Katherine Howard: A New History (22 page)

Figure 11 -
Hampton Court Palace

Figure 12 -
Engraving of Henry VIII

8) ‘Yours as Long as Life Endures’

In April 1541, shortly after her husband’s serious illness, Katherine commenced an association with Thomas Culpeper that was eventually to prove fatal. Modern historians have disputed contentiously the nature of the relationship between the queen and a handsome young gentleman who served her husband the king within the intimate faculty of groom of the privy chamber. As has been seen, Culpeper had enjoyed a successful career at court before Katherine’s rise to power. A favourite of the king, as a ‘handsome youth’ he was also viewed commendably by ladies of the court. Why he became involved with Queen Katherine in the spring of 1541 is a mysterious issue, which has been insufficiently and unsatisfactorily explored.

Most modern historians continue to believe that Katherine and Culpeper, two lustful individuals, were naturally attracted to one another and, shortly after the queen’s marriage, foolishly began to meet at night-time for the purpose of enjoying sexual fulfilment with one another.
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As a consequence, they conclude that while Katherine’s execution represented a tragedy, it was entirely deserved because of her reckless conduct. Other historians who believe that Katherine and Culpeper did not likely consummate their union nevertheless suggest that love existed between the pair.
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However, a feminist interpretation has also been advocated which argues that, as an aggressive courtier, Culpeper manipulated the young queen into granting him sexual favours in return for keeping quiet about her scandalous childhood.
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The difficulties inherent with this particular approach are obvious, since many details not borne out by contemporary sources are invented: ‘Dereham and others from Katherine’s past began blackmailing her at court’, ‘Culpeper [...] exchanged information about her with Dereham’.
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The pressing difficulties in relation to understanding Katherine’s relations with Culpeper arise from the distorted nature of the evidence. As has been succinctly observed of the sex lives of individuals living in the early modern period, ‘we usually acquire information [...] only when they are publicized as a result of someone behaving in a fashion which is considered scandalous, or has caused outrage.’
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The misogynistic notions prevalent in the indictments drawn up against the queen and her associates further obscure any understanding one can hope to gain in considering the events of 1541. It is therefore necessary to recognise that the basis of what we know about the affair stems entirely from indictments produced against the couple with the purpose of attainting them for treason. Neither accurate nor fair, the inherent male prejudice and gross exaggeration present should be viewed critically and cautiously.

It seems likely that it was Culpeper who had instigated the affair by approaching Lady Rochford, beseeching her to assist him in meeting with the queen. Lady Rochford, according to both the queen and her ladies-in-waiting, had encouraged the affair and perhaps even planned it. But if Culpeper had first approached Lady Rochford then Katherine would only have been aware of Lady Rochford’s encouragements to her. Culpeper may have assumed that, as an experienced courtier and lady of the bedchamber coupled with her kinship ties to the Howard family, Lady Rochford would be an ideal candidate to approach in order to assist him with meeting the queen in private. Traditionally, biographers have characterised Lady Rochford as a vengeful, even sociopathic, shrew who actively brought down her husband on charges of incest, out of resentment at his closeness to Anne Boleyn, and then engineered Katherine’s relations with Culpeper for mysterious reasons of her own. The evidence actually indicates that Culpeper approached her and probably blackmailed her into allowing him to meet with the queen and impose his demands on her.
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Significantly, by Culpeper’s later admission, the couple first met on Maundy Thursday, which fell on 14 April 1541. This occurred only four days after the French ambassador had reported that the queen was believed to be pregnant and the court was in the midst of preparations for the impeding birth.
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It is almost certain that both the king and his councillors remembered this at the time of the queen’s downfall and interpreted this meeting in a sinister light. According to Culpeper’s report, the queen summoned Culpeper to her presence by her servant Henry Webb. There she gave him ‘by her own hands a fair cap of velvet garnished with a brooch and three dozen pairs of aglets and a chain’. Katherine warned Culpeper to hide the items to prevent anyone seeing them. When Culpeper questioned her behaviour, she rebuked him: ‘Is this all the thanks ye give me for the cap? If I had known ye would have [said] these words you should never have had it.’
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When analysing this evidence, it seems to suggest that Katherine initiated the meeting. By Katherine’s admission, however, it was Lady Rochford who encouraged her to meet with Culpeper, promising that he ‘meant nothing but honesty’. She also advised the queen to ‘give men leave to look’ on her, ‘for they will look upon you [Katherine]’. Katherine’s own feelings towards Culpeper are uncertain, but she responded to Lady Rochford’s suggestions with the retort that she did not wish to be involved with ‘such light matters’.
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Although the queen had generously provided Culpeper with several small gifts at their meeting in April, they did not next meet until three months later during the summer progress. In view of prevailing social and cultural customs, and Katherine’s own sexual past, it is unlikely that she met with Culpeper willingly, for an ‘expectation concerning virtuous female behaviour [...] impressed upon the consciousnesses of all well-educated ladies [...] was that they should avoid trivial flirtatious relationships, not merely carnal liaisons, with all men except their husbands’.
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Katherine’s association of sexual experiences with abuse, coercion and punishment received from her step-grandmother, coupled with her own sense of honour and pride in her Howard lineage, does not support the view that she recklessly sought to meet Culpeper for the purpose of sexual enjoyment. Indeed, having escaped the systematic abuse of both Manox and Dereham through her appointment at court, it is possible that Katherine developed an aversion to sex.

