Catherine Howard (24 page)

Three problems complicated such a solution. First, the Queen herself, either through insatiable Howard pride, which refused to acknowledge the possibility that she had never been Queen of
England
even for eighteen months, or possibly through an almost pathological need to cling to the one exceptional aspect of an otherwise ordinary life, refused to allow the pre-contract.
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Second, the question whether Catherine’s relations with Dereham actually constituted a sufficiently legal marriage to invalidate the union with the King, was in considerable doubt. By customary and ecclesiastical law it was possible to argue that the two young people were in fact married. In the sixteenth century the Church always claimed that a couple were wedded in the eyes of God and the law, even without a public engagement or a religious ceremony, if they had agreed between themselves and that agreement was accompanied by carnal knowledge.
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The issue was debated by the doctors of theology, but before any final decision could be reached a third and far more dangerous factor suddenly entered the picture. It soon became apparent that the complete story of the Queen’s activities had yet to be revealed, for, as Wriothesley remarked, ‘an appearance of greater abomination’ was now suspectcd.
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So far the worst that could be directed against Catherine was that she had committed bigamy. This was bad enough, since the crime united both felony and perjury, and was punishable by death. Evidence was now beginning to appear that the Queen had not, as she hopefully confessed, ‘intended ever during my life to be faithful and true unto your majesty’; nor had she kept the sorrow of her early offences ‘ever before her eyes’. Instead, she had taken into her service Katherine Tylney, who had known and connived at her early amours with Dereham, and she had actually introduced her former lover into her regal household as an usher and secretary within the privy chamber. These were difficult actions to rationalize, and the government immediately placed a dangerous and fatal interpretation upon them. The council wrote on 12 November that what this portended was easy to conjecture, and that further scandal would shortly be revealed.
28
Though Dereham frantically denied adulterous activities with the Queen, it was simply a matter of time and probably of torture, before further evidence was disclosed.

In the meantime, orders were sent to prepare the Queen for removal to the suppressed monastry of Syon. There she was to be ‘furnished moderately, as her life and conditions hath deserved; that is to say, with the furniture of three chambers, hanged with mean stuff without any cloth of estate.’ Again the Crown was being strangely lenient; even though Catherine was deprived of the glittering jewels and sumptuous gowns that she loved so dearly, yet she was allowed to retain her privy keys, was attended by four ladiesin- waiting and twelve servants, and was presented with a wardrobe consisting of six French hoods edged with gold, six pair of sleeves, as many gowns, and ‘six kirtles of satin damask and velvet’.
29
While Cranmer was arranging for the closing of the Queen’s household at
Hampton Court
, orders were also issued that on the 13th the Lord Chancellor should call the great council together and ‘declare to them the abominable demeanour of the Queen’, but not mention any possibility of a pre-contract.
30
This was the first public announcement of the scandal, but why it was decided to pass over the pre-contract question is not known. Possibly it was feared that not only Catherine but also Dereham might use it as a justification for their actions. A more likely explanation is that evidence of further scandal had already been detected.

The council had finally fastened on to the scent of Mr Thomas Culpeper. The secret of the King’s matrimonial difficulties had been well kept; not even the foreign ambassadors, who made it their profession to ferret out court secrets, knew until 11 November what was brewing, and even then the French Ambassador was not sure why Henry had left
Hampton Court
for
London
so hurriedly. Bad news from
Ireland
, possible war with
Scotland
, and the rumoured disclosure of financial peculation among high government officials, were all voiced as possible explanations. As for the unfortunate Thomas Culpeper, he appears to have been totally unaware of the danger that surrounded him, or the fatal words that were being wrung from prisoners in
London
, and he spent his days ‘merry a hawking’.
31
His name had been linked with that of the Queen certainly as early as 11 November, and probably even earlier, for Catherine herself mentioned the rumour of an engagement to him while she was maid of honour to Queen Anne of Cleves. This was an innocent enough association until Francis Dereham, ‘to show his innocence since the marriage, said that Culpeper had succeeded him in the Queen’s affections’.
32
This was a clue worth chasing, and on the 11th, Wriothesley first questioned Catherine upon ‘the matter now come forth concerning Culpeper’. Evidently the interview was not satisfactory, for the council ordered further queries, saying, ‘she hath not, as appeareth by her confession, so fully declared the circumstances of such communications as were betwixt her and Culpeper’, as the evidence seemed to indicate. The interrogators were informed that Henry was anxious that they endeavour once more ‘to get of her more information’.
33
Consequently Cranmer and Wriothesley tried again, but how successful they were is not certain, for if they wrung a second confession from the Queen it has not been preserved.

The first confession was quite sufficient to cost Culpeper his head. Catherine admitted the meetings on back stairs, she even confessed to calling him her ‘little sweet fool’, and she admitted presenting him with a cap and a ring. On the other hand, she denied ‘upon her oath’ any carnal relationship. Moreover, she claimed that she had begged Lady Rochford not to bother her further ‘with such light matters’, and warned her that ‘alas madame this will be spied one day, and then we be all undone.’ She not only placed the blame squarely on Culpeper, but painted Lady Rochford as the agent provocateur, who had engineered the whole affair for mysterious reasons of her own. According to Catherine, Jane Rochford had said that not even the threat of being ‘torn with wild horses’ could induce her to mention the meetings with Culpeper, and she had warned the Queen that if she, Catherine, disclosed the truth, she would ‘undo herself and others’.
34

