by David Loades
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calm, Catherine was a skilled seductress. It is reasonable to suppose that with her peculiar background she had more sexual experience than any of her colleagues
– even the married ones – and it was this quality that caught the King’s attention. He had failed to consummate his union with Anne, and was full of self-doubt, looking for reassurance, and this adolescent sex-pot was just what he was hoping for
.5 By about March or April of 1540, Henry was beginning to show a serious interest in her, and the Duke and the Dowager Duchess were quick to perceive a political opportunity. It was not known at that point that the King had decided to end his failed marriage but it would not have required much skill to realize that Catherine’s best initial response should be coy. It worked, and Henry quickly became infatuated. Gossip had already identifi ed her as the King’s latest ‘amour’, long before Anne had any inkling that anything was wrong. Lavish presents began to be sent as early as April, and unlike Jane in similar circumstances, Catherine did not refuse them, so that when convocation dutifully declared the King’s marriage null and void on 9 July, expectations were already formed. The ground was carefully prepared in spite of the shortness of the time. The king’s non-consummation of his existing marriage was ascribed to his having acted under compulsion, a transparent fiction that was aimed against his fallen minister, Thomas Cromwell, then in the Tower awaiting the attentions of the executioner. Moreover Parliament, which now had jurisdiction in such matters, helpfully abolished the impediment of consanguinity insofar as it applied to fi rst cousins – which was the relationship between Catherine and Anne Boleyn. Henry’s marriage to Anne might have been declared null but he had no desire to deny that he had slept with her. Both the French and Imperial courts greeted the repudiation of Anne of Cleves with theatrical displays of incredulity and disgust, which made the English ambassadors’ lives diffi cult for a few weeks, but neither had the slightest intention of taking any action. If even the Duke of Cleves was not prepared to break off diplomatic relations, why should anyone else? Henry and Catherine were married at Oatlands on 28 July and it was observed that he was so uxorious that he could not keep his hands off her, even in public. ‘The king’s affection was so marvellously set upon that gentlewoman, as it was never known that he had the like to any woman’, wrote Cranmer’s secretary Ralph Morice, and most of the comment was similarly indulgent.
6 There were great hopes that the succession would now be put beyond all reasonable doubt. Unfortunately it was not to be. Henry’s health and spirits noticeably improved. He took to rising early, and hunted with renewed enthusiasm, but Catherine did not conceive. It is possible that the Queen herself was infertile and it was that rather than any precautions that had protected her during her earlier affairs, but 142
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it is unlikely in view of her knowing comments. It seems more likely that Henry’s grasp exceeded his reach and in spite of his evident desire, his performance fell far short. It is hard to imagine even so sexually active a girl as Catherine acting in the way that she subsequently did if her relationship with her husband had been entirely satisfactory. Henry was at best erratic and this drove his young bride wild with frustration. Somehow or other he managed not to notice that her maidenhead had already been taken but this was probably due to his absolute (and quite irrational) conviction that she was young and pure rather than to any lack of experience on his part. After all, he had suffered from the opposite delusion about Anne. Although Catherine did not conceive, for the time being she concealed any disappointment that she may have felt and all appeared to be well. Although her education seems to have been neglected and she had no intellectual pastimes, in some respects she was an ideal consort. She was, or appeared to be, totally submissive and chose (or had chosen for her) the appropriate motto
‘Non autre volonte que la sienne’ – ‘no other will but his’. She was a courtier and a member of a courtly family, so it was not diffi cult for the King to become the centre of her world. However, her attitude was paradoxical. On the one hand she seems to have thought that her husband was omniscient, and on the other hand set out to deceive him with quite inadequate precautions. She knew how to make all the correct physical responses to his passionate advances but emotional commitment seems to have been lacking from the start. She needed a young and athletic lover, not this elderly and overweight fumbler. Moreover it soon transpired that his own ardent spirit was outrunning his fl agging body. He could no longer dance all night and hunt all day and an awareness of his own declining powers made him irritable and fretful. Nor was there any genuine companionship in his marriage to fall back on when the physical fl ames burned low; in other words it was a one-dimensional union. Then in March 1541 the King fell ill. He suffered from a chronic ulcer on his leg, the result of numerous falls in the tilt yard and the hunting fi eld as a young man, which suddenly closed up. He was in excruciating pain and it was feared for some time that he would die. The condition eased, but the optimism and apparent vitality of the previous autumn were now only memories. He became savage and morose and if he had been an unreliable lover in the past, he was now virtually
hors de combat. There was also a political context to the King’s fi fth marriage, because, as we have seen, Catherine was a Howard, and a niece of the Duke of Norfolk. Norfolk was the arch-enemy of Thomas Cromwell, and the opportunity to use Catherine against him was too good to be missed. Although the politics of the court could be Machiavellian, it would be an exaggeration to say that the Duke ‘dangled’ his niece under the King’s nose with the intention of ruining the marriage that Cromwell
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had brought about. Henry had already decided that he wanted rid of Anne before Catherine came on the scene. Nevertheless his infatuation did ensure that there was no going back on that decision. At the same time the Cleves marriage was not the only, nor even the principal, cause of Cromwell’s fall; but it created a dissatisfaction in the King’s mind that could be worked on to the minister’s disadvantage, and that cer
