‘Company is good or ill
But every man hath his free will …’
Henry married Catherine Howard at Oatlands Palace, Surrey on 28 July 1540, the day of Thomas Cromwell’s execution. Their marriage brought renewed energy to the court. Once married to Catherine, Henry was like a child in a sweet shop, celebrating his good luck with constant festivities. He still hunted until he had tired out several horses, threw himself into jousting, tennis and dancing with youthful exuberance, enjoying the admiration of the whole court. A large cloud seemed to be lifted off him. It was said that: ‘The King’s affection was so marvellously set up on that gentlewoman, as it was never known that he had the like to any woman.’1
Henry’s frame and height meant that he could carry his extra weight; he was still a physically impressive man when he started pursuing Catherine Howard. This king, who had probably been without a woman in his life for three years, had now fallen madly in love. He was wholly besotted, his behaviour surprising even the courtiers who knew him so well. He does not seem to have been able to keep his hands off Catherine. It was reported that ‘the King is so amorous of her that he cannot treat her well enough and caresses her more than he did the others’.2
Despite the rumours of impotence, it is unlikely that Henry would have been so happy during his fifth marriage if he had been unable to consummate it. There are many reports from ambassadors of the time explaining how Henry showered Catherine with presents, how the French ambassador had never ‘seen the King in such good spirits or in so good a humour’.3 But there was, after their courtship, not even a hint of a pregnancy. Henry had certainly slowed down and there was no suggestion that he was unfaithful to Catherine Howard.
Catherine’s numerous kith and kin were now voracious in their desire for court appointments, and Catherine, although apparently difficult and haughty at times, helped her relatives advance themselves. Her parents were both dead, but she had many siblings, cousins, aunts and uncles clamouring for grants, posts and money. She appears to have been unconcerned about the responsibilities of being queen. She had every possession she desired, and everyone at court was anxious to win her favour. Yet it was only four years since Anne Boleyn’s execution and this should have played heavily on her mind. Catherine ensured that her old friends found positions at court. With her wild and unrestricted childhood, bringing to court those who knew her secrets was extremely dangerous.
Catherine could read and write and had received an average education for a noblewoman. A lady should obey her father and then obey her husband; there was no need for her to learn more than was necessary for this. Some women ran country estates and had to be able to perform these duties well, even when their men were away, as they often were, at court or at war. This required organisational and administrative skills, so their academic education often prepared them directly for this and nothing else. Catherine had been trained only for court.
The Privy Council described Catherine as a ‘jewel of womanhood’.4 Henry showered his new wife with diamonds, pearls, rubies, gold and silver in the form of necklaces, gowns and shoes. He satisfied her every whim. This was a relationship which had been promptly consummated, in a way that pleased his conscience (in marriage), and his last wife had faded into the background without causing a fuss. There had been no debates, no papal courts or threats of invasion, little of the emotional behaviour he increasingly disliked in women when this marriage was being annulled; God was finally giving him all he wanted.
Catherine was in a strong position, but it was not one she could take for granted. It was important to make friends in high places, but she seems to have lacked the skills to do so. She argued repeatedly with her stepdaughter, the Lady Mary. The new queen simply wished to enjoy herself at court, dancing and feasting with her young friends. She would have been a good mistress for Henry, but Catherine was even less suited to the dignified and regal role required of the Queen of England than her cousin Anne Boleyn had been. Yet as long as she retained Henry’s love, no one at court – not Mary, and not the reformers – could touch her.
It is unsurprising that Henry’s daughter Mary, who had become close to Jane Seymour and Anne of Cleves, would have disliked her young stepmother from the start. Not only had Catherine supplanted Anne of Cleves, but she was five years younger than Mary, and her polar opposite. Catherine was also closely related to the woman Mary blamed for so much, Anne Boleyn. The parallels between Henry’s fourth wife being replaced by her young maid of honour and Mary’s mother being replaced by the new queen’s cousin would have been uncomfortably obvious. No one could then have foreseen exactly how similar their stories would be.
