Read Katherine Howard: A New History Online
Authors: Conor Byrne
There is a notorious lack of consensus amongst modern historians about the nature of Queen Anne’s rapid downfall in the early summer of 1536, with the majority of historians divided between theories of a factional conspiracy masterminded by Thomas Cromwell, who resented the queen’s influence; the birth of a defective foetus that January which convinced the king that his wife was a sorceress who had bewitched him into marrying her; the queen being guilty of the charges brought against her; or the simple fact that her own indiscreet conversations with male courtiers planted suspicion in the mind of the king when rumours circulated of the queen’s closeness with these individuals.
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The frustrating nature of the surviving evidence and the prejudiced, even misguided, reports of ambassadors resident at court compound these problems, but the fact remains that Anne had been in a relatively strong position as late as April 1536, calling into doubt the first three theories, none of which are satisfactory in demonstrating why the queen was charged, imprisoned, condemned and executed within a space of three weeks. The likelihood is that the queen, unsettled by her second miscarriage that winter and fearful of the rising influence of Jane Seymour, failed to maintain a respectable distance from courtiers, participating in tantalising conversations that could be sinisterly misinterpreted as evidence of treason and plotting the king’s death. Most infamously, she berated Norris on 29 April, informing him that ‘you look for dead man’s shoes, for if aught came to the King but good you would look to have me’, bringing his shocked reply that ‘he would his head were off rather than think such thoughts’.
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Two days later, May Day, the king abruptly departed from the jousts, leaving the queen in some discomfort and bewilderment: ‘on May day were a Solempne Justes kept at Grenewyche, and sodainly from the Justes the kyng departed hauying not above vi persons with him, and came in the evening from Grenewyche in his place at Westminster. Of this sodain departyng many men mused, but most chiefely the quene, who the next day was apprehended and brought from Grenewyche to the Tower of London.’
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The following day, she was arrested on charges of adultery with three men (unnamed, with others to follow), incest, and plotting her husband’s death: ‘[...] about five of the clocke at night, the Queene Anne Bolleine was brought to the Towre of London by my Lord Chancellor, the duke of Norfolke, Mr. Secretarie, and Sir William Kingston, Constable of the Tower [...]’
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The lack of documented evidence relating to the Duke of Norfolk during the initial proceedings against the queen calls into question the suggestion that, in order to save both himself and his family, the duke allied himself with the Seymours and their friends in conspiring the downfall of Anne Boleyn. The first tangible mention of the duke in relation to the queen’s downfall was his role in her arrest, for on the morning of 2 May, the duke, alongside Sir William Fitzwilliam, treasurer of the Household, Sir William Paulet comptroller of the Household, and other members of the privy council, had accused the queen of adultery and incest before escorting her to the Tower that afternoon. Norfolk’s fear for the future of his family was evident in the reports of the disapproval he showed his niece, saying ‘tut, tut, tut [...] in answer to her defence’ during her journey to the Tower.
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The duke’s concern for the Howards, through their association with a queen now accused of heinous crimes, is understandable, particularly when another relative of that family, George Lord Rochford, was imprisoned in the Tower on a charge of incest committed with the queen. Yet any concern for the future of the Howard family encouraged the duke, as one of the foremost peers in the realm, to serve as a member of the Oyer and Terminer Commission for Middlesex on 24 April, which sat at Westminster. This commission also included another Howard relative, the Earl of Wiltshire, father to the queen. The duke later sat on the Oyer and Terminer Commission for Kent on 11 May at Deptford.
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As will be considered in relation to the downfall of Katherine Howard five years later, prevailing contemporary mores about the sinfulness of women were demonstrably brought to the fore in the downfall of Queen Anne, who was denigrated in the indictments for her ‘frail and carnal lust’ entertained with male courtiers due to the ‘malice’ she held against the king.
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Significantly, it was reported that ‘the king [...] took such inward displeasure and heaviness, especially from his said queen’s malice and adultery, that certain harms and perils have befallen his royal body’.
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The implication, clearly, was that Anne had bewitched the king into marrying her and had rendered him impotent, to the danger of his realm. The likelihood was that the king genuinely believed that his queen had employed sorcery to enact evil upon his body, for contemporaries believed that women were able to manipulate men’s sexual organs and rob them of their manhood through sorcery and witchcraft. Henry VIII’s insecurity about his manhood and his ability to father a male heir reflected the concerns of many men living in the Tudor age, for manhood was commonly perceived to be a fragile achievement always open to threat from the malice of women.
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Meanwhile, the queen’s Howard relatives readily participated in the proceedings against the queen, in order to safeguard their lineage from disgrace through association and preserve their honour. Jane, Lady Rochford, sister-in-law to Queen Anne and the niece of the Duke of Norfolk through her marriage to George Boleyn, participated in the allegations made against the queen by her ladies-in-waiting. Although the only extant reference to Jane during the downfall of the queen does not support the popular notion that she was the prime mover against the queen, she was to testify that her husband had discussed the king’s impotence with Queen Anne.
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Despite the actual minimal evidence she supplied in the proceedings, Lady Rochford has still been perceived as a: ‘wretched woman [who] was actuated wholly by hatred of her own husband and the Queen, and it was upon her unsupported statements that the charges of incest were brought [...] She was largely instrumental in bringing Ann [
sic
] Boleyn to her death.’
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Bishop Burnet agreed, believing that Lady Rochford ‘provided the damaging evidence that there was a familiarity between the queen and her brother beyond what so near a relationship could justify’.
