Katherine Howard: A New History

by Byrne, Conor

  Predictably, this alleged rape and later murder of a villager has coloured historians’ assessments of Thomas Culpeper and his later relationship with Katherine, who argue that, as a violent and cruel individual, Culpeper manipulated ‘Lady Rochford to assist him in obtaining political control of Katherine’.48 It is possible, however, that Hilles confused Thomas with his elder brother, who shared the same name, for surviving evidence indicates that this eldest son was physically violent and aggressive for, in a dispute over land with a reverend, ‘[...] the said Thomas Culpeper broke the bow of the said William; clerk, with the shaft of a knife so that the blade ran down his face in the presence of this deponent [...] then the said Culpeper gave the said William, clerk, a blow or two with a staff for he was not able to sing mass for a fortnight after, and thereupon the said clerk plucked the said Culpeper down by the beard in the sight of the wife of the said Culpeper who with one or two of her servants came running to help to beat the said William clerk, so that he was forced to cry to the said William Playce and Robert Fulcher for aid [...] and by report the said Culpeper drew his dagger at another time to strike the said William, clerk, and more he cannot depose.’49

  Because of Culpeper’s intimacy with the monarch and the fact that positions within the privy chamber were highly covetous and competitive, it is inconceivable that Henry VIII would have kept within his household an individual who engaged in rape and murder with no apparent qualms as that cast doubt upon both Culpeper’s honour and the honour of the king, for it suggested that he was unable to properly govern his household and those who served within it. Rape, in particular, was perceived to be a sexual deviance and was to become prohibited by law, with a Bill passed in 1548 protecting young males from sodomy and another in 1576 protecting girls under the age of ten from forcible rape.50 It is more likely, in view of the evidence relating to the elder Thomas’s aggressive conflict with Reverend Williams, that Hilles unknowingly confused the younger Thomas with his elder brother, who was clearly violent. In the absence of any definitive evidence that illustrates the younger Thomas’s personal characteristics, the trust the king had in him and his favourable relations with contacts such as Lady Lisle indicates that he was a respectable and pleasant young gentleman, not an aggressive or manipulating courtier as many historians, relying on Hilles’ inaccurate information, continue to suggest.

  While Culpeper, and particularly Katherine, enjoyed greater favour and rewards from their king during the early summer of 1540, Norfolk was apparently plotting with Stephen Gardiner, Bishop of Winchester, to achieve Cromwell’s downfall, the queen’s divorce and Katherine’s elevation to the title of queen. Herbert did later record that ‘he [Cromwell] was odious by reason of his low birth to all the Nobility, and hated particularly by Stephen Gardiner and all the Roman Catholiques, for having operated so much in the dissolution of Abbies’, and mentioned specifically that Norfolk was chosen by the king to arrest Cromwell at a council meeting on 11 June.51 He did not, however, associate Gardiner with the duke, recounting only that the bishop’s hatred of Cromwell was shared by fellow Catholics at court. Hall made no mention of Gardiner and Norfolk plotting to remove Cromwell from power, merely recounting, like Herbert, that Cromwell was detested by conservative clergy who ‘rejoysed’ and ‘triumphed together that night’.52 Although contemporaries were aware that Gardiner provided banquets and entertainments at his residence that provided a convenient social setting for the king to court Katherine, there is no convincing evidence that demonstrates that the duke and bishop, contrary to popular belief, joined forces as a Catholic party in order to bring down Cromwell and marry Katherine to the king. Glyn Redworth significantly noted that the two men belonged to different generations and were not connected through family alliances or patronage networks.53 Both men were, however, undoubtedly hostile to Cromwell and resented his religious policies. Cromwell’s closeness with German Lutherans, and his backing of the alliance with Cleves, was believed by the French ambassador to be the principal reason for his downfall.54 Norfolk corresponded intimately with the French king regarding his desire to effect Cromwell’s decline, with Francis reporting to Marillac on 15 June: ‘Norfolk will be able to remember what I said of it to him when he was last in France.’55 Katherine’s personal desire, in fact, to reconcile the mutual hostility between her relatives and the reformers represented by Archbishop Cranmer was demonstrated in late June when she personally promised Cranmer: ‘you should not care for your businesses, for you should be in better case than ever you were.’56 In effect, she seems to have promised that, were he to loyally support her and serve her well as queen, she would gladly support his advancement and vouchsafe his security.

