Katherine Howard: A New History (14 page)

The next day, Cromwell visited the king in his privy chamber to ask again ‘how [he] liked the Queen’, presuming that the newlywed royal couple had consummated their marriage. The king bluntly responded: ‘Surely, as ye know, I liked her before not well, but now I like her much worse. For I have felt her belly and her breasts and thereby, as I can judge, she should be no maid. [The] which struck me so to the heart when I felt them that I had neither will nor courage to proceed any further in other matters’. He then admitted, ‘I have left her as good a maid as I found her’.
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When read in light of cultural customs and beliefs about the female body, the king’s comments take on new meaning. Contemporaries believed that maidens should have small breasts and flat stomachs, while demonstrating modest behaviour and a ‘sober’ appearance.
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Believing that his new wife was not a virgin, Henry may have feared that she would steal his manhood or bewitch him into loving her.
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The king’s concerns with his wife, particularly with her body, occurred at a crucial time, for governments during this era interpreted women’s fertility as a political concern.
²¹
Aware of such matters, the king reported that ‘he found her body in such sort disordered and indisposed to excite and provoke any lust in him’, and ‘could not in any wise overcome that loathsomeness, nor in her company be provoked or stirred to that act’. Yet he ‘thought himself able to do the act with other, but not with her’.
²²

Clearly, the modern notion that it was Anne of Cleves’ personal ugliness that offended her husband is incorrect, for the king’s comments demonstrate that, once more, fertility concerns threatened the future of his marriage. Indeed, court observers unanimously praised the new queen’s beauty, with Cromwell informed that ‘everyman praiseth the beauty of the said Lady [Anne], as well for the face, as for the whole body, above all other ladies excellent’.
²³
The king’s disgust with his wife’s breasts and belly signifies his fear that she had surrendered her maidenhead to another man.
²⁴
Anne herself was aware of her predicament, for she informed her ladies-in-waiting that her husband had failed to consummate the marriage: ‘She knew well she was not with child.’ The Countess of Rutland, an experienced courtier who was aware of the king’s obsession over the English succession, warned her mistress: ‘Madam, there must be more than this, or it will be long ere we have a Duke of York.’
²⁵
Cromwell, fearful in light of his prominent involvement in this new marriage, instructed the Earl of Rutland, lord chamberlain of the queen, to behave more pleasingly towards the king her husband, in an attempt to encourage the consummation of the marriage.

Anne’s marital problems were compounded by the fact that the king had fallen in love with her maid-of-honour, Katherine, some time beforehand. Most historians see the king’s affection for the young Katherine as a consequence of his marital difficulties, occurring only in the late spring or early summer of 1540 when the king had set in process the events that would culminate in the annulment of his fourth marriage.
²⁶
It is possible, however, that when Henry VIII had first become acquainted with Katherine in the closing months of 1539, before the arrival of Anne, he had developed a strong affection and love for her that consequently impaired his relations with his fourth wife. Katherine’s step-grandmother was later informed that the ‘King’s Highness did cast a fantasy to Catherine [
sic
] Howard the first time that ever his Grace saw her’.
²⁷
If Henry had personally presided over the selection of appropriate maidens for his wife’s household, as has been conjectured, then he may have fallen in love with this young maid-of-honour before his wife had even arrived in the kingdom.
²⁸
It is interesting that ambassadors who resided at court only learned of the king’s new love in the summer of 1540, when his disaffection with Queen Anne had become obvious. It is likely that Henry maintained considerable discretion and secrecy, for the French ambassador reported only in July that the king planned to marry ‘a lady of great beauty’ who was niece of the Duke of Norfolk.
²⁹

The king’s desire for Katherine probably occurred mainly due to her renowned beauty, of which most contemporaries unanimously agreed was uncommon. Nikander Nucius, who appears to have served the imperial ambassador at Henry VIII’s court, remembered her as ‘the most beautiful woman of her time’.
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George Cavendish emphasised Katherine’s ‘beawtie freshe and pure’, while Marillac commented on Katherine’s ‘attractive deportment’ and modesty.
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The glaring contrast between Katherine and Anne only made the king more determined to annul his marriage and remarry, for he publicly admitted that he was unable to consummate his fourth marriage. Henry’s subjects, however, were not as understanding, for they viewed the king’s frequent visits to the dowager duchess’s household in Lambeth or to Gardiner’s Winchester Palace as evidence of adultery: ‘the bishop of Winchester also very often provided feastings and entertainments for them in his palace; but the citizens regarded all this not as a sign of divorcing the queen, but of adultery.’
³²

