Katherine Howard: A New History (12 page)

Meanwhile, the hostility between the Howards and Seymours worsened, which was particularly aggravated by the actions of the duke’s son, the Earl of Surrey. It is intriguing, therefore, that an alliance between the Seymours and the Howards by virtue of a Seymour marriage to the widowed Duchess of Richmond, daughter of the duke, was briefly mooted, although it eventually came to nothing.
⁴³
During the summer and autumn of 1538, the duke sold some of his manors to the king and others favourable to him:

Sold to the King, the manors of Claxton and Fyndon, 70
l;
the manor of Hunsdon, with the parks, 50
l.
To Sir John Dudley, the manor of Acton Burnell, 98
l.
To James Lauson, the manor of Wollerhampton, £27. To George Throgmorton, the manor of Sullyhill, £34. To Gostwicke, the manor of Willyngton, 46
l.
To my lord of Suffolk (when I went to Ireland), the manor of Cossey, 110
l.
Also divers other manors to the value of 133
l
6
s
. 8
d.
Total 568
l
6
s
8
d.
Bought the manors of Wynthering, Snape, Alborough, Romborowe, and some other lands. Annual receipts: The Treasurership, fee of 378
l.
An annuity of my lord of Suffolk, 413
l.
6
s.
8
d.
The Stewardship of the Augmentation, 100
l.
The stewardship of Winchester, 100
l.
Of suppressed lands given by the King, 200
l.
Of Sipton, 200
l.
Whereof, to the quondam and other monks, 72
l.
To my wife and son, 400
l.
And so remaineth to me, clear, 2638
l
.
⁴⁴

In April 1538, Lady Elizabeth Howard, mother of Anne Boleyn and sister to the duke, died and was buried at Lambeth, where her brother Edmund, father of Katherine, acted as chief mourner at her funeral.
⁴⁵
Edmund continued to suffer personal financial difficulties, leading him to seek Cromwell’s assistance for his staff consisted of seven clerks and he was obliged to keep four horses and a groom. Despite Edmund’s personal difficulties and his inability to achieve success as a Howard nobleman, his brother Lord William, who had earlier chastised his niece for her behaviour within the household of the Dowager Duchess, ‘was steadily climbing the ladder of political success’ as ‘a diplomat of rare merit’, particularly as the English ambassador at the court of James V of Scotland and later in Scotland. It is ironic that he was employed, along with other diplomats, with the task of selecting an appropriate royal consort in Europe as a fourth bride for his king, months before his niece Katherine became fifth queen of Henry VIII.
⁴⁶
Edmund did not long survive the death of his sister, dying in the spring of 1539, months before his daughter Katherine departed for court in order to serve the new queen as her maid-of-honour. As with Jane Seymour’s father, Edmund Howard did not share in the success of his daughter’s family when elevated to royalty.

The inauguration of the reformed religion in England correspondingly led to an attack on conservatives who were known to favour papal authority. The treachery of Cardinal Reginald Pole, who had wholeheartedly supported the cause of Katherine of Aragon and who had printed and distributed in late 1538 his book, which personally vilified and slandered the English monarch, led to the king’s displeasure with the Pole family and encouraged Cromwell to seek evidence of treason committed by members of that family. On 5 November Henry Courtenay, Marquess of Exeter, the Earl of Devon, Edward Neville, and Henry, Lord Montague, were arrested for treason and imprisoned in the Tower of London. The Lady Marquess of Exeter was shortly afterwards imprisoned there too.
⁴⁷
Montague and Exeter were tried for treason in December and, on 9 January, were beheaded alongside Edward Neville on Tower Hill. Montague’s brother, Geoffrey Pole, was pardoned on account of evidence he had provided against his relatives.
⁴⁸
In March 1539, Sir Nicholas Carew was also executed. The execution of these prominent noblemen did not occur solely on account of their religious interests and connection with the traitorous Reginald Pole, but because of their regal blood – the ‘White Rose’. Fearing the uncertain nature of the English succession, the king appears to have become increasingly suspicious of noble families, such as the Poles, who could lay claim to the throne of England on account of their lineage. This demonstrated further the need for the king to take a fourth wife who could bear him a second male heir and ensure that the succession was safeguarded against all possible dynastic threats.

