Six Wives (102 page)
Authors: David Starkey
'No, Madam, I warrant you,' Culpepper replied.
Catherine's meaning is not entirely clear. Did she suspect that the priest would betray such sensational revelations to the King? Or that God would somehow communicate them to his deputy on earth? Or did she even confuse her husband with God himself?
After all, at times, that was an easy enough mistake to make.
But, really, there was so little to confess. It was all talk, talk, talk. Nevertheless, as Culpepper admitted, the intention was there. 'He intended', he admitted, 'and meant to do ill with the Queen and that likewise the Queen so minded with him.'
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It was little. But it proved enough for the law.
* * *
Dereham and Culpepper were tried for treason at Guildhall on 1 December and found guilty. Their execution was postponed for several days as the Council made final frantic efforts to extract from them the admission that they had actually committed the act with Catherine as Queen. But, despite 'serious examination', the efforts failed.
There was now no reason to delay the process of law. Dereham's final request was for Henry to spare him the full penalty of treason. But Henry, the Council reported, 'thinketh he hath deserved no such mercy at his hands and therefore hath determined that he shall suffer the whole execution'. On 10 December, therefore, he was dragged on a hurdle to Tyburn and hanged, castrated, disemboweled, beheaded and quartered.
And all for sleeping a few times with an attractive and willing teenage girl who at the time was not married.
Culpepper was luckier. Benefiting from Henry's former favour and his powerful friends he was, despite the fact that his crimes were 'very heinous', only beheaded.
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* * *
On 22 December, it was the turn of the Duchess, Lord William, the Countess of Bridgewater and the women of the Duchess's Household. They were tried for 'misprision of treason', for concealing and abetting Catherine's offences, and they were sentenced to imprisonment at the King's pleasure and forfeiture of goods.
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The rumour was that Norfolk himself would share their fate. But on 12 December he wrote Henry an abject letter. He distanced himself from 'mine ungracious mother-in-law, mine unhappy brother . . . with my lewd sister of Bridgewater'. And he denounced 'the most abominable deeds done by two of my nieces', Queen Anne and Queen Catherine. In view of that toll of disasters inflicted by his family, the Duke conceded, it would be reasonable for Henry 'to conceive a displeasure in your heart' against him and his whole Howard kindred. But, in extenuation, Norfolk pleaded that it was he who had first pointed the finger of suspicion at the Duchess; moreover, Anne Boleyn and Catherine, his 'two false, traitorous nieces', had borne him 'small love'.
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The letter proved excuse enough. Norfolk was quickly restored to favour and even the convicted members of his family were soon pardoned.
* * *
Only against Catherine and Lady Rochford was Henry implacable. They were condemned by an Act of Attainder. The Bill was introduced on 21 January 1542 and completed all its Parliamentary stages three weeks later. The key clauses of the Act were flagrantly retrospective. If any loose-living woman dare marry the King 'without plain declaration before of her unchaste life unto his Majesty', it was treason. Adultery by or with the Queen or the wife of the Prince of Wales was treason. And failure on the part of the witnesses to disclose such offences was misprision of treason. Finally, with all the loop-holes closed, Catherine and Lady Rochford were declared convicted of high treason.
On 11 February the Act received the royal assent
in absentia
by letters patent, to spare Henry the grief of hearing, once again, a recital of the 'wicked facts' of the case.
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in absentia
by letters patent, to spare Henry the grief of hearing, once again, a recital of the 'wicked facts' of the case.
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Catherine was now legally dead. It remained only to inflict the actual penalty.
* * *
All this time, Catherine had remained in her easy confinement at Syon House. 'She is', Chapuys reported at the beginning of 1542, 'making good cheer, fatter and handsomer than ever she was, taking great care of her person, well dressed and much adorned; more imperious and commanding, and more difficult to please than ever she was when living with the King her husband.'
Was this stupid indifference, as most modern accounts have supposed? Or merely making the best of a bad job? Chapuys himself seems to incline to the latter. Notwithstanding her apparent pleasure in life's luxuries, he reported, 'she believes that her end will be on the scaffold, for she owns she has deserved death'.
