Katherine Howard: A New History (13 page)

Meanwhile, in October Anne of Cleves had been given a safe-conduct to travel to England, which the king had agreed to.
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The future queen left Düsseldorf in November and arrived at the English keep of Calais on 11 December. Admiral Fitzwilliam, who provided hospitality for Anne during her sojourn in Calais, informed the king that ‘she played as pleasantly and with as good a grace and countenance as ever in all my life I saw any noblewoman’.
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Eventually, Anne arrived in England amidst stormy weather on 27 December. The Duke of Suffolk reported that she was ‘desirous to make haste to the King’s Highness’. At Canterbury, Archbishop Cranmer welcomed her with a speech, while the mayor and citizens received her with torches and a peal of guns. Fifty ladies in velvet bonnets visited her in her chamber. Suffolk reported that this ‘she took very joyously [...] that she forgot all the foul weather and was very merry at supper’.
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On New Year’s Eve, Anne travelled to Rochester where she was personally met by Norfolk and Lord Dacre. Alongside Lord Mountjoy, the knights and esquires of Norfolk and Suffolk and the barons of the exchequer, ‘all in coates of velvet with chaynes of gold’, escorted Anne to Rochester.
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The king himself decided to visit his new queen at Rochester, days before their marriage. The nature of the meeting has been enshrined in controversy and legend, with the king’s decision to visit her often attributed to impatience or curiosity. Yet it is likely that the particular nature of this meeting formed ‘part of the elaborate courtship ritual based on chivalrous antecedents’, with Henry’s greeting constituting ‘a sophisticated adaptation of fertility ritual and chivalric ceremonies concerned with the rites of passage, because the begetting of male children was the ultimate goal of the marital union’, while demonstrating the king’s excellent hospitality and social position within his kingdom.
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Hall reported that Anne ‘was sumwhat astonied’ at meeting with the king in such a manner, but after he ‘spoke & welcomed her, she with most gracious and lovyng coutenance & behaviour received and welcomed on her knees, whom he gently toke vp & kyssed [...]’
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Sir Anthony Browne, however, who served as gentleman of the privy chamber and Master of the Horse, believed that the king spoke barely twenty words to his prospective wife and parted from her company without giving her the New Year’s gift of bejewelled sables that he had brought with him.
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The king’s disappointment with his new wife will be addressed in context of the succeeding chapter, but it is worthwhile to view the king’s opinion of his queen, and his desire to marry again, in context of concerns about fertility, reproduction and the English succession. Although the king had successfully sired a prince in 1537, his own childhood reminded him of the urgent necessity of fathering multiple sons for, if the eldest were to die young and there was no brother to replace him, the succession could be cast into supreme difficulties. Thus the emphasis on fertility within the ritual used to welcome Anne of Cleves reminded her that she had been selected as queen consort because of the need for her to bear her king a second son, to fully secure the Tudor succession beyond all possible doubt. The king had utilised ritual before to remind his queens of the ultimate reason why he had chosen to marry them. The pageants in Anne Boleyn’s coronation were centred on the themes of fertility, with verses hoping ‘may Heaven bless these nuptials, and make her a fruitful mother of men-children’.
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Further verses opined: ‘Fruitful Saint Anne bare three Maries; the off-spring of her body, by a strange conception, bare the first founders of our holy Faith. Of that daughter was born Christ our Redeemer, foster-father of a vast family. Not without thought therefore, Queen Anne, do the citizens form this pageant in your honour. By her example, may you give us a race to maintain the Faith and the Throne.’
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During Jane Seymour’s period as queen, the celebrations at Corpus Christi indicated hope for the royal couple’s ‘long life together’ and future children born to them.
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Only in context of prevailing sixteenth-century social and cultural beliefs about fertility, reproduction and sexuality can Henry VIII’s decision to marry not only Anne of Cleves, but also his other queens, be fully understood. Because the queen was traditionally selected by her spouse first and foremost on account of her suitability in a fertile context, the king did not select Anne merely to protect England from the hostility of other European powers. He must have been convinced that, by virtue of her fruitfulness and ‘convenient’ age, she would provide an answer to the pressing issues that continued to plague the English succession. Her inability to do so provides an essential context for understanding the subsequent rise of Katherine Howard and her spectacular attainment of the queenship scarcely months later.

