November 1541: The Downfall of Katherine Howard

Above: A portrait miniature thought to be of Katherine Howard, c. 1540.

For Queen Katherine, the end came quickly and inexplicably. One moment she was England's adored queen, the beloved youthful consort of Henry VIII, renowned for her beauty and virtue. Finally, it seemed, Henry had married a woman who represented everything he desired in a bride: youthfulness, beauty, virtue, chasteness, fertility and, above all, innocence. Katherine seemed to share Katherine of Aragon's loyalty and humility; Anne Boleyn's sensuality and attractiveness; Jane Seymour's demureness and modesty; Anne of Cleves' good sense. Contemporaries often noted Henry's pleasure in his bride and his new found happiness. But throughout her brief reign Katherine was on the edge of a precipice. Her past harboured dark secrets, and she was well aware of the need to conceal them from public attention, if she was to be secure as England's queen.

From her marriage in the hot days of July 1540 to the autumnal beginnings of November 1541, Queen Katherine managed rather well. Recently, historians have come to dismiss the traditional notion that she was an irresponsible, reckless hedonist who spent her days partying and making merry. David Starkey noted her excellent handling of the responsibilities of queenship and credited her with bringing the Tudor family together for the first time. My research similarly suggests that Katherine took her responsibilities as queen seriously, providing for her family, dispensing patronage and maintaining good relations with the royals. She was young and inexperienced, but she moved past these drawbacks to perform her responsibilities as queen earnestly and devotedly.


Above: Possibly Katherine Howard.

Katherine's success, however, depended on her past remaining secret. Despite her apparent successes as queen, Katherine's past haunted her from the moment she married the king. Francis Dereham, a persistent and forceful young man who had been intimately involved with the queen some years before her marriage, arrived at court hoping to win her favour. When he arrived at court in spring 1541, he began boasting of his friendship with the queen and even commented that, were the king to die, he would be sure to marry Katherine. Henry Manox, a musician who had fondled Katherine some years previously, also pressed for appointment. 

In context of these dangerous rumours swirling about the queen's past, the emboldened Thomas Culpeper, a groom of the privy chamber to the king, sought out the queen and urged her to meet with him in secret. Possibly he had learned of her murky past and used it to encourage her to bestow favours upon him. Katherine, hoping to continue as England's queen, beseeched him to meet with her only in the presence of her chaperone Lady Rochford. What the two discussed is not known, but in context of dangerous allegations about the queen, it seems more credible that Culpeper had come into knowledge of Katherine's childhood liaisons and was using this knowledge to manipulate her. 


Above: Hampton Court Palace, where the queen was abandoned in November 1541.

The royal court departed on a northern progress in the summer of 1541. While they were away, an ardent reformer John Lascelles (who would be burned for heresy five years later) approached the Archbishop of Canterbury with damaging knowledge about the queen. Historians have recently considered the possibility that Katherine was the victim of a reformist conspiracy designed to bring down the conservative Howards. Certainly, it seems too much of a coincidence that Lascelles informed Cranmer of Katherine's past at this time, when rumours were also circulating of her sexual misadventures. The royal couple arrived in London in late October. On 2 November, the disbelieving king was informed of his wife's misconduct before her marriage. Four days later, distraught and emotional, Henry left Hampton Court Palace. He would never see his wife again. 

A day later, the queen was confined to her chambers. Katherine quickly guessed what was going on and suffered a full breakdown. Archbishop Cranmer referred to her 'lamentation and heaviness' when he visited her to interrogate her. He seems to have felt pity and compassion for her. The following day, Katherine had recovered sufficiently to answer Cranmer's questions. She admitted liaisons with both Manox and Dereham, but took care to emphasise her youth and vulnerability when these had occurred. She explained that Dereham had pursued her and that she had not enjoyed the affair. In a religious society valuing female chastity and honour, a loss of a girl's maidenhead proved personally and socially damaging. In view of this alongside her clear loyalty to her family, it is questionable whether Katherine would voluntarily and consensually have permitted either man, both of whom were lower in status, intimacies. She denied being Dereham's wife, possibly because canon law required that both vowtakers provide consent. 