tainly happened.7 How much the Duke actually knew about his niece before he encouraged the King to marry her, we do not know. Perhaps, in the light of the outcome, not very much. However, for the time being she symbolized a Howard ascendancy at court which brought many political advantages. It also created a time bomb, because the Howards were greedy and the way in which the Queen fi lled her household with her kindred and their hangers on created great resentment. It was expected that the consort would do her best for her relations, and both Anne Boleyn and Jane Seymour had done the same, but Catherine went a step too far. She was given a lavish jointure, to the tune of £4,600 a year, which was more than any of her predecessors, and a good deal of freedom as to how she used it. It included a substantial part of the estates of the late Earl of Essex (Thomas Cromwell) and of the newly dissolved abbeys of Reading and Glastonbury, which was ironic in view of the fact that the Howards were notorious religious conservatives. Catherine was genuinely grateful for Henry’s generosity, but had no idea how to use such largesse wisely. Within a few months the memory of Thomas Cromwell began to appear much less obnoxious. When the King was low, in the spring of 1541, he began to look back on his great minister with regret, and (more ominously) ‘to have a sinister opinion of some of his chief men …’; in other words to blame his present councillors for having destroyed ‘the best servant he ever had’. 8 This was not entirely fair, because the responsibility for Cromwell’s fall lay with the King himself but he was not likely to acknowledge that and the blame game had sinister implications. Catherine simply lacked the resources to cope with the black royal moods that now became increasingly frequent. A suitable toy or pet when his fi ts of youthful exuberance were on him, she was incapable of being pleasing or supportive when he most needed her. For about a fortnight while he was ill in March, he declined to see her at
all. This was not because she had displeased him, but because he was aware how unattractive an object he had become and although that selfawareness does him credit it was not a hopeful sign for their future together. The Queen simply could not cope, and perhaps to escape from an intolerable situation, or perhaps out of irresponsible habit, in the spring of 1541, Catherine renewed a relationship with one of her former lovers, a young gentleman named Thomas Culpepper. At the time, Culpepper was a junior member of the King’s Privy Chamber, so the opportunities for encounter would have been numerous. 144
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Culpepper was an unscrupulous womanizer, and his intention seems to have been to establish a claim to Catherine if (or when) the King’s deteriorating health carried him off.
9 The Queen may have encouraged him more out of ingrained habit than with any deliberate intent, but if so, her indulgence soon backfi red, because what may have started as a mild fl irtation soon became emotionally serious – at least on her part. She started writing passionate love letters to her paramour – an extremely dangerous course in a world where privacy was virtually unknown and anything committed to paper gave a hostage to fortune.10 Although Culpepper’s visits were no doubt as surreptitious as they could be, it was not long before the principal lady of her Privy Chamber found out what was going on. Jane Rochford should have gone immediately to the King and declared what she knew – but she did no such thing. Perhaps out of loyalty to her mistress, or perhaps heavily bribed, she kept quiet and became in effect an accomplice. Throughout the royal progress to the north in the summer of 1541, Culpepper kept up his secret assignations with Jane Rochford’s connivance. Every time that the court stopped overnight (on its progress), there were backstairs adventures. It is hard to believe that others of the Queen’s entourage did not also know what was going on, but no one said anything, and it may be that Jane had her own methods for maintaining discipline.
At the same time, Francis Dereham also reappeared. He may have threatened to disclose their previous relationship but for whatever reason, Catherine appointed him her private secretary. No one was surprised that she should have promoted an old friend but then nobody knew what the nature of that friendship had been. Throughout the progress, it seems that Culpepper and Dereham were in and out of the Queen’s bedroom like characters in a modern farce, but nobody dared to say anything to the King. All this activity exposed Catherine to blackmail and so did her earlier liaisons, given the misconception which her husband had of her. On 12 July Joan Bulmer, who had been one of Catherine’s
‘bedfellows’ at Horsham, wrote to the Queen demanding a place at court as the price of her silence. It was duly provided, and it is possible that several other places in the Queen’s service were similarly fi lled.
11 That might explain the silence which enveloped her later misdemeanours. That may have been part of the bargain. Unfortunately for Catherine, there were others who were interested in her behaviour who were less easy to silence. Gossip began to circulate and Henry must have been the only person at Court who did not harbour some suspicion of the Queen’s activities. At the same time, as we have seen, her kindred was not popular, because the Howards did not bear their good fortune lightly. Cromwell had had few committed friends at court, but there were many who owed obligations to him, and mostly the evangelical writers and preachers
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whom he had patronized. John Foxe was later to lament the passing of his Godly infl uence, and that may well have been an exaggeration, but there were certainly some evangelicals on the look out for a chance to av
enge him.12 One of these was a man called John Lascelles. Lascelles was a Protestant whose life was to end at the stake fi ve years later, but at this time he was a key witness for the prosecution. His sister, Mary Hall, had been in the service of the Dowager Duchess at the time of Catherine’s upbringing at Horsham and knew a great deal about what that young lady had been up to. Whether Mary herself was a Protestant is not clear, but at some time in the summer of 1541 she told her brother all that she knew. She may have been motivated by sheer malice because she is alleged to have said of the Queen at the time, ‘Let her alone, for if she holds on as she begins, she will be nought within a while.
