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The Love Story of Charles Brandon and Mary Tudor

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The Love Story of Charles Brandon and Mary Tudor When Knighthood Was In Flower COULD YOU MAKE HIM DUKE OF SUFFOLK?" WHEN KNIGHTHOOD WAS IN FLOWER OR THE LOVE STORY OF gvattdon and 2JXa*nj THE KING S SISTER, AND HAPPENING IN THE REIGN OF HIS AUGUST MAJESTY, KING HENRY VIII REWRITTEN AND RENDERED INTO MODERN ENGLISH FROM SIR EDWIN CASKODEN S MEMOIR BY EDWIN CASKODEN [CHARLES MAJOR] THOUSAND INDIANAPOLIS, INDIANA, U. S. A. THE BOWEN-MERRILL COMPANY PUBLISHERS Copyright, 1898 By The Bowen-Merrill Company HENRY MORSE Published September, 1898. Reprinted in October, twice in November, three times in December, 1898, three times in January, 1899, twice in February, five times in March, three times in April, and three times in May, July, August, and September, four times in October and November. The sub sequent editions make a total of over one-quarter million copies printed of this book. ? p , TO MY WIPE 5 !42.i 3 CONTENTS tHAP, FAG* THE CASKODENS , 1 I. THE DUEL . 5 II. How BRANDON CAME TO COURT , . 11 III. THE PRINCESS MARY . 19 IV. A LESSON IN DANCING . , . .37 V. AN HONOR AND AN ENEMY , , . 61 VI. A RIDE TO WINDSOR . , .73 VII. LOVE S FIERCE SWEETNESS ... 83 VIII. THE TROUBLE IN BILLINGSGATE WARD . 104 IX. PUT NOT YOUR TRUST IN PRINCESSES . 119 X. ! . , JUSTICE, O KING . , .138 XI. Louis XII A SUITOR .... 149 XII. ATONEMENT . 166 XIII. A GIRL S CONSENT .... 175 XIV. IN THE SIREN COUNTRY .... 186 XV. To MAKE A MAN OF HER . 201 XVI. A HAWKING PARTY . 211 XVII. THE ELOPEMENT . 221 XVIII. To THE TOWER 238 XIX. PROSERPINA 249 XX. DOWN INTO FRANCE . 263 XXI. LETTERS FROM A QUEEN . 277 LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS PAGB " " COULD YOU MAKE HIM DUKE OF SUFFOLK ? . Frontispiece " HAVE I THE HONOR TO FIND THE PRINCESS?" . e . 29 M MY LORD HAS DROPPED HIS SWORD." 65 81 WHEN WE CAME UP ... MARY SAID, I FEAR MY GIRTH IS LOOSE. " 75 - BRANDON THRUST HIS SWORD INTO THE HORSE S THROAT." . 116 :( I RODE UP TO THE KING AND WITH UNCOVERED HEAD ADDRESSED HIM. ..." 142 le IT IS MY TURN TO ASK FORGIVENESS. ..." 171 |{ SHE WENT ALONE, ONE AFTERNOON, TO SEE BRANDON." . 193 * ! GOOD-BYE, MY FRIEND, . AND SHE FLEW HER BIRD . ." 214 64 . I DELIVERED THE REST OF MARY S MESSAGE." . 220 ** , . ONE OF THOSE BLACK NIGHTS FIT FOR WITCH TRAVEL ING." . 222 * THESE FELLOWS . GATHERED ABOUT MARY TO INSPECT HER." 231 K* AT MIDNIGHT A BODY OF YEOMEN . TOOK POSSESSION OF THE BOW AND STRING." . 238 * " MARY , . SAID, IT WAS LIKE A PLAY WEDDING. , , . 269 "Cloth of gold do not despise, Though thou be match d with cloth of frize; Cloth of frize, be not too bold, thou d cloth of Though be match with gold." * Inscription on a label affixed to Brandon s lance nnder a pictnrs of Mary Tudor and Charles Brandon, at Strawberry Hill. "There lived a Knight, when Knighthood was in fiow r, Who charmed alike the tilt-yard and the bow r." WHEN KNIGHTHOOD WAS IN FLOWER THE CASKODENS We Caskodens take great pride in our ancestry. Some persons, I know, hold all that to be totally un-Solomon- like and the height of vanity, but they, usually, have no ancestors of whom to be proud. The man who does not know who his great-grandfather was, naturally enough would not care what he was. The Caskodens have pride of ancestry because they know both who and what. Even admitting that it is vanity at all, it is an impersonal sort of failing, which, like the excessive love of country, leans for the fears to his virtueward ; man who disgrace ancestors is certainly less likely to disgrace himself. Of course there are a great many excellent persons who can go no further back than papa and mamma, who, doubt less, eat and drink and sleep as well, and love as happily, as if they could trace an unbroken lineage clear back to Adam or Xoah, or somebody of that sort. Nevertheless, we Caskodens are proud of our ancestry, and expect to remain so to the end of the chapter, regardless of whom it pleases or displeases. We have a right to be proud, for there is an unbroken male line from William the Conqueror down to the pres ent time. In this lineal list are fourteen Barons the title lapsed when Charles I fell twelve Knights of the Garter and forty-seven Knights of Bath and other orders. -A (O 2 WHEN KNIGHTHOOD WAS IN FLOWER Caskoden distinguished himself by gallant service under the Great Norman and was given rich English lands and a fair Saxon