Catherine Howard

by Lacey Baldwin Smith

  It is easy to forget in the midst of youthful romance the stiffnecked pride of the Howard clan. Even as a maiden in her teens, Catherine Howard had developed a keen sense of the social abyss which existed between herself and Henry Manox, and now with Dereham she must have realized that her family would hardly consider him an eligible catch for a Howard lady. Love and marriage were two entirely different things, and though she might have a good deal to say about the former, it was up to the family to determine the latter. Acutely conscious of her family name, Catherine was a victim of that ingrained arrogance which assumes that a Howard lady is destined for a more illustrious future than marriage to a simple family retainer. She had learned well the code that demanded that her personal desires conform to the will and political requirements of her house. Already one might have predicted the unbending stand the Queen would later take, when questioned about her relations with Dereham. She stubbornly denied any form of marital contract between them, at a time when her life might have been saved by confessing that she had never been legally married to Henry VIII. That she slept with Dereham she admitted, but excused it as the result of youth, ignorance and frailty, and she steadfastly refused to acknowledge that she had ever accepted his pleas for matrimony.87 Such a perverse and fatal stand is in part explicable only in terms of family pride – the refusal to admit even to herself that she had not been the wife of a king.

  The parting of the two lovers came in the autumn of 1539 when the Duke’s influence finally arranged an opening at court for Catherine as one of the maids-in-waiting to the most recent of Henry’s wives. The monarch was getting ready to wed his fourth wife, the German princess of Cleves, and once again there was a scramble on the part of the noble families of the realm to place their nieces and daughters, cousins and friends, in the new queen’s household. Anne of Cleves arrived with an extensive and Germanic retinue, complete with three laundresses. She shortly learned, however, that her role was that of an English queen and not a Rhenish princess, and that she was expected to surround herself with well-connected ladies of her adopted land. Consequently the twelve to fifteen ‘Dutch maids’ were dispatched home again, and the foreign princess was given a thoroughly English household.88 Attendance upon the queen was highly coveted, and such offices as gentlewoman of the privy chamber, chamberer, cupbearer, and maid of honour were carefully parcelled out according to political influence. The positions were particularly desirable since it had long been recognized that the King had a weakness for a pretty face and might listen to a petition spoken by soft lips. The Howard clan did well in this struggle for placement, and of the six maidens about the Queen two of them, Catherine and her cousin, Mary Norris, were both of the Duke’s patronage.89

  The story of the family efforts to place Mistress Howard at court is lost, but the methods cannot have been far removed from the conniving employed by Lady Lisle in establishing her daughter Kattherine Basset, in the household of Henry’s newest wife. Lady Lisle wrote to her cousin, the Countess of Rutland, for assistance in this matter, and the countess reported, saying that the king had placed a limit upon the number of maids to be allowed at court, but if Lady Lisle would ‘make some means unto mother Lowe’ she might accomplish her purpose.90 Mrs Lowe held the title of ‘mother of the Dutch maids’, and the hint is transparent: a certain amount of judicious corruption would win Katherine Basset the precious post. Mistress Basset eagerly awaited the outcome of her mother’s intrigues, and wrote to her parent urging her to send Mother Lowe ‘my good token that she may the better remember me’.91 Anne Basset, sister to Katherine, had already attained a place at court, and the Lisle family called upon her charms to win the King’s approval of her sister’s appointment. Anne, however, was not encouraging, and reported that she had spoken to the King and he had answered that he had not decided upon the final number or selection of maids, but that they would have to ‘be fair and as he thought meet for the room’. Evidently Anne did not feel that her own efforts were sufficient, for she advised her mother to ‘send to some of your friends that are about his grace to speak for her.’92

