Young and Damned and Fair

by Gareth Russell

  75. Household Ordinances, p. 155.

  76. LP, IX, 612.

  77. SP 1/167, f. 148

  78. Ibid.

  79. SP 1/167, f. 148.

  80. Burnet, VI, 72.

  81. SP 1/168, f. 53.

  82. LP, XIV, ii, 256.

  83. LP, XIV, ii, 314, 360, 553, 591.

  84. LP, XIV, ii, 622.

  85. LP, XIV, ii, 718.

  86. LP, XIV, ii, 677.

  7. “The charms of Catherine Howard”

  1. The account of Anne of Cleves’s arrival, including the weather and her ladies’ outfits, is taken from Hall’s Chronicle, pp. 834–36. Edward Hall’s mania for the details of Tudor court pageantry is a historian’s delight.

  2. LP, XIV, i, 490.

  3. The first recognizably “modern” royal wedding, taking place in a cathedral and accompanied by processions through the street and media attention, was that of Mary, the Princess Royal, to Henry Lascelles, the future 6th Earl of Harewood, in February 1922.

  4. Hall’s Chronicle, p. 837.

  5. Hall’s Chronicle, p. 836.

  6. LP, XV, 86. A report of the punishment of a criminal mentions that they were pelted with snowballs by local children.

  7. Hall’s Chronicle, p. 837.

  8. LP, XV, 822; letter from Charles de Marillac to the Constable de Montmorency, January 5, 1540, cit. Thomas, pp. 135–36.

  9. Warnicke, The Marrying of Anne of Cleves, pp. 183–4.

  10. Retha M. Warnicke, “Henry VIII’s Greeting of Anne of Cleves and Early Modern Court Protocol” in Albion (1996), pp. 580–82.

  11. LP, XV, 179.

  12. The comments on Anne’s appearance tally with de Marillac’s assessment, although it is possible that Eleanor had also heard reports on Anne of Cleves from her sister Maria, Dowager Queen of Hungary, who had sent a nobleman to escort Anne on her journey through the Netherlands. The sisters were in regular enough contact that when a messenger was absent from the Dowager Queen’s court, it was assumed he had taken a message to the Queen of France—LP, XV, 837, and a letter from Charles de Marillac to King François I, January 5, 1540, cit. Thomas, p. 135.

  13. The title was held by Edward’s family before their seizure of the crown in 1461, and it was given to his younger son, Richard, in 1473. Ironically, given its customary designation as a title for the monarch’s second surviving son, five of the men invested with the title since then later succeeded to the throne—Henry VIII, Charles I, James II, George V, and George VI were all dukes of York during their fathers’ or brothers’ lifetimes. In the eighteenth century, the title was also joined with the duchy of Albany and awarded to younger brothers of kings George I, George III, and George IV. The duchies were separated for a son and grandson of Queen Victoria and have not been coupled together since.

  14. John Strype, Ecclesiastical Memorials (London: John Wyat, 1721), App., pp. 315–16.

  15. LP, XIV, ii, 33.

  16. LP, XV, 925. De Marillac’s experience of England typically meant London.

  17. LP, XV, 243. This message was carried verbally by one of Anne’s compatriots, making it more likely that the sentiment was genuine.

  18. LP, XV, 776.

  19. LP, XV, 976.

  20. LP, XV, 823.

  21. Diarmaid MacCulloch, Thomas Cranmer: A Life (Yale University Press, 1996), p. 258.

  22. LP, XV, 822.

  23. The English interest in maintaining the alliance with Cleves is suggested by the Duke of Norfolk’s embassy to France, in which his mission was to persuade François I to default on his treaty with Charles V in favor of a tripartite alliance with England and Cleves—LP, XV, 233.

  24. LP, XV, 652.

  25. LP, XV, 38.

  26. LP, XV, 189.

  27. Cal. S. P. Span., VI, i, 160.

  28. LP, XV, 154.

  29. LP, XV, 121.

  30. LP, XV, 115.

  31. Hall’s Chronicle, p. 837; LP, XV, 209. For the weather, a letter from Sir John Gage records that the weather was improving by the middle of February—LP, XV, 218.

