Katherine Howard: A New History

by Byrne, Conor

  It seems likely that it was Culpeper who had instigated the affair by approaching Lady Rochford, beseeching her to assist him in meeting with the queen. Lady Rochford, according to both the queen and her ladies-in-waiting, had encouraged the affair and perhaps even planned it. But if Culpeper had first approached Lady Rochford then Katherine would only have been aware of Lady Rochford’s encouragements to her. Culpeper may have assumed that, as an experienced courtier and lady of the bedchamber coupled with her kinship ties to the Howard family, Lady Rochford would be an ideal candidate to approach in order to assist him with meeting the queen in private. Traditionally, biographers have characterised Lady Rochford as a vengeful, even sociopathic, shrew who actively brought down her husband on charges of incest, out of resentment at his closeness to Anne Boleyn, and then engineered Katherine’s relations with Culpeper for mysterious reasons of her own. The evidence actually indicates that Culpeper approached her and probably blackmailed her into allowing him to meet with the queen and impose his demands on her.6

  Significantly, by Culpeper’s later admission, the couple first met on Maundy Thursday, which fell on 14 April 1541. This occurred only four days after the French ambassador had reported that the queen was believed to be pregnant and the court was in the midst of preparations for the impeding birth.7 It is almost certain that both the king and his councillors remembered this at the time of the queen’s downfall and interpreted this meeting in a sinister light. According to Culpeper’s report, the queen summoned Culpeper to her presence by her servant Henry Webb. There she gave him ‘by her own hands a fair cap of velvet garnished with a brooch and three dozen pairs of aglets and a chain’. Katherine warned Culpeper to hide the items to prevent anyone seeing them. When Culpeper questioned her behaviour, she rebuked him: ‘Is this all the thanks ye give me for the cap? If I had known ye would have [said] these words you should never have had it.’8 When analysing this evidence, it seems to suggest that Katherine initiated the meeting. By Katherine’s admission, however, it was Lady Rochford who encouraged her to meet with Culpeper, promising that he ‘meant nothing but honesty’. She also advised the queen to ‘give men leave to look’ on her, ‘for they will look upon you [Katherine]’. Katherine’s own feelings towards Culpeper are uncertain, but she responded to Lady Rochford’s suggestions with the retort that she did not wish to be involved with ‘such light matters’.9

  Although the queen had generously provided Culpeper with several small gifts at their meeting in April, they did not next meet until three months later during the summer progress. In view of prevailing social and cultural customs, and Katherine’s own sexual past, it is unlikely that she met with Culpeper willingly, for an ‘expectation concerning virtuous female behaviour [...] impressed upon the consciousnesses of all well-educated ladies [...] was that they should avoid trivial flirtatious relationships, not merely carnal liaisons, with all men except their husbands’.10 Katherine’s association of sexual experiences with abuse, coercion and punishment received from her step-grandmother, coupled with her own sense of honour and pride in her Howard lineage, does not support the view that she recklessly sought to meet Culpeper for the purpose of sexual enjoyment. Indeed, having escaped the systematic abuse of both Manox and Dereham through her appointment at court, it is possible that Katherine developed an aversion to sex.

  Since Katherine did not seek to renew Culpeper’s acquaintance until three months later, her random and infrequent meetings with him, at which Lady Rochford was often present, accompanied with the occasional exchange of gifts, does not suggest an amorous affair between the two, nor does it indicate that she instigated or even controlled it. Later, Culpeper was to couch his intentions in the language of courtly love, in suggesting that he had met with the queen only because she was ‘dying’ of love for him and he had no other choice. Notably, the game of courtly love flourished at the Tudor court and was viewed as a popular social convention in which young, well-born ladies participated with handsome knights in witty exchanges. First originating in the love lyrics of eleventh-century French troubadours and codified at Eleanor of Aquitaine’s court, courtly love was variously perceived to be a genuine way of life or merely a pleasant literary convention. The theme of courtly love may have first become extent in the Latin writings of Ovid and later flourished in twelfth-century Provence.11 The knight was expected to serve his lady, obey her commands and gratify her whims. Obedience and loyalty to the high-ranking lady were viewed as critical, while the lady was firmly unavailable by virtue of her status and was consequently inclined to be remote, haughty and imperious. Most significantly these courtly love exchanges were expected to remain secret.