  Once a foothold at court had been attained, nieces and daughters were expected to make the most of their favoured position. Not only was Anne Basset utilized in her mother’s dynastic ambitions, but she was expected to maintain the family name and reputation fresh in the King’s mind. ‘I have presented’, she wrote to Lady Lisle, ‘your codiniac [quince marmalade] to the King’s highness, and his grace does like it wondrous well, and gave your ladyship hearty thanks for it. And whereas I perceived by your ladyship’s letter that when the king’s highness had tasted of your codiniac, you would have me to move his grace for to send you some token of remembrance ... I durst not be so bold to move his grace for it no other wise.’ Lady Lisle’s schemes and aspirations were insatiable, and she instructed her daughter to seek the King’s favour for a business friend of her husband’s and to say a good word for a son of one of Lord Lisle’s acquaintances. The unfortunate girl was too terrified to plague the monarch with these constant requests and petitions and implored her mother to excuse her, ‘for I dare not be so bold to move the King’s grace in no such matter, for fear how his grace would take it.’93 As Henry grew older and more impatient, no one could forecast how he might react to these irritating appeals for tokens, pledges, and offices, but it was regarded as a reasonable assumption that he would receive them better from a pretty maid-in-waiting than from a member of his own generation.

  If a Basset daughter was expected to further her family’s interests, it is a fair conjecture that the Howards anticipated the same of Catherine Howard and Mary Norris. King Hal had already shown a marked preference for Howard charm and beauty, and though the family could hardly have hoped to place another daughter upon the throne of England, they could at least surround the sovereign with the fairest of their clan. Henry had pronounced, if unpredictable, tastes concerning female beauty; he had taken one Howard lady to bed as his mistress and made another his queen. If nothing else, Catherine, as well as Anne Basset, could present quince marmalade to her sovereign.

  The voice of family duty and the dazzling prospects of the court ended any hopes that Dereham may have had about marrying a Howard daughter, and it thrust Catherine into a world far removed from the Duchess’s household at Horsham or Lambeth. How Mistress Catherine viewed the new developments is not clear, for there are two versions of her leave-taking, told years later by the lovers themselves and narrated under the probing and hostile eyes of government interrogators. Dereham described a deeply emotional scene with Catherine, tears trickling down her checks, reluctantly obeying her family’s command to leave Lambeth for a career at court, and Dereham swearing that ‘he would not tarry long in the house’ and that ‘he should never live to say thou hast swerved.’ Catherine’s version is one of cold indifference – she announced that he ‘might do as he list’ for all she cared.94 Probably both stories contain an element of truth. For Catherine, the parting was but the end of an episode in her life. The Derehams of her world belonged in Lambeth as the Manoxes of her life belonged in Horsham. For her, the future held marriage, adventure and distinction. Probably tears did trickle down her face, for despite Mistress Catherine’s callousness and pride, she cannot be accused of impassivity. Moreover, girls are not prone to contemptuous dismissals when their paramours have presented them with £100 as a highly useful token of their enduring love.

  Dereham was off to the Irish coast, in persuit of the commercial activities which lay somewhere between legitimate trade and piracy, and he presented the money to Catherine with instructions to keep it should he never return. It was only after Dereham had left that the girl began to realize the gulf between their stations in life, and that their paths had actually diverged. When they met again, Catherine had been at court almost a year, and Dereham confronted her with the rumour that another man, one Thomas Culpeper, was being considered as a possible husband. Catherine coldly retorted: ‘Why should you trouble me therewith, for you k
now I will not have you.’95 As usual, however, the young maid-in-waiting was incapable of prolonged anger, and just as she had willingly walked with the lovelorn Manox in her grandmother’s orchard at Lambeth, so now she did not entirely forget Dereham. When she became queen she found room for her ex-lover as a private secretary in her regal household.

  The girl who appears dimly through these early years was a bundle of contradictory passions and desires. She was pretty and giddy, unscrupulous and passionate, easy to anger but quick to forgive, capable of intense if mercurial emotions, but always and acutely aware of her Howard descent and family obligations. At nineteen, Catherine was probably no different from other girls of gentle blood whose greatest ambition was to be maid of honour to the new Queen. As yet, the future remained mercifully hidden. The only characteristics that in any fashion differentiated her from the other maidens of the court were her vitality, her diminutive stature, her Howard connections, and above all that fatal something that caught and held the royal eye.

