The Other Tudors (40 page)

Rather than using her secretary, Catherine wrote this letter with her own hand. She made it clear that she longed for Culpepper’s presence and could trust only one of her servants to act as a messenger between them, although Lady Rochford, one of her ladies-in-waiting, also seemed to be privy to what was going on. It is hardly the letter of a devoted wife, a queen – or even a sensible woman.

The matter came to a head when Mary Hall, another lady who had shared a dormitory with Catherine, told her brother, John Lascelles, about Catherine’s previous sexual activities. Lascelles promptly told Cranmer, who, rather tentatively, told Henry. The King would not believe the story, but ordered a discreet enquiry. Lascelles and Mary Hall were interviewed, as were Mannox and Dereham, who admitted their relationships with her before her marriage. Indeed, when he learned that Catherine had had these affairs, at first, Henry was prepared to forgive her, but too many people had a vested interest in removing the Howards and the Queen from power. Catherine’s uncle and aunt, Lord William and Lady Margaret Howard, were arrested, as was Catherine’s sister-inlaw, her aunt, Lady Bridgwater, and her grandmother, the Dowager Duchess of Norfolk. Anne Boleyn’s widowed sister-in-law, Lady Rochford, who was now one of Catherine’s ladies, was also arrested and questioned; she had a breakdown and apparently went mad.

Catherine Howard was to be formally arrested – leading to one of the most poignant stories to come out of the whole affair. Catherine was staying at Hampton Court with Henry. Due to the investigation they had been separated, but Catherine knew that Henry would be hearing Mass in the chapel. She ran from her room along a gallery towards the chapel door, in order to find Henry and put her side of the story to him. She believed, with some justification, that if she were to explain to him and persuade him that it was all quite innocent or someone else’s fault, Henry would still be prepared to forgive her – even to take her back. In the event, the guards stopped her, and Catherine’s screams as she was dragged back along the passage are said to haunt the gallery even today.

Once the full story came out, nothing could save Catherine. The French Ambassador reported of Henry that, ‘He has changed his love for the Queen into hatred, and taken such grief at being deceived that of late it was thought he had gone mad, for he called for a sword to slay her he had loved so much … [he regrets his] ill-luck in meeting with such ill-conditioned wives.’

All those involved were questioned again, under the severest conditions, until a case had been constructed. Even after torture, however, Culpepper and Dereham both denied having any relations with Catherine after her marriage. Mannox admitted he had been familiar with Catherine, and Dereham admitted that they had had sex while she was living at Lambeth with the Duchess. Catherine herself finally agreed that they had slept together, ‘in such sort as a man doth use his wife many and sundry times’. However, this had all happened before she came to Court, when she possessed, ‘the ignorance and frailness of young women …’. As Catherine wrote to Henry, ‘I was so desirous to be taken unto your Grace’s favour, and so blinded with the desire for worldly glory that I could not, nor had grace, to consider how great a fault it was to conceal my former faults from your Majesty, considering that I intended ever during my life to be faithful and true unto your Majesty after.’
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It was Culpepper who destroyed any hope Catherine had of forgiveness. He denied that they had had sexual relations, but said that they had both desired it (‘he intended and meant to do ill with the Queen and in likewise the Queen so minded to do with him.’
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) The condemnation of Dereham and Culpepper seemed to be for their intentions, rather than any specific acts – that they spent time with Catherine and by admiring her they were intending to commit adultery, even if they did not actually do it. This was treason and they were condemned to death.

It was bad enough that Catherine had had lovers before Henry married her, and was not a virgin when she went to her marriage bed but it was treason if she had had sex with anyone other then Henry after their marriage. Culpepper, Dereham and Mannox all claimed nothing had happened after the wedding, but Lady Rochford, Catherine’s confidante, gave additional evidence pointing to a sexual relationship, even though she could offer no proof. Amongst other things, Culpepper had visited Catherine’s private rooms when the King was away. Catherine was doomed. Henry would forgive a lot, but never adultery. In the end, all three men were found guilty of treason and executed. On 10 December 1541, Culpepper was beheaded at Tyburn, and Dereham was hung, drawn and quartered. Their heads were set up on Tower Bridge.

