Judge The Best

by G Lawrence

  We should also remember that even if these encounters were consensual, which I think they were not, were Catherine to be judged by male extra-marital or pre-marital relationships, which often were numerous, she would come up as an example of restraint. The simple fact is that women then, and even now, are judged differently to men in terms of sexuality. It stems from deep-rooted, antiquated religious and societal beliefs and misogyny. In Tudor times, women were censured, punished, and often branded for promiscuity and men were usually celebrated for engaging in it. And although change is coming, it continues to this day, sadly.

  People see Catherine as the flighty, wanton temptress of Henry’s wives, and perhaps she was a flirt, but perhaps this should be seen as another response to abuse. Perhaps she, like so many who suffer abuse early in life, learned how to exert a measure of control over men by playing into the behaviour expected of women. Maybe Catherine learnt to appease men, in an effort to protect herself.

  There is also doubt as to whether she actually committed adultery with Thomas Culpeper, or if the affair was merely romantic. Since most historians take the accusations against Anne with a pinch of salt, it seems strange we do not offer the same courtesy to Catherine Howard. Is it so hard to believe that Henry, hearing of her past relationships, might have wanted to rid himself of her? He had used an accusation of adultery against Anne, and got away with it, so why not with Catherine Howard? Perhaps his ego could not cope with his fantastical illusion of the perfect woman becoming soiled by the knowledge she did not come to his bed a virgin, and took revenge. When he heard of her pre-marital affairs, he swore he would take a sword to her himself.

  Something else that should be considered is that if Catherine was in a relationship, sexual or not, with Thomas Culpeper, this is perhaps something to be pitied rather than condemned. Culpeper had been accused of rape, but had been pardoned by the King due to Henry’s affection for him. If this is so, then Catherine, a potential survivor of childhood sexual abuse, was attracted to another abuser in adulthood. This is not uncommon. Abuse can become a cyclical monster; victims of abuse occasionally (the majority of childhood sexual abuse survivors do not become adult abusers) victimise others, or sometimes end up in abusive relationships which mirror the suffering they endured. Often this is entirely subconscious. If Catherine was attracted to Culpeper, this, as much as his looks, may have been the reason. We would not now judge a person who had suffered as she may have done, for ending up in a cycle of abuse. We would pity them, and attempt to help them. I feel Catherine Howard is one of the original ‘slut-shamed’ women of the past, and also think it is time to end this. Depending on what date is taken for her birth, Catherine was between sixteen and twenty years of age when she was executed. She was a child. This, I think is the way we should see her, rather than putting her down as the Tudor wild-child, and dismissing her.

  On the night before her death, Catherine asked that the block be brought to her rooms, so she could practice walking to it and putting her head on it, so she might die with the same courage her cousin had shown. Unlike Anne, Catherine never got a trial. She was condemned by Act of Attainder, and executed by the clumsy axe. Her family utterly abandoned her. Catherine’s death is one of the most tragic of the Tudor age, in my opinion, and remembering this young girl as nothing but a silly flirt is reductive and damaging. We should remember her death as one of Henry’s most awful crimes.

  Katherine Parr, Henry’s last wife, was too a remarkable woman. Sadly, and unfairly, called the ‘blue-stocking’ or the ‘nurse’, Katherine was a lively, witty, pretty woman with a great deal of intelligence. One of the first female authors in England, she produced books of devotion and prayer.

  Her religious beliefs were reformist and radical, and she held salon meetings where she and her women discussed Scripture and religious beliefs. Stephen Gardiner worked on a plot to destroy her, as he did not like her influence over the King.

  It came horrifyingly close to succeeding. Henry had grown tired of Katherine’s habit of debating Scripture with him, and agreed to order an investigation into her beliefs. That Katherine escaped with her life was only due to two things; luck and her own wits. The warrant for her arrest was found, dropped by Gardiner, so Katherine had forewarning of what was coming. She saved her life by taking to her bed. Her illness may have been feigned, or not. She might have played ill in order to rouse Henry’s pity, but by this time two queens had gone to their deaths. It is therefore not unfeasible that she might have truly suffered hysteria or sickness. When Henry came to her, she told him she only sought to discuss faith with him in order to distract him from his bodily pains, and learn more for herself, since he was such a wise man.

