Notorious Royal Marriages: A Juicy Journey through Nine Centuries of Dynasty, Destiny, and Desire

by Leslie Carroll

  Henry was moved to tears. His virtuous wife had turned out to be nothing but a harlot. And yet he had never inquired about her past sexual experience, nor sent someone to ascertain the details for him before he chose to marry her.

  Even as the council heard witness after witness shred Kathryn’s virtue, the queen herself, holed up at Hampton Court, remained unaware of the investigation. When the king’s men came to place her under house arrest and found her making merry with her maids, they informed the queen that it was “no more the time to dance.”

  Kathryn was first informed about the proceedings on November 7, two days after they had commenced. But the evidence against her had been so well rehearsed that a refutation of the charges was impossible. She could only counter them with resignation and abject humility.

  The authorities gave Kathryn every chance to admit a precontract with Dereham, which would have saved her life, since the precontract was itself tantamount to a marriage. If she had been contracted to Dereham, then her marriage to Henry would have been null and void—and she could not possibly have committed adultery if she was not Henry’s wife.

  But Kathryn was unschooled in canon law, and too hysterical to comprehend the nuances of the situation. She insisted that Dereham had forced himself upon her in the Maidens’ Chamber, averring that she had never welcomed his advances. But no one believed her version of events because of the duration of their relationship and the numerous love tokens exchanged.

  On November 11, the Privy Council ordered the queen’s household to be broken up. Most of Kathryn’s ladies were dismissed, leaving her with a minimum of attendants. Kathryn’s jewels and sumptuous gowns were confiscated. The council issued a public statement intended for dissemination abroad: “The king . . . being solicited by his Council to marry again took to wife Katherine . . . but this joy is turned to extreme sorrow . . . having heard that she was not a woman of such purity as was esteemed. . . . Now you may see what was done before marriage. God knoweth what hath been done since.”

  Kathryn was arrested on November 12, 1541. When Henry refused to see her, she wrote him a desperate request for clemency, admitting that she was now unworthy of being his wife, let alone his subject. She confessed that she had

  been so blinded by desire of worldly glory that I could not . . . 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.

  . . . First, at the flattering and fair persuasions of Manox, being but a young girl, I suffered him at sundry times to handle and touch the secret parts of my body. . . .

  Also, Francis Dereham, by many persuasions procured me to his vicious purpose and obtained first to lie upon my bed with his doublet and hose and after within the bed and finally he lay with me naked, and used me in such sort as a man doth his wife many and sundry times, but how often I know not.

  Our company ended almost a year before the King’s Majesty was married to my Lady Anne of Cleves and continued not past one quarter of a year or a little above.

  In her defense, Kathryn urged Henry “to consider the subtle persuasions of young men and the ignorance and frailness of young women.”

  Kathryn had been guilty of being young and lusty, something Henry understood firsthand. For that, he could consign her to a convent forever, but at least her life would be spared. Surprisingly—maybe because he was older, or perhaps because part of him remained infatuated with Kathryn—Henry was inclined to consider clemency. On November 14, he sent Kathryn to Syon, a former convent, while the whole sordid business could be sorted out.

  The Privy Council had described Henry’s profound sorrow and distress in a November 12 letter to Sir William Paget, the resident ambassador in France, informing him that the king had been so overcome with emotion over Kathryn’s betrayal that he wept “plenty of tears.” But then Jane Rochford, Kathryn’s Lady of the Bedchamber and the sister-in-law of the late Anne Boleyn, stepped forward. After she unburdened her conscience, any consideration of royal mercy was mooted. Lady Rochford informed the king that she had acted as go-between and gatekeeper when Kathryn admitted Thomas Culpeper to her bedchamber on numerous occasions after Kathryn had married Henry.

  If Kathryn had slept with Culpeper during the Royal Progress, she had indeed committed adultery—as well as high treason, because she had cuckolded a king. And the penalty was death.

