Young and Damned and Fair

by Gareth Russell

  Now the whole truth being declared unto Your Majesty, I most humbly beseech you to consider the subtle persuasions of young men and the ignorance and frailness of young women. I was so desirous to be taken unto your Grace’s favour, and so blinded by with the desire of worldly glory that I could not, nor had grace to consider how great a fault it was to conceal my former faults from your Majesty, considering that I intended ever during my life to be faithful and true unto your Majesty ever after. Nevertheless, the sorrow of mine offenses was ever before mine eyes, considering the infinite goodness of your Majesty toward me from time to time ever increasing and not diminishing. Now, I refer the judgment of my offenses with my life and death wholly unto your most benign and merciful Grace, to be considered by no justice of your Majesty’s laws but only by your infinite goodness, pity, compassion and mercy, without which I acknowledge myself worthy of the most extreme punishment.

  Acting on tips that the Queen’s household was the cause of the unusual events of the past week, Charles de Marillac set spies to watch the palace, with instructions to pay special attention to Catherine’s ladies-in-waiting. His watchers saw Cranmer leave Hampton Court on the Monday evening, a development they rightly reported as potentially significant, although they did not realize that Cranmer was carrying the Queen’s confessions to the King at Whitehall, along with his own assessment of her stories.37 Three things stood out as jarring to the Archbishop—the first the change in her interpretation of events, from a foolish romance to coercive exploitation. Secondly, that Francis Dereham had been appointed to Catherine’s service in August, despite her alleged distaste for him. Thirdly, the Queen’s stunning blunder in one of the earlier confessions, when she recalled:

  . . . he then asked me, if I should be married to Mr. Culpepper, for so he said he heard reported. Then I made answer, “What should you trouble me therewith, for you know I will not have you; and if you heard such report, you heard more than I do know.”

  Whether Catherine had simply honestly recalled a conversation with Dereham in late 1539 or early 1540 or tactically included it to throw Cranmer off the scent is unknowable. As much as he pitied her, Cranmer believed the Queen had lied to him at least once, and that made him suspect everything else she said. Why would she have mentioned Culpepper in relation to Dereham and the question of marriage unless there was something between them? Why would she appoint a man she claimed had repeatedly assaulted her to her household more than a year after she became queen? And how could she expect Cranmer to believe that all of her initial memories of her time with Dereham, of flirtatious gifts and affectionate questions, had been untrue?

  In the unnatural quiet of her apartments, Thomas was on Catherine’s mind far more than Francis. For the time being, she still had her staff and she took every available opportunity to speak privately with Lady Rochford. She veered from confidence to fear over what would happen if the council found out about her nocturnal meetings with Culpepper. Lady Rochford loyally promised “to be torn with wild horses” rather than betray her Queen.38

  Outside the palace, events moved quickly to an apparent conclusion that would see Catherine’s marriage annulled on grounds of precontract. Robert Damport was brought in for questioning. As soon as he was taken from her house, the Dowager had his chests smashed open as well to see if he had hidden anything about Francis’s relationship with Catherine.39 She gave her servant Ashby a white silk jacket that she found in Dereham’s coffers as recompense for the money Ashby had once loaned him.40 She sent her grandson Gruffydd, the Countess of Bridgewater’s eldest boy, to fetch a book of statutes to see if she or any of her relatives could be held accountable for Catherine’s premarital dalliances.41 She fretted about her son William returning from his embassy in France without any prior knowledge of what he was walking into. Her servants had to talk her out of sending a warning to him, because, if caught, such a message would give the appearance that they had a secret to hide.42

  Hampton Court was under close guard by Tuesday, as preparations were made within to send Catherine’s ladies-in-waiting home or to the houses of nearby friends.43 The Queen was to be moved to Syon Abbey, a disused Bridgettine convent on the north bank of the Thames, where she was to be housed “till the matter be further ordered.” While there, she was to be treated with “the state of a Queen,” but the council stipulated that her furniture was to be modest and her household cut dramatically. She was allowed to pick four gentlewomen and two chamberers, with the condition that one woman be her sister Lady Isabella Baynton, whose husband was sent to manage the Queen’s household-in-exile, as it were. They would depart on Monday, the 14th.44