  32. LP, XV, 239, 240.

  33. LP, XV, 115, 224.

  34. LP, XV, 223.

  35. LP, XV, 223, 253, 412; Roger Bigelow Merriman, Life and Letters of Thomas Cromwell (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1902), II, p. 338.

  36. LP, XVI, 1332.

  37. Michael Everett, The Rise of Thomas Cromwell: Power and Politics in the Reign of Henry VIII (Yale University Press, 2015), pp. 58–61.

  38. SP 1/121, f. 131.

  39. Burnet, VI, pp. 258–59.

  40. LP, XIV, ii, 379.

  41. LP, XV, 383.

  42. Hall’s Chronicle, p. 838.

  43. Hall’s Chronicle, p. 840.

  44. LP, XV, 414.

  45. LP, XV, 259, 269.

  46. LP, XV, 179.

  47. Wriothesley, Chronicle, p. 115.

  48. LP, XV, 1025.

  49. Glyn Redworth, In Defence of the Church Catholic: The Life of Stephen Gardiner (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1990), pp. 119–20.

  50. LP, XV, 822.

  51. SP 1/168, f. 64–5.

  52. SP 1/168, f. 8.

  53. SP 1/168, f. 80.

  54. LP, XV, 612, grant 12.

  55. LP, XV, 686; Inventory, II, 155.

  56. Hastings Robinson (ed.), Original Letters Relative to the English Reformation (Cambridge University Press, 1846), I, pp. 201–2.

  57. Ibid.

  58. LP, XV, 648, 737.

  59. Burnet, V, p. 276.

  60. LP, XV, 442.

  61. LP, XV, 719, 737.

  62. LP, XV, 749; Stanford E. Lehmberg, The Later Parliaments of Henry VIII, 1536–1547 (Cambridge University Press, 1977), p. 127.

  63. Redworth, pp. 105–6.

  64. LP, XV, 833.

  65. Wriothesley, Chronicle, p. 118.

  66. LP, XV, 737.

  67. LP, XV, 823.

  68. LP, XV, 332.

  69. LP, XV, 418.

  70. LP, XV, 412.

  71. LP, XIV, ii, 389; XV, 171. Even on occasions when they were declaring the opposite, as in conversations with Charles de Marillac, the English courtiers’ conversations suggested a degree of concern about the Duke of Cleves’s actions—LP, XV, 651.

  72. LP, XV, 161, 662, 665.

  73. LP, XV, 676.

  74. LP, XV, 712.

  75. LP, XV, 811, 901.

  76. LP, XV, 703.

  77. Cal. S. P. Span., XI, 337.

  78. Strype, Ecclesiastical, I, App., p. 313.

  79. LP, XV, 850 (11) seems to show Cromwell’s sluggishness or reluctance to press ahead with the annulment, despite Wriothesley’s panic.

  80. LP, XV, 776.

  81. LP, XV, 766—the French ambassador was told by an unnamed gentleman of the court that the primary reason for the King’s anger was Cromwell’s religious policy.

  82. LP, XV, 766.

  83. LP, XV, 767.

  84. LP, XV, 267.

  85. LP, XIV, i, 1193.

  86. LP, XV, 825, 850 (13).

  87. Original Letters, II, ii, 141.

  88. LP, XV, 844.

  89. HMC Rutland, I, p. 27.

  90. LP, XV, 850 (5, 7, 9, 13, 14).

  91. LP, XV, 850 (7).

  92. Burnet, II, pp. 307–8; LP, XV, 823.

  93. LP, XV, 860, 861.

  94. H. A. Kelly, The Matrimonial Trials of Henry VIII (Stanford University Press, 1976) p. 273.

  95. There is a debate over the legislation passed to facilitate Catherine’s marriage, with suggestions that some of it indicates that Catherine had made some half-confession about having being attached to someone in a relationship that involved discussion of marriage but no consummation. However, it seems far more likely that the legislation was designed to free Henry from any difficulty regarding the annulment of his marriage to Anne of Cleves; Kelly, Matrimonial Trials, pp. 261–64.