  On November 12, 1541, Culpeper was arrested and taken to the Tower. His rank prohibited him from being subjected to torture or undue duress, but even without those encouragements he did have more to say on the matter. Culpeper delineated in chapter and verse the extent of his affair with the queen, stating that on Maundy Thursday (April 14, 1541), he was summoned by one of Kathryn’s servants to the queen’s presence, where Kathryn gave him “by her own hand a fair cap of velvet garnished with a brooch, along with three dozen pairs of aglets [decorative pins] and a chain, [advising him to] ‘Put this under your cloak [and let] nobody see it.’ ”

  Culpeper explained that their subsequent meetings consisted of considerable flirtatious banter, during which he received additional gifts and marks of favor from Kathryn; and he admitted to having been the one who picked the lock with his servant in order to gain access to her chamber when the Royal Progress stopped in Lincoln. But what would consign the young queen to the block was the letter she subsequently wrote to him after learning that he was ill: Master Culpepper,

  I heartily recommend me unto you, praying you to send me word how that you do. . . . For I never longed so much for a thing as I do to see you and to speak with you. . . .

  . . . and when I think again that you shall depart from me . . . it makes my heart to die to think what fortune I have that I cannot be always in your company.

  ...I would you were with me now, that you might see what pain I take in writing you.

  Yours as long as life endures,

  Katheryn

  Though this missive provides no proof of sexual intercourse, to write it and send it was spectacularly ill-advised. And perhaps Kathryn was telling the truth when she insisted that she and Culpeper were not making love all those nights they spent together during the Progress. Historian Retha Warnicke hypothesizes that the subject of their furtive clandestine meetings might have been blackmail instead—Culpeper’s threats to spill the beans about Kathryn’s relationship with Francis Dereham and her efforts to forestall him. Knowing that he wanted to bed her, did Kathryn intend to string Culpeper along just enough to keep him hopeful, aware that he’d stay mum as long as he expected her to yield her body to him as a reward for his silence?

  On the other hand, Kathryn had left her door ajar for Culpeper on purpose, and there was that night that he had broken the lock to Kathryn’s bedchamber so that they could enjoy their preplanned rendezvous. Culpeper had admitted he “meant to do ill with the Queen, and that likewise the Queen so minded with him.”

  His testimony would be enough to convict them both.

  The royal ego was crushed. Not only had the Howards sold Henry damaged goods, but he had been cuckolded in the bargain. And the entire court knew it. So would the rest of the world, once the foreign ambassadors sent their dispatches.

  It’s hard not to feel somewhat sorry for Henry, so self-deluded was he about his virility. Or was he? To condemn Kathryn was to air his own fragile insecurities about his age, his health, and his sexual prowess. His mortality mocked him, and with each passing day it became more important to insure the succession of his crown and the propagation of the Tudor dynasty. Yet court insiders claimed that Henry seemed to age overnight when he learned that his beloved “rose without a thorn” might have played him for a fool. Chapuys reported that “the king has wonderfully felt the case of his wife. He has certainly shown greater sorrow and regret at her loss, than at the faults, loss or divorce of his preceding wives,” and he had never seen Henry “so sad, pensive and sighing.” Henry openly “regretted his ill luck in meeting
with such horribly ill-conditioned wives.” Enraged and horribly disappointed by Kathryn’s conduct, he called for his sword that he might kill her “that he loved so much.” All the pleasure “that wicked woman” had derived from her “incontinency” should not equal the pain she should receive from torture.

  Anne of Cleves also weighed in on the subject of Kathryn’s downfall, remarking that “she was too much a child to deny herself any sweet thing she wanted.” On November 19, Chapuys reported, “I hear also that the Lady Anne of Cleves has greatly rejoiced . . . and that in order to be nearer the King she is come to, if she is not already at, Richmond.”

  As eager as Anne had been to extricate herself from her royal marriage with all limbs intact and as large a settlement as possible, she remained extremely fond of Henry—even sexually attracted to him—and wasn’t about to miss the opportunity to become his consort again.

