Young and Damned and Fair

by Gareth Russell

27. The period between November 1541 and July 1543, when Henry VIII was unmarried, can also tentatively be dismissed—though glaziers were not always thorough in reflecting the latest installment in the matrimonial misadventures of the royal household. For the suggestion that the Queen of Sheba might have been inspired by Anne Boleyn, see Bernard, Anne Boleyn, p. 198.

  28. Genesis, 19:15–26; Strong, Tudor and Jacobean Portraits, I, p. 43. The details in the broach are difficult to see, but it does show a figure leading individuals away from scenes of destruction. It could also represent the moment Lot’s wife turned into salt for her disobedience.

  29. Toledo Inventory 1926.57; National Portrait Gallery, Portrait 1119; “Portrait of King Henry VIII’s Fifth Wife Catherine Howard Is Found,” The Times (March 4, 2008).

  30. Oliver Cromwell was Thomas’s great-great-great-nephew, via the latter’s sister Katherine. Her son, Sir Robert Williams (d. 1544), preferred to go by the Cromwell name, a move imitated by his descendants.

  31. Lot 45 at Christie’s auction on October 27, 1961; “Portrait of Mary Tudor, Queen of France and Duchess of Suffolk” drawn by Sarah Capel-Coningsby, Countess of Essex, in Lucy Aikin, Memoirs of the Court of Queen Elizabeth (London: Stratham and Spottiswoode, 1818).

  32. Sir Lionel Cust, “A Portrait of Queen Catherine Howard, by Hans Holbein the Younger” in Burlington Magazine for Connoisseurs (July 1910), pp. 193–99.

  33. Courtesy of the Toledo Museum of Art, correspondence with the author, 2015.

  34. Strong, I, p. 43.

  35. Fraser, p. 315n; Kathy Lynn Emerson, Wives and Daughters: The Women of Sixteenth Century England (Troy, NY: Whitston, 1984), pp. 114–15, 197.

  36. Starkey et al., Lost Faces, pp. 73–75, is the best modern argument in favor of the Toledo portrait and its derivatives as depictions of Catherine Howard.

  37. Frances Grey’s appearance is not incompatible with this attribution. She is usually described as an obese lady, based on the misidentification of a portrait by Eworth of Lady Dacre and her son. This has been convincingly refuted, and Frances’s appearance is discussed, in Leanda de Lisle, The Sisters Who Would Be Queen: The Tragedy of Mary, Katherine and Lady Jane Grey (London: HarperPress, 2009), pp. 167–68.

  38. RCIN 422293.

  39. Jonathan Brown, Kings and Connoisseurs: Collecting Art in Seventeenth-Century Europe (Princeton University Press, 1995), pp. 22–23, 65. The portrait of Anne of Cleves by Holbein that now hangs in the Louvre was also part of the Arundel collection and was subsequently purchased by the French Crown in 1671.

  40. Leo Gooch, A Complete Pattern of Nobility: John, Lord Lumley (c. 1534–1609) (University of Sunderland Press, 2009), pp. 115–16; Ives, Life and Death, p. 43. The Boleyn portrait was apparently last recorded intact during a sale of John West’s (d. 1772) collection.

  41. “Catherine Howard, Queen of K. Henry VIII” in Thomas Birch, The Heads of Illustrious Persons of Great Britain (London: John and Paul Knopton, 1747).

  42. Heard and Whitaker, p. 83.

  43. Starkey et al., Lost Faces, pp. 70–73; Starkey, Six Wives, p. 651.

  44. Susan E. James, “Lady Margaret Douglas and Sir Thomas Seymour by Holbein: Two Miniatures Re-identified,” Apollo (1998), pp. 15–20.

  45. RCIN 912223; RL 12223.

  46. “Unknown Lady, c. 1540–5, aged 17,” Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, 49.7.30.

  47. It cannot be Mary Fitzroy herself due to her age. For arguments in favor of the Metropolitan portrait as a portrait of Catherine, see James and Franco, “Susanna Horenbout,” p. 124, and Conor Byrne, Katherine Howard: A New History (Lúcar, Spain: MadeGlobal Publishing, 2014), pp. 118–20.

