Katherine Howard: A New History (8 page)

3) ‘His Vicious Purpose’:
A Tainted Upbringing

During Anne Boleyn’s meteoric rise to the queenship, that brought unprecedented favour to the Howard family undermined only by the queen’s spectacular downfall, her young cousin Katherine Howard embarked upon her first steps into the adult world through receiving music lessons in 1536, when she was aged around twelve years old, which would prepare her for a future at court as a skilled gentlewoman. It is reasonable to suppose that had Queen Anne’s son been born that summer, securing her position as queen consort beyond all doubt, negotiations might have been made for a place within Anne’s household for her pubescent cousin Katherine to serve as one of her maids. Unfortunately, Anne’s downfall put paid to any hopes the Dowager Duchess of Norfolk might have had of placing further Howard relatives with the queen.

Musical ability was a talent that was strongly prized in young gentlewoman, with some going so far as to perceive it as ‘not only an ornament but a necessity to the Courtier’.
¹
Katherine’s cousin Anne Boleyn had been particularly celebrated for her musical capabilities, which attracted the notice of the English court: ‘She [Anne] knew perfectly how to sing and dance [...] to play the lute and other instruments.’
²
It appears that Katherine’s step-grandmother, the Dowager Duchess of Norfolk, arranged in 1536 for her young relative to receive music lessons from a neighbour, Henry Manox, younger son of George Manox of Giffords, who had connections with the dowager duchess’ household. Agnes Howard’s decision to provide Katherine with such lessons can be viewed as typical in context of ideals about education in the Tudor age for Honor, Viscountess Lisle, had similarly decided to ensure that her daughter Anne Basset became proficient musically through sending her, as a teenager, to France in order to acquire both fluency in French and for the purposes of developing her skills in ‘her work, the lute and virginals’.
³
Anne Basset’s musical capabilities probably influenced the decision of Jane Seymour, queen consort of Henry VIII, to accept her as one of her maids-of-honour in 1537.

Before proceeding to a discussion of the nature of the relationship between Katherine Howard and Henry Manox, which occurred in context of that music master’s task of providing his young pupil with music lessons, it is useful to remember that evidence of this relationship exists only in the indictments brought against the queen in 1541. Such documents are, by the very nature of their genre, inherently difficult to examine, for legal records often contained manufactured and manipulated evidence in relation to matters pertaining to marriage and sexuality.
⁴
Moreover, in cases of adultery, witnesses often transferred the blame from the defamers to the wives themselves.
⁵
These difficulties in relation to legal evidence have been particularly recognised in relation to the queen’s childhood experiences leading to Katherine’s downfall, with one historian going so far to say that ‘imagination largely supplemented memory [...] almost everyone concerned lied like a trooper’.
⁶
A critical reading of the surviving evidence about Katherine’s relationships with both Manox and Francis Dereham, taking into account the flawed nature of the indictments and legal records in general, will lead to the conclusion that not only can this young woman be viewed as a victim of sexual abuse from her pre-teenage years, but that such experiences can be termed sexual deviance.
⁷

The relationship between Katherine and these two young men should be interpreted in context of sixteenth-century beliefs about female sexuality, honour codes, and the nature of the institution of marriage. Influential witchcraft treatises connected female sexuality with the most heinous of crimes, believing that females had the ability to render men impotent and destroy their souls, warning that ‘carnal lust [...] is in women insatiable’.
⁸
That these treatises were particularly influential in Europe during the sixteenth century, leading eventually to the notorious witchcraft persecutions towards the end of the 1500s and during the 1600s, is significant in terms of signifying how early modern males perceived their female counterparts. Helkiah Cooke, writing shortly after Queen Elizabeth’s reign, argued that ‘the imaginations of lustfull women are like the imaginations of brute beasts which have no repugnancy or contradiction of reason to restrain them’.
⁹
It has further been suggested that heterosexual relations during this period can be regarded as ‘the most fundamental site of repression’ and ‘the key to [...] patriarchal power’.
¹⁰
Misogynistic attitudes were commonly held among contemporary males, who viewed women as mysterious or threatening creatures who had the power to unman them, bewitch them into loving them, and cause them diabolical harm if angered. Such attitudes must be borne in mind when analysing the indictments for evidence of the relationship between Katherine and the men dwelling in the household of the Dowager Duchess of Norfolk during her step-granddaughter’s teenage years. This task is complicated when it is remembered that ‘carried out under the threat of torture [...] the language men and women use in criminal trials is clearly forced discourse’, meaning that the evidence provided by both the queen and her childhood acquaintances cannot be taken at face value as a true reflection of the reality of those childhood experiences.
¹¹

