Katherine Howard: A New History (5 page)

The hostility of the Howard family towards the cardinal is further demonstrated in the dispatches of Eustace Chapuys, the imperial ambassador, although it is essential to recognise the limitations of this ambassador’s writings since he vehemently opposed Anne and her relatives.
²⁵
Nevertheless, the report in February 1530 that Norfolk ‘began to swear very loudly that rather than suffer this he would eat him up alive’
²⁶
in relation to the cardinal is plausible in consideration of this family’s belief that the cardinal was preventing not only the annulment of Henry VIII’s marriage, but the rise of their relative, Anne, to the queenship and the consequent consolidation of their own position within the kingdom. It is clear from contemporary reports that ‘faction’, in the modern sense of the word, did not exist within the Henrician court. Rather, alliances and friendships were centred on ties of kinship, often consolidated through marriage and fertility, in which women played essential roles. As Starkey credibly suggests, Henrician faction cannot be seen as ‘a universal, but rooted in certain institutions, and not as a constant, but flourishing or being repressed in accordance with the character and policies of certain crucial figures – and the monarch above all’.
²⁷
In view of this, there was nothing particularly strange about the power and influence headed by Anne Boleyn personally during this time for, as has been made apparent, women were essential in the Tudor court in providing their family with power, prestige and influence.
²⁸
It is intriguing to analyse and interpret Tudor politics from a gendered perspective, since ‘looking at politics from women’s point of view alters our understanding of the development of the [Tudor] monarchy.’
²⁹

Nonetheless, this did not mean that women who played important political roles within the operation of the Tudor court were universally accepted or perceived to be political players on a par with their male counterparts. Quite the opposite was true. This should be viewed in context of cultural and social norms prevailing within the sixteenth-century court, for not only were women’s bodies constructed in this period as the absolute Other, but women’s chastity and unchastity was continually proscribed, ridiculed and feared, which led to a preoccupation and obsession with notions of honour and dishonour.
³⁰
Dishonour focused overwhelmingly on sexual sins and eventually ‘dismantled the trappings of higher status women’s rank.’
³¹
The female body itself was widely feared by men for it ‘was believed to have magical effects, bewitching a lover, serving as an aphrodisiac, assisting in conception’.
³²
In view of this, the visible influence and power wielded by Anne within the Tudor court opened her up to ridicule which her male relatives, including the Duke of Norfolk, did not face by virtue of their biological sex. It is unsurprising that male commentators, such as the unknown chronicler of
The
Chronicle of Henry VIII
, blamed Anne for the annulment of Katherine’s marriage to Henry VIII, opining how ‘he was ruined by Anne Boleyn’, while castigating Anne’s ‘wickedness’ and ‘the pleasure she took in doing harm to the blessed Queen Katharine’.
³³

Despite the censure she faced for her unique position within the annulment struggle, the kinship between Anne and her Howard relatives brought tangible benefits, increasing the influence held by the Howard family within the English court. The Venetian ambassador Lodovico Falieri was able to report by November 1530 that Henry ‘makes use of him [Norfolk] in all negotiations more than any other person [...] and every employment devolves to him’.
³⁴
Similarly, Charles V in 1532 was informed that the Duke of Norfolk was ‘a man who willingly takes trouble in this matter, but would suffer anything for the sake of ruling’.
³⁵
In 1532 Norfolk’s thirteen-year old daughter Mary participated in the ceremony creating Anne Boleyn Marquess of Pembroke and was later to attend her during her first appearance as queen. Rather more obvious and lucrative benefits were acquired in the months leading to the marriage and coronation of Anne Boleyn, when Norfolk was created Earl Marshal on 28 May 1533, four days before the public coronation of his niece at Westminster Abbey, who was then six months pregnant. Norfolk’s role in the demotion of Katherine of Aragon, whose marriage had by now been formally annulled, was confirmed by Wriothesley: ‘on Easter evening, Anne Boleyn, Marquess of Pembroke, was proclaimed Queen at Greenwich. The Wednesday before the good Queen Katherine was deposed at Ampthill, Bedfordshire by the dukes Norfolk and Suffolk; the marquis of Exeter; the earl of Oxford; the treasurer; and comptroller. On 29 May 1533 she was received as Queen of England by all the lords of England.’
³⁶
Members of the Howard family played a prominent part in Anne’s coronation, with her uncle, Lord William Howard, carrying the rod of the marshal of England and the Dowager Duchess of Norfolk, step-grandmother of Anne and Katherine, present in the procession.
³⁷
Other relatives, however, such as the Duchess of Norfolk, aunt of the queen, personally opposed Anne’s rise and openly expressed their sympathy for the old queen.