While Cromwell rooted out evidence of treason among disaffected nobles, the king’s advisers pressed ahead with plans for a fourth marriage. In the autumn of 1538, the king was rumoured to favour the seventeen year-old Christina, Duchess of Milan, as a possible consort, but she was not ecstatic about a marriage alliance with the ageing king.
⁴⁹
During negotiations with the Schmalkaldic League that year, Cromwell was believed to be ‘most favourably inclined to the German nation’, intending ‘very dearly, that the King should wed himself with the German Princes’.
⁵⁰
The Duke of Cleves, as early as September 1538, sought a marriage alliance between Henry VIII and his sister Anne as a means of countering the emperor’s influence in Europe.
⁵¹
This occurred in context of England’s increasing isolation on the European continent, for the inauguration of the reformed religion had alarmed and angered the Catholic powers of France and the Holy Roman Empire, who opposed what they came to perceive as heresy, castigating Cromwell and Cranmer as heretics and schismatics. In January 1539, the Bishop of Tarbes, Caros and Granvelle signed a letter that was sent to both Charles V and Francis I promising ‘that no new alliances, agreements or accords with the King of England whether for marriages of himself, the Princess, his daughter [Mary] or the Prince his son, or any treaties whatsoever without mutual consent, were to be made’.
⁵²
In view of this, it is more likely that Henry VIII sought an alliance with Cleves through marrying Anne because of England’s diplomatic isolation by the 1538 alliance between Charles, Francis and the Pope, rather than being an international alliance masterminded solely by Thomas Cromwell.
⁵³

The king, fearing the consequences of England’s diplomatic isolation and resentful of the rapid rate of religious changes encouraged by Cromwell and Cranmer, called a meeting of Parliament in April 1539 in which a new religious settlement, centred around the conservative Act of Six Articles, was inaugurated. In May, Norfolk was personally authorised to put forward the Six Articles to Parliament for discussion.
⁵⁴
It is possible that Henry VIII himself selected Norfolk, because he was aware of the strong extent to which the Howards personally favoured traditional religion and their opposition towards the reformed settlement. Norfolk’s disagreement with Anne Boleyn during the period of her queenship had probably occurred mainly because of conflicting religious interests, for she was known to favour the reformed cause, something that was unacceptable to her conservative relatives.
⁵⁵
This parliament passed the Act of Precedence, which confirmed, among others, Norfolk’s power and influence as Lord Treasurer of England and Earl Marshal, second only to the positions of Lord Chancellor Audley. Suffolk, Cromwell, Oxford and Southampton were also confirmed within the Act.

By then the king had agreed to marry Anne of Cleves in an alliance that would bolster England’s security and prestige against the hostility of the European powers of France and the Holy Roman Empire. The English ambassador Christopher Mont visited the court of Cleves and reported on the appearance of Anne, promising to Cromwell 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 [...] She excelleth as far the Duchess [of Milan], as the golden sun excelleth the silvern moon’.
⁵⁶
In August, John Wotton, writing from Cleves, reported that both Anne and her sister Amelia had been brought up in the household of their mother, the Duchess of Cleves, ‘a wise lady and one that very straitly looketh to her children.’ Believing Anne to be ‘of very lowly and gentle conditions’, Wotton wrote that Anne was accomplished in needlework but did not speak French or Latin, nor was she musically gifted, ‘for they take it here in Germany for a rebuke and an occasion of lightness that great ladies should be learned or have any knowledge of music.’
⁵⁷
In the autumn of 1539, negotiations were made for her passage and arrival in England.