  48. National Gallery of Ireland 1195. Katherine Knollys (née Carey) was also unlikely on the basis of her subsequent portraiture and the uncertainty of her husband’s financial situation. A case over his inheritance was not settled until 1545; Yale Center for British Art B1974.3.22.

  49. Dolman, pp. 124–26.

  50. Cal S. P. Span., VI, i, 144.

  51. For Catherine’s jewelry collection and the dates of the gifts from the King, see LP, XVI, 1389.

  52. Cal S. P. Span., VI, i, 149.

  53. Cal S. P. Span., VI, i, 149.

  54. LP, XV, 1012, grant 12.

  55. After the deposition of King Richard II in 1399, his widow, Isabelle de Valois, was regarded as a former queen consort rather than a widow, due to the nonconsummation of her marriage, and she was eventually sent home to her parents in France. Margaret of Anjou was tentatively classed as a former queen by Yorkists following her husband’s first deposition in 1461.

  56. By the time Elizabeth Woodville was received back at court, during the reign of her son-in-law Henry VII, her title and position as queen had been legally restored by act of Parliament.

  57. This account of Anne of Cleves’s visit is based on a letter from Eustace Chapuys to Maria of Austria on January 8, 1541—Cal S. P. Span., VI, i, 149.

  58. Cal S. P. Span., VI, i, 148. Chapuys had been skeptical of the need to do so, because he doubted that Henry would ever take back someone he had dismissed, but he remained vigilant during Anne’s visit, as the length of his letter about it indicates.

  59. LP, XVI, 374.

  60. LP, XV, 976.

  61. Norton, Anne of Cleves, p. 115.

  62. Cal S. P. Span., VI, i, 149.

  63. Chapuys and most of the courtiers concluded that the dogs and jewel were given to Anne by Catherine on her own initiative, rather than as part of an elaborate gift-giving orchestrated by the King, who had already separately presented Anne with an increase to her annual income.

  64. LP, XVI, 503, grant 32.

  65. Cal. S. P. Span., VI, i, 149.

  66. Cal. S. P. Span., VI, i, 151, 161.

  67. Cal S. P. Span., VI, i, 150; LP, XVI, 482, 534.

  68. State Papers, VIII, 514.

  69. LP, XVI, 517.

  70. LP, XVI, 511.

  71. LP, XVI, 481.

  72. LP, XVI, 482, 528, 529; Cal S. P. Span., VI, i, 151.

  73. LP, XVI, 649.

  13. Lent

  1. LP, XVI, 529.

  2. LP, XIV, ii, 35; XVI, 533, 590; Kaulek, 274.

  3. LP, XV, 114; Acts of the Parliament of Scotland, II, p. 368.

  4. LP, XV, 248; Jamie Cameron, James V: The Personal Rule, 1528–1542 (East Lothian, Scotland: Tuckwell Press, 1998), p. 289.

  5. LP, XVI, 534.

  6. Kenneth Muir, Life and Letters of Sir Thomas Wyatt (Liverpool University Press, 1963), p. 167.

  7. LP, XVI, 541; Cal S. P. Span., VI, i, 155.

  8. LP, XVI, 595.

  9. LP, XVI, 597.

  10. LP, XVI, 533.

  11. LP, XVI, 589; Kaulek, 273.

  12. LP, XVI, 558.

  13. Kaulek, 273.

  14. Kaulek, 274.

  15. LP, XV, 589; Kaulek, 273.

  16. Cal S. P. Span., VI, i, 204.

  17. LP, XVI, 589.

  18. The Gospel according to St. Luke, 4:1–13.

  19. LP, XVI, 597.

  20. Hoyle, Pilgrimage of Grace, p. 545; for the Stockholm Syndrome analogy, Beth von Staats, “Thomas Cranmer: Were his recantations of faith driven by Stockholm Syndrome?” in Tudor Life (November 2014), pp. 2–14.

  21. Strickland, III, pp. 127–28, seems to have been the origin of the story; for one modern repetition of it, see Denny, Katherine Howard, p. 186.

