Katherine Howard: A New History (20 page)

But if Katherine loved adorning herself in the finest of fabrics and the most dazzling of jewels, she was ready and willing to impart that love to others and share it with them. A look at her inventory demonstrates this, and suggests a kind-hearted and caring girl who wanted others to love fashion in the same way she did. Katherine bestowed upon her two stepdaughters, the twenty-four year-old Mary and the seven year-old Elizabeth, gifts of jewellery, including a pomander of gold with rubies and pearls, and she was also to grant her former mistress and predecessor, the rejected Anne of Cleves, a ring.

The last few months of Katherine’s life offer final tantalising glimpses into the close associations she was clearly felt to possess with fashion. Upon being imprisoned in Syon Abbey in November 1541, it was specifically ordered that her clothing should only be plain, and her French hoods should contain no jewels. Just as her expensive and lavish French fashion and royal jewellery had demonstrated her power and legitimacy as the beloved consort of the king in the times of her queenship, so too did Katherine’s downgraded fashion demonstrate visibly her disgrace and disfavour. Upon being taken to the Tower in February 1542, the imperial ambassador felt it apt to record that the queen, who had once taken such pride in French designs and glittering jewels, was merely wearing a gown of black velvet. This fashion choice may have been a calculated move on Katherine’s part, allowing for a measure of dignity and a suggestion of the gravity of her situation, or it may merely have reflected the limited array of clothing she now had at her disposal.

It is uncertain what Katherine wore on the scaffold, for no contemporary observers felt it necessary to record what she wore - a somewhat surprising omission, given that this chapter has suggested that her associations with, and love of, fashion were well-known. Disgraced Tudor queens about to die on the scaffold had something of a habit for utilising fashion to make a final and compelling statement to the assembled audience. We know that Queen Anne Boleyn wore an elegant gown of grey damask with a crimson kirtle underneath and a mantle trimmed with ermine. These represented two conscious and clever fashion choices on the part of the queen. Crimson, as Alison Weir notes, was the Catholic colour of martyrdom, so by wearing it, Queen Anne was effectively proclaiming her innocence and martyrdom in the most visible means possible. Secondly, her ermine mantle, a fur only worn by the royalty, represented her position as queen to the very last. In so doing, Anne died proclaiming both her innocence and her royalty. Similarly, in 1587, Mary Queen of Scots selected a red costume to wear to her execution, in a calculated effort to emphasise her martyrdom and innocence.

Queen Jane Grey, on the other hand, chose to wear a gown of black, probably the same she had worn to her public trial three months previously. Of course, in Delaroche’s famous painting of 1833, the teenage queen is replete in white costume, emphasising her innocence, fragility, and martyrdom. But this painting is steeped in inaccuracies. Couple this fashion choice with her devout Protestant faith, so evident in the last days of her life, and a clear picture emerges of a woman determined to emphasise her sobriety, earnestness, piety and dignity to the last, dying in her faith. Just as Anne Boleyn chose to celebrate her innocence and royalty on the scaffold, Jane Grey focused on her Protestant faith and dignity, while Mary Queen of Scots’ red costume declared her martyrdom and death in the Catholic faith.

