Katherine Howard: A New History

by Byrne, Conor

  It is uncertain what Katherine wore on the scaffold, for no contemporary observers felt it necessary to record what she wore - a somewhat surprising omission, given that this chapter has suggested that her associations with, and love of, fashion were well-known. Disgraced Tudor queens about to die on the scaffold had something of a habit for utilising fashion to make a final and compelling statement to the assembled audience. We know that Queen Anne Boleyn wore an elegant gown of grey damask with a crimson kirtle underneath and a mantle trimmed with ermine. These represented two conscious and clever fashion choices on the part of the queen. Crimson, as Alison Weir notes, was the Catholic colour of martyrdom, so by wearing it, Queen Anne was effectively proclaiming her innocence and martyrdom in the most visible means possible. Secondly, her ermine mantle, a fur only worn by the royalty, represented her position as queen to the very last. In so doing, Anne died proclaiming both her innocence and her royalty. Similarly, in 1587, Mary Queen of Scots selected a red costume to wear to her execution, in a calculated effort to emphasise her martyrdom and innocence.

  Queen Jane Grey, on the other hand, chose to wear a gown of black, probably the same she had worn to her public trial three months previously. Of course, in Delaroche’s famous painting of 1833, the teenage queen is replete in white costume, emphasising her innocence, fragility, and martyrdom. But this painting is steeped in inaccuracies. Couple this fashion choice with her devout Protestant faith, so evident in the last days of her life, and a clear picture emerges of a woman determined to emphasise her sobriety, earnestness, piety and dignity to the last, dying in her faith. Just as Anne Boleyn chose to celebrate her innocence and royalty on the scaffold, Jane Grey focused on her Protestant faith and dignity, while Mary Queen of Scots’ red costume declared her martyrdom and death in the Catholic faith.

  While surviving sources offer compelling insights into Katherine’s love of fashion, alongside her patronage activities and participation in court ceremonies, they do not reveal the tensions surfacing within her household. Seeking to ensure that her former childhood companions such as Katherine Tylney remained silent about her sexual experiences, Katherine bestowed upon them positions at court. Only scant evidence survives about Katherine’s relations with her ladies-in-waiting and maids-of-honour. As has been recognised, ladies-in-waiting were expected to participate enthusiastically, persistently and successfully ‘in all the activities connected to forming, maintaining, and exploiting patronage networks’.32 Katherine’s household included eight great ladies, nine ladies and gentlewomen attendant, five maids-of-honour, four gentlewomen of the privy bedchamber, and four chamberers.33 In total twenty-six staff served in Katherine’s household compared with only sixteen in that of Katherine of Aragon.34 As well as giving gifts of jewellery to her stepdaughters, the queen bestowed beads on Lady Carew, Lady Rutland, Lady Surrey, and Lady Margaret Douglas.35 Because she was queen for an extremely short period of time, little evidence exists about Katherine’s interactions with her ladies. As with Jane Seymour, who occasionally made gifts of jewellery to favourite ladies, Katherine’s relations with them appear to have been professional and cordial, although loyalty and trust may not have been inspired as with more significant queens such as Katherine of Aragon and Anne Boleyn. But there is no convincing evidence to support the sweeping claim that ‘there were plenty of others among the Queen’s immediate household who also cordially disliked their Howard mistress [...] Catherine [sic], in life as well as in death, became the victim of that malice’.36

  In contrast, Katherine’s ladies only moved against her at the time of her downfall when they were pressurised and bullied by the crown into providing damning evidence against their mistress, presumably reluctantly. That Katherine was close to her female family members and provided them with lavish positions at court there is no doubt, for at the time of the queen’s downfall the prosecutors utilised these women’s intimate connections with the queen against Katherine: four Howard women were accused of abetting or concealing Katherine’s premarital and extramarital affairs.37 Like her ancestor Anne of York and her cousin Anne Boleyn, Katherine actively sought to promote and raise her family’s fortunes through her patronage as queen.

