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

by David Baldwin

  Madam, In my most hearty wise I heartily recommend me unto your ladyship, heartily thank you for your good wine you sent me, which I ensure you was very good. And also, I heartily thank you for your little dog you sent me, wherein I promise you you have done me no little pleasure, which I promise you I shall be glad to acquit whenever it shall lie in me to do you any pleasure, to be as ready to it as any friend you have. Madam, my lord, my husband has him heartily recommended to you and to my lord your husband, and thanks you both for your kindness. Also I pray you to have me heartily recommended to my lord your husband as she which would be glad to be acquainted with him. No more to you at this time, but I beseech Jesu have you in his keeping. Written at my Lord of Shrewsbury’s house in Yorkshire, the Saturday after our Lady Day the Assumption. By your assured friend to my power, Katherine Suffolk.11

  But dilatoriness was not Katherine’s only failing. She herself admitted that her temper was often short and her tongue sharp, and there were occasions when even her friends thought it prudent to take cover. Richard Morrison, the English ambassador to the court of Charles V, remarked on her ‘heats’, regretting that ‘so goodly a wit waiteth on so froward a will’, and on another occasion she had to apologise to William Cecil for her ‘foolish choler’ and ‘brawling’, begging his ‘forgiveness on my knees’. Hugh Latimer said pointedly that some women ‘should keep their tongues in better order’ in one of the sermons he preached before her at Grimsthorpe, and if he was not immune from her rages then neither (presumably) were members of her household and servants.12 Katherine Bassett may not have been altogether sorry that things had turned out the way they had.

  A hasty word, a flash of anger on the spur of the moment, was one thing, but there were also times when Katherine went out of her way to cause ill feeling. John Foxe tells of an occasion in her husband’s lifetime when they hosted a dinner at which Bishop Stephen Gardiner was one of the guests. Charles Brandon suggested that each lady present should invite the gentleman she ‘loved best’ to take her into dinner, whereupon Katherine took Gardiner by the hand saying that ‘forasmuch as she could not sit down with my lord whom she loved best (Brandon had apparently ruled himself out of contention), she had chosen him whom she loved worst’.13 It was one thing to dress her dog in a white rochet and name it ‘Gardiner’, but this was a direct, personal insult inflicted in the presence of other members of aristocratic society. Clearly, she did not think that as the hostess it behoved her to be polite to everyone, and the incident must be seen as part of an unfortunate, and growing, tendency to be contemptuous of those she disagreed with. Regrettably, Foxe does not tell us what her husband thought of her behaviour, or what he said to her after their guests had gone home!

  The person who emerges from these incidents is self-assured, but prone to anger and forthright or dismissive to the point of rudeness. She was in no doubt that, in matters of religion, she was right (and those who disagreed with her were therefore wrong), and we may wonder if her rather offhand treatment of Honor Lisle was not unconnected to her own nascent Protestantism and Honor’s staunch Catholicism. Later on, she would display great loyalty to her friends and a remarkable stoicism in adversity, although she can never have been ‘easy’ to deal with. She did admit her faults, however, and without them would not have been the woman she was.

  We noted earlier that it was Katherine’s mother’s death which first allowed her to indulge her taste for Protestantism, and her admission into Catherine Parr’s circle and the removal of her husband’s restraining hand combined to accelerate the process. She forged closer relationships with the leading reformers, not least Edward Seymour, to whom she gave a horse in the spring of 1544, and John Dudley, to whose infant daughter she stood godmother in November 1545. Although it was only three months since Charles Brandon’s death Katherine made her London home available to those invited to attend the ceremony, and, for a short period, laid her formal mourning aside. At the beginning of 1547 Chapuys confided to Mary of Hungary that ‘the King of England gives his countenance to his stirrers-up of heresy, the Earl of Hertford [Seymour] and the Lord Admiral [Dudley], which may be feared … because, according to report, the queen, instigated thereto by the Duchess of Suffolk [Katherine], the Countess of Hertford, and the admiral’s wife, is infected by the sect, which she would not be likely to favour, at least openly, unless she knew the king’s feeling’.14 Conservatives were becoming alarmed by the pace of change, and feared what might happen when the ailing king died.

  Chapuys had left London in 1545, and may not have been aware of a story which his successor as Imperial ambassador, François Van der Delft, reported to Charles V in February 1546. ‘Sire, I am confused and apprehensive to inform your majesty,’ he began apologetically,

  that there are rumours here of a new queen, although I do not know why, or how true it may be. Some people attribute it to the sterility of the present queen, whilst others say that there will be no change whilst the present war [with France] lasts. Madame Suffolk [Katherine] is much talked about, and is in great favour; but the king shows no alteration in his demeanour towards the queen, though the latter, as I am informed, is somewhat annoyed at the rumours.15

