Young and Damned and Fair

by Gareth Russell

  Catherine and Henry remained on their horses throughout the clergy’s presentation then rode over to their tent, where Henry changed into a dazzling outfit of cloth of gold and Catherine donned a dress cut from cloth of silver. After pieces from her jewelry collection were wrapped around her throat and waist and slotted onto her ears and fingers, the little Queen shimmered from head to toe as she walked out on her husband’s arm. Their servants helped them onto their horses, and as soon as they were mounted, the heralds put on their coats, the trumpets sounded, and the procession into Lincoln began. The Gentlemen Pensioners followed the heralds, then the noblemen and gentlemen of the court, who rode “according to the ancient order” of their respective ranks. One of them, the middle-aged Earl of Huntingdon, carried the sword of state, symbol of the King’s authority.33 The last time Huntingdon had wielded a sword in Lincolnshire it had been to help crush the uprising. After him, the King rode on one of his horses, while Sir Anthony Browne, his master of the horse, rode behind him leading the horse of estate, which bore the King’s crests on its saddles and habiliment. Six “children of honour,” loyal future subjects from high-ranking local families, dressed in crimson and cloth of gold paid for by the royal household for the occasion, were escorted on individual horses before the Queen’s household began its procession, headed by its lord chamberlain, the Earl of Rutland, who rode directly ahead of Catherine and Sir John Dudley, who carried out the same duties for Catherine’s horse of estate as Anthony Browne did for the King’s. Catherine’s women, whom the Lincoln authorities had also provided with a tent in which to change, rode after Dudley, followed by the captains of the guard and the vast number of guardsmen, who preceded the servants. With its size, the royal household’s arrival in Lincoln may have resembled an army of occupation, albeit an unusually beautiful one.

  Before they passed into the city, Lincoln’s other representatives prostrated themselves as the clergy had done. The city’s sergeant at law and recorder, Mr. Misseldon, was tasked with the first greeting, which he delivered in English and then presented a copy of to the King, who passed it to the Duke of Norfolk, riding near enough behind him as the highest-ranking aristocrat there. The gentry and the mayor’s party alike knelt before the King and twice shouted, “Jesus save your Grace!” Before he began his speech, the mayor kissed the mace, the symbol of his office, and passed it to the King, who also kissed it and then handed it back. The initial gesture symbolized that the mayor’s position as representative of the city’s liberties, which were granted by the King; the King’s return of the mace, carried by the mayor for the rest of the ceremony, in turn underlined the monarchy’s obligation to respect and preserve the rights it had long ago bestowed on its subjects.

  The court nobility did not generally have a high opinion of Lincolnshire’s landed classes. A few years earlier, Thomas Cromwell had received a report that referred to them as “a sight of asses, so unlike gentlemen as the most part of them be,” but that might have been nothing more than a blast of geographical snobbery.34 On August 9, the leaders of the local gentry acquitted themselves well in a ceremony that was not only partly humiliating but also nerve-wracking and rife with potential for a mistake to be made or offense given. The gentry from the nearby Lynsey region pleaded for absolution and gave Henry a purse that contained £300; the Lincoln authorities handed over £40.35 Through this, the fruits of the county were being offered to the sovereign, who accepted his subjects’ gifts in the same way his government accepted their taxes. Again the underlying imagery was one of submission in return for protection; obedience and tribute that was supposed to bring with it certain freedoms and privileges. Under Henry VIII, that bargain had long ago been stretched to its limits, but the theater of politics continued with the script used in past centuries. The symbolism was continued with the city’s offerings to Catherine—she was given local fish for her table, including pike and carp.36 This may sound like a lackluster souvenir in comparison to the King’s purses of gold, but food was a staple of present-swapping for the aristocracy—Cardinal Wolsey had sent Anne Boleyn fish for her supper table during Lent, and Lady Lisle sent baked partridge to Sir Brian Tuke.37

