All this long while, Brandon’s discarded wife, the Lady Mortimer, nursed her grievance (which she held to be supported by an ecclesiastical dispensation in her possession) against the Duke of Suffolk, so that, justly incensed as she was at his marriage with the ex-queen of France, she endeavoured to force him to recognize her as his legitimate wife; which he steadfastly refused to do. Possibly, in a sense, she blackmailed him, knowing full well the parlous position in which he had placed himself. Some time in 1524, therefore, just before the birth of the Lady Eleanor, Lady Mortimer must have clamoured so loudly for the return of her recalcitrant husband to his conjugal duties, as to make herself very unpleasant, for Brandon was once more fain to have recourse to the law to obtain an official absolute dissolution of his connection with her. He appealed to the ecclesiastical and to the civil courts, and received a favourable verdict from both, the marriage between himself and the Lady Mortimer being declared null and void. This decision, however, did not satisfy Wolsey as a sufficient protection for the queen and her children against the humiliating aspersions persistently cast on them by Lady Mortimer and her friends. In 1528 a mission, headed by Stephen Gardiner and Edward Fox, was sent to Orvieto, where Clement VII was then residing,[40] with the object of inducing His Holiness to despatch Cardinal Campeggio to England to represent the pope on the Commission for the matter of the divorce of Queen Katherine of Aragon. Wolsey availed himself of this mission to forward an account, written by Suffolk and endorsed by himself, of the reasons why the duke petitioned the Pontiff for the dissolution of his marriage with the Lady Mortimer. In this document Suffolk declared that, “although a lapse of time had passed, instead of diminishing, it only increased his crime, and hence his seeking this divorce from a woman with whom he was too closely allied.” Clement, after due investigation, and on the strength of Wolsey’s assurance, issued a bull dissolving the marriage with Lady Mortimer, and declaring the children of Anne Browne, alias Brandon, the second wife, legitimate. This bull, dated Orvieto, May 12, 1528, was not, however, published in England until August of the following year, when Bishop Nix of Norwich read it from the pulpit of his cathedral, to a no doubt highly interested and gossiping congregation. This successful appeal to Rome apparently settled the matter, even in the eyes of Lady Mortimer herself, for she presently took a third husband,[41] Robert Horn, Esq., with whom she lived in peace for the rest of her life, which, however, was not long, for the invaluable _Baronagium_ informs us that she died before the marriage of Suffolk’s second daughter, the Lady Eleanor Brandon, which took place in 1537. [Illustration: [_To face p._ 62 LADY MONTEAGLE (Younger daughter of Charles Brandon, Duke of Suffolk)