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Catherine Howard (c. 1523 - 13 February 1542) was Queen of England from 1540 until 1541, as the fifth wife of Henry VIII who referred to her as his "rose without a thorn".[2] Catherine married Henry VIII on 28 July 1540, at Oatlands Palace, in Surrey, almost immediately after the annulment of his marriage to Anne of Cleves was arranged. Catherine was beheaded after less than two years of marriage to Henry on the grounds of treason for committing adultery while married to the King. Family Catherine was the third of Henry VIII's wives to have been a member of the English gentry; Catherine of Aragon and Anne of Cleves being of European nobility. Catherine was a daughter of Lord Edmund Howard (c 1478-1539) and Joyce Culpeper (c 1480- c 1528). Her father's sister Elizabeth Howard, was the mother of Anne Boleyn. Therefore Catherine Howard and Anne Boleyn were first cousins and Catherine Howard and Lady Elizabeth (later Queen Elizabeth I) were first-cousins-once-removed. As a granddaughter of Thomas Howard, 2nd Duke of Norfolk (1443-1524), Catherine had an aristocratic pedigree, but her father was not wealthy owing to his large birth family, being one of 21 children; and the primogeniture custom in which the eldest son inherits all his fathers estate. When Catherine's parents married, her mother already had five children from her first husband, Ralph Leigh (c 1476-1509), she went on to have another six with Catherine's father; Catherine being about her mother's tenth child. With little to sustain the family, her father was often reduced to begging for handouts from his more affluent relatives. In 1531, he was appointed Controller of Calais.[3] He was dismissed from his post in 1539, and died in March of the same year. Early life Catherine was probably born in Lambeth (now part of London) in about 1523; her exact date of birth unknown. Soon after the death of her mother (c 1528), when Catherine was aged about five, Catherine was sent with some of her siblings to live with her father's stepmother, the Dowager Duchess of Norfolk. The Dowager Duchess presided over households at Chesworth House, near Horsham, and Norfolk House, at Lambeth, comprising numerous male and female attendants along with her many wards, usually the children of aristocratic but poor relatives. While sending young children to be educated and trained in aristocratic households other than their own was common for centuries among European nobles, supervision at both Chesworth House and Lambeth was apparently lax. The Dowager Duchess was often at Court and seems to have had little direct involvement in the upbringing of her wards and young female attendants. As a result of the Dowager Duchess's lack of attention and guidance, Catherine became influenced by some older girls who candidly allowed men into the sleeping areas at night for entertainment. The girls were rewarded with food and wine and gifts. Catherine was not as well formally educated as some of Henry's other wives; although, on its own, her ability to read and write was impressive enough at the time.[4] Her character has often been described as vivacious, giggly, and brisk, but never scholarly or devout. She displayed great interest in her dance lessons, but would often go off track of the lessons and make jokes. She also had a nurturing side for animals, particularly dogs. In the Duchess's household, in around 1536, Catherine and her music teacher, Henry Mannox, began a sexual relationship. Catherine was then aged about thirteen. He later gave evidence in the inquiry against her. Mannox and Catherine both confessed during her adultery inquisitions that they had engaged in sexual contact, but not actual coitus. When questioned Catherine was quoted as saying, "At the flattering and fair persuasions of Mannox, being but a young girl, I suffered him at sundry times to handle and touch the secret parts of my body, which neither became me with honesty to permit nor him to require." Her affair with Mannox came to an end in 1538, when Catherine was pursued by a secretary of the Dowager Duchess's household, Francis Dereham. They became lovers, addressing each other as "husband" and "wife". Dereham also entrusted Catherine with various wifely duties, such as keeping his money when he was away on business. Many of Catherine's roommates among the Dowager Duchess's maids of honour and attendants knew of the relationship, which apparently ended in 1539 when the Dowager Duchess caught wind of the matter. Despite this disapproval, Catherine and Dereham may have parted with intentions to marry upon his return from Ireland, agreeing to a precontract, as it was then known. If indeed they exchanged vows of their intention to marry before having sexual intercourse, they would have been considered married in the eyes of the Church. Arrival at court Catherine's uncle, The Duke of Norfolk, found her a place at Court in the household of the King's fourth wife, the German Anne of Cleves.