Tudor Women: Queens and Commoners (14 page)

The time to settle Katherine's future came in the late autumn of 1539. Her appointment to one of the much-coveted posts in the new Queen's household was, of course, thanks entirely to the patronage of her uncle the Duke, and it would certainly have been impressed upon her that she was being granted a very special opportunity and would be expected to make the most of it. Katherine herself pranced cheerfully off to Court, her head full of the dazzling social life she was about to enjoy in the company of an unlimited number of handsome young gallants, but with apparently no realization whatever that she was leaving the nursery for a dangerous adult world, a world seething with intrigue and violence where no quarter was asked or given.

Except that it was larger and grander, the structure and hierarchy of the King's household was not so very different from that of the Dowager Duchess of Norfolk. There was the same overcrowding, the same mixture of squalor, confusion and luxurious discomfort; but the Court was also a jungle, the natural habitat of predators whose teeth and claws were only imperfectly concealed by the embroidered satin, the velvet and jewels, and of whom it behooved the weak, the ignorant and the inexperienced to be very wary indeed. Nevertheless, when the grandest and most dangerous predator of all 'cast his fantasy' towards the plump, dainty morsel that was Katherine Howard, her relations were overjoyed. This was just the stroke of fortune which the family needed and had perhaps been angling for. Aunts and cousins descended in flocks to give Mistress Katherine sage advice on how to behave and 'in what sort to entertain the King and how often'. His Highness was welcomed at Lambeth with open arms and the Howards joined in chorus to commend their young kinswoman for 'her pure and honest condition'. Any lingering memories of tales about scufflings behind the bed-curtains were naturally expunged from their collective consciousness.

Henry was now forty-nine, and the muscle of his superb athlete's body was turning rapidly to fat. But although increasing age and girth had forced him to give up the violent exercise he had once revelled in, he was stilt a fine figure of a man, still active and energetic, and the stimulus of his new marriage seemed to have given him a new lease of life and vigour. Katherine's exuberant vitality, her gaiety and the new-minted quality of her auburn-haired prettiness enchanted the King. She was his rose without a thorn, a jewel of womanhood, and nothing was too good for her. New dresses, expensive furs and jewellery, valuable grants of land, manors and lordships, poured forth in an apparently inexhaustible stream, while life at Court had once more become a continuous round of dancing and feasting. Katherine was still probably no more than eighteen or nineteen when she was 'showed openly as Queen' at Hampton Court on 8 August 1540. The world and the King were suddenly at her feet, and perhaps it is hardly surprising that she should have paid little attention to the duties and responsibilities of her new dignity. Pampered and petted by a doting husband, flattered and fawned upon by the place-seeking multitudes, heedless and shallow by nature, she proceeded to concentrate her considerable energies on indulging a seemingly insatiable appetite for pleasure.

