Charles Brandon's father, Henry VII's Standard-Bearer, had been killed at Bosworth Field by Richard III. On 7 November 1507 he married Lady Margaret Nevill but soon divorced her as, in 1508, he married Anne Browne by whom he fathered two daughters. After only four years Anne died. Charles Brandon owed his advancement to sporting prowess and good-fellowship, sharing Henry VIII's love of the joust and tourney. This red-headed, almost illiterate giant had a shrewd eye to the main chance. In 1514 he was considered the most influential man in England after Wolsey. Henry VIII made him Duke of Suffolk although, as Fleuranges noted contemptuously, he was only of 'petite maison'. The King had enough trust in his abilities to send him to France as ambassador.
For diplomatic reasons Henry VIII arranged the marriage of his nineteen-year-old sister, Mary, to the fifty-two year old Louis XII, King of France. Later Mary claimed that she had agreed only on the
understanding that she might choose her second husband herself. The marriage took place on 
9 October 1514 but on 1 January 1515 Louis XII died.
The Emperor Maximilian hoped to procure her for the Archduke Charles, a marriage which would undermine the Anglo-French alliance. The French, hoping she would marry someone more friendly, did not want her to leave France. Mary became still more of a problem when the Duke of Suffolk returned to France at the beginning of February 1515 to congratulate the new French king, Francois I, on his succession and to renew the treaty of the previous year.
However, Francois I told him plainly: "My Lord of Suffolk, there is a rumour you have come to marry the Queen, your master's sister," and then promised to intercede with Henry VIII. It was a way of
averting the Habsburg marriage. Mary, suffering from toothache and hysteria, grew desperate and forced Suffolk to surrender. A secret wedding took place in the Hotel de Cluny, probably on 3 March 1515. In April 1515 the uneasy lovers set out from Paris. At Calais, nearly mobbed by an angry crowd, Mary wrote to her brother that she would never leave France until he wrote to her, that she would rather become a nun if she could not marry Suffolk.
On 15 May 1515 Mary Tudor and Charles Brandon were married for a second time, at Greenwich in the presence of Henry VIII and his court. The marriage was unpopular but three children were born. Mary died on 24 June 1533. As a widower Suffolk was utterly lost and looked around with indecent haste for a fourth wife; nor did he look very far. His own son, Henry, Earl of Lincoln, was betrothed to Catherine, heiress of the late Lord Willoughby, and now Suffolk arranged for this to be annulled so he could marry the fourteen-year-old girl himself. Two sons were born from this marriage.
Charles Brandon, Duke of Suffolk, died 22 August 1545 at the Palace in Guildford, Surrey; his widow married early in 1553, Richard Bertie, her gentleman-usher.
 

Source: Leo van de Pas