Eleanor Brandon

Eleanor Brandon, Countess of Cumberland , German  Countess of Cumberland (* around 1518/21; † September 27, 1547 at Brougham Castle), was an English noblewoman and the youngest daughter of Charles Brandon, 1st Duke of Suffolk and Mary Tudor , queen widow from France. She was a niece of King Henry VIII of England and, through her sister Frances Brandon, aunt of the Nine Day Queen Jane Gray .

Life

Childhood and youth

Eleanor Brandon was born between 1518 and 1521, the exact date of birth is unknown. She was baptized Eleanor, possibly in honor of Eleonores of Castile , the sister of Emperor Charles V. She grew up with her siblings under the care of her mother, mostly in Westhorpe Hall , a country estate of her parents.

When Eleanor's sister Frances married in March 1533, Eleanor may have been engaged to Henry Clifford (1517-1570), heir to the Earl of Cumberland , who had to strain his finances for this prestigious marriage of his son. Negotiations for the marriage between Eleanor and the young Clifford had been going on since 1530. In June 1533 the family was hit hard when Eleanor's mother suddenly died. Eleanor moved north to the Cliffords nine months later, where they owned a fortress near Skipton in Craven. Eleanor's wedding finally took place in June 1535 in the presence of her uncle, King Henry VIII, after he had already given his consent before Easter. The Earl of Cumberland upgraded the fortress in the 1530s, but the young couple doesn't seem to have lived there at first, as Eleanor's father later complained to Cumberland that Henry and Eleanor were living in an unhealthy country house.

Hostage of the rebels

In February 1536 Eleanor led the funeral procession (as chief mourner ) at the funeral of Catherine of Aragón , an honorable task. When in October of the same year the so-called Pilgrimage of Grace , a Catholic revolt against the religious reforms carried out by the king, broke out in England under the leadership of Robert Aske , it got caught between the political fronts. The revolt broke out in the north, where the Cliffords resided, and many of the region's nobles defected to the rebels. Her father-in-law, the Earl of Cumberland, was one of the few northern nobles who did not join the rebellion. He and Eleanor's husband Henry had successfully held the beleaguered Skipton Castle for two or three days when the rebels finally got the idea to force them to surrender by capturing Eleanor, who was ten miles away with their young son Stopped at Bolton Abbey.

A message was then sent to Cumberland to give up Skipton Castle or to put his daughter-in-law and her baby on the front lines of the besiegers; if Skipton still did not surrender, Eleanor and her servants would be "handed over to the lowest men in the camp." The Earl of Cumberland received help in this situation from Christopher Aske, who was his cousin and servant, but more importantly, the brother of the leader of the rebels. He asked him to bring Eleanor and his grandson back. At night, Christopher Aske, accompanied only by the Vicar of Skipton and two servants, managed to break into the rebel camp and bring Eleanor and her son back to Skipton.

The rebellion finally collapsed. Fewer details are known from Eleanor Brandon's further life than from the life of her sister Frances, but it is certain that she and Frances, together with her cousin Lady Margaret Douglas, were among the so-called ladies of honor of Queen Catherine Parr .

Role in the line of succession

Margaret Clifford , Eleanor's only surviving child

As the niece of the king and granddaughter of Henry VII , Eleanor had a place in the line of succession to England. Through the act of succession of 1544 she was eighth in line to the throne after her cousins Edward , Mary and Elizabeth and her sister and their daughters. The king had already excluded the descendants of his older sister Margaret from the line of succession in 1536 and preferred the line of his younger sister Mary , Eleanor's mother. When her uncle died in 1547, Eleanor moved into seventh place, but she died in the same year and her place in the line of succession passed to her daughter Margaret .

Last years

When Eleanor's father died in 1545, he bequeathed her and her sister Frances tableware with the ducal coat of arms worth £ 200 each, but Eleanor herself died an early death two years later. Possibly the only known letter from her is from that year, because in it she speaks of an illness. "Dearest, [...] since you left I have been very ill and my water is very red, which is why I assume that I have both jaundice and intermittent fever, because I have no appetite for meat and such pain in my side and towards the back like in Brougham, where this happened to me the first time. Which is why I ask you to send me a doctor [...] ” .

