Lady Katherine Knollys

by Sarah-Beth Watkins

  Mary would have stayed in her bed in the darkened room for about three days after Katherine’s birth until her ‘upsitting’ when she would begin to move about her chamber and receive more visitors. The norm was to stay in your chamber for a week or more before being allowed back into the household although not outside the house until the ‘churching’ ceremony had taken place. The churching ceremony was a way of purifying a woman where a short service would be held and the new mother would make an offering to the church which was wrapped in her newborn’s christening gown. Unlike today, mothers did not attend their child’s christening. They usually took place as quickly as possible and so were at a time when the mother was still confined to her birthing chamber.

  Katherine was Mary Boleyn’s first and only living daughter, born in 1524 at the height of her affair with King Henry VIII. There has been some conjecture over her date of birth - in Ive’s study of Anne Boleyn, he suggests that her brother, Henry, was in fact the first born child of Mary Boleyn - but there is mounting evidence that Katherine was born in 1524 and Henry two years later. As births weren’t recorded in the Tudor age, no certificates or Parish records exist but other evidence can be used to gauge when she was born.

  The first piece of evidence is that she became a maid of honour to Anne of Cleves in 1539. This position was usually taken up by young girls at the age of sixteen or thereabouts and coincides with Katherine being in her early teenage years. The recent discovery of her husband’s Latin dictionary, the first volume of a Dictionarium Seu Thesaurus Latinae Linguae, has provided the birth dates of Katherine and Sir Francis Knollys’ 14 children and corroborated their date of marriage. Their last son, Dudley, was born in 1562 and this date coincides with a portrait believed to be of a heavily pregnant Katherine by Steven van der Meulen, whose inscription gives the sitter’s age as 38. This confirms that if Katherine was 38 in 1562, she would have been born in 1524.

  This portrait of Katherine is the only one that has been attributed to her. Art historians, Croft and Hearn suggest that there is ‘a plausible resemblance between the sitter and the effigy of Lady Knollys’ (Katherine’s married name) in Rotherfield Greys church. It was sold at Sothebys by Katherine’s descendents in the 1970s and as such its provenance proves it came from the Knollys family. As well as the portrait being attributed to Katherine, it also shows her resemblance to Henry VIII - the red hair, the same nose and a very similar set of the lips. Although we cannot go on looks alone, Katherine does show a remarkable likeness to Henry in this portrait and no resemblance to William Carey at all.

  When Mary took to her birthing chamber, where was she? Some sources indicate that Mary gave birth in Hampton Court Palace while she was attending on Queen Catherine of Aragon as a lady-in-waiting, although as Wolsey didn’t grant King Henry the palace until at least 1525, this would have been difficult, while others believe she was confined in her husband William’s childhood home at Chilton Foliat. It seems unlikely that if Mary was indeed pregnant with the King’s child that she would have gone to her husband’s ancestral home for her confinement but then his family may never have known about her affair with the King. Although it became general knowledge in later years, at the time it was conducted with great secrecy. She may have given birth in any one of the King’s residences whilst there with her husband, secluded herself away at Jericho as Bessie Blount had done or returned home to Hever to present her parents with their first grandchild.

  We will never know how much King Henry pushed Mary into the affair but he was definitely capable of taking a woman by force should he so desire. An incident recorded in the State Papers tells us of one William Webbe who was charged with treason because he had ‘cried vengeance on the King’4. He only did so because the woman he had been travelling with caught the King’s eye. Henry kissed her and made her ride off with him, to become one of his mistresses or so William thought. Mary may have had no choice but to succumb to the King’s attentions.

  Mary continued her affair with Henry VIII after Katherine’s birth which has lent further credence to him being her father. Henry forbade his mistresses to sleep with their husbands while they were in a relationship with him. He would not have taken her back if she’d just given birth to her husband’s child.

