Young and Damned and Fair
Page 48
29. The Babees’ Book, p. 4.
30. John Russell’s Book of Nurture quoted in The Babees’ Book, p. 50.
31. The Babees’ Book, pp. 201–2.
32. Joan Bulmer (née Acworth) was born c. 1519 and later married “young Bulmer.” Others, like Katherine Tilney, seem to have been younger and were still unmarried and in the Dowager’s service when Catherine became queen.
33. Originally published in French as L’enfant et la vie familiale sous l’Ancien Régime (Paris: Plon, 1960).
34. Laurence Whistler, The English Festivals (London: William Heinemann, 1947), pp. 59–60.
35. The Gospel according to Saint Matthew, 2:1–11.
36. Cal. S. P. Span., IV, ii, 323.
37. LP, III, 1675.
38. Griffiths, Sir Rhys ap Thomas, pp. 91–92.
39. Griffiths, Sir Rhys ap Thomas, p. 92.
40. Griffiths, Sir Rhys ap Thomas, p. 98.
41. LP, VIII, 230.
42. Proceedings of the Privy Council, VII, pp. 282–83.
43. LP, IX, 577.
44. Griffiths, Sir Rhys ap Thomas, p. 113.
45. Lisle Letters, IV, p. 10.
46. LP, IX, 576–77.
47. LP, XVI, 1414, 1469.
48. LP, VIII, 1103.
49. LP, IX, 577. This seems to disprove the contemporary rumor, either repeated or invented by the imperial ambassador, that Katherine’s first husband had been targeted partly because he was anti-Boleyn and that “had it not been for the Lady, who hated him because he and his wife had spoken disparagingly of her, he would have been pardoned and escaped his miserable fate.” The speed with which Katherine remarried, her favor with the Queen, and the attempts made to safeguard Katherine’s finances during her husband’s downfall suggest that Rhys’s fall was not linked to the question of the King’s remarriage. Cf. Cal S.P., Span., IV, ii, 323; Griffiths, Sir Rhys ap Thomas, pp. 104–111.
50. LP, X, 911.
51. Griffiths, Sir Rhys ap Thomas, pp. 94–95.
52. Later in life, Elizabeth I publicly defended her mother on several occasions, even going into relatively precise details of her life to do so. Given that her mother died before Elizabeth’s third birthday, and many of her childhood servants were appointed by Queen Anne, including Elizabeth’s governess Katherine Ashley (née Champernowne) and her future archbishop of Canterbury, Matthew Parker, they seem the most likely source for Elizabeth’s information about her mother. It is not true that Elizabeth seldom mentioned Anne, and accounts from her sister’s reign, when it would have been more diplomatic to avoid the conversation, describe the topic in a way that suggests Elizabeth had discussed it frequently—see Lisa Hilton, Elizabeth I: Renaissance Prince (London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 2014), pp. 84–85.
53. Between May 1536 and October 1537, there was no clear heir to the English throne. All three of the King’s biological children were legally illegitimate, either because they had been born in bastardy or because they had been declared so after the annulment of their mothers’ marriages. As a result, Margaret Douglas’s place in the line of succession was ambiguous but undeniable.
54. Original Letters, III, iii, 208.
55. Lisle Letters, III, 221; LP, XIII, i, 295.
56. LP, X, 371.
57. LP, XI, 636.
58. LP, Add., I, 1148.
59. LP, XVI, 1398; W.A. Copinger, The Manors of Suffolk: Notes on Their History and Devolution (London: T. Fisher Unwin, 1905), I, p. 221. Manox was also thought to have been related to Edward Waldegrave, another young man on the Dowager’s staff, and a close friend of Manox’s future rival, Francis Dereham.
60. SP 1/167, f. 117.
61. See in particular R. M. Warnicke, “Katherine [Catherine; née Katherine Howard] (1518x24–1542), queen of England and Ireland, fifth consort of Henry VIII” in Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (Oxford University Press, 2004), and Denny, Katherine Howard, pp. 86–89, 115–124. This particular interpretation rests strongly on Denny’s belief that Catherine was born c. 1525. Variants of this narrative of Catherine as a victim of long-term sexual abuse have been repeated elsewhere.
62. Paul Johnson, Elizabeth: A Study in Power and Intellect (London: Weidenfeld and Nicholson, 1974), pp. 25–27; David Starkey, Elizabeth: Apprenticeship (London: Vintage, 2001), pp. 67–70.
63. Martin Ingram, “Child sexual abuse in early modern England” in Michael J. Braddick and John Walter (eds.), Negotiating Power in Early Modern Society: Order, Hierarchy and Subordination in Britain and Ireland (Cambridge University Press, 2001), pp. 81–83.