  I doubt Katherine thought this in actual fact. She submitted to her husband because she knew it was what he wanted, and it saved her. Henry bought it, and when Gardiner arrived to take her under arrest the next day, Henry hit him with his walking stick and sent him packing.

  Katherine was careful for the rest of his reign, and managed to outlive him, but she was not to end her life happily. Her marriage to Thomas Seymour, and his subsequent ‘wooing’ as it is called in many books of Princess Elizabeth, led to Katherine falling into deep depression. Today, were a forty year-old man to hunt a thirteen year old girl, his own stepdaughter, by giving presents, touching her, jumping into her bed, and, quite literally, ripping a dress from her body, we would call it grooming and abuse. Katherine’s death in childbirth was only more tragic as she felt she had lost the love she had yearned for so long, and never become a mother; something she had always wanted.

  Henry was attracted to outstanding women; women of courage, spirit and intelligence. Once married, however, he wanted them to abandon those traits and become submissive, obedient and awed by him. Those who obeyed, like Jane Seymour, Anne of Cleves and Katherine Parr, did as well as could be expected. Those who did not, Anne Boleyn, Katherine of Aragon, and Catherine Howard, were defamed, punished and sent to their deaths; two by execution, and one by insidious neglect.

  Although Henry is famous for having six wives, to his mind, he had only had two; Jane Seymour and Katherine Parr. The reasoning behind this is that all his other unions were annulled, making them non-existent in law, if never in our minds. I have no doubt it eased his conscience to believe this, but if he thought that belief would stick in the minds of his people, he was a fool.

  But Henry believed what he wanted to believe, and never was this more true than when it came to killing his wives.

  The Other Players in the Story

  Richard Page and Thomas Wyatt were set free. Cromwell secured the release of both men. Page stayed away from court for some time, but was later granted positions and became a regularly attending courtier again. Wyatt returned to court quite swiftly, but was left haunted by the executions of his friends, as may be attested from his poetry. He went back to his father’s estates, wrote heartbreaking sonnets about his experiences and fallen friends, but returned to court later, and was knighted by Henry. He spent the latter years of his life as an ambassador and spy in the court of Spain, and died in 1542. His poetry is still studied in schools and universities to this day.

  Thomas Cranmer, Archbishop of Canterbury, continued to serve Henry, and furthered the fight for reform. Henry protected him during his reign, as there were many who considered Cranmer a heretic. During Henry’s reign Cranmer published the first vernacular service, The Exhortation and Litany.

  Cranmer was successful in the reign of King Edward, too, promoting major reforms and writing the first two editions of the Book of Common Prayer. But when Queen Mary came to the throne and instigated her counter-reformation, Cranmer was arrested on charges of treason and heresy. He recanted his beliefs, but on the day of his execution withdrew them, choosing to die as a Protestant. He was burned at the stake in 1556. As the flames crept higher, he put his right hand, the one which had signed the recantation of his beliefs, into the flames, saying his unworthy hand should go first to death for its crimes
. His last words were, “Lord Jesus, receive my spirit. I see the heavens open and Jesus standing at the right hand of God.”

  Thomas Howard, Duke of Norfolk, was banished from court for a while after Anne’s fall, but continued in service later. His influence was nominal until his niece, Catherine Howard, became Queen. Her fall was disastrous for him, and he abandoned her to save himself. His son, Surrey, managed to get into trouble often at court. He was proud, and had a rather inflated notion of the importance of his family. Surrey commissioned more portraits from Holbein than anyone else, and displayed the royal arms of England along with his own. Henry was remarkably tolerant of this for many years, but it was not to last.