  In 1526, Katherine’s brother, Henry, was born and by this time, Mary’s affair with the King was over and his attentions had turned towards her sister, Anne. In one of Henry VIII’s letters to Anne Boleyn he says ‘…also that I will take you for my mistress, casting off all others that are in competition with you, out of my thoughts and affection…’5. Was this Henry’s way of letting Anne know that her sister, Mary, now meant nothing to him?

  Mary was no longer a royal mistress and was soon to be a widow. She had not profited from her time with the King and when her husband, William Carey died of the sweating sickness in 1528, he was just 32 years old. Mary Boleyn was now a single mother with two children of questionable parentage. Mary was in dire straits.

  Katherine’s aunt Anne, who was high in the King’s favour by now, interceded on their behalf. In King Henry’s letter to Anne concerning their situation, he says ‘As touching your sister’s matter, I have caused Walter Welche to write to my lord mine mind therein, whereby I trust that Eve shall not have the power to deceave Adam. For surely, whatsoever is said, it cannot so stand with his honour, but that he must needs take her his natural daughter now in his extream necessity.’6

  Sir Thomas Boleyn, father of both Anne and Mary, was told to allow Mary to return to the family home to live with her disapproving mother and her ageing grandmother, Lady Margaret Butler. Katherine too, was to return with her mother to the family home at Hever Castle where she would reside for the next five years of her life. The King also granted Mary a yearly annuity of £100 and it has been suggested this was primarily to make sure that Katherine was well looked after.

  Mary had had a difficult relationship with the formidable Sir Thomas. Some historians have berated Thomas for using his daughters as bargaining chips to gain financial rewards and prestige, prostituting first Mary and then Anne in a callous bid to rise high in the King’s favour but he was a typical Tudor man in that he saw his daughters as women who were under his control; they were his property to do with as he saw fit even if that included bringing his daughters to the attention of the King. Mary and Anne may well have caught the King’s eye without any encouragement from their father.

  In the girls’ early days, he definitely took care to make sure they were well educated and sent to further their education by attending at foreign courts but in later years, he fell out with Mary and watched as Anne’s momentous downfall took place. Sir Thomas took part in the trial that condemned Anne for her supposed actions without even once trying to save his daughter from her fate. We will never know how much his daughters’ involvement with the King was out of his hands or whether he really did push them to catch Henry’s eye. For both Mary and Anne, the consequences of their liaisons would be disastrous.

  Returning to the family home of Hever Castle, near Edenbridge in Kent, must have been an upsetting journey for Mary and Katherine, now four years old. Hever was a 13th century castle of the Norman de Hever family. Sir Thomas’ ancestor, Sir Geoffrey Boleyn made his money in trading in mercantile London and bought both Blickling and Hever estates for his family. When Thomas’ father, Sir William, died in 1505, he was left the estates as his father’s heir. He gave Blickling to his brother, James, and concentrated on making Hever Castle a family residence. He continued the renovation of Hever Castle to a manor house as started by his ancestors, specifically adding a 90ft long gallery above the great hall to be used as an area for exercise during bad weather when hunting or riding was not permissible.

  The running of Hever Castle was conducted by Lady Elizabeth, Katherine’s grandmother, who was rarely at court whether due to her own preference or Sir Thomas’ orders. There would have been a steward to help collect rents or deal with tenants’ disputes and many other servants to e
nsure the smooth running of the Boleyn home. Lady Elizabeth would have been responsible for overseeing the servants and making sure her home was well-kept and everybody’s needs were catered for, including Mary and her daughter, Katherine. Lady Elizabeth may not have welcomed home two more mouths to feed, nor might she have been happy to see her disgraced daughter, and Katherine surely felt the tension between her grandmother and mother as she was growing up. It would be an uneasy start for a woman who was to become a Lady in her own right.

  Katherine would never be afforded the luxury of being called princess but in Tudor times, being a princess wasn’t a safe and secure position. Nor did it bring happiness to either of the Princesses Mary and Elizabeth, Henry’s acknowledged daughters, especially throughout their childhood. The next few tumultuous years would see Katherine watching from the sidelines as the Tudor age unravelled and the fate of her once helpful aunt Anne was sealed.

