Catherine Willoughby
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Catherine Brandon, Duchess of Suffolk, suo jure 12th Baroness Willoughby de Eresby (22 March 1519 - 19 September 1580), born Catherine Willoughby, was a noblewoman living at the English courts of King Henry VIII, King Edward VI and later, Queen Elizabeth I. Noted for her Protestant reform views, she fled abroad to Wesel and later Poland during the reign of Queen Mary I.
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[edit] Childhood
Catherine was born, probably at court, to Maria de Salinas, a close friend and lady-in-waiting to the Queen, Catherine of Aragon, and the 11th Baron Willoughby de Eresby, a courtier of Henry VIII, on 22 March 1519 and was baptised on 26 March. The King favored another match bolstering his own marital alliance with Spain, and he even named one of his warships the Mary Willoughby. It seems clear that Catherine was named for the Queen, but her Spanish ties did not prevent her from becoming one of England's leading Protestants later in life.
[edit] Marriage
In 1526, Lord Willoughby de Eresby died, and Catherine, as his only surviving child, inherited the Barony and an income of 15,000 ducats a year at the age of seven. Wardship of the girl, i.e., guardianship and provision of her person, fell to the King, who sold it to his brother-in-law, the Duke of Suffolk. A battle over her inheritance ensued with her uncle, who argued that the estates and title should pass to him rather than a female heir. After this issue was resolved, Catherine was betrothed to the Duke's son and heir, the Earl of Lincoln. However, on the death in 1533 of the Duke's wife, Mary Tudor (sister of Henry VIII and Queen Dowager of France), Brandon chose to marry Catherine himself (Lord Lincoln died the following year).
Despite about 35 years' difference in their ages, the Duke of Suffolk and his new Duchess had two sons, Henry and Charles. This marriage brought Catherine into a significant branch of the extended royal family, as the King's will made his sister Mary's descendants the next heirs to the throne after his own children. The Duke and Duchess of Suffolk officially greeted Anne of Cleves when she arrived in England in 1539 to marry the King, and in 1541 they helped arrange a royal progress for the King and his next Queen, Catherine Howard. This progress later became notorious for the Queen's adulterous trysts with her kinsman, Thomas Culpeper, though the Duke and Duchess's Grimsthorpe Castle was "one of the very few places on the route ... where Catherine Howard had not misbehaved herself" (Martienssen, Queen Catherine Parr).
[edit] 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 Protestant. 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 the Queen's Protestantism grew controversial, the King ordered the Queen's arrest, though his wife managed to sweet-talk him into cancelling this.
At this time, it was rumoured that the King was considering the Duchess of Suffolk - still only in her mid-20s — as wife number seven. In February 1547, Van der Delft wrote: 'I hesitate to report there are rumours of a new queen. Some attribute it to the sterility of the present Queen, while others say that there will be no change during the present war. Madame Suffolk is much talked about and is in great favour; but the King shows no alteration in his behaviour to the Queen, although she is said to be annoyed by the rumour'[1] But the friendship of the two Catherines remained strong, and after Henry VIII's death in 1547, the Duchess helped fund the publication of one of Catherine Parr's books, The Lamentation of a Sinner. She also became a patron of John Day, England's leading Protestant publisher; Day printed various books with the Duchess of Suffolk's coat of arms from 1548 onward. Beginning in 1550, the Duchess helped establish Stranger churches for foreign Protestants, principally Dutch, who were fleeing religious persecution on the Continent.
[edit] After Henry VIII's death
Upon Catherine Parr's death in childbirth, the Duchess of Suffolk took custody of her child, Mary Seymour. But the Duchess's letter to her friend William Cecil, asking for funds to support the Queen's infant daughter, is the last definite record of this child. Years later, the Duchess also became the custodian of one of her Brandon step-granddaughters, Lady Mary Grey, when the latter was placed under house arrest after marrying without royal consent.
In 1551 both the Duchess's sons, already students at Cambridge, died within an hour of each other. In recovering from this misfortune and its severe test to her faith, Catherine built a new life. In this period she employed Hugh Latimer as her chaplain.[2] She married her second husband, Richard Bertie, a member of her household, out of love and shared religious beliefs. But she continued to be known as the Duchess of Suffolk, and her efforts to have her husband named Lord Willoughby de Eresby were unsuccessful. In 1555, during the reign of Queen Mary I, the Berties were among the English Protestants who went into exile on the Continent. Their persecution by Stephen Gardiner, the Bishop of Winchester and Lord Chancellor, and subsequent wanderings were recounted in Foxe's Book of Martyrs, in an account probably written by Richard Bertie himself for the 1570 edition. After their return to England, they lived at Catherine's estate, Grimsthorpe in Lincolnshire, and at court. By Richard Bertie, Catherine was the mother of Peregrine Bertie, who married a sister of the Earl of Oxford, and of Susan Bertie, who married firstly Earl of Kent, and secondly Sir John Wingfield, a nephew of Catherine's friend Bess of Hardwick.
[edit] Literary tributes
Advocates of Oxford as the real author of Shakespeare's plays have suggested that Catherine's strong personality may have served as a model for Paulina in The Winter's Tale. Catherine and Richard Bertie's exile became the basis of a ballad by Thomas Deloney, The Dutchess of Suffolk's Calamity, published before 1607, 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. Catherine'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.
[edit] References
[edit] Bibliography
- My Lady Suffolk: A Portrait of Catherine Willoughby, Duchess of Suffolk by Evelyn Read (1963) ASIN B000JE85OK.
- Letters and Papers of the Reign of Henry VIII
[edit] In fiction
- Catherine's story is fictionalized in the novel The Sixth Wife: A Novel by Suzannah Dunn.
| Peerage of England | ||
|---|---|---|
| Preceded by William Willoughby |
Baroness Willoughby de Eresby 1526-1580 |
Succeeded by Peregrine Bertie |
