Catherine Howard

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Catherine Howard (ca. 1523 – 13 February 1542) was Queen Consort of England from 1540 to 1541 as wife of Henry VIII.

Catherine was the daughter of Lord Edmund Howard and Joyce Culpeper, as well as a cousin of Anne Boleyn (Henry VIII's second wife) and niece of Thomas Howard, 3rd Duke of Norfolk, who was a prominent politician at the King's court, ensuring Catherine a place in the entourage of Enrique's fourth wife, Ana de Cléveris, thanks to which the monarch became interested in her. Both were married on July 28, 1540 at Oatlands Palace, in Surrey, immediately after the annulment of the marriage between Henry and Anne, the king being 49 years old and she being barely a teenager.

Catherine was stripped of her title of queen in November 1541, and three months later was beheaded on charges of treason for having committed adultery with her mother's distant cousin Thomas Culpeper.

Biography

Family

Catherine was one of the daughters of Lord Edmund Howard and his wife Joyce Culpeper. Elizabeth Howard, her father's sister, was the mother of Anne Boleyn, so Catherine was her first cousin as well as a second-degree aunt to Elizabeth I, daughter of Anne and Henry. As the granddaughter of Thomas Howard, 2nd Duke of Norfolk, Catherine was of aristocratic lineage, although her father was not wealthy as he was the third of 21 children and was disadvantaged because he was not the eldest, with his older brother inheriting the entire fortune. his father's.

When Catalina's parents married, her mother was already bringing up five children from her first marriage to Ralph Leigh; With Catalina's father she procreated six more offspring, being the tenth of her children. With few resources to support his family, Howard was frequently forced to ask relatives for financial help. After the death of Catalina's mother, her father remarried two more times. In 1531, Howard was appointed controller of Calais (then under English rule), being deposed in 1539 and dying in March of that same year. On the other hand, Catherine was the third of Henry VIII's wives to be a member of the English nobility, since Catherine of Aragon and Anne of Cleveris were members of the European nobility.

Early Years

Catherine was possibly born in Lambeth around 1523, although the exact date is unknown (some sources which include family records suggest that she was born between 1518 and 1524, being more likely around the latter year). After her mother's death (about 1528), Catherine was sent with several of her siblings to live in the care of her father's stepmother, Agnes Tilney, Duchess of Norfolk, who kept a large boarding house in Chesworth House, in Horsham, Sussex, and Norfolk House, in Lambeth, where dozens of tenants resided with their dependents (usually children of impoverished aristocratic relatives). Sending young children to be educated and prepared in other aristocratic homes instead of in the family home had been common for centuries among the European nobility, although supervision was exercised at Chesworth House and at Lambeth it was apparently lax. The Dowager Duchess often remained at court and apparently had little involvement in the upbringing of the young men in her charge.

Because of the duchess's lack of discipline, Catherine was influenced by some older girls who allowed men access to the bedrooms, being rewarded with food, wine and various gifts. Although Catalina did not enjoy the exquisite education of Enrique's other wives, her ability to read and write was high enough for the time. Her character was frequently described as lively, smiling, and energetic, though never scholarly or devout. She showed, likewise, great interest in her dance lessons, although she used to get distracted during them and play jokes. In addition, she was very given to animal husbandry, particularly dogs.

At the Duchess's house in Horsham, around 1536, Catherine (aged approx. 13) was repeatedly harassed by her music teacher Henry Mannox (aged 36), who would later provide evidence in the process against Catherine. Both she and Mannox confessed during the adultery investigation to having had sexual contact, although they never had intercourse. During her interrogation, Catherine stated: "At Mannox's flattering and beautiful persuasions, as a child, I suffered him on several occasions to fondle and touch the secret parts of my body, which he did not honestly return to me to allow or demand of him." ». His encounters with Mannox ceased in 1538, when Catherine moved to the home of the Dowager Duchess at Lambeth. She there she was courted by Francis Dereham, secretary to the Duchess. Supposedly, the two became lovers, calling each other "husband" and "wife." Dereham even entrusted Catherine with various duties inherent in a wife, such as looking after her money when he was away on business. Many of Catherine's roommates among the duchess's ladies-in-waiting and servants were aware of this relationship, which apparently came to an end in 1539, when the duchess discovered the idyll. Despite this, Catherine and Dereham probably separated with the intention of marrying after his return from Ireland, both agreeing to a pre-marriage contract: had they exchanged vows before proceeding to have sexual relations, both would have been considered married in the eyes of the Church.