Further early modern beliefs about female sexuality offer illuminating insights into the relationship between Katherine and Henry Manox, which occurred while he was expected to offer her lessons on the virginal and lute. The chaplain of Thomas Cranmer, Archbishop of Canterbury, opined that fourteen year-old maidens were ‘desirous to be married... to the end that they may be fruitful’.
¹²
Believing that this was the case, males propagated beliefs that, because they were oversexed, women desired to be raped, a notion that had prevailed since the medieval period, with a particular saying demonstrating this idea:
‘Un coq suffit a dix poules, mais dix homes ne suffisent pas a une femme
[...]
’
¹³
Yet, despite prevailing ideas that associated female sexuality with sinfulness, rape and sorcery – all of which were perceived to be sexually deviant – honourable women were expected to be chaste and modest, retaining their honour through avoiding sexual sin and consequently upholding their family honour.
¹⁴

There is no evidence to indicate that Manox instructed other young gentlewoman who resided in the dowager duchess’s household in music, although some of Katherine’s female relatives surely dwelled there, including perhaps her younger sister. This suggests that the dowager duchess had singularly chosen out her young step-granddaughter to receive music lessons as a way of enhancing her future prospects, thus making her more attractive to prospective suitors who favoured such attributes in well-born maidens. It has been suggested, in light of this, that Katherine’s superior lineage and kinship to the duke and dowager duchess meant that other individuals within the household who were aware of the nature of her relationship with Manox decided not to inform the duchess against Katherine.
¹⁵
A more reasonable interpretation, in light of the sentiments prevailing within sixteenth-century English society referred to earlier, is that the nature of this relationship was perceived to be deviant in terms of not only the abuse that Katherine suffered, but the unnatural reconfiguration of the social boundaries. For as Katherine’s inferior in status Manox had gravely overreached himself, which probably meant that Katherine’s acquaintances remained silent about the affair not only because they feared the consequences for Katherine due to her kinship relations and Howard lineage, but because the undertones of abuse, classed as deviant in early modern society, cast the honour of the dowager duchess into doubt for maintaining a household that allowed such acts to occur.

Manox’s kinship relations probably encouraged the dowager duchess to select him to instruct her young step-granddaughter on the virginal and lute, for his cousin Edward Waldegrave served as a gentleman-in-waiting to the dowager duchess. According to the indictments drawn up at the time of the queen’s disgrace, bearing in mind sixteenth-century notions of female sexuality and culpability, Manox reported that he had asked Katherine, who was then aged around twelve years old, to let him ‘perceive by some token that you love me’. Apparently Katherine, fearful of the consequences both to herself and to the honour of the Howard family, responded uneasily: ‘What token should I show you? I will never be taught with you and able to marry me you be not.’ Far from demonstrating arrogance or even callousness, as some writers have alleged, this young gentlewoman was desperately trying to remind Manox that, because of her place within a noble English family which was connected by marriage to the ruling family of England, he would compromise both her own personal honour and that of her family through his attempts to seduce her. Surely the dowager duchess had emphasised to both Katherine and her relatives that the Howard family’s honour and prestige could not be undermined at any cost, particularly in the wake of Anne Boleyn’s disgrace. Manox, however, was not satisfied with this answer, perhaps because he subscribed to prevailing notions of interior consent to sexual acts despite the clear resistance of females.
¹⁶
He continued to harass Katherine, desiring that he allow her to handle her body, eventually forcing her to agree. Later, when the two met in the dowager duchess’s chapel chamber ‘in the dark evening’, where others were not present to act as witnesses to what occurred there, this music master ‘felt more than was convenient’.
¹⁷
Manox later swore that he ‘never knew her [Katherine] carnally’.
¹⁸
At some point, the dowager duchess appears to have discovered the two alone together and probably dismissed Manox from her household for placing the honour of the Howard family in disrepute, for he later held a post in the household of Lord Bayment. Interestingly, Manox may have later married Margaret Munday, widow of Katherine’s father Edmund. Margaret, Katherine’s stepmother, had a negative or ‘unnatural’ opinion of him, perhaps because she blamed him for his relentless seduction of her disgraced stepdaughter.
¹⁹

