The Six Wives & Many Mistresses of Henry VIII: The Women's Stories

by Amy Licence

  On 9 February, Sir Nicholas Wooton arrived back at Schloss Berg, at the court of William, Duke of Cleves. A letter he sent back to Cromwell at the end of the month sheds the first light on Anne’s view of the marriage. On telling ‘Ghogreve how well the king liked the queen’s Grace, he rejoiced greatly that the affection was mutual, for lady Keteler had written that, on leaving the Queen, she was desired to report to the Duchess, her mother, and the Duke, her brother, that she thanked them most heartily for having preferred her to such a marriage that she could wish no better’.8 At Easter, the ladies and gentlewomen waiting upon the queen were paid wages totalling over £194, while the royal goldsmith Cornelius Hayes received twice this, claiming an impressive £403 6s 8d for spangles made to decorate costumes and clothes. Two silkwomen, Cope’s wife and Lettice Woursop, were paid £80 and £177 respectively for adorning the king’s and queen’s bodies.9 That April, a Bill confirming Queen Anne’s dower was passed through Parliament and, in spite of his failure to rid his master of his unwanted wife, Cromwell was elevated to the Earldom of Essex. It was the calm before the storm, though. With the queen’s household full of attractive young ladies, it was only a matter of time before history began to repeat itself.

  Back in the autumn of 1539, as the Cleves negotiations were reaching their conclusion, Cranmer, in his capacity as Henry’s personal chaplain, suggested to Cromwell that the king should ‘marry where that he had his fantasy and love, for that would be most comfort for his Grace’.10 He obviously knew his master well but the archbishop’s was the lone voice of reason. Having masterminded the alliance, Cromwell dismissed him angrily, saying that ‘there was none meet for him within this realm’. Within weeks, though, Henry was to do exactly as his chaplain had suggested. It would cost Cromwell his head.

  The date and location of Catherine Howard’s birth went unrecorded. Like Anne Boleyn and Jane Seymour, no one could have anticipated that she would ever become queen. She was one of at least six children born to Edmund Howard and Joyce Culpepper, although her mother already had five others from a previous marriage. Estimates for Catherine’s birth usually err on the side of caution, placing her arrival in the early to mid-1520s, usually around 1522/23. She was definitely born before 1527, when she was mentioned in the will of her grandmother Isabel Legh, but she did not appear in that of her grandfather John in 1524. However, this does not mean Catherine had not been born by that point; it may have been down to caution, which advised against recognising infants, particularly girls, in family wills.11 Her father was the brother of Elizabeth Howard, mother of Anne and Mary Boleyn, making her their first cousin; Edmund’s own cousin Margery was the mother of Jane Seymour. Catherine was still young when her mother died in 1531 and her father was appointed to the position of Comptroller of Calais.

  Catherine’s first years were spent at Norfolk House in Lambeth, the London home of the Howard clan. Early in the reign of Elizabeth, it was described as having been two inns, ‘formerly called the George (west) and the Bell (east)’, which had been annexed to a medieval mansion house, which came with about forty acres of land, meadow and a marsh, called ‘the hopes’.12 In 1531, she was moved into the household of her step-grandmother, Agnes Tilney, the dowager Duchess of Norfolk, at Chesworth House, Horsham, in Sussex. The large property provided shelter for a number of young people from less wealthy backgrounds, who were supposed to learn and make themselves useful until such time as they could find their way in the world of their own accord. For Catherine, it proved to be a period of sexual awakening; her years at Chesworth would come back to haunt her and be the cause of her downfall as queen.

