Read Katherine Howard: A New History Online
Authors: Conor Byrne
The death of Fitzroy in the summer of 1536 severed completely the connection of the Howards with the Tudor dynasty, which had first began with the downfall of Queen Anne scarcely two months earlier. In a matter of months, the influence of the Howard family had decreased rapidly and their rivals had overtaken them within the king’s court. Unsurprisingly, it has been suggested that ‘those [...] years, between 1536 and 1540, are strange, restless, memorable years in the annals of the house of Howard – years replete with bitter hates and passionate loves that ended in bitterness [...] During that brief period, the story of the Howards was the story of the English Court [...]’
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The increasing suspicion in which the king likely regarded the Howards was worsened by the rapid rate of religious changes within England, which not only offended the religious conservatism of the Howards, but encouraged the rise of individuals such as Lord Cromwell and Thomas Cranmer, Archbishop of Canterbury, to the detriment of individuals such as the duke. Following the disgrace of Thomas Howard in July 1536, what came to be known as the Ten Articles was passed, ‘the which the bishopps of this realme should cause to be declared in their dioces[es].’ Cromwell was appointed vicegerent in September and, while proceeding with the dissolution of the smaller monasteries, quickly sent out his first set of injunctions to the prelates and clergy, desiring ‘the vertuous living of the said cleargie’.
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At the same time, the lady Mary, daughter of the king by his first marriage to Katherine of Aragon, was reconciled with her father.
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However, the religious changes that Cromwell and Cranmer now began to inaugurate relentlessly in England in the summer and autumn of 1536 were to provide an opening for the Duke of Norfolk, particularly during what came to be known as the Pilgrimage of Grace. According to Hall: ‘the inhabitauntes of the North [...] altogether noseled in supersticion and popery, and also by the means of certayne Abbottes and ignorant priestes not a little stirred and prouoked for the suppression of certain Monasteries... & thus the fayth of holy churche shall vtterly be suppressed and abholished: and therefore sodainly they spred abrode and raysed great and shamefull slanders only to moue the people to sedicion and rebellion, and to kyndle in the people hateful and malicious myndes against the kynges Maiestie and the Magestrates of the realme [...]’
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Other chroniclers agreed with Hall that certain individuals had incited rebellion amongst the commoners, opposing particular religious changes that threatened traditional practices. Wriothesley recorded that ‘[...] in the beginning of October [...] the people made an insurrection, and made of them tow captaines, the one being a monke and the other a shoomaker, and so increased to the number of twentie tow thousand persons or more’ in Lincolnshire, while ‘their was an insurrection in Yorkeshire, and they made of them a captaine called Robart Aske [...] they were so oppressed with taxes and putting downe of religious howses...’
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Favourites such as the Duke of Suffolk were sent to suppress the riots, while Norfolk as Lieutenant of the North, alongside the Earl of Shrewsbury, negotiated with Aske and his followers. Norfolk encouraged the rebels to ask the king for pardon before riding back to the king to inform him of the suppression of the rebellion.
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On 26-7 October, the king thanked Norfolk for his ‘politique devise’, urging him ‘never to give stroke [...] unless you shall, with due advisement, thinke yourself to have greate and notable advauntage for the same’.
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Following the king’s orders, the duke set upon a campaign of brutal vengeance in Yorkshire, punishing the inhabitants for daring to rise against their monarch. In early 1537, the king instructed the duke to ‘cause such dreadful execution upon a good number of the inhabitants, hanging them on trees, quartering them and setting their heads and quarters in every town, as shall be a fearful warning’.
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In February, following a further revolt in Westmorland involving around eight thousand, Norfolk took the captains as prisoners, hanging them on the walls of Carlisle.
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In Yorkshire, during Francis Bigod’s rebellion, Norfolk rode as the king’s lieutenant ‘to appease the sayde rebells and kepe the countrye in peace’.
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Later, in the summer of 1537, prominent rebels such as Aske, Lord Darcy, Sir Thomas Percy, John Hussey and Sir Robert Constable were publicly executed in London as traitors.
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The duke’s ruthlessness and military capabilities somewhat restored his influence with the king, but his weariness soon began to show, leading him in June 1537 to complain to Cromwell: ‘I aske your Lordeship to take in good parte that I do not followe your advise in offring my poure person to remayne lenger in thies parties [...] for, and I shold tary here when the cold tyme of the yere should comme, I knowe surely my deathe shold shortely insewe witheowte remedy... My Lord this contrey is more cold than those that hath not experimented the same, wold beleve, wherfore, if ye woll have my liff to contynewe any tyme, help that His Majesties promisse, made to me in his last letters, may be observed.’
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Only in November 1537, however, following the death of Queen Jane was Norfolk able to lay down his office.
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Although the king’s confidence in Norfolk had been restored through his brutal efficiency during the northern rebellions, others at court resented the return of the Howards to favour, fearing the subsequent loss of their own influence with the king. The Seymours speedily accused the Earl of Surrey, son of the duke and cousin to Katherine Howard, of connivance with the northern rebels during the insurrections. Insulted, Surrey reacted violently, striking his accuser. Surrey was arrested and summoned before the council, leading to Norfolk writing to Cromwell from the north: ‘What chawnces of informations hath ben of my son falsely ymagined, no man knoweth better than ye. And nowe to amende the same in my hert, by chaunce of lightlihode to be maymed of his right arme.’
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Fortunately, Surrey did not lose his arm, but he was imprisoned in Windsor Castle.
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Following the brutal retribution exacted in the aftermath of the Pilgrimage of Grace, somewhat happier news reached the king that his new wife, Jane, was pregnant. On 27 May 1537, Trinity Sunday, ‘there was Te Deum sounge in Powles for joye of the Queenes quickninge of childe [...] the same night was diverse greate fyers made in London, and a hogeshed of wine at everye fyer for poore people to drinke as longe as yt woulde last [...]’