Although Norfolk was not personally present at the pinnacle of her triumph, the coronation in June 1533, being on embassy in France, this particular point must surely be interpreted as the golden age for the Howard family when their connection with the Tudor dynasty was substantially confirmed by virtue of the marriage of their relative to England’s monarch. This was further strengthened by the birth of Princess Elizabeth to the king and his new queen in September, although the ambitions of the Howard family and the personal expectations of the Tudors required that the queen present her husband with a son in order to secure her position completely. While traditionally historians have interpreted Norfolk’s relations with his niece the queen as being strained due to their differing religious beliefs – the Howards being firmly conservative in their religious orthodoxy – the duke and his niece maintained a mutually beneficial relationship during the initial years of Anne’s marriage. Norfolk’s mistress, Bess Holland, was made one of the new queen’s ladies-in-waiting, and the fortunes of the Howard family and their closeness to the Tudors was further strengthened in the winter of 1533 through the marriage of Norfolk’s fourteen year-old daughter Mary to the king’s bastard son Henry Fitzroy. Uberto de Gambara further proposed that the duke approach the king with the idea of a marriage alliance between Mary Tudor, the bastardised daughter of Katherine of Aragon, and Henry Howard earl of Surrey, Norfolk’s heir:

Only the duke of Norfolk can persuade him to do this by his influence, and relationship to the new queen, pointing out that the peace of the Kingdom and the settlement of the king’s son weighs more with him than the good of his own niece, and that if the king were to die before the son became a man, the next heirs might trouble the succession – the king of Scotland and the sons of the other sister and of the duke of Suffolk [...] I think I could point out to him that this course would so endear him to the emperor and the pope that they would enable him to have the princess for his son; whose right would not really be put aside, and they would afterwards help to maintain him by force.
³⁸

Whether this report can be credited is difficult to ascertain, for ambassadorial reports were often heavily based on rumour, hearsay and gossip circulating at the English court. It is impossible to know whether or not the duke did suffer a long-term estrangement with Queen Anne, based on differing religious interests, for the Spanish ambassador reported that the queen personally scolded the duke as if he were a ‘dog, so much so that Norfolk was obliged to quit the royal chamber’, referring to his niece as a ‘whore’.
³⁹
Historians have traditionally asserted that a personal crisis occurred in the relationship between Norfolk and the queen soon after the birth of Elizabeth, with the duke resenting his niece’s assertiveness and power within the court, which threatened his own religious and political interests. Although it may be likely that he, like his male contemporaries, believed that women should not hold substantial power and influence to the detriment of male figures within the court, the surviving evidence compiled by resident ambassadors must be considered sceptically, since the queen had brought unprecedented prestige to the Howard family, firstly through her marriage to Henry VIII and secondly through her personal involvement in the marriage alliance between her cousin Mary, daughter of Norfolk, and Henry Fitzroy, son of the king.