The king and queen did argue occasionally – he once refused to allow Catherine to see him for a week. This was dangerous for his wife, as factions could have worked against her during this time. However, overall he was extremely happy in his latest marriage. The only thing that seems to have ended Henry’s rejuvenation was illness; his ulcerated leg was again causing him pain and this caused the onset of a period of depression. One clear sign of the king’s infatuation with Catherine was his decision to try a ‘new rule of living’ as the French ambassador called it – trying to lose weight. In 1540 this seems to have improved Henry’s health for a short while, before his ‘sore legge’ incapacitated him again.
In August 1541 rumours were spread that King Henry, who had been seen enjoying the company of Anne of Cleves at court on several occasions, was going to set aside his fifth wife to re-marry his fourth. This gossip continued throughout the marriage. On 11 December 1541 Chapuys wrote that Anne ‘was known to have gone away in the family way from the King, and had actually been confined this summer’.5* The descriptions of the New Year celebrations of 1541 are bizarre: the former queen and her replacement staying up to dance together while the king went to bed early because of the pain in his leg. The rumours were ridiculous – Henry was still captivated by his young queen and felt no sudden attraction to her predecessor, yet the gossip shows just how cordial his third annulment had been. Henry wished to show Anne favour, for she had done as he wished without arguing – such a pleasant contrast to Katherine of Aragon. Yet there were indications in 1543 that Anne herself was hoping for a reconciliation.
Henry was almost the same age as Catherine’s father, Lord Edmund Howard. Despite presumably growing up at court together, Henry and Edmund were never friends. Several letters show that the king did not respect the duke of Norfolk’s younger brother and did not offer him the lucrative positions that he was so desperate for. Edmund was constantly crippled by debt. He had even been to court charged with using his office of provost-marshal of Surrey to rule in favour of his relatives, who had given him a large gift. The king had no sympathy with this medieval, feudal behaviour, at least not in Edmund’s case. The Tudors had worked hard to limit the power and corruption of the nobility.
Catherine’s father was judged to have been a pathetic failure by most people’s standards, including the king’s. Yet Henry would have given many of his possessions for Lord Edmund’s fertility – Catherine was the youngest of his ten children. Edmund himself was one of twenty-three siblings, who included Elizabeth Boleyn and the duke of Norfolk. Her mother, Joyce Culpeper, had died when Catherine was a young child. Catherine must have been chosen out of the Howard clan for her position at court because she was attractive and showed promise, as there were many Howard girls and only so many places to be filled.
Catherine was poor, but she still had her noble blood, and as such she was sent away to an aristocratic household to be brought up. She went to the estate of Agnes Howard, dowager duchess of Norfolk, one of the most high-ranking women in the country and young Catherine’s step-grandmother. Although Catherine was the niece of the first peer of the realm, she had to share a dormitory with many other girls. These girls were from various noble and gentle families who had connections to the Howards, and many of them were of a similar rank to her. Her father died in 1539, and by the time she became a maid of honour she was an orphan, just another Howard mouth to feed among many.
Castillon, the French ambassador, had described her as eighteen in 1539 when she was first appointed at court.6 Although some historians have suggested she was younger, we have no evidence to back this up. She had already been involved in two sexual relationships and, in a time when puberty was later than it is today, an earlier date sounds unlikely, especially as her relationship with Francis Dereham was long term. Therefore, we can assume that she was born around 1521.
Catherine showed, by all accounts, no interest in any form of reading or studying. This might have annoyed the intellectual Henry at a younger age, but now he was happy to watch her light up the court, enjoying all the festivities and receiving the homage she was due as the woman he loved. The forty-nine-year-old king, obese and suffering from other health problems, appears to have enjoyed something of a second youth while married to the light-hearted Catherine. She was interested in music, dancing and games, was from a very aristocratic family and was very attractive. So what if while she had been learning to play music she had allowed her music teacher to become more familiar with her than he should?
In November 1541 the party came to an abrupt end. It had been going so well, and after sixteen months of marriage Henry was still clearly infatuated with his young wife. Then a report was made to the Council by a man called John Lassells. John’s sister, Mary, had told him that Catherine had been sexually involved with young men before her marriage. Mary had shared a dormitory with her while they were under the guardianship of the dowager duchess of Norfolk. Once in possession of such information, it could be considered treason not to alert the king; either way, Lassells was in a dangerous but powerful position.