  The speculation had reached Europe by early March when Stephen Vaughan, the king’s factor in Antwerp, advised Thomas Wriothesley and William Paget that

  this day came to my lodging a High Dutch, a merchant of this town, saying that he had dined with certain friends, one of whom offered to lay a wager with him that the King’s Majesty would have another wife; and he prayed me to show him the truth. He would not tell me who offered the wager, and I said that I never heard of any such thing, and that there was no such thing. Many folks talk of this matter, and from whence it comes I cannot learn.16

  Rumours are sometimes without foundation, but there are strong indications that King Henry found Katherine attractive. They had been exchanging New Year gifts since 1534, and Chapuys noted that he had been ‘masking and visiting’ with her in March 1538, only months after Jane Seymour’s death. ‘The king,’ he wrote, ‘has been in much better humour than ever he was, making musicians play on their instruments all day along. He went to dine at a splendid house of his, where he had collected all his musicians, and, after giving orders for the erection of certain sumptuous buildings therein, returned home by water, surrounded by musicians, and went straight to visit the Duchess of Suffolk … and ever since cannot be one single moment without masks.’17 Henry might have wed her then had she been single, and the disappointments of his later marriages can only have enhanced his feelings towards her. It is possible that by 1546 he had grown impatient with Queen Catherine’s failure to give him a second son, and more than ever saw this younger, perhaps more attractive, woman who was now a widow and the mother of two healthy boys as the solution to his problem. He would not have been the first man to think that a new, more exciting, relationship would somehow restore his lost youth.

  The real question, of course, is, had Henry and Katherine already become lovers, perhaps in the late 1530s or thereafter? And had Charles Brandon, the courtier par excellence, turned a diplomatically blind eye? The answer will probably always elude us, but William Carey had long tolerated the king’s liaison with his wife, Mary Boleyn, and both he and Brandon would have been anxious to retain the irascible monarch’s favour. Carey received substantial grants between 1522 and 1525 when Mary was Henry’s mistress, presumably as a reward for his understanding, and it could have been for the same reason that twenty years later Brandon was allowed to buy Tattershall College on the generous terms already noticed.18 Katherine had waited on both Anne of Cleves and Catherine Howard before joining Catherine Parr’s household, and in this capacity would have been regularly at court and ‘available’ to Henry. And what Henry wanted, he usually got.

  We catch only occasional glimpses of Katherine during her years of attendance on the king’s fourth and fifth wives, but there was one occasion when both his present and former spouses and (we suppose) his mist
ress all enjoyed an amicable time together. On 3 January 1541 Anne of Cleves came to Hampton Court to present her New Year gifts, a handsome pair of horses caparisoned in mauve velvet, to Henry and Catherine Howard in person, and, we are informed,

  was received by the duchess of Suffolk [Katherine], the countess of Hertford, and certain other ladies, who, after conducting her to the rooms destined for her lodging, took her to the queen’s apartments. Having entered the room, Lady Anne approached the queen with as much reverence and punctilious ceremony as if she herself were the most insignificant damsel about court, all the time addressing the queen on her knees, notwithstanding the prayers and entreaties of the latter, who received her most kindly, showing her great favour and courtesy. At this time the king entered the room, and, after making a very low bow to Lady Anne, embraced and kissed her, upon which he and his queen sat down to supper in their usual places, whilst their visitor was made to occupy a seat near the bottom of the table, all the time keeping as good a mien and countenance, and looking as unconcerned as if there had been nothing between them. After supper all three conversed for a while in the most gracious manner, and when the king retired to his own apartments, the queen and Lady Anne first danced together …19

  It is hard to believe that any of these women genuinely liked one another, but appearances had to be maintained.

  Now, five years later, Henry had another Catherine, and the religious conservatives were quick to seize their opportunity when they sensed that his feelings towards her had cooled. Their first victim was Anne Askew, a Lincolnshire gentlewoman who had rejected an unhappy arranged marriage, turned to religion, and become an outspoken Protestant. Her sister was married to a lawyer in Katherine’s household, and the Catholic author Robert Parsons alleged that Katherine arranged meetings between Askew and Queen Catherine before the former was arrested in April 1546. Her opinions were so far removed from the royal view of what constituted orthodoxy that they could easily be construed as subversive, and her interrogators hoped that she would confirm that the queen and other reformers shared them. Katherine and her friends must have been concerned by what Askew would say about them under torture, but no amount of racking could persuade her to implicate her contacts. The most she would admit was that two men acting on behalf of the Countess of Hertford and Lady Denny had given her money, and Katherine must have been saddened and not a little frustrated by her inability to help her when she was burned at the stake in July.