  Still standing today, Chesworth House is located half a mile south of Horsham, in the middle of twenty-three acres and preserves much of its original Tudor character. In 1549, it was described as comprising a hall, great chamber, dining chamber, chapel and at least twenty other rooms and service quarters, incorporating the present day north and south wings. Here, the young Catherine Howard was lodged in one of the attic dormitories known as the maiden’s chamber with the other young women, while the men had separate sleeping quarters. There were also visiting servants and staff who came to the house on a regular basis during Catherine’s youth. One of them was the music teacher Henry Manox, who had been employed by the duchess to teach the girl to play the virginals in 1536. Manox later admitted he ‘fell in love’ with Catherine, who was then in her early teens, and that the pair exchanged kisses and caresses. He would claim he had touched her intimately, ‘feel the secret parts of her body’ and would know her by a ‘secret mark’ on her body. Conscious of her status, though, she refused to allow him to consummate the match, allowing him instead to enjoy certain favours. When the duchess discovered them alone in a chamber, she gave her charge ‘two or three blows’ and forbade the pair to be alone together again.

  Manox was soon replaced in Catherine’s affections by a far more ardent suitor, a Howard cousin named Francis Dereham, who arrived at Horsham from Norfolk. If Catherine had wisely held Manox off because of the discrepancy between their social positions, she now had no reason to deny the advances of the dashing Dereham, who wooed her by bringing gifts and making sweet talk. The door to the maiden’s chamber was locked every night by the duchess, who took the key away with her until the morning, but one of her waiting women, Mary Lascelles, managed to steal the key and allow a group of gentlemen to enter. Bringing ‘wine, strawberries, apples and other things to make good cheer’, Dereham quickly progressed to Catherine’s bed. The girls slept two to a bed, as was common at the time, so with Catherine’s usual bedfellow evicted, the development of the relationship was witnessed by those who shared the chamber.

  This arrangement was to prove Catherine’s downfall in years to come, when the eyes and ears of her past resurfaced. Privacy was a luxury reserved for the rich. Public sex and courtship must have been common in large establishments after hours, when temporary beds appeared and the majority of young people slept communally. Court records dating from this time are full of examples of servants having sex in dormitories or the various rooms of their masters’ house, which usually come to light when a pregnancy resulted. Witnesses would later cite how Catherine and Dereham would ‘hang together’ by the belly ‘like sparrows’, leaving little doubt of what was occurring. One, Alice Restwold, who was herself married, knew ‘what belonged to that puffing and blowing’ that took place under cover of night. Catherine later admitted that Dereham ‘lay with [her] naked and used me in such sort as a man doth his wife, many and sundry times’.13 As the relationship progressed the pair entered an informal betrothal, a promise to become man and wife in the future, referring to each other in those terms. Gifts were exchanged, Dereham giving Catherine fine materials to make dresses from and Catherine sending him a band to wear upon his sleeve, perhaps as a remembrance of her.

  Jealous of his rival, Manox informed the duchess by leaving an anonymous letter in her pew at chapel:

  Your Grace,

  It shall be meet you take good heed to your gentlewomen, for if it shall like you half an hour after you shall be a-bed to rise suddenly and visit their chamber you shall see that which shall displease you. But if you make anybody of counsel you shall be deceived. Make then fewer your secretary.14

  The duchess upbraided her charges over their ‘misrule’, which might ‘hurt [Catherine’s beauty]’15 but this served to unite her and Dereham against a common enemy, seeking out the letter from its hiding place in a gilt coffer and making a secret copy. Dereham confronted Manox, calling him a knave whom neither he nor Catherine loved, but a greater threat was soon to arise. Late in 1539, Catherine was granted a position at court, to be in attendance upon Anne of Cleves. Dereham knew that this would signal the end of their relationship but Catherine was happy to move on to bigger and better things, later saying, ‘All that knew me, and kept my company, know how glad and desirous I was to come to court.’16

  Of two surviving portraits claimed to depict Catherine, one is far more likel
y to show the new queen’s maid of honour. Recently, David Starkey has identified a Holbein miniature of an unknown woman as Catherine, by matching the jewels she is wearing to records of those in her possession. The sitter wears gold and brown against a blue background, her auburn hair pulled back under a gold French hood lined with pearls. More pearls and golden embroidery line her bodice and a further string and pendant sit around her neck. The sitter’s face is pale and serene, with heavy-lidded eyes, delicate lips and rounded chin. She wears a gold wedding ring, indicating that the portrait was probably painted between mid-1540 and late 1541. It is less certain that the full-length Holbein Portrait of a Lady in a Black Dress depicts Catherine as, although the features are similar, the sitter appears to be older than Catherine is thought to be.