  22. Proceedings of the Privy Council, pp. 146–47; LP, XVI, 1489.

  23. Proceedings of the Privy Council, p. 146.

  24. LP, XVI, 598.

  25. LP, XVI, 606.

  26. LP, XVI, 631, 658. McGilpatrick was replaced as speaker by Thomas Cusack.

  27. Cal S. P. Span., VI, i, 134, 154; LP, XVI, 589, 607—de Marillac mistakenly concludes that the discussions about the inspections had ceased, but the tour began twelve days later.

  28. Ives, Life and Death, pp. 222–23.

  29. Ives, Life and Death, p. 219; Sir Henry C. Maxwell-Lyte, A History of Eton Col
lege (London: Macmillan & Co., 1877), p. 114.

  30. Ralph Roister Doister (c. 1553) was probably written during his time as headmaster of the Westminster School, though Tim Card, Eton Established: A History from 1440 to 1860 (London: John Murray, 2001), pp. 38–39, suggests that it may have been written earlier or give a flavor of the kind of plays encouraged at Eton in Udall’s time.

  31. A sympathetic biographer of Udall attempted to argue that the word “buggery” was mistranslated in the publication of the Privy Council records in the nineteenth century and that the original read “burglary.” This is untrue. Cf. William L. Edgerton, Nicholas Udall (New York: Twayne Publishers, 1965), pp. 37–40.

  32. Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, 25.205.

  33. MacCulloch, Thomas Cranmer, p. 354.

  34. Redworth, p. 82n.

  35. For the Udall-Cheney affair at Eton, the relevant pieces of evidence are Proceedings of the Privy Council, VII, pp. 152–58; LP, XII, i, 1209; Bindoff, I, pp. 12, 663; Sir Henry Ellis (ed.), Original Letters of Eminent Literary Men of the Sixteenth, Seventeenth, and Eighteenth Centuries (London: Camden Society, 1843), pp. 2–7; Maxwell-Lyte, pp. 114–16, 143–44; Sir Wasey Sterry, The Eton College Register, 1441–1698 (Eton, England: Spottiswoode, Ballantyne & Co., 1943), pp. 70, 179.

  36. LP, XVI, 804.

  37. Wriothesley, Chronicle, I, p. 124; Cal S. P. Span., VI, i, 155.

  38. LP, II, 3204; E. W. Ives, “A Frenchman at the Court of Anne Boleyn” in History Today (1998), pp. 21–26.

  39. LP, XVI, 678, grant 41.

  40. State Papers, VIII, 544 (LP, XVI, 1660); Cal S. P. Span., VI, i, 155; Brigden, Thomas Wyatt, p. 547.

  41. Brigden, Thomas Wyatt, pp. 515–66.

  42. LP, XVI, 517.

  43. Brigden, Thomas Wyatt, p. 547. On the subject of John Leigh, Wyatt may ironically have had a hand in setting up Leigh’s arrest before he himself was taken.

  44. Childs, p. 167.

  45. Brigden, Thomas Wyatt, pp. 92–93.

  46. Cal S. P. Span., VI, i, 155.

  47. State Papers, VIII, p. 544.

  48. LP, XVI, 650 (2).

  49. LP, XIV, ii, 71.

  14. “For they will look upon you”

  1. Kaulek, 289. It does not seem as if Henry told de Marillac personally.

  2. The jousts for Elizabeth Woodville’s coronation in 1465 were the result of months of preparation by the organizers and contestants; Laynesmith, p. 109.

  3. Inventory, I, 55, 57, 112–55, 1096–7.

  4. In France, the precedent for the king’s mother to serve as regent during her son’s minority was more established—approximately a century on either side of Catherine Howard’s life, the regency in France was held by Louise of Savoy, Catherine de Medici, Marie de Medici, and Anne of Austria. However, a dowager queen had never successfully served as regent for her son in England—an attempt to do so by Elizabeth Woodville in 1483 ended in disaster, and previous queens, such as the mothers of Henry III, Richard II, and Henry VI, had all been sidelined in favor of a council of guardians.