It is unlikely that the duke would have forfeited his favour with his niece the queen on the basis of personal religious beliefs to the detriment of the overall fortunes of the Howard family, for Anne had been instrumental in ensuring that the Howards achieved greater success and prominence at Henry VIII’s court, which acted politically as a microcosm of the English state. Her female attendants included several Howards, with Mary Howard, Elizabeth Boleyn, Mary Shelton, Mary Boleyn and Jane Parker, Lady Rochford, foremost amongst Anne’s ladies-in-waiting.
⁴⁰
Directly relevant to Anne’s young cousin Katherine Howard, in 1535 the queen acting together with Norfolk successfully achieved for Edmund Howard some forfeited goods worth 200 marks.
⁴¹
The appointment of Howard women within the queen’s household to increase the prestige of the Howard family and further this family’s influence at court can be looked at when considering the age of Katherine Howard, for had she been born in 1520-1 as many historians still believe, then surely her uncle or her step-grandmother, the Dowager Duchess of Norfolk, would have sought a position for her within Anne’s household as a maid-of-honour. That there is no evidence of them doing so indicates that Anne’s young cousin was still too young to serve at court.
⁴²
Further rewards were granted to Norfolk through his association with the new queen, including a French pension and an invitation for his son, Surrey, to accompany the king’s bastard son and Norfolk’s son-in-law, Henry Fitzroy, Earl of Richmond, to the French court.
⁴³

The suggestion here that the duke did not suffer a personal fall-out with his niece the queen has also been offered by other historians, who argue that ‘when Norfolk suffered reduced power and influence after 1531, it was less the result of a strained relationship with his niece than his own lack of talent and commitment’, ‘[...] in terms of his leadership of the Howard clan and political faction at court, this senior member of the family [Norfolk] spent a lifetime chasing after the unattainable’, ‘he was no more successful as a politician at court’.
⁴⁴
Seemingly the likelier view, the nature of fertility politics within the Henrician court, means that Anne’s position as queen was not fully secure through giving birth to Elizabeth in September 1533. A son was needed in order to ensure her legitimacy as queen consort and to preserve the continuation of the Tudor dynasty. From a European perspective, the new queen was no more than a mischievous harlot who had bewitched, or manipulated, a pliable king into annulling his marriage with a good Spanish princess and marrying her instead, fathering a bastard daughter who was no more legitimate than Henry Fitzroy. In view of this, it is likely that Norfolk counselled his niece on the necessity of bearing Henry VIII a male heir, in order to avoid the fate of Katherine of Aragon and to ensure that the Howard family’s burgeoning influence at court increased further.

The succession troubles that affected the royal family directly involved the queen’s relatives. Mary Tudor, aged seventeen at the birth of her half-sister in 1533, refused to renounce her title as princess, leading to the king her father ordering Norfolk to visit her ‘concerning the diminishing of her high estate of the name and dignity of Princess’. Visiting her at Beaulieu, the Duke of Norfolk informed the king’s eldest daughter that the king ‘desired her to go to the Court and service of [Elizabeth], whom he named Princess’, but Mary refused since the title of princess, in her eyes, rightfully belonged to her and not to her infant half-sister. The duke, however, informed her that ‘he had not come to dispute but to accomplish the King’s will’, before Mary finally agreed to depart, ‘with a very small suite’.
⁴⁵
Around the same time, the Duke of Suffolk was involved in compelling Katherine of Aragon’s servants to refer to her as princess dowager rather than queen, and attempting to encourage the king’s first wife to retire to Somersham, a mission that was spectacularly unsuccessful. These troubles that plagued the English succession had brutal repercussions, with Bishop John Fisher of Rochester and Sir Thomas More, both of whom had formerly been close to Henry VIII, suffering execution for high treason in the summer of 1535.
⁴⁶
According to the Spanish ambassador, demonstrating contemporary values that perceived women, as deceitful and sinful creatures as to blame for their husbands’ follies, Queen Anne following these executions entreated the king ‘that he does not act with prudence in suffering the Queen and Princess to live, who deserved death more than all those who have been executed, and that they were the cause of all’.
⁴⁷
Anne’s deep fears and hostility towards the former queen and her daughter can meaningfully be understood in context of the prevailing concern about the Tudor succession within both the court and England as a whole. Well aware that Katherine had been rusticated for her inability to solve the succession crisis, Anne perceived that, only through bearing Henry VIII a healthy son could her position as queen remain secure, for no blame could be attached to her husband were her attempts to prove futile. In view of this, it is evident that ‘by his divorce and remarriage Henry had created for himself a domestic tangle that was unusual for his day [...] when his second consort presented him with a female child, confusion reigned in the minds of many about which daughter had the better claim to the throne’.
⁴⁸