Historians have suggested porphyria as a possible diagnosis of Eleanor's disease . Symptoms for this disease include a., as listed by Eleanor, severe pain in the abdomen and back and red urine. She died on September 27, 1547 (according to some sources also in November) at the age of just mid to late 20s at Brougham Castle and was buried in Skipton. Her husband's reaction to her death was remarkable. He fainted and was unconscious for so long that his servants thought he was dead and had already covered the "corpse" when he suddenly came to. Henry Clifford recovered from the shock, married a second time a few years later, and had six other children.

portrait

Hans Holbein, sketch of an unidentified lady, approx. 1532–1543, often given as Eleanor Brandon

There are no clearly identified portraits of Eleanor Brandon. A sketch by Hans Holbein the Younger , which is published on the Internet as Eleanor, is in truth unidentified, a miniature by Hans Holbein, which was considered a representation of Eleanor in a private collection, has meanwhile been identified as Catherine Howard . For several years, Hans Eworth's portrait, now traditionally mistaken for Margaret Clifford, was thought to be a representation of Eleanor. The reason for this is the coat of arms, which is a combination of Eleanor Brandon's coat of arms with that of her husband Henry Clifford. Such a coat of arms was traditionally carried by women after the wedding. However, the portrait was only created in the 1560s, almost twenty years after Eleanor's death, and could therefore at best be a posthumous portrait. It has been proven that the coat of arms was only inserted into the picture much later. It may therefore represent a lady whose identity was no longer clearly established at the time the coat of arms was inserted.

The Victorian biographer Agnes Strickland, however, knew a portrait that was taken for Eleanor at the time and describes the lady in the picture:

“Lady Eleanor is very pretty, her hair is adorned with strings of pearls and she wears a double pearl necklace around her neck. She has beautiful hazel brown eyes and a delicate, light complexion. "

progeny

• Henry Clifford, died as an infant
• Charles Clifford, died as an infant
• Margaret Clifford , (ca.1540 to September 28, 1596), ∞ Henry Stanley, 4th Earl of Derby. She was the mother of Ferdinando Stanley, 5th Earl of Derby

Pedigree

literature

• Steven J. Gunn: Charles Brandon, Duke of Suffolk, c. 1484-1545. Blackwell Publishing, Williston 1988, ISBN 0-631-15781-6 . (About her father)
• Dulcie M. Ashdown: Tudor Cousins: Rivals for the Throne. Sutton Publishing, 2000, ISBN 0-7509-2547-7 .

Web links

• Lady Eleanor Brandon on thepeerage.com , accessed October 6, 2015.
• Entry on tudorplace.com.ar (English)

Individual evidence

1. ^ Steven J. Gunn: Charles Brandon, Duke of Suffolk, c. 1484-1545. Blackwell Publishing, Williston 1988, p. 94.
2. ^ Steven J. Gunn: Charles Brandon, Duke of Suffolk, c. 1484-1545. Blackwell Publishing, Williston 1988, p. 62.
3. ^ Dulcie M. Ashdown: Tudor Cousins: Rivals for the Throne. Sutton Publishing, 2000, p. 18.
4. ^ Steven J. Gunn: Charles Brandon, Duke of Suffolk, c. 1484-1545. Blackwell Publishing, Williston 1988, p. 132.
5. ^ Dulcie M. Ashdown: Tudor Cousins: Rivals for the Throne. Sutton Publishing, 2000, p. 56.
6. ^ Steven J. Gunn: Charles Brandon, Duke of Suffolk, c. 1484-1545. Blackwell Publishing, Williston 1988, p. 175.
7. ↑ "... the chief mourner what lady Eleanor daughter of the duke of Suffolk and the French Queen, and niece of king Henry" In: Letter of the imperial ambassador Chapuys of 10 February 1536 Emperor Charles V. In: Letters and Papers, Foreign and Domestic, Henry VIII, Volume 10: January – July 1536. London 1887, p. 106.
8. ↑ ^{a b} Dulcie M. Ashdown: Tudor Cousins: Rivals for the throne. Sutton Publishing, 2000, p. 58
9. ^ RW Hoyle: The Pilgrimage of Grace and the Politics of the 1530s. Oxford University Press, Oxford 2005, p. 444.
10. ↑ Barbara J. Harris: English Aristocratic Women 1450-1550. Marriage and Family, Property and Careers. Oxford University Press, Oxford 2002, p. 218.
11. ^ Steven J. Gunn: Charles Brandon, Duke of Suffolk, c. 1484-1545. Blackwell Publishing, Williston 1988, p. 220.
12. ↑ ^{a b} Dulcie M. Ashdown: Tudor Cousins: Rivals for the throne. Sutton Publishing, 2000, p. 59.
13. ^ Sarah Gristwood: Arbella. England's Lost Queen. Bantam Books 2004, p. 464
14. ↑ Royal Collection: 'An unidentified woman'
15. ^ Lionel Cust: A Portrait of Queen Catherine Howard, by Hans Holbein the Younger . In: The Burlington Magazine for Connoisseurs, Vol. 17, No. 88 . The Burlington Magazine Publications Ltd. 1910, p. 194
16. ↑ ^{a b} Tate Collection
17. ↑ Agnes Strickland: Lives of the Tudor Princesses including Lady Jane Gray and her Sisters. 1868 Longmans, Green and Co., p. 295