Though the council might have wished for more, Catherine’s words were enough to send them in search of Lady Rochford, Katherine Tylney, Margaret Morton and others of the Queen’s household and chambers. Mistress Tylney had already been interrogated about life at Lambeth, but now, on 13 November, she went through a second ordeal about the Queen’s behaviour at court. Had the Queen gone out at night while at
Lincoln
? What messages had she taken between the Queen and Jane Rochford? How late had the Queen stayed up, and with whom had she been? The answers were disappointing and vague, for Katherine Tylney had never been allowed a chance to see who it was that Catherine met in the early hours of the morning. Lady Rochford was more accommodating. In an effort to disentangle herself from any responsibility, she accused the Queen and Culpeper of contriving the whole thing while she herself was forced to play the role of an unwilling and unhappy minion who did as she was told. Jane Rochford’s evidence does not make much sense. She denied ever overhearing what Culpeper and Catherine murmured together, and she insisted that she had slept through at least one whole interview. On the other hand, she thought ‘that Culpeper hath known the Queen carnally considering all things that she hath heard and seen between them’.
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So far the evidence was inconclusive, dependent upon idle gossip and the chattering of Lady Rochford, but Catherine’s fate was sealed beyond reprieve when Culpeper himself confirmed Lady Rochford’s estimation by confessing that ‘he intended and meant to do ill with the Queen and that in like wise the Queen so minded to do with him.’
36
Right or wrong, true or false, here was a confession of treason that was more than sufficient to cost the Queen her silly head, and Henry’s mercy, on which Catherine had so abjectly called, could not now be expected to save her.

At this stage in the narrative of these unhappy days, the reader is usually appalled by what appears to be the total and blatant disregard for the most basic and fundamental principles of justice. On what possible legal grounds could Thomas Culpeper, Francis Dereham, and Catherine Howard have been found guilty of treason? There is not a scrap of evidence to indicate an overt act of adultery; at worst, Dereham might conceivably have been guilty of misprision for having failed to disclose the existence of a precontract, and might have been said to have caused injury both to the State and the monarch, for having allowed Henry to marry under false pretences. Catherine could have been tried and condemned for bigamy, but not even the best efforts of the council could unearth positive proof that Culpeper had ever been the Queen’s lover. His only crime seems to have been the normal and masculine tendency of allowing his imagination too great a scope. The victims appear to have been falsely accused of crimes they never committed, and condemned on the most tenuous, distorted and vicious evidence possible – testimony which today would be thrown out of court as totally false and unacceptable. The credibility of the evidence and the nature of their crimes, however, must be viewed in terms of the social and ethical assumptions existing in the sixteenth century.

The law determining the character of treason under Henry VIII had been enacted in 1534. It extended the punishment for the most heinous act a subject of the Crown could commit to all who ‘do maliciously wish, will or desire by words or writing, or by craft imagine’ the King’s death or harm.
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Stated in this fashion, almost any word, expression, wish or deed could be construed as high treason. All that was necessary was to prove the malicious nature of the act or desire. In other words, the key to Tudor trials and to the reaction of the juries was simply the question of intent; no overt act was required. Condemnation upon the basis of presumptive treason was in no way regarded as being a miscarriage of justice, for thought must precede action; the imagined attempt implies the treasonous deed; and the execution of the criminal on the grounds of treasonous intent was simply the judicious nipping of treason in the bud.
38
At the trial of Sir Thomas More in 1535, the King’s attorney-general argued quite logically that, ‘even though we should have no word or deed to charge upon you, yet we have your silence, and that is a sign of your evil intention and a sure proof of malice.’
39

Culpeper, Dereham and the Queen were all caught on the basis of intent, on the secret malice that lay concealed within their evil hearts and the presumptive carnal desires that lay hidden in their imagination. In the case of Culpeper, the French Ambassador reported that he was condemned to death for having carnally known the Queen, ‘although he had not passed beyond words; for he confessed his intention to do so, and his confessed conversations, being held by a subject to a Queen, deserved death.’
40
Dereham was executed upon a similar basis: ‘that his coming again to the Queen’s service was to an ill intent’ and that he and Catherine had ‘traitorously imagined and procured that he, Dereham, should be retained in the service of the Queen, to the intent that they might continue their wicked courses.’ To this the government added the further crime that Dereham had concealed the pre-contract, ‘to the intent of preferring the Queen to her royal marriage by which they deceived the King’.
41
Catherine herself was executed for like causes, for the appointment of Dereham as her secretary and Katherine Tylney as her chamberer was construed as ‘proof of her will to return to her abominable life’.
42
For a time even the Dowager Duchess was accused of presumptive treason, when she foolishly opened one of Dereham’s chests left in her keeping, and destroyed a number of the documents. Henry argued that the breaking of the coffers imported, ‘a marvellous presumption’ that the writings contained matters of treason and that the Duchess’s ‘intent’ had been to conceal such ‘letters of treason’.
43
In the end the old lady of
Norfolk
escaped the charge of treason with its terrifying consequences. Instead, she was accused, along with other members of her clan, of misprision for having failed to divulge the truth about her granddaughter’s early activities, and for having deliberately contrived to deceive the King, by her assurances that Catherine was of pure and chaste living.

The ease with which the government could ‘construct’ treason is obvious, but there was also an added advantage to the system – that the victims almost invariably had to acknowledge the justice of their accusations. Although Catherine and her two admirers vehemently denied adultery, in the end all confessed their faults. It was not torture that extorted the plea of guilty, for it was extremely difficult not to admit that somewhere in their relations they had harboured secret carnal thoughts. Nor did society and public opinion have any doubt that they were indeed guilty of presumptive treason. One chronicler recorded that Catherine was, ‘found an harlot’ before the King married her, and ‘an adultress after he married her’, while a servant of the Dowager Duchess declared that ‘they were worthy to be hanged one against another.’
44
Even the French Ambassador, who viewed English politics with a critical eye and the King’s matrimonial difficulties with Gallic cynicism, described Culpeper as a gentleman of the King’s privy chamber who had shared the royal couch and, ‘apparently wished to share the Queen’s too’.
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