Katherine Howard: A New History (23 page)

Relying on gossip circulating within the city of London, the Spanish chronicler reported that, before Katherine’s marriage to the king, Culpeper had been in love with her and the queen had looked favourably upon him. Like most male contemporaries, the chronicler adhered to prevailing gender assumptions that assigned women the blame for sexual transgression: ‘the devil tempted her [Katherine]’.
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Rather than interpreting the mostly negative and prejudiced evidence produced against the couple as convincing evidence of an adulterous and physically consummated affair, it is more useful to analyse the evidence carefully in context of the culture of courtly love pervading the Tudor court. As other wealthy noblewomen participated in social and literary exchanges concerned with courtly love with other gentlemen, Katherine might have believed that, following Queen Anne’s example, her political position as queen and her social position as mistress of her household permitted her to engage in similar exchanges. She failed, however, to recognise the dangers a young woman faced by involving herself too closely in these affairs, for women were warned to guard their honour and virtue against the threats presented by carnal love. Only when viewed in context of the accepted social and cultural pastime of courtly love that flourished at Renaissance courts in this era can Katherine’s probable relationship with Culpeper in 1541 be understood.

The chronicler believed that the queen promised the courtier in a letter ‘to have patience, and she would find a way to comply with his wishes’.
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At some point during the early summer of 1541 the queen may have penned a letter to Culpeper. On 30 June the court had set off on a northern progress with the intention of quashing the threat of a rebellion headed by disgruntled conservatives, as well as intending to meet with the Scottish king, James V, in a lavish rendezvous at York. The poor weather did not augur well for the progress, nor did rumours that the queen was ill.
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On 29 July the court reached Lodington, where it was later reported that one of Katherine’s ladies, Margaret Morton, carried a sealed letter without superscription from the queen to Lady Rochford, to whom Katherine responded that she was sorry that she could write no better. Lady Rochford promised an answer the following morning, ‘praying her Grace to keep it secret and not to lay it abroad.’
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It is almost certain that Katherine’s note was the letter penned to Thomas Culpeper written about this time. However, it is unknown whether the queen herself actually composed this piece. Because no other extant evidence of her handwriting survives, it is usually believed that she was illiterate. Other queen consorts, who reigned for similarly short periods, including Jane Seymour and Anne of Cleves, nonetheless have examples of their signatures surviving. Supporting this point is the fact that the first sixteen words of the letter are penned in a different hand to the rest of the letter.
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If Katherine had commissioned Lady Rochford to complete a letter to Culpeper, what follows may not be indicative evidence of Katherine’s personal feelings about the affair. That she probably wrote the first sixteen words is likely given the impersonal and restrained nature of the subject matter expected of her regal position. The letter is as follows:

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. The 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 to die to think what fortune I have that I cannot always be 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 then 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 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 have 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.
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The survival of this letter strengthens the evidence presented by the Spanish chronicler in relation to this affair, for he too had recognised the passive nature of the queen’s response to Culpeper in promising to fulfil ‘his wishes’. This letter cannot be taken as evidence of a love letter evidencing Katherine’s true feelings in relation to Culpeper, as many historians still continue to believe it is. As has been wryly noted, ‘it is an odd specimen of the romance genre’.
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Before proceeding to an analysis of Katherine’s letter, it would be useful to first consider the context and nature of letter writing in early modern England.

Historians have questioned whether early modern English letters are able to allow ‘direct unmediated access to inner emotions’ hundreds of years after they were first penned.
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The content and structure of letters was crafted, in the same manner that church court depositories were manipulated, with specific models for letter writing extant. Cultural archetypes were utilised to structure languages of feeling, meaning that ‘the rhetoric of love-letters was [...] paralleled in epistolary fiction, romances and letter-writing manuals’.
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Moreover, ‘acts of writing and reading the familiar letter involve making and inferring meanings that may be pertinent to a single reading only as well as constructing meanings that might shift with the circumstances in which the letter might be read’.
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The same applied to letters crafted at the early modern French court: ‘far from providing a transparent portrayal of events or sentiments, letters offered a complicated conjunction of meanings shaped by compositional forms and conventions and the conditions of their expedition and reception’; ‘letter writers negotiated established ways of representing personal identity, and, by extension, how they thought about and represented themselves.’
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In the first two sentences the writer asks how Culpeper is, concerned that he is ill because she seeks to meet with him as soon as possible. Particular phrases utilised in this letter, such as ‘at your commandment’, were utilised in contemporary guides to letter-writing.
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The language itself is singularly dramatic. The writer fears that if she cannot meet with Culpeper her heart will ‘die’ with sorrow at her ill-fortune at being parted from him. The long, even laborious sentences indicate a well-thought out, even mediated, approach, in contrast with shorter sentences, which might convey a sense of urgency or restlessness. The letter contains very little in the way of love or passion, meaning that it is questionable why modern historians continue to persist in identifying this piece as a love letter. The abiding theme is a desire to meet with Culpeper as soon as possible, a point repeatedly emphasised: ‘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’, ‘when I think again that you shall depart from me again it makes my heart die’, ‘praying you that you will come when my lady Rochford is here’, ‘trusting to see you shortly again’.