  At some point early in 1540, Henry’s and Catherine’s paths crossed. She may have been coached by her Howard relatives, her grandfather the Duke of Norfolk and her step-grandmother Agnes Tilney, to attract the attention of the dissatisfied king. As longstanding enemies of Cromwell, recognising that the royal marriage was unlikely to last, they might have encouraged Catherine once it was clear that Henry was interested. The duchess believed that it happened almost as soon as she arrived at court, perhaps even as late as autumn 1539, saying that ‘the king’s highness did cast a fantasy to Catherine Howard the first time that ever his Grace saw her’.17 The relationship may have developed at one of the midnight banquets held by Bishop Gardiner at Winchester Palace in Southwark which, reputedly, ‘far outdid the impromptu entertainments in the maiden’s chamber at Horsham or Lambeth’.18

  By late April the king was smitten, making the first grant of land to his new mistress, indicating a possible time when the affair was consummated. From that point, the possibility of Catherine becoming pregnant meant that Anne’s days were numbered. When she took her seat to watch the May Day jousts at Westminster, followed by a week of tournaments and feasting at Durham House, Anne could not have anticipated it would be her last public engagement as queen. On 9 May, Henry summoned Cromwell to Westminster, ‘desiring his presence immediately on weighty business concerning the honour and surety of the king’s person and the tranquillity of his subjects’. The king’s servant can have been in little doubt about what this ‘weighty business’ was. His efforts appear to have not been enough for Henry, who ordered his arrest for treason on 8 June. Heading to a Westminster council meeting, Cromwell was – literally – stripped of his chain of office by Howard and Wriothesley, and carried away to the Tower. Henry would keep him alive long enough for him to push through the necessary paperwork for his divorce, before he signed the earl’s death warrant.

  On 24 June, ‘the kyng caused the queen to Richmond’, purportedly for ‘her health, open air and pleasure’ and to escape the illnesses that often broke out at court during the summer months. It was a beautiful palace and Henry promised that he would be joining Anne there shortly. The days passed and she waited patiently. Instead, though, her husband established a commission to investigate the legality of his marriage, with the aim of securing a divorce and easing the path of Catherine Howard into his bed. The resulting investigation allows us an insight into the intimate nature of the marriage, a glimpse through the keyhole of the bedroom door, as Henry had reluctantly climbed into bed with Anne of Cleves.

  52

  The King’s Sister, 1540

  Was I not a king’s fare in marriage,

  Had I not plenty of every pleasant thing?

  Merciful God, this is a strange reckoning;

  Riches, honour, wealth, and ancestry,

  Hath me forsaken1

  It was down to Henry to prove that he had not had sex with Anne. This essentially began as a private matter concerning what had happened between the marital sheets, but, given the dynastic and national proportions that evolved from his challenge to Catherine of Aragon’s virginity, the king was taking no chances. He roped his court into securing the result he wanted. Anne’s marriage had to be annulled in order for him to make Catherine Howard his wife and, as it always had, his court obligingly rose to the challenge. According to the preparations drawn up by Bishop Gardiner, as much proof must be prepared in advance ‘to declare the king’s misliking, his Grace’s dissent and abstinence a carnali copula and also her confession thereof of it’.2 As they had in 1536, Henry’s commissioners went in search of the details of his love life, or, in this case, the lack of it.

  The most powerful evidence came from Henry’s doctor. That July, William Butts testified that it had been the king’s decision not to attempt consummation on the night of the wedding. There may have been a valid religious reason for this as, after having been delayed, the ceremony eventually took place on Epiphany, a major day of observation in the Catholic calendar, on which abstinence of all kinds was expected. It was also believed that children conceived on such dates would be less healthy, so the delay is understandable. Henry’s comment to Cromwell on the following morning, that ‘his nature hath abhorred her’,3 could be taken to refer to his inability to sleep with Anne, a metaphor for erectile dysfunction or simply a comment on the dislike that had been borne out of closer physical proximity, not necessarily of a sexual nature. Dr Butts reported that Henry attempted to consummate the match on the third and fourth night, on 8 and 9 January, but was unsuccessful. He claimed ‘his heart would never consent to meddle with her carnally’.4 He continued to lie with her every other night after this for short periods, but after he had ‘felt’ her ‘breasts and belly’ and believed them to indicate that she was not a virgin (‘when I felt them, strake me so to the heart that I had neither will nor courage to prove the rest … if she had brought her maidenhead with her’) he ‘never took any from her by true carnal copulation’. He told his doctor that ‘he found her body disordered and indisposed to provoke any lust in him’.5

