He held a succession of offices in the royal household, becoming
Master of the Horse in
1513, and received many valuable grants of land. On
15 May 1513 he was created
Viscount Lisle, having entered into a marriage contract with his ward, Elizabeth Grey,
suo jure Viscountess Lisle, who, however, refused to marry him when she came of age.
He distinguished himself at the sieges of
Thérouanne and
Tournai in the French campaign of
1513. One of the agents of
Margaret of Savoy, governor of the
Netherlands, writing from before Thérouanne, reminded her that Lord Lisle was a "second king" and advised her to write him a kind letter.
At this time Henry VIII was secretly urging Margaret to marry Lisle, whom he created
Duke of Suffolk, though he was careful to disclaim (
March 4, 1514) any complicity in the project to her father, the emperor
Maximilian I.
Suffolk took part in the jousts which celebrated the marriage of
Mary Tudor, Henry's sister, with
Louis XII of France. He was accredited to negotiate various matters with Louis, and on Louis' death was sent to congratulate the new King
Francis I.
An affection between Suffolk and the young Dowager Queen Mary had existed before her marriage, and Francis roundly charged him with an intention to marry her. Francis, perhaps in the hope of
Queen Claude's death, had himself been one of her suitors in the first week of her widowhood, and Mary asserted that she had given him her confidence to avoid his importunities.
Francis and Henry both professed a friendly attitude towards the marriage of the lovers, but Suffolk had many political enemies, and Mary feared that she might again be sacrificed to political considerations. The truth was that Henry was anxious to obtain from Francis the gold plate and jewels which had been given or promised to the Queen by Louis in addition to the reimbursement of the expenses of her marriage with the king; and he practically made his acquiescence in Suffolk's suit dependent on his obtaining them. The pair cut short the difficulties by a private marriage, which Suffolk announced to
Wolsey, who had been their fast friend, on
5 March.
Suffolk was saved from Henry's anger only by Wolsey, and the pair eventually agreed to pay to Henry £24,000 in yearly instalments of £1000, and the whole of Mary's dowry from Louis of £200,000, together with her plate and jewels. They were openly married at
Greenwich on
13 May. The Duke had been twice married already, to
Margaret Neville (the widow of John Mortimer) and to Anne Browne, to whom he had been betrothed before his marriage with Margaret Mortimer. Anne Browne died in
1511, but Margaret Mortimer, from whom he had obtained a divorce on the ground of
consanguinity, was still living. He secured in
1528 a bull from
Pope Clement VII assuring the legitimacy of his marriage with Mary Tudor and of the daughters of Anne Browne, one of whom, Anne, was sent to the court of Margaret of Savoy.
After his marriage to Mary, Suffolk lived for some years in retirement, but he was present at the
Field of the Cloth of Gold in
1520. In
1523 he was sent to
Calais to command the English troops there. He invaded
France in company with
Count de Buren, who was at the head of the
Flemish troops, and laid waste the north of France, but disbanded his troops at the approach of winter.
Unlike his wife, Suffolk was entirely in favour of Henry's divorce from
Catherine of Aragon, and in spite of his obligations to Wolsey he did not scruple to attack him when his fall was imminent. The Cardinal, who was acquainted with Suffolk's private history, reminded him of his ingratitude: "If I, simple Cardinal, had not been, you should have had at this present no head upon your shoulders wherein you should have had a tongue to make any such report in despite of us."
After Wolsey's disgrace Suffolk's influence increased daily. He was sent with
Thomas Howard, 3rd Duke of Norfolk to demand the Great Seal from Wolsey; the same noblemen conveyed the news of
Anne Boleyn's marriage to King Henry, after his divorce from Queen Catherine, and Suffolk acted as High Steward at the new Queen's coronation. He was one of the commissioners appointed by Henry to dismiss Catherine's household, a task he found distasteful.
He supported Henry's ecclesiastical policy, receiving a large share of the lands after the suppression of the monasteries. In
1544 he was for the second time in command of an English army for the invasion of France. He died at
Guildford on
24 August in the following year.
After the death of Mary Tudor on
24 June 1533 he married in
1534 his ward Catherine (
1520–1580), suo jure Baroness Willoughby de Eresby, then a girl of fifteen.
His daughters by his marriage with Anne Browne were Anne, who married firstly Edward Grey, Lord Powys, and, after the dissolution of this union, Randal Harworth; and Mary (b.
1510), who married Thomas Stanley, Lord Monteagle. By Mary Tudor he had
Henry Brandon, 1st Earl of Lincoln (
1516–1534); Frances, who married
Henry Grey, Marquess of Dorset, and became the mother of
Lady Jane Grey; and
Eleanor, who married
Henry Clifford, 2nd Earl of Cumberland. By Catherine Willoughby he had two sons who showed great promise, Henry (
1535–1551) and Charles (c.
1537–1551), Dukes of Suffolk. They died of the
sweating sickness within an hour of one another.
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