Had Henry been convinced that his union with Anne of Cleves would be fertile and provide a secure solution to the pressing issues that continued to plague the Tudor succession, it is reasonable to assume that Katherine would have become merely his mistress, as both Elizabeth Blount and Mary Boleyn had been previously. The fact that Dereham became aware of rumours in the spring of 1540 that suggested that Katherine was promised to Thomas Culpeper, a gentleman of the king’s privy chamber, evidences the incredible secrecy surrounding this relationship, for it is possible that the king had been in love with Katherine as early as December 1539. However, the king’s intention to annul his marriage to the queen and marry Katherine as his fifth wife seemed to be confirmed in April, when she was granted the forfeited goods and chattels of two murderers on the 24th day of that month. In May, Katherine was granted twenty-three quilts of quilted sarcenet.
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Similarly to the Dereham affair, the king provided Katherine with elaborate gifts as a means of courting her and signalling to the court his intent to marry her, for as has been noted, gifts formed an essential part of courtship during this period.
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The Howards, appreciative of Katherine’s efforts to raise the prestige of their family, commended and praised her ‘for her pure and honest condition’.
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Henry’s conviction that marriage to Katherine, whom he believed to be fertile and virginal, would remedy the pressing issues of the English succession cast Cromwell into further difficulties, for he had been known to favour the now barren alliance with Cleves. Notwithstanding this, the king chose to reward him in the spring and early summer of 1540, culminating in Cromwell’s acquirement of the earldom of Essex and the position of Lord Great Chamberlain in April.
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However, with the benefit of hindsight, observers later believed that ‘this was all an artifice’ in which Henry was presented in the best possible light and Cromwell’s treachery made to look worse.
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But, as the educated observer Richard Hilles stressed in his letter abroad to Henry Bullinger, the king’s fourth marriage was questioned openly by the nobility only when ‘they had perceived that the king’s affections were alienated from the lady Anne to that young girl Catharine [
sic
], the cousin [
sic
] of the duke of Norfolk, whom he married immediately upon Anne’s divorce’.
³⁸
Intriguingly, in light of later events, on 12 June Thomas Culpeper, cousin to Katherine and a member of the privy chamber, was granted reversion of properties in crown leases in Yorkshire ‘grant in fee, in consideration of his true and faithful service’, some of which had previously been held by the Yorkshire gentlemen Sir Ralph Ellerker and Sir William Fairfax.
³⁹

Culpeper’s rewards must be set in context of the nature of the politics and social institutions that comprised the Henrician court. The court emerged as the centre of national politics during Henry’s reign, leading to a distinct form of court politics that modern historians have tended to interpret as factional, but which had medieval antecedents, as recorded by Chaucer in
The Knight’s Tale
: ‘And therefore, at the Kynges court, my brother, Ech man for himself, ther is noon other.’
⁴⁰
David Starkey’s seminal research demonstrated the fundamental divisions within the royal household, with the ‘below-stairs’ comprised of rooms such as the hall and kitchens run by the lord steward, while the ‘above-stairs’ encompassed private apartments headed by the lord chamberlain. The private apartments gradually became increasingly complex, which granted the king greater privacy. The privy chamber itself had its own staff, headed by the groom of the stool, and included half a dozen other grooms and pages of modest gentry backgrounds who intimately served the king.
⁴¹

Culpeper, by virtue of his intimate position within the reformed royal household, was demonstrably one of the king’s favourites. He had possibly began his career as a page who lit fires and warmed his sovereign’s clothes, before progressing to the station of groom, before becoming a gentleman of the privy chamber in around 1537.
⁴²
His influence was well-known, for in 1537 Lady Lisle and John Hussey had disputed as to whether Sussex or Culpeper was in a stronger position to be helpful at court, and who should be granted a hawk as a gift. They both agreed that ‘there is no remedy; Culpeper must have a hawk’.
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Lady Lisle also granted him two bracelets, promising ‘they are the first that ever I sent to any man’.
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On 5 May 1540, at the annual May Day celebrations, Culpeper participated in the jousts as a defendant and was overthrown by Sir Richard Cromwell, challenger.
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Culpeper was distantly related to Katherine, for he was the second son of Sir Alexander Culpeper of Bedgebury and Constance Harper. His father probably died sometime in 1540 or 1541, for his will was made on 20 May 1540.
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The eldest son of that union was also, somewhat confusingly, named Thomas, and he had served Thomas Cromwell. Later, in May 1542, Richard Hilles described the younger Thomas thus: ‘two years before, or less, [he] had violated the wife of a certain park-keeper in a woody thicket, while, horrid to relate! three or four of his most profligate attendants were holding her at his bidding. For this act of wickedness he was, notwithstanding, pardoned by the king, after he had been delivered into custody by the villagers on account of this crime [...]’
⁴⁷

Predictably, this alleged rape and later murder of a villager has coloured historians’ assessments of Thomas Culpeper and his later relationship with Katherine, who argue that, as a violent and cruel individual, Culpeper manipulated ‘Lady Rochford to assist him in obtaining political control of Katherine’.
⁴⁸
It is possible, however, that Hilles confused Thomas with his elder brother, who shared the same name, for surviving evidence indicates that this eldest son was physically violent and aggressive for, in a dispute over land with a reverend, ‘[...] the said Thomas Culpeper broke the bow of the said William; clerk, with the shaft of a knife so that the blade ran down his face in the presence of this deponent [...] then the said Culpeper gave the said William, clerk, a blow or two with a staff for he was not able to sing mass for a fortnight after, and thereupon the said clerk plucked the said Culpeper down by the beard in the sight of the wife of the said Culpeper who with one or two of her servants came running to help to beat the said William clerk, so that he was forced to cry to the said William Playce and Robert Fulcher for aid [...] and by report the said Culpeper drew his dagger at another time to strike the said William, clerk, and more he cannot depose.’
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Because of Culpeper’s intimacy with the monarch and the fact that positions within the privy chamber were highly covetous and competitive, it is inconceivable that Henry VIII would have kept within his household an individual who engaged in rape and murder with no apparent qualms as that cast doubt upon both Culpeper’s honour and the honour of the king, for it suggested that he was unable to properly govern his household and those who served within it. Rape, in particular, was perceived to be a sexual deviance and was to become prohibited by law, with a Bill passed in 1548 protecting young males from sodomy and another in 1576 protecting girls under the age of ten from forcible rape.
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It is more likely, in view of the evidence relating to the elder Thomas’s aggressive conflict with Reverend Williams, that Hilles unknowingly confused the younger Thomas with his elder brother, who was clearly violent. In the absence of any definitive evidence that illustrates the younger Thomas’s personal characteristics, the trust the king had in him and his favourable relations with contacts such as Lady Lisle indicates that he was a respectable and pleasant young gentleman, not an aggressive or manipulating courtier as many historians, relying on Hilles’ inaccurate information, continue to suggest.