Eleanor BRANDON
(C. Cumberland)
Born: 1519
Died: Nov 1547
Father: Charles BRANDON (1° D. Suffolk)
Mother: Mary TUDOR (Queen of France/D. Suffolk)
Married: Henry CLIFFORD (2° E. Cumberland)
Children:
1. Margaret CLIFFORD (C. Derby)
2. Charles CLIFFORD
The youngest daughter of Charles, Duke of Suffolk, and Mary Tudor (sister to Henry VIII and widow of Louis XII of France), possibly named after the Emperor Carlos V sister. She was contracted to married Henry Clifford in 1533, the same year he was made Knight of the Bath on the vigil of Queen Anne Boleyn's coronation. Henry was forced to sell some of the Clifford estates to pay for the wedding and building of the Tudor wing at Skipton Castle. Henry VIII was present at the wedding and in his will he entailed the crown to Eleanor's children if there was no issue from Henry's own children or by his other niece Lady Frances.
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In 1536, she was chief mourner in the funeral of
Catalina de Aragon. She and
sixteen other ladies and fifthy of
Catalina`s serving women followed the hearse in slow stages to the
abbey of Saltry, where a burning chapel was lit and the party rested overnight.
Then, accompanied by forty-eight poor men in black hoods and robes carrying long
torches, the company made the final journey to the benedictine abbey of
Peterborough, where Catalina
was to be interred. In October 1536, during the Pilgrimage of Grace, she was staying with her son and twho of her sisters.in. law at Bolton Priory. The commons, besieging the Earl of Cumberlandīs stronghold at Skipton Castle, threatened to capture them and, if the castle was not yielded, "to violate and enforce them with knaves unto my Lordīs great discomfort". Instead, Christopher Aske, brother of the rebel Robert Aske, and a cousin and a receiver of the Earl of Cumberland, enlisted the aid of the vicar of Skipton, a groom and a boy and led the would-be captives over the moors at night to the safety of Skipton Castle. Henry Clifford and Eleanor Brandon had three children, two boys whom both died in infancy and a daughter Margaret. Eleanor died in 1547 and her husband was heartbroken. He was very ill for a long time and retired to the country to recover. He was the bearer of the Third Sword at the Catholic Queen Mary's coronation and was Lord Lieutenant of Westmorland from 1553 to 1559 but when Elizabeth came to the throne he was accused of protecting popish priests in the North. In 1569 he supported Mary Queen of Scot's claim to the English throne but he did not take part in the Catholic Rising of the Northern Earls. He died in Jan the following year. By his second wife, Anne Dacre, he left two sons and three daughters. |
Margaret Clifford (C. Derby) |
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