  While evidence was provided that proved Cromwell to be guilty of both treason and heresy, the king’s desire to marry Katherine only increased. Marillac reported to Francis I on 1 June that, on 22 May, Queen Mary of Scotland, wife of James V and niece by marriage of Henry VIII, had given birth to a son, who the King of Scotland hoped to make Lord of Ireland or establish in France.57 Although Henry was believed to be joyous at news of the birth of his grandnephew, this must surely have heightened his fear and unease about the nature of the English succession, for although Queen Jane had provided him with an heir, the fact that Edward had no brothers with which to completely safeguard the succession did not necessarily bode well for the future, particularly when the nature of Henry VIII’s succession is considered. Why the king decided to select Katherine as his queen consort needs to be considered. Although she was certainly beautiful in appearance, youthful, charming, sweet-natured and gentle, the king was probably moved more by the promising signs of her fertility, for her mother had given birth to at least three sons by her second marriage and several by her first. As with Katherine of Aragon, Henry believed that Anne of Cleves had never been his wife, signalled by her unacceptable bodily appearance which suggested that she had lost her maidenhead before she married the English king. The Howards, who knew nothing of Katherine’s sexual experiences, emphasised her purity and, more importantly, fertility, convincing their monarch of the suitability of the young Katherine as queen consort.

  Although the king may have been involved with Katherine as early as late 1539, his relationship with her only became public in the early summer of 1540, when his desire to annul his marriage to Anne was obvious. On 20 June, the queen herself complained to the Cleves ambassador Carl Harst of the king’s affair with her young maid-of-honour, although he comforted her by undermining the affair as merely a ‘light romance’.58 Two days later, she was in better spirits because of Henry’s kindness towards her, but she cannot have been unaware of the rumours circulating at court about both her future and Katherine’s relationship with her husband the king. On 24 June, the queen was ordered to leave court and remove herself to Richmond Palace, allegedly because it enjoyed a better climate, but in reality in order to begin the proceedings that would culminate in the annulment of her marriage.59 Several ladies within the queen’s household, Lady Rutland, Jane Rochford and Lady Katherine Edgecombe, ‘gave such communications as was between the Queen’s Grace and themselves, the Tuesday or Wednesday before midsummer day last at Westminster to the effect that the Queen had confessed to them the non-consummation of the marriage’.60 It is possible, as has been suggested, that these ladies deliberately provided false evidence in order to ensure the annulment of the queen’s marriage.61 Certainly, in annulment cases, evidence was manufactured or embroidered whatever the cost in order to void a marriage.62 Lady Rochford, in particular, may eagerly have participated in the proceedings against Queen Anne on account of her own conservative religious beliefs and her kinship ties to the Howard family, which required that she support their candidate, Katherine Howard, in her rise to the queenship.

  As has been wryly noted, ‘sexual attraction was quite obviously important for the King to achieve the male heirs necessary to continue the Tudor dynasty.’63 It is interesting in view of this that contemporary observers believed that the
king had consummated his relationship with Katherine several months before she became queen.64 It is probably unlikely that Henry enjoyed a sexual relationship with his wife’s maid-of-honour before their marriage, for social customs and beliefs dictated that a maiden should guard her chastity and virginity and only yield it to her husband once married. Repulsed by his wife’s body, the king seems to have been strongly attracted to the sixteen year-old Katherine because her bodily attributes signalled, in his eyes, that she was a virginal maiden who had yet to be initiated in sexual experiences. Since both the potency of men and the fertility of women were profound political concerns in early modern governments,65 it is likely that Henry was convinced that Katherine, by virtue of both her age and her fertility, would provide a second male heir to safely establish the Tudor succession once and for all, where his fourth queen had failed. Reassured by Howard relatives, Henry was convinced that Katherine was honourable by virtue of her modesty and chastity, upholding her honour through being inexperienced in sexual relations.66 By contrast, the queen was accused of preventing her husband from consummating the marriage, inciting his suspicion that she had never been his lawful wife. As with both Katherine of Aragon and Anne Boleyn, the king’s fourth consort was entirely blamed for the non-consummation of the marriage, for contemporaries adhered to the accepted view that women were usually to blame for failures in conception and fertility.

