Henry VIII's Last Love: The Extraordinary Life of Katherine Willoughby, Lady-in-Waiting to the Tudors

by David Baldwin

  The Willoughbys were an old peerage family with a long tradition of service – and occasionally opposition – to the Crown. Their ancestor Ralph had forfeited his lands for his part in the baronial rebellion against King John, but William, the fifth Baron Willoughby, became a trusted royal servant after helping Henry Bolingbroke depose Richard II in 1399 (see Table 2). His eldest son Robert, the sixth baron, fought at Agincourt and had a distinguished career as a soldier and administrator; but when he died in 1452 he left an only daughter, Joan. Joan’s marriage to Richard, son and heir of Lionel, Lord Welles, temporarily united the baronies of Welles and Willoughby, and their daughter, another Joan, brought the titles to her husband Richard, younger brother of William, Lord Hastings. Richard Hastings’s position was ambiguous after the House of York was defeated in 1485, and although he continued to style himself Lord Willoughby his claim was contested by his wife’s kinsman Sir Christopher, the descendant of a younger son of the fifth baron. Sir Christopher predeceased Richard Hastings, but his son William, Katherine’s father, became the undisputed Lord Willoughby in 1503.1

  The period from 1455 to 1485 was the era of the Wars of the Roses, and the Willoughby and Welles families frequently found themselves on the wrong side of the argument. Lionel, Lord Welles, was slain at Towton in 1461, and ten years later his son Richard, Lord Welles and Willoughby, was executed, together with his son Sir Robert, for their part in the Lincolnshire rebellion against Edward IV. After the death of Robert, sixth Lord Willoughby, in 1452 his widow, Maud Stanhope, married Sir Thomas Neville who was killed with the Duke of York at Wakefield, and then wed, as her third husband, Sir Gervase Clifton, who was executed after the Battle of Tewkesbury in 1471. By this time she had apparently had enough of matrimony, and stayed single for the remaining twenty-six years of her life.

  The wars were over when Katherine’s father succeeded to the barony at the turn of the century, and he became one of Henry VII’s most committed supporters. Invited to formally welcome Catherine of Aragon to England in November 1501, he later escorted Princess Margaret to York when she wed James IV of Scotland, and was appointed Master of the Hart Hounds in July 1508. He was frequently employed in campaigns against the French in the young Henry VIII’s reign, and part of his reward was to make two conspicuously good marriages. His first wife, Mary, sister of John Lord Hussey, died young, and he wed Maria (Mary) de Salinas, one of Queen Catherine’s Spanish ladies-in-waiting, in June 1516. The king attended the wedding (where he offered 6s 8d), granted the couple the reversion of Grimsthorpe and other Lincolnshire manors forfeited to the Crown by Francis Lovel, Richard III’s friend and chamberlain, and named one of his new ships the Mary Willoughby.

  Maria was one of only two fellow Spaniards whose services the queen retained on her marriage to King Henry, and the Spanish ambassador complained bitterly that she was encouraging her mistress to put England’s interests before those of her father King Ferdinand. ‘The few Spaniards who are still in her household,’ he wrote, ‘prefer to be friends of the English, and neglect their duties as subjects of the King of Spain. The worst influence on the queen is exercised by Dona Maria de Salinas, whom she loves more than any other mortal.’2 He may have exaggerated, but Catherine and Maria were undoubtedly close.

  Henry VIII had become king on his father’s death in 1509, but might never have done so if his elder brother Arthur, Catherine of Aragon’s first husband, had not died unexpectedly in 1502. Good-looking and athletic, he wed Catherine himself shortly after his accession, and for many years they seemed ideally suited. He was deservedly popular, but his ruthlessness, his readiness to send Yorkists and other descendants of Edward III to the block, soon manifested itself. Edmund de la Pole, Earl of Suffolk, executed in 1513, and Edward Stafford, Duke of Buckingham, beheaded in 1521, were only the first of a long line of rival claimants who were destined to be eliminated during the years he ruled England. Parliament had acquired certain powers – most notably the right to vote taxation – but the king was still his own prime minister and pursued his own foreign policy. He was the fount of all political authority, and in the next decade would assume control over religious matters too.