This may have been part of a wider plot. John Lassells was a Protestant, who was burnt at the stake for his religious beliefs four years later; he may have sought to bring down the influence of the conservatives and the Howards were leading advocates of the old ways. Catherine had the capacity to be a significant influence on Henry, and her relatives were now entrenched in the important positions at court. We have no record of Catherine’s personal beliefs, but regardless of her own views, she was a figurehead of the conservative faction at court.
Thomas Cranmer, archbishop of Canterbury, was the unfortunate man who was responsible for giving Lassells’ report to his king. He only dared do so in a letter, and reluctantly. Although he was a Protestant whose position was in danger from the ascendancy of the Howards, Cranmer was not a man to gloat at the misfortune of others. At this point, he was simply revealing the queen’s past with Henry Manox, the music teacher, and Francis Dereham. A queen could never be even suspected of loose morals – if she became pregnant, there could not be the slightest doubt that the child was the king’s. At first, Henry did not believe the stories. He ordered Catherine to be kept to her apartments while he tried to track down the malicious gossipmonger and disprove the lies. But it did not take much digging to find several witnesses to corroborate Mary Lassells’ story. On 12 November 1541, Catherine was arrested.
The whole story was repeated to Henry – of how her paramour, Francis Dereham, had begun visiting the dormitory to see Catherine’s friend, but soon moved on to Catherine herself. Some of the girls in the dormitory were visited by their husbands or lovers. Married couples rarely had their own bedroom; this was a luxury only the king and queen regularly enjoyed. Gentlemen from the duke of Norfolk’s household, including Dereham, would often come over to spend time with the girls and this led to many love affairs. Like many of the young people involved, he was a distant cousin of Catherine’s. Her family knew of the nocturnal visits to the ladies’ apartments, but did nothing to prevent the young girl embarking on a sexual relationship.
The dowager duchess of Norfolk, a shrewd but at times reckless woman, did not intervene. She boxed their ears with her fists and with her words when she caught them, but she seems to have been aware, for many months, of Dereham’s frequent visits to Catherine’s bedroom; she only became angry when it was out in the open. They bought each other presents; Dereham gave Catherine fine materials for dresses and caps and she sent him a band to wear upon his sleeve. Alice Restwold, one of Catherine’s roommates, insisted that she had been disgusted with Catherine’s behaviour because ‘she was a married woman and wist what matrimony meant and what belonged to that puffing and blowing’.7 In fact, Alice seems to have been one of the leaders of the conspiracy.
There had been talk of marriage. Catherine later insisted she had never considered this as more than role play, although she and Dereham had openly referred to each other as ‘husband’ and ‘wife’. He was near her social level, but not near enough that she would consider marrying him. And this was not Catherine’s first love affair. Henry Manox, although a gentleman, had only been able to obtain a place at the dowager duchess’s residence as a music teacher. Catherine may have been around fourteen at this time. They had made each other promises of marriage and could be considered, once they had consummated their relationship, legally married. These relationships often occurred, and often ended. But any subsequent marriage they made was legally doubtful.
Catherine did not give Manox the little love tokens that she was later to give to Dereham – she told him clearly that ‘I will never be naught with you and able to marry me you be not’.8 They could only have married if they had eloped, to lead an impoverished life. In an age where a woman might starve to death if she married a man of little means, Catherine was understandably aiming for someone who could keep her and her future children in luxury. Neither she nor Manox seem to have considered this an option; he insisted to Mary Lassells that his intentions were not honourable.
Catherine confessed that she ‘suffered him [Manox] at sundry times to handle and touch the secret parts of my body’.9 She also admitted that Dereham ‘lay with me naked and used me in such sort as a man doth his wife many and sundry times’.10 She had then made Dereham her private secretary and usher of her chamber once she was queen. This looked extremely suspicious now that the truth had been revealed, and led to speculation that their relationship had continued after her marriage. This does not seem to have been the case – as Catherine had moved on to Thomas Culpeper.
To betray Henry was an incredibly dangerous move. Yet it was a vicious, violent world and adultery was the least of many people’s worries. For sixteenth-century English people, life was too short for moderation and this extended to love affairs and marriages. Life had been too short for Henry to stay married to women who repulsed him when their attendants were so attractive. And life was too short for Queen Catherine to stay faithful to her king – she had to enjoy every moment, and that meant with attractive and exciting young men, not her old, obese husband.
