Catherine Howard fifth Wife of Henry VIII
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Catherine Howard was the fifth wife of Henry VIII of England, and sometimes known by his reference to her as his "rose without a thorn".
Catherine Howard (c. 1521 - 13 February 1542), also spelled Katherine or Katheryn, was the fifth wife of Henry VIII of England, and sometimes known by his reference to her as his "rose without a thorn".ine's birth date and place of birth are unknown (but occasionally cited as 1521 or 1524, possibly in Wingate, County Durham. She was the daughter of Lord Edmund Howard, a younger son of the 2nd Duke of Norfolk. This made her a first cousin of the King's second wife, Anne Boleyn. Catherine married Henry VIII on 28 July 1540, at Oatlands Palace in Surrey, almost immediately after the annulment of his marriage to Anne of Cleves was arranged. However she was beheaded after less than two years of marriage to Henry on the grounds of treason, meaning adultery committed while married to the King.
Early life
Catherine Howard was the fourth child of Lord Edmund Howard and Joyce Culpeper. Catherine's exact date of birth is unknown, although the year has been estimated as being between 1521 and 1524. She was the niece of Thomas Howard, 3rd Duke of Norfolk, and therefore a first cousin to Henry's second wife, Anne Boleyn, and to Anne's sister Mary, Henry's one-time mistress.Catherine's family, therefore, had an aristocratic pedigree. But her father, a younger son, was not well-off owing to primogeniture and the large size of his family, and he often begged for handouts from his more powerful relatives.
At this point, young Catherine was sent to live with her step-grandmother, Agnes Tilney, the Dowager Duchess of Norfolk.
At Lambeth, the Dowager Duchess of Norfolk ran a large household that included numerous female and male attendants, along with her many wards, usually the children of aristocratic but poor relatives who could not afford to support their families. While sending young children to be educated and trained in aristocratic households other than their own was common for centuries among European nobles, supervision at Lambeth was lax. The Dowager Duchess was often at Court and took little interest in the upbringing and education of her wards and young female attendants.
Consequently, Catherine was not as well educated as Henry's other wives, though her mere ability to read and write was impressive enough for the time. Her character is often described as vivacious, but never scholarly or devout. The casual upbringing in the licentious atmosphere of the Duchess' household led to Catherine's music teacher, Henry Manox, starting a sexual relationship with her around 1536, when she was between the ages of 11 and 16. When she became Queen, Manox was appointed as a musician in her household. He later gave evidence in the inquiry against her.
Manox and Catherine both confessed during her adultery trial that they had engaged in sexual contact without intercourse: "At the flattering and fair persuasions of Mannox, being but a young girl, I suffered him at sundry times to handle and touch the secret parts of my body which neither became me with honesty to permit nor him to require," she said.
This adolescent affair came to an end in 1538, when Catherine was pursued by a secretary of the duchess's household, Francis Dereham. They became lovers, addressing each other as "husband" and "wife". Dereham also entrusted Catherine with various wifely duties, such as keeping his money when he was away on business. Many of Catherine's roommates among the duchess's maids of honor and attendants knew of the relationship, which was apparently ended in 1539 when the Dowager Duchess caught wind of the matter. Despite this disapproval, Catherine and Dereham may have parted with intentions to marry upon his return from Ireland, agreeing to a "precontract," as it was then known. If indeed they had exchanged vows of their intention to marry before having sexual intercourse, they would have been considered married in the eyes of the Church.
Arrival at court
Catherine's uncle found her a place at Henry's court. As a young and attractive lady-in-waiting to Henry's new German wife, Queen Anne of Cleves, Catherine quickly caught the eye of the King, who had displayed little interest in Anne from the start. Catherine's relatives privately doubted that the young woman was mature and intelligent enough to handle the responsibilities of being the King's mistress, as she had arrived at Court a few months earlier and was minimally educated and not particularly bright; but other factors were at play. The memory of Anne Boleyn's execution for supposed adultery had marred the standing of the Howards (a family proud of their grand lineage) in Henry VIII's court, and this Catholic family saw Catherine as a figurehead for their determination to restore the faith to England. As the King's interest in their relative grew, so did their influence. Within months of her arrival at Court, Henry bestowed gifts of land and expensive cloth upon Catherine.