  In August 1541 she appointed Francis Dereham as her private secretary. Possibly the king had encouraged her to do so, if Dereham had approached the king directly. There is extant evidence that Dereham relations were viewed favourably by the crown. In December 1540, the king had granted to Thomas Dereham and his wife – possibly the parents of Francis – the house of West Dereham Monastery with reservations for twenty-one years, lands in West Dereham and Roxham, Crimplesham (where Francis had been born) and Wyram, lands in Faltewell and Estholme, ‘and all tithes of corn, hay, &c., on the said lands; and all woods on the premises.’38 Following Katherine’s appointment at court, Dereham had journeyed to Ireland, where he possibly engaged in piracy. After her step-granddaughter’s marriage to Henry VIII, the Dowager Duchess of Norfolk encouraged Dereham to seek from the queen a position within her household. Almost certainly she was neither aware of the full extent of Dereham’s sexual relations with her step-granddaughter or his relentless pursuit of her within the duchess’s household. Although he openly confronted Katherine with rumours of an engagement to Thomas Culpeper, the queen consented to ‘be good unto him’ because of her step-grandmother’s request.39 In August 1541, the queen found the place for Dereham within her household as private secretary and as an usher of the chamber. She warned him to ‘take heed what words you speak’,40 since her reputation had already been slandered by hostile observers the previous summer and because she feared Dereham’s aggressiveness.

  Although Katherine sought to placate doubtful acquaintances such as Francis Dereham with appointments within her household, she continued to be troubled by his behaviour. Soon after his appointment in the summer of 1541, he openly boasted to his friend Robert Davenport that: ‘many men despised him by cause they perceived that the Queen favoured him insomuch that one Mr John, being gentleman usher with the Queen, fell out with him for sitting at dinner or supper with the Queen’s council after all others were risen, and sent one to him to know whether he were of the Queen’s council, and the said Dereham answered the messenger – Go to Mr John and tell him I was of the Queen’s council before he knew her and shall be there after she hath forgotten him.’41 While bearing in mind the limited utility of indictments produced against the queen in a process designed to culminate in her disgrace and execution, this documentation and evidence of Dereham’s past behaviour with Katherine confirms his aggressive, even violent, temperament, and his arrogant belief that he and no one else was Katherine’s rightful paramour. In remarking that ‘[if] the King were dead I am sure I might marry her’, his behaviour was highly dangerous, for were the king to become aware of his comments, he would face charges of treason for predicting the king’s death. Dereham himself showed no respect towards the queen or consideration of her feelings. This was particularly irresponsible, for ‘in a culture [...] where a woman’s honour was construed in purely sexual terms, loose talk could cause cruel damage’.42 Believing that she had consented to his forceful sexual advances, Dereham continued to believe that, when the king died, Katherine would eagerly return to him as his ‘wife’.

  Dereham’s allegations were particularly foolish in light of the concerns of Henry VIII regarding treasonous behaviour. The 1534 Treason Act condemned those who maliciously desired the death of the sovereign through ‘words or writing, or by craft imagine’. By prophesying that once the king had died Dereham would be able to marry his young queen, he placed both himself and Katherine in serious harm. Later on the queen was to be accused of offering Dereham a place within her household in order to continue her ‘abominable’ lifestyle of lust which, the councillors believed, she had shamelessly enjoyed with him during her childhood.

  After relatively successful first months as queen, Katherine’s relationship with her husband, which seems to have been promising, was placed i
n some difficulties by the king’s dangerous illness at the end of February 1541. Marillac informed the French king that Henry had suffered a tertian fever, and had simultaneously endured: ‘a mal d’esprit having conceived a sinister opinion of some of his chief men, in his illness [...] most of his Privy Council under pretence of serving him, were only temporizing for their own profit, but he knew the good servants from the flatterers [...] Under this impression he spent Shrovetide without recreation, even of music [...] and stayed in Hampton Court with so little company that his Court resembled more a private family than a king’s train’.43 Chapuys was later to write that at Lent, because of his illness, the king refused to see his queen for a period of ten or twelve days, ‘during which time there was much talk of a divorce, but owing to some surmise that she was with child or else because the means for a divorce was not arranged the affair slept.’44 However, for various reasons Chapuys’ suggestion that Henry seriously considered annulling his marriage to Katherine in the spring of 1541 is dubious for several reasons. Firstly, the French ambassador, who was well-informed, made no mention at the time of the queen or an annulment in his reports to the King of France when discussing Henry’s illness. Secondly, in March 1541 Henry publicly arranged for Katherine to pass through London as queen in which she was saluted and warmly greeted by the notables of the city. Thirdly, the queen’s personal activities in the spring, in which she was involved with the pardoning of several criminals and her visits with the king to the royal children, indicate that the king warmly expected her to continue her duties appropriate as his consort.