There remains one letter that Catherine sent to Culpeper, showing that they were not careful to destroy their incriminating correspondence:
Master Culpeper,
I heartily recommend me unto you, praying you to send me word how that you do. It was showed me that you was sick, the which thing troubled me very much till such time that I hear from you praying you to send me word how that you do, for I never longed so much for a thing as I do to see you and to speak with you, the which I trust shall be shortly now. That which doth comfortly me very much when I think of it, and when I think again that you shall depart from me again it makes my heart die to think what fortune I have that I cannot be always in your company. It my trust is always in you that you will be as you have promised me, and in that hope I trust upon still, praying you that you will come when my Lady Rochford is here for then I shall be best at leisure to be at your commandment, thanking you for that you have promised me to be so good unto that poor fellow my man which is one of the griefs that I do feel to depart from him for then I do know no one that I dare trust to send to you, and therefore I pray you take him to be with you that I may sometime hear from you one thing. I pray you to give me a horse for my man for I had much ado to get one and therefore I pray send me one by him and in so doing I am as I said afor, and thus I take my leave of you, trusting to see you shortly again and I would you was with me now that you might see what pain I take in writing to you.
Yours as long as life endures,
Katheryn.
One thing I had forgotten and that is to instruct my man to tarry here with me still for he says whatsomever you bid him he will do it.
Catherine clearly found writing difficult, but she later wrote to Henry begging forgiveness and insisting that her past faults were in the past, that when she married him she ‘intended ever during my life to be faithful and true unto your Majesty after’. A promise she had not kept, as he was soon to find out. It was discovered that Catherine had been secretly meeting Thomas Culpeper. She admitted the rendezvouses but denied she had committed adultery. The energetic athlete for whom women had swooned in his youth was long gone – Henry had to face the fact that the woman he was completely besotted with had preferred his younger, more virile friend. Catherine Howard found Thomas Culpeper, a convicted rapist and murderer, more enticing than the omnipotent King of England.
The Howard clan had managed to keep their position after Anne Boleyn’s fall, but they must have made Catherine aware of how difficult this had been. The duke of Norfolk had condemned Anne Boleyn – his own niece – to death and there was no doubt that he would do the same for Catherine if he had to. He could do little else; ‘the wrath of the King meant death.’11
She had promised to ‘take thee, Henry, to my wedded husband, to have and to hold, for this day forward, for better or worse, for richer and poorer, in sickness and in health, to be bonair and buxom in bed and at board, till death us do part’. Perhaps the vows needed to have specified with whom she was to be ‘bonair and buxom in bed’. This letter shows that she felt passionately for Culpeper, who she called her ‘little sweet fool’.12 There is little evidence that this was a tragic love affair though; she was later happy to insist he had tried to force himself on her. The king was still an attractive man to a few observers, but he was not enough for Catherine. The man who caught her eye, Master Thomas Culpeper, was a distant cousin on her mother’s side**, a gentleman of the Privy Chamber. According to Marillac, the King trusted Culpeper enough that he ‘ordinarily shared [Henry’s] bed’ but it seemed he had ‘wished to share the Queen’s bed too’.13
Henry had not only to accept that the woman he loved passionately had conducted a sexual relationship before he had met her, he also had to face the fact that she was arranging lovers’ meetings with a charming, handsome and – most hurtful of all –young coutier. He must have realised that, crown or no crown, Catherine did not really desire him as a man. He was obese, irritable and often ill – most of all, he was old. In his head, their relationship had been love’s young dream; he now had to confront the reality that he was simply a man well past his prime, lusting after a teenage girl who had only married him for his crown. He does not seem to have ever fully recovered from this realisation.
It was soon revealed that Catherine and Culpeper had regularly exchanged gifts and notes, arranging clandestine rendezvouses. He had often visited her room at night and Catherine was said to have looked at him lovingly in front of one of her women. At court, where people lived in each other’s pockets, it was only a matter of time before their conduct was reported to the king. It was noticed that Queen Catherine was not interested in having guests in the evenings anymore, although no one at first realised who she had started entertaining.