[5] As a young and attractive lady-in-waiting, Catherine quickly caught the eye of Henry, who had displayed little interest in Anne from the beginning. The Howards may have sought to recreate the influence they gained during the reign of Anne Boleyn, and the mostly religiously conservative Howard family may have seen Catherine as a figurehead for their determination to restore Catholicism to England. As the King's interest in Catherine grew, so did their influence. Within months of her arrival at Court, Henry bestowed gifts of land and expensive cloth upon Catherine. Marriage King Henry and Catherine married on 28 July 1540. It was alleged that early in 1541, Catherine embarked upon a romance with Henry's favourite male courtier, Thomas Culpeper, a young man who, according to Dereham's testimony "had succeeded [him] in the Queen's affections", and whom Catherine had considered marrying during her time as a maid-of-honour to Anne of Cleves.[7] The couple's meetings were arranged by one of Catherine's older ladies-in-waiting, Lady Rochford, the widow of Catherine's cousin, George Boleyn, Anne Boleyn's brother. Catherine and Henry toured England together in the summer of 1541, and preparations for any signs of pregnancy, which would have led to a coronation, were in place, indicating that the royal couple were sexually active with each other. During this time, however, a crisis began to loom over Catherine. People who had witnessed her indiscretions at Lambeth began to contact her for favours in return for their silence, and many of them were appointed to her household. Most disastrously, Catherine appointed Francis Dereham as her personal secretary, at the urging of the Dowager Duchess of Norfolk.[8] This miscalculation led to the charges of treason and adultery against her. Downfall By late 1541, the northern progress of England had ended, and Catherine's indiscretions had become known to John Lascelles, a Protestant reformer whose sister, Mary Hall, had been a member of the Dowager Duchess's household; Mary had seen a letter to Culpeper in Catherine's distinctive handwriting, which is the only letter of hers that still survives, other than her confession.[4][9][10] However, there is considerable doubt as to the story's authenticity, since Catherine was not fully aware of the charges against her until the Archbishop of Canterbury, Thomas Cranmer, and a delegation of councillors were sent to question her on 7 November 1541. Even the staunch Cranmer found Catherine's frantic, incoherent state pitiable, saying, "I found her in such lamentation and heaviness as I never saw no creature, so that it would have pitied any man's heart to have looked upon her."[11] He ordered the guards to remove any objects that she might use to commit suicide. While a precontract between Catherine and Dereham would have had the effect of terminating Catherine's royal union, it also would have allowed Henry to annul their marriage and banish her from Court. Catherine would have been disgraced, impoverished, and exiled, but, ultimately, she would have been spared execution. However, she steadfastly denied any precontract, maintaining that Dereham had raped her.[12] Imprisonment and death Catherine was stripped of her title as queen on 23 November[citation needed] and imprisoned in Syon Abbey, Middlesex, where she remained throughout the winter of 1541. Culpeper and Dereham were executed at Tyburn on 10 December 1541, Culpeper being beheaded and Dereham being hanged, drawn, and quartered. According to custom, their heads were placed on top of London Bridge. Many of Catherine's relatives were also detained in the Tower with the exception of her uncle, the Duke of Norfolk, who had sufficiently distanced himself from the scandal by writing a letter on 14 December to the King, excusing himself and laying all the blame on his niece and stepmother.[13] All of the Howard prisoners were tried, found guilty of concealing treason, and sentenced to life imprisonment and forfeiture of goods. In time, however, they were released with their goods restored. Catherine herself remained in limbo until Parliament passed a bill of attainder on 7 February 1542.[14] The Royal Assent by Commission Act 1541 made it treason, and punishable by death, for a queen consort to fail to disclose her sexual history to the king within twenty days of their marriage, or to incite someone to commit adultery with her. This solved the matter of Catherine's supposed precontract and made her unequivocally guilty. She was subsequently taken by boat to the Tower on Friday 10 February. Her flotilla passing under London Bridge where the heads of Culpeper and Dereham were impaled. Entering through the Traitors' Gate she was led to her prison cell. The next day, the bill of attainder received the Royal Assent, and Catherine's execution was scheduled for 7 am on Monday, 13 February.