  Usually, it was expected that the male suffered from love sickness, encouraging him to write emotional letters to his lady and lament his piteous lot.12 In view of this it is significant that in April Culpeper was believed to be ‘at Greenwich [...] sick’. The lady in question was often married, meaning that the relationship had to be conducted in an atmosphere of secrecy and danger, with a need for absolute discretion in order to preserve the lady’s honour.13 From the late fourteenth into the sixteenth century reading and talking about love, casting, playing and emulating the lover constituted a form of polite recreation for ‘social play’ and ‘social display’.14 However, the repartee of courtly love threatened highborn women’s personal security, for prevailing domestic codes associated female chastity with silence and self-effacement, which the game of courtly love appeared to threaten.15 The contemporary Book of the Courtier warned of the need for female discretion: ‘and therefore muste she keepe a certaine meane verie hard, and (in a manner) derived of contrary matters, and come just to certaine limittes, but not to passe them.’16

  Although Renaissance courts provided an ideal setting for the flourishing of courtly love, some male contemporaries, dictated by their cultural prejudices regarding female sexuality, viewed such exchanges pessimistically and fearfully. The downfall of Anne Boleyn in 1536 clearly demonstrated ‘the dalliance prescribed by courtly codes of female behaviour was seen to threaten the chastity prescribed by domestic codes’.17 Ladies within Katherine’s household, including Lady Margaret Douglas and her own cousin Mary Howard, had engaged in similar pastimes encouraged at the Tudor court.18 The ideals of courtly love, contained within love poems and novels in particular, continued to be transmuted into practice well into the late sixteenth century at the court of Elizabeth I.19 Literature was reshaped in order to allow an ideal form of love to exist without violating accepted norms of aristocratic society and refused to endorse adultery as an ideal type of love.20 Katherine’s urging of secrecy and the random meetings with Culpeper take on new light when viewed from this angle, for having been subjected to violent male hostility from an early age, directed through sexual abuse, she was aware that, as a highborn female, her actions would be perceived in the worst possible light by those unsupportive towards her.

  The giving of gifts to Culpeper might indicate Katherine’s desire to become better acquainted with him, for although he was kin to her, because he served within the household of her husband she probably knew very little of him. It is likelier, however, that this experienced courtier promised silence in return for the queen bestowing lavish gifts upon him. Because lurid evidence of Katherine’s involvement with Culpeper survives only in a negative sense in the indictments presented against both individuals and dubious gossip forwarded by international ambassadors to their monarchs, scepticism is required when interpreting what is known of this relationship. These individuals, particularly the ambassadors, had very little contact with the queen, yet they accepted unquestioningly negative gossip related to her and preserved it as fact. During Katherine’s period as queen, no mention, in fact, of her supposed affairs with either Dereham or Culpeper were related by resident ambassadors such as Marillac or Chapuys before her actual downfall in November 1541. Had there even been a hint that she was conducting a sordid and amorous affair with either gentleman behind her husband’s b
ack they would have eagerly revealed it to their masters, who would have delighted in the humiliation of their rival, the King of England. That there was no mention of the queen in much of their reports warns against accepting later ‘evidence’ of an adulterous affair supposedly carrying on at this time. It is also significant that none of her ladies suspected anything was amiss during this time.

  The Chronicle of King Henry VIII of England was written and published by an unknown Spaniard, perhaps a merchant, living in London several years after the events he describes.21 Historians have responded negatively to this source because of its manifest inaccuracies, perceiving it to encompass ‘garbled street gossip, strongly laced with the picaresque’.22 Most notably, the author identified Katherine as the king’s fourth consort, rather than his fifth.23 The chronicler evidently made it his business to learn as much about Katherine’s affair with Culpeper as possible, which was not surprising in context of sixteenth-century culture: ‘individuals eagerly sought intelligence about the monarchy, the events at court, and other titillating matters’.24 However, whether the chronicler’s reports about Katherine’s relations with Culpeper can truthfully be validated depends fully on whether these reports can be confirmed by other evidence, which is exceptionally difficult regarding the hostile and distorted nature of the indictments produced against the queen and her acquaintances. More potently, rumours about the queen’s affair may be ‘more likely to provide a deeper understanding of cultural attitudes than reliable facts about those defamed’.25

  Relying on gossip circulating within the city of London, the Spanish chronicler reported that, before Katherine’s marriage to the king, Culpeper had been in love with her and the queen had looked favourably upon him. Like most male contemporaries, the chronicler adhered to prevailing gender assumptions that assigned women the blame for sexual transgression: ‘the devil tempted her [Katherine]’.26 Rather than interpreting the mostly negative and prejudiced evidence produced against the couple as convincing evidence of an adulterous and physically consummated affair, it is more useful to analyse the evidence carefully in context of the culture of courtly love pervading the Tudor court. As other wealthy noblewomen participated in social and literary exchanges concerned with courtly love with other gentlemen, Katherine might have believed that, following Queen Anne’s example, her political position as queen and her social position as mistress of her household permitted her to engage in similar exchanges. She failed, however, to recognise the dangers a young woman faced by involving herself too closely in these affairs, for women were warned to guard their honour and virtue against the threats presented by carnal love. Only when viewed in context of the accepted social and cultural pastime of courtly love that flourished at Renaissance courts in this era can Katherine’s probable relationship with Culpeper in 1541 be understood.

