Tales From the Tower of London

by Donnelly, Mark P.

  Jane’s death sent Henry, and by extension the entire English court, into a prolonged period of mourning. The once light-hearted monarch became morose and bitter. The masquerade parties, jousts and banquets gave way to sombre gatherings at which the king sought refuge in food and drink, gradually becoming a bloated caricature of his former self. The jousts and hunting parties, too, disappeared, partly as the result of a leg injury he had suffered during his marriage to Anne Boleyn. The wound never healed, leaving Henry with a weeping ulcer on one leg.

  In an attempt to cheer up their king and endear themselves and their political goals to him, the reforming party at court – led by Henry’s personal secretary Thomas Cromwell and the Archbishop of Canterbury Thomas Cranmer – connived a fourth marriage with Anne, the daughter of the Duke of Cleves. It was a disaster. The two hated each other at first sight. At the age of forty-eight Henry was grossly fat, gouty, prematurely aged and foul tempered. Anne was unschooled in the courtly graces of music, dancing and needlework; neither had she taken up the English habit of regular bathing. Worst of all, she could probably out-think Henry and insisted on arguing religion and politics with him. As a staunch Lutheran Protestant, Anne’s views on church reform were just too liberal for Henry, even though he had long since broken with Roman Catholicism. Behind her back Henry took to calling her ‘the great Flanders mare’. There was no doubt the marriage would not last.

  With another divorce imminent, the conservative faction at court, led by Bishop Gardiner and Thomas Howard the Duke of Norfolk, who had been out of favour since Henry’s ill-fated marriage to his niece Anne Boleyn, saw a way to get themselves, and their religious views, back in favour. If they could find a young woman more to the king’s tastes, he might replace Anne with her. Better still, the fall of Anne might discredit the hated Thomas Cromwell. To this end, Norfolk inveigled a position in Anne’s household for his niece Katherine Howard.

  Only weeks after Anne officially came to court so did Katherine. At fifteen years of age, Katherine Howard was a silly, frivolous child with big brown eyes and auburn hair. Still plump with baby-fat, the 4 foot 11 inch Katherine was awestruck by the glitter of the court, and particularly by the monumental figure of King Henry, who presided over it. To keep her happy, and hopefully throw her directly in front of the king’s wandering gaze, in the spring of 1540 her uncle secured her an invitation to a masked ball.

  Katherine’s upbringing had been nothing if not unconventional. Orphaned at the age of ten, she spent the next five years in the household of her step-grandmother, the Dowager Duchess of Norfolk. Although she was well advanced in years, the duchess kept a massive household peopled with youngsters collected from her extended family. Too old to oversee them properly, she generally left the children to their own devices. They were not abused, but neither were they educated, given the diversions necessary for young people, nor properly supervised. Housed in dormitories divided by sex, the youngsters were left with no more chaperoning than a locked door intended to keep the boys and girls apart at night. Obviously it did not work.

  The gentlewomen’s chamber was the site of almost nightly parties, which frequently included the young men of the household who simply crawled out of their own window and in through the window of the girls’ chamber. Inevitably, along with the games, laughing and drinking came a lot of sexual experimentation. One of the first of the young men to catch Katherine Howard’s thirteen-year-old eye was the duchess’s music master, a man named Edward Manox. After a few romps in the bedroom, however, Katherine dumped him in favour of her distant cousin, the handsome and charming Francis Dereham. Dereham and Katherine became constant bed partners, excusing their illicit sex by insisting they were going to marry, even calling each other ‘husband’ and ‘wife’. Outraged at being dumped, Manox wrote a letter to the dowager duchess detailing Katherine’s latest affair. The duchess caught her granddaughter and Dereham in bed together and beat her; but it was only a momentary solution to a long-term problem. By any standards, Katherine Howard was a wild child.