’13 Lascelles, however, had no intention of leaving her alone and on 1 November he sought out the Archbishop of Canterbury and unburdened himself. The King had by this time returned to Hampton Court, and by a supreme irony had ordered that very day a special mass of thanksgiving for the happiness that his Queen had brought him. He was living in a fool’s paradise, because Cranmer realized at once that so convincing and circumstantial a story must have substance to it. He was also, although discreetly, an enemy of the Howards and the opportunity was too good to miss. What Mary Hall knew, of course, related to the days before Catherine’s marriage to the King, so it did not constitute evidence of adultery. What it did do was to demonstrate that the Queen had not been the innocent bride that Henry had taken her for. It also provided some evidence for a pre-contract with Dereham, which, if established, would have nullifi ed the royal marriage altogether. On 2 November Cranmer passed the King a discreet note while he was at mass, with the request that he read it privately. 14 By this time the Archbishop had also communicated his knowledge to the Lord Chancellor, Sir Thomas Audley, and to the Earl of Hertford, both also enemies of the Howards. Henry’s reaction was surprisingly low key. He was inclined to dismiss the story as a slanderous forgery, cooked up by a jealous woman. Nevertheless he instituted an inquiry in order, as he put it, to clear his wife’s name, and entrusted it to William Fitzwilliam, the Earl of Southampton, one of his most senior and trusted advisers. Southampton examined Lascelles, who repeated his story, and then went down to Sussex to interview Mary Hall, who also told the same tale. Meanwhile, almost certainly without the King’s knowledge, Dereham and Mannox had been detained by Sir Thomas Wrothesley, the former on a rather far-fetched charge of piracy. Henry was not yet convinced, but Catherine was ordered to keep her chamber and await his pleasure. By this time the Howards’
numerous enemies had sensed their opportunity. On 6 November the King 146
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returned to London without seeing his wife, which was an ominous sign. By this time several of Catherine’s ladies had also been arrested but, most seriously, Dereham had broken down under interrogation. Not only did he confess his earlier intimacy but also his more recent access and in the process implicated Culpepper. By the time the King met his Privy Council in emergency session after his return to London, the whole issue had escalated alarmingly. Henry had proved credulous when confronted with the evidence against Anne Boleyn but this time credulity was not in question. Not only had he misjudged his young bride, but she had made him a cuckold into the bargain. When confronted by the full evidence that had now been painstakingly assembled, the King exploded with fury and threatened to torture the ungrateful girl to death. As had happened with Henry before, the measure of his infatuation was now the measure of his disillusionment. When his rage subsided, he collapsed into an embarrassing orgy of weeping and self-pity. The realization that he had not only been unable to satisfy his young wife but had also been unable to prevent her from fi nding her satisfaction elsewhere was the ultimate humiliation. For the time being nobody ventured to mention either courtly ‘amours’ or the prospect of a Duke of York. Of course, none of this was his fault. The responsibility lay partly with Catherine herself, and partly with those who had persuaded him to take such a wanton slut into his bed. The fact that the choice had been entirely his conveniently escaped his memory and just as Anne’s fall had brought down the whole Boleyn party in ruin, now the Howard ascendancy was destroyed at a stroke. Servants and minor members of the family began to be rounded up. On 10 December the Dowager Duchess of Norfolk was arrested, and on 13 December Catherine’s aunt, Lady Bridgewater, Catherine Daubeney. The Duke himself was neither a
rrested nor charged but was forced to abase himself and then retreated tactfully to his estates. On 22 December the entire family, except for the Duke, was found guilty of misprision of treason for concealing the Queen’s offences. This could have resulted in perpetual imprisonment and the loss of all property, and was indeed premature because Catherine had not yet come to trial and the fact of her treason was not yet established. Most of them were entirely innocent of any intention to deceive and were pardoned and released over the next few months. Agnes was in a rather different position, because not only had she known perfectly well what was going on under her roof, but she was also found to have destroyed some of Dereham’s papers. However in this case the King did not prove to be vindictive and she too was released in May 1542. No doubt she had learned a salutary lesson, but the shock of this experience had a paralysing effect upon the whole clan. The Duke did not forfeit his offi ce of Lord Treasurer, and soon recovered a measure of favour, so that he was leading the King’s forces
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into Scotland by the autumn. He was brought down fi nally by the indiscretions of his son the Earl of Surrey in 1546, and was in the Tower awaiting execution on the night in January 1547 when King Henry died. He lived to be restored under Mary and to die in his bed in August 1554.