  It is not always easy in these days of ‘take it or leave it’ religion to appreciate the fervour, the degree of commitment felt by women like Katherine and Anne Askew. Askew’s account of her ordeal is written in almost matter-of-fact language without a trace of self-pity, and the reader can only try to imagine how much she suffered for what was after all only a belief, an alternative interpretation of scripture. Before her execution she told how

  they did put me on the rack, because I confessed no ladies or gentlewomen to be of my opinion, and thereon they kept me a long time; and because I lay still, and did not cry, my lord chancellor [Thomas Wriothesley] and Master Rich took pains to rack me with their own hands till I was nigh dead. Then the lieutenant [of the Tower] caused me to be loosed from the rack. Incontinently, I swooned, and then they recovered me again. After that I sat two long hours reasoning with my lord chancellor upon the bare floor; where he, with many flattering words, persuaded me to leave my opinion. But my Lord God (I thank his everlasting goodness) gave me grace to persevere, and will do, I hope, to the very end.20

  The torture of a gentlewoman, especially one who had already been condemned, was unprecedented, and the personal involvement of Wriothesley and Richard Rich, Wriothesley’s successor as chancellor, shows that this was no ordinary interrogation. The conservatives were determined to hunt down their opponents, and in this febrile charged climate no one – not even the Duchess of Suffolk – could feel entirely safe.

  Askew’s determined silence had thwarted Bishop Gardiner and his cronies for the moment, but not for long. King Henry may have blamed Queen Catherine for failing to give him a son, but Foxe believed that another reason for their deteriorating relationship was her readiness to challenge her husband’s opinions when they discussed matters of religion. Henry, who thought himself no mean theologian, is said to have wearied of these arguments – perhaps he did not always win them – and was heard to complain that ‘a good hearing it is when women become such clerks; and a thing much to my comfort, to come in mine old days to be taught by my wife’. Gardiner, who was present, replied that, in his opinion, ‘the religion by the queen, so stiffly maintained, [which] did disallow and dissolve the policy and politic government of princes’ merited death under the laws of the kingdom, and offered to obtain further evidence that would disclose this ‘treason cloaked with the cloak of heresy’. His intention was to search the closets of some of Catherine’s ladies for heretical books and other incriminating material, and then have the queen arrested and sent to the Tower.

  It seemed that this time, there was no escape for Catherine and her ladies, but their enemies were again foiled. Henry confided his intentions to Doctor Wendy, one of his physicians, and the bill of articles against Catherine was dropped by an unnamed councillor, found by one of her friends, and brought to her. Realising she was in mortal danger, she ‘fell incontinent into a great melancholy and agony, bewailing and taking on in such sort as was lamentable to see’, and Dr Wendy, who was summoned to attend her, advised her to ‘show her humble submission unto the king’ who he was sure would be ‘gracious and favourable’ to her. Henry, hearing of her sudden illness, visited her and offered words of reassurance, but she did not allow herself to be lulled into a false sense of security. She immediately ordered her ladies to dispose of their reformist books (she had earlier entrusted her own to her uncle, Lord Parr of Horton), and the following evening went to her husband’s chamber where she found him talking with several of his gentlemen. Henry turned the conversation to religion appearing to desire her opinion, and she, seizing her opportunity, begged him to excuse her ‘your majesty being so excellent in gifts and ornaments of wisdom, and I a silly poor woman, so much inferior in all respects of nature to you’. She explained that she had never tried to instruct him, but

  whereas I have, with your majesty’s leave, heretofore been bold to hold talk with your majesty, wherein sometimes in opinions there has seemed some difference, I have not done it so much to maintain opinion, as I did it rather to minister talk, not only to the end your majesty might with less grief pass over this painful time of your infirmity, being attentive to our talk, and hoping that your majesty should reap some ease thereby; but also that I, hearing your majesty’s learned discourse, might receive to myself some profit thereby.

  Henry was mollified by this combination of self-abasement and flattery, and embraced her with the words, ‘And is it even so, sweet heart? And tended your arguments to no worse end? Then perfect friends we are now again, as ever at any time heretofore.’21 Unfortunately, no one told Lord Chancellor Wriothesley that the situation had altered, and when he came with an armed escort to arrest Catherine he found her walking with her husband in the garden. He was sent packing with Henry’s curses ringing in his ears.

  The whole incident, as related by Foxe, had been a close call for the queen and her Protestant circle, but there are indications that King Henry never meant to allow the conservatives an outright victory. By forewarning Dr Wendy and, we may suppose, allowing the bill of articles to be ‘lost’ where someone close to Catherine could find it, he was giving her an opportunity to redeem herself; and it seems likely that Wriothesley was not told of their reconciliation so that he and his associates could be put firmly in their collective place. The idea that Henry was toying with his wife and his ministers, playing them off against one another in order to assert his own authority, may seem improbable at first glance, but the only logical conclusion is that Catherine Parr – unlike Anne Boleyn and Catherine Howard – was effectively bein
g given a second chance. Far from gaining the ascendency over his opponents, Gardiner was not named among the councillors who would govern for Prince Edward after the king’s death, and another of his allies, the Duke of Norfolk, was spared only because Henry died the night before he was due to be executed – for not informing against his son Henry Howard, Earl of Surrey, who had stupidly flaunted his Plantagenet ancestry by quartering the royal arms with his own. Henry Howard had defended himself brilliantly at his trial, and was only condemned after the king’s opinion had been sought and the jurors ‘interviewed’. Henry could still overawe his subjects, and never lost his grip on the levers of power.