Catherine had been married to Henry for over a year when she began her midnight meetings with Thomas Culpeper. There was an expectation – particularly as pregnancy rumours had started before the marriage – that she would bear Henry a child. There is the possibility that Catherine was hoping she would conceive with Culpeper. As a teenage queen, to an old and unwell king, she was likely to outlive her husband. As the mother of a prince, she would have been in a powerful position. Then it would have been difficult to have had her executed, or to sideline her when the young Prince Edward ascended the throne. A son would have given her security. Yet there is no proof that Catherine and Thomas were motivated by anything other than lust and a taste for adventure.
According to Culpeper’s confession, Catherine had warned him not to tell anyone about their affair, not even a priest at confession. Both would have believed that if they died with the guilt of adultery unconfessed, they would go to Hell, but Catherine was also aware of the risks of confession to her mortal life. This was a period when many boys went into the priesthood just for steady employment. There were constant complaints that there were too many priests and that many of them could not read or write even in English, never mind in Latin. Therefore, throughout the mass, which was entirely in Latin, many priests were probably talking nonsence – not that any of the congregation would be likely to notice. Only around court and the universities of Oxford and Cambridge would there be found someone who could correct a priest’s Latin.
Catherine felt that Henry would definitely find out about their affair if Culpeper confessed to a priest, as the king was the supreme head of the Church. She may have meant that as the king was almost a demigod in his subjects’ eyes, he would know the content of all people’s confessions. But she also may have realised that although priests swore oaths that they would never tell what was mentioned in the confessional, it would put the priest in a difficult position if he knew the truth – and in a potentially powerful one. But such a relationship could only be kept secret for so long.
Culpeper was reckless and rash; he was also a rapist and a murderer. It was only his friendship with Henry that had saved him from the death penalty. He was around ten years older than Catherine and twenty years younger than her husband. Catherine wrote to Culpepper: ‘It makes my heart die to think I cannot be always in your company.’14
Yet when Catherine was confronted, she put the blame wholly on the scheming Lady Rochford and the pestering Thomas Culpeper. Jane Rochford was shocked by this and told what she believed to be the truth – that ‘considering all the things that she hath heard and seen between them’ she was sure that Catherine and Thomas had been lovers. It is surprising that Catherine’s accomplice in this affair was Lady Jane Rochford, the widow of George Boleyn. She should have been fully aware of the danger Catherine was placing herself in just by spending time alone with a young man; Lady Rochford should also have known of the dangers to herself. Culpeper, like Catherine, denied that they had actually had sexual intercourse, but said that ‘he intended and meant to do ill with the Queen and in likewise the Queen so minded to do with him’.15 Dereham was, at this point, in the clear. Then someone came forward and said that they had heard Dereham say he might marry the queen if the king died.
Chapuys remarked on how Henry had been almost triumphant when it was ‘discovered’ that Anne Boleyn had committed adultery; but with Catherine it was very different indeed. He was madly in love with his wife and deeply saddened that he had been tricked. He had worked his way through five brides and was single once again. For an old romantic and a traditionalist at heart, this would have been devastating; from that time on, Henry appears to us as an old and increasingly dangerous man. Chapuys wrote that Henry’s
case resembles very much that of the woman who cried more bitterly for the loss of her tenth husband than she had on the death of the other nine put together: the reason being that she had never buried one of them without being sure of the next, but that after the tenth husband she had no other in view.16
The situation was replicating the fall of the queen’s cousin Anne, but this time the allegations were true. Henry’s wife really had committed adultery, and had really had sexual intercourse with more than one man. The marriage truly was invalid. All the key players were guilty of treason. Francis I, who had married women he was not attracted to, commented that Catherine ‘hath done wondrous naughty’ and sent his rival Henry a letter of condolence.17 Henry had been publicly humiliated by this – all of Christendom knew him to be a cuckold, twice over. Henry seems to have taken some time to accept that this had really happened.
In a rage he ‘shouted for a sword with which to slay the girl who had betrayed him, and he swore aloud that she would never have “such delight in her incontinency as she should have torture in her death”’.18 The monarch then broke into a cringeworthy display of weeping, while his Council stood there, unsure what to do. He then bizarrely claimed that the Council were responsible for ‘this last mischief’ and felt he had suffered ‘ill-luck in meeting with such ill-conditioned wives’.19 This time he had no pretty maid of honour to sweep off her feet – indeed, he could barely walk on his own; this time, he was still madly in love with his wife; this time it was all true.