  Following her departure to Richmond, the queen was met by certain lords on 6 July who informed her that her marriage to Henry VIII ‘was not lawfull’, meaning that, in effect, the king was now once more a free man.67 There was some confusion as to whether or not Anne actually agreed with the king that their marriage should be judged by convocation, with the councillors later reporting that she had given her consent and was ‘content always with your Majesty’s [desires]’, but the Cleves ambassador believed that she had never consented to such a wish.68 He reported that the queen suffered an emotional collapse when her consent to the proceedings of the annulment was required, allegedly protesting: ‘She knew nothing other than that she had been granted the King as her husband, and thus she took him to be her true lord and husband,’ making ‘such tears and bitter cries, it would break a heart of stone’. Anne’s reaction was perfectly understandable, for the annulment of her marriage and the loss of her social and political position as queen placed her in an ambiguous situation. Denounced by her husband as physically repellent and believed to be the lawful wife of another man, it is extremely unlikely that Anne rejoiced at her new status, as some historians have suspected. Rather, both her position and reputation had been fatally undermined by Henry’s rejection of her. However, by Sunday 11 July, Anne had sufficiently recovered to accept the settlement her former husband was prepared to grant her. Referring to Anne as his ‘sister’ in a letter written to her on 12 July, the king granted her an income of £4,000 per annum, with the residences of Richmond, Bletchingley and Hever, and she was welcomed to visit court.69 Scarcely more than two weeks later, Cromwell was executed on Tower Hill, stating in his execution speech that he died ‘in the Catholicke faithe’ and describing himself as ‘a very wretche and miser’ who deserved death, before submitting himself to death by the axe, wielded by ‘a ragged and Boocherly miser’.70

  Cromwell’s execution was not the culmination of factional intrigues masterminded by the so-called Catholic faction, led by the Duke of Norfolk and Stephen Gardiner, Bishop of Winchester, who allegedly manipulated their king into favouring their ‘candidate’ Katherine Howard and, consequently, influenced his decision to execute his master secretary for treason and heresy. Instead, Cromwell was most likely beheaded for two separate reasons. Firstly, his radical religious beliefs, which were demonstrated in his close correspondence with the German Lutheran princes, were unacceptable to England’s largely conservative king, who was consistently ruthless in stamping out heresy in his desire to maintain a form of Catholicism, which was essentially traditional, despite the break from Rome. Secondly, Cromwell was a scapegoat for the embarrassing failure of the king’s fourth marriage, since it is likely that Henry held his secretary personally responsible for his failure to consummate the marriage, believing that he had been bewitched into marrying a woman who had been promised to another. As with his first two queens, Henry believed that other individuals were always to blame for his marital failures. Anne, whom he openly proclaimed to be physically repugnant and capable of rendering him impotent, enjoyed an enviable fate by virtue of the annulment of her marriage, but the king’s master secretary was not as lucky. Indeed, on the day Cromwell died, his king was to marry for the fifth time, believing that his new queen would, finally, resolve the disturbing problems that plagued the English succession once and for all..