The Queen's behaviour may have been understandable, but it was not very wise. As long as the King remained besotted and as long as her old playmates were kept sweet with positions in her household, there seemed small danger of her past catching up with her - who, after all, would be so foolish as to kill the goose which was laying so many delicious golden eggs? -but it was not only Katherine's past which made her vulnerable. Assisted by the King's timely infatuation, the Howards had climbed back into power and favour over the dead body of Thomas Cromwell and were now unashamedly enjoying the sweets of victory. Howard arrogance alone would have made them unpopular, but they and their party also represented the reactionary right wing in both religion and politics, and as such they were feared and resented by the progressive faction, which advocated a far more radical programme of religious reform than the King had yet been prepared to sanction. The progressives, who numbered many able and ambitious men among their ranks, watched angrily as the Queen's relations dug themselves in around the throne, and meditated a counter-stroke. The flighty Howard queen, symbol and source of the family's ascendancy, offered a natural target for the family's enemies, and unfortunately Katherine was to demonstrate that, like her cousin Anne Boleyn, she had quite a useful talent for making enemies on her own account. She was jealous of the Princess Mary and quarrelled with her, thus offending the Princess's friends. She had surrounded herself with old friends from Lambeth days: Alice Restwold, Joan Bulmer, Katherine Tylney and Margaret Morton were all found places as chamberers and were so intimate with the Queen that other, more superior ladies of the bedchamber complained they were being ousted and ignored. Even more foolishly, the Queen had also welcomed another old friend, giving Francis Dereham, of all people, the post of private secretary and usher of the chamber. Worse still, Katherine had taken another lover. Within six months of her marriage she was casting languishing glances at Master Thomas Culpeper, gentleman of the privy chamber and yet another distant cousin. Soon, with an almost incredible lack of the most basic kind of common sense, she was sending him presents and snatching secret meetings, with the connivance of Lady Rochford (widow of Anne Boleyn's brother George), who seems to have possessed all the instincts of a natural procuress. In the summer of 1541 the King made his long-postponed visit to the North, progressing with great pomp and splendour as far as York, and all along the route Thomas Culpeper was being smuggled up the backstairs to keep late-night rendezvous with the Queen. Just as at Lambeth, it was impossible to keep this sort of thing quiet. Some people's suspicions had been aroused simply by seeing the way Katherine looked at Culpeper. Others had begun to notice that the Queen never seemed to go to bed and was curiously unanxious for company in the evenings, admitting only Lady Rochford and her friend Katherine Tylney to her apartments. By the time the Court returned to London at the end of October, gossip was running like wildfire through the household. Only the King remained in complacent ignorance - but not for much longer.

While the unwieldy cavalcade was still jolting on its homeward way, one John Lassells, whose sister Mary had once served the old Duchess of Norfolk both at Horsham and at Lambeth, had laid certain information before the Archbishop of Canterbury. Lassells was a convinced member of the reformist party, and so, though he was careful not to make it too obvious, was Thomas Cranmer. As he listened to John Lassells' detailed account of the Queen's shameless behaviour with her former music master and of her disgraceful goings-on with Francis Dereham in the dormitory at Lambeth, the Archbishop at once perceived its 'weight and importance'. It was, of course, just the sort of scandal which the anti-Howard faction had been waiting for. The problem was how best to pass it on to the King. Although, after fifteen months of marriage, Katherine had shown no signs of becoming pregnant, Henry's affections were still 'so marvellously set' upon her that no one really fancied the task of destroying his illusions. In the end, it fell to Cranmer, but even he, privileged old friend though he was, could not bring himself to break the news in person. Instead he wrote a letter, which he handed to the King in the chapel at Hampton Court, begging him to read it in private.

Henry's first reaction to the accusations against his wife was one of furious disbelief, and he ordered an enquiry to be put in hand immediately to discover those responsible for slandering the Queen. But Mary Lassells, now Mary Hall, confirmed her brother's story, and Manox and Dereham both admitted their past misdeeds, Dereham confessing that he had had intercourse with Katherine many times, 'both in his doublet and hose between the sheets and in naked bed'. Katherine herself began by denying everything, but in a private interview with Cranmer on 8 November she broke down and, between floods of hysterical tears, told him how Dereham had lain with her and used her 'in such sort as a man doth use his wife many and sundry times'. In a confession addressed to the King, she threw herself on his mercy and as much blame as possible on others, beseeching her husband 'to consider the subtle persuasions of young men and the ignorance and frailness of young women'. True, she had succumbed to the flattery of Manox and had allowed Francis Dereham to procure her 'to his vicious purpose'; but, this ingenuous document continued: T was so desirous to be taken unto your Grace's favour and so blinded with the desire of 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.'

So far there had been no suggestion of adultery - Dereham utterly denied any misconduct with the Queen since her marriage - and so far the worst crime Katherine could legally be charged with was bigamy. But although she admitted having called Dereham 'husband' during the period of their intimacy, she refused, from either pride or pig-headedness, to admit the existence of any pre-contract or engagement between them. Nevertheless, it looked as if she might still escape with divorce and social disgrace. Then the Council's bloodhounds picked up the scent of Thomas Culpeper, and the whole complexion of the case was changed.