[15] Arrangements for the execution were supervised by Sir John Gage in his role as Constable of the Tower.[16] The night before her execution, Catherine is believed to have spent many hours practising how to lay her head upon the block, which had been brought to her at her request.[17] She died with relative composure, but looked pale and terrified and required assistance to climb the scaffold. She made a speech describing her punishment as "worthy and just" and asked for mercy for her family and prayers for her soul. According to popular folklore, her final words were, "I die a Queen, but I would rather have died the wife of Culpeper", although this is widely discredited.[by whom?] Catherine was beheaded with a single stroke. Jane Boleyn, Lady Rochford was executed immediately thereafter. Both their bodies were buried in an unmarked grave in the nearby chapel of St. Peter ad Vincula, where the bodies of Catherine's cousins, Anne and George Boleyn, also lay.[18] Henry did not attend. Catherine's body was not one of those identified during restorations of the chapel during Queen Victoria's reign. She however is commemorated on a plaque on the west wall dedicated to all those who died in the Tower.[19] Upon hearing news of Catherine's execution, Francis I of France wrote a letter to Henry, regretting the "lewd and naughty [evil] behaviour of the Queen" and advising him that "the lightness of women cannot bend the honour of men".[20] Footnotes Jump up ^ The portrait, believed to be Catherine Howard, has been persuasively identified through the jewels on her dress, which match those in her inventory. Jump up ^ There are several different spellings of "Catherine" that were in use during the 16th century and by historians today. Her one surviving signature spells her name "Kathryn" but this archaic spelling is rarely used anymore. Her chief biographer, Lacey Baldwin Smith, uses the common modern spelling "Catherine"; other historians, Antonia Fraser, for example, use the traditional English spelling of "Katherine". Jump up ^ Mannock 1982. ^ Jump up to: a b "Letter of Queen Catherine Howard to Master Thomas Culpeper, Spring 1541". Catherine Howard. Englishhistory.net. Retrieved 31 December 2013. Jump up ^ Weir 1991, p. 413. Jump up ^ Boutell 1863, p. 243. Jump up ^ Smith 1961, p. 173. Jump up ^ Weir 1991, p. 460. Jump up ^ Farquhar 2001, p. 77. Jump up ^ Smith 1961, pp. 170-171. Jump up ^ Herman 2006, pp. 81-82. Jump up ^ Weir 1991, p. 451. Jump up ^ Weir 1991, p. 474. Jump up ^ Weir 1991, p. 478. Jump up ^ Weir 1991, p. 481. Jump up ^ Potter, David (2002). "Sir John Gage, Tudor Courtier and Soldier (1479-1556)". The English Historical Review 117 (474): 1129. doi:10.1093/ehr/117.474.1109. Jump up ^ Weir 1991, p. 480. Jump up ^ Weir 1991, p. 482. Jump up ^ Wheeler 2008. Jump up ^ Weir 1991, p. 475. Sources Boutell, Charles (1863). A Manual of Heraldry, Historical and Popular. London: Winsor & Newton. Denny, Joanna (2005). Katherine Howard: A Tudor Conspiracy. London: Portrait. ISBN 0749950889. Farquhar, Michael (2001). A Treasure of Royal Scandals. New York: Penguin Books. ISBN 0-7394-2025-9. Herman, Eleanor (2006). Sex with the Queen (hardback). New York: William Morrow. ISBN 0-06-084673-9. Lawrence-Young, D. (2014). Catherine Howard - Henry's Fifth Failure. Fayetteville, North Carolina: GMTA Publishing/Celestial Press. ISBN 978-06159-69527. Lindsey, Karen (1995). Divorced, Beheaded, Survived: Feminist Reinterpretation of the Wives of Henry VIII. Cambridge: Da Capo Press. ISBN 0-201-40823-6. Mannock, Henry. Bindoff, S. T., ed. "HOWARD, Sir George (by 1519-80), of London and Kidbrooke, Kent". The History of Parliament: the House of Commons 1509-1558. Histparl.ac.uk. Retrieved 31 December 2013. Richardson, Douglas (2011). Everingham, Kimball G., ed. Magna Carta Ancestry: A Study in Colonial and Medieval Families II (2nd ed.). CreateSpace. pp. 407-418. ISBN 1449966381. Richardson, Douglas (2011). Everingham, Kimball G., ed. Magna Carta Ancestry: A Study in Colonial and Medieval Families IV (2nd ed.). CreateSpace. pp. 107-109. ISBN 1460992709. Smith, Lacey Baldwin (1961). A Tudor tragedy: The life and times of Catherine Howard. New York: Pantheon. Starkey, David (2004). Six Wives: The Queens of Henry VIII. New York: Harper Collins. ISBN 0060005505. Strong, Roy (1983). Artists of the Tudor Court: Portrait Miniature Rediscovered, 1520-1620. Catalogue of exhibition held at the Victoria & Albert Museum, 9 July-6 November 1983. London: Victoria & Albert Museum. ISBN 0905209346. Weir, Alison (1991). The Six Wives of Henry VIII. New York: Grove Press. ISBN 0-8021-3683-4. Wheeler, Elisabeth (2008). Men of Power: court intrigue in the life of Catherine Howard. Glastonbury: Martin Wheeler. ISBN 9781872882017. From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
William B.