  The government prepared letters to send to its ambassadors in Europe. The officials who would be sent in to disband the Queen’s establishment were briefed on what to say, namely to condemn her morality but leave out any specifics in case it swayed future testimonies against her. Rumors, each with a unique tethering to reality, flew unchecked through the court. The Queen was to be divorced. Physicians had discovered that she was barren. Anne of Cleves was to be restored. The Queen had previously been married to another man. The Queen had enjoyed eight or nine lovers before her marriage. In a letter sent on the 11th, its first half having been written three days earlier, de Marillac concluded, “Nothing is certain except that these troubles are on her account.”45

  Then, sometime between the orders being given to move Catherine from Hampton Court to Syon Abbey, and the dispatching of the official notifications to the English embassies abroad, the case shifted. That it was still an investigation into Catherine’s unchaste adolescence as late as the evening of the 11th is suggested by the fact that it was then that the directive was given to move the Queen, but by the evening of the 12th the council were hinting in their letters that “an appearance of a greater abomination” was imminent.46 In a letter to Paris, written on the 22nd, Charles de Marillac wrote that the change in the investigation had been initiated by an unexpected revelation from Francis Dereham, who, “to show his innocence since the marriage, said that Culpepper had succeeded him in the Queen’s affections.”47 Thomas Culpepper had gone hawking on the 11th, seemingly and perhaps deliberately oblivious to the events unfolding around Catherine. He was summoned to his first interrogation two days later.48 In a letter written on the evening of the 12th and sent to the clerk of the Privy Council, Sir William Paget, the council summed up their collective attitude to the Queen: “Now may you see what was done before the Marriage; God knoweth what hath been done sithence.”49

  * * *

  I. Most probably Catherine’s uncle Lord Thomas Howard the younger, who died of a fever in the Tower in October 1537. It could also have referred to her first cousin, Lord Thomas Howard, who was the 3rd Duke’s youngest surviving son and later created 1st Viscount Howard of Bindon by Elizabeth I.

  Chapter 20

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  A Greater Abomination

  Thus spoke that inscription. He stood intent on the hidden meanings of the cryptic words: meanwhile he heard the wind continually moaning among the leaves and undergrowth of the wood, and drawing from them a sound that seems a plaintive harmony of human sobs and sighs, and instils in his heart, I know what mingled sense of pity, fear, and sorrow.

  —Torquato Tasso, Jerusalem Liberated (1581)

  On Saturday, November 12, Catherine was visited by Cranmer, her uncle Norfolk, the earls of Southampton, Sussex, and Hertford, Lord Russell, and five other members of the Privy Council, including Sir Anthony Browne, Sir Ralph Sadler, and Sir Thomas Wriothesley.1 The council asked the Queen about three nocturnal meetings she had allegedly had with Thomas Culpepper during the royal progress, at which point Catherine abandoned Lady Rochford with the same alacrity she had Francis Dereham. She tossed all the blame onto her lady-in-waiting: “The Queen saith that my lady Rochford hath sundry times made instance to her to speak with Culpepper declaring him to bear her good will and favour, whereupon she did at the last grant he should speak to her, my lady of Rochford a
ffirming that he desired nothing else but to speak with her and that she durst swear upon a book he meant nothing but honesty.”2