Arrival at court

Catherine's uncle, Thomas Howard, found a place for her at court as a lady-in-waiting to the king's fourth wife, Anne of Cleves. Thanks to her youth and good looks, Catherine soon attracted the attention of Enrique. The monarch had shown little interest in Anne from the start, and following Thomas Cromwell's failure to find a wife for the king, Norfolk saw an opportunity. The Howard family apparently tried to recreate in Catherine the influence gained by Anne Boleyn during her reign as her consort. According to the priest Nicholas Sander, the conservative and religious Howard family possibly saw in the young Catherine a leading figure in their fight for express determination to restore the Catholic religion in England. In fact, Catholic Bishop Stephen Gardiner entertained the couple at Winchester Palace with grand festivities.

As Henry's interest in Catherine grew, the influence of the House of Norfolk grew. Her youth, beauty, and vivacity captivated the monarch, who declared that he had never known "anything like that in a woman." Within just a few months of her arrival, Henry granted Catherine lands and luxurious clothing, the king calling her his "jewel of femininity" (the fact that the monarch referred to Catherine as his "thornless rose" probably constitutes a myth).

Marriage

Henry and Catherine were married, officiated by the Bishop of London Edmund Bonner, at Oatlands Palace on 28 July 1540, the same day Thomas Cromwell was executed. Catalina was barely a teenager, while Enrique was 49 years old, the young woman adopting the French motto "non autre volonté que la sienne " ("no other will than hers"). The marriage was made public on 8 August, with prayers held in the Chapel Royal at Hampton Court Palace.

Catherine, whom Mannox had taught to play the virginal, was young, cheerful, and carefree; her youth prevented her from taking part in affairs of state and in administrative matters relating to it. Despite this, every night Sir Thomas Heneage, the king's servant, came to her chambers to inform her of Enrique's well-being. No plans for a coronation were carried out, although she Catherine sailed down the river in the royal barge to the City of London to an artillery salute and some cheers. The young queen was installed at Baynard's Castle, with little change at court, including the arrival of various members of the Howard family. Catherine dressed each day in new French-style garments adorned with precious jewels, notably the motto "non autre volonté que la sienne " decorated in gold around her sleeves.

The queen managed to avoid the plague that struck London in August 1540 during the royal entry. The monarchs' entourage traveled on their honeymoon to Reading, in Berkshire, and to Buckingham. After the Queen's Chamberlain became drunk and misbehaved, the King fell into a poor mood until his transfer to Woking Palace, where his health improved, embarking on a splendid and the time expensive celebration to celebrate their marriage, with expensive reforms in the Palace of Whitehall. This was followed in turn by lavish Christmas presents at Hampton Court Palace.

That winter Enrique's bad mood increased and he began to show fury and irritability. The pain of his ulcerous legs was agony for him, which made relations at court difficult, the monarch accusing his advisers of being "lying temporal servants", in turn beginning to lament having lost Cromwell. After the depression suffered in March 1541, his character improved at Easter of that year. Regarding Catalina, he had everything ready for any sign of pregnancy, Marillac informing her on April 15 that "if it is true, let her be crowned in Whitsuntide."

Fall

Catherine reportedly had an affair with one of the king's favorite courtiers, Thomas Culpeper, a young man who had "succeeded [her] in the queen's affections" according to testimony provided by Dereham. Catherine had considered marrying Culpeper during her time as a lady-in-waiting to Anne of Cleves, calling her "my sweet little fool" in a love letter. It has been suggested that in the spring of 1541 the two met in secret, their meetings arranged by Catherine's oldest lady-in-waiting, Jane Boleyn, Viscountess Rochford, widow of Queen George Boleyn's executed cousin, brother of Anne Boleyn.

Letter from Catherine Howard to Thomas Culpeper (1541)

During the royal entry in autumn, a crisis began to betray Catherine's behavior. Those who claimed to have witnessed the queen's early sexual arousal during her stay in Lambeth contacted her to request favors in exchange for silence, some of these blackmailers being assigned to her court. John Lascelles, brother of Mary Lascelles, claimed to have tried to persuade her sister to find a position in the queen's royal chamber. However, Mary had refused to do so, claiming to have witnessed Catherine's 'light' behavior while she and the two lived together in Lambeth. Supposedly, John reported this fact to the Archbishop of Canterbury Thomas Cranmer, who proceeded to question Mary, who stated that Catherine had had sexual relations under Agnes Tilney's tutelage and therefore prior to her marriage to him. king. Cranmer used this information to overthrow her rivals: the Catholic Norfolk family. Jane was questioned and, fearing torture, agreed to speak, stating that she was in charge of guarding the back stairs when Culpeper slipped out of Catalina's chambers. During the investigation, a love letter written in the unmistakable handwriting of the queen was found in Culpeper's rooms, this being the only letter written by Catherine that is currently preserved (apart from her confession).

