Catherine Howard

1523 – 1542 · Generation XXII

Catherine Howard, Henry VIII’s fifth wife, was born probably in about 1523, though the surviving records are thin enough that dates from 1518 to 1525 have been proposed. She belonged to one of the great families of England without sharing in its wealth. Her father, Lord Edmund Howard, was a younger son of the 2nd Duke of Norfolk, a proud man sunk in gambling debts who at times hid from his creditors. Her mother, Joyce Culpeper, died when Catherine was small. Through her father she was a first cousin of Anne Boleyn, and through her grandmother a second cousin of Jane Seymour.

In about 1531, when she was around eight, the family broke up and Catherine was sent to live as a ward of her step-grandmother Agnes, the Dowager Duchess of Norfolk, who kept large households at Chesworth House near Horsham and at Norfolk House in Lambeth. Supervision there was loose. When she was about twelve or a little older, her music teacher Henry Mannox used his position to draw her into sexual contact, and at Lambeth she was drawn into a full affair with Francis Dereham, a kinsman in the duchess’s service. He and Catherine called each other husband and wife. Many recent historians read these episodes as the exploitation of a neglected girl rather than the misconduct of a knowing one, although the ages and dates are still argued over.

In 1539 her uncle, the 3rd Duke of Norfolk, obtained a post for her as a maid of honour to Anne of Cleves, the king’s new German bride. Henry took an instant dislike to Anne and was soon besotted with the young Howard. By June 1540 his interest was common knowledge at court, and her religiously conservative Howard relations stood to gain from it. The marriage to Anne was annulled in July, and on 28 July 1540, the day Thomas Cromwell was beheaded, Henry married Catherine privately at Oatlands Palace in Surrey. She was presented as queen at Hampton Court on 8 August. She was perhaps seventeen, he was forty-nine, and she took as her motto “No other will but his.”

For a year the king seemed delighted with her. Catherine played her part correctly, greeting Anne of Cleves warmly at Christmas and asking the king to pardon prisoners, as queens were expected to do. But her past followed her to court. Dereham turned up asking for favours, and in the summer of 1541 she made him her secretary. She also began meeting Thomas Culpeper, a favoured gentleman of the king’s privy chamber and a distant relation on her mother’s side, with Jane Boleyn, Lady Rochford, keeping watch. A letter in Catherine’s hand, telling Culpeper that it made her heart die to be apart from him, survived to be used against her. Whether the two actually committed adultery has never been proved. Some historians now suggest she was trying to placate a dangerous man rather than conducting a love affair.

In the autumn of 1541 John Lassells told Archbishop Cranmer what his sister had seen in the Lambeth household. Cranmer passed the allegations to the king in writing on All Saints’ Day. Henry at first refused to believe them, then ordered an inquiry that uncovered the meetings with Culpeper. Questioned by Cranmer, Catherine was so distraught that he had anything she might harm herself with taken away, and she eventually admitted the relationships with Mannox and Dereham. She was stripped of the title of queen in late November and was held at Syon through the winter. Culpeper and Dereham were executed at Tyburn on 10 December 1541, and their heads were set on London Bridge.

Catherine was never tried. Parliament instead passed an act of attainder against her and Lady Rochford, which also made it treason for a queen to conceal an unchaste past from the king. On 10 February 1542 she was taken by barge to the Tower, passing under London Bridge, where the heads of the two men were displayed. On the morning of 13 February she was beheaded on Tower Green, so weak that she needed help to mount the scaffold. The famous last words about dying the wife of Culpeper are a later legend, and eyewitnesses recorded only a conventional speech. She was buried in the chapel of St Peter ad Vincula, near her cousin Anne Boleyn.

Images

• Holbein’s portrait miniature of about 1540 in the Royal Collection, traditionally identified as Catherine. No likeness of her has been authenticated. (Hans Holbein the Younger, public domain)
• Catherine’s letter to Thomas Culpeper, written in 1541 and later used as evidence against her. (Catherine Howard, public domain)
• An engraving published by John Thane in 1793 and labelled as Agnes Tilney, Duchess of Norfolk, Catherine’s step-grandmother and guardian. (Published by John Thane, public domain)
• The memorial pavement bearing Catherine’s name and arms in the chapel of St Peter ad Vincula at the Tower of London, laid when the chapel was restored in the 1870s. (VCR Giulio19, CC BY-SA 4.0)

Read more on Wikipedia

Partners

• Married King Henry VIII (1491 – 1547) in 1540

Life

• 1523 — Born
• 1540 — Married Henry VIII Tudor
• 1542 — Died

Sources

1. Catherine Howard · Wikipedia
2. Catherine Howard (queen of England) · Encyclopaedia Britannica
3. Catherine Howard · Historic Royal Palaces (Hampton Court Palace)