  Given the girl’s own history, and the king’s mercurial record with his past wives, Katherine was hardly the most appropriate marriage candidate to put before Henry VIII. But when Henry took notice of the tiny, vivacious girl, her uncle ‘commended her pure and honest conditions’. That one recommendation was all it took. According to a contemporary account, ‘The King’s Highness did cast a fantasy to Katherine Howard the first time that ever his Grace saw her.’ Undoubtedly, her uncle Norfolk encouraged the girl to return the king’s attention; at the same time cautioning her to keep a discreet distance. If the king was allowed to take her for a mistress, he would not need her as a wife; and it was a royal marriage that Norfolk needed.

  In no time Henry was doting on the girl. He lavished gifts of fine gowns and jewels on her. He threw feasts and entertainments to focus her childish, wandering attention. It could not have taken him long to realise that she was not only uneducated, but also none too bright, but the king didn’t seem to care. She was young, pretty and fun-loving. She loved to dance and listen to the court musicians, just as he once had. In Henry’s lonely mind, this was the woman who would reinvigorate him, bring back his youth and be the solace of his old age. With Katherine by his side, the deprivations of age and the approach of death would not be so terrible. He called her ‘the very jewel of womanhood’ and his ‘rose without a thorn’ – the perfect woman who would never give him the anxieties that had been so much a part of his previous marriages. One of Henry’s courtiers wrote, ‘He is so amorous of her he cannot treat her well enough. He [can] not, in public or in private, keep his hands off his acquisition.’ She was, in short, the fantasy of every middle-aged man.

  For her part, the teenager doted on the attention Henry showed her – especially when there were expensive gifts thrown in to the bargain. For a girl who had never had anything, Henry’s extravagance only made her greedy for more, and she behaved like a spoilt child. Her petulance may have passed unnoticed by Henry, but it did not sit well with everyone. Henry’s pious, eldest daughter Mary – who was nearly ten years older than Katherine – was scandalised by the affair and took every opportunity to voice her feelings to anyone who would listen. Thomas Cromwell, realising that Anne of Cleves was about to be cast off in favour of this silly child, manoeuvred frantically to save his position and his head. Even Katherine’s former lover, the young Francis Dereham, heard the news of Henry’s latest fancy and beat a hasty retreat to Ireland to take up piracy; it may have been dangerous, but not so much as having the king find out about his affair with Katherine.

  For all the things that can be said against Henry and Katherine’s pairing, there was also a positive side. The prematurely aged Henry was indeed reinvigorated. He went on a diet. He took regular exercise. He went riding every day, hunting and hawking as he had done in the past. With the new regimen the ulcers on his leg began to heal for the first time in years. He even seemed to be able to put the tragedy of Jane Seymour’s death out of his mind. As his physical health improved, so did his attitude. Henry’s physician, Dr Marillac, wrote: ‘This King has taken a new rule of living. To rise between five and six, hear mass at seven, and then ride till dinner time which is at ten a.m.’ The court again became a place of joy rather than mourning. There were feasts and dancing, music and celebrations. Even Henry’s legislative judgement seemed more stable than it had been in recent years. Henry now had no doubts; he would marry Katherine Howard.

  On 28 July 1540, just sixteen days after his divorce from Anne of Cleves, Bishop Edmund Bonner secretly married the 49-year-old Henry VIII to the seventeen-year-old Katherine Howard. In either an ironic twist of fate, or a cleverly arranged social tour de force, this was the exact day his old friend, right-hand man and engineer of the Cleves marriage, Thomas Cromwell, went to the block. Ten days later the marriage was publicly announced. To celebrate his new-found marital bliss Henry had coins struck in Katherine’s honour. The legend on them read ‘Truly a rose without a th
orn.’

  Somehow, Henry even managed to let the acrimony between him and Anne of Cleves dissipate. At Katherine’s insistence Henry went to visit his ex-wife at Richmond and she was invited to dine with the royal couple at Hampton Court. When Anne began to curtsey to her successor, Katherine stopped her, insisting that it was not proper. For such a normally thoughtless girl, it was an impressive and touching gesture.