He embarrassed his courtiers by openly weeping, not bothering to hide his desolation. For days this continued, and then Henry realised that the show must go on. He began flirting with the ladies of the court. Henry was finally informed that Catherine had admitted most of the accusations against her and he described her as ‘that wicked woman’.20 Like the other three wives he had discarded, he did not say goodbye. Catherine lamented the ‘gracious and loving prince I had’ to Cranmer.21 He had been so in love with her that his councillors were determined to ensure that she did not see him again, as they believed she may win him round.
Catherine’s family and friends, those who had been leaching off her for the last two years, quickly distanced themselves from the fallen queen. Most of her close relatives had been sent to the Tower. The duke of Norfolk denounced Catherine publicly, but as his family were in danger, it is understandable that he wished to disassociate himself from his niece; he was in fear of his life. He went so far as to declare that Catherine should be burnt alive.22 A power vacuum was being created at court – the Howards remain an aristocratic family to this day, but they never quite recovered the influence they had during Henry VIII’s reign.
Adultery was a king’s birthright; fidelity was a queen’s obligation. It was a double standard, but it made sense. If Henry had an affair during marriage and fathered a child, it was unlikely to damage the monarchy. The child would be well provided for, and so would the mother. If a queen had an affair during marriage and conceived, then somebody else’s bastard could inherit the throne of England. In an age where people believed in the divine right of kings, this situation would have been against God’s ordained social order and therefore a challenge to God’s authority. It was unthinkable for a queen to allow any hint of scandal about her; she must be completely and utterly above reproach.
Yet Catherine Howard was a queen who dared to play the role of a mistress. She was only the second queen in English history who historians believe was unfaithful to her royal husband. (The first was Isabella the ‘She-Wolf’, Edward II’s wife; and she had far greater provocation, as her husband neglected her in favour of his homosexual lovers. Historians are almost unanimous in considering Anne Boleyn innocent of adultery.) The example of Anne Boleyn should have been foremost in the mind of any woman agreeing to marry Henry, and for Catherine it should have been more so as Anne was her cousin. She has been portrayed as a stupid slut and as a romantic heroine. The truth seems to have been that her affair was based on lust, not love; she was happy to blame Culpeper for the whole sorry mess.
Dereham was disembowelled and castrated while conscious; he suffered the death the law demanded of a common traitor. Culpeper – the king’s former friend and from a more genteel family than Dereham’s – was beheaded. Then, in an eerie repeat of her cousin’s fate six years before, Catherine Howard’s marriage was annulled two days before her execution. She was beheaded on the same block, in the same place, before being buried beside Queen Anne in St Peter ad Vincula, Tower of London, condemned for having led ‘an abominable, base, carnal, voluptuous and vicious life’ and having behaved ‘like a common harlot with divers persons’.23 She was executed on the eve of St Valentine’s Day, 13 February 1542, three months after she had been arrested. They may have waited this length of time to see if she was pregnant, although the paternity would have been in doubt. She was very weak and upset but managed to compose herself.
Henry was a shattered man; the wife who had given him a renewed zest for life had betrayed him. It was enough to smash anyone’s ego to smithereens, and as Henry’s ego was bigger than most, it had a devastating effect on him. This whole fiasco did nothing for his chances of marrying a foreign princess. Christendom was shocked by the English king’s behaviour – a prince was expected to marry, maybe annul one marriage if the woman was sterile, and to have mistresses. He had now annulled four of his five marriages and executed two of his wives. The slim chance he had previously had of marrying a princess had turned to nil. If he married again – for a sixth time – it would have to be to an Englishwoman again and he had had little success with his choice of English aristocrats so far.
On the day that Catherine was condemned, 29 January 1542, Chapuys wrote to Charles V: ‘The King has shown no inclination whatever to a fresh marriage nor paid attention to any lady of his court.’24 Yet this soon changed. In February it was reported that
Since he was informed of the trial and subsequent condemnation on the 29th [January], he has considerably changed, for on the night of that day he gave a grand supper, and invited to it several ladies and gentlemen of his court … the lady for whom he showed the greatest predilection on the occasion was no other than the sister of Mr Cobham, the same lady whom Master Wyatt did some time ago repudiate on a charge of adultery. She is a pretty young creature and has sense enough to do as the others have done should she consider it worth her while. It is also rumoured that the King has taken a fancy for the daughter of Madame Albart, the niece of the Grand Esquire, Master Anthony Browne, and likewise for a daughter by the first marriage of the wife of [Lord] Lisle*** This last attachment of the King, as the report goes, is founded on the fact that the above-mentioned official, who for the last two years has been kept a prisoner at the Tower, has all of a sudden obtained his liberty.25
The whole court was on the lookout for the woman Henry would choose as his sixth wife.
