Catherine Howard

by Lacey Baldwin Smith

  It may be charitable to excuse Mistress Catherine’s rather wanton activities as the fault of her heartless step-grandmother, who forced her ‘to associate with her waiting-women’ and ‘compelled’ her to sleep in communal sleeping apartments with ‘persons of the most abandoned description’ who took ‘fiendish delight in perverting the principles and debasing the mind of the nobly-born damsel who was thrown into the sphere of their polluting influence’.23 There are only two things wrong with this touching thesis. First, Catherine herself was regarded as a pseudo-servant, or rather an apprentice learning the secret of good manners and accomplishments. It was important for children to know that they were expected to ‘rise when their elders and betters’ entered the room, stand while their superiors sat, and curtsy to the Duchess ‘in token of humility and subjection’. These were considered to be social graces best inculcated by treating children as indentured domestics and keeping them from idleness.24 Menials were customarily viewed as being part of the family, and there tended to be little distinction between those of gentle and humble birth. Anyone who served in the household appeared on the account books as servants, and this applied to the chaplain, the chamberlain, and the secretary, as well as to the scullery urchin. It made little difference that more often than not, the dowager’s ladiesin- waiting were as well-born as their mistress and that her steward might be a close relative. As for the children, they were expected to help their elders’ dress, to wait at table and to fetch and carry on command, and when they failed in their social and educational duties they were beaten with as much vigour as any village maid.

  Secondly, on closer inspection, Catherine appears to have been no better born than those ‘abandoned persons’ who presumably took such ‘fiendish delight’ in systematically corrupting her innocent mind. Her brothers and sisters were all under the Dowager’s care at various times, and the children of her aunt, the Countess of Bridgewater, were her constant associates.25 It emerges that her bedmates, those immoral temptresses, were her cousins, for both Katherine and Malyn Tylney were relatives of the Duchess, while Dorothy Baskerville, Margaret Benet, and Alice Restwold were of lesser but eminently respectable landed stock. As for her paramours, one was a neighbour, the other a distant kinsman. Henry Manox, who taught her to play on the virginal, and possibly a good deal else, came from a neighbouring gentry family, and Francis Dereham was a cousin. Both gentlemen formed part of the Howard ménage – the former as music teacher to the Howard children, and the latter as one of the Duke’s pensioners and later as a member of the Dowager’s service at Lambeth.26 Even that ‘drab’ Elizabeth Holland, who carried the doubtful title of laundress and was for years the Duke’s mistress, was sister to the Duke’s secretary and related to Lord Hussey of Sleaford.27

  The effect of sending children away from home at an early age was fatal to any sense of family solidarity, since the progeny of the upper classes might live to manhood without laying eyes on their parents, and the relationship between father and son was often one of bitter enmity and rivalry. Even when the educational process took place in the home, the pedagogical maxim of the age was spare the rod and spoil the child. Not for nothing did one mother mention as a normal occurrence that her daughter had been beaten ‘twice in one day and her head broken in two or three places’.28 Children were generally regarded as being important financial assets, and it was in no way remarkable that Sir John Fastolf sold the marriage rights of his stepson to Sir William Gascoigne for 500 marks and then bought them back again.29 In a very real sense, children were considered as being the goods and possessions of their parents, to be disposed of as their elders saw fit. Romance and courtly love may have been suitable for chivalric tales of the past, but neither was in the least concerned with marriage. Throughout the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, society was generally convinced that love marriages led only to trouble, and one lady quite honestly asked whether there was ‘any thing thought so indiscreet, or that makes one more contemptible’ than marrying for love.30 Land and financial settlements were the considerations at stake, and slight value was placed upon the wishes or sentiments of the bride or bridegroom. The Duke of Norfolk’s daughter was married at fourteen to a lad of fifteen; the Duke of Suffolk’s brother, a boy of eighteen, was espoused to a widow of fifty; and young Master Robert Barre, aged three, had to be lured with an apple to get him into the church, to celebrate his engagement to Elizabeth Rogerson.31