  5. LP, XVI, 774.

  6. Inventory, II, p. 49.

  7. The Gospel according to Saint Luke, 22:19–20.

  8. The Gospel according to Saint Matthew, 25:34–40; the Book of Tobias, sometimes known as the Book of Tobit, 1:19–20 and 2:6–9.

  9. Richard Rex, Henry VIII and the English Reformation (London: Macmillan Press, 1993), pp. 173–74. A contemporary defense of Henry’s actions on the grounds that it mirrored Old Testament kings, such as Hezekiah, can be found in Thomas, p. 40. For the biblical precedent of Jehoshaphat, see 1 Kings 22:46. In the Old Testament, Jehoshaphat’s actions specifically pertain to expelling male prostitutes associated with worship in various pagan cults. The theory that the Buggery Act may have been partly inspired by this relies also on the act’s alleged purpose in intimidating English monks on the eve of the Dissolution.

  10. 4 Kings 12:18 (Douay-Rheims translation); 2 Kings 12:18 (the King James Version).

  11. Rex, p. 172.

  12. The Gospel according to Saint Luke 1:27; Genesis 3:15.

  13. The Gospel according to Saint Matthew 26:14–29.

  14. The Gospel according to Saint John 13:34.

  15. Edward I’s grandfather, King John, performed the ceremony twice, in 1210 and 1213, and fragmentary evidence survives about Henry III’s participation in the ritual, which he seems to have conducted on several dates throughout the year. It was in the reign of the latter’s son, Edward I, that it became a more regular occurrence for English kings. See Virginia A. Cole, “Ritual Charity and Royal Children in Thirteenth-Century England” in Joëlle Rollo-Koster (ed.), Medieval and Early Modern Ritual: Formalized Behavior in Europe, China and Japan (Leiden, Netherlands: Brill, 2002), pp. 228–43.

  16. LP, XVI, 1488 (183b).

  17. Inventory, I, 9513, 9514, 9515.

  18. Cal S. P. Span., VI, i, 158.

  19. Inventory, I, 9543.

  20. Henry VII visited the north of England after his succession. Elizabeth of York had spent time residing in Lancashire and Yorkshire before becoming queen.

  21. LP, XVI, 733; Cal S. P. Span., VI, i, 156.

  22. SP 1/167, f. 148.

  23. Catherine’s conversations with Culpepper were very different in setting, tone, and dynamic to her more fraught dealings with Francis Dereham. A hat, however dashing, did not constitute a down payment for hush money. Equally, her request that he hide it undercuts recent arguments that, at this stage, their relationship was purely platonic.

  24. Psalm 21:19 in the Douay-Rheims translation; Psalm 22:18 in the King James version; the Gospel according to Saint Matthew 27:35.

  25. For Easter, Eamon Duffy, The Stripping of the Altars, second edition (New Haven and London: Yale University Press), pp. 22–37. For the cramp rings ceremony, Marc Bloch, The Royal Touch: Sacred Monarchy and Scrofula in England and France (McGill-Queen’s University Press, 1973), pp. 105–6.

  26. Psalm 87:5 in the Douay-Rheims translations of the Bible; Psalm 88:4 in the King James version.

  27. Fox, Jane Boleyn, pp. 8, 333.

  28. Original Letters, III, iii, 278.

  29. Fox, Jane Boleyn, pp. 120–21, suggests that she may also have partially or fully paid for William Foster, the scholar’s, education at Eton.

  30. LP, IV, 1939.

  31. LP, V, 1109; VIII, 263.

  32. LP, VII, 1257.

  33. Thurley, pp. 44–45.

  34. Fox, Jane Boleyn, pp. 315–26.

  35. Fox, Jane Boleyn, pp. 191–92; Clare Cherry and Claire Ridgway, George Boleyn: Tudor Poet, Courtier and Diplomat (Lúcar, Spain: MadeGlobal 2014), pp. 232–33.

