Catherine Willoughby

Catherine Willoughby, Duchess of Suffolk, "suo jure" 12th Baroness Willoughby de Eresby (22 March 1519 - 19 September 1580), 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.

Childhood

Catherine was born, probably at court, to Maria de Salinas, a close friend and lady-in-waiting to the Queen, Catherine of Aragon. Catherine Willoughby's father was William Willoughby, 11th Baron Willoughby de Eresby, a courtier during the reign of Henry VIII. She was born on 22 March 1519 and was baptised on 26 March. The King favoured 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.

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).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").

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 cajole him into cancelling this. Catherine once gave a banquet and during a party game afterwards named Bishop Gardiner as the man she loved least. She named her pet spaniel "Gardiner", provoking much amusement when she called her dog to heel. [ Anthony Martienssen,"Queen Katherine Parr" page195.] Several years later when Gardiner was imprisoned during the reign of King Edward VI, she is quoted as saying,"It was merry with the lambs when the wolf was shut up". [Martienssen, page 195]

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' [Letters and Papers from the Reign of Henry VIII, 21, pt. i, no. 1027; by Francis van der Delft, Imperial ambassador)] 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.

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. [Susan Wabuda, ‘Latimer, Hugh (c.1485–1555)’, "Oxford Dictionary of National Biography", Oxford University Press, Sept 2004; online edn, Jan 2008 [http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/16100] , accessed 28 March 2008. ] She married her second husband, Richard Bertie (25 December 1516- 9 April 1582), 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 the Earl of Kent, and secondly Sir John Wingfield, a nephew of Catherine's friend Bess of Hardwick.

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.

Children

# Henry Brandon, 2nd Duke of Suffolk (18 September 1535-14 July1551 died of the sweating sickness
# Charles Brandon, 3rd Duke of Suffolk (1537- 14 July 1551) died of the sweating sickness an hour after his older brother.
# Susan Bertie (1554-) Married firstly in 1570, Reginald Grey of Wrest, 5th Earl of Kent and secondly on 30 September 1581, John Wingfield by whom she had two sons Peregrine Wingfield and Robert Wingfield.
# Peregrine Bertie, 13th Baron Willoughby de Eresby (12 October1555-1601. Married 1577 Mary de Vere, daughter of John de Vere, 16th Earl of Oxford and Margery Golding. [The Peerage.com] They had seven children.

References

Further reading

*"My Lady Suffolk: A Portrait of Catherine Willoughby, Duchess of Suffolk" by Evelyn Read (1963) ASIN B000JE85OK
*"Queen Katherine Parr" by Anthony Martienssen, McGraw-Hill Book Company, New York 1973
* "Women, Reform and Community in Early Modern England: Katherine Willoughby, Duchess of Suffolk, and Lincolnshire's Godly Aristocracy, 1519-1580: 19 (Studies in Modern British Religious History)" by Melissa Franklin Harkrider

In fiction

*Catherine's story is fictionalized in the novel "" by Suzannah Dunn