  Child marriages were the constant custom of the age, and most of Catherine’s relatives were married young. Her mother, at the age of twelve, had taken as her first husband a man who belonged to a previous generation;32 and the Earl of Surrey had his marriage arranged for him at thirteen and was betrothed by the age of fourteen.33 It is true that this was beginning to exceed the legal limits, since the law prohibited the marriage of boys under fourteen, and legally the ‘flower of a female’s age’ was twelve.34 But as Bishop Latimer complained, a society that regarded marriage primarily as the joining of ‘lands to lands, and possessions to possessions’ paid scant heed to either the physiological or psychological factors involved.35 When it was rumoured that Sir Brian Stapleton had been offered 1,200 marks in ready gold and land worth 100 marks for the hand of his son and heir ‘and yet he trusteth to have more’,36 one could hardly expect anxious parents to have waited until their progeny reached the legal age. This, of course, did not necessarily mean that girls of twelve, or even the ‘forward virgins’ of fourteen, were exposed to the doubtful care of their spouses, and they often lived at home until eighteen lest they endanger themselves through childbearing. As far as the parents were concerned, the essential aspect of wedlock had been established, for once the marriage settlement was signed then the estates involved were fixed and settled by law. When we come to Catherine Howard’s youthful escapades and her marriage to a sovereign, it might be well to remember how the Howards regarded the subject of marriage and the contemporary view: the girl ‘who strikes the fire of full fourteen, today [is] ripe for a husband.’

  The education and training of a young lady or gentleman of good birth was geared to these considerations. ‘A good housewife is a great patrimony’, and the honest wife, who also had an honest income of her own, was even more highly treasured. It was not necessary that a young lady be accomplished in the arts.37 That both Queen Elizabeth and Queen Mary were highly educated ladies is the royal exception, and not the common rule. Catherine Howard had few intellectual accomplishments, and it was considered unnecessary that she should. It was a ‘gentleman’s calling to be able to blow the horn, to hunt and hawk’, and to leave learning to the ‘clodhoppers’ who made scholarship a substitute for birth.38 For a young gentlewoman, it sufficed if she was of honest, humble and of a wifely disposition. As late as 1598, Robert Cleaver could write that parents had only four duties that they owed their children – to instruct them in the fear of God, to instil in them a love of virtue and a hatred of vice, to keep them from idleness, and (the most important of all ) to rear them to acknowledge the strict authority of the father, whose judgment must be obeyed at all times, especially in matters of matrimony.39 It was this last duty that was most often discussed, and Roger Ascham bewailed that ‘our time is so far from that old discipline and obedience’ that not only young gentlemen but even girls dared to marry ‘where they list and how they list’ without respect to ‘father, mother, God, good order and all’.40

  Though Ascham’s condemnation may have been justified as far as court circles were concerned, the country families still maintained that the ‘principal commendation in a woman [is] to be able to govern and direct her household, to look to her house and family’, and ‘to know the force of her kitchen’.41 It was to learn such honest and wifely duties that Catherine was sent to live with her stepgrandmother. The finer accomplishments of life were not needed to enhance her eligibility as the wife of some country squire within the Howard circle, or some strategic courtier who might be useful to the family interests. No one, least of all Catherine,
had any notion that she would be consulted when the time for connubial selection arrived, or that a Howard daughter would be thoughtlessly thrown away on just any hopeful aspirant to her hand.

  For Catherine and the other maids of the Dowager’s household, it was sufficient if they learned obedience and the inner mysteries of domestic organization. It is magnificently ironic that it should have been the Duchess’s efforts to bring a touch of refinement into her granddaughter’s life that resulted in the first of those fatal acts for which Catherine eventually paid with her life. What began as playing on the virginal and the lute under the tender care of Mr Henry Manox ended in clandestine meetings in the dark places under the chapel stairs. In the other, if less dangerous arts, Catherine seems to have been neither an especially apt nor a well-trained pupil, but she was certainly not the illiterate and neglected damsel of the history books. She was as well-educated as most of the ladies of the period, and could both read and write, which is more than can be said for other ladies-in-waiting at Henry’s court.42