64. B. A. Windeatt (trans.), The Book of Margery Kempe (London: Penguin, 2004), p. 59.
65. See chapter 19.
66. LP, XVI, 1321.
67. LP, XVI, 1320.
68. LP, XVI, 1321.
69. Ibid.
70. Dating Mary’s arrival requires combining her own imprecise memories with the itinerary of her first mentioned employer, Lord William Howard. On November 5, 1541, Mary dated her arrival to “three or four years past” (LP, XVI, 1320), provisionally meaning 1537 or 1538. In the same statement, she mentions that her first job was as a nursemaid to Lord William’s daughter Agnes, the future Marchioness of Winchester. Agnes must have been born before 1535, the year of her mother’s death, but Mary’s own recollections make it clear that she had not served the girl from birth. Mary also states that much of her early employment was spent in Lord William’s household and that it was only later that she gradually began to spend more time at the Dowager Duchess’s. After the Prince of Wales’s christening in October 1537, William was sent to France to report back on a rumored marriage negotiation between the Scottish King, James V, and Marie de Guise, Dowager Duchess of Longueville (LP, XII, ii, 1004). The proposed union worried the English, and William was ordered to remain in France until a final announcement was made. That announcement arrived in January 1538, which, when set alongside Mary’s statement from November 1541, supports the idea that she became familiar with both households after that—in early or mid-1538. Testimonies from other servants, who dated the beginning of Catherine’s affair with Francis Dereham to mid-1538, suggest that Mary arrived in 1538, since she had certainly arrived before the end of the liaison with Manox.
71. LP, XVI, 1320.
72. SP 1/167, f. 129.
73. SP 1/167, f. 130.
74. SP 1/167, f. 117.
75. SP 1/168, f. 85.
5. “Mad wenches”
1. Kim M. Philips, Medieval Maidens: Young Women and Gender in England, 1270–1540 (Manchester University Press, 2003), p. 6.
2. Smith, A Tudor Tragedy, p. 138.
3. George Cavendish, The Life of Cardinal Wolsey, by George Cavendish, his Gentleman Usher, and Metrical Visions (Chiswick, England: Harding, Triphook, and Lepard, 1825), II, p. 64. The author had retired from court in 1530, but he remained tied to it through his brother, William.
4. LP, XVI, 1317.
5. LP, XVI, 1321.
6. Ibid.
7. In 1536, the Dowager Duchess gave him money to purchase a livery—LP, XVI, 1398.
8. Francis Dereham’s date of birth is difficult to determine. G. H. Dashwood (ed.), The Visitation of Norfolk in the year 1563 taken by William Hervey, Clarenceux King of Arms (Norwich, England: Miller and Leavins, 1878), I, family tree 84, p. 228, provides dates of birth for Francis’s siblings, ranging from late in Henry VII’s reign to early in Henry VIII’s, but they seem out of order and there are gaps for several of the younger siblings. More concretely, a family will indicates that Francis was under twenty-one in 1529, two years before his father’s death. How far under twenty-one is not clear, but it weakens the suggestion he was born c. 1508. He may have been a decade or so older than Catherine, but his entry into the Dowager’s service in 1536 raises the possibility of a date of birth of c. 1515, or perhaps sometime after.
9. LP, XVI, 1398, 1416; Dyer, Standards of Living in the Later Middle Ages, p. 55.
10. Dyer, Standards of Living, pp. 58–63.
11. Burnet, IV, p. 71.
12. LP, XVI, 1321; Burnet, IV, p. 71.
13. Burnet, IV, p. 71.
14. SP 1/167, fos. 130, 161.
15. Burnet, IV, p. 71.
16. LP, XVI, 1337; Proceedings of the Privy Council, VII, p. 354.
17. SP 1/167, f. 131.
18. Ibid.
19. LP, XVI, 1320.
20. Teresa McLean, The English at Play in the Middle Ages (Slough, England: Kensal Press, 1983), p. 3.
21. Susan E. James, Kateryn Parr: The Making of a Queen (Aldershot, England: Ashgate Publishing, 1999), plate 9.
22. Beryl Rowland (trans.), Medieval Woman’s Guide to Health: The First English Gynecological Handbook (Kent State University Press, 1981), p. 87; James A. Brundage, Law, Sex, and Christian Society in Medieval Europe (University of Chicago Press, 1987), p. 491.
23. Brundage, p. 504.
24. Brundage, p. 535.
25. Thomas Tentler, Sin and Confession on the Eve of the Reformation (Princeton University Press, 1977), p. 143.
26. Rowland, p. 167.
27. SP 1/167, f. 137.
28. LP, XVI, 1321.
29. LP, XVI, 1469.
30. SP 1/167, fos. 130, 137. Whoever that family was it was not the “Lord Bayment” mentioned in Smith, A Tudor Tragedy, p. 50. There was no family with that title in the Anglo-Irish peerages in 1539.
