Katherine Howard
Henry VIII’s Fifth Wife, And The Second He Had Executed
Of King Henry VIII’s six wives, Katherine Howard’s story is, I think, the saddest of all.
Katherine of Aragon was a high achiever and had an interesting life. Jane Seymour died of natural causes, as did Katherine Parr, who outlived the King, but remarried and died in childbirth just over a year later. Anne of Cleves lived as an independent woman (a rare situation at the time) after her marriage was annulled.
Even Anne Boleyn, the other executed wife, married Henry when he was handsome and good company. She seems to have loved him, and was the mother of Elizabeth I, one of England’s greatest monarchs, who helped redeem her mother’s reputation.
Katherine Howard
Howard had all the disadvantages and few of the advantages of a young Tudor lady.
She was born around 1523 or 24; the daughter of Edmund Howard, third son of Thomas Howard, Duke of Norfolk, who died in 1524. Her mother was Joyce Culpeper, who was a widow with five children when she married Edmund. Together, they had another six children.
Inheritance was by primogeniture — the eldest son inherited all the father’s wealth. So Katherine was a niece of the new Duke of Norfolk, and her father’s sister was Anne Boleyn’s mother, but Edmund Howard was not wealthy. He also had a serious gambling problem and was frequently in debt. (We know this from letters he wrote to his elder brother and others, asking for loans.)
Katherine’s bad start in life was also because of her gender. For her to find a suitable husband would require payment of a dowry, for which her father did not have the money.
She was more an inconvenience than an asset, and her education was largely neglected, leaving her with few necessary skills.
In the Duchess’s house
In 1528, her mother Joyce died and the family broke up. Katherine was sent as a ward to Agnes Howard, Dowager Duchess of Norfolk, a deeply religious woman.
Katherine became an attractive young woman, with auburn hair and a vivacious personality, who gained the attention of several men, the first being Henry Mannox, whom the Duchess had appointed as her music teacher.
As a girl who had often been ignored by her own family, Katherine must have enjoyed this attention. It’s possible to be lonely in a house full of people but, at last, people were interested in her. She was too inexperienced to know how to react without harming her own reputation.
We don’t know the details of the physical side of their relations with her, but we do know that she and the Duchess’s Secretary, Francis Dereham, wrote letters in which they addressed each other as “husband” and “wife,” which suggests either a sexual relationship or a plan to marry.
The Church at the time considered a sexual relationship between a man and a woman to be marriage, even if no wedding had taken place.
Dereham was sent to Ireland, promising Katherine he would marry her on his return. He left her with the responsibilities of a wife, including looking after his money, and they wrote to each other. Then Katherine’s uncle, the Duke of Norfolk, found her a place as Lady-in-Waiting to Anne of Cleves.
Henry and Katherine
When Katherine arrived at Court, Henry VIII flirted with her. The Howard family approved of this, hoping to regain the influence they had while Anne Boleyn was Queen.
When Henry had his marriage to Anne of Cleves annulled. Anne got an excellent financial settlement, and the King was now officially free to pursue a new wife. This was the only one of Henry’s marriages which ended happily for both parties.
What happened next is, I believe, about an older man making a fool of himself with a teenage girl, then regretting it. Henry gave Katherine many valuable gifts — land, jewels, expensive cloth to make clothes. He was obviously madly in love with her, and trying to buy her affection.
We don’t know how Katherine felt about Henry, but we can guess. She was an attractive girl of around seventeen. Henry was 49, grossly overweight, irascible, and with putrid ulcers on his legs.
Katherine was far too lively to be happy with such a situation, but young Tudor ladies nearly always had their husband chosen by their parents. Katherine did her duty and married him on 28 July 1540. On the same day, Thomas Cromwell, who had displeased the King several times, was executed.
The Howard family had what they wanted, and many of them now appeared at Court. Others found them arrogant, but their opportunity for that was short-lived. In 1540, plague came to London, and Henry took Katherine on a Royal Progress round the country.
Katherine’s downfall
The Royal Court spent Christmas of 1540 at Hampton Court Palace, and it would be the last Christmas Henry and Katherine would spend together. There were already rumors of an affair between Katherine and Thomas Culpeper.
Culpeper was a distant cousin of her mother and had been a courtier in Henry VIII’s court since Anne Boleyn’s time. He was about ten years older than Katherine.
Thomas Cranmer, the Archbishop of Canterbury, had his own grudges against the Howards, and his position required him to support the new Protestant Anglican church against any possibility of England returning to Catholicism. He examined the case against Katherine and found it suited his purpose.
Cranmer went to question Katherine about the allegations, and found her in “a pitiful state.” She knew what happened to her cousin, Anne Boleyn and could guess her own fate. Henry learned of the case in November 1541, and had Katherine stripped of her title as Queen on 23 November.
One of Katherine’s Maids of Honour, Lady Jane Rochford, who seems to have played a leading role, gave evidence of how she kept watch while Culpeper was leaving Katherine’s bedroom. Most of all, despite being described as “barely literate,” Katherine had written long, affectionate letters to him.
Both Culpeper and Dereham confessed to high treason in their relations with the Queen, though confessions under torture don’t mean much. If someone is hurting you badly enough, you’ll say anything to stop them.
If the charges were true, Dereham’s sentence was especially harsh. He only had an affair with someone who later married a King.
With Culpeper, both knew the risks. Katherine’s feelings for him seem genuine, and she may also have been seeking comfort. We don’t know if Henry was still capable of sex, but he must have been a terrifying husband.
Both Dereham and Culpeper were charged with high treason on 1 December 1541, and executed at Tyburn on 10 December that year. They were hung, castrated, decapitated, eviscerated, and cut into quarters. Their heads were placed on spikes on London Bridge.
Katherine was executed by decapitation on 13 February 1542, as was Lady Jane Rochford.
After Katherine’s downfall, Henry VIII behaved as if she never existed, and tried to have anything associated with her destroyed. Even the portrait at the beginning of this article, which fits dates and descriptions, is not guaranteed to be her. Its title is only: Portrait of a Lady.
Unlike her cousin Anne Boleyn, she had nobody to defend her reputation, and is remembered as the teenage wife who sought solace in affairs. She never had much chance to be anything else.
Sources:
https://tudors.fandom.com/wiki/Agnes_Tilney,_Dowager_Duchess_of_Norfolk (Tilney was Agnes Howard’s maiden name)
https://es.frwiki.wiki/wiki/Francis_Dereham