Both Katherine and Dereham, when questioned, responded that their relationship had not continued following Katherine's royal marriage. However, Dereham asserted that Thomas Culpeper had since succeeded him in the queen's affections. Possibly he was aware of Culpeper's knowledge about Katherine's past, and assumed that the two were close. Katherine denied committing adultery with Culpeper, but did not reveal what she had discussed with him. Possibly, if their discussions had concerned the queen's past and a need to conceal it, Katherine felt reluctant to incriminate herself further by revealing sordid details of her childhood experiences.

Although Culpeper did later admit his hope to commit adultery with Katherine, 'the queen's motives remain opaque, not least because her questioners never pressed Katherine to explain why she met with Culpeper or needed to converse with him, beyond her excuse that he insisted on seeing her'. (Warnicke) Warnicke suggests that Katherine remained silent about the topics of their discussions because 'an admission that she had been attempting to deceive the king by concealing her relationship with Dereham would not have bolstered her defence'. Thus, while she may not have committed adultery, Katherine was guilty of deceit.

The king, meanwhile, experienced extreme sorrow and desolation when faced with knowledge of his wife's misbehaviour. On 12 November his privy council described his distress in a letter to Sir William Paget, resident ambassador in France. As late as April 1542 the king was described as being a different man since hearing of Katherine's past. On 14 November, the queen was relocated to Syon. Eight days later she relinquished the title of queenship, which proved easy enough to do, since she had never been crowned and had been queen purely by virtue of her marriage to the king. The following month, Dereham and Culpeper were sentenced to death, and shortly afterwards executed at Tyburn. Katherine and Lady Rochford were never brought to trial, but were found guilty by act of Attainder. They were executed at the Tower of London in February 1542.

Katherine never did admit to adultery. Although she admitted that she had been unchaste before her marriage, she insisted that she had done no more than converse with Culpeper. Because she admitted to having had a sexual relationship with Dereham, and because she confirmed that she had met secretly on several occasions with Culpeper, both early modern and modern commentators have tended to accept her guilt. If she did not commit adultery with Culpeper, then why did she become involved with him? Possibly 'fear of disclosure would... have made her vulnerable to the machinations of seasoned courtiers like Culpeper, for as she said in her confession about Dereham, 'the sorrow of my offences was ever before my eyes''. (Warnicke)


Above: Tower Green.

The Deaths of Katherine Howard and Lady Rochford

Above: the Church of St Peter ad Vincula in the Tower of London, where the bodies of both Queen Katherine and Lady Rochford were buried.

On this day in history, 13 February 1542, the teenage queen Katherine Howard and her Lady of the Bedchamber, Jane Rochford, were executed within the walls of the Tower of London on charges of high treason. The former queen suffered first, reported to be "so weak that she could barely stand or speak", but managed to make a short speech in which she admitted that her execution was just, for she was deserving of "punishment". After the axe severed Katherine's head from her body, Lady Rochford was executed, also stating that she deserved to die and exhorting the people to pray for the king. Contrary to legend, Lady Rochford did not admit her guilt in the downfall of Anne Boleyn and George Boleyn, in which she reputedly accused them of incest.

There appears to have been uncertainty among the judges as to whether or not Katherine's actions actually constituted treason. She never admitted to adultery with Thomas Culpeper, and swore that Francis Dereham had forced himself upon her without her consent. Instead, she was attainted for not having "a pure and honest living before her marriage" and desiring to return to her "abominable" lifestyle with Dereham when she employed him into her household in the summer of 1541 - actually, it is more credible that she appointed the aggressive Dereham into her household as a naive means of keeping him silent about her past. Lady Rochford was convicted for helping the queen "to bring her vicious and abominable purpose to pass with Thomas Culpeper". But as Retha Warnicke argues, and I agree with her, it is more likely that Katherine only met with Culpeper because he was blackmailing, and later manipulating, her. She was never secure as queen, surrounded by hostile and ambitious individuals who perhaps regarded her as an easy mark.