While surviving sources offer compelling insights into Katherine’s love of fashion, alongside her patronage activities and participation in court ceremonies, they do not reveal the tensions surfacing within her household. Seeking to ensure that her former childhood companions such as Katherine Tylney remained silent about her sexual experiences, Katherine bestowed upon them positions at court. Only scant evidence survives about Katherine’s relations with her ladies-in-waiting and maids-of-honour. As has been recognised, ladies-in-waiting were expected to participate enthusiastically, persistently and successfully ‘in all the activities connected to forming, maintaining, and exploiting patronage networks’.
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Katherine’s household included eight great ladies, nine ladies and gentlewomen attendant, five maids-of-honour, four gentlewomen of the privy bedchamber, and four chamberers.
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In total twenty-six staff served in Katherine’s household compared with only sixteen in that of Katherine of Aragon.
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As well as giving gifts of jewellery to her stepdaughters, the queen bestowed beads on Lady Carew, Lady Rutland, Lady Surrey, and Lady Margaret Douglas.
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Because she was queen for an extremely short period of time, little evidence exists about Katherine’s interactions with her ladies. As with Jane Seymour, who occasionally made gifts of jewellery to favourite ladies, Katherine’s relations with them appear to have been professional and cordial, although loyalty and trust may not have been inspired as with more significant queens such as Katherine of Aragon and Anne Boleyn. But there is no convincing evidence to support the sweeping claim that ‘there were plenty of others among the Queen’s immediate household who also cordially disliked their Howard mistress [...] Catherine [
sic
], in life as well as in death, became the victim of that malice’.
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In contrast, Katherine’s ladies only moved against her at the time of her downfall when they were pressurised and bullied by the crown into providing damning evidence against their mistress, presumably reluctantly. That Katherine was close to her female family members and provided them with lavish positions at court there is no doubt, for at the time of the queen’s downfall the prosecutors utilised these women’s intimate connections with the queen against Katherine: four Howard women were accused of abetting or concealing Katherine’s premarital and extramarital affairs.
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Like her ancestor Anne of York and her cousin Anne Boleyn, Katherine actively sought to promote and raise her family’s fortunes through her patronage as queen.

In August 1541 she appointed Francis Dereham as her private secretary. Possibly the king had encouraged her to do so, if Dereham had approached the king directly. There is extant evidence that Dereham relations were viewed favourably by the crown. In December 1540, the king had granted to Thomas Dereham and his wife – possibly the parents of Francis – the house of West Dereham Monastery with reservations for twenty-one years, lands in West Dereham and Roxham, Crimplesham (where Francis had been born) and Wyram, lands in Faltewell and Estholme, ‘and all tithes of corn, hay, &c., on the said lands; and all woods on the premises.’
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Following Katherine’s appointment at court, Dereham had journeyed to Ireland, where he possibly engaged in piracy. After her step-granddaughter’s marriage to Henry VIII, the Dowager Duchess of Norfolk encouraged Dereham to seek from the queen a position within her household. Almost certainly she was neither aware of the full extent of Dereham’s sexual relations with her step-granddaughter or his relentless pursuit of her within the duchess’s household. Although he openly confronted Katherine with rumours of an engagement to Thomas Culpeper, the queen consented to ‘be good unto him’ because of her step-grandmother’s request.
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In August 1541, the queen found the place for Dereham within her household as private secretary and as an usher of the chamber. She warned him to ‘take heed what words you speak’,
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since her reputation had already been slandered by hostile observers the previous summer and because she feared Dereham’s aggressiveness.

Although Katherine sought to placate doubtful acquaintances such as Francis Dereham with appointments within her household, she continued to be troubled by his behaviour. Soon after his appointment in the summer of 1541, he openly boasted to his friend Robert Davenport that: ‘many men despised him by cause they perceived that the Queen favoured him insomuch that one Mr John, being gentleman usher with the Queen, fell out with him for sitting at dinner or supper with the Queen’s council after all others were risen, and sent one to him to know whether he were of the Queen’s council, and the said Dereham answered the messenger – Go to Mr John and tell him I was of the Queen’s council before he knew her and shall be there after she hath forgotten him.’
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While bearing in mind the limited utility of indictments produced against the queen in a process designed to culminate in her disgrace and execution, this documentation and evidence of Dereham’s past behaviour with Katherine confirms his aggressive, even violent, temperament, and his arrogant belief that he and no one else was Katherine’s rightful paramour. In remarking that ‘[if] the King were dead I am sure I might marry her’, his behaviour was highly dangerous, for were the king to become aware of his comments, he would face charges of treason for predicting the king’s death. Dereham himself showed no respect towards the queen or consideration of her feelings. This was particularly irresponsible, for ‘in a culture [...] where a woman’s honour was construed in purely sexual terms, loose talk could cause cruel damage’.
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Believing that she had consented to his forceful sexual advances, Dereham continued to believe that, when the king died, Katherine would eagerly return to him as his ‘wife’.