Although, alongside other conservatives such as Bishop Gardiner, the Duke of Norfolk may not have personally favoured the king’s alliance with Cleves and his prospective marriage to Anne, the king’s impending fourth marriage did offer the opportunity for the duke to seek appointments within the new queen’s household for his relatives. Aristocratic women were well-placed to advance their family’s fortunes and prestige within the queen’s household through serving her in the capacity of maids-of-honour and ladies-in-waiting, although families were expected to mobilise all their connections and contacts at court in order to secure appointments to the queen’s household for their daughters, who ‘functioned as members of dense kin networks’.
⁵⁸
The difficulty in attaining a place within the household of the queen, however, was demonstrated in relation to Katherine Basset, sister of Anne Basset, who had served Jane Seymour and later served Anne of Cleves. Lady Lisle, mother of both girls, sought the assistance of her cousin the Countess of Rutland in the matter, the countess replying that the king himself had limited the number of maids allowed at court, but if Lady Lisle would ‘make some means unto mother Lowe’, who was ‘mother of the Dutch maids’ brought from Cleves, she might accomplish her purpose of achieving a place for Katherine.
⁵⁹
Anne Basset reported that she had approached the king regarding her sister’s appointment, but he replied that he had not decided upon the final number or selection of the queen’s maids, but that they would have to ‘be fair and as he thought meet for the room’. Anne encouraged her mother to ‘send to some of your friends that are about his grace to speak for her’.
⁶⁰
The case of the Bassets demonstrates the fundamental role women played in achieving the appointments of female relatives within the queen’s household. When Anne had sought a place in the household of Queen Jane in 1537, her mother’s niece, Mary, Countess of Sussex, and her stepfather’s cousin, the Countess of Rutland, wife of the queen’s lord chamberlain, had provided invaluable assistance.
⁶¹

In the autumn of 1539 the duke, probably assisted by his stepmother the dowager duchess, had achieved appointments at court within the queen’s household for his nieces Katherine Howard, Katherine Carey and Mary Norris. They were to serve the queen as her maids-of-honour, alongside other young girls such as Anne Basset and Dorothy Braye, while other Howard relatives, such as the widowed Duchess of Richmond and Lady Jane Rochford, were selected to serve the queen as her ladies-in-waiting.
⁶²
Katherine’s half-sister, Isabel Legh, was wife of Sir Edward Baynton, who served the king’s later queens as vice-chamberlain, while another half-sister, Margaret, daughter of Jocasta Culpeper by her first husband, was married to Sir Thomas Arundell, Anne of Cleves’ receiver and later chancellor to Katherine.
⁶³
That Katherine Howard was chosen to serve Anne of Cleves as a maid-of-honour, alongside her young cousins Katherine Carey and Mary Norris, provides a further clue to her age. Katherine Carey was born most likely in the spring of 1524, and Mary Norris, daughter of the disgraced Henry Norris (who had been executed alongside Queen Anne for treason), had been born around 1526 in Berkshire, suggesting Katherine Howard was fairly close in age.
⁶⁴

Since the duke had probably had little contact with his niece Katherine due to his various duties in both the north and at court, he likely relied on reports provided by his stepmother which advised him as to the suitability of Katherine as a maid-of-honour to the new queen. Surely neither the dowager duchess nor the duke were aware of the full extent, or nature of, the sexual experiences Katherine had been forced to undergo, for the Howards would not have risked the threat to their family honour were rumours of their relative’s past to surface at court and expose them to scandal. It is likely that the duke had heard pleasing reports of his young niece that convinced him she would be an asset to the Howards by serving Anne of Cleves. Aged in her fifteenth year, she appears to have developed into a young lady of noteworthy beauty, with reddish-gold, or auburn, hair, blue-grey eyes, pale skin and a dainty figure, while being ‘very small of stature’.
⁶⁵
One writer later accredited her as the most beautiful lady at court, if not in the kingdom.
⁶⁶

The announcement that Katherine had been chosen to serve the new queen instigated the conclusion of her affair with Francis Dereham. Dereham’s later confession conveys his possessiveness of Katherine and desire to retain control of her, for he promised that ‘he should never live to say thou hast swerved’. Katherine, exasperated with his behaviour, replied that he ‘might do as he list’.
⁶⁷
Clearly, she was eager to leave him and the scandalous nature of the sexual experiences to which she had been unwillingly exposed to behind, for she later admitted that ‘for all that knew me, and kept my company, knew how glad and desirous I was to come to the court’. Later at court, having returned from Ireland, Dereham confronted Katherine with the rumour that she had promised to wed Thomas Culpeper, a distant relative and a servant of the king. She replied: ‘Why should you trouble me therewith, for you know I will not have you; and if you heard such reports, you heard more than I do know.’
⁶⁸
Dereham’s manipulative and controlling behaviour illustrates his sexual jealousy and fear of cuckoldry, in an environment that perceived female sexuality to be excessive and harmful to the honour of men, ensuring an atmosphere of jealousy, anxiety and violence. Indeed, ‘the force with which women’s unchastity was imagined, ridiculed and proscribed made for a culture in which the possibilities of dishonour seem almost to erase those of honour.’
⁶⁹