It seems unlikely that the king was completely ignorant of the accusations against his wife when on November 1, 1541, All Saints' Day, he arranged for her to be found praying in the Royal Chapel, where he received a warrant for her arrest. queen in which the crimes committed by her were detailed. On November 7, Cranmer led a delegation of councilors to Winchester Palace in Southwark to question Catherine. The Archbishop found the young woman frantic and incoherent, declaring: "I found her in such lamentation and heaviness as I have never seen in any creature, that it would have pityed any man's heart to have looked at her." Whatever Catherine could do in that state, she ordered the guards to remove any object that the queen could use to commit suicide.

Arrest and execution

The existence of a pre-contract between Catherine and Dereham would not only have caused the end of the royal union, but would have allowed Henry to annul their marriage and banish Catherine from court, condemning her to poverty and disgrace instead of to be executed, although there is no evidence to support that the king would have considered opting for that alternative. Despite the accusations against her, Catalina firmly denied the existence of any pre-contract, stating that Dereham had violated her.

Catherine was stripped of her title of queen on 23 November and imprisoned in Syon Abbey, a convent located in Middlesex, where she remained throughout the winter. She was forced by a privy councilor to return the ring of Ana de Cléveris that the king had given him (this jewel was a symbol of his royal and legal rights). Although the king was at Hampton Court, Catherine never saw him in person again. On the other hand, despite the actions carried out against her, the marriage between Catalina and Enrique was never formally annulled.

Culpeper and Dereham were indicted for high treason at Guildhall on December 1, and were both executed at Tyburn on December 10. Culpeper gained the king's favor and was beheaded, while Dereham was hanged, disemboweled, castrated, quartered and beheaded, the heads of both being displayed on pikes on London Bridge. Several of Catherine's relatives were similarly arrested and imprisoned in the Tower of London, with the exception of the Duke of Norfolk, who had distanced himself enough from the scandal by retreating to Kenninghall to write a letter of apology, which was an act of humiliation for his share (his son, the Renaissance poet Henry Howard, Earl of Surrey, nevertheless continued to be in the King's favour). The duke, aware that his family had been disgraced, wrote a letter of apology to the king on December 14, excusing himself and shifting the blame onto his niece and stepmother. All imprisoned family members They were tried, found guilty of concealing treason, and sentenced to life imprisonment and the forfeiture of all their property, though they would eventually be released and their property returned. For his part, the obese king sank further into morbidity, indulging his appetite for food and women.

Catherine's situation remained uncertain until the Parliament of England introduced a bill of attainder on January 29, 1542 (legislative act by which it is condemned, often without trial, to one or more people), which was approved on February 7. The Royal Assent by Act of Commission 1541 converted the crime committed by Catalina into treason (crime punishable by death) for the fact that, being a consort, not having revealed her sexual past to the king within the first twenty days of marriage, or for having incited someone to commit adultery with her. This settled the question of the alleged pre-contract and meant that Catherine was unequivocally guilty (a marriage was never held). formal trial).

Recording of the execution of Catherine Howard (1864)

When Council members came looking for her, the young woman reportedly panicked and screamed loudly as she was forced onto the barge that would take her under guard to the Tower on February 10, the flotilla passing under the Bridge from London, where the heads of Culpeper and Dereham were impaled (they would remain there until 1546). After passing through the Traitors' Gate, Catherine was led to her cell. The next day the bill of attainder received the Royal Assent, the execution being scheduled in the Green Tower for 7:00 a.m. on Monday 13 February and the execution arrangements being overseen by Sir John Gage as Constable of the Tower.

The night before the execution, Catalina is believed to have spent several hours practicing how to place her head on the beheading block, which had been moved to her cell at her request. She died with apparent calm and composure, although according to witnesses She looked pale and terrified, requiring help to climb the scaffold, from where she delivered a speech describing her punishment as "deserved and just" and asking for mercy for her family as well as prayers for her soul. According to popular folklore, her last words were: "I die as queen, but I would have preferred to die as Culpeper's wife." However, no testimony from the witnesses to her execution reported anything similar, declaring that Catalina uttered the traditional words, which consisted of asking for forgiveness for her sins and acknowledging that she deserved "a thousand deaths" for having betrayed the king, who always he had treated her well. This was typical of the speeches of those who were going to be executed at that time, especially in order to protect their families, since her last words were reported to the king. Catalina herself died a quick death, having been decapitated with a single blow of the axe.

Jane Rochford was executed immediately after the queen, both bodies being buried in an unmarked grave in the nearby Royal Chapel of St. Peter ad Vincula, where the remains of two of Catherine's cousins, Anne and George Boleyn, also rested. Several of his cousins were present in the crowd during the execution, including the Earl of Surrey, while the King was not in attendance. Catherine's body was one of those not identified in restorations to the chapel during the reign of Victoria of the United Kingdom, although she is commemorated by a plaque on the west wall dedicated to those who died in the Tower of London. Upon hearing the news of Catherine's execution, Francis I of France wrote a letter to Henry lamenting the "lewd and daring behavior of the queen" and advising the monarch that "the lightness of women cannot subdue the honor of men.".

