself by riding away. Instead he was unseated from his horse and dealt a deathly blow. Tales tell that Lord Thomas Stanley found the gold coronet from Richard’s helmet under a thorn bush and placed it on Henry’s head, crowning him in the field. With their king dead, the royal troops fled or surrendered to Henry’s men. Death surrounded them. Hundreds of bodies from both sides littered the surrounding area. Richard’s naked body was slung over a horse and taken to Leicester where his corpse was left on display to prove his demise.

  After Charles’ father died, he was lauded for his bravery by some, remembered for his misdeeds by others. William is remembered in a poem about Bosworth:

  amongst all other Knights, remember

  which were hardy, & therto wight;

  Sir william Brandon was one of those,

  King Heneryes Standard he kept on height,

  & vanted itt with manhood & might

  vntill with dints hee was dr(i)uen downe,

  & dyed like an ancyent Knight,

  with HENERY of England that ware the crowne.

  —Bosworth Ffeilde, anonymous author

  He is also immortalised in Shakespeare’s Richard III when the king says ‘Sir William Brandon, you shall bear my standard’ and on hearing of his death along with the Duke of Norfolk, Lord Ferrers and Sir Robert Brakenbury, Richard tells Stanley to ‘inter their bodies as becomes their births’.

  There is some debate as to whether William actually was knighted. In various sources he is given the title of Sir. Hall’s Chronicles states ‘Kyng Rychard set on so sharpely at the first Brout y he ouerthrew therles standarde, and slew Sir William Brandon his standarde bearer’, while a list of knights compiled by William Shaw states he was knighted as Henry made landing in Wales on 7 August prior to the Battle of Bosworth. A recent article also claims that William was knighted just before the Battle of Bosworth, either at Milford Haven or at Witherley, closer to the battle.

  Whether or not he had been knighted, it seems William was not the chivalrous knight that others spoke of. In 1478, Sir John Paston wrote that he had been arrested for rape:

  yonge William Brandon is in warde and arestyd ffor thatt he scholde have fforce ravysshyd and swyvyd an olde jentyl-woman and yitt was nott therwith easyd, butt swyvyd hyr oldest dowtr, and than wolde have swyvyd the other sustr bothe; wherffor men sey ffowle off hym, and that he wolde ete the henne and alle hyr chekynnys; and som seye that the Kynge entendyth to sitte uppon hym, and men seye he is lyke to be hangyd, ffor he hathe weddyd a wedowe.11

  Paston wrote that there were rumours he would be hanged for his offence, but somehow he escaped his punishment.

  Now with his death, Charles and his siblings, William and Anne, were left fatherless, as were his two half-sisters, Elizabeth and Katherine – his father’s illegitimate daughters. It was the second time that his mother, Elizabeth Bruyn, daughter and coheiress of Sir Henry Bruyn of South Ockendon, Essex, Sheriff of Hampshire, Steward of the Isle of Wight and MP for Portsmouth, found herself widowed. She had married Thomas Tyrrell of Heron, Essex, before 17 February 1462, but he died after 3 July 1471. Charles also had two half-brothers from this marriage, William and Humphrey Tyrell. After William’s death, Charles’ mother remarried one William Mallory.

  Henry Tudor was crowned the rightful king of England on 30 October 1485 at Westminster, and early the next year married Elizabeth of York, Edward IV’s daughter, as he had sworn to do during his stay in France. At Westminster Abbey, the Houses of Lancaster and York were finally united and their first son, Arthur, was born just eight months after at Winchester. Bernard Andre wrote that after the wedding ‘great gladness filled all the kingdom’12 but this seems a biased view. The people had only just become accustomed to Richard III’s reign and now they had yet another new king.

  Charles’ grandfather was quick to petition the newly crowned king for his position back as Marshal of the King’s Bench, stating that he was ‘put in such fear of his life by Richard III, late in deed and not by right king of England, that to save his life he was obliged to take the protection and privilege of sanctuary at Colchester’.13 Henry VII granted his petition.

  Charles had lost his father fighting for Henry Tudor but his grandfather, Sir William Brandon, had survived and was now loyal to the next king of England. This loyalty may have impressed upon the young Charles who was probably staying in his household after his father’s death but any influence Sir William had over his grandson was short-lived.

  Sir William Brandon died in the same year that a boy was born who would be everything to Charles. In 1491, Prince Henry came into the world – the future King Henry VIII and the man who would become Charles’ closest companion. Charles wouldn’t know it yet but their lives would be forever intertwined.

  His grandfather, William, was buried in the parish church of St Peter and St Paul in Wangford and left the church 40 marks in his will towards its restoration and upkeep. When Charles’ mother, Elizabeth, also died three years later, on 7 March 1494, Charles was sent to his Uncle Thomas at court. The same Thomas who had fought alongside Charles’ father but had been spared his life. Uncle Thomas was to be a guiding mentor and role model for the young Charles, and would pave his way into court life and the beginning of his illustrious career.

  Portrait of Charles Brandon circa 1530

  Chapter Two

  1494–1509

  The Princess and the Knight

  Charles was now firmly ensconced at the court of Henry VII and from these beginnings, his star would rise to become the king’s son’s most favoured companion and to others in later years, a second king. Charles started his court career by humbly serving at the king’s table along with his friend Walter Devereux, who would later become Viscount Hereford. They were clothed and fed whilst they learnt the ways of the court, sleeping in close quarters and gaining ‘social confidence to play a public role’.1

  The Tudor court was a mass of servants and, in 1494, Henry
VII established the new department of the royal household and set down some regulations as to how he wished his household to run, including:

  How the King ought to be served in His Great Chamber.

  There ought daylie twoe yeomen of the crowne to sett upp the board, and two esquires at dinner and supper to take it downc ; and if it please the Kinge to sitt before hee bee served of the first course, then both dinner and supper, twoe esquires to take upp the board be- twcene them ; and when the King is sett, then to sett the board downe againe ; the which is most used on festivall dayes. Alsoe, at night there ought to bee in the chamber three torches, five, seven or nine ; and as many fifes sett upp as there bee torches ; the havinge of them is much after the festival daies; and alsoe after as the cause requireth. These torches to bee houlden with yeomen of the crowne, or of the chamber ; and if the King command water before supper, then there ought as many esquires as there bee yeomen with torches to goe to the yeomen and take the torches of them, and they to hould the torches till the King hath washed, and is sett : and then to deliver againe the torches to the fame yeomen, and they to stand still till the board be served ; and when the King is served with wafers or fruites, then the torches to come in and stand on the other side of the chamber ; and when the Almoner doth take upp the board, the esquires againe to take the torches ; and they to come neare the table doeing their obeysaunce; and they to stand still there till the Kinge bee upp and have washed. And then againe to deliver the torches to the yeomen, and to tarrie as longe as it shall please the Kinge, and the yeomen with the torches not to departe them before supper nor after ; but to bee readie to receave the torches of the esquires ; and whensoever the sewer goes to the kitchen to have a torche with him, and to bee borne be fore the meate by an esquire ; and when the meate is sette on the board, then the torch to be delivered at the chamber doore to the sewers servant, whoe ought there to bee readie for : that purpose ; and after the torches come once into the King’s presence, there ought none to depart with noe manner of estate till they avoide all at once ; and thus ought the King to bee day lie and nightlie served…2