  Despite Henry’s best efforts, his health remained uncertain. At his best he could even dance with his new bride, but as often as not his bad leg and excessive weight kept him on the sidelines, often forcing him to sit and watch while Katherine danced with the younger men at court. By spring 1541, the king’s health took a serious turn for the worse. The ulcer on his leg reappeared, and his weight soared. He became morose and depressed, sitting alone in his private chambers for days on end, unable to work and refusing to see anyone except his closest personal aide, Thomas Culpeper, who helped hoist his bulk out of bed and dress and wash him. He even refused to allow the court musicians to entertain him and often denied Katherine admittance to his rooms, probably because he did not want her to see him as an invalid. There was a moment of hopefulness in April 1541 when Katherine thought she was pregnant, but when it proved to be a false alarm Henry’s spirits sank lower than ever.

  To fill the long days and weeks without Henry, Katherine busied herself with putting together her own household. In the unthinking, generous way of children, everyone who approached her for favours and advancement was welcomed into Katherine’s glittering little circle. She dressed herself and her ladies in the latest French clothes and everyone got an allowance. In an effort to curb the worst of her excesses, Lady Jane Rochford was appointed to serve as her chief lady-in-waiting. Jane Rochford was the sister-in-law of Katherine’s cousin, the late Anne Boleyn. She had been married to Anne’s brother George and had been instrumental in manufacturing the evidence that sent her husband and Anne to the block only five years earlier. Jane Rochford was an inveterate plotter and schemer and the worst possible candidate to be put in a position of authority over an impulsive, senseless girl like Katherine Howard.

  Most of Katherine’s household, however, consisted of lively young people near her own age, many of whom were friends and distant relations she had known during her five years at the Duchess of Norfolk’s house. Unwisely, among those she took into her household was her former lover Edward Manox, whom she appointed her court musician. In her endless quest to find amusing companions, Katherine made friends with her husband’s personal body servant, the handsome and charming Thomas Culpeper. As a trusted retainer of the king and not many years older than the queen, Culpeper seemed a perfectly acceptable companion – as long as he remained at a discreet distance.

  With the innocence of a child, Katherine graced both those around her and those she hardly knew with random acts of kindness. The accumulating mountain of gifts sent by her doting husband were shared with her ladies-in-waiting, palace staff and Anne of Cleves, who commented on the new queen’s ‘utmost kindness’. When she heard of the plight of the ageing Countess of Salisbury – who had been kept prisoner in the cold, damp confines of the Tower for more than two years – Katherine begged Henry to allow her to send warm clothes to the old lady. With his permission she had her seamstress make a fur-lined nightgown, a fur-lined petticoat and a skirt of heavy wool. She even took up the cause of the poet Sir Thomas Wyatt whom Henry had condemned to the Tower on a frivolous charge. When Henry finally released Wyatt on Katherine’s insistence, his popularity soared and he magnanimously gave the credit to Katherine.

  Despite her ongoing arguments with Henry’s older daughter, Mary, she befriended his younger daughter Elizabeth, the child of her cousin Anne Boleyn. She insisted that Elizabeth be returned to court, calling her ‘kinswoman’ and allowing her to attend official court functions. Although he had officially declared Elizabeth a bastard, Henry did not seem openly offended by this constant reminder of his time with Anne. As the summer of 1541 approached, Henry’s health again improved and his spirits lightened so much that he proposed to undertake a ‘progress’ through his kingdom. With their combined households in tow, Henry and Katherine set off on an extended tour of the country in late July.

  When the royal party reached Pontefract, Katherine was approached by another of her former lovers, Francis Dereham, who had recently returned from his adventures in Ireland. Either out of sheer excitement, or to keep Dereham from blurting out her past indiscretions, Katherine took him into her household as private secretary. Obviously Henry had been told nothing of his wife’s past association with either Dereham or Manox. When the king and queen returned to Windsor at the end of October, Henry was in better spirits than he had been in years. Only days after their return, he ordered the Bishop of Lincoln to give a special service thanking God for his new happiness ‘after sundry troubles of mind which had happened to him by [previous] marriages’.