The unique position which women held within noble families guided Katherine’s responses to the manipulative Manox, for women were expected to contribute to the successes of their families and strengthen their families’ honour.
²⁰
The dowager duchess’s decision to relocate her household to Lambeth from Horsham had the effect of intensifying Katherine’s desperation to be rid of Manox, for his intent to control and sexually manipulate her was becoming ever stronger. There, one of Katherine’s fellows, a chamberer named Mary Lascelles, heard from a fellow servant, Alice Restwold, a rumour circulating within the dowager duchess’s household, which alleged that Katherine and Manox were engaged. Mary, aware of the prestige of the Howard family and the displeasure of the dowager duchess were she to discover such a tale, reprimanded Manox, upbraiding him for his seduction of Katherine: ‘Man, what mean thou to play the fool of this fashion’, ‘know not thou that if my lady of Norfolk knew of the love betwixt thee and Mistress Howard, she will undo thee’, warning Manox of Katherine’s position within ‘a noble house’ and, were he to ‘marry her some of her blood would kill thee’.
²¹

Manox’s reply to Mary Lascelles, documented in the indictments drawn against Katherine in 1541, demonstrated scornfully his intimacy with Katherine: ‘I know her well enough,’ informing Mary that ‘she [Katherine] hath said to me that I shall have her maidenhead though it be painful to her, not doubting but I will be good to her hereafter’.
²²
Thus in the indictments the blame was transferred neatly from the lowly musician to the noble step-granddaughter of the Dowager Duchess of Norfolk. Whether Katherine promised Manox anything of the kind is unlikely, considering her earlier behaviour towards him. Keenly aware of the necessity of preserving her virginity and her family’s honour, she appears to have attempted to offer him a compromise through permitting him caresses but stopping short of sexual intercourse, for in that way she could preserve her maidenhead and, by association, the purity of her family name. Manox later attempted to conceal his pursuit of his young student by excusing his actions, believing himself to be ‘so far in love’ with Katherine that he was unable to control himself. He certainly managed to retain control over Katherine, despite the attempted intervention of Mary Lascelles, for Katherine later accompanied him on a walk in the orchard of her step-grandmother, ‘they two alone’.
²³
Possibly, Manox sought to seduce her further in an attempt to acquire means of influence within the Howard family.

The dowager duchess’s regular duties at court and her own elderly disposition restricted her abilities to manage her household successfully, for had she been fully aware of the manipulation of her step-granddaughter, she almost certainly would have done something to aid that relative in order to preserve her honour. The ‘flattering and fair persuasions’ of Manox placed Katherine in a position of some danger, for in an age that identified young females with licentious wantonness and the power to entrap men, she surely recognised that she would earn little sympathy or pity were her male relatives to become aware of her experiences. Indeed, when Lord William Howard discovered Mary Lascelles’ reports of his niece Katherine’s plight, he took no moves to intercede on her behalf, lamenting only: ‘what mad wenches! Can you not be merry amongst yourselves but you must thus fall out?’
²⁴
Although it is anachronistic to interpret Katherine’s experiences as constituting child sex abuse, which were not interpreted as such in the mid-sixteenth century, it is intriguing that, as Martin Ingram discovered in his analysis of the abuse of English females within early modern society who were aged between eight and fifteen, ‘children are as individuals and as a group among the most vulnerable elements in any society.’
²⁵