Katherine Howard: A New History

by Byrne, Conor

  Although the writer repeated her desire and intent to meet with Culpeper again, she did not specify for what reason. Probably, rather than instigating the affair as has been commonly believed, the queen’s emphasis on meeting with Culpeper stemmed from her wish to placate his desire to meet with her. She promised to meet with him because of his continual demands to see her. This essentially passive tone is corroborated by the Spanish chronicler’s belief that Katherine, in her letter, had assented to ‘comply with his wishes’.38 It is significant that Lady Rochford, as an intermediary, was specifically mentioned. Probably because Culpeper had first approached her as a means of meeting with the queen, Katherine believed that any meetings with Culpeper could only be appropriate if this older woman was present as chaperone and intercessor. It also implies that Katherine did not meet with Culpeper willingly and possibly feared being alone with him. Her dark encounters with Manox, in shadowy areas of her step-grandmother’s residence, hidden from the eyes of others, and her abusive relationship with Dereham probably guided the particular nature of her fearful acquiescence to Culpeper’s wishes.

  Whether the letter was as significant as evidence produced against Katherine and Culpeper as most modern historians suggest is uncertain, for no mention of it as a document of evidence survives in the later indictments drawn up by prosecutors. Other detail indicates that the letter cannot be viewed necessarily as a love letter professing passion and desire. Despite the belief of writers that the ending ‘yours as long as life endures’ convincingly establishes Katherine’s passionate love for Culpeper, it is more likely that the writer chose to use an ending quite commonly used in practice by the nobles. For example, the Duchess of Norfolk had finished a letter written to Thomas Cromwell with the promise ‘by yours most bounden during my life’,39 but there was no hint of scandal suggesting that the duchess and Cromwell had been conducting a sordid adulterous affair. Moreover, in context of the practice of early modern letter writing, as has been suggested the sentiments expressed in this letter cannot be taken at face value as a genuine and realistic indication of the writer’s true feelings.40 As Daybell cautions in relation to letters, they were ‘subject to generic and linguistic conventions, texts that were socially and culturally coded’.41 Elite women, as Daybell suggests, often had access to published guides by Erasmus and Angel Day, and many women followed the style and conventions they had seen in other letters, meaning that many letters were formulaic. It would therefore be foolish to read too much into this letter, in context of the nature of early modern letter-writing, but it does establish the writer’s intent to meet with Culpeper.

  Why Jane Rochford chose to concern herself with the affair is uncertain and has perplexed most historians for decades. Her recent biographer disposes of the theory that she became involved because she was experiencing financial difficulties and hoped to profit economically by assisting Katherine’s courtly love exchanges with Culpeper, arguing instead that ‘since she [Jane] had just obtained her jointure settlement and was richer than ever before in her own right, Jane did not need to endanger her life for money’.42 There is no extant evidence during the early months of Katherine’s marriage, or during her time as maid-of-honour to Queen Anne of Cleves, to indicate that she was particularly close to Lady Rochford, although the two were bound by ties of kinship, Lady Rochford being the widow of Katherine’s cousin George Boleyn. Most writers adhere to the belief that Lady Rochford involved herself in the affair because she had lived a life starved of affection, worsened by her supposedly loveless marriage to George, and assisted Katherine’s meetings with Culpeper in order to enact her own fantasies.43 Others suggest that she was actually insane.44 No convincing evidence exists to suggest that she had been a particularly controversial or meddlesome woman before her involvement with Katherine, since most historians do not now accept the traditional suggestion that she acted as the crucial witness in charges of adultery and incest against her husband and Anne Boleyn in 1536.45