  Katherine grew up in a country that, in many ways, still resembled the England of the Middle Ages, but was experiencing some profound if subtle changes. Printed books, which had first become available at the end of the fifteenth century, were being produced in ever larger quantities and made knowledge accessible to everyone who could read. Already there were demands for an English Bible, and soon anyone with a little education would be able to challenge the teachings of the Church. The great Gothic period of church building succumbed to the Reformation after 1530, and nobles and gentlemen who no longer needed the protection of castles and moated houses began to make their homes more impressive and comfortable. The common living space of the great hall was partitioned, and high, draughty ceilings were lowered to create new private rooms at first-floor level. Wood panelling and hanging tapestries countered the cold of stone or brickwork, but glass remained expensive and large sheets could be manufactured only with difficulty. It is likely that small windows made many of the rooms Katherine occupied dim and airless, and that she seldom missed an opportunity to exchange the confines of the house for the garden. Once, all land attached to a dwelling would have been used for growing herbs and fruit and for other utilitarian purposes, but the rich were now creating pleasure gardens featuring geometric flowerbeds and low hedges. It was all part of what they believed was a more cultivated, and more ‘civilised’, way of life.

  Katherine would have readily appreciated these innovations, but other changes affecting society would only become apparent later. The Black Death and other disasters had reduced the population of England and Wales from somewhere between four and five million to about two million by the middle of the fifteenth century and recovery was slow. England alone still had only an estimated two and a quarter million inhabitants by 1525, but growth accelerated rapidly thereafter, reaching perhaps two and three-quarter million by 1541. The increased demand benefited those able to meet it, but for others the inevitable speculation in land and foodstuffs led to inflation, unemployment, poverty, vagrancy and urban squalor. If a basket of consumables cost 100 in the period 1451–75, it had risen to 111 in 1519–20 (the year of Katherine’s birth), and to a staggering 148 by the end of the next decade. Modern governments often have little success in tackling this problem, and their Tudor counterparts fared no better. Henry VIII would not have thought that trying to control economic – or demographic and social – changes formed any part of his responsibilities towards his subjects. They were simply ‘acts of God’.3

  Lord and Lady Willoughby’s obligations to the king and queen meant that they were only periodically at home as a family, and they would always have seemed more distant to little Katherine than the nurses and teachers who were responsible for her well-being and whom she saw every day. No precise evidence for this, the earliest phase of her life, has come down to us, but her education and upbringing would have mirrored the routines of other girls whose parents moved in the same social circles. Her day would have begun with mass or formal prayers at dawn followed by breakfast – consisting of bread, eggs and sometimes mutton washed down with small beer or ale. She would then have gone to her studies, reading and writing, perhaps memorising Latin passages from the Bible, and acquiring the ability to converse with other members of polite society in French, until dinner, the main meal of the day, was served between eleven and one. After dinner there would be more pleasant lessons, learning to ride a horse, to dance, to sew, to play a musical instrument and, most importantly, good manners. Supper would have been at about five or six according to the season, and would have been followed by games and recreation before more prayers and bed. Discipline could be harsh – Katherine would later order ‘byrche for roddes’ to chastise her own children4 – and privacy was almost non-existent. She would have become sexually aware long before the more sheltered children of some
later eras.

  Katherine’s father died in October 1526, some six months after his daughter’s seventh birthday. The cause of death is unknown, but if the assumption by The Complete Peerage that he was ‘probably of age’ (i.e. twenty-one) by November 1497 is accurate he would have been at least fifty, a good lifespan for that period. Her mourning was perhaps more formal than personal, but the fact that she was now an heiress and a ward of the Crown was bound to affect her future. Lord Willoughby’s closest surviving male relative was his brother Sir Christopher Willoughby, and Sir Christopher now claimed that the promises made to him before Katherine’s birth entitled him to some of the family properties.5 The result was an acrimonious dispute in which Sir Christopher asserted his right to the lands in the courts of Chancery and Star Chamber while simultaneously occupying Eresby and threatening to seize other manors. Lady Willoughby petitioned Queen Catherine and took the precaution of removing certain valuables from Parham; but an agreement of sorts was reached only after Charles Brandon, Duke of Suffolk, bought Katherine’s wardship from King Henry (for £2,266 13s 4d) in March 1528. Brandon acted to protect what were now his – as well as Katherine’s – interests, and although Sir Christopher was allowed to keep certain properties he was denied others. He believed that his niece and her allies had cheated him, and ill feeling lingered for many years.