5) From Mistress to Queen

The circumstances that led to the elevation of Katherine Howard to the position of Henry VIII’s fifth queen in the summer of 1540 have often been explained as the culmination of factional intrigues masterminded by the Duke of Norfolk and Stephen Gardiner, Bishop of Winchester, in an attempt to dislodge both Anne of Cleves and Thomas Cromwell from power. Apparently, ‘it was plain to the Catholic chiefs, that if a suitable lady of their own faith could be found, she might win Henry back to what they considered the true fold’, leading Norfolk and Gardiner to select Katherine, ‘whose good looks and supposed Spartan upbringing seemed to fit her peculiarly for the perilous rank of Queen-consort’.
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Baldwin Smith agrees: ‘Catherine [
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] was selected by the conservative party for such a role’ as Norfolk and Gardiner ‘planned their strategy accordingly’ through influencing their king ‘by means of feminine guile’.
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One writer goes further, alleging that ‘Norfolk was quite ready to use Katherine to further his own political agenda’ and Katherine was ‘the victim’ of ‘a reformist conspiracy’ instigated by her uncle and Gardiner.
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These views are largely misguided and do not accurately reflect the state of affairs that resulted in the annulment of Anne of Cleves’ marriage, Cromwell’s execution and Katherine’s marriage to the king.

Norfolk’s decision to appoint three of his female relatives to the household of the new queen, Anne of Cleves, illustrates his desire to further the influence of the Howards within the intimacy of the queen’s chambers, but it does not signal that he intended for one of them to seduce the king and emulate Anne Boleyn in becoming a Howard Queen of England. Indeed, a rather more realistic aim of the duke was for his nieces to contract excellent marriages, a political and social goal that would consolidate and enhance the influence and prestige of the Howard family within the setting of the court. As has been noted, like other noble families the Howards appreciated that women within the family could play important roles, especially in marriage alliances, in bolstering the prestige of the family. Since rumours were to circulate shortly after Katherine’s arrival at court that she was about to marry Thomas Culpeper, gentleman of the king’s privy chamber, it is possible that the duke, aware of the family connection with the Culpepers, considered marrying his niece to an individual who enjoyed enviable influence and proximity to the king. Katherine, however, was ignorant of such rumours, informing Francis Dereham when he accused her: ‘What should you trouble me therewith, for you know I will not have you, and if you heard such reports, you heard more than I do know.’
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Female relatives at court played an essential role, both in maintaining their family’s honour and furthering its influence and prestige. The renowned court poet Thomas Wyatt cynically opined: ‘In this also see you be not idle: thy niece, thy cousin, thy sister or thy daughter, if she be fair, if handsome by her middle, if thy better hath her love besought her, if thy better hath her love besought her, advance his cause, and he shall help thy need [...]’
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Aware of this, it is certain that both the duke and the dowager duchess instructed Katherine and her cousins on the necessity of maintaining modesty, purity and chastity at the court of Henry VIII, for any scandal that threatened the Howard name would be injurious. Chastity and modesty were closely associated with maids-of-honour at court. Earlier, in 1537, when Anne Basset was appointed to serve Jane Seymour, it was emphasised that she should ‘be sober, sad, wise and discreet and lowly [...] and to be obedient’ to the queen and ‘to serve God and to be virtuous’. If she did not do so, it would have grave consequences on her family’s honour, to their own ‘discomfort and discontentation’. The dangers of the court were well-known, being ‘full of pride, envy, indignation and mocking, scorning and derision’.
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Katherine was surely aware of the prestigious nature of her appointment, for competition to become a maid-of-honour to the queen was intense. Maids were expected to dress fashionably, maintain a modest and proper demeanour in court functions, have musical capability, escort the queen in functions such as processions, and sing and dance well. The repeated emphasis on maintaining honesty, chastity and purity can only be understood in light of prevailing cultural and social beliefs that associated the female body with evil, licentiousness and whoredom. One popular rhyme ran thus: ‘Nine times a night is too much for a man / I can’t do it myself, but my sister Nan can.’ Nicholas de Venette was to write that women ‘are much more amorous than men, and as sparrows, do not live long, because they are too hot and too susceptible of love’, associating a woman’s caresses with sin and ‘a capital crime’.
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Robert Cawdry, writing in the reign of Elizabeth, warned: for ‘a maid, the honesty and chastity is instead of all [...] the which thing only if a woman remember, it will cause her to take great heed who, and be more a wary and careful keeper of her honesty, which alone being lost [...] there is nothing left’.
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In view of this it is inconceivable that the duke and his stepmother, the dowager duchess, would have promoted Katherine to a place within the household of Anne of Cleves had they been aware of the full extent of her childhood affairs with Manox and Dereham. Obsessed with maintaining family honour, they would almost certainly have sought a place for an alternative female relative who they knew was chaste and virginal, potentially Katherine’s younger sister.