  But Henry remained staunchly uninterested in such a reunion. On December 15 the Privy Council issued a formal statement: “The separation had been made for such just cause that [the King] prayed to the Duke [Anne’s brother] never to make such a request.”

  By official proclamation Kathryn had been demoted from queen on November 22, 1541, to be called simply Kathryn Howard from then on. That day she was indicted for having led “an abominable, base, carnal, voluptuous, and vicious life before her royal marriage,” behaving “like a common harlot with divers persons, maintaining however the outward appearance of chastity and honesty.” She was accused of leading the king “by word and gesture to love her,” and “arrogantly coupled herself with him in marriage,” concealing her precontract with Francis Dereham “to the peril of the king and his children to be begotten by her,” as well as seducing Culpeper and telling him that she preferred him to the king.

  On December 1, 1541, although both men refused to confess to carnal knowledge with Kathryn after she had become queen, Culpeper and Dereham were tried for treason and found guilty. They were executed on December 10.

  In mid-January 1542, at the urging of Parliament, a Bill of Attainder in the form of a petition was drawn up, permitting Henry to execute Kathryn and her lady-in-waiting Lady Rochford for high treason, the penalty for which was “death and the confiscation of goods.” Although Kathryn had never confessed to adultery, it was Henry’s will that she be put to death under the “violent assumption” that she had been unfaithful to him. It was also considered misprision of treason for anyone to conceal knowledge of such an offense—and that’s what convicted Lady Rochford.

  There was some hesitation about using an Act of Attainder against the former queen without her being afforded the opportunity to speak for herself, so a delegation was dispatched to Syon House to hear her side of the story. But Kathryn refused to defend herself, openly acknowledging her guilt instead. However, she did request that Henry spare her relations from being punished, that he “would not impute [her] crime to [her] whole kindred and family.” She also asked that Henry give some of her fine attire to her household, “since she had nothing now to recompense them as they deserved.”

  On February 10, Kathryn, clad in black velvet, was taken by barge from Syon to the Tower, amid a bout of perfectly understandable last-minute hysterics. She spent her final days in the Queen’s Apartments at the Tower, amid the same honors and ceremonies that had been accorded to her when she was Queen of England, despite the fact that she had been stripped of her title.

  The Act of Attainder received Henry’s assent in absentia on February 11. Although the words le roi le veut (the king wills it) had been printed at the top of the document, Henry never actually signed it and both women would meet their gruesome ends without the king’s formal imprimatur.

  Kathryn was brought before Cranmer to make her confession. It was a pitiful sight. Cranmer said, “I found her in such lamentation and heaviness as I never saw no creature, so that it would have pitied any man’s heart in the world to have looked upon her.” Endeavoring to calm her troubled soul, the archbishop gave her some false hope for the king’s mercy, which did have the intended effect.

  “What a gracious and loving prince I had,” she wept. “Alas, my lord that I am still alive; the fear of death grieved me not so much before, as doth now the remembrance of the king’s goodness.”

  But there was to be no clemency.

  On Sunday, February 12, Kathryn was told that she would die the next day. In an oft-repeated anecdote, the utterly terrified young woman asked for the block to be brought to her, so she could “make trial of it, that she might know how to place herself.” She tearfully confessed that she deserved a thousand deaths for so offending a king who had treated her so graciously.

  Kathryn Howard was executed on Tower Hill, where Anne Boleyn had met her end six years earlier. She was probably only twenty years old, and had been queen for just over eighteen months.

  The weeping ladies-in-waiting wrapped her bleeding body parts in blankets and Kathryn’s remains were placed in a coffin that was buried alongside Anne Boleyn’s in the little Tower church of St. Peter ad Vincula.

  Lady Rochford was then beheaded on the block still red with Kathryn’s blood.

  Though Henry enjoyed a court banquet and feasted his eye upon numerous attractive young ladies just two weeks later, it would take nearly eighteen months before his heart and his ego recovered sufficiently from the queen’s alleged infidelity to consider remarrying. In April 1542, imperial ambassador Chapuys reported to Charles V that “since he has heard of his late wife’s conduct he has not been the same man.”