  In 1546, Norfolk and his son, Surrey, were arrested on charges of treason. Norfolk’s mistress, Bess Holland, as well as his daughter, Mary Howard, gave evidence against them. Surrey was executed; the last victim of Henry VIII, but Norfolk escaped, as Henry held back from signing his death warrant, and had not put quill to parchment by the time he himself died in 1547.

  Norfolk survived into Mary’s reign, when he was released from the Tower and restored to favour. That he was the uncle of the woman who had displaced her mother mattered less to Mary than his rigid Catholicism. He died in 1554.

  Thomas Cromwell was knighted, became Lord Cromwell of Wimbledon, and later the Earl of Essex. He also held the posts of Lord Privy Seal (taken from Thomas Boleyn), Vicar-General and Vice-Regent of the King in spirituals. His son married one of Jane Seymour’s sisters.

  Quickly, Cromwell became in charge of all the major administrative departments of England, enabling him to bring about sweeping reform. In 1536, Convocation laid out the King’s wishes for religion. A middle path was forged between the teachings of the Catholic Church and the radical one of reformers. The dissolution of the monasteries began in force after Anne’s death. Over the span of four years, every religious house in England, five hundred and sixty-three in all, were closed down and their monks, nuns and abbots were either pensioned off or simply sent out into the streets. Dissolution brought Henry great wealth, and the people of England great suffering. Clergymen and women became beggars, and the educational, medical and pastoral care they had offered, in differing scales, was lost.

  Some houses were re-founded, but many of them were dissolved later. All the money, lands, estates and goods from the monasteries went into Henry’s pocket, as Cromwell had intended, making him one of the richest kings in the world. One of the gemstones confiscated was a ruby donated by Louis VII for the tomb of Anne’s ancestor, Thomas Becket, at Canterbury. Henry had it set into a thumb ring.

  Many abbeys were pulled down or became fashionable estates for noblemen. Nobles had to pay for the estates, so the King did not miss out on any money.

  The Pilgrimage of Grace, a rebellion led by commoners, erupted in October 1536 in response to the closures of the monasteries and the religious changes in England. It was a huge, and extremely dangerous, uprising. Terms of peace were made in December, where Henry agreed to all the rebels’ demands, and Robert Aske, the ringleader, was invited to court. Afterwards, Aske went back north, telling everyone that Henry was on their side, but in January 1537 another rebellion broke out, and martial law was imposed on England. Two hundred rebels were executed, Aske amongst them. To celebrate, Henry dubbed forty-eight new knights. Henry emerged from this horror more powerful than ever, but if his people loved him as they had when he was a young prince, is doubtful. They had learned to fear their King.

  Cromwell became a powerful man, but he never exerted the same influence over Henry as Wolsey and Anne had. There are unsubstantiated tales that Henry hit Cromwell at times and told him that his common birth meant he was unfit to meddle with the affairs of Kings.

  In 1540, just four years after Anne’s execution, Cromwell was brought down by his enemies. On the 10th of June, whilst sat at the Council table, Cromwell was arrested by the Captain of the Guard. Norfolk and the Earl of Southampton tore Cromwell’s badge of the Order of the Garter from his chest, saying, “A traitor must not wear it.”

  In reply, Cromwell said, “This, then is my reward for faithful service.”

  There was a boat already waiting by the river, and he was taken to the Tower.

  Attained for treason and heresy, Cromwell was sentenced to death. His fall, much like his career, echoed Wolsey’s. The failure of the Cleves marriage was his true undoing, granting his enemies the opportunity to unseat him. They told Henry he supported Anabaptists, Lutherans, and had even plotted to marry the Lady Mary. His last letter to Henry survives, “Most gracious Prince, I cry for mercy, mercy, mercy!” it reads.

  But there was none to be had.

  Cromwell did not get a trial. He was condemned by Act of Attainder and died on the 28th of June 1540. Not for Cromwell was a private death granted. He died on Tower Hill, before thousands, and was given an inexperienced executioner. It took two blows to sever his head, and he would have suffered greatly. His head was set upon a spike on London Bridge.