Since Katherine did not seek to renew Culpeper’s acquaintance until three months later, her random and infrequent meetings with him, at which Lady Rochford was often present, accompanied with the occasional exchange of gifts, does not suggest an amorous affair between the two, nor does it indicate that she instigated or even controlled it. Later, Culpeper was to couch his intentions in the language of courtly love, in suggesting that he had met with the queen only because she was ‘dying’ of love for him and he had no other choice. Notably, the game of courtly love flourished at the Tudor court and was viewed as a popular social convention in which young, well-born ladies participated with handsome knights in witty exchanges. First originating in the love lyrics of eleventh-century French troubadours and codified at Eleanor of Aquitaine’s court, courtly love was variously perceived to be a genuine way of life or merely a pleasant literary convention. The theme of courtly love may have first become extent in the Latin writings of Ovid and later flourished in twelfth-century Provence.
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The knight was expected to serve his lady, obey her commands and gratify her whims. Obedience and loyalty to the high-ranking lady were viewed as critical, while the lady was firmly unavailable by virtue of her status and was consequently inclined to be remote, haughty and imperious. Most significantly these courtly love exchanges were expected to remain secret.

Usually, it was expected that the male suffered from love sickness, encouraging him to write emotional letters to his lady and lament his piteous lot.
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In view of this it is significant that in April Culpeper was believed to be ‘at Greenwich [...] sick’. The lady in question was often married, meaning that the relationship had to be conducted in an atmosphere of secrecy and danger, with a need for absolute discretion in order to preserve the lady’s honour.
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From the late fourteenth into the sixteenth century reading and talking about love, casting, playing and emulating the lover constituted a form of polite recreation for ‘social play’ and ‘social display’.
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However, the repartee of courtly love threatened highborn women’s personal security, for prevailing domestic codes associated female chastity with silence and self-effacement, which the game of courtly love appeared to threaten.
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The contemporary
Book of the Courtier
warned of the need for female discretion: ‘and therefore muste she keepe a certaine meane verie hard, and (in a manner) derived of contrary matters, and come just to certaine limittes, but not to passe them.’
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Although Renaissance courts provided an ideal setting for the flourishing of courtly love, some male contemporaries, dictated by their cultural prejudices regarding female sexuality, viewed such exchanges pessimistically and fearfully. The downfall of Anne Boleyn in 1536 clearly demonstrated ‘the dalliance prescribed by courtly codes of female behaviour was seen to threaten the chastity prescribed by domestic codes’.
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Ladies within Katherine’s household, including Lady Margaret Douglas and her own cousin Mary Howard, had engaged in similar pastimes encouraged at the Tudor court.
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The ideals of courtly love, contained within love poems and novels in particular, continued to be transmuted into practice well into the late sixteenth century at the court of Elizabeth I.
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Literature was reshaped in order to allow an ideal form of love to exist without violating accepted norms of aristocratic society and refused to endorse adultery as an ideal type of love.
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Katherine’s urging of secrecy and the random meetings with Culpeper take on new light when viewed from this angle, for having been subjected to violent male hostility from an early age, directed through sexual abuse, she was aware that, as a highborn female, her actions would be perceived in the worst possible light by those unsupportive towards her.

The giving of gifts to Culpeper might indicate Katherine’s desire to become better acquainted with him, for although he was kin to her, because he served within the household of her husband she probably knew very little of him. It is likelier, however, that this experienced courtier promised silence in return for the queen bestowing lavish gifts upon him. Because lurid evidence of Katherine’s involvement with Culpeper survives only in a negative sense in the indictments presented against both individuals and dubious gossip forwarded by international ambassadors to their monarchs, scepticism is required when interpreting what is known of this relationship. These individuals, particularly the ambassadors, had very little contact with the queen, yet they accepted unquestioningly negative gossip related to her and preserved it as fact. During Katherine’s period as queen, no mention, in fact, of her supposed affairs with either Dereham or Culpeper were related by resident ambassadors such as Marillac or Chapuys before her actual downfall in November 1541. Had there even been a hint that she was conducting a sordid and amorous affair with either gentleman behind her husband’s back they would have eagerly revealed it to their masters, who would have delighted in the humiliation of their rival, the King of England. That there was no mention of the queen in much of their reports warns against accepting later ‘evidence’ of an adulterous affair supposedly carrying on at this time. It is also significant that none of her ladies suspected anything was amiss during this time.

The
Chronicle of King Henry VIII of England
was written and published by an unknown Spaniard, perhaps a merchant, living in London several years after the events he describes.
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Historians have responded negatively to this source because of its manifest inaccuracies, perceiving it to encompass ‘garbled street gossip, strongly laced with the picaresque’.
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Most notably, the author identified Katherine as the king’s fourth consort, rather than his fifth.
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The chronicler evidently made it his business to learn as much about Katherine’s affair with Culpeper as possible, which was not surprising in context of sixteenth-century culture: ‘individuals eagerly sought intelligence about the monarchy, the events at court, and other titillating matters’.
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However, whether the chronicler’s reports about Katherine’s relations with Culpeper can truthfully be validated depends fully on whether these reports can be confirmed by other evidence, which is exceptionally difficult regarding the hostile and distorted nature of the indictments produced against the queen and her acquaintances. More potently, rumours about the queen’s affair may be ‘more likely to provide a deeper understanding of cultural attitudes than reliable facts about those defamed’.
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