  Catherine, however, never transcended the narrow educational and intellectual horizons of her kind. Reared under the strict and conservative influence of the old Duchess, she was orthodox in religion and naively credulous. She learned her paternosters, but was quite content to leave matters of theology and interpretation to those who knew better, happily mixing ceremonial punctiliousness with a firm belief in supernatural omens and signs. Catherine’s world was crowded with blue crosses above the moon, flaming horseheads and swords, and church steeples demolished by the Devil’s hand.43 It mattered little, however, whether this Howard girl could write courtly love sonnets, appreciate theological niceties, or even sign her name, for when the moment came, Henry was not looking for a second Anne Boleyn who could match his own amorous love-letters. With Catherine he was seeking a less vicarious experience.

  Born into a family of ten children, reared in the peripatetic household of a father who constantly sponged on both friend and relation, and accustomed to the rough and ready existence of sixteenth-century childhood, Catherine was probably prepared for almost everything that she might encounter at the Duchess’s country house at Horsham – except perhaps its size. Agnes, Dowager Duchess of Norfolk, who presided over the manors of Horsham and Chesworth in Sussex44 and the school for young relatives in her household, was herself something of an anachronism. Stiff-necked, testy and old-fashioned, she harkened back to the Wars of the Roses and the irresponsible anarchy of the old nobility. Rigidly religious, balancing the sins of her youth with a hair-shirt in the twilight of her life, the old Dowager was under it all a kind-hearted if shorttempered matriarch. She had most of the strength and shortcomings of her generation. She rarely went to court except on business or command, and she must have represented almost everything that Henry and the new men of the age most disliked. Her acid tongue, her stubborn defence of Henry’s first wife, Catherine of Aragon, her studied disregard for the refinements of high society, and her total disdain for courtly etiquette must have made her distinctly unpopular at court. But under this starched and feudal façade lay both shrewdness and knowledge of the ways of the world, and despite her outward religious orthodoxy, there remained a good deal of amused toleration of the antics and escapades of youth. Officially frowning upon what went on in her ‘maidens’ chambers’ at night, the Dowager probably knew a good deal more about such ‘goingson’ than Catherine and her companions gave her credit for. She knew full well where a certain Mr Francis Dereham was prone to spend his evenings, and more than once she was heard to exclaim: ‘I warrant you if you seek him in Catherine Howard’s chamber ye shall find him there.’45 All she required was that the younger generation should not flaunt their love-affairs in her face, and when she stumbled upon Catherine and Dereham kissing in the corridor she flew into a rage, boxed her granddaughter’s ears and upbraided Dercham for his liberties. Yet for all the Duchess’s vinegary words and violent fashions, she seems to have liked the full-blooded adventurer, and when Catherine finally grew weary of Dereham’s attentions she found a perverse pleasure in reminding Mistress Howard of her early fascination.46

  Life was too short and too complex for her to be burdened with the morals of her household, and all she asked was that the lusty youth conform to outward appearances. Her time was filled with the multitude of tasks related to the running of a vast and disorganized estate. As one of the richest widows in the realm, she was chronically being hounded by poor relations, and her son, Lord William, was constantly plaguing her for money and an advance upon his inheritance. In an age when banking facilities were almost non-existent, the old lady resorted to the proverbial sock (she confessed in later life that she had some £800 in cash hidden about the house), and rapidly acquired a reputation for being something of a miser.47 But the care of money was not her only consideration. In the paternalistic society of the sixteenth century, her responsibilities reached out into the surrounding countryside, where she cared for her sick neighbours and prescribed ‘treacle and water imperial’ as a sure cure for all their ailments. The Duchess was evidently something of an apothecary, for she suggested to Cardinal Wolsey that ‘vinegar, wormwood, rosewater and crumbs of brown bread is very good and comfortable to put in a linen cloth to smell unto your nose.’48 This was her remedy for the various noxious odours that pervaded the Tudor world.