When Catherine Howard had first been accused, in November 1541, she had retired to Syon House, near Richmond, once a Brigittine nunnery and now a private house. She was moved to the Tower for her execution in February 1542. Catherine was allowed only four ladies-in-waiting and two chamberers. She was loaded on to a barge to go to the Tower. She struggled and had to be dragged on board. When they passed under Tower Bridge, the heads of Culpepper and Dereham were already on display.

On the evening on 12 February 1542, Catherine was told that she would die the next day. She asked that the block be brought into her room so she could practise kneeling and placing her head, so she would not disgrace herself the next day. She spent some time practising until she felt sure she could accomplish her death with dignity. She was executed at 7 a.m. on 13 February. She seemed calm, but had to be helped up the steps to the scaffold and gave her final words in a quiet speech. After her death, all her relatives, except Jane Parker, were released; Jane was also executed. Catherine, like her cousin, Anne Boleyn, was buried in St Peter ad Vincula.

The debacle with Catherine Howard seemed to sober Henry in his relationships with women. He had fallen in love with Catherine with the passion of his youth, and he took longer to recover from her treachery. However, in July 1543, Henry made his last marriage, to the lady who had started life as Catherine Parr.

Catherine Neville, Lady Latimer, at 30, was already a widow. She was born Catherine Parr in 1512, the eldest child of Sir Thomas Parr and Maud Greene, of Kendal Castle, Westmoreland. Sir Thomas died when Catherine was five. Her mother arranged her marriage to Edward Borough or Brough in 1529, but he was in poor health, and died three years later. Catherine then married John Neville, Baron Latimer, a year later when she was 21 and he was around 40; their principal residence was at Snape Castle, near Bedale in Yorkshire. Her role had twice been both wife and companion-nurse to an older man, a role that Henry may well have appreciated.

In 1542 Lord Latimer died after a lengthy illness and Catherine became a wealthy widow. Henry VIII had been quietly courting her for some weeks before her husband’s death. Why he chose her is a puzzle. She was not particularly beautiful, sparkling, youthful or, indeed, any of the other things that had attracted him in the past. However, she was a handsome woman, brown-eyed and auburn-haired, and might yet provide him with another child.

Catherine had existing connections with the Court. Her mother, Maud, had been a lady-in-waiting to Catherine of Aragon, and she herself had been one of the young girls educated with the Princess Mary; they already knew each other and were close friends. Her sister, Anne, was married to William Herbert, an esquire of the body, and her brother, William Parr, was Lord Warden of the Scottish Marches and had been in the household of the Duke of Richmond. Certainly, she had no children of her own, but she had been married to two invalids (her first marriage to Borough may never have been consummated due to the state of his health). She was kind, cheerful, modest and gentle, used to living with older husbands, an experienced nurse; she would not be demanding nor set her expectations too high. She was intelligent, well read and a scholar in the New Religion. It was the latter that made Henry uneasy and which might, had he lived longer, have triggered yet another divorce.

Catherine gathered those of the New Faith around her, including the outspoken young Duchess of Suffolk, Katherine d’Eresby, widow of Charles Brandon, who named her pet spaniel, ‘Gardiner’, after the Bishop of Winchester as an insult; he was Catholic, she was extreme Protestant. Her forthright wit was rather attractive, to both the Queen and the King.

In 1545, Henry gave his permission for Bishop Gardiner to examine Catherine as to her religious belief. In fact, Catherine had been discussing her burgeoning Protestantism with her husband, who felt that sometimes he was being lectured. Gardiner gleefully drew up his charges against the Queen, but a copy of the paper was dropped (probably on purpose) and subsequently found by one of Catherine’s servants. She was shown the paper, and promptly threw herself on her husband’s mercy.