  Setting Henry’s case aside, it seems highly unlikely that Anne was not a virgin. Her sheltered upbringing and character, along with her reputed ignorance, suggest that she was, indeed, as pure as the day she had been born. Her status on the international marital market would have been damaged beyond repair if there had been even the slightest rumour of a previous physical relationship; the legal bond of her pre-contract proved problematic enough without any actual suitors complicating her reputation. Virginity was thought to be physically manifest in several ways, in the shape and firmness of the breasts, the smooth belly and clear urine. Henry’s concerns over Anne’s pre-contract led him to perceive her body in this context, reading it as a sign that she was legally contracted to another man, creating a psychological problem, a barrier or inhibition that would not allow him to consummate the match. As he admitted to Dr Butts, he had experienced emissions of seed (wet dreams) twice nightly during the marriage, which he claimed proved that he was capable of sleeping with a woman, just not this woman. Henry was keen for it to be known that he was a ‘man like any other’, particularly with an impending marriage to a young wife and the comments reputedly levelled at his sexual prowess by Anne Boleyn.

  Night after night, Anne awaited her husband. She lay on the marital bed with its oak head, which depicted a pregnant woman, awaiting the time that she would become a mother. Just how far was she aware of what was expected of a married woman and how far the marriage had fallen short? She is usually depicted as a complete innocent, naïve to the ways of the world to such an extent that she was completely unaware of the sexual act and the means of becoming pregnant. However, the evidence suggests she may not have been as sheltered as this. As early as January, by his own later admission, Anne was seeking advice from Cromwell regarding the failure of her marriage. He, in turn, passed the task on to the Earl of Rutland, a difficult and delicate task in which he probably failed. Anne also still had her own Flemish women with her, including Mother Lowe, to whom she could have turned for advice. It would also be within her mother’s remit to inform her of what to expect upon her departure for England. Sex and childbirth formed the subject of bawdy marital jokes,
songs and sayings at the time; with privacy being elusive even for royalty, the conception and arrival of children was a far more public occurrence, being overheard at night through walls and closed doors. Sex was no great Tudor secret.

  Then there is the standard of Anne’s spoken English. In July, three of Anne’s ladies – Jane, Viscountess Rochford; Eleanor, Countess of Rutland; and Catherine, widow of Sir Piers Edgecombe – testified that Anne had no knowledge of sex at all. When they asked her if she was pregnant, Anne apparently said,

  How can I be a maid … and sleep every night with the king? … When he comes to bed he kisses me, and takes me by the hand, and bids me, good night sweet heart; and in the morning kisses me, and bids me farewell darling. Is this not enough?6

  But did she really utter these words, in exactly this way? Rutland required an interpreter to speak to Anne that same month, as neither could understand each other, so it seems very unlikely she was able to formulate such sentences to her waiting women. No interpreter is mentioned in their deposition. What seems most likely is that these three women willingly contributed the evidence Henry required, either by inventing this conversation or by signing a statement they knew not to be true but believed to accurately reflect the nature of the marriage. They may have created a version of what they believed Anne would have said if they questioned her under such circumstances. It would have been designed to expose her ignorance and thus prove that the marriage had been unconsummated and could, therefore, be annulled. Her virginity needed to be established beyond doubt to prevent her from being examined verbally or physically, as was frequently the case in annulments. Anne herself would never have seen this piece of evidence. She would never be able to challenge it in person. For whatever reason, Henry was unable to have sex with Anne. She probably knew it.