  The moment that Catherine left the security of Lambeth and Horsham, she entered a world of quickened tempo in which the stakes were dangerously high, the risks immeasurably greater – where the price of failure was death, and where the reward of talent was beyond calculation. She was going to court as a member of the Howard tribe in order to promote the interests of her family and make for herself an advantageous marriage. The past belonged to forgotten paramours – to Henry Manox and Francis Dereham; the future was promised to the young gallants at court, to her cousins the Norrises, the Arundels, the Culpepers, and the Leghs. Catherine stood upon the threshold of a fairytale come true; that the wonderful vision of the future should explode into a nightmare from which there was no awaking, was due to Catherine herself, for she lacked both the intuitive insight and the rational assumption to perceive that ‘slippery is the place next to kings.’ Once she faltered, Catherine would be forsaken by friends, family and society, to face alone the truth that ‘the king’s wrath is death.’

  CHAPTER 4

  London Town

  Comet-like, brilliant yet transitory, Catherine Howard blazed across the Tudor sky. The light that so fiercely illuminated the dark places of history lasted only eighteen months, but the harsh flame of her passing silhouetted and exposed the monstrous realities of her age – the cruelty and violence of London, the predatory morality of the court, the dazzling magnificence of the Crown, and the complex character of the man she married, the King himself. These four underlie the ephemeral spleandour of her life and the tragedies that followed her career at court; and here a diversion from the main flow of events leading to the fateful days of February, 1542, is necessary. Catherine was something more than the product of her family; she was also a child of her age, the product of, and in the end victimized by, those vague postulates of social and political behaviour which, though rarely articulated, nevertheless set fetters upon men’s minds and condition their actions. Catherine mirrored in her assumptions and ethical standards the violence that pervaded all levels of society, and especially the city of London and the royal court – the essential stages upon which the final acts of her life were played.

  The city that lay downstream and across the river from the suburban residences, immaculate gardens and well-kept orchards of Lambeth was sprawling, disorderly and inelegant. London was slovenly but exciting, sordid but vital, callous yet deeply religious. No industrial Hercules had as yet swept clean its Augean stables, and the combination of soap factories and tanneries, slaughterhouses and muck-heaps made the metropolis more discernible to the nose than to the eye. The city was still dominated by its three medieval landmarks – the towering Gothic spire of St Paul’s Cathedral; London Bridge with its cluster of shops, fortified towers and drawbridge; and finally that ancient bastion and symbol of royal authority, the Tower of London. The major streets were paved with sand, gravel and cobblestone, but the rabbit-warren of by-ways and alleys remained a mixture of dirt, rubble and mud. A single gutter or open channel divided the lesser roads, while a main throughway such as Westchepe and Cornhill had double drains dividing the road into three parts, with vendors’ stalls located in the middle section. The mental picture of medieval streets, narrow and tortuous, noxious and noisome, is only partly correct. London had its broad avenues, and even as late as the reign of Henry VIII, Cheapside was still a place for jousting and tournaments – after unwilling merchants had been induced to move their portable stalls to make room for mounted knights.

  The growth and life of the city were essentially accidental and random, the result of centuries of avarice and generations of thoughtless activity. Portable sheds tended to become cherished and vested rights; broad highways were transformed into narrow lanes by the encroachments of artisans anxious to sell their wares from permanent shops immediately contiguous to their homes; and roads grew higher and higher as each passing generation repaired cart ruts and mud holes with new layers of sand and stone, so that by 1595 the parish church of St Katherine was seven steps below street level. The city was constantly changing, incessantly moving, and by Catherine’s day the old terms had already lost their meaning. Ironmongers’ Lane no longer housed the iron trade; the hosiers had long since forsaken Hosier Lane to invade Cordwayner Street, while the drapers had removed to new quarters on Candlewick Street. Houses that had once been designed as modest single-floor structures, with a garret by way of sleeping accommodation, now rose three and four storeys. Their overhanging upper levels effectively obliterated both light and air, and the introduction of outside stone staircases added to the confusion of the teeming streets.