  Rising to their feet with the King’s permission, Lincoln’s leaders took their place at the front of the procession and escorted it through Stonebow, the main gate, where a statue of the Virgin Mary, the city’s patron saint, watched down on the arrivals, in the company of a carved Saint Gabriel. On the other side of Stonebow, the King’s coat of arms had been erected after a manic two-day cleaning spree in which everyone in the city was ordered to help clear away dunghills and filth from the streets, which were then coated with sand. All of Lincoln’s church bells rang out in welcome, including those of the Cathedral Church of the Blessed Virgin Mary of Lincoln, an architectural wonder built in the eleventh century on the site of an earlier place of worship and expanded and beautified throughout the Middle Ages. Its 520-foot spire might have been the tallest building constructed between the Great Pyramid of Pharaoh Khufu and the Washington Monument in 1884.38 In the afternoon light, the hilltop cathedral was an awe-inspiring sight, dwarfing both its bishop’s palace, which nestled in the first southern indents of the hill, and the local castle that lay directly ahead of the great western door where Henry and Catherine dismounted to be greeted by John Longland, Bishop of Lincoln, who was surrounded by his choristers as he moved forward to greet the King and Queen.

  If the suppression of the Pilgrimage of Grace had shown the government at its most firm, the reception at Lincoln Cathedral was an attempt to wipe the sting of repression away with rosewater and perfume. Henry in gold and Catherine in silver knelt on prayer cushions covered in more cloth of gold and clasped their hands in prayer as Bishop Longland presented a bejeweled crucifix for them both to kiss. Incense curled forth into the air from golden censers to bless Catherine and her husband, who knew the Bishop well, since he had once served as the King’s confessor. Bishop Longland’s loyalty to his King, however, was not as strong as his zeal for the Queen of Heaven—a golden statue of the Virgin had been hidden in the cathedral’s vaults when Thomas Cromwell’s commissioners came to gut the church of its “idols.”I39

  Another of the Bishop’s preoccupations was saving his flock from the perils of lust, a concern shared by his episcopal predecessors—it was one of many scenes immortalized in stone by earlier masons on Lincoln Cathedral’s West Door. If Catherine saw it, it is possible she missed its significance, especially since it was part of a series of carvings that also showed the torment of the damned in Hell, Daniel in the lions’ den, and the expulsion of Adam and Eve from Eden. When the King and Queen had been blessed, clergy held the canopy used for processions of the Blessed Sacrament over Henry and Catherine as they walked into the cathedral and over to the choir, where they again knelt in prayer as the choristers sang a Te Deum, a service of thanks for the couple’s safe arrival. The area where they prayed was a broad space, with only the few sturdy beams bracing the transepts giving any clue to how far the long-dead architects had been willing to push their craft when it came to building the cathedral.

  Two of Henry’s ancestresses were buried, or partially buried, in Lincoln Cathedral. A few feet from where he and Catherine knelt was the tomb of his three-times great-grandmother Katherine, Duchess of Lancaster, who had also been a sister-in-law of Geoffrey Chaucer.40 Ahead of them, bathed in the light streaming through the stained glass of the great East Window, was the victual tomb of Henry’s six times great-grandmother, Queen Eleanor of Castile, whose viscera had been interred at Lincoln after the Queen died nearby in 1290.41 An elaborate funerary procession had brought her body back to Westminster for burial, and as with many medieval royal funerals, some of her organs, which were removed during embalming, were buried near to the site of her death. Eleanor’s position as the King’s ancestress and a former Queen of England had not saved her monument from damage during the “cleansing” of the cathedral fourteen months earlier, when the head shrine of Saint Hugh of
Lincoln, a twelfth-century bishop of Lincoln, was dismantled. The head shrine’s name was literal—after his canonization, the cathedral staff had tried to move Saint Hugh’s body to a new resting site, but the skull became detached during the exhumation, which led to a separate shrine for it in the early fourteenth century.42 Over the next two centuries, the head shrine had been visited so many times that the pilgrims’ knees had worn a groove into the step directly in front of it.43 In 1540, the royal commissioners ordered that “a certain shrine and divers feigned relics and jewels, with which all simple people be much deceived and brought into great superstition and idolatry” should be destroyed and melted down. Stripped from the cathedral were 2,621 ounces of gold and 4,285 ounces of silver, along with “a great number of pearls and precious stones.”44