Above: Portraits said to be of Katherine are, in fact, more likely to be of Margaret Douglas.

Katherine is an enigma. We know next to nothing about her: we do not know when she was born, where she was born, her exact number of siblings, her appearance, her personality, or her personal beliefs. Indeed, the more I have researched her, the more convinced I have become that myths and legends, rather than solid historical fact, attach themselves to this queen.

Portraits said to be of Katherine (above) are probably actually of Lady Margaret Douglas, Henry VIII's niece. The prevailing depiction of the queen in modern media remains close to Tamzin Merchant's portrayal of Katherine in the Showtime series The Tudors: a flighty, not too bright bimbo who revelled in male attention, committing adultery with Thomas Culpeper while continuing to seduce and enchant an ageing king. Philippa Gregory's Katherine, in her novel The Boleyn Inheritance, similarly portrays a stupid young girl who thinks of nothing but sexual pleasure. On the other hand, Angela Pleasance in the BBC TV series The Six Wives of Henry VIII offers a darker view of Katherine as a manipulative, sadistic young woman who bullied her lovers into doing her will.


Above: A beautiful bimbo. Tamzin Merchant (left) as Katherine Howard in The Tudors. (left)
A scheming harlot. Angela Pleasance (right) as Katherine Howard in The Six Wives of Henry VIII.

All of these portrayals might be valid, we just don't know. There is virtually nothing in extant sources about Katherine, aside from her marriage to the king and her spectacular downfall in 1541-2, culminating in the gory details of her execution. Aside from that, it's free rein, for novelists, dramatists and historians alike. I personally do not subscribe to modern views of Katherine as an idiotic, sex-obsessed 'bimbo' who committed adultery with Culpeper - I think it is a very modern, twentieth/twenty-first century reading of the situation, which does not rely on any concrete fact whatsoever. As I have already explored in my article on this blog "Misconceptions of Katherine Howard", there is no evidence that she was stupid. My book rather explores the view that she took her duties as queen seriously, acting as patron and intercessor, traditional queenly roles. She also tried to act as a good stepmother, and kindly provided clothing to the doomed Countess of Salisbury shortly before that woman's grisly execution. The fragments of detail we have about Katherine suggest a kind, good-natured young woman who nonetheless was naive, but who never experienced security as queen; manipulated as she was by devious individuals from her youth while fully aware that the king expected her to provide a male heir, something she never managed to do.


Above: Left - perhaps a sketch of Jane Boleyn, Lady Rochford.
Middle - Joanne King as Jane in The Tudors.
Right - Sheila Burrell as Jane in The Six Wives of Henry VIII.

Jane Boleyn is, similarly, an enigma. Modern scholarship has not been kind to her, and she continues to be portrayed as a sadistic, sociopathic, even insane woman who plotted the downfall of her husband George, loathed Anne Boleyn, and eagerly provided evidence of incest between the two which led to their executions. But there is no historical fact to support this, and we have no way of knowing how the downfalls of the Boleyns personally and psychologically affected her in 1536, whether she was complicit or not. Why she became involved with Katherine is impossible to determine, but Warnicke suggests - and it is possible - that Culpeper blackmailed her into allowing him to meet with Katherine, and I think this theory is credible. Certainly it makes no sense why she would have initiated the meetings on her own, and there is no evidence to suggest that Katherine instigated the whole thing. But whatever the case, Lady Rochford was to pay dearly for her indiscretions, dying alongside Katherine in February 1542.

Both women deserve respect and sympathy. It is essential to recognise that modern portrayals of Katherine and Jane in a variety of media - including literature, film and TV - are often distorted, modernised, and even simplified; they do not necessarily present an accurate depiction of these figures or of the circumstances they experienced. But after 13 February 1542, they were dead and gone, forgotten at court and probably not much mourned. It has been left to a much later age to restore these women's reputations, although many continue to regard Katherine as a promiscuous wanton and Jane as a mentally deranged sociopath. Perhaps, one day, they will be portrayed in the media in a positive light, in which historical accuracy is respected while offering entertainment.