  Most important and time-consuming of all was the management of her own household. How many people were involved in such an organization it is impossible to say, and very likely the old lady of Norfolk was not sure herself. Considering the size of other noble establishments, there may have been well over a hundred persons, ranging in a carefully graduated hierarchy from the dirty and naked scullery-boys who scrubbed the cauldrons in the great kitchen to the most important household officials, such as the steward, the chamberlain and the cellarer. Whether the Dowager had a house at both the manors of Horsham and Chesworth is not clear, but the Chesworth house itself consisted of five great rooms below stairs – not counting such ‘necessary rooms’ as the kitchen, pantry, and storage places – and five rooms upstairs, plus a garret. Then there were the malt-house, the barn, the stable, the cow barn, and four acres of orchards and gardens plus ‘divers fish ponds’. At one time there had evidently been a moat, while the park of 223 acres harboured a herd of 100 deer.49 Like other large estates, Horsham and Chesworth were self-sustaining organizations, splitting their own wood for the insatiable Tudor fireplaces, carding their own flax, weaving their own clothes, and producing food for guests and retainers. Hams had to be smoked, bacon cured, vegetables preserved, fruit stored, ale brewed, bread baked, for the whole household, and goose-down collected for the mistress’s bed. Agnes Howard was in charge of all this, and though she had her steward, her secretary, and her cellarer to assist her, the ultimate responsibility for the establishment rested on her shoulders.

  It was into such a household that Catherine, aged approximately ten, entered, so as to become versed ‘in the worthy knowledges which do belong to her vocation’ – that of a prospective housewife to a Tudor gentleman.50 Life at Horsham must have been the epitome of luxurious discomfort. Early Tudor mansions were cold, damp, and dirty. The stone floors of the draughty halls remained bare, except for rushes that were rarely changed as often as they should have been, and the cavernous fireplaces did little to cut the chill. The sanitary facilities were both primitive and infrequent, and at best a house the size of the Dowager’s would boast but a single ‘house of easement’ which was usually in cellar or the corner of the courtyard; occasionally, however, they were supplied with double seats. Chamber-pots were usually furnished in the various ‘privy chambers’, and their contents were disposed of with careless and dangerous abandon.

  Such an establishment was not only labyrinthine and selfsufficient, it was also crowded and intimate to a degree unimaginable to modern society. Privacy was almost unknown; eating was a formal and communal function; and not even the Duchess herself slept alone. The sixteenth centur
y was not particular where or with whom it slept, and the usual arrangement consisted of dormitories divided between men and women. Only in the most elevated and distinguished cases did married couples sleep together, and more often than not two couples shared the same bed. It is dillicult to conceive of a society in which the bed was a household luxury, where chairs were scarce and kings ate at collapsible trestle tables. In the early part of the century, even in the homes of the rich and powerful, linen was a rarity, and a down mattress or a feather bed was a possession worthy of mention in one’s last will and testament. Probably only the Duchess and a few honoured visitors were esteemed deserving of such luxury. For Catherine and her dormitory-mates a straw mattress and dagswain blanket with ‘a good round log under their heads’ sufficed, while pillows were kept for women in childbirth.51 Moreover, society made little distinction in assigning beds, and where children were concerned, servants and noble progeny were indiscriminately mingled.

  So far the life of Catherine Howard in Sussex has been merely a historical reconstruction – the surroundings of any girl given a similar position in society. Historical reality commences in the year 1536 when Catherine had reached the ‘fire of full fourteen’ and Henry Manox, the son of the Duchess’s neighbour, George Manox, was summoned to Horsham to instruct the children of the house in the art of playing the virginal and the lute.52 Henry Manox, like so many others of the Dowager’s entourage, occupied a tenuous position somewhere between that of a servant and a gentleman; nor was he the only member of his family to be in service at Horsham, since his cousin, Edward Waldgrave, was one of the gentlemen-inwaiting to the old lady of Norfolk. He may have been something of a cad, but he certainly was not the systematic corrupter of innocent youth portrayed by some historians. In a society which left children to their own devices behind the back stairs, it is not surprising that Manox flirted with his pretty, auburn-haired pupil, who seems to have shown no sign that she in any way resented his advances or was ignorant of his designs.