Marriage
When Henry had his marriage to Anne of Cleves annulled on July 9, 1540, rumours swirled that Catherine was pregnant with his child. Their quick marriage just a few weeks after the divorce from Anne, in July 1540, reflected Henry's lifelong urgency to secure the Tudor succession by begetting healthy, legitimate sons, since he had only one, Edward (later Edward VI). Henry, nearing 50 and expanding in girth, showered his young bride with wealth, jewels, and fantastically expensive gifts. War with France and the English Reformation had cost Henry the goodwill of his people, and he was suffering from a number of ailments. The presence of a young and seemingly virtuous wife in his life brought him great happiness. Her motto, "Non autre volonte que la sienne" or "No other wish (will) but his", supposedly reflected her desire to keep Henry, an ailing man 30 years her senior, content.Despite her newly acquired wealth and power, however, Catherine found her marital relations unappealing. She was not pregnant upon marriage and was repulsed by her husband's obesity. (He weighed around 21 stone, about 136 kilograms (300 pounds), at the time, and had a foul-smelling, festering ulcer on his thigh that had to be drained daily.) Early in 1541, she embarked upon a light-hearted romance with Henry's favourite male courtier, Thomas Culpeper, whom she had initially desired on her arrival at court two years earlier. The couple's meetings were arranged by one of Catherine's older ladies-in-waiting, Lady Rochford, the widow of George Boleyn, brother of Anne Boleyn and Mary Boleyn.
Henry and Catherine toured England together in the summer of 1541, and preparations for any signs of pregnancy (which would have led to a coronation) were in place, indicating that the married couple were sexually active with each other. However, as Catherine's extramarital liaison progressed, people who had witnessed her indiscretions at Lambeth began to contact her for favours. In order to buy their silence, she appointed many of them to her household. Most disastrously, she appointed Henry Mannox as one of her musicians and Francis Dereham as her personal secretary. This miscalculation led to the charges of treason and adultery against her two years after her marriage to the King.
Downfall
By late 1541, the "northern progress" of England had ended, and Catherine's indiscretions rapidly became known thanks to John Lascelles, a Protestant reformer whose sister, Mary Hall, was a chambermaid to the Dowager Duchess; she had witnessed Catherine's youthful sexual liaisons. Lascelles presented the information to Thomas Cranmer, then Archbishop of Canterbury and one of Henry's closest advisors.Cranmer, aware that any precontract with Dereham would invalidate Catherine's marriage to Henry, gave Henry a letter with the accusations against his wife on November 2, 1541, as they attended an All Souls' Day Mass. Henry at first refused to believe the allegations, thinking the letter was a forgery, and requested that Cranmer should further investigate the matter. Within a few days, corroborative proof was found, including the confessions of Dereham and Culpeper after they were tortured in the Tower of London, as well as a love letter to Culpeper in Catherine's distinctive handwriting, which is the only letter of hers that still survives.
Catherine was charged with treason, but she never, even to her confessor just hours before her death, admitted to infidelity. She did, however, admit that her behaviour prior to her marriage had been unbecoming of a lady of her rank, let alone a Queen of England.
According to legend, after being ordered to keep to her rooms, Catherine briefly escaped her guard's clutches to run to the chapel where Henry was hearing Mass. She banged on the doors and screamed Henry's name. Eventually, she was arrested by the guards and taken to her rooms in Hampton Court, where she was confined, accompanied only by Lady Rochford. However, this tale has been proven as false, since Catherine was not fully aware of the charges against her until Cranmer and a delegation of councillors were sent to Hampton Court to question her on 7 November. Her pleas to see Henry were ignored, and Cranmer interrogated her regarding the charges. Even the staunch Cranmer found Catherine's frantic, incoherent state pitiable, saying, "I found her in such lamentation and heavyness as I never saw no creature, so that it would have pitied any man's heart to have looked upon her." He ordered the guards to remove any objects that she might use to commit suicide.