  Charles Brandon was the son of Sir William Brandon, the knight killed bearing Henry VII’s standard at the Battle of Bosworth, and owed his rapid rise in the world entirely to his friendship – and camaraderie – with Henry VIII. Steven Gunn has remarked that in 1509 Charles was one of ninety-three esquires of the body in the funeral procession of Henry VII; but five years later he was Charles, Duke of Suffolk, by Tudor rules of precedence Henry VIII’s fifth most exalted subject.6 His skill as a jouster and his ability to share the king’s pleasures ensured that he remained close to Henry, and – unlike many senior royal servants – he died in his bed.

  Brandon’s marital liaisons were almost as numerous as those of his royal master, and no less complicated. In 1503 or slightly later, he promised to marry Anne Browne, a daughter of the Constable of Calais, Sir Anthony Browne, and by her had a daughter named Anne. The marriage did not proceed, however, and he sought to improve his prospects by wedding Lady Margaret Neville, a daughter of John, Marquis Montagu, Warwick the Kingmaker’s brother, who was many years his senior. He had licence to enter Margaret’s lands in February 1507, and from a series of sales raised over £1,000 (which he doubtless pocketed) before seeking annulment of the union on the grounds that they were too closely related to have been legally married in the first place.7 He wed Anne Browne in 1508 and they had a second daughter, Mary, two years later; but her death shortly afterwards presented him with new opportunities. He bought the wardship of the young Lady Lisle and was allowed to assume her title on the understanding that he intended to marry her; but this did not prevent him from flirting with Margaret of Austria, the regent of the Netherlands, when King Henry visited her court in 1513. There can be no doubt that he was keeping his options open, and any possibility that he would espouse either of these ladies evaporated when he married Mary, the king’s younger sister, in February 1515.

  It is unclear when Brandon first formed an attachment to Mary, but it was certainly before she was married to Louis XII, the elderly King of France, in the summer of 1514. Louis expired the following January, and Mary and Brandon wed in Paris in mid-February without first obtaining her brother’s permission. Henry may not have been particularly surprised – he is said to have assured Mary that, if Louis died, she could marry someone of her own choosing, and he knew that Brandon was enamoured of her – but the implication was that his sister feared he would renege on his promise if another Continental alliance beckoned. Brandon excused himself by claiming that he ‘newar sawe woman soo wyepe’ (when she begged him to marry her),8 and Mary made their peace with Henry by agreeing to give him her jewels and plate, half her dowry and a further £24,000 drawn from her dower lands in France payable over twelve years. The price of rehabilitation was massive, but Brandon was surely mindful of the fact that a child of his might one day succeed the still childless king.

  Brandon and Mary returned to England to marry again at Greenwich – this time with royal approval – and to establish themselves as a great lord and lady in East Anglia. They engaged in extensive rebuilding projects – notably at Suffolk Place, their town house in Southwark, and at Westhorpe in Suffolk – and were again leaders of society when the nine-year-old Katherine Willoughby joined their household in 1528. By now they had two daughters of their own, Frances, who was almost two years older than Katherine, and Eleanor, about the same age, as well as a son, Henry, born in 1522 and created Earl of Lincoln in 1525. Sixteenth-century parents regularly sent their children to the homes of others to complete their education (while taking the children of their social equals into their own houses), and a practice that may appear uncaring to our way of thinking would have seemed perfectly normal at that period. The aim was to teach a girl like Katherine how to run a great household herself, how to behave in polite society, and, perhaps most importantly, give her an opportunity to forge relationships that would stand her in good stead when she grew older. She soon formed an attachment to Frances, and her friends in the Westhorpe household included Margaret Douglas, the daughter of King Henry’s elder sister Margaret and her second husband the Earl of Angus.