  96. LP, XV, 845.

  97. LP, XV, 899.

  98. LP, XV, 883.

  99. LP, XV, 991.
<
br />   100. LP, XV, 925 (ii).

  101. LP, XV, 901.

  102. MacCulloch, Thomas Cranmer, p. 271.

  103. Burnet, I, pp. 569–70.

  104. Thurley, p. 190.

  105. David Starkey, “Intimacy and innovation: the rise of the Privy Chamber, 1485–1547” in David Starkey (ed.), The English Court: from the Wars of the Roses to the Civil War (London: Longman, 1987), p. 82.

  8. “The Queen of Britain will not forget”

  1. LP, XIV, i, 1303; Thurley, p. 60.

  2. Hall’s Chronicle, p. 840. This might explain why writers later in the century and in the Stuart era mistakenly dated Catherine’s wedding to August 8, for instance Burnet, II, p. 449.

  3. LP, XV, 902.

  4. Emperor Charles IV (d. 1378) was survived by his fourth wife, Elisabeth of Pomerania (d. 1393), the mother of Anne of Bohemia, Queen consort of England (d. 1394). Charles is buried in St Vitus’s Cathedral in Prague, in a sepulcher that houses the Empress Elisabeth’s remains and those of his first three wives—Blanche of Valois (d. 1348), Anna of Bavaria (d. 1353), and Anna of Świdnica (d. 1362). Technically, King Philippe II of France (d. 1223) was also married four times, but twice to the same woman. Henry VIII’s record as the most married European sovereign was beaten in the next generation by Tsar Ivan IV (“the Terrible”) of Russia (d. 1584), who wed seven times.

  5. Cal S. P. Span, VI, i, 115.

  6. The Bulmers were a prominent family in York; The Cause Papers Database, G.360—a case regarding a tithe dated to the Church Courts at York on 7 October 1540 gives a John Bulmer’s age and occupation, when he was named as one of the plaintiffs. Holinshed gives the name of Joan’s husband as Anthony Bulmer, but John Roche Dasent et al. (eds), Acts of the Privy Council (London: Her Majesty’s Stationery Office, 1890–1964), I, pp. 46–48, explicitly gives his Christian name as William. There is nothing to support the narrative that Joan and William were married while she was still in service to the Dowager Duchess of Norfolk, since the Acts of the Privy Council only refers to an estangement between the couple after February 1542. The suggestion that William Bulmer stopped Joan joining Queen Catherine’s household in 1540 is speculative and it is difficult to believe that a countercommand from the Queen would not have secured Joan’s place.

  7. LP, XV, 875.

  8. Antonia Fraser, The Six Wives of Henry VIII (London: Arrow Books, 1998), p. 329; Denny, Katherine Howard, pp. 166–67.

  9. E101/422/16, f. 63v; SP 1/157, fos. 15–16.

  10. SP 1/167, f. 110.

  11. James, Kateryn Parr, p. 152.

  12. LP, XVI, 1321.

  13. LP, XVI, 1334.

  14. LP, XVI, 1394, 1422. Potentially contrary evidence is that the King granted a pardon to Mary Lascelles on the grounds that she had refused to join the Queen’s service and that by pardoning her it would encourage others to tell the truth in future. Joan was not included in this pardon, but that may simply be because she had not willingly revealed the information about Catherine’s past, as Mary had, or because in July 1540 she had sought employment in Catherine’s household.

  15. SP 1/168, f. 80.

  16. Original Letters, I, ii, 121.

  17. Griffiths, Sir Rhys ap Thomas, p. 90.

  18. Griffiths, Sir Rhys ap Thomas, pp. 127–28.

  19. Smith, A Tudor Tragedy, p. 155.

  20. That it was a sustained policy is supported by the fact that they sought out Alice Restwold in October 1541—see SP 1/167, f. 136.

