page_title: Wives of Henry VIII
section_title: Catherine Howard
hierarchical_section_title: Wives of Henry VIII / Catherine Howard
caption_attribution_description: English: Portrait miniature of a lady, perhaps Katherine Howard, by Hans Holbein the Younger.
context_page_description: In common parlance, the wives of Henry VIII were the six queens consort wedded to Henry between 1509 and his death in 1547. In legal terms, King Henry VIII of England had only three wives, because three of his marriages were annulled by the Church of England. However, he was never granted an annulment by the Pope, as he desired, for Catherine of Aragon, his first wife. Annulments declare that a true marriage never took place, unlike a divorce, in which a married couple end their union. Along with his six wives, Henry took several mistresses.
context_section_description: Catherine Howard (c.1521 – 13 February 1542) was Henry's fifth wife between 1540–1542, sometimes known as "the rose without a
  thorn". She was the daughter of Lord Edmund Howard and Joyce Culpeper, cousin to Anne Boleyn (the second wife of Henry VIII), and niece to Thomas Howard, 3rd Duke of Norfolk. Thomas Howard was a prominent politician at Henry's court, and he secured her a place in the household of Henry's fourth wife, Anne of Cleves, where she caught the King's interest. She married him on 28 July 1540 at Oatlands Palace in Surrey, just 19 days after the annulment of his marriage to Anne. He was 49, and she was still a teenager, at about 17 years old.
  Henry was informed of her alleged adultery with Thomas Culpeper, her distant cousin, on 1 November 1541. Catherine was stripped of her title as queen in November 1541. She was beheaded three months later on the grounds of treason for committing adultery.
caption: Catherine Howard
exif: {}