As Henry slowly evolved into an obese and bald monarch who had to be carried around in a sedan chair, his leg oozing pus, he no longer maintained mistresses. His fifty-seven-inch chest and fifty-four-inch waist were not as alluring as in his younger days, but Henry did not give up trying to impress the ladies. Two beautiful ladies-in-waiting, each an intelligent and amiable woman, missed out on the booby prize. Anne Bassett was a popular, shy and well-respected maid of honour who did not, as far as we are aware, accept the king’s advances; Elizabeth Brooke was the opposite, a married woman notorious for her adultery. It was understood that if another woman entranced him, it would mean a crown.
Anne of Cleves herself seems to have hoped that Henry would take her back after the execution of Catherine Howard; she is said to have given way to ‘great grief and despair’ when he did not.26 Her brother, Duke William, clearly believed this to be a possibility; he pursued this to an embarrassing extent, forcing the Council to issue a formal rebuff. This was surprising; Anne had not demurred when she had been discarded, and two years on Henry was an even less enticing prospect, having executed another wife. It is likely that it was her family who were pushing for this, and not Anne herself.
There were fewer women at court after Catherine’s execution. All the ladies-in-waiting were sent home, some had been sent away even earlier to attend to the queen in her last days. Henry kept only one maid of honour at court: Anne Bassett. She was paid even when there was no queen to serve, and later impressed Queen Mary enough to be made a lady of the Privy Chamber in her reign.27
Although Henry had been fond of his uncle, Anne’s stepfather Lord Lisle, he had been under suspicion of plotting to betray Calais to the French and had been languishing in the Tower since March 1540. The family were lucky that Henry allowed Anne to stay and serve Catherine Howard and Katheryn Parr, as well as to bring her mother and sister to court. Henry was apparently arranging a marriage for her, as she had no male relative to do this for her. It is possible that Henry, ever wanting to have another woman lined up, was considering Anne for himself.
When Jane Seymour was pregnant, Lady Lisle had sent her some quails, which she had been informed that the queen was craving. Jane took the not-so-subtle hint and invited the two Bassett girls to court, to choose one to be her lady-in-waiting. She chose Anne, aged around sixteen, rather than her sister Katherine. Although she was required by Jane to dress conservatively, Anne was described as a ‘pretty, young creature’, ‘fair, well-made and behaveth herself so well that everybody praiseth her that seeth her’. The king had apparently commented that she was ‘far fairer’ than her sister.28 She set off for her new glamorous position at court, and arrived in time for the queen’s funeral. It was then back to her parents’ home in Calais, as there was then no queen to serve.
If Henry did consider marrying Anne Bassett, she may have had her family’s previous mistakes counting against her. As well as her stepfather’s alleged treason, there was her sister’s indiscretion. Elizabeth Bassett had acquired a position as maid of honour to the king’s ‘sister’, Lady Anne of Cleves. She was reported and imprisoned for her comments on the king’s love life. She and her friend Jane Rattsey were said to have discussed Queen Catherine’s execution, wondering ‘Is God working his own work to make the Lady Anne of Cleves queen again?’ and Elizabeth commented, ‘What a man is the King! How many wives will he have?’29
Anne Bassett was Henry’s first cousin (by marriage) so he would have needed another dispensation if he had wished to marry her. One concern about Henry marrying Anne would have been her age. He had married a vivacious teenage lady-in-waiting two years before and it had ended in degradation and decapitation. He did not wish to repeat this fiasco. He seems to have made this decision then with his head rather than his heart when he instead chose a sensible and intelligent woman, Katheryn Parr, as his companion through old age.