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And it was this responsible, dignified Catherine who confronted a delegation of Lords at Syon. For there had been some nervousness about using an Act of Attainder against the Queen and condemning her unheard. '[The] Queen', Lord Chancellor Audley informed the House, 'was in no sense a mean and private person but an illustrious and public one.' 'Therefore', he continued, 'her case had to be judged with . . . integrity.' To remove any suspicion of injustice, he recommended the despatch of a delegation to hear her speak in her own defence, for it was 'but just that a princess should be tried by equal laws'.
The delegation duly waited on the Queen. But Catherine refused the opportunity to defend herself, either with the delegates or before a more public assembly. Instead, she 'openly confessed and acknowledged to them the great crime of which she had been guilty against the most High God and a kind prince'. She had only two requests to make: that Henry 'would not impute her crime to her whole kindred and family' and that the King would also give some of her fine clothes to her attendants, 'since she had nothing now to recompense them as they deserved'.
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Catherine the rebel, it seemed, was tamed at last. For she was here acknowledging her submission to the core values of the sixteenth century: God, King, Family and Dependants.
She was now ready for the final submission: to the Good Death.
* * *
There were still a few flashes of the old Catherine, however. On 10 February she was removed from Syon to the Tower by water. According to Chapuys, she did not go without a struggle: '[there was] some difficulty and resistance'. As with the fallen Anne Boleyn, the procession to the Tower was like a black parody of her inauguration river pageant. Lord Privy Seal Southampton went first in a large barge. Then followed the Queen and her ladies in a small covered boat. While at the rear was Suffolk in another large barge, filled with armed men. Catherine landed at the water gate and stepped ashore. She was dressed in black velvet and was 'received with the same honours and ceremonies' as if she were still Queen.
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Two days later, on Sunday the 12th, she was told to prepare herself for death on the morrow. Marillac heard that, since 'she weeps, cries and torments herself miserably, without ceasing', her execution had been postponed to give her time to compose herself. But his chronology is wrong and so too, probably, is his picture of Catherine's state.
For Chapuys tells a very different story: not only was Catherine prepared for death, she even went through a form of rehearsal to make sure she got things right. Later on the Sunday evening, the ambassador reported, 'she asked to see the block, pretending that she wanted to know how she was to place her head on it'. Her request was granted and the block was brought into her Chamber. Once it was in place, 'she herself tried and placed her head on it by way of experiment'.
Like so much in Catherine's life, her preparation for death was curiously materialistic.
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* * *
The execution was scheduled for early the following morning. Soon after 7 o'clock, the Council and other dignitaries arrived to act as witnesses. Norfolk was absent, but his son and heir, the Earl of Surrey, was present to watch his cousin beheaded. He was a poet and man of action. Did he imagine that one day he might be in her place?
According to Marillac, Catherine was 'so weak that she could hardly speak'. But he was not an eye-witness. The merchant Ottwell Johnson was – and he gives a very different account. 'I see the Queen and the Lady Rochford', he wrote to his brother John on the 15th, 'suffer within the Tower.' 'Whose souls', he continued, 'be with God, for they made the most godly and Christian end.'
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Catherine, according to Johnson, 'uttered [her] lively faith in the blood of Christ only'. She 'desired all Christian people to take regard unto [her] worthy and just punishment'. She had offended 'God heinously from [her] youth upward, in breaking all his commandments'. And she had offended 'against the King's royal Majesty very dangerously'. She was 'justly condemned . . . by the Laws of the realm and Parliament to die'. And she 'required the people (I say) to take example at [her], for amendment of their ungodly lives and gladly to obey the King in all things'. Then she prayed 'heartily' for '[the King's] preservation, and willed all people so to do'. Finally, she commended her soul to God and earnestly called for mercy on Him.
That is what Johnson heard and what Catherine must have said. God knows what, if any of it, she believed. The reference, in particular, to her faith in 'the blood of Christ only' sounds more like Cranmer than anything that Catherine would say of her own accord. Had he coached her? Had she undergone some form of conversion in the Tower?
We cannot know.