  Henry regretted beheading his most able minister not long later, but obviously it was far too late.

  Ironically, one of Cromwell’s descendants would return the favour of beheading to another King. Oliver Cromwell, the great general and leader of the Parliamentarian cause in the English Civil War, was the great-grandson of Richard Cromwell, Cromwell’s nephew. King Charles I was beheaded after losing the war against his own Parliament, and Oliver Cromwell became Lord Protector of England. He was offered the crown, and the title of King, but turned it down.

  Stephen Gardiner continued as ambassador to France for some time, and was also sent to Germany. Returning to England, he took part in the Six Articles, which led to Anne’s bishops, Latimer and Shaxton, resigning from their posts. After Cromwell was executed, Gardiner became Chancellor of Cambridge University, and spent a great deal of time trying to make charges of heresy stick to Cranmer. He became the face of the Catholic faction at court, tried to bring down Queen Katherine Parr, but failed, and when Henry died Gardiner found himself excluded from the Council. He opposed the reforms of Edward Seymour as Lord Protector, and eventually ended up in the Tower, where he was deprived of his bishopric.

  Gardiner was released when Mary came to the throne. His bishopric was restored and he became Lord Chancellor. He sat in judgement on several bishops accused of heresy as Mary’s counter-reformation got underway, and there is some suggestion he was behind the arrest of Princess Elizabeth, and may have petitioned Mary to have her executed.

  Gardiner died at Westminster in 1555.

  Charles Brandon, Duke of Suffolk, had two sons with Katherine Willoughby, who, very sadly, both died on the same day in 1551 of the sweating sickness. Charles had no other male heirs, so the title of Duke of Suffolk was granted to his eldest daughter’s husband, Henry Grey. From Frances Brandon and Henry Grey came Lady Jane Grey, as well as her sisters, Katherine and Mary, who became famous, or infamous, in the reign of Elizabeth I due to their unsanctioned marriages.

  Charles remained in favour, and died in 1545.

  Richard Rich became Chancellor of the Court of Augmentations in 1536, and was a part of the dissolution of the monasteries. He was also a participant in the torture of Anne Askew, who was arrested in conjunction with investigations into heresy. Askew was tortured, at least in part, to provide evidence to bring down Queen Katherine Parr. Askew did not provide the evidence, and burned to death. She was the only woman to be tortured at the Tower of London.

  Rich became a Baron in 1547 and then Chancellor of England. He was a supporter of Protector Somerset (Edward Seymour) and helped to prosecute Thomas Seymour. He joined forces with the Duke of Northumberland in 1549, but Northumberland’s later coup to place Lady Jane Grey on the throne failed.

  Under Mary, Rich took an active role in the restoration of the Catholic faith, showing his ease at switching sides, and was a member of the Privy Council, but did not attend regularly. He also served Elizabeth in a minor role, and died in 1567.

/>   Chiefly remembered for his part in the death of Sir Thomas More, Rich has not done well in the pages of history. The historian Hugh Trevor-Roper called Rich a man “of whom nobody has ever spoken a good word.”

  Thomas Boleyn retained his place at court, attended the christening of Prince Edward, and helped to suppress the Pilgrimage of Grace. He died in 1539 and Henry ordered Masses to be sung for his soul. His wife, Elizabeth, died before him in 1538. There is no record of her coming to court after the executions of her children.

  Thomas is, quite rightly, not remembered with affection. He thrust one, if not two, daughters at the King, and completely abandoned Anne and George when they were arrested. He never reconciled with Mary, either. Justly, Thomas Boleyn is remembered as a self-serving social climber, happy to sacrifice his offspring for his own gain. His wife and children deserved better.

  Mary Boleyn lived in Calais for some years, returning to England later, and died at Rochford Hall in 1543. Although there are tales that Mary was reconciled with her father after her clandestine marriage, there is no evidence to support this. In fact, upon his death, Thomas Boleyn left all his property to his granddaughter, Elizabeth, leaving Mary and her children with nothing.