Dereham’s allegations were particularly foolish in light of the concerns of Henry VIII regarding treasonous behaviour. The 1534 Treason Act condemned those who maliciously desired the death of the sovereign through ‘words or writing, or by craft imagine’. By prophesying that once the king had died Dereham would be able to marry his young queen, he placed both himself and Katherine in serious harm. Later on the queen was to be accused of offering Dereham a place within her household in order to continue her ‘abominable’ lifestyle of lust which, the councillors believed, she had shamelessly enjoyed with him during her childhood.

After relatively successful first months as queen, Katherine’s relationship with her husband, which seems to have been promising, was placed in some difficulties by the king’s dangerous illness at the end of February 1541. Marillac informed the French king that Henry had suffered a tertian fever, and had simultaneously endured: ‘a mal d’esprit having conceived a sinister opinion of some of his chief men, in his illness [...] most of his Privy Council under pretence of serving him, were only temporizing for their own profit, but he knew the good servants from the flatterers [...] Under this impression he spent Shrovetide without recreation, even of music [...] and stayed in Hampton Court with so little company that his Court resembled more a private family than a king’s train’.
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Chapuys was later to write that at Lent, because of his illness, the king refused to see his queen for a period of ten or twelve days, ‘during which time there was much talk of a divorce, but owing to some surmise that she was with child or else because the means for a divorce was not arranged the affair slept.’
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However, for various reasons Chapuys’ suggestion that Henry seriously considered annulling his marriage to Katherine in the spring of 1541 is dubious for several reasons. Firstly, the French ambassador, who was well-informed, made no mention at the time of the queen or an annulment in his reports to the King of France when discussing Henry’s illness. Secondly, in March 1541 Henry publicly arranged for Katherine to pass through London as queen in which she was saluted and warmly greeted by the notables of the city. Thirdly, the queen’s personal activities in the spring, in which she was involved with the pardoning of several criminals and her visits with the king to the royal children, indicate that the king warmly expected her to continue her duties appropriate as his consort.

With the benefit of hindsight, Chapuys – writing eight months later in the wake of Katherine’s downfall – probably misinterpreted the king’s decision to part from his wife as sinister evidence of his intent to separate from her pending the annulment of their marriage. As evidence of the couple’s continuing happiness together, on Katherine’s first passage on the Thames as queen on 19 March, Henry arranged for the Tower cannons to salute her and she was escorted, along with her husband, by the Lord Mayor of London, aldermen and craftsmen in barges decorated with banners. Charles Wriothesley viewed these festivities as ‘a goodly sight’.
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Nevertheless, the rumour noted by Chapuys that the queen was pregnant in the spring of 1541 is intriguing, for Marillac also indicated that Katherine was believed to have conceived, writing in April: ‘this queen is thought to be with child, which would be a very great joy to this king who it seems believes it, and intends, if it be found true, to have her crowned at Whitsuntide. Already all the embroiderers that can be got are employed making furniture and tapestry, the copes and ornaments taken from the churches not being spared. Moreover, the young lords and gentlemen of this Court are practising daily for the joists and tournaments to be then made.’
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Since there is no other evidence of Katherine’s pregnancy, either at this time or later, it is difficult to credit both gentlemen’s reports, for foreign ambassadors were customarily deceived by the king’s councillors about matters pertaining to pregnancy and fertility. Since the English queen was not accustomed to publicly announcing pregnancies, these ambassadors were reliant on court rumours and the symbolism of protocol to provide ‘evidence’ of a royal pregnancy. If the king had been suffering with a life-threatening illness early that year it is difficult to believe that he had recovered sufficiently to father a child on his consort. Potentially Marillac was deceived by councillors close to the king, who untruthfully informed the ambassador that their monarch’s marital relations were so happy that he had managed to father an heir on his present queen. Alternatively, Katherine may have believed herself to be pregnant when in fact she never was. At the time of her downfall later that year, it was rumoured that physicians had confirmed that the queen was unable to bear children.
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More possibly, the physical effects of the sexual abuse she had suffered earlier on may have physically damaged her, rendering her unable to have children.
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Despite the reports of both Marillac and Chapuys, there is no evidence that Katherine became pregnant during her tenure as queen consort. More probably, the reason was her husband’s infertility, with which he had suffered increasingly from the period between Jane Seymour’s death and Anne of Cleves’ rejection.