  With the benefit of hindsight, Chapuys – writing eight months later in the wake of Katherine’s downfall – probably misinterpreted the king’s decision to part from his wife as sinister evidence of his intent to separate from her pending the annulment of their marriage. As evidence of the couple’s continuing happiness together, on Katherine’s first passage on the Thames as queen on 19 March, Henry arranged for the Tower cannons to salute her and she was escorted, along with her husband, by the Lord Mayor of London, aldermen and craftsmen in barges decorated with banners. Charles Wriothesley viewed these festivities as ‘a goodly sight’.45

  Nevertheless, the rumour noted by Chapuys that the queen was pregnant in the spring of 1541 is intriguing, for Marillac also indicated that Katherine was believed to have conceived, writing in April: ‘this queen is thought to be with child, which would be a very great joy to this king who it seems believes it, and intends, if it be found true, to have her crowned at Whitsuntide. Already all the embroiderers that can be got are employed making furniture and tapestry, the copes and ornaments taken from the churches not being spared. Moreover, the young lords and gentlemen of this Court are practising daily for the joists and tournaments to be then made.’46 Since there is no other evidence of Katherine’s pregnancy, either at this time or later, it is difficult to credit both gentlemen’s reports, for foreign ambassadors were customarily deceived by the king’s councillors about matters pertaining to pregnancy and fertility. Since the English queen was not accustomed to publicly announcing pregnancies, these ambassadors were reliant on court rumours and the symbolism of protocol to provide ‘evidence’ of a royal pregnancy. If the king had been suffering with a life-threatening illness early that year it is difficult to believe that he had recovered sufficiently to father a child on his consort. Potentially Marillac was deceived by councillors close to the king, who untruthfully informed the ambassador that their monarch’s marital relations were so happy that he had managed to father an heir on his present queen. Alternatively, Katherine may have believed herself to be pregnant when in fact she never was. At the time of her downfall later that year, it was rumoured that physicians had confirmed that the queen was unable to bear children.47 More possibly, the physical effects of the sexual abuse she had suffered earlier on may have physically damaged her, rendering her unable to have children.48 Despite the reports of both Marillac and Chapuys, there is no evidence that Katherine became pregnant during her tenure as queen consort. More probably, the reason was her husband’s infertility, with which he had suffered increasingly from the period between Jane Seymour’s death and Anne of Cleves’ rejection.

  It should be considered why the king failed to discern that his wife was not a virgin at the time of his marriage to her. During this period, the modern fixation with the hymen was not necessarily relevant in determining virginity, for other attributes were believed to offer evidence of virginity. A woman’s behaviour and dress, the colour of her urine, and the direction in which her breasts point were viewed as valid indicators of virginity.49 Jane Seymour’s downcast eyes and modest gestures, for instance, were viewed commendably by Henry because they signified that Jane was a virginal maid. From the classical period writers had debated whether or not the hymen existed at all. Socrates, writing in the second century AD, argued that it was nonexistent.

  Katherine’s own panic and concern, if she had believed herself to be pregnant and was subsequently proved wrong, can only be guessed at, for the dangerous game of fertility politics that threatened the security of Henry’s queen consorts now threatened to turn against her. There is some evidence that the queen became concerned, even pensive, about her relations with her husband around this time. On 26 May, Chapuys reported that Katherine had been melancholy owing to a rumour that the king desired to annul his marriage to her and remarry Anne of Cleves.50 Although Henry assured her that these rumours were false and that he loved her, Katherine’s position remained fragile, for ten months into her marriage she had still not managed to conceive the long desired second male heir. While she continued admirably to perform her duties as queen satisfactorily, she also faced concerns about the behaviour of Dereham, whose threatening behaviour within her household further endangered her already insecure position.