  The likeliest explanation for Jane’s conduct is that she had been directly approached by Culpeper, who sought to obtain her assistance in meeting with the queen, for he had possibly come into sensitive information about the queen’s past. It has been pointed out that it is surely significant that he first sought to meet with the queen in the spring of 1541 when she was both being harassed by Dereham and having to cope with the serious, even life-threatening, illness of her husband. Rumours had actually implied that the king was on the point of death. An ambitious courtier with years of experience at court, and aware of Katherine’s naivety coupled with knowledge that unfavourable rumours about her past had been in circulation since the previous year, Culpeper might have believed that, were the king to die, he could attain even greater power through political manipulation and control of the young and inexperienced queen. Although he was probably not the violent rapist reported by rumour, as an ambitious and power-seeking member of the king’s household he could have believed that establishing a hold over the queen would be an effective means of acquiring greater power at court, particularly in the wake of Henry’s illness. The queen soon discovered the reality of Culpeper’s motives, focused as they were on acquiring further power and influence through manipulating her. The letter penned to Culpeper in the summer of 1541 focuses not on passion or romance, its urgent even desperate tone suggesting a need for placation. If Katherine continued to give Culpeper gifts, it was probably in the sense of trying to pacify him. Margaret of Anjou famously bequeathed gifts upon her enemy Richard Duke of York as ‘a form of reassurance and pacification, a message that the queen was aware of York’s concerns’.46 Arguably Katherine was acting in a similar manner.

  Although Culpeper later blamed Jane for ‘having provoked him much to love the queen’,47 it is interesting that Katherine and her ladies swore that Lady Rochford had initially encouraged her to meet with Culpeper, promising her that handsome gentlemen would look upon her. Yet Katherine would probably not have been aware, unless Jane informed her, that Culpeper had first met with Lady Rochford and asked her to arrange a meeting. Thus, in the queen’s eyes, it was her lady of the bedchamber who had instigated the whole affair, although Lady Rochford had probably been acting on the wishes of Culpeper. Lady Rochford’s behaviour condemned her in the eyes of her contemporaries, particularly because of her association with a man executed on criminal charges of treason and incest. Because of who her husband had been, it was easy to believe in her guilt. Her own behaviour was foolish, for she should have been aware, having resided at court for at least twenty years, that young women who met with gentlemen who were not their husbands were viewed with suspicion and hostility. Tellingly, it was later reported of Lady Rochford that ‘all her life [she] had the name to esteem her honour little and thus in her old age had shown little amendment’.48 To be fair to her, however, it cannot now be determined what psychological pressures Culpeper might have imposed on her to ensure her acquiescence to his demands to meet with her mistress.

  That Katherine’s rendezvous with Culpeper were from her part innocent, assisted by Lady Rochford, is likely given that no hint of scandal attached to the affair during its actual period. Only later, in the advent of Katherine’s downfall, did her ladies suddenly and helpfully remember that Katherine had been missing from her bedchamber during the early hours of the morning, and testified that she had been explicitly showing her love for Culpeper by giving him amorous looks when looking out of the window. As has already been recognised in relation to this affair, much of the later evidence was embroidered and distorted, if not outright invented. It is therefore surprising that some modern historians, who have recognised and appreciated the invented nature of the testimonies, nevertheless accepted it at face value.49 It is unlikely that Katherine would have been reckless enough and eager enough to endanger her own position as queen and jeopardise her family’s security by engaging in adultery with her husband’s groom of the chamber. Her own activities demonstrate her desire to accord the Howards greater wealth and
influence at court, and it is doubtful whether she would have subsequently sought to ruin them and the rewards they had acquired through her marriage through her own actions. Anne Boleyn’s example undoubtedly served as a warning to the queen, and Lady Rochford’s own position as widow to a man executed alongside Queen Anne probably confirmed Katherine’s belief that caution was essential. Moreover, the belief that the queen was an oversexed adolescent who basely sought to fulfil her carnal desires with the handsome Culpeper is seriously flawed in view of what this study has indicated, for it is likely that she had, at an early age, formed an aversion to sex and may have equated it with violence and dishonour. That Katherine knew that sexual relations with Culpeper were impossible and dangerous is proven by her comment that only if she had still been in the maidens’ chamber would she ‘have tried’ him.50

  These meetings were to be viewed in a hostile and scandalous light because of how they could be interpreted and represented by unsympathetic male observers. Male awareness of the fragility of their potency, coupled with an anxiety about female power within sexual dynamics, encouraged noblemen to view powerful women darkly, particularly because it continued to be believed that women brought about their impotence and destroyed their manhood.51 Because of prevailing gender expectations, young women were encouraged to avoid flirtatious relationships with all men except their husbands, because it threatened beliefs regarding virtuous female behaviour.52 Katherine’s involvement with Culpeper, although innocent, compromised her reputation, for domestic codes associated female chastity with silence and self-effacement as well as distance from other young men they were not married to.53

