Katherine Howard: A New History (10 page)

Perhaps Dereham believed that Katherine was his lawful wife. Katherine later admitted that ‘there was Communication in the House that we Two should Marry together [...] wherefore he desired to give me Leave to call me Wife, and that I should call him Husband [...] And so after that, commonly he called me Wife, and many times I called him Husband’.
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When one observer opined that it seemed as if ‘Mr Dereham shall have Mrs Katherine Howard’, Dereham responded ‘By St John you may guess twice and guess worse’.
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Seeking to legalise his affair with Katherine, Dereham persistently bothered her with ‘the question of marriage’.
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Possibly, Dereham’s persistent giving of gifts to Katherine signified his desire to marry her, for gifts signified an important and accepted part of courtship during this period, with coins, rings, and gloves being particularly popular amongst lovers.
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Despite the wishes and concerns of the noble Howards, Dereham may have adhered to the accepted belief that ‘merely [...] uttering the appropriate words’ was sufficient to contract a marriage, without the presence of witnesses, priest or church, or the goodwill of Katherine’s Howard relatives.
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It is noteworthy, in light of Katherine’s experiences, that some women only agreed to marry following a sexual attack. In the fifteenth century, Agnes Grantham of York agreed to marry her attacker using words of present consent, fearing further instances of rape.
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Probably because she never consented to Dereham’s sexual advances, Katherine later vehemently denied ever being his wife, which was an accepted notion amongst canon lawyers who required that marriage vows be freely given and not coerced by others.
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Significantly, she defined her experiences in terms of ‘force’ brought about by Dereham’s ‘vicious purpose’, as has been intriguingly suggested, ‘in most narratives rape was defined in terms of male violence, not sex’.
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Dereham’s pursuit of Katherine was to have fatal consequences for both of them. However, Katherine’s personal position during the time of her experiences rendered her unable to end her abuse. Not only was her step-grandmother often at court to carry out her duties and thus unable to provide her with assistance, but sixteenth-century English law regarding rape and sexual assault worked against the young Katherine. Only women who belonged to a father, husband or master could make public accusations against those who assaulted them – although Katherine’s father may have still been alive, his duties and his absence from his daughter rendered him unavailable to assist her. Despite this, the rape of virgins was an offence punishable by death, and even in eighteenth-century England the sexual assault of children was perceived to be far worse to the rape of adult women. Although it is likely that Katherine had commenced puberty by the time of her relations with Dereham in 1538-9, interestingly the death penalty was merited for the sexual molestation of a girl who had not yet reached puberty.
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If Henry VIII believed that Dereham had violated a pre-pubescent Katherine, this could account for the particularly savage execution granted to him in 1541. Dereham’s irresponsible and violent behaviour shattered Katherine’s reputation and rendered her, in the eyes of male contemporaries, dishonest and deceitful, for ‘girls who had already lost their virginity were regarded as more culpable for their sexual relationships’.
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Moreover, in cases of rape women struggled to prove any allegations they made ‘because the very law suspects her of having invited the assault [...] the law puts women on the defensive’.
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If Dereham was particularly sexually violent towards Katherine, this could account for her failure to fall pregnant while queen. It has been recognised that the long-term physical impacts of sexual abuse can encompass damage to the urethra and vagina, sexual and reproductive health problems, and other problems associated with sex.
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It needs to be considered why Katherine’s fellow relatives and acquaintances who shared the maidens’ chamber with her did not inform the dowager duchess of the sexual relationship between her step-granddaughter and a gentleman-pensioner within her household. By contrast, Mary Lascelles had been pivotal in putting an end to the affair with Manox. Possibly, if other individuals within the establishment believed that the two were actually married, then it could explain why they did not intervene to protect Katherine’s honour and discourage Dereham in the same way in which Manox had been confronted. Dereham’s behaviour supports this interpretation for, referring to Katherine as ‘his own wife’, when a fellow acquaintance commented that ‘Mr Dereham shall have Mrs Katherine Howard’, he was to reply, ‘by St John you may guess twice and guess worse’.
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Although she was to chastise her step-granddaughter for her behaviour with Dereham, it is probable that ‘the Dowager may have been unaware of the full extent of the relationship’ between Katherine and Dereham.
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Katherine’s fellow residents within the dowager duchess’s household were only to provide details about the full nature of the Dereham affair during the queen’s downfall, when they were forcibly required to. Possibly they mistakenly believed that Katherine consented to Dereham’s advances, while excusing his aggressiveness. Significantly, the contemporary language utilised for describing male sexual misbehaviour was the same as that of ordinary male heterosexual activity: ‘lustfull Desires’ and ‘pleasures’. In a strikingly similar case John Wolfe, accused of violently raping a maiden, declared that he had ‘pulled up her clothes and asked her whether she was willing as I’. Katherine’s acquaintances reported that Dereham, like Wolfe, had plucked Katherine’s ‘clothes above her navel so that he might well discern her body’.
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Yet, as has been recognised: ‘men often claimed that sex, not rape, had occurred. They dramatised female consent verbally (by a woman’s assent or invitation), physically (by her acquiescence or little resistance), and association (by claiming that she was of ‘lewd’ disposition).’
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Taking into account the inherent difficulties with legal evidence in which witnesses embroidered or manufactured details for their own purposes, when the evidence is read in light of cultural and social customs it indicates that Katherine’s adolescence was characterised by abuse, neglect and manipulation by avaricious men within the household of her step-grandmother. The sexual practices involved, which probably encompassed sexual assault and, potentially, rape, were viewed as sexually deviant by contemporaries and abhorrent to God.
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Because of the importance attached to female honour and the prestige of the Howard family, in which women could play a prominent part as family members, it is reasonable to suppose that Katherine’s uncle, the Duke of Norfolk, was not aware of his niece’s sexual experiences when he sought a place for her at court in the autumn of 1539, particularly since he had participated in the downfall of Anne Boleyn and was aware of the suspicion and hostility aroused by female sexuality. Instead, probably through hearing reports of his niece’s beauty and charm coupled with her developing musical ability, Norfolk sought a place for her at court that year to serve Henry VIII’s new queen, Anne of Cleves, a process in which he also sought appointments for his other teenage nieces, Katherine Carey and Mary Norris. Although she had not consented to the sexual experiences she had been forced to undergo, Katherine’s childhood past would return soon to haunt her.