bride, albeit an unwilling one, as his reward. With this fair, unwilling Saxon bride and her long plait of yellow hair goes a very pretty, pathetic story, which I may tell you at some future time if you take kindly to this. A Caskoden was seneschal to William Rufus, and sat at the rich, half barbaric banquets in the first Great Hall. Still another was one of the doughty barons who wrested from John the Great Charter, England s declaration of another was in the councils of independence ; high Henry V. I have omitted one whom I should not fail to mention : Adjodika Caskoden, who was a member of the Dunce Par liament of Henry IV, so called because there were no lawyers in it. It is true that in the time of Edward IV a Caskoden did stoop to trade, but it was trade of the most dignified, hon orable sort; he was a goldsmith, and his guild, as you know, were the bankers and international clearance house for people, king and nobles. Besides, it is stated on good authority that there was a great scandal wherein the gold smith s wife was mixed up in an intrigue with the noble so learn that in King Edward ; we even trade the Casko- dens were of honorable position and basked in the smile of their prince. As for myself, I am not one of those who so much to trade and I think it object ; contemptible in a to his all iHian screw nose out of place sneering at it, while enjoying every luxury of life from its profits. This goldsmith was shrewd enough to turn what some persons might call his ill fortune, in one way, into gain in another. He was one of those happily constituted, thrifty philosophers who hold that even misfortune should not be wasted, and that no evil is so great but the alchemy of THE CASKODENS 3 common sense can transmute some part of it into good. So he coined the smiles which the king shed upon his wife he being powerless to prevent, for Edward smiled where he listed, and listed nearly everywhere into nobles, crowns and pounds sterling, and left a glorious fortune to his son and to his son s son, unto about the fourth genera tion, which was a ripe old age for a fortune, I think. How few of them live beyond the second, and fewer still beyond the third. It was during the third generation of this fortune that the events of the following history oc curred. Now, it has been the custom of the Caskodens for centu ries to keep a record of events, as they have happened, both private and public. Some are in the form of diaries and like those of and others in let journals Pepys Evelyn ; ters like the Pastons others in verse like ; again and song Chaucer and the Water Poet still others in ; and the more pretentious line of memoir and chronicle. These records we always have kept jealously within our family, thinking it vulgar, like the Pastons, to submit our private affairs to public gaze. There can, however, be no reason why those parts treating solely of outside matters should be so carefully guarded, and I have determined to choose for publication such portions as do not divulge family secrets nor skele tons, and which really redound to family honor. For this occasion I have selected from the memoir of my worthy ancestor and namesake, Sir Edwin Caskoden grandson of the goldsmith, and Master of the Dance to Henry VII the story of Charles Brandon and Mary Tu dor, sister to the king. This story is so well known to the student of English history that I fear its repetition will lack that zest which 4 WHEN KNIGHTHOOD WAS IN FLOWER attends the development of an unforeseen denouement. But it is of so great interest, and is so full, in its sweet, fierce manifestation, of the one thing insoluble by time, Love, that I will nevertheless rewrite it from old Sir Edwin s memoir. Not so much as an historical narrative, although I fear a little history will creep in, despite me, but simply as a picture of that olden long ago, which, try as we will to put aside the hazy, many-folded curtain of time, still retains its shadowy lack of sharp detail, toning down and mellowing the hard aspect of real life harder and more unromantic even than our own into the blend ing softness of an exquisite mirage. I might give you the exact words in which Sir Edwin wrote, and shall now and then quote from contemporane ous chronicles in the language of his time, but should I so write at all, I fear the pleasure of perusal would but poorly pay for the trouble, as the English of the Bluff King is almost a foreign tongue to us.
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