  It is possible that this was how Culpepper’s interest in Catherine first came to her attention—through the prattling of Lady Rochford—but she omitted the extent of her own attraction to him or their previous premarital entanglement. Catherine admitted to meeting with Culpepper privately and late at night in Lincoln, Pontefract, and York and exchanging flirtatious gifts with him, including the velvet cap, a chain, and a cramp ring from her own finger. She also confirmed Lady Rochford’s role in organizing their meetings and repeatedly implied that she had been the initiating party by advising Catherine, “Yet must you give men leave to look, for they will look upon you,” and refusing Catherine’s request to chaperone them more efficiently during the late-night meetings, when the Queen had apparently asked, “For God’s sake madam, even nearer us.” Catherine admitted that Lady Rochford had hunted out rooms or back stairs at every stop on the progress for the Queen’s meetings with Culpepper but failed to mention her own frequent insistence for news about when she and Culpepper could next meet. She remembered trivial things, like the gossip from Lady Rochford that Culpepper’s colleague in the Privy Chamber, Thomas Paston, was also romantically interested in her, a memory which looks like a deliberate divulgence to cast the Culpepper relationship in an equally innocent light. Catherine claimed that she had tried to end the relationship when she told both Culpepper and Lady Rochford that she wished to hear no more about it, but Culpepper had refused and in response to his protests Catherine had called him “little sweet fool.” Even though it was wholly at odds with her behavior in the north, the latter claim could credibly refer to her temporary anger at Culpepper after his rudeness to her on Maundy Thursday. She also told the councillors that she had lived in fear since the investigations into her private life began at the start of November and that Lady Rochford advised her never to tell about their conversations with Culpepper. This version of events was repeated later by Lady Rochford, who did not cause too much of a surprise when she remembered it was the Queen who advised silence and initiated most of the earlier meetings.

  It is often assumed that at this juncture Catherine was simply responding to the details of the confession made by Dereham, and faced with his singling out of Culpepper’s name, she had no choice but to admit her involvement with him.3 Yet Dereham could not possibly have known firsthand of the Queen’s meetings with Culpepper on the progress, since he did not join Catherine’s household at Pontefract until August 26. Nor could he have known of the gifts she had given Thomas. Equally, confusion over the dates of the interrogations of Lady Rochford and Thomas Culpepper have led to the assumption in some accounts that Catherine’s confessions of November 12 were provoked by evidence of her transgressions being laid in front of her.4 However, Lady Rochford was not questioned until November 13, and Culpepper’s rooms were not searched, nor was he arrested, until November 14.5 The missing link is the multiple testimonies of Katherine Tilney, who was questioned for the first time in regard to the Queen’s premarital liaisons on November 5, then once the investigation had shifted focus to her alleged adultery on November 13 and again on November 30.6

  Katherine Tilney could not have been the direct source of the information the government set in front of the Queen on the 12th, since she was questioned about it a day after, but she had almost certainly been the source for Dereham. Unlike him, Tilney had been present throughout the progress, and the records provide a tantalizing glimpse of the two old acquaintances being sent on errands by the Queen on the long journey from Pontefract.7 Dereham had few other friends in Catherine’s household, and he certainly did not make any with his eye-watering manners. It cannot be ruled out that he heard whispers about Culpepper from somebody else, but that scenario does not fully explain how, between November 11 and 12, the council were able to confront Catherine with relatively accurate details of her recent encounters with Thomas Culpepper.

  Two scenarios are possible. The first is that the narrative reported by de Marillac, which places the blame on Dereham attempting to exonerate himself from the charge of intending to resume sexual relations with the Queen after her marriage, is correct but incomplete, as has been mentioned. Secondly, there is the possibility either that the chamberer Margaret Morton’s testimony predates Katherine Tilney’s and Lady Rochford’s on November 13 or that other depositions, now lost, were taken from other members of the household. One of those lost revelations, made either to Dereham or the council, presumably came from a retainer fairly close either to the Queen or to Lady Rochford, or one who was eagle-eyed, who then divulged information about the Queen’s activities at Lincoln, Pontefract, and York. Katherine Tilney had been sent on numerous unusual errands by the Queen during the progress, and she had felt disgruntled or confused enough to discuss it with Margaret Morton, which strongly suggests she may have done so with others, particularly someone she already knew, like Francis Dereham.