4) ‘Strange, Restless Years’

Jane Seymour’s ascendancy following Anne Boleyn’s downfall, and the subsequent rise of the Seymour family, inaugurated a period of ambivalence for the Howards, who had forfeited the major source of their influence with the king through their relative’s disgrace. The Seymours, who initially shared the religious conservatism of the Howards, were to become the Howards’ greatest rivals within the kingdom, ushering in a period of hostility and suspicion between the two families that was to endure throughout the later years of Henry VIII’s reign.

Following Anne’s execution, ‘the weke before Whitsontyde the kyng maryed Jane doughter to the right worshipfull sir John Seymour knight, whiche at Whitsontyde was openlye shewed as Quene.’
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The unknown author of
The
Chronicle of Henry VIII
approvingly described Jane as ‘this good lady’, who was ‘much beloved by all’ for the kindness she showed to Henry’s daughter Mary.
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On the following Tuesday, Jane’s elder brother Edward, who had played a prominent role in encouraging his sister’s influence with the king during Anne’s reign, was created Viscount Beauchamp, while Sir Walter Hungerford was made a lord.
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The king agreed, ‘at the humble entreaty of his nobility [...] to accept that condition [of marriage] and has taken to himself a wife, who in age [Jane was twenty-eight] and form is deemed to be meet and apt for the procreation of children.’
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The king’s speedy marriage to Jane Seymour demonstrates the precarious nature of the Tudor succession and his desperation, more than ever, to sire a male heir to ensure a peaceful succession. The rise of the Seymour family led to a considerable loss of influence for their opponents, the Howards. On 10 July, Cromwell was made Lord Cromwell and Baron Cromwell of Wimbledon, replacing Thomas Boleyn, father of the late queen, as the Lord Privy Seal on 29 July. Later, Cromwell’s son Gregory was married to Elizabeth, younger sister of Queen Jane, strengthening the alliance between the Master Secretary and the queen’s family.