Portraits

Painters generally continued to include Joan Seymour, Henry VIII's third wife, in the King's paintings after his death mainly because of the monarch's favor for her as the only one of his wives to have provided him with a son. Consequently, many artists copied Hans Holbein the Younger's portrait of Joan. Regarding Catalina, after her execution, the Howard family withdrew her portrait from the family gallery. Debate over the identity of the sitters for various portraits continues to this day, with no known authentic portrait of Henry VIII's fifth wife existing.

Susan James, Jamie Franco, and Conor Byrne have identified the work titled Portrait of a Young Woman, attributed to Holbein's studio and housed in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, as a possible painting of Catherine.

Thumbnails

Two miniature portraits of Holbein (Royal Collection and Buccleuch Collection) are considered by most historians to be the only surviving images of Catherine painted during her lifetime, notable for her brown hair and nose columbine typical of the Howard family. Historian David Starkey dates these works, based on certain details of her dress and the technique of the miniature, to Catherine's brief period as queen. In them, the model wears the same large jewel that Juana Seymour shows in a portrait located in the Royal Gallery of Mauritshuis Paintings, in The Hague. Records reveal that these jewels belonged to the Crown and not to the queen personally, there being no evidence that they had been withdrawn from the treasury or delivered to anyone. Likewise, the pearls shown may be related to a gift made by Henry to Catherine in 1540, she being the only queen to date whose appearance is unknown. At that time, duplicate miniatures only existed in the case of her queens, with no authentic portrait of her for comparison. Despite this, both versions have been identified as portraits of Catherine Howard: from 1736 the one in the Buccleuch Collection and from 1739 (or at least since the 1840s) the one in the Royal Collection. Similarly, a sketch by Holbein it has traditionally been identified as a portrait of Catherine, although this is disputed.

ETATIS SVA 21

Holbein's contemporary portrait of a young woman dressed in black (Toledo Museum of Art) was identified by Sir Lionel Cust in 1909 as an image of Catherine, with two copies of Holbein's original extant: one in the Castle of Hever and another property of the National Portrait Gallery, London. Although the portrait has been associated with Henry VIII's fifth wife, identification of it with Catherine is widely, though not universally, ruled out..

The text of the portrait, ETATIS SVA 21, indicates that the sitter was 21 years old, an age that Catalina never reached. Herbert Norris points out that the model wears a sleeve which follows the style imposed by Ana de Cléveris, which would date the work after January 6, 1540, when the marriage between Ana and Enrique took place, she being consort from the January 6 to July 30 of the same year. Holbein's original is dated between 1535 and 1540, although the National Portrait Gallery copy is dated to the 17th century.

Historians Antonia Fraser and Derek Wilson believe the portrait probably represents Elizabeth Seymour. Antonia Fraser argues that the sitter is the sister of Joan Seymour, widow of Sir Anthony Ughtred, on the grounds that the lady is wearing a countenance similar to that of Juana, especially in relation to the nose and chin, in addition to wearing mourning attire. Her black clothing, however, was expensive and did not necessarily imply mourning or mourning, but rather indicative of wealth and status. Derek Wilson observed that "in August 1537 Cromwell succeeded in marrying his son Gregory to Elizabeth Seymour," the Queen's younger sister. Thanks to this she became related to the king, "an event worth capturing for posterity, in a portrait of his daughter-in-law", the painting remaining in the possession of the Cromwell family for centuries.

The portrait on display at the Toledo Museum of Art is attributed to Holbein and dates to between 1535 and 1540, titled Portrait of a Lady, Probably a Member of the Cromwell Family. Another A version of this portrait, currently housed in Hever Castle and dated to the 16th century, is on display as a painting by Catherine Howard. The National Portrait Gallery houses a similar painting, Unknown Woman, formally known as Catherine Howard, which has been dated to the late 17th century, the gallery not establishing the identity of the sitter.

Relationship with Joan Seymour and Anne Boleyn

Elizabeth Cheney
Elizabeth Tilney
Anne Say
Edmund Howard
Elizabeth Howard
Margery Wentworth
Catalina Howard
María Bolena
Ana Bolena
Henry VIII
Juana Seymour
Isabel I
Eduardo VI

Representations in the media

YearMovieDirectorActress
2007The Tudor (TV)Michael HirtsTamzin Merchant
1972The six wives of Henry VIII (Series)Waris HusseinAngela Pleasence
1933The Private Life of Henry VIIIAlexander KordaBinnie Barnes
2017 Six (musical)Toby Marlow, Lucy MossAimie Atkinson, Samantha Pauly


Predecessor:
Ana de Cléveris
Queen Consort of England
1540-1542
Arms of Catherine Howard.svg
Successor:
Catalina Parr
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