31. LP, XVI, 1469.
32. LP, XVI, 1385, 1424.
33. LP, XVI, 1337 (2).
34. LP, XVI, 1330, 1337 (2).
35. LP, XVI, 1469.
36. Ibid.
37. LP, XVI, 1348. Maunsay told a member of the Privy Council on November 15, 1541, that Bess “could also speak of this,” at a time when they were inquiring after the Queen’s alleged sexual indiscretions at Horsham and Lambeth. If she was subsequently questioned, Bess’s testimony sadly has not survived, but because he identified her, Maunsay must have known that she had some specific and relevant information.
38. LP, XVI, 1385.
39. Ibid.
40. LP, XVI, 1414.
41. Burnet, IV, p. 71.
42. Ibid.
43. Catherine only referred to “my lady Breerton.” Elizabeth Brereton (née Somerset), daughter of Charles, 1st Earl of Worcester, and widow of William Brereton (ex. 1536) could have been the lady she was referring to, but there is no firm evidence that her late husband had ever been knighted. The only definite Lady Brereton in 1539 was Lady Eleanor Brereton (née Brereton), wife of Sir William Brereton, who became Lord Justice of Ireland in April 1540. Her husband was in England between 1536 and November 1539, which leaves Eleanor as the only Lady Brereton in the right place and time.
44. For one instance among hundreds, the twelfth-century case of the disinheritance of Mabel de Francheville by her cousin Richard de Antsey, who challenged her legitimacy in the hope of confiscating her lands, which would then fall to him. Pope Alexander III eventually ruled in de Antsey’s favor. In living memory for Catherine’s parents, the bastardizing of Edward V and his siblings in 1483 on the grounds of his father’s alleged precontract with Lady Eleanor Talbot helped bring the Duke of Gloucester to the throne as Richard III. A precontract would also later be used to annul Henry VIII’s fourth marriage.
45. He may have retired from his job in Calais shortly before his death, quite possibly for health reasons. Plans were in motion to appoint a replacement by January 31, although the intention may have been to make the appointment only after Edmund retired or was dismissed. LP, XIV, i, 172; 906, grant 17; Sylvanus Urban, The Gentleman’s Magazine and Historical Chronicle (London: John Nichols, 1797), p. 543.
46. Margaret Jennings was not subsequently attached to Catherine’s household, as was suggested in the nineteenth century and repeated in the twentieth and twenty-first. The sources make it clear that the Lady Howard in question was Catherine’s aunt.
47. Archaeologia: or Miscellaneous Tracts Relating to Antiquity, 1770–1992 (London: J. B. Nichols and Son, 1883), XLVII, p. 326.
48. LP, XII, ii, 463.
49. Lisle Letters, IV, 998.
50. LP, XIII, I, 395.
51. Lisle Letters, V, 1139. The Countess of Bridgewater acted as chief female mourner. Elizabeth Boleyn had died at a house near Baynard’s Castle in London and her body was brought from there to Lambeth on a barge, with burning torches and banners from each of the barge’s corners.
52. Burnet, IV, p. 71.
6. “The King’s highness did cast a fantasy”
1. LP, XII, ii, 1004.
2. Ibid.
3. LP, XIII, ii, 77.
4. There is some evidence that a middle sister, Louise, was also briefly considered. She later married Charles II, Prince de Chimay.
5. LP, XII, ii, 1172, 1187; Julia Cartwright, Christina of Denmark, Duchess of Milan and Lorraine, 1522–1590 (London: John Murray, 1913), pp. 149–54.
6. Cartwright, pp. 192–94.
7. LP, XIII, i, 583; LP, XIV, ii, 400; Cartwright, pp. 192–94.
8. LP, XIII, ii, 1087. The final straw seemed to be the despoliation of the shrine of Saint Thomas Becket and Saint Augustine’s monastery, both in Canterbury.
9. LP, XIV, i, 953, 1005, 1245; XV, 142. There were already concerns about the Scottish government’s possible role in encouraging aristocratic dissent in Ireland.
10. Susan Brigden, “Henry VIII and the Crusade against England” in Thomas Betteridge and Suzannah Lipscomb (eds.), Henry VIII and the Court: Art, Politics and Performance (Farnham, England: Ashgate, 2013), pp. 215–23.
11. LP, XIV, i, 940; XIV, ii, 35.
12. Hall’s Chronicle, p. 842.
13. Hazel Pierce, Margaret Pole, Countess of Salisbury, 1473–1541: Loyalty, Lineage, and Leadership (Cardiff: University of Wales Press, 2003), pp. 36–37.