After she had finished speaking she knelt at the block, in her carefully rehearsed gesture, and her head was struck off.
Lady Rochford's turn was next. According to Chapuys, she 'had shown symptoms of madness until the very moment when they announced to her that she must die'. But she, too, made a good end.
The strange, delinquent partnership of mistress and servant was over.
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74. Interlude
W
ould Henry marry again after his bitter disappointment and humiliation over Catherine Howard? It seemed a moot point to intelligent observers, including Chapuys.
ould Henry marry again after his bitter disappointment and humiliation over Catherine Howard? It seemed a moot point to intelligent observers, including Chapuys.
For by the winter of 1541–2, the ambassador had known Henry for a dozen years. He had seen him change from a fit, if florid, forty-year-old to the prematurely aged and bloated monster he had become a decade later. He had witnessed his reaction to Anne Boleyn's execution and to Jane Seymour's death. But he had never seen him behave as he did over Catherine Howard. 'This King', he reported on 3 December 1541, 'has wonderfully felt the case of the Queen, his wife.' 'He has certainly shown', he continued, 'greater sorrow and regret at her loss than at the faults, loss or divorce of his preceding wives.'
Indeed, the contrast was so great that Chapuys felt the need to offer what we might call a little psychology to explain it. He did so by means of a homely comparison. 'I should say', he wrote, 'that this King's case resembles very much that of the woman who cried more bitterly at the loss of her tenth husband than she had cried on the death of the other nine put together, though all of them had been equally worthy people and good husbands to her.' 'The reason', Chapuys's tale continued, '[was] that she had never buried one of them without being sure of the next. But after the tenth husband she had no other one in view: hence her sorrow and her lamentation.'
'Such', Chapuys concluded, 'is the case with this King, who does not seem to have any plan or female friend to fall back upon.'
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1
It can be put more simply. Previously, with the exception of the ever-sainted Jane Seymour, Henry had abandoned his wives. Now, he felt, a wife had abandoned him.
He did not like it.
* * *
But Henry's loss was, Anne of Cleves thought and hoped, her gain. As we have seen, Anne had handled her demotion from wife to 'sister' with dignity and aplomb. But that does not mean that she was reconciled to it – or, much less, that she welcomed it. On the contrary. Instead of rejoicing in her escape, as we might imagine, she was eager to put her head in the lion's mouth once more. 'I hear also', Chapuys reported on 19 November 1541, 'that the Lady Anne of Cleves has greatly rejoiced at [Catherine's fall], and that in order to be nearer the King she is coming to, if she is not already at, Richmond.'
2
A formal diplomatic initiative to restore the Cleves marriage followed from her brother, the Duke. Harst delivered letters from the ducal minister Olisleger to Privy Seal Fitzwilliam and Archbishop Cranmer, to ask for their good offices. But, knowing Henry's sensitivity on the subject, both refused to have anything to do with the matter and informed the King of the approach. Harst next tried for a personal audience with the King. This, too, was refused on the grounds of his 'grief ' about Catherine Howard's betrayals. Finally, Harst presented his case to the Privy Council on 15 December, when it was politely but firmly rejected. '[The King intended]', the Councillors explained, 'that the Lady [Anne] should be graciously entertained and her estate rather increased than diminished.' 'But the separation', they continued, 'had been made for such just cause that [Henry] prayed the Duke never to make such a request [again].'
Unwisely, Harst tried to press the matter. At this point, things turned nasty and Gardiner, speaking 'with every appearance of anger', told him the blunt truth. 'The King', he said, 'would never take back the . . . Lady [Anne].'
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* * *
It was a truth that Anne still found difficult to accept. And it is easy to understand why. She had her slighted honour to avenge. She found her position of Henry's 'sister', despite its comfort, both awkward and anomalous. And she had positive reasons for wanting Henry back. As we too easily forget, Henry had been kind and generous to her as he was to all his wives. For he was a good husband – as long as the marriage lasted. Nevertheless, Anne's attempt to renew the marriage led only to a fresh rejection. But, once again, she had the wisdom to swallow the slight and to submit.
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