  The suggestion that Katherine and Culpeper must have committed adultery and could not have just been conversing, because ‘she could have talked to him, although admittedly not for such long periods, within the normal confines of the court if that was all she wanted’54 does not take into account prevailing views regarding female honour, virginity and acceptable behaviour. If Katherine had openly conversed with Culpeper in her chambers in the sight of others, for instance, her behaviour would have earned her opprobrium and hostility, as well as suspicion because of the suggestion of intimacy between queen and servant. She probably believed that it was safer, and more innocent, for her to meet with Culpeper in secret, aided by an experienced female courtier who could deflect controversy from the affair. The subject matter, after all, was especially sensitive: the queen’s dubious past, which Culpeper wished to use to his advantage. The necessity for secrecy was evidenced in the pair’s meeting at Lincoln in early August. The queen admitted that they had met ‘in a little gallery at the stairs’ head’ near the back door, before journeying to Lady Rochford’s chambers.55 Although Lady Rochford, three months later, admitted to the prosecutors that the couple might have participated in sexual intercourse, Katherine’s chamberers Katherine Tylney and Margaret Morton supplied no such evidence, although they reported that the queen had spent two nights in Lady Rochford’s chambers. Lady Rochford actually admitted earlier that she had heard and seen nothing of what had passed between the two.56 Margaret Morton fancifully claimed several months later that, at Hatfield, ‘I saw her [Katherine] look out of her chamber window on Master Culpeper after such sort that I thought there was love between them.’57 But, tellingly, this did not spur her to accuse the queen of adultery at this time.

  Lady Rochford’s involvement in the affair as chaperone was crucial. While Culpeper reported that she had encouraged him in his love for the queen, Katherine later suggested that Jane ‘would at every lodging search the back doors’ for secret meeting-places, which the queen may have assented to in the belief that their use for meetings was innocent, for Lady Rochford had sworn ‘upon a book’ that Culpeper ‘meant nothing but honesty’. When confronted with Lady Rochford’s reports of Culpeper’s supposed love and desire to meet with her, Katherine, recognising the dangers attached, sighed: ‘Alas, madam, will this never end? I pray you, bid him desire no more to trouble me or send to me.’58 Extant documentation reported that Culpeper ‘was very much in love with her’ but ‘had committed no treason’.59 Katherine sought to placate him by agreeing to meet with him, but she was understandably fearful because of her awareness of how these meetings could be misinterpreted. Faced with male suspicion of female sexuality and the menace of Francis Dereham at court, Katherine was unsurprisingly ‘skittish and jittery’, fearful ‘lest somebody should come’ in.60 Culpeper’s manipulative behaviour must also have been causing her worry. Although Hall later reported that Katherine had met with Culpeper ‘alone’ at Lincoln in August, he did not specify their actual activities. He did state that the queen provided him with ‘a Chayne, and a riche Cap’, but whether Katherine bestowed these upon Culpeper as a reward for his good service to her husband, or whether she gave them to him as a concerted attempt at buying his silence regarding her past, Hall did not specify.61

  That Katherine and Culpeper did not commit adultery or seek the destruction of King Henry as was later alleged is clear from a detailed reading when the interrogations are read in an appropriate social and cultural context. At Lincoln, they conversed for four hours. Indicating her detachment from Culpeper and recognition that she could not be involved with him in an actual relationship, the queen encouraged him to resume his relations with Elizabeth Harvey, a gentlewoman at court, by giving her ‘a damask gown’ and warning Culpeper that ‘he did ill to suffer his tenement [Elizabeth] to be so ill repaired and that she, for to save his honesty, had done some cost over it’. Aware of the dangers of the meetings, Katherine proceeded to restrain herself and showed Culpeper ‘little favour’.62 This may also have been because of his increasingly controlling behaviour, which may have reminded her of the dangers Dereham posed in her household.