  Only in context of these pressing dynastic and political concerns can Katherine’s involvement with her husband’s groom of the chamber and her relative, Thomas Culpeper, in April 1541 be satisfactorily and clearly understood. Rather than advocating the traditional view which suggests that the queen, by nature a supposedly lustful young woman, sought night-time meetings with this handsome young man in order to enjoy sexual relations, it will be suggested that, as with her encounters with Manox and Dereham, Katherine’s liaisons with Culpeper were essentially passive, responding to his demands in a misguided if genuine attempt to placate him. Her relative inexperience at court and her position as queen rendered her vulnerable to predatory behaviour from unscrupulous individuals seeking to bring down the powerful Howards through the slander of female honour and sexuality.

  Figure 1 - Engraving of Thomas Howard, 3rd Duke of Norfolk

  Figure 2 - Engraving of Anne Boleyn

  Figure 3 - Engraving of Jane Seymour

  Figure 4 - Engraving of Anne of Cleves

  Figure 5 - The Toledo Museum of Art Portrait, Ohio.

  Once thought to be Katehrine Howard, but more likely to be one of Henry VIII’s nieces: Margaret Douglas, Frances Brandon, or her sister Eleanor

  © Toledo Museum of Art (Toledo, Ohio)

  Gift of Edward Drummond Libbey 1926.57

  Figure 6 - Portrait of an unknown woman from the

  Royal Collection at Windsor.

  Possibly Katherine Howard or Margaret Douglas.

  Reference RCIN 422293

  Supplied by Royal Collection Trust / © HM Queen Elizabeth II 2012

  Figure 7 - Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

  “Portrait of a young woman”

  Workshop of Hans Holbein the Younger.

  Thought by the author to be an authentic portrait of Katherine Howard.

  Figure 8 - A modern day Chesworth House, Horsham.

  Figure 9 - The Tower of London

  Figure 10 - St. Peter ad Vincula Church,

  Tower of London

  Figure 11 - Hampton Court Palace

  Figure 12 - Engraving of Henry VIII

  8) ‘Yours as Long as Life Endu
res’

  In April 1541, shortly after her husband’s serious illness, Katherine commenced an association with Thomas Culpeper that was eventually to prove fatal. Modern historians have disputed contentiously the nature of the relationship between the queen and a handsome young gentleman who served her husband the king within the intimate faculty of groom of the privy chamber. As has been seen, Culpeper had enjoyed a successful career at court before Katherine’s rise to power. A favourite of the king, as a ‘handsome youth’ he was also viewed commendably by ladies of the court. Why he became involved with Queen Katherine in the spring of 1541 is a mysterious issue, which has been insufficiently and unsatisfactorily explored.

  Most modern historians continue to believe that Katherine and Culpeper, two lustful individuals, were naturally attracted to one another and, shortly after the queen’s marriage, foolishly began to meet at night-time for the purpose of enjoying sexual fulfilment with one another.1 As a consequence, they conclude that while Katherine’s execution represented a tragedy, it was entirely deserved because of her reckless conduct. Other historians who believe that Katherine and Culpeper did not likely consummate their union nevertheless suggest that love existed between the pair.2 However, a feminist interpretation has also been advocated which argues that, as an aggressive courtier, Culpeper manipulated the young queen into granting him sexual favours in return for keeping quiet about her scandalous childhood.3 The difficulties inherent with this particular approach are obvious, since many details not borne out by contemporary sources are invented: ‘Dereham and others from Katherine’s past began blackmailing her at court’, ‘Culpeper [...] exchanged information about her with Dereham’.4 The pressing difficulties in relation to understanding Katherine’s relations with Culpeper arise from the distorted nature of the evidence. As has been succinctly observed of the sex lives of individuals living in the early modern period, ‘we usually acquire information [...] only when they are publicized as a result of someone behaving in a fashion which is considered scandalous, or has caused outrage.’5 The misogynistic notions prevalent in the indictments drawn up against the queen and her associates further obscure any understanding one can hope to gain in considering the events of 1541. It is therefore necessary to recognise that the basis of what we know about the affair stems entirely from indictments produced against the couple with the purpose of attainting them for treason. Neither accurate nor fair, the inherent male prejudice and gross exaggeration present should be viewed critically and cautiously.