  Oddly, the shrine to a local nine-year-old who had vanished in 1255 was left intact by Henry’s Reformation.45 The child, known as “Little Saint Hugh of Lincoln,” despite the fact that he had never formally been canonized, had been found murdered at the bottom of a well. His death was used as one of the most infamous examples of the “blood libel” against the local Jewish community, who were accused of enticing the child to his capture, feeding him up, then ritually torturing and crucifying him before dumping the body. Fantastic stories claimed that every Jew in England had been invited to the Christian child’s execution. The fact that there was no evidence to suggest that little Hugh had suffered a death anywhere near as traumatic as the blood libel story claimed did not prevent it being repeated in a climate of anti-Semitic hatred that lasted long after the entire Anglo-Jewish community were expelled from England in 1290. There is no clear reason why “Little Saint Hugh’s” shrine was spared when the cathedral’s other shrines were gutted. Perhaps the commissioners hesitated to pillage a spot associated with a child or spared it because it did not have the same material value of the other Saint Hugh’s. For whatever reason, the grizzly reminder of the ruthless exploitation of a boy’s death was still on display when Catherine entered the cathedral in 1541.

  The arrival into Lincoln and her public prayers at its cathedral constituted one of the high points of Catherine’s queenship. Throughout the progress, she carried out her public duties perfectly. Accounts of the tour, written years later, referred to her as Henry’s “fair and beloved queen.” Catherine was a flawlessly behaved consort—content to dazzle as a supporting player, cloth of silver next to Henry’s cloth of gold, never pulling focus or openly pursuing her own agenda. After a rapid and unexpected rise to it, she had successfully negotiated her first few months on the consort’s throne. She had weathered rumors of a rival’s restoration at her expense and the embarrassment of an alleged pregnancy, some details of which had leaked to the public. She was credited with saving the lives of two prisoners, at least one of whom had been expected to die; she had established her preeminence over a disgruntled and respected stepdaughter and won praise from diplomats and courtiers for her tact and dignity.

  But beyond the Lincoln Cathedral choir, half-hidden in the bracket of a dark pillar on the left of the dismantled shrine and Eleanor of Castile’s dented memorial, just above the carved face of a bearded saint, long-dead masons had rendered the image of a demonic imp—a visual reminder to worshippers that evil, sin, and failure lurked close to all human triumphs, just as they had in Eden and through the betrayal of Judas Iscariot at the Last Supper.46 When they had finished their prayers, the King and Queen blessed themselves and processed out of the cathedral. They were escorted “straight to their lodgings for the night,” down the hill to Bishop Longland’s palace.47 Twenty fat oxen and one hundred fat muttons had been provided for the visiting entourage by the city, cooked in the palace’s cavernous fireplaces.

  The fatigue of a long day was banished by the layout of the rooms set aside for Catherine. Lady Rochford’s bedroom was at the top of a narrow flight of stairs leading from the Queen’s. Jane was the Queen’s preferred lady-in-waiting and a member of her privy chamber, so the location of the Dowager Viscountess’s rooms was not suspicious. However Catherine’s announcement that she wanted a late-night chat in those rooms was distinctly odd. Members of the royal family did not call on anybody. Katherine Tilney and Margaret Morton accompanied Catherine up the staircase until she dismissed them and went in by herself. Once they thought they were alone, Catherine and Lady Rochford went to the back entrance to the apartments and waited for Culpepper to arrive.