  The chronicler believed that the queen promised the courtier in a letter ‘to have patience, and she would find a way to comply with his wishes’.27 At some point during the early summer of 1541 the queen may have penned a letter to Culpeper. On 30 June the court had set off on a northern progress with the intention of quashing the threat of a rebellion headed by disgruntled conservatives, as well as intending to meet with the Scottish king, James V, in a lavish rendezvous at York. The poor weather did not augur well for the progress, nor did rumours that the queen was ill.28 On 29 July the court reached Lodington, where it was later reported that one of Katherine’s ladies, Margaret Morton, carried a sealed letter without superscription from the queen to Lady Rochford, to whom Katherine responded that she was sorry that she could write no better. Lady Rochford promised an answer the following morning, ‘praying her Grace to keep it secret and not to lay it abroad.’29 It is almost certain that Katherine’s note was the letter penned to Thomas Culpeper written about this time. However, it is unknown whether the queen herself actually composed this piece. Because no other extant evidence of her handwriting survives, it is usually believed that she was illiterate. Other queen consorts, who reigned for similarly short periods, including Jane Seymour and Anne of Cleves, nonetheless have examples of their signatures surviving. Supporting this point is the fact that the first sixteen words of the letter are penned in a different hand to the rest of the letter.30 If Katherine had commissioned Lady Rochford to complete a letter to Culpeper, what follows may not be indicative evidence of Katherine’s personal feelings about the affair. That she probably wrote the first sixteen words is likely given the impersonal and restrained nature of the subject matter expected of her regal position. The letter is as follows:

  Master Culpeper,

  I heartily recommend me unto you, praying you to send me word how that you do. It was showed me that you was sick, the which thing troubled me very much till such time that I hear from 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, the which I trust shall be shortly now. The which doth comfortly me very much when I think of it, and when I think again that you shall depart from me again it makes my heart to die to think what fortune I have that I cannot always be in your company. It my trust is always in you that you will be as you have promised me, and in that hope I trust upon still, praying you then that you will come when my lady Rochford is here for then I shall be best at leisure to be at your commandment, thanking you for that you have promised me to be so good unto that poor fellow my man which is one of the griefs that I do feel to depart from him for then I do know no one I dare trust to send to you, and therefore I pray you take him to be with you that I may sometime hear from you one thing. I pray you to give me a horse for my man for I have much ado to get one and therefore I pray send me one by him and in so doing I am as I said afor, and thus I take my leave of you trusting to see you shortly again and I would you was with me now that you might see what pain I take in writing to you.

  Yours as long as life endures

  Katheryn

  One thing I had forgotten and that is to instruct my man to tarry here with me still for he says whatsomever you bid him he will do it.31

  The survival of this letter strengthens the evidence presented by the Spanish chronicler in relation to this affair, for he too had recognised the passive nature of the queen’s response to Culpeper in promising to fulfil ‘his wishes’. This letter cannot be taken as evidence of a love letter evidencing Katherine’s true feelings in relation to Culpeper, as many historians still continue to believe it is. As has been wryly noted, ‘it is an odd specimen of the romance genre’.32 Before proceeding to an analysis of Katherine’s letter, it would be useful to first consider the context and nature of letter writing in early modern England.

  Historians have questioned whether early modern English letters are able to allow ‘direct unmediated access to inner emotions’ hundreds of years after they were first penned.33 The content and structure of letters was crafted, in the same manner that church court depositories were manipulated, with specific models for letter writing extant. Cultural archetypes were utilised to structure languages of feeling, meaning that ‘the rhetoric of love-letters was [...] paralleled in epistolary fiction, romances and letter-writing manuals’.34 Moreover, ‘acts of writing and reading the familiar letter involve making and inferring meanings that may be pertinent to a single reading only as well as constructing meanings that might shift with the circumstances in which the letter might be read’.35 The same applied to letters crafted at the early modern French court: ‘far from providing a transparent portrayal of events or sentiments, letters offered a complicated conjunction of meanings shaped by compositional forms and conventions and the conditions of their expedition and reception’; ‘letter writers negotiated established ways of representing personal identity, and, by extension, how they thought about and represented themselves.’36

  In the first two sentences the writer asks how Culpeper is, concerned that he is ill because she seeks to meet with him as soon as possible. Particular phrases utilised in this letter, such as ‘at
your commandment’, were utilised in contemporary guides to letter-writing.37 The language itself is singularly dramatic. The writer fears that if she cannot meet with Culpeper her heart will ‘die’ with sorrow at her ill-fortune at being parted from him. The long, even laborious sentences indicate a well-thought out, even mediated, approach, in contrast with shorter sentences, which might convey a sense of urgency or restlessness. The letter contains very little in the way of love or passion, meaning that it is questionable why modern historians continue to persist in identifying this piece as a love letter. The abiding theme is a desire to meet with Culpeper as soon as possible, a point repeatedly emphasised: ‘I never longed so much for a thing as I do to see you and to speak with you, the which I trust shall be shortly now’, ‘when I think again that you shall depart from me again it makes my heart die’, ‘praying you that you will come when my lady Rochford is here’, ‘trusting to see you shortly again’.