During the parliament called in June, however, Lord Thomas Howard, stepbrother of the duke, ‘without the kynges assent affied the lady Margaret Douglas daughter to the quene of Scottes and nece to the kyng: for whiche presumpteous acte he was attainted of treason [...] and so he dyed in the Tower, and she was long there as prisoner.’
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The love affair between Thomas Howard and Henry VIII’s niece, Margaret Douglas, daughter of the Scottish queen Margaret, brought the Howard family into further disrepute, for it was alleged by their enemies that Howard had conspired to seize the throne through marriage with the king’s relative. The Act of Attainder brought against him recorded that: ‘he aspired to the throne by reason of so high a marriage [...] that he had a firm hope and trust that the subjects of this realm would incline and bear affection to the said lady Margaret being born in the realm and not to the King of Scots her brother.’
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It was later recorded by Wriothesley that ‘this yeare [1537], on All Hallowe Even, the Lord Thomas Howarde, brother to the Duke of Northfolke, died in prison in the Tower of London, and his bodie was caried to Thetforde, and there buried’. At the same time, Margaret Douglas returned to court, having been pardoned by her uncle the king, although ‘she tooke his death [Thomas’s] very heavilie’.
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The duke must have reacted to news of his stepbrother’s liaison with Margaret Douglas with fury, for the security of the Howard family had been spectacularly threatened through such rash behaviour. The downfall of Anne Boleyn, coupled with Thomas Howard’s misalliance with Margaret, weakened the position of the Howards, worsened by the rapid rise of the Seymours and increasing favour with the king.

Notwithstanding this, the Howards continued to play important roles within the kingdom, showing that their influence continued to remain strong. Cromwell, in a letter written to Sir Brian Tuke on 12 June, mentioned that the king of arms had been sent to ‘the lorde William Howarde’ then serving in Scotland as ‘ambassade’.
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The Duke of Norfolk continued to bear ‘the golden staffe as Marshall of Englande’ during celebrations for the new queen.
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During the processes of reconciliation between the Lady Mary and her father the king in early June, Norfolk headed a delegation of the council at Hunsdon, entreating Mary to acknowledge her father as her sovereign lord and to accept all the laws and statutes of the realm, while accepting him as supreme heard of the English church and repudiating the jurisdiction of the Bishop of Rome, while agreeing that her parents’ marriage had been invalid. When she refused, Norfolk brutally informed her, alongside the other councillors, that he ‘would knock her head so violently against the wall that they would make it as soft as baked apples’.
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Later the duke, alongside the lord chancellor of England, escorted the new wife of the heir of the Earl of Oxford, who was daughter to the Earl of Westmorland, to her new home.
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However, the fortunes of the Howards suffered a blow with the death of the king’s bastard son Henry Fitzroy, Duke of Richmond and husband of the duke’s daughter Lady Mary Howard, on 23 July at St James’s. Aged only seventeen, his cause of death was then unknown but was attributed by some to the use of poison by the late queen and her brother. Married to Lady Mary, the failure to consummate the marriage meant that ‘she is maide, wife, and now a widowe’. Fitzroy was buried at Thetford in Norfolk, the traditional burial place of the Howards.
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The widowed duchess struggled to obtain payment of the dowry settled upon her, before receiving in March 1539-40 the manor of Swaffham in Norfolk and other crown properties.
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