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A persistent myth is that Henry VIII loved Jane Seymour more dearly than he had his other queens, for the simple reason that she bore him a son. Whether this is true or not is doubtful, for his behaviour towards her during her period as queen does not support the view that he loved and cherished her during her own lifetime. Barely a week after his marriage to Jane, the king had become acquainted with two beautiful young women, leading the king to state that he was ‘sorry that he had not seen them before he was married’.
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During the lifetime of Queen Anne, Jane had sought to intercede for the Lady Mary, begging Henry to restore her as princess. The king castigated her as a fool, warning her that she ‘ought to solicit the advancement of the children they would have between them, and not any others’.
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Whatever the true nature of his private life with the queen, the king reacted with understandable joy when he discovered that she was pregnant. However, Queen Jane was well aware that it was essential for her to bear the king a son. Were she to deliver a daughter, her position and future as queen would remain uncertain. The public rejoicing and demonstrations of joy at news of the queen’s pregnancy calls into serious doubt one writer’s belief that the reason Katherine Howard was removed from power by reformers was because of rumours that she was pregnant for, if this was the case, one might question why no moves were made to remove either Anne Boleyn or Jane Seymour while they were pregnant with the king’s heir.
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Soon after Cromwell rose further after being made a Knight of the Garter, the queen delivered a son, Edward, at Hampton Court Palace on 12 October 1537, the eve of St. Edward. Indicating that his influence and favour with the king had been speedily restored, Norfolk served, alongside Cranmer, Archbishop of Canterbury, as godfather to the new prince at his christening, while Lady Mary served as the prince’s godmother.
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While both she and her newborn son lived, Queen Jane had emerged triumphant in the deadly game of fertility politics that penetrated the court of Henry VIII. Where both her predecessors had failed, being notoriously blamed as women for their failure to bear sons, the king’s third wife had demonstrated her husband’s fertility and that of her own through bearing a healthy prince. Celebrations took place in London the whole day, with banquets, hogsheads of wine, thanksgivings and the ringing of bells in parish churches until ten o’clock at night, demonstrating the people’s joy at the birth of a son to the king and queen.
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Supporters of the queen received further rewards. William Fitzwilliam, Lord Admiral and Vice Treasurer, became Earl of Southampton; Beauchamp, brother to the queen, became Earl of Hereford; Sir John Russell became Controller of the King’s Household; Heneage, Long and Knevett of the king’s privy chamber became knights. And Thomas Seymour, younger brother of Jane, also became a knight.
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The mood of celebration in court and kingdom at the birth of a son, however, soon turned to one of grief and mourning with the death of the queen from childbed fever on 24 October, less than two weeks after her greatest triumph. Norfolk summoned Cromwell from London, asking him on the evening of the 24th ‘to be here tomorrow early to comfort our good master, for as for our mistress there is no likelihood of her life, the more pity, and I fear she shall not be in life at the time ye shall read this’.
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According to Hall, who was present as a court chronicler, ‘[...] of none in the Realme was it more heavelier taken then of the kynges Majestie himself, whose death caused the kyng imediatly to remove into Westminster wher he mourned and kept him selfe close and secret a great while.’
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On 8 November, the queen was buried at Windsor ‘withe greate solempnitie’, with the Lady Mary serving as chief mourner for her dead stepmother. The king remained in mourning apparel until Candlemas 1538.
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Queen Jane’s triumph ushered in a new phase of English politics, for the Seymours had now triumphantly displaced the Howards as the English family connected most closely with the Tudor dynasty. By virtue of the birth of Prince Edward, their place in the Tudor dynasty was firmly established. Notwithstanding this, the Howards could feel confident once more for two major reasons. Firstly, the duke’s success in quashing the rebellions known collectively as the Pilgrimage of Grace restored the confidence and trust of the king, following the suspicion with which the king had briefly viewed him during the downfall of his niece. Secondly, the death of the queen meant that the king would require a new wife who could bear him a second son, for the Tudor succession, despite the birth of Jane’s son, was still not completely secure. The example of the death of Prince Arthur, and Henry VIII’s own eventual succession, demonstrated that a ‘spare’ heir was needed, should the first die at an early age. Although it is unnecessary to believe, as some historians have done, that the Howards set about grooming their female relatives as a means of seducing the king and ensuring a Howard Queen of England, it is likely that the Howards hoped that the king would marry someone, perhaps a foreign princess, who was favourable to their conservative religion and political interests.
The king’s own unpredictable health emphasised the need for him to marry again and father a second son. Louis de Perreau, sieur de Castillon, was to write to Anne de Montmorency on 14 May of how ‘the King has had stopped one of the fistulas of his legs and for ten or twelve days the humours which had no outlet were like to have stifled him, so that he was sometimes without speaking, black in the face, and in great danger’.
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While the king’s health remained uncertain, the rate of religious changes in England remained rapid, something that surely alarmed conservatives within both court and the kingdom. Cranmer was instrumental in early 1538 in ensuring that ‘the people might leave their idolatrie that had bene there used’ in relation to the use of holy images in churches.
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At around the same time, it was ordered that the Bible should be published in English for the common people to read.
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Later in September, Cromwell issued his second injunctions as Lord Privy Seal and vicegerent, which ordered that every parish church in the realm should have a Bible in English for the parishioners to read, while instructing that holy images and roods should be removed. He also ordered curates to keep a book or register that recorded every wedding, christening and burial that took place within the parish. While this occurred, abbeys and monasteries continued to be dissolved and the profits obtained by the king.
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