The story is told by Foxe that Henry was annoyed when Catherine took an interest in religion and made her opinions known to him: ‘A good hearing it is when women become such clerks; and nothing much to my comfort in mine old days to be taught by my wife.’ Henry told her, ‘You have become a doctor, Kate, to instruct us, as we take it, and not to be instructed or directed by us.’ Catherine denied this vehemently; she had set up a disputation in order to take his mind off his illness and to learn from his superior arguments. ‘And is it even so, sweetheart, and tended your arguments to no worse end? Then perfect friends we are now again, as ever at any time before.’ Henry forgave her, and when Sir Thomas Wroithesley came to arrest her, he found Henry and Catherine walking arm in arm, the best of friends. He was sent away with a flea in his ear.
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Friends they may have been, but Henry VIII wanted to be in love. Even with the approach of death, there were rumours at the time that Henry was considering divorcing Catherine Parr and marrying Katherine d’Eresby. According to the Imperial Ambassador, Van der Delft, there was talk of a change of queens: ‘Some attribute it to the sterility of the present Queen, while others say there will be no change during the present war. Madame Suffolk is much talked about and in great favour …’
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However, on the night spanning 27 and 28 January 1547, Henry died.

Katherine d’Eresby had come into Charles Brandon’s household in 1529, as his ward. She was the only child and very wealthy heiress of the widowed Maria de Salinas, Lady Willoughby d’Eresby and Brandon planned to marry her to his son, Henry, Earl of Lincoln. As the only legitimate son of the Henry VIII’s sister, Mary, the child Henry, had he lived, might very well have succeeded Edward VI as king of England, had Mary and Elizabeth been removed from the succession. Henry VIII had excluded the children of his sister Margaret from the succession. Brandon suffered the death of his wife, Mary, on 24 June 1533, and the death of their son the following year. Although Katherine was much younger than he (she had been born in 1520 and was 14 to his 49), Brandon married her later that year, on 7 September.

Katherine’s parentage was eminently respectable. Her father was William Willoughby d’Eresby, 8th Baron Willoughby. Her mother Maria de Salinas (Saluces), was one of Catherine of Aragon’s maids of honour and her distant relative.

To add to Brandon’s two surviving daughters by his first wife, Mary, Katherine gave him two sons, Henry, born in 1535 and Charles, in 1537. Henry was a contemporary of Edward VI, and the two little boys were educated together, sharing the tutor Sir John Cheke. Perhaps Henry VIII and Charles Brandon hoped their sons would grow up to be as good friends as their fathers.

Charles Brandon, Duke of Suffolk, died on 24 August 1545 at Guildford. He was buried at Windsor, according to the wishes of Henry VIII. In 1551, Brandon’s sons Henry and his brother Charles were at St John’s College in Cambridge when the sweating sickness broke out. Despite all that was done for them, both boys died on 16 July. Charles was Duke of Suffolk for 30 minutes – the time that he survived Henry. The title of Duke of Suffolk eventually passed to Henry Grey as the husband of the eldest surviving daughter, Frances.

Katherine d’Eresby now caught the King’s attention. She possessed all the qualities that he most admired – she was pretty, witty and intelligent. The Dowager Duchess of Suffolk was, as Fuller reported, ‘a lady of a sharp wit and sure hand to thrust it home and make it pierce when she pleased’. She must have amused and entertained the King, and to cap it all she was the chosen partner of his dearest friend. Henry made very tentative enquiries about divorcing Catherine Parr and remarrying, but he was already ill and dying, and the plans came to nothing.

In 1548, after Henry VIII’s death, Catherine Parr married Thomas Seymour. They had been in love and contemplating marriage before Henry stepped in and broke up their relationship. Catherine now wrote to Thomas Seymour:

With Seymour, at last Catherine Parr was able to start a family. She gave birth to a daughter, Mary. A letter, from the Duke of Somerset to his brother Thomas, congratulating the Queen Dowager on having been delivered of ‘so pretty a daughter’, is dated 1 September.
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The baby was born on 30 August 1548, and Catherine died on 7 September, of the puerperal fever that had also killed Jane Seymour.

On 17 January 1549 Thomas Seymour was arrested, imprisoned and tried. He was executed in March. The ‘pretty daughter’, Mary, first went to the Duchess of Somerset, Seymour’s sister-in-law, who didn’t want her and was happy to hand her over to Katherine d’Eresby’s household. Catherine Parr and Katherine d’Eresby had been close friends, since both were fervent supporters of the Reformation and the New Religion. It was only natural that she should take an interest in her friend’s only child. It was also said that Catherine Parr had requested her friend to take her daughter in a dying wish. Katherine d’Eresby may even have contemplated a marriage between the infant heiress and her second son, then about 11 years old.