  36. Original Letters, I, ii, 124.

  37. Original Letters, III, iii, 265.

  38. Warnicke, The Marrying of Anne of Cleves, pp. 233–34.

  39. Smith, A Tudor Tragedy, p. 154; Fox, Jane Boleyn, pp. 120, 329.

  40. LP, X, 908.

  41. LP, XVI, 1366.

  42. LP, XIV, I, 927; XV, 217; XVI, 824; Proceedings of the Privy Council, VII, pp. 282–83. The rumors that the Bridgewaters might reunite were reported in February of the previous year, but there was never a formal reconciliation between them. The documents are clear that both of Lady Bridgewater’s sons were living with the Dowager, but they do not specify if her daughter Anne was with the Dowager or still residing with her mother.

  43. LP, XVI, 678, grant 38.

  44. LP, XVI, 751.

  45. LP, XVI, 878, grant 49.

  46. Cal S. P. Span., VI, i, 204.

  47. Two of Henry’s previous wives, Katherine of Aragon in 1510 and Anne Boleyn in 1534, had been accused of concocting pregnancies—see Starkey, Six Wives, pp. 116–18; Tremlett, pp. 168–71; Ives, Life and Death, pp. 191–92; Warnicke, Rise and Fall, pp. 173–78. Cf. Bernard, Anne Boleyn, pp. 74–76.

  48. Cameron, p. 265, gives it as Arthur.

  49. LP, XVI, 832.

  50. LP, XVI, 852.

  51. LP, XVI, 832; Rosalind K. Marsh
all, Mary of Guise (London: Collins, 1977), pp. 87–88.

  52. LP, XVI, 573.

  53. LP, XVI, 804.

  54. LP, XVI, 816.

  55. Starkey, Six Wives, p. 602; Hilton, Elizabeth I, pp. 43–4.

  56. LP, XIV, ii, 697.

  57. Starkey, Elizabeth, pp. 25–26.

  58. LP, XVI, 804.

  59. Kaulek, 302.

  60. Mikhaila and Malcolm-Davies, pp. 16–18.

  61. Jennifer Loach, Edward VI (Yale University Press, 1999), p. 12.

  62. A variety of theories have been put forward on the causes of Edward VI’s death—Loach, pp. 160–62, suggests renal failure; Frederick Holmes, Grace Holmes, and Julia McMorrough, “The Death of Young King Edward VI” in New England Journal of Medicine (2001) argue for tuberculosis; Linda Porter, Mary Tudor: The First Queen (London: Piatkus, 2009), pp. 184–86, suggests a bacterial pulmonary infection that left Edward defenseless against secondary infections.

  63. Chris Skidmore, Edward VI: The Lost King of England (London: Weidenfield & Nicolson, 2007), p. 28.

  64. The others were Richard I in 1189, Edward II in 1307, and Henry V in 1413.

  65. Cal S. P. Span., VI, i, 161.

  66. Ibid.

  67. LP, XVI, 1122.

  68. Thomas, p. 75.

  69. LP, XVI, 111.

  70. Cal S. P. Span., VI, i, 163.

  71. LP, XVI, 823.

  72. Ibid.

  73. Thomas, p. 58.

  74. Steven J. Gunn, Early Tudor Government, 1485–1558 (London: Macmillan Press, 1995), pp. 194–95; Bernard, Anne Boleyn, p. 184; Starkey, Six Wives, pp. 584–85.

  75. The Spanish Chronicle, p. 77.

  76. LP, XVI, 1332.

  77. LP, V, 276.

  78. HMC Bath, II, pp. 9–10.

  15. The Errands of Morris and Webb

  1. LP, XIII, ii, 855.

  2. This means that the countess did not die in Tower Green, though her name is included in the memorial plaque there. Both Eustace Chapuys and the court herald Charles Wriothesley record that she was taken out of the Tower, which means that the site of Lady Salisbury’s death is probably now covered by the A100 road.

  3. LP, I, i, 81.

  4. For contemporary descriptions of the execution, see Cal S. P. Span., VI, i, 166, and Wriothesley, Chronicle, I, p. 124. For the site of East Smithfield, Colin Buchanan et al., Tower of London Local Setting Study (Bristol, England: Land Use Consultants, 2010), pp. 20–21.