  Chapter Two

  Aunty Anne

  We will never know how Katherine’s mother felt about her sister, Anne Boleyn, usurping her in the King’s affections. Was it a relief to no longer be the bedfellow of the King of England or did Mary miss her life at court? Did Katherine watch in horror as her aunt became the most talked about woman in Christendom and subsequently lose her life in a mass of intrigue and political manoeuvring? It was an upbringing that would have shocked any child and could have meant their disgrace from court but Katherine was always welcome.

  King Henry was pursuing Katherine’s aunt, Anne Boleyn, from as early as 1526. In February of that year, as he had done with Mary, he attended a joust riding a horse whose caparisons were embroidered with a message from his heart. This time he was wearing the motto ‘Declare I dare not’ along with a depiction of a heart surrounded by flame. At this time, the King’s courtship of Katherine’s aunt was in its early stages. Henry had no intention at this time of making Anne his next wife but Anne had other ideas. She had seen how Katherine’s mother, her sister, was treated and refused to accept her role just as a mistress. She kept Henry dangling, never giving in to his protestations of love but encouraging him nonetheless. When the going got tough, she retreated to Hever and provoked a flurry of ardent letters and gifts.

  Henry could not bear to be parted from Anne. She was rapidly becoming constant in his thoughts. He wrote to her:

  My Mistress and friend, my heart and I surrender ourselves into your hands, beseeching you to hold us commended to your favour, and that by absence your affection to us may not be lessened: for it would be a great pity to increase our pain, of which absence produces enough and more than I could ever have thought could be felt, reminding us of a point in astronomy which is this: the longer the days are, the more distant is the sun, and nevertheless the hotter; so it is with our love, for by absence we are kept a distance from one another, and yet it retains its fervour, at least on my side; I hope the like on yours, assuring you that on my part the pain of absence is already too great for me; and when I think of the increase of that which I am forced to suffer, it would be almost intolerable, but for the firm hope I have of your unchangeable affection for me: and to remind you of this sometimes, and seeing that I cannot be personally present with you, I now send you the nearest thing I can to that, namely, my picture set in bracelets, with the whole of the device, which you already know, wishing myself in their place, if it should please you. This is from the hand of your loyal servant and friend, H.R.1

  This letter shows a vulnerable side to Henry. He wanted Anne to return the love he felt for her but none of her letters remain for us to see her replies. However, her replies must have given the King hope as she did manage to keep him interested over the course of seven years before their marriage in 1533. At a private ceremony at Whitehall Palace, attended by few family and friends, Anne got what she had held out for, the hand in marriage of the King.

  King Henry’s infatuation with Anne resulted in his divorce from Queen Catherine of Aragon. They had been married for over twenty years and what is clear is that Henry desperately needed a son and heir which Catherine could no longer give him. The politics involved in the King’s ‘great matter’ are long and convoluted and many authors have written volumes on this time in Henry’s life.

  What interests us here is how this related to Katherine’s life as it directly impacts on why she was never acknowledged by her father. King Henry’s main conviction in seeking a divorce from his Queen was that their marriage was frowned on in the eyes of God and was the reason why they had no sons (at least, no living sons). He quoted the bible - ‘If a man shall take his brother’s wife, it is an unclean thing he hath uncovered his brother’s nakedness; they shall be childless’ (Leviticus 20:21) - as confirmation that his marriage to Catherine was unwholesome. Henry had already made up his mind to put aside his wife but he was looking for proof and who could deny the word of God?

  What was also at stake was his relationship to Anne if it became public knowledge that he had slept with her sister, Mary. If a marriage between a man and his brother’s wife was so abominable then a marriage between a man and his mistress’s sister was also. Leviticus also says ‘Neither shalt thou take a wife to her sister, to vex her, to uncover her nakedness, besides the other in her life time’ (Leviticus 18:18). Henry had placed himself within the ‘first degree of affinity’ or relatedness. To this end, we see another confirmation that Henry truly did have an affair with Mary when in 1527 he asked for a legal dispensation to remarry and to marry a woman with whom he had that first degree of affinity.