Although the writer repeated her desire and intent to meet with Culpeper again, she did not specify for what reason. Probably, rather than instigating the affair as has been commonly believed, the queen’s emphasis on meeting with Culpeper stemmed from her wish to placate his desire to meet with her. She promised to meet with him because of his continual demands to see her. This essentially passive tone is corroborated by the Spanish chronicler’s belief that Katherine, in her letter, had assented to ‘comply with his wishes’.
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It is significant that Lady Rochford, as an intermediary, was specifically mentioned. Probably because Culpeper had first approached her as a means of meeting with the queen, Katherine believed that any meetings with Culpeper could only be appropriate if this older woman was present as chaperone and intercessor. It also implies that Katherine did not meet with Culpeper willingly and possibly feared being alone with him. Her dark encounters with Manox, in shadowy areas of her step-grandmother’s residence, hidden from the eyes of others, and her abusive relationship with Dereham probably guided the particular nature of her fearful acquiescence to Culpeper’s wishes.

Whether the letter was as significant as evidence produced against Katherine and Culpeper as most modern historians suggest is uncertain, for no mention of it as a document of evidence survives in the later indictments drawn up by prosecutors. Other detail indicates that the letter cannot be viewed necessarily as a love letter professing passion and desire. Despite the belief of writers that the ending ‘yours as long as life endures’ convincingly establishes Katherine’s passionate love for Culpeper, it is more likely that the writer chose to use an ending quite commonly used in practice by the nobles. For example, the Duchess of Norfolk had finished a letter written to Thomas Cromwell with the promise ‘by yours most bounden during my life’,
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but there was no hint of scandal suggesting that the duchess and Cromwell had been conducting a sordid adulterous affair. Moreover, in context of the practice of early modern letter writing, as has been suggested the sentiments expressed in this letter cannot be taken at face value as a genuine and realistic indication of the writer’s true feelings.
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As Daybell cautions in relation to letters, they were ‘subject to generic and linguistic conventions, texts that were socially and culturally coded’.
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Elite women, as Daybell suggests, often had access to published guides by Erasmus and Angel Day, and many women followed the style and conventions they had seen in other letters, meaning that many letters were formulaic. It would therefore be foolish to read too much into this letter, in context of the nature of early modern letter-writing, but it does establish the writer’s intent to meet with Culpeper.

Why Jane Rochford chose to concern herself with the affair is uncertain and has perplexed most historians for decades. Her recent biographer disposes of the theory that she became involved because she was experiencing financial difficulties and hoped to profit economically by assisting Katherine’s courtly love exchanges with Culpeper, arguing instead that ‘since she [Jane] had just obtained her jointure settlement and was richer than ever before in her own right, Jane did not need to endanger her life for money’.
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There is no extant evidence during the early months of Katherine’s marriage, or during her time as maid-of-honour to Queen Anne of Cleves, to indicate that she was particularly close to Lady Rochford, although the two were bound by ties of kinship, Lady Rochford being the widow of Katherine’s cousin George Boleyn. Most writers adhere to the belief that Lady Rochford involved herself in the affair because she had lived a life starved of affection, worsened by her supposedly loveless marriage to George, and assisted Katherine’s meetings with Culpeper in order to enact her own fantasies.
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Others suggest that she was actually insane.
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No convincing evidence exists to suggest that she had been a particularly controversial or meddlesome woman before her involvement with Katherine, since most historians do not now accept the traditional suggestion that she acted as the crucial witness in charges of adultery and incest against her husband and Anne Boleyn in 1536.
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The likeliest explanation for Jane’s conduct is that she had been directly approached by Culpeper, who sought to obtain her assistance in meeting with the queen, for he had possibly come into sensitive information about the queen’s past. It has been pointed out that it is surely significant that he first sought to meet with the queen in the spring of 1541 when she was both being harassed by Dereham and having to cope with the serious, even life-threatening, illness of her husband. Rumours had actually implied that the king was on the point of death. An ambitious courtier with years of experience at court, and aware of Katherine’s naivety coupled with knowledge that unfavourable rumours about her past had been in circulation since the previous year, Culpeper might have believed that, were the king to die, he could attain even greater power through political manipulation and control of the young and inexperienced queen. Although he was probably not the violent rapist reported by rumour, as an ambitious and power-seeking member of the king’s household he could have believed that establishing a hold over the queen would be an effective means of acquiring greater power at court, particularly in the wake of Henry’s illness. The queen soon discovered the reality of Culpeper’s motives, focused as they were on acquiring further power and influence through manipulating her. The letter penned to Culpeper in the summer of 1541 focuses not on passion or romance, its urgent even desperate tone suggesting a need for placation. If Katherine continued to give Culpeper gifts, it was probably in the sense of trying to pacify him. Margaret of Anjou famously bequeathed gifts upon her enemy Richard Duke of York as ‘a form of reassurance and pacification, a message that the queen was aware of York’s concerns’.
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Arguably Katherine was acting in a similar manner.