The Execution of the Queen's Lovers

On this day in history, 10 December 1541, the alleged lovers of Queen Katherine Howard were put to death at Tyburn: Francis Dereham and Thomas Culpeper. Culpeper was first beheaded, before Dereham suffered the excruciatingly painful death of hanging, drawing and quartering. Charles Wriothesley wrote in his chronicle:

Culpeper and Dereham were drawn from the Tower of London to Tyburn, and there Culpeper, after an exhortation made to the people to pray for him, he standing on the ground by the gallows, kneeled down and had his head stricken off; and then Dereham was hanged, membered, bowelled, headed, and quartered [and both] their heads set on London Bridge.

Contrary to popular myth, Culpeper did not profess his love for Katherine on the scaffold; as Wriothesley makes clear, he merely asked the people present to pray for him, thus giving a very traditional last speech. Although Culpeper had arguably committed the worst offence of the two, in allegedly committing adultery with the queen while she was married to the King, he suffered a 'kinder' death. In my book, I speculate that Dereham suffered the more brutal death not necessarily because Culpeper was the king's favourite and thus the king was more inclined to mercy, but because Dereham had spoken openly about Henry VIII's death (a treasonable offence) and because he had sexually assaulted Katherine as a youth, a criminal offence.

Katherine Howard had become involved with Dereham in 1538, when she was aged around fourteen, and the two had commenced a sexual relationship which lasted around three months, ending in early 1539. That Katherine entered this unwillingly is clear from her confession. She appears to have sought comfort from Dereham after being abused by another young man, Henry Manox, but before long Dereham was pressuring her into marriage and sexual intercourse. When she received an appointment at court, she happily left him behind. When she became queen, however, Dereham blackmailed Katherine into giving him an appointment at court; perhaps in return for his silence regarding their past relationship.

If Katherine hoped that this would keep him silent, she was to be disappointed. Before long, Dereham was openly bragging about his relations with the queen, and intimated that, were Henry VIII to die, he would marry Katherine. Around the same time, Thomas Culpeper began meeting with the queen in secret. There is no convincing evidence that the two ever were in love or had an adulterous relationship. This of course contradicts the portrayal of the affair in The Tudors and other popular works. It is extremely plausible that Culpeper began blackmailing the young queen in return for favours, assisted by Lady Rochford.

Dereham's aggressive behaviour and Culpeper's meetings with the queen occurred at the worst possible time. In the autumn of 1541, the Archbishop Thomas Cranmer was informed by Mary Lascelles, a childhood acquaintance of Katherine, that the queen had not been a virgin when she had married the king, and had had sexual relations with both Manox and Dereham. Under interrogation, Dereham admitted to a pre-marital relationship with Katherine, but, perhaps reacting out of jealousy, claimed that Culpeper had replaced him in the queen's affections.


Above: the relationship between Thomas Culpeper and Katherine Howard was, in reality, very different to that portrayed in The Tudors.

Like Dereham, Culpeper blamed the queen entirely for what had happened. He admitted, however, that he had intended to  'do ill' with her, but claimed that he had only met with her because she had been 'dying of love' for him. A letter written by the queen to Culpeper was found and used as evidence against the pair. Far from being a love letter, the tone is fearful, anxious, afraid. It has been credibly suggested that Culpeper was blackmailing Katherine into meeting him as a means of him increasing his power, in exchange for keeping silent about her past.

Both Dereham and Culpeper were found guilty of treason and sentenced to death. In February 1542, the queen and Lady Rochford followed them to the scaffold. So ended a tragedy which had culminated in the deaths of four people and the heartbreak of an ageing king. Although there was no convincing evidence that Katherine had committed adultery with either Dereham or Culpeper, prevailing attitudes to female sexuality and honour meant that it was all too easy for the interrogators to believe that she had.