  6)Katerina Regina

  On 28 July 1540, the day of Cromwell’s execution, the king took Katherine Howard to wife as his fifth queen consort at the pleasant ‘hunting-box’ palace of Oatlands in Surrey, with Edmund Bonner, Bishop of London, officiating. In accordance with royal marriage vows, Katherine promised to ‘take thee, Henry, to my wedded husband, to have and to hold from this day forward, for better for worse, for richer for poorer, in sickness and in health, to be bonair and buxom in bed and at board, till death us depart’.1 Although the chroniclers Edward Hall and Charles Wriothesley both give the wedding date as 8 August at Hampton Court, this was in fact the date on which Katherine’s marriage was openly celebrated at court, with Katherine appearing as queen for the first time, thus signifying a marriage celebration, not the actual wedding day.2 Hall, in fact, actually states that it was on 8 August that ‘the Lady Katheryn Haward, nece to the duke of Norfolk, and daughter to the lord Edmond Haward, shewed openly as Quene at Hampton Court’.3 Some observers continued to believe that the new queen was pregnant when she married Henry VIII. Marillac had opined on 21 July that Katherine was ‘already enceinte’, while John III of Portugal was informed several days later that the king had married ‘an English lady, niece of the duke of Norfolk, daughter of his brother [...] she is already with child’.4 Marillac believed that the king’s new queen was not universally popular among the English people, who had greatly favoured Anne of Cleves as ‘the sweetest, most gracious queen they ever had or would desire’.5 According to one later chronicler, the king’s marriage to Katherine was celebrated with ‘grand rejoicings’ at court.6 Certainly, a week after Katherine was publicly ‘showed’ as queen at Hampton Court, prayers were made in church for herself, the king and Prince Edward.7

  Katherine’s marriage afforded the Howard family considerable prestige and influence at court, allowing them positions of power that they had not enjoyed since the days of Anne Boleyn’s success several years previously. As with her cousin Anne Boleyn, and her relatives, Anne of York and Elizabeth Tylney, Katherine’s experiences proved that Howard women were capable of playing - and were expected to play - essential roles within court politics as a means of bolstering and furthering the power and privilege of the Howard family.9 Like her cousin and predecessor, Katherine consciously took on her role as patron in providing for her family. Katherine’s older brother George became a gentleman of the king’s privy chamber, in the same capacity as her cousin Thomas Culpeper, and by October 1540 he had been granted a pension of 100 marks in tail male, before receiving the manors of Berwick, Hulcott, North Newnton, Wiltshire and Wylye and later, in June 1541, was granted alongside his brother Charles a licence to import 1000 tons of Gascon wine and Toulouse woad.10 George was described by the unknown Spanish chronicler as ‘a gentleman-in-waiting’, who earned a ‘good’ income, suggesting that his success was well-known beyond the confines of the court.11 Charles Howard was appointed to the position of the king’s spear, and was granted £100 while his half-sister, Lady Baynton, and her children were granted 100 marks.12 Katherine’s brother-in-law, Sir Edward Baynton, was also granted possession of the manor of Semleigh, while her female relatives occupied important positions within the queen’s household. The queen’s household was
headed by the Earl of Rutland as Lord Great Chamberlain, Sir Thomas Dennys as chancellor, and Sir John Dudley as Master of the Horse. Katherine’s great ladies included her cousin Mary Howard, Duchess of Richmond, her half-sister Isabel Baynton became a lady of the privy chamber alongside her cousin (by marriage) Lady Jane Rochford, while Howard relatives such as Margaret Arundell, the queen’s aunt, and Lady Dennys, the queen’s cousin, served as gentlewomen attendants. Other important ladies such as Lady Margaret Douglas, Lady Frances Brandon and the Countess of Rutland served the queen. Katherine decided to promote several ladies she had known from her childhood, with Katherine Tylney and Margaret Morton among her chamberers.13

  Why Katherine decided to appoint women who were aware of the unsettling nature of her childhood sexual encounters to important positions within her household must be considered. The indictments later brought against her suspected that it was because they, as her friends and confidantes, were necessary to help facilitate the queen’s sexual encounters with gentlemen at court, including past lovers. It is rather more likely that Katherine feared the consequences were she to refuse favour to those who knew the truth about her affairs in the years 1536 to 1539. Probably, she believed that she could more successfully control and manage these women were she able to keep an eye on them at court. Her behaviour was not idiotic or dangerous, as most historians have wrongly assumed, for queen consorts were readily expected to promote those within their households who had been close to them, either through kinship or friendship. Two weeks before Katherine’s marriage to the king, her old acquaintance Joan Bulmer, dwelling in York, wrote to Katherine, promising ‘her love for her’, declaring her misery because of her unsuccessful marriage and begging Katherine to provide assistance. Praising Katherine’s ‘perfect honesty’ and promising ‘unfeigned love that my hearth hath always borne towards you’, she concluded hopefully that ‘the quyne of Bretane wyll not forget her secretary’.14