In December 1539, Katherine received a maiden’s stipend, probably having already travelled to Greenwich Palace in anticipation of Anne of Cleves’ arrival.
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On 3 January, Anne became acquainted with the dukes of Norfolk and Suffolk, the Archbishop of Canterbury, and was welcomed by prestigious ladies within the kingdom, including Margaret Douglas, niece of the king, Frances Marchioness of Dorset, Mary Howard, Duchess of Richmond, and the countesses of Rutland and Hereford. Following these greetings, the gentlemen of the king’s privy chamber, ‘some apparelled in coates of velvet embrodered’, the barons, the bishops, the earls, foreign ambassadors, and finally Cromwell amongst other officers rode forth to meet their new queen. The king himself shortly followed, ‘apparelled in a coate of purple velvet, somewhat made lyke a frocke, all ouer embrodered with flatte golde of Dammaske with small lace mixed betwene of the same gold, and other laces of the same so goyng trauerse wyse [...] the sleues and brest were cut lyned with cloth of golde, and tyed together with great buttons of Diamondes, Rubyes, and Orient Perle [...] his bonnet was so ryche of Iuels that fewe men coulde value them.’
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Hearing of the king’s arrival, Anne came forth to greet him, ‘beyng apparelled in a ryche goune of cloth of golde reised, made rounde without any trayne after the Dutche fassyon, and on her head a kall, & ouer that a rounde bonet or cappe set full of Orient Perle of a very propre fassyon, & before that she had a cornet of blacke velvet, & about her necke she had a partelet set full of riche stone which glystered all the felde.’ Riding forth to the king, Anne was personally welcomed and ‘embrased [...] to the great reioysyng of the beholders’, replying with ‘sweete woordes and great thankes’.
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It is likely that Katherine was present at this occasion, for Hall records the presence of ‘Ladies, Gentlewomen & Maydens in a gret nombre’.
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The new queen’s household was comprised of great ladies, including Mary Arundell Countess of Sussex, Frances Brandon, Lady Margaret Douglas, Elizabeth Grey Lady Audley, Mary Howard and the Countess of Rutland. Gentlewomen included Lady Wriothesley and Lady Elizabeth Cromwell, and maids-of-honour included Katherine Howard, Katherine Carey and Anne Basset, who had previously served Queen Jane.
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Evidence suggests that the king was not personally delighted with his prospective wife, lamenting: ‘I see nothing in this woman as men report of her’, speaking ‘very sadly and pensively’. He continued: ‘And I marvel that wise men would make such report as they have done.’
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Cromwell, who had been greatly involved in the marriage negotiations, asked the king how he liked his new wife. Replying that he found her ‘nothing so well as she was spoken of’, the king insisted that Cromwell find a ‘remedy’. Yet Cromwell was forced to admit that he knew ‘none’, adding that ‘he was very sorry therefore’.
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The king, however, was required to put aside personal feelings for the needs of the kingdom and married Anne on 6 January at Greenwich: ‘[...] on Twelfe daie, which was Twesdaie, the Kinges Majestie was maried to the said Queene Anne, solemply, in her closett at Greenwych, and his Grace and shee went a procession openlie that daie, she being in her haire, with a rytch cronett of stones and pearle sett with rosemarie on her Graces heade, and a gowne of rich cloath of silver, and richlie behanged with stonne and pearle, with all her ladies and gentlewomen following her Grace, which was a goodlie sight to behold.’
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The new queen, dressed in a gown of rich cloth of gold set with large flowers and orient pearl, with her ‘fayre, yelowe and long’ hair loose, chose the motto for her wedding ring: ‘GOD SEND ME WILL TO KEEP.’
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