  What Henry could not know was that while he was away Archbishop Cranmer had been approached by a man named John Lascelles and his sister Mary Hall, who was a member of Katherine’s household. Both Lascelles and Hall had worked for the Dowager Duchess of Norfolk while Katherine had lived there and Mary had slept in the same dormitory as Katherine where she witnessed the goings on with Manox and Dereham. When Katherine took these men into her new household it outraged Mary Hall’s sense of propriety. Now, with the foolish young queen away from court, they babbled everything they knew to Cranmer. Mary Hall insisted that Manox had lain with the queen and ‘felt the secret and other parts of her body’ and went into lurid detail of her sex romps with Dereham and the thrashing she had received from the Duchess of Norfolk as punishment.

  Although Cranmer had nothing against Katherine herself, he was a staunch Protestant and irritated to see the Catholic-leaning Howard clan amassing power and social influence. To him she was no more than an innocent child. This revelation, however, was deeply disturbing. If Katherine and Dereham had actually insisted that they were going to be married, by the law of the time this made Katherine a bigamist when she married Henry. It would not lead her to the same end as her cousin Anne Boleyn, but it would demand an immediate divorce and a lot of hushing-up. It would also discredit the Howards once and for all. It was a moral dilemma with which Cranmer wrestled for months before coming to a decision.

  Finally, one morning around 1 November 1541, while Henry was attending mass in his private chapel, Cranmer crept up behind him and passed him a note outlining the allegations. Cranmer admitted that he had to do it in writing because he ‘had not the heart to tell him by mouth’. Henry’s initial reaction was exactly what might be expected. He dismissed the entire thing as malicious gossip spurred on by old acquaintances who were jealous of Katherine’s good fortune. In conference with his council, he abused Cranmer and the rest, accusing them of trying to bring down this sweet girl for their own political ends ‘under pretence of serving him [when they] were only temporising for their own profit, but . . . if God lent him health, he would take care that their projects should not succeed’.

  Henry may have been furious, but he was no fool. He knew the allegations would have to be investigated. If any of them proved true it would certainly not amount to treason, but it would demand that his marriage be annulled. Of course, as head of the kingdom and the Church of England he could tidy up that little problem. There was no way some childish indiscretion, if it had actually happened, was going to ruin the rest of his life and that of his queen. Atypically, Henry even discussed the problem with Katherine, telling her that she had nothing to worry about and that if the worst came to the worst he would grant her a Royal Pardon.

  As certain as he might have been of his wife’s innocence, Henry also knew that legal procedure must be adhered to absolutely. The king could not be seen to flout the law. As he called those ministers he could trust into council, Henry told Katherine to stay in her private apartment. As he left her, he told her musicians to leave, saying ‘it is no more t
he time to dance’. For three days Henry and his advisers wrangled over possible courses of action. Certainly there was nothing here that smacked of treason, but everyone even remotely associated with the accusations was to be rounded up and questioned. First, Dereham and Manox were to be taken to the Tower and questioned rigorously. Henry insisted that if they refused to cooperate, they were to be tortured, muttering ‘Necessitas non legem habet’ – necessity knows no law. Also to be questioned were Katherine’s friends who had come to court from the Dowager Duchess’s household, including John Lascelles and Mary Hall, who had made the original accusation. The Dowager Duchess, too, along with Katherine’s uncle Lord William Howard, his wife Margaret, her brother Henry and his wife along with her aunt Lady Bridgewater must all give depositions. With the exception of her uncle, the Duke of Norfolk, virtually the queen’s entire family was brought in for questioning. Someone out there knew the truth and Henry was going to find out what it was.

  Francis Dereham at first denied everything, but under torture admitted to having sex with the queen when she was thirteen years old. That he was telling the truth and not simply saying what his questioners wanted to hear was confirmed by his knowledge of a birthmark on Katherine’s thigh. If that were not bad enough, an old friend of Dereham’s insisted that he had overheard Dereham say that if ‘the king were dead, I am sure I might marry her’. This alone was enough for a charge of treason against Dereham, but Katherine still seemed relatively safe. It was not until one of the queen’s ladies, Margaret Morton, made reference to the king’s trusted body servant, Thomas Culpeper, that things began to turn nasty.