Anne Bassett remained single until 1554, when in her early thirties she married Sir Walter Hungerford, who was twelve years her junior.30 He regained the title of baron, attainted when his father had been the first person to be executed for homosexuality in England, in 1540. Anne died in 1557. We do not know whether Henry chose to pursue his attraction to Anne Bassett or Elizabeth Brooke further. It was probably too soon for Henry to do more than show some interest in other women; he was, understandably, still devastated by his wife’s betrayal. Henry had ordered Wyatt to take his adulterous wife back shortly before. But either lady would have made a very interesting Queen of England.
The king passed a new law; if a woman was to marry the king she had to declare everything about any past sexual affairs. For her not to do so was treason. Even more damning, anyone who knew anything untoward about the woman and did not inform the king was also guilty of treason. The courtiers had made careers out of attracting the king’s attentions to their family members; now it was clearly a dangerous gamble. Few women at the English court had not had some relationship that could be considered a precontract, or had not been involved in a sexual affair; even if they had not, one could easily be fabricated and all her friends and family brought down with her. It is significant that all the women Henry was attracted to from this point onwards seem not to have been interested in him.
1. Cit. Loades, The Politics of Marriage: Henry VIII and His Queens, p.124; Thomas Cranmer’s secretary, Ralph Morice, in a letter to his master, 1540
2. Marillac on Catherine Howard; cit. Fox, Jane Boleyn, p.271
3. Cit. Baldwin Smith, Catherine Howard: A Tudor Tragedy, p.192
4. Cit. Fraser, The Six Wives of Henry VIII, p.405
5. Chapuys to Charles V; CSP, Spanish, 1538–42, no.213
6. Cit. Baldwin Smith, Catherine Howard: A Tudor Tragedy, p.209
7. L&P, XVI, no.1320
8. Cit. Baldwin Smith, Catherine Howard: A Tudor Tragedy, p.50
9. Cit. Fraser, The Six Wives of Henry VIII, p.392
10. Ibid., p.393
11. Norfolk to Thomas More; Rowse, (ed.), A Man of Singular Virtue: A Life of Sir Thomas More by his son in law William Roper, p.71; cit. Hume, The Wives of Henry VIII, p.162
12. Cit. Baldwin Smith, Catherine Howard: A Tudor Tragedy, p.156
13. L&P, XVI, pp.630–1
14. TNA SP.I, 167, 14
15. Cit. Plowden, Tudor Women, p.102
16. CSP, Spanish, VI, I, no.207
17. L&P, XVI, no.649
18. Cit. Baldwin Smith, Catherine Howard: A Tudor Tragedy, p.168
19. L&P, XVI, no.1426
20. L&P, XVI, pp.665–6
21. L&P, XVI, no.691
22. L&P, XVI, no.641
23. L&P, XVI, p.642
24. CSP, Spanish, 1538–42, no.228
25. Chapuys to Charles V; CSP, Spanish, 1538–42, no.230
26. Cit. Fraser, The Six Wives of Henry VIII, p.453
27. Harris, The View from My Lady’s Chamber: New Perspectives on the Early Tudor Monarchy, 60, 3, English Political History, 1500–1640, p.240
28. Cit. Denny, Katherine Howard, p.108
29. Cit. Strickland, Lives of the Queens of England, from the Norman Conquest: with Anecdotes of their Court, III, pp.84–5; Weir, The Six Wives of Henry VIII, pp.465–6
30. Byrne (ed.), The Lisle Letters: An Abridgement, p.414
* Chapuys’ reports always need to be taken with a pinch of salt, especially when they concern Anne of Cleves, who he disapproved of.
** Her sixth cousin, so they were not closely related; King Henry was her eighth cousin.
*** Elizabeth Brooke was described by Chapuys as a ‘pretty young creature’. She had first given birth in 1521; her eldest son was twenty-one years old. Even if she was then only thirteen (which is unlikely) she would have been thirty-four when she was described as ‘young’. The details given by Chapuys clearly indicate Elizabeth Brooke, who was both the sister of Lord Cobham and the wife of Thomas Wyatt. The use of the word ‘young’ could be argued to indicate that this was another Elisabeth Brooke, Elizabeth Brooke Wyatt’s niece. She was a beautiful woman; however it probably suggests that Elizabeth Brooke Wyatt was simply youthful-looking. As Anne Bassett was both a close relative of Anthony Browne and the daughter of Lady Lisle, it is likely that these rumours were both referring to her.