  21. See chapters 11 and 17.

  22. SP 1/167, f. 117.

  23. LP, XIII, ii, 695.

  24. Andrew S. Currie, “Notes on the Obstetric Histories of Catherine of Aragon and Anne Boleyn” in Edinburgh Medical Journal (1888), pp. 1–34; Ove Brinch, “The Medical Problems of Henry VIII” in Centaurus (1958), pp. 339–69.

  25. Sir Arthur Salusbury MacNalty, Henry VIII: A Difficult Patient (Norwich, England: Christopher Johnson, 1952), pp. 159–63, which retracts in detail an earlier lecture given by the author in support of the theory that the King had syphilis. For the recent resurrection of the theory, see Joanna Denny, Anne Boleyn (London: Portrait, 2004), pp. 119, 227–28, and the same author’s Katherine Howard, pp. 160–61.

  26. Frederick Chamberlin, The Private Character of Henry the Eighth (London: John Lane, 1932), pp. 268–76 for the medical experts’ responses, and pp. 276–82 for Chamberlin’s own debunking of the syphilis myth.

  27. Derek Wilson, A Brief History of Henry VIII: Reformer and Tyrant (London: Constable & Robinson, 2009), p. 106. This is one of the best books to explore and promote the idea that Henry’s impotence significantly affected his performance as king, along with Ives, Life and Death, pp. 190–92.

  28. Ives, Life and Death, p. 191.

  29. Ibid.

  30. Michelle Anne White, Henrietta Maria and the English Civil Wars (Aldershot, England: Ashgate, 2006), pp. 23–24.

  31. Derek Wilson, The Uncrowned Kings of England: The Black Legend of the Dudleys (London: Constable & Robinson, 2005), p. 109.

  32. C. M. Prior, The Royal Studs of the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries (London: Horse and Hound Publications, 1935), pp. 2–3; Inventory, II, pp. 98–99.

  33. Thurley, pp. 63–65.

  34. Martin Biddle, Nonsuch Palace: The Material Culture of a Noble Restoration Household (Oxford: Oxbow Books, 2005), pp. 1–3.

  35. Thurley, p. 38.

  36. Thurley, p. 51.

  37. LP, XIV, ii, 35.

  38. Hall’s Chronicle, p. 840.

  39. One such procession was organized in London by Edmund Bonner.

  40. LP, XIV, i, 1239.

  41. LP, XII, i, 923; XIV, ii, 378; XV, 985, 1015.

  42. Susan Brigden, New Worlds, Lost Worlds: The Rule of the Tudors, 1485–1603 (London: Penguin, 2000), p. 233; LP, XV, 82.

  43. Hall’s Chronicle, p. 841; Burnet, I, pp. 599–600. Wriothesley, Chronicle, I, p. 126, incorrectly places Meekins’s execution on July 30, 1541.

  44. LP, XVI, 20. Swinerton or Swynerton came from the parish of Swineshead, most likely the one which is now in Bedfordshire. He was summoned to appear before the Privy Council at Ampthill, also in Bedfordshire. If he had been from the Lincolnshire village of the same name, he would have been taken to the Council of the North. Until the reign of George III, Swineshead was an exclave of Huntingdonshire, but it was enclosed as part of Bedfordshire by Parliament in 1803.

  45. LP, XIV, ii, 11.

  46. LP, XV, 202; Jean Baptiste Louis Kaulek (ed.), Correspondance politique de mm. de Castillon et de Marillac (Paris: Félix Alcan, 1885), 347; Cal. S.P. Span, VI, i, 135.