  To a casual observer, the city represented a myriad of fascinating pictures: of hustling and hurried commotion, of carts and coaches, ‘thundering as if the world ran upon wheels’, of men, women and urchins ‘in such shoals’ that posts had to be set up to protect the houses lest the jostling crowds shoulder them down. London continued to live and work in the open, and her streets were a congestion of clamorous bargaining and primitive manufacturing. Laws had to be enacted ordering tailors and rag dealers to scour their cloth in the streets only at night, and butchers and fishmongers had to be restrained from turning the roads into sinks of entrails and scales. Chapmen, ‘as if they were at leap frog’, skipped from shop to shop; tradesmen, ‘as if they were dancing galliads’, were incessantly on the move; and street scavengers and takars, priests and apprentices, criminals and saints were all ‘as busy as country attorneys’ at an assize.1 This was the rhythmic pulse of London, the throbbing heart of England.

  The city lured rich and poor, gentleman and caitiff into the ratinfested haven of twisted streets and filthy cottages. London was not simply the residence of the monarch’s perambulating court, but was also the centre of wealth, the home of fashion, the sink, and ‘the storehouse and mart’ of all Europe. ‘What can there be in any place under the heavens,’ exclaimed one loyal, ‘that is not in this noble City either to be bought or borrowed?’2 The economy of the entire southern part of the island was effectively oriented to the needs and pleasure of possibly 100,000 Londoners, and daily the roads leading into the metropolis were crowded with country folk bringing food, fuel, and fodder. The city walls afforded a sanctuary for all who sought justice or profit, labour or crime, fame or adventure. The army of lusty beggars, victims of the ever-increasing population of domesticated ruminants and farmlands turned into sheep-runs, were attracted by the hope of work, charity and larceny. Likewise, the veterans of Tudor wars found shelter from the unsympathetic arm of authority, which frowned, during peacetime, upon the activities of men trained to loot and kill.

  Scattered indiscriminately among the stalls, the taverns, the hostels, and the cottages of the town were the establishments of the rich and mighty. Nothing so amazed and baffled the foreign traveller as this tendency for wealthy merchants and even gentlemen of ancient lineage to live in the midst of squalor and commotion. Actually, appearances were deceptive, and one observer noted that the larger houses, being ‘buil
t all inward’ with their front rooms let out to shopkeepers, made but a poor impression upon those ignorant of the true magnificence that lay concealed behind shabby mercantile exteriors.3 Behind the commercial façade lay spacious halls and broad gardens – a fact which helps to explain why the city was not periodically burned to the ground. In many ways, London was closer to a provincial town than to a modern metropolis, and the picture of narrow, noisome streets hides the existence of sizeable open spaces, which acted as effective if quite accidental fire-breaks. Fear of fire hung perpetually over rich and poor alike, and as early as 1189 the city had ordained that the first floor of all houses must be constructed of stone, and that slate or baked tile should take the place of thatched roofs. The Crown and the city aldermen waged a chronic but losing battle to enforce the building and zoning laws, but the growth and pressure of population was too great, and by Elizabeth’s reign London was primarily a city of wood and plaster.4 Possibly the only advantage of such jerry-built structures was the ease with which they could be pulled down by the grappling-hooks kept by each ward in case of fire, for the basic principle of fire-control in the sixteenth century was demolition, not extinguishment.

  During the day London was a mosaic of clashing and primary colours. Hose and doublet tended to be gaudy if not over-clean; servants wore the brilliant livery of their masters; and that part of society which could neither read nor write advertised itself and its wares by armorial designs and heraldic beasts. Taverns, hostels and shops were all known by the swaying sign above the door, and the pressure for increasingly extravagant commercial selfexpression, constrained the city elders to limit the length to which such signs could extend out into the street to seven feet. In a life which for most people continued to be short and savage, the harlequin design of clothing, the clash of vivid and basic hues, and the sumptuous splendour of pageantry were all necessary antidotes to an otherwise squalid and drab existence. The court, the church, and the city itself, supplied the populace with a constant round of entertainment and diversion. Holy days tended to become holidays, with maidens dancing in the streets and young apprentices practising with shield and cudgel. A royal entry into the city was a matter of meticulous planning and magnificent celebration, and even a funeral would lure from every nook and cranny the curious housewife, the idle artisan, the accomplished cut-purse, and the chronic scalawag.