  Katherine disappears from the record for the next few years – her daily routine would have seemed hardly worth mentioning – but great events were unfolding in the world beyond Suffolk. Queen Catherine had given her husband a number of children, but only one, Princess Mary, born in 1516, had survived infancy. By the mid-1520s her childbearing years were clearly behind her, and Henry, who desperately wanted a son to succeed him, came to regard an annulment of the marriage as not merely desirable but necessary. He chose to believe that he had offended God by marrying his late brother Arthur’s widow (the Old Testament book of Leviticus specifically forbade such a union), and that childlessness – the prescribed penalty – had been visited upon him even though he had a daughter. His problem was that the book of Deuteronomy appeared to state the opposite – that a man should marry his brother’s widow and ‘raise up seed unto his brother’ – a problem the royal theologians overcame by arguing that the word ‘brother’ in Deuteronomy meant all male relatives except for brothers-in-law who were specifically excluded by Leviticus. Henry, they reasoned, was not childless in the accepted sense of the word, but critically, had no son to carry on his name.9

  It is not easy to decide at what point Henry’s infatuation with Anne Boleyn became a factor in his calculations, but there can be no doubt that her refusal to become his mistress made him more determined than ever to remarry. The Pope was too afraid of the Emperor Charles V (who was Catherine of Aragon’s nephew) to grant Henry the annulment he wanted, and finally, between 1530 and 1533, Henry made his own solution on his own terms. The new ‘Supreme Head of the Church in England’ had his marriage to Queen Catherine declared unlawful in May 1533, and Anne was crowned in her place on 1 June.

  The changes imposed by King Henry were bound to affect the lives of many members of the aristocracy, and Katherine Willoughby’s new family had good reason to regret some of them. Charles Brandon was delegated to inform Catherine that she was no longer queen, and in December 1533 was instructed to dismiss some of her servants and move her from Buckden in Huntingdonshire to Somersham in the Isle of Ely against her will. He found these tasks distasteful – if Eustace Chapuys, the Imperial ambassador, is to be believed, he ‘wished some mischief might happen to him to excuse himself from this journey’ – but could not defy the king who had raised him from nothing.10 Mary, his wife, had a poor opinion of Mistress Boleyn, and had declined to accompany the royal couple to Calais to meet King Francis in 1532. It was a most unhappy period, and Katherine must have felt that a cloud had descended on her guardian’s house.

  B
y 1533 Katherine was approaching her fourteenth birthday, and her horizons were broadened when she saw and met many of the great and good of the kingdom (possibly for the first time) at Anne Boleyn’s coronation. Mary Brandon had been unwell for some time and returned to Westhorpe almost immediately afterwards, but her husband remained in London, perhaps to facilitate arrangements for the marriage of Frances, their elder daughter, to Henry Grey, Marquis of Dorset.11 Katherine may have accompanied Mary or stayed with Brandon; but if the latter then her sojourn in the capital ended abruptly when the duke received word that Mary’s health was failing. They made their excuses and rode hard for East Anglia, but failed to reach her before she died on 25 June. Her dislike of Queen Anne had been shared by Maria Willoughby and, in all probability, by Katherine herself.

  Mary’s funeral was conducted with all the respect due to a lady who was both a dowager Queen of France and a senior member of the English royal family. Her body, embalmed and placed in a leaden coffin covered by a pall of blue velvet, lay in state in the chapel at Westhorpe for more than three weeks while arrangements were made for her burial. Her former attendants watched over her, tapers burned constantly and Mass was said every day. According to custom, the deceased’s closest female relative, her eldest daughter Frances, acted as chief mourner, and on Tuesday 21 July she was formally escorted to the chapel by her brother, the Earl of Lincoln, and her husband, the Marquis of Dorset. Also in attendance, and walking behind in couples, were Eleanor Brandon and Katherine, followed by Anne, Lady Powis, and Mary, Lady Monteagle, Charles Brandon’s daughters by Anne Browne. Mass was said, and after the bereaved had made their offerings they breakfasted while the cortège was prepared for its journey to Bury. Six gentlemen conveyed the coffin from its resting place in the chapel to the funeral car which was richly draped with black velvet embroidered with escutcheons of Mary’s arms and drawn by six horses. A pall of cloth of gold of frieze (a heavy woollen fabric) on a black ground was thrown over the coffin, with a cross of the same on a white ground incorporating a portrait showing her apparelled in her state robes, wearing a crown of gold upon her head and holding a sceptre in her right hand.