Catherine Howard

Born
 Died
 Buried
 Children

Catherine Howard was a cousin of Henry VIII’s ill-fated second queen,
 Anne Boleyn; and like Anne, Catherine would die on the scaffold at
Tower Green. Her birthdate is unknown, but her father was the younger
brother of the duke of Norfolk. Though personally impoverished,
Catherine had a powerful family name and thus secured an appointment as
lady-in-waiting to Henry’s fourth queen, Anne of Cleves. While at court,
 she caught the eye of the middle-aged king and became a political pawn
of her family and its Catholic allies. Catherine’s greatest crime was
her silliness. Raised in the far too permissive household of her
grandmother, she was a flirtatious and emotional girl who rarely
understood the consequences of her actions. She made the mistake of
continuing her girlish indiscretions as queen. Henry was besotted with
her, calling her his ‘Rose without a Thorn’ and showering her with gifts
 and public affection. Catherine was understandably more attracted to
men her own age and, after just seventeen months of marriage to the
king, she was arrested for adultery. The distraught king at first
refused to believe the evidence but it was persuasive. Unlike Anne
Boleyn, Catherine had betrayed the king. She was beheaded on 13 February
 1542, only nineteen or twenty years old. The drama of her execution
lends gravity to a brief life which would otherwise pass unnoticed.

## Biography

Catherine Howard’s short life is one of the great cautionary tales of
 Henry VIII’s reign; there is about it something strangely pathetic and
small, but also powerful and moving. Catherine was neither particularly
beautiful or intelligent, but she was a charming, flirtatious girl who
rose, virtually overnight, from obscurity to become queen of England.
She was the daughter of the 2d duke of Norfolk’s youngest son, Edmund,
and his wife, Jocasta (Joyce) Culpeper. She was one of too many children
 for her impoverished parents and the date of her birth was not
recorded; most historians believe it was 1521. Edmund was not an
auspicious individual and, like most younger sons, spent most of his
life in constant need of money. He complained to the king’s chief
minister Thomas Cromwell that he wished to be a poor man’s son for at
least then he could work without shame. But he was an aristocrat, a
member of one of the greatest noble families of England, and he could do
 little but beg for help from one relation to another. He sent his
daughter to live with her grandmother, the dowager duchess of Norfolk,
and thus avoided responsibility for Catherine’s upbringing. This should
not reflect badly upon him since it was typical of the times; and though
 Catherine’s grandmother complained ceaselessly about the expense of
supporting numerous grandchildren, she did provide a comfortable home.
She did not, however, provide strict supervision – a fact which would
have dire consequences for the entire Norfolk family after Catherine
became queen.

Catherine was raised in a type of dormitory at Lambeth Palace,
crowded in with other young girls (some were servants to her
grandmother) and her education was not intellectual. Rather, her days
were spent passing the time in the most pleasant manner possible. The
duchess’s household was not wealthy and Catherine understandably chafed
at her constricted lifestyle. There was within her a strong love of
luxury and inability to control her desires; this was a lack of
self-control, a realization that certain things should not be done, must
 not be risked, no matter how much she wanted something. While she was
simply one of many daughters of an impoverished lord, this immaturity
did not matter. But when she became queen, it remained and past
indiscretions also returned to haunt her.

Catherine grew into a merry and vivacious girl, not conventionally
beautiful but graceful and charming. She possessed all the vitality of
youth, something which proved irresistible to her aged king. The only
part of her sporadic education which she seemed to enjoy were her music
lessons; in particular, she enjoyed the attentions of her music teacher,
 a man named Henry Mannox. They first met in 1536, when Catherine was
just fifteen years old. Hired to teach her the virginal and lute, Mannox
 soon began a practiced seduction of his young pupil.

Catherine later swore the relationship was not consummated. ‘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 later told interrogators. Mannox admitted the same. Since Catherine
 later confessed to more serious transgressions, there was no reason for
 her to lie in this instance. And one can certainly condemn Mannox for
taking advantage of his young student.

As a mere music teacher, Mannox was too far below her in social
status for a serious relationship to develop. Though he followed the
duchess’s household to London in 1538, Catherine’s attentions soon
turned elsewhere. She fell in love with a gentleman-pensioner in her
grandmother’s household named Francis Dereham. This relationship was far
 more serious and undoubtedly consummated. There is much evidence on
this point, including Catherine’s own confession: ‘Francis Dereham by
many persuasions procured me to his vicious purpose and obtained first
to lie upon my bed with his doublet and hose and after within the bed
and finally he lay with me naked and used me in such sort as a man doth
his wife many and sundry times but how often I know not.’