While a precontract between Catherine and Dereham would have had the effect of terminating Catherine's Royal marriage, it also would have allowed Henry to annul their marriage and banish her from Court. Catherine would have been disgraced, impoverished, and exiled, but ultimately spared the grisly fate of Anne Boleyn. However, she steadfastly denied any precontract, stating that Dereham had forced himself upon her.
Imprisonment and Death
Catherine was stripped of her title as queen on November 23 and imprisoned in Syon House, Middlesex, through the winter of 1541. Culpeper and Dereham were executed at Tyburn on December 10, 1541 - the former beheaded, the latter hanged, drawn and quartered - for treasonous conduct. As was customary, their heads were placed atop London Bridge. Catherine's relatives were also detained in the Tower, except her uncle Thomas, Duke of Norfolk, who had sufficiently detached himself from the scandal. All of the Howard prisoners were tried, found guilty of concealing treason, and sentenced to life imprisonment and forfeiture of goods. In time, however, they were released with their goods restored.
Catherine herself remained in suspension until Parliament passed a bill of attainder, on 21 January 1542, that made the intent to commit treason punishable by death. This solved the matter of Catherine's supposed precontract and made her unequivocally guilty, as adultery by a queen was de facto treason. Catherine was taken to the Tower of London on February 10, 1542. On February 11, Henry signed the bill of attainder into law, and Catherine's execution was scheduled for 7 a.m. on February 13.
The night before her execution, Catherine is said to have spent many hours practising how to lay her head upon the block. She died with relative composure but looked pale and terrified, and she required assistance to climb the scaffold. She made a speech describing her punishment as "worthy and just" and asked for mercy for her family and prayers for her soul. According to popular folklore, her last words were, "I die a Queen, but I would rather have died the wife of Culpeper." However, this final declaration of love did not occur; its invention was an attempt to give Catherine's story some mark of distinction. She was beheaded with one stroke, and her body was buried in an unmarked grave in the nearby chapel of St Peter ad Vincula, where the body of her cousin, Anne Boleyn, also lay. Henry did not attend.
Catherine's body was one of those identified during restorations of the chapel during the reign of Queen Victoria, and she is commemorated on a plaque on the west wall dedicated to all those who died in the Tower.
Francis I of France wrote a letter to Henry upon news of Catherine's death, regretting the "lewd and naughty behaviour of the Queen" and advising him that "The lightness of women cannot bend the honour of men". When Sir William Paget informed Francis of Catherine's misconduct, he exclaimed "She hath done wondrous naughty!"
Catherine herself remained in suspension until Parliament passed a bill of attainder, on 21 January 1542, that made the intent to commit treason punishable by death. This solved the matter of Catherine's supposed precontract and made her unequivocally guilty, as adultery by a queen was de facto treason. Catherine was taken to the Tower of London on February 10, 1542. On February 11, Henry signed the bill of attainder into law, and Catherine's execution was scheduled for 7 a.m. on February 13.
The night before her execution, Catherine is said to have spent many hours practising how to lay her head upon the block. She died with relative composure but looked pale and terrified, and she required assistance to climb the scaffold. She made a speech describing her punishment as "worthy and just" and asked for mercy for her family and prayers for her soul. According to popular folklore, her last words were, "I die a Queen, but I would rather have died the wife of Culpeper." However, this final declaration of love did not occur; its invention was an attempt to give Catherine's story some mark of distinction. She was beheaded with one stroke, and her body was buried in an unmarked grave in the nearby chapel of St Peter ad Vincula, where the body of her cousin, Anne Boleyn, also lay. Henry did not attend.
Catherine's body was one of those identified during restorations of the chapel during the reign of Queen Victoria, and she is commemorated on a plaque on the west wall dedicated to all those who died in the Tower.
Francis I of France wrote a letter to Henry upon news of Catherine's death, regretting the "lewd and naughty behaviour of the Queen" and advising him that "The lightness of women cannot bend the honour of men". When Sir William Paget informed Francis of Catherine's misconduct, he exclaimed "She hath done wondrous naughty!"
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