14. LP, XIII, ii, 695.
15. The Spanish Chronicle, p. 132. This is accepted by Pierce, p. 128.
16. Lisle Letters, V, 1259; LP, XIV, i, 191.
17. LP, XVI, 74.
18. Burnet, VI, pp. 258–59; LP, XXI, ii, 554.
19. LP, XIII, i, 1124.
20. LP, XIV, i, 37.
21. LP, XIV, i, 233, 280.
22. Madeleine Hope Dodds and Ruth Dodds, The Pilgrimage of Grace, 1536–1537, and the Exeter Conspiracy, 1538 (Cambridge University Press, 1915), II, pp. 321–22.
23. LP, XIV, i, 815, 1009, 1035.
24. LP, XIV, i, 940, 953, 1005, 1245, 1288.
25. Manuel Fernández Alvarez, Charles V: Elected Emperor and Hereditary Ruler (London: Thames and Hudson, 1975), p. 115.
26. Charles Wriothesley, A Chronicle of England During the Reigns of the Tudors, William Douglas Hamilton (ed.) (London: Camden Society, 1875), pp. 97–99.
27. LP, XIV, ii, 1137.
28. An example being Francis Dereham’s trip to Ireland—the majority of the sources suggest that he went there without the Dowager Duchess’s permission or knowledge, but there is one which implies she told Lady Isabella Baynton that she knew Dereham had gone there. On the balance of probability, especially given the doubt expressed in the latter anomalous source, the majority version that remembered him leaving England without taking leave of the Howard family beforehand seems the most probable—SP 1/168, f. 53; LP, XVI, 1409 (8), 1416.
29. LP, XIV, ii, 300.
30. LP, XIV, i, 955.
31. LP, XIV, ii, 275.
32. Original Letters, I, ii, 146.
33. LP, XIV, ii, 469.
34. Burnet, VI, p. 233.
35. SP 1/167, fos. 110, 131; LP, XVI, 1334, 1379.
36. SP 1/168, f. 14.
37. Ives, Life and Death, p. 9.
38. SP 1/168, f. 8.
39. SP 1/168, f. 53. The framing of the questions put to Agnes during the interrogations in 1541 also makes it clear that the Dowager was not present at the time and that the information was passed on to her by another source.
40. SP 1/168, f. 53.
41. Inventory, II, pp. 58–59.
42. II Samuel
11:1–27.
43. LP, XIV, ii, 221.
44. Anne of Cleves may have had as many as seven maids of honor, based on B. L.—Additional MS 45, 716a, f. 16. At least at the start of her queenship, Catherine had five, excluding the mother of the maids, based on SP 1/157, f. 16. Katherine Parr’s were back up to seven in 1547, with their ‘mother’—Hamilton, pp. 30–31.
45. LP, XIV, i, 1088.
46. Lisle Letters, III, 574; IV, 899; VI, 1653.
47. LP, XV, 1030 (52); Lisle Letters, V, 1558.
48. Original Letters, I, ii, 146.
49. LP, XV, 215.
50. LP, XV, 229
51. LP, XIV, ii, 33; XV, 215
52. John Russell’s Book of Nurture quoted in The Babees’ Book, p. 66.
53. Household Ordinances, p. 156; Thurley, pp. 123–27.
54. The Gospel according to Saint Matthew 7:20.
55. Ninya Mikhaila and Jane Malcolm-Davies, The Tudor Tailor: Reconstructing sixteenth-century dress (London: Batsford, 2006), p. 23.
56. Lisle Letters, IV, 161–62, 191, 894; Burnet, VI, 72.
57. B. L., Harleian MS 6807, f. 10v–11.
58. Thurley, p. 172.
59. Thurley, pp. 172–76.
60. G. W. Bernard, The Power of the Early Tudor Nobility: A Study of the Fourth and Fifth Earls of Shrewsbury (Brighton, England: Harvester Press, 1985), p. 173.
61. Susan Brigden, Thomas Wyatt: The Heart’s Forest (London: Faber and Faber, 2012), p. 521; Thurley, p. 50; LP, XIV, ii, 718.
62. LP, XIV, ii, 718.
63. Thurley, pp. 50–58.
64. LP, XIV, ii, 340.
65. LP, XIV, i, 970, 1208; XV, 330.
66. SP 1/168, f. 48.
67. Head, pp. 251–52.
68. Childs, pp. 92–93.
69. Childs, p. 17.
70. Childs, pp. 133–34. His wife was Lady Frances de Vere, daughter of the 15th Earl of Oxford and his second wife Elizabeth (née Trussell).
71. Childs, p. 3.
72. Beverley A. Murphy, Bastard Prince: Henry VIII’s Lost Son (Stroud, England: History Press, 2010), p. 176.
73. Ibid., pp. 221–22.
74. Mary Howard had three titles in 1539—her late husband Henry Fitzroy (1519–1536) had been Duke of Richmond and Somerset and Earl of Nottingham. It was only later in the reign, when the Seymour match was suggested again, that Surrey apparently claimed that marrying a Seymour was beneath a Howard.