  47. Brigden, Thomas Wyatt, pp. 515–21.

  48. LP, XV, 954.

  49. Holinshed, III, p. 819.

  50. Hall’s Chronicle, p. 840.

  51. LP, XV, 976.

  52. J. J. Scarisbrick, Henry VIII (Yale University Press, 1997), p. 353.

  53. Herbert, p. 532.

  9. “All these ladies and my whole kingdom”

  1. The Spanish Chronicle, pp. 75–76.

  2. Hamilton, pp. 15–16.

  3. James, Kateryn Parr, p. 122.

  4. LP, XV, 21.

  5. Elizabeth Norton has suggested that the Lady Clinton in attendance was Jane (née Poynings), Elizabeth Blount’s mother-in-law. However, by 1540, Jane had remarried to Sir Robert Wingfield, and despite his death, it would be unusual to see her referred to by her previous marital name—see Elizabeth Norton, Bessie Blount: Mistress to Henry VIII (Stroud, England: Amberley, 2013), pp. 301–4. I believe it was Elizabeth (née Blount) who served in the household as Lady Clinton in 1540, but I am convinced by Norton’s suggestion, based on her analysis of family wills, that Elizabeth probably died giving birth to a daughter. This child was christened Catherine, which, on an admittedly tenuous basis, may have been a tribute to the queen Elizabeth served at the time of her death.

  6. The Babees’ Book, p. 4.

  7. Household Ordinances, p. 38.

  8. Margaret Visser, The Rit
uals of Dinner: The Origins, Evolution, Eccentricities, and Meaning of Table Manners (London: Viking, 1992), p. 334.

  9. John Russell’s Book of Nurture in The Babees’ Book, p. 64.

  10. Julia Fox, Jane Boleyn: The Infamous Lady Rochford (London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 2007), p. 333; S. T. Bindoff (ed.), The House of Commons, 1509–1558 (London: Secker & Warburg, 1982), III, pp. 255–58; J. L. Kirby, “Edgcumbe, Sir Richard (c. 1443–1489),” Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (Oxford University Press, 2004). Lady Edgecombe’s parents, Sir John St. John of Bletsoe and Sybil (née Morgan), had started their family in the late 1490s. Lady Edgecombe’s brother, who had the same name as her father and served as one of the MPs for Bedfordshire, was married by 1521 and she by 1525. She was widowed on August 14, 1539.

  11. Norman Davis (ed.), The Paston Letters and Papers of the Fifteenth Century (Oxford University Press, 1971), I, 116, 117, 165, 231.

  12. LP, XIV, i, 1312; XV, 236.

  13. S. J. Gunn, Charles Brandon, Duke of Suffolk, c. 1484–1545 (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1988), p. 205; Barbara J. Harris, “Women and Politics in Early Tudor England” in Historical Journal (1990), p. 265.

  14. Lisle Letters, IV, 882; Original Letters, II, ii, 106.

  15. Wriothesley, Chronicle, I, p. 124; LP, XIV, i, 965; XIV, ii, 753, 1121; XV, 1, 215, 229, 947.

  16. LP, XIV, ii, 188.

  17. Lisle Letters, V, 1393.

  18. LP, XVI, 1389.

  19. Ibid.

  20. BL: Addit. MS 46, 348, ff. 167b, 169b, 170a.

  21. BL: Addit. MS. 46, 348, f. 168b.

  22. BL: Addit. MS. 46, 348, f. 172b.

  23. LP, XVI, 1389; BL: Addit. MS. 46, 348, f. 171b.

  24. James P. Carley, The Books of Henry VIII and his Wives (London: British Library, 2004), pp. 134–35.

  25. RCIN 912256.

  26. James, Kateryn Parr, p. 11.

  27. LP, XII, ii, 167, 424, 1060. William Herbert’s father, Sir Robert Herbert, was the illegitimate son of the 1st Earl of Pembroke, who died in 1469. The title had been surrendered to the Crown in the reign of Edward IV as part of a deal by the 2nd earl. It was one of the titles used by King Edward V prior to his accession in 1483, and after his death it merged with the Crown until it was revived and elevated for Anne Boleyn, who became Lady-Marquess of Pembroke in 1532. With her death, the title was again in abeyance, and William Herbert hoped to have it restored in his favor. This was achieved in the reign of Edward VI, and the title is currently held by William and Anne’s descendant, William Herbert, 18th Earl of Pembroke and 15th Earl of Montgomery.