  Katherine Tilney’s first formal interrogation on November 5 had been conducted by Sir Thomas Wriothesley and focused exclusively on the Queen’s youthful romances.8 A month later, after the first spate of executions, it was Wriothesley who, oddly, tried to save Tilney from ruin alongside the others with the unusual phrase in a letter to the council, “My woman Tilney hath done us good service.”9 The language used and their lack of previous connection make it clear that some sort of deal must have been made between Tilney and her first inquisitor. It is possible, on the most tenuous and speculative level, to discern something exploitative and possibly sexual in the phrase “my woman,” but that is neither the most obvious nor perhaps the most probable explanation.

  Of everyone bar the principals, Katherine Tilney stood in the most appalling danger and, like Nicholas Udall and Thomas Cheney in March, without Wriothesley she faced more than an outside chance of ending her life on the scaffold. Tilney was the only one, apart from the Queen, who could be said with a confidence approaching certainty to know all that had transpired before Catherine married the King. She had been at Chesworth House when the Manox fling took place. She had, at least once, been in the bed when Catherine and Francis slept together. She had heard the talk in the house of their betrothal. She had carried messages from the Queen to Lady Rochford which she may not have fully understood but nonetheless had suspicions about. She had accompanied Catherine to her first postmarital rendezvous with Culpepper at Greenwich Palace on Maundy Thursday. She was the servant chosen to accompany Catherine on both of her nighttime visits to Lady Rochford’s rooms at Lincoln. The Queen’s favor towards Tilney had been noticed by other chamberers, such as Mistresses Morton and Luffkyn.

  If Wriothesley had worked his magic to rescue Udall and Cheney from hanging for sharing a bed with each other, he might be able to save Katherine Tilney for having been in the same one as Catherine Howard and Francis Dereham. For Wriothesley, who prided himself on getting results from his suspects, a plea bargain for Katherine Tilney, to use a modern term, was tactical good sense. She knew the most, and if they wanted her to tell them that information, which could be used to condemn her to death for misprision of treason, they would have to offer her something. We know from his behavior during a later interrogation of a condemned female heretic that Wriothesley did use the strategy of offering help in return for information.10 Tilney’s role as a passive observer rather than initiator in most of the key episodes of the case against the Queen may have made it easier for Wriothesley to praise her “good service” as the scandal drew to a close and make good on any promise to her.

  It would be unfair to see Katherine Tilney as an unprincipled snitch. She may have been indiscreet in her conversations with Margaret Morton and Francis Dereham, and she certainly helped Wriothesley and his colleagues, yet it is difficult to see what else she could have done when she was first asked about the Queen’s behavior in the north. Once questions about the progress were put to Tilney, to deny everything entirely could risk
her being accused of complicity. To Tilney’s credit, she seems to have avoided telling the councillors what they wanted to hear. When they were feverishly hunting evidence that the Dowager Duchess of Norfolk knew that Catherine’s relationship with Francis had been consummated either at Chesworth or Lambeth, Tilney stuck to her testimony that the Dowager “only knew that there was love between them.”11

  Katherine Tilney’s multiple interrogations signpost a split in the questioning after November 12. The investigations into Queen Catherine can broadly be divided into three overlapping phases. The first, which took place from November 2 to late on November 11, was an inquiry prompted by the revelations by Mary Hall via John Lascelles of the Queen’s alleged binding precontract to Francis Dereham, which could have made her legally ineligible to marry anyone else. The second, from November 12 to about December 1, sought to establish if the Queen had committed adultery, either with Francis Dereham or Thomas Culpepper. This was inaugurated by the confessions of Francis and then, within twenty-four hours, of the Queen, whose testimony was then used to bounce Katherine Tilney into testifying, who quite probably completed the circle by having been the source of the information about Culpepper that was originally imparted to the Privy Council in self-preserving panic by Francis Dereham. The third thrust of the prosecution, which gathered momentum from December 1 to 22 but had been discussed, debated, and investigated intermittently since early November, was to determine how much the Howards had known and if, as a result of that knowledge, they had conspired to commit treason by encouraging Catherine to hire Dereham, her former lover. It was during that phase of proceedings that so many of the witnesses from the first round were called back, often several times.