  It is significant that, while Lady Rochford chaperoned these meetings, Katherine admitted to her that if these conversations ‘came not out, she feared not for nothing’.63 She was demonstrably aware of how her enemies could misinterpret her exchanges with Culpeper. But, in referring to the actual subject matter of the conversations, Katherine may have been referring to a possible discussion of Dereham that she could have had with Culpeper. Four days before her meeting with Culpeper at Pontefract, Katherine had appointed Dereham to the position of secretary within her household, in an attempt to silence his arrogant boasts of his previous relationship with her. Warning him to ‘take heed what words’ he uttered, Katherine offered him £13 in total, probably in a desperate mission to prevent him from jeopardising her security. If, as Culpeper reported, Katherine was fearful and anxious during their meetings, it is possibly because she lived in fear of Dereham and his aggressive behaviour. She may have discussed him with Culpeper, a likelihood if Culpeper had come into sensitive information about the queen’s sexual past and was using it to blackmail her.

  Culpeper later recalled that he had kissed the queen’s hand, ‘saying he would presume no further’, and Katherine later admitted that Culpeper had touched no part of her body except her hand.64 After their final meeting at York in September, where Katherine may have discerned her warning to Culpeper that ‘whensoever he went to confession he should never shrive him of any such things as should pass betwixt her and him, for, if he did, surely the King, being Supreme Head of the Church, should have knowledge of it’, Katherine sent word via Lady Rochford to Culpeper that she did not wish to see him again: ‘I pray you, bid him desire no more to trouble me or send to me’. When Culpeper proved reluctant, Katherine utilised courtly language to describe him as a ‘little sweet fool’, allowing her to haughtily display her restraint and distance from him, while showing disdain for ‘such light matters’.65 Belatedly, in context of Dereham’s aggressive threats and alarming behaviour, Katherine realised the dangers of her meetings with Culpeper and sought to put an end to them, probably also because his manipulative behaviour endangered her security. At York, the king and queen were welcomed by two hundred gentlemen wearing coats of velvet, and four thousand yeomen,
who generously bestowed nine hundred pounds upon the king.66 Although Henry had hoped to meet at York with his nephew James V, King of Scotland, by 26 September the French ambassador reported that the Scottish king was no longer expected.67

  Although Katherine’s meetings with Culpeper, from her perspective, were innocent and forced upon her by political necessity at what was, mildly speaking, a sensitive time, the nature of fertility politics meant that these exchanges would be interpreted in the worst possible light. After fourteen months of marriage, the queen had not managed to conceive a second son to secure the Tudor succession once and for all. Having discarded his first wife, accused his second wife of adultery and incest, lost his third wife in childbed and discarded his fourth wife on grounds that she had bewitched him into impotence, Henry was surely fearful that his fifth marriage was, once more, contrary to God because it had not produced the longed-for second son. Anxious and uncertain, Katherine ended her meetings with Culpeper while Dereham continued to threaten her personal and political security. She may have hoped that the end of the Culpeper affair would allow her to regain a sense of safety as the king’s consort. But, on the court’s return to London that autumn, a malicious allegation regarding Katherine’s childhood made while she was on progress would destroy any hopes she harboured regarding her future as queen.

  9) Downfall and Death

  The royal court returned slowly back to London, passing through Kettleby, Collyweston and Ampthill. On 26 October they reached Windsor. The king might have been somewhat perturbed to learn that his son Edward was suffering from a quartan fever, which the French ambassador described as strange given the prince’s young age. It was reported ‘that the prince was so fat and unhealthy as to be unlikely to live long’.1 It is somewhat ironic, given the upcoming events, that Prince Edward’s life was feared of at this time, and probably evidenced to Henry the continuing troubles of the English succession. Whether or not he had come to privately doubt his queen’s capacity to bear a second son is unknown, but given that rumours were to circulate weeks later that Katherine’s physicians had admitted that she could not bear children, it is probable that the king was anxious about whether his fifth wife had been a suitable choice as consort in terms of her childbearing potentials. Nevertheless, publicly the king continued to express love and happiness with his queen. Arriving at Hampton Court on 29 October, Henry was reported to believe that ‘after sundry troubles of mind which have happened unto him by marriages, [he had] obtained [...] a jewel. For womanhood and very perfect love towards him’, Katherine demonstrated ‘virtue and good behaviour’ and would be ‘to his quietness’ and likely to bring ‘forth the desired fruits of marriage’.2 On All Saints Day, Henry also thanked God with ‘humble and hearty thanks for the good life he led and trusted to lead’ with Katherine. But the king’s newfound happiness was to be abruptly destroyed.