  Light spilled in as one of the guardsmen on the night watch approached and saw an unlocked door in the dead of night leading into the Queen’s apartments. Catherine and Lady Rochford ducked out of view and the guard relocked the door. He had then mercifully moved on before Culpepper arrived, accompanied by one of his servants, who was also told to wait outside. Apparently very pleased with himself, Culpepper had picked the lock and slipped through the door. Catherine was frightened by the near miss and Culpepper had to be his most charming self to calm her down. The three of them relocated to the Queen’s lavatory, a large room with enough space for Lady Rochford to doze in the corner while the two she had brought together had “fond communication.” With frankness and humor, they chatted about past lovers. It must have been refreshing for Catherine, daringly liberating, to talk about Manox and Dereham, or other men, such as Roger Cotes and Thomas Paston, who might have harbored unreciprocated feelings for her, with a man like Culpepper, who was handsome and amused by her stories. He had a few of his own, including his dalliance with Bess Harvey. He seems to have been quite clear with Catherine on the nature of his relationship with Bess and his less than chivalrous treatment of her. Bess’s wardrobe was not that of a kept woman. She had the notoriety but not the rewards. Thomas and Catherine’s conversations became more flirtatious when the Queen teased him with boasts of her skills as a lover: “If I listed [wanted], I could bring you into as good a trade as Bray hath my lord Parr in.” Thomas replied that he did not think of her as the same kind of woman as the flighty Dorothy, but Catherine was not put off and replied, “Well, if I had tarried still in the maidens’ chamber I would have tried you.”48

  The two talked for hours, until about two or three o’clock in the morning, which makes Lady Rochford’s subsequent claim that she fell asleep much more believable. Katherine Tilney had the same idea and climbed into the bed she shared with Mistress Frideswide, another chamberer. A disgruntled Margaret Morton, who had already seen enough odd behavior from the Queen during the last few weeks, went back to see if the Queen was still with Lady Rochford. When she returned to the chamberers’ room, Tilney asked, “Jesus, is not the Queen abed yet?” Morton answered, “Yes, even now,” and went to bed.49

  The next morning, the King went to inspect Lincoln Castle. The Queen heard about the case of a local spinster called Helen Page, who had been condemned for various minor felonies. We do not know how serious Helen Page’s crimes or sentence was, or who brought the case to the Queen’s attention, but Catherine heard enough to feel moved, and she spoke to the King, who agreed to pardon the woman.50 Charitably, but less appropriately, Catherine also had one of her servants deliver a damask gown to Bess Harvey and then sent Lady Rochford with an innuendo-heavy joke to Culpepper to tell him about the dress, which the Queen claimed she gifted to save Thomas’s reputation for having allowed “his tenement to be so ill repaired.” Despite how late she had gone to bed the night before, that evening the Queen asked Katherine Tilney to accompany her on another visit to Lady Rochford. This time, Tilney was told to wait in an alcove outside the room, where she sat with Lady Rochford’s maid for hours. On the other side of the door, the Queen and Lady Rochford again slipped out another exit from the room and went down to the stool house, the lavatory, where Culpepper joined them. Opportunities to meet had proved sparse since they left London, so even after the frightening brush with the guardsman the night before, they did not want to miss the chance to talk. The Queen was in a more serious humor than she had been while firing out witty quips and suggestive gifts. And she was st
ill agitated, jumping with fear when she heard a noise and dashing into the shadows. The night before they had talked of the past; on the second evening, conversation turned to the present, and Catherine told Culpepper that she was in love with him. Culpepper felt the same, “bound” to her because he “did love her again above all other creatures.” As he left, he kissed Catherine’s outstretched hand and told her it was the only physical intimacy he could allow himself.51

  The declaration of love at Lincoln was a Rubicon moment between Catherine and Thomas. They had been indiscreet before—servants had been sent on unusual errands, open doors had been noticed, risqué gifts had been exchanged, Culpepper had been invited in daylight to the corridor leading to Catherine’s private rooms—but after Lincoln, their behavior, particularly Catherine’s, spiraled out of control. There could be, and was, no more pretense that they were meeting as friends to joke about long-ago romantic mishaps. The possibility that the Queen might commit adultery with Thomas had shifted to a probability, and the only explanation for why she was prepared to court such a terrible risk was the obfuscating lunacy of having fallen in love with an arrogant, risk-taking womanizer who, it seems, had actually developed feelings for her, which were either too strong or too weak for him to take the wisest course of action and avoid any further nocturnal meetings.