  The Act of Attainder against Kathryn and Lady Rochford stood until 1553, when Queen Mary reversed it because it lacked the sovereign’s signature. Although it was obviously too late for the queen and her lady-in-waiting to materially benefit from Mary’s action, it restored a measure of their dignity.

  Within Hampton Court Palace is a corridor known as the Haunted Gallery. Legend has it that while Henry was attending services in the chapel, Kathryn managed to escape from her guarded chamber and ran down the corridor hoping to speak with her husband and beg his mercy. Over the centuries there have been several sightings of a ghost dressed in a white Tudor-era gown shouting Henry’s name as it races desperately down the length of the hallway toward the chapel, knocking unsuspecting tourists to their feet in its effort to reach the door.

  HENRY VIII

  and

  CATHERINE PARR

  (“TO BE USEFUL IN ALL THAT I DO”)

  1512-1548

  married 1543-1547

  “. . . And thus love maketh me . . . set apart mine own . . . pleasure and to embrace most joyfully his will and pleasure whom I love. . . .”

  —Catherine Parr, in a letter to Henry written in July 1544

  HENRY VIII’s WIVES ARE SIX OF THE MOST FAMOUS women in history, in part because their husband had a singular view of marriage. He was determined to wed for love as well as dynasty, which he managed to do five out of six times; but when he became disappointed in both, he coldly moved on, saddled up, and sought a woman who could bring him his heart’s desire. Even his passions were larger than life and anomalous in his own era.

  After Kathryn’s Howard’s execution in 1542, Henry dipped his gouty toes in the marital waters one more time, wedding the childless, twice-widowed, wealthy, “middle-aged” (at thirty) Catherine Parr. At the time, the massively corpulent king suffered from high blood pressure, chronic indigestion, and debilitating headaches in addition to a festering, ulcerated leg wound. Unbeknownst to Catherine, she’d successfully auditioned for the role of wife and queen by assiduously nursing her dying second husband, Lord Latimer, a man of the king’s vintage some two decades Catherine’s senior. But Catherine possessed other redeeming qualities as well. Prudent, dignified, and virtuous, she was also well bred, exceptionally well educated for a gentlewoman of the day, and extremely lovely—a slender, gray-eyed redhead of medium height (four of Henry’s six wives were auburn-haired) with an exquisite fashion sense and a passion for
diamonds. Her only drawback was that during four years of marriage to her first husband and nine years to her second, she had not borne any children, leading to the presumption of barrenness. But Henry was ever-hopeful that Catherine would give him a Duke of York.

  Derided by her detractors as a mere Yorkshire housewife, Catherine was a commoner, but she came from a family with generations of royal service. Her father, Sir Thomas Parr, had been a respected career courtier, well born and well connected. Maud Green, her mother, was a lady-in-waiting to Katherine of Aragon. Catherine, the eldest of the three Parr children, had been named in the queen’s honor; in all likelihood (and ironically, if true), Henry VIII’s first wife was the godmother to his sixth.

  Although Sir Thomas died when Catherine was only five years old, she grew up in an atmosphere of comfort and privilege. Widowed at the age of twenty-two, Maud never remarried. Instead, she founded and ran a highly respected academy that taught “courtesy”—the skills necessary for one to become a crackerjack courtier—to young boys and girls. Catherine was among the pupils who learned languages, the art of conversation, dancing, musicianship, manners, deportment, and court etiquette, although legend has it that when Maud ordered her to attend to her instructions in needlework, the girl pertly replied that according to a fortune-teller, her “hands were ordained for scepters” instead.

  During the winter of 1542-43, while Catherine’s second husband, Lord Latimer, was on his last legs in London, Catherine rekindled her connection with the Lady Mary and was granted a position of responsibility in the princess’s household. It was there that Catherine caught the king’s eye. Soon, observers were commenting that Henry “was calling at [Mary’s] apartment two or three times a day.”