Questioned on 'the matter now came forth concerning Culpeper', Katherine admitted the clandestine meetings; she confessed to having called him her 'little sweet fool' and giving him a cap and a ring, but she denied 'upon her oath' that she had ever gone to bed with him. Characteristically, she accused Culpeper of having pestered her with his attentions and blamed Lady Rochford for encouraging him and deliberately acting as an agent provocateur. Lady Rochford, naturally enough, maintained that she had performed the services of go-between on the Queen's explicit orders, adding that she thought Culpeper had known the Queen carnally, 'considering all the things that she hath heard and seen between them'.

Despite the Council's best efforts, actual adultery was never conclusively proved, though the presumption that the King had been systematically cuckolded must be pretty strong, and, in any case, Culpeper confessed that 'he intended and meant to do ill with the Queen and in likewise the Queen so minded to do with him'. This was quite enough to condemn them both, and when a friend of Francis Dereham's conveniently remembered that individual's once saying he was sure he might still marry the Queen if the King were dead, that was enough to condemn him too. Under the 1534 Treason Act, evidence of evil intent against the Crown was all that was needed for a conviction.

Dereham and Culpeper were tried together at the beginning of December and executed together ten days later, but Katherine was not even accorded the courtesy of a trial. Parliament met in January, 1542, and proceeded to pass an Act of Attainder against the Queen, setting forth her treason and carefully locking the stable door after the horse had been stolen. In future, it was laid down that if the King should take a fancy to a woman, innocently believing her to be 'a pure and clean maid' when proof to the contrary was later forthcoming, or if such a woman coupled herself with her sovereign lord without first disclosing the existence of her unchaste life, then every such offence would be deemed and adjudged high treason - a provision which, as the cynics did not fail to point out, was likely to limit the monarch's field of choice pretty severely.

Katherine was brought by water from Syon House, where she had spent the last weeks of her life, to the Tower on 10 February and two days later was warned to 'dispose of her soul and prepare for death'. Although so weak that she had to be helped up the steps to the scaffold, she died well. The sixteenth century considered it important to die well, with dignity and proper repentance for one's sins - not merely for the sake of the soul's salvation, but 'to leave a good opinion in the people's minds' - and the Queen had summoned up sufficient reserves of courage and self-command to enable her to make a final appearance worthy of a Howard lady.

Katherine Howard was an extreme, but by no means untypical example of the way in which her world regarded its womenfolk as pawns in the game of high politics. Silly, feckless and over-sexed, she'd been incapable of meeting the demands made upon her and had become the inevitable victim of a system which ruthlessly eliminated its failures.

The King's self-esteem had been grievously wounded by his young wife's betrayal. Back in the days when Anne Boleyn was being accused of adultery on a far grander scale than poor Katherine's, Eustace Chapuys remarked of Henry that he had never seen prince or man who wore his horns more pleasantly. But things were different now, and Chapuys, still in England, still observing the antics of the islanders with a coldly clinical eye, probably came near the truth when he wrote that the King's case resembled very much 'that of the woman who cried more bitterly at the loss of her tenth husband than she had on the death of the other nine put together ... the reason being that she had never buried one of them without being sure of the next, but that after the tenth husband she had no other in view, hence her sorrow and her lamentations.'

All the same, rather to some people's surprise, the King did marry again, and in a quiet ceremony at Hampton Court on 12 July 1543 the widowed Lady Latimer of Snape Hall became the sixth woman to stand beside her sovereign lord and vow to 'take thee, Henry, to my wedded husband, to have and to hold from this day forward, for better for worse, for richer for poorer, in sickness and in health, to be bonair and buxom in bed and at board, till death us do part'.

If Henry had been seeking a loyal and sympathetic companion for his declining years, he could hardly have made a better choice. Lady Latimer, born Katherine Parr, had already been twice married to men much older than herself and been twice widowed. At thirty-one she was still a pretty woman, but more to the point she was also a mature, well-educated and thoughtful woman, experienced in the arts of managing elderly husbands. In the words of the anonymous author of The Spanish Chronicle, she was 'quieter than any of the young wives the King had had, and as she knew more of the world, she always got on pleasantly with the King and had no caprices'.