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English noblewoman

Katherine Brandon, Duchess of Suffolk, suo jure 12th Baroness Willoughby de Eresby ( Willoughby; 22 March 1519 – 19 September 1580), was an English noblewoman living at the courts of King Henry VIII, King Edward VI and Queen Elizabeth I. She was the fourth wife of Charles Brandon, 1st Duke of Suffolk, who acted as her legal guardian during his third marriage to Henry VIII's sister Mary. Her second husband was Richard Bertie, a member of her household. Following Charles Brandon's death in 1545, it was rumoured that King Henry had considered marrying Katherine as his seventh wife, while he was still married to his sixth wife, Catherine Parr, who was Katherine's close friend. An outspoken supporter of the English Reformation, she fled abroad to Wesel and later the Grand Duchy of Lithuania during the reign of Queen Mary I, to avoid persecution.

Katherine Willoughby, born at Parham Old Hall, Suffolk, on 22 March 1519 and christened in the church there four days later, was the daughter of William Willoughby, 11th Baron Willoughby de Eresby, and his second wife, María de Salinas. Lord Willoughby's first wife, Mary Hussey, the daughter of William Hussey, Chief Justice of the King's Bench, had died childless before 1512, and in June 1516 he married María de Salinas. Doña María de Salinas had come to the English court with Henry VIII's Queen consort, Catherine of Aragon, and was one of the queen's ladies in waiting and closest friends. The king favoured another match bolstering his own marital alliance with Spain, and even named one of his warships the Mary Willoughby. It seems Katherine was named for the queen, but her mother's lifelong friendship with Catherine of Aragon did not prevent her daughter from becoming one of England's Marian exiles later in life. Katherine had two brothers, Henry and Francis, who died as infants.

According to Goff, Katherine likely spent her early childhood at Parham, as her mother was in almost constant attendance on Henry VIII's Queen, Catherine of Aragon. On 14 October 1526, when Katherine was seven years of age, Lord Willoughby died after falling ill during a visit to Suffolk and was buried at Mettingham. As his only surviving child, Katherine inherited the barony. Her father held some thirty manors in Lincolnshire, and almost the same number in Norfolk and Suffolk, worth over £900 per annum, and Katherine is said to have been 'one of the greatest heiresses of her generation'. However, her inheritance became a subject of dispute for many years, as there was doubt as to which lands had been settled on the heirs male and which on the heirs general, and the matter was further complicated by a deed which Lord Willoughby had drawn up before leaving for France to campaign in Henry VIII's wars in 1523. In 1527 Katherine's uncle, Sir Christopher Willoughby, accused his sister in law, Katherine's mother, María de Salinas, of withholding documents from him which established the title to various estates, and of having kept him out of possession of estates which rightfully belonged to him. At her father's death, Katherine's wardship fell to the king, who on 1 March 1528 sold it to his brother in law Charles Brandon, 1st Duke of Suffolk. On acquiring Katherine's wardship, Suffolk immediately intervened in the family quarrel with a letter to Cardinal Wolsey, and his intervention appears to have cowed Sir Christopher Willoughby, who wrote to Wolsey that the Cardinal's anger was 'worse to him than death'. Katherine is said to have been betrothed to Henry Brandon, 1st Earl of Lincoln (died 1534), Suffolk's son by his third wife, Mary Tudor. Mary Tudor died at Westhorpe, Suffolk, on 25 June 1533, and on 21 July the young Katherine was one of the chief mourners at her funeral. As early as 1531 it had been rumoured in the household of Henry VIII's future wife, Anne Boleyn, that Suffolk was personally interested in Katherine, and six weeks after Mary Tudor's death the Imperial Ambassador, Eustace Chapuys, reported to Charles V that:

On Sunday next the Duke of Suffolk will be married to the daughter of a Spanish lady named Lady Willoughby. She was promised to the Duke's son, but he is only ten years old, & although it is not worth writing to your Majesty, the novelty of the case made me mention it'. Although Suffolk was forty nine and Katherine only fourteen, the marriage was a financially successful one. The Willoughby inheritance was not fully settled until the reign of Queen Elizabeth I, but Suffolk was able to force Sir Christopher Willoughby to relinquish possession of some of the contested Willoughby estates, and Suffolk eventually became the greatest magnate in Lincolnshire. As such, he played an important role in quelling the Lincolnshire rebellion in 1536, and built an imposing residence at Grimsthorpe, which came into Katherine's possession at the death of Elizabeth de Vere, Dowager Countess of Oxford, widow of the 13th Earl. The Duke and Duchess had two sons, Henry Brandon, 2nd Duke of Suffolk, born 18 September 1534 at Katherine's mother's house in the Barbican, and Charles Brandon, 3rd Duke of Suffolk, born 1537. The marriage brought Katherine into the extended royal family, because Henry VIII's will made his younger sister Mary Tudor'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 wife, Catherine Howard. This progress later became notorious for the queen's alleged adulterous trysts with her kinsman, Thomas Culpeper, though the duke and duchess's home at Grimsthorpe Castle was "one of the very few places on the route where Catherine Howard had not misbehaved herself".

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 advocate of the English Reformation. 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 these views grew controversial, the king ordered the queen's arrest, though his wife managed to cajole him into cancelling this. The Duchess of Suffolk 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. 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." In February 1546, 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". But their friendship 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 religious 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.

Katherine and Richard Bertie's exile became the basis of a ballad by Thomas Deloney (1543–1600), The most Rare and Excellent History, Of the Duchess of Suffolks Calamity, 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. Katherine'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.