  Even with a legal dispensation granted, others were aware of what Henry had done. His cousin, Cardinal Pole, went so far as to publish Pro ecclesiasticae unitatis defensione (A Defence of the Unity of the Church) which strongly accused him of having an affair with Mary and then getting rid of his wife so that he could marry Anne.

  At your age in life, and with all your experience of the world, you were enslaved by your passion for a girl. But she would not give you your will unless you rejected your wife, whose place she longed to take. The modest woman would not be your mistress; no, but she would be your wife. She had learned, I think, if from nothing else, at least from the example of her sister, how soon you got tired of your mistresses; and she resolved to surpass her sister in retaining you as her lover.

  Now what sort of person is it whom you have put in place of your divorced wife? Is she not the sister of her whom first you violated and for a long time after kept as your concubine? She certainly is. How is it then, that you now tell us of the horror you have of illicit marriage? Are you ignorant of the law which certainly no less prohibits marriage with a sister of one with whom you have become one flesh, than one with whom your brother was one flesh? If one kind of marriage is detestable, so is the other. Were you ignorant of the law? Nay, you knew it better than others. How did I prove it? Because, at the very time that you were rejecting your brother’s widow, you were doing your very utmost to get leave from the Pope to marry the sister of your former concubine.

  This treaty infuriated King Henry who wasn’t used to being questioned and publicly attacked in this way. It also brought up the whole issue of his affair with Mary - ‘for a long time after kept as your concubine’ that he had tried to keep secret but was now being brought into the open not just as a brief affair but one that had lasted some duration. It is precisely why Katherine would never be acknowledged by her father. His desire for her aunt overrode everything in his life at that time. To admit Katherine was his daughter, would admit his affair with her mother and thus jeopardise his marriage to the woman he wanted above all else.

  Anne too may not have wanted Katherine to be acknowledged for her own reasons. Although she had a close relationship with her mother and her brother, George, she seems to have had little contact with Mary. She may even have despised her for being with the man she wanted as her husband. To know that she had had a child by the King must have galled her. She detested his other daughter, the Princess Mary, Henry’s daughter by Catherine, a
nd saw her sole mission as giving the King the legitimate heir he so wanted, making sure that he cast aside any other children, legitimate or not.

  In many of the reports sent home by Chapuys, the Spanish ambassador, who was famous for his vitriol towards Anne, he writes of her animosity towards Catherine of Aragon and the Princess Mary. On the 10th October 1533, he reported that Mary’s expenses and attendants had been reduced and by January 1534, he was telling of how Anne was insisting that Mary be kept in close confinement. There were even rumours that Anne might poison the King’s daughter from his previous marriage. The act of divorce made the Princess Mary now the Lady Mary, in effect bastardising her, and Anne tried everything in her power to belittle her even further. And the King allowed this to continue. He was in no way blameless for the treatment of his first-born daughter. In Bernard’s book about Anne Boleyn, he suggests that it is ‘another example of Henry’s skill at directing policy while allowing others to shoulder public responsibility for it.’ Anne mistreated the Princess Mary but the King allowed her to do so which raises questions about how much he actually cared for his legitimate daughters let alone one who had been born to his mistress.

  Katherine’s aunt Anne was crowned as Queen on 1st June 1533 in Westminster Abbey with all the pomp and splendour her new role required. She was visibly pregnant but her robe of purple velvet covered her well. Her coronation was attended by the Boleyn family. The people of London had turned out to see her procession to the abbey but not in the droves she had expected. They laughed at their entwined initials ‘HA’ and there was a feeling of solemnity to the whole affair. Catherine of Aragon had been a well-loved Queen and Anne was her usurper. Chapuys, the Spanish ambassador, wrote that the coronation was ‘a cold, thin and very unpleasant thing, to the great regret, anger and reluctance not only of the common people but also of all the rest. And it seems that the indignation of everybody about this affair has increased by a half since.’2