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Significantly, however, hostile observers such as Chapuys and the chronicler of
The
Chronicle of Henry VIII
did not mention the role of Lady Rochford in her husband’s downfall. It is more than likely that her uncle, the duke, encouraged her to act helpfully during the interrogations in order to preserve the safety of the Howards, which was placed in considerable danger during April and May 1536. On 12 May, letters were directed to the Duke of Norfolk that appointed him High Steward of England for the trial of his niece and nephew, the queen and her brother, ‘to give judgment according to the laws and customs of England and direct execution’.
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That same day, four men accused of adultery with the queen, Henry Norris, Francis Weston, William Brereton and Mark Smeaton, were found guilty and sentenced to a traitor’s death.
The minimal role of the Duke of Norfolk during the downfall of his niece, apart from in his role as High Steward of England during her actual trial, is confirmed by a letter written by William Paulet, Comptroller of the Royal Household, to Cromwell on 11 May: ‘my lord of Norfolk showed me that he had no knowledge that the indictment was found and asked me whether the parties should proceed to their trial or not [...] he said he knew not how many were required nor whether they ought to be barons or not. Therefore he could not tell whom to name, and if he knew yet he would name none till he learned the king’s pleasure so he willed me to advertise you.’
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Although ambassadors at court during Anne’s reign, and modern historians since then, generally subscribed to the view that the duke became increasingly disaffected with his niece through her outspokenness and conflicting religious views, the evidence supporting this argument is astonishingly slim. Rather than eagerly participating in the queen’s downfall as a way of enacting a revenge upon a niece he had come to loathe, the evidence indicates that Norfolk supported his monarch because of his firm belief in duty to the king, and the belief that the future of the Howard dynasty was a more pressing concern than the survival of his niece as queen. He could surely not have happily anticipated the rise of Jane Seymour to the queenship, for her family was hostile to his, meaning that his focus must have shifted from his niece the queen to his daughter Mary who, by virtue of her marriage to Henry Fitzroy, represented the opportunity for the influence of the Howards amongst the Tudor dynasty to increase further.
On 15 May, the queen and her brother were tried at the Great Hall within the Tower of London for adultery, incest and plotting the death of the king. Wriothesley reports that ‘there were made benches and seates for the lordes, my Lord of Northfolke sittinge under the clothe of estate, representinge there the Kinges person as Highe Steward of Englande and uncle to the Queene, he holding a longe white staffe in his hande, and the Earle of Surrey, his sonne and heire, sittinge at his feete before him holdinge the golden staffe for the Earle Marshall of Englande [...]’
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The queen maintained her composure when the charges were read out, ‘whereunto she made so wise and discreet aunsweres to all thinges layd against her, excusinge herselfe with her wordes so clearlie, as thoughe she had never bene faultie to the same.’
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Despite her firm answers and courageous demeanour, the twenty-six peers present unanimously found the queen guilty, leaving her uncle the duke to pass the sentence of death. Following her trial, her brother George was also found guilty on all accounts and was sentenced to a traitor’s death, although the king later permitted the more gracious method of decapitation, a privilege also granted to the other four men under sentence of death.
The Howard family, by virtue of their prestigious standing within the kingdom as a noble family, had been required to participate in the proceedings against Queen Anne and the five men accused of adultery and treason with her, although the duke grievously regretted the loss in his status as relative to the king and the dishonour enacted to the Howard name. Following the execution of the queen’s supposed lovers on 17 May, on 19 May Anne herself was beheaded within the walls of the tower. Edward Hall, who served as chronicler at Henry VIII’s court, reported her execution speech:
Good Christen people, I am come hether to dye, for according to the lawe, and by the lawe I am judged to dye, and therefore I wyll speake nothynge agaynst it. I am come hether to accuse no man, nor to speae any thyng of that, whereof I am accused and condemnped to dye, but I pray God save the king and send him long to reygne over you, for a gentler nor a more mercifull prince was there never: and to me he was ever a good, a gentle and soveraygne lorde. And if anye persone wyll medle of my cause, I require them to judge the best. And thus I take my leve of the worlde and of you all, and I hertely desyre you all to praye for me. O Lorde have mercy on me, to God I commende my soule.
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The rapid downfall of Anne Boleyn within a space of three weeks, bringing down five almost certainly guiltless men with her, demonstrates visibly the dangerous nature of fertility politics within Henry VIII’s court and the opportunities it presented for the disgrace and death of a queen consort. As with Katherine of Aragon during the 1520s, Anne’s failure to bear a male heir, after suffering two miscarriages, signified to her husband Henry VIII that he had made a grave error in marrying a woman who was unable to rectify the disturbing nature of the Tudor succession. It is erroneous to interpret his relationship with Jane Seymour as one based on lust and desire, for by all accounts she lacked the charisma, beauty and wit of Anne Boleyn that had made that gentlewoman so irresistible to her monarch.
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Instead, issues of honour and masculinity were at stake, for the king speedily married Jane following his wife’s execution, not because he was captivated by Jane and wildly impatient to marry her, but because Anne Boleyn’s failure had intensified the problems of the English succession, while placing his manhood and his fertility in considerable doubt. Jane’s maidenly and virtuous demeanour probably convinced the king that the solution to these pressing issues lay with her. Some writers have even speculated that she reminded him of his gentle mother, Elizabeth of York, a queen whose fate Jane would tragically share. Historians, misunderstanding the nature of sixteenth-century manhood and beliefs about reproduction and fatherhood, have usually interpreted Henry VIII’s marriage to Jane Seymour merely eleven days after Anne’s death as callous, proving that he had been so moved by hatred for his second wife that he could not wait to get rid of her.
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The reality was that his honour and his manhood required that he speedily take another wife in order to sire a son, both for his own personal security and that of the kingdom. The indictments produced at the queen’s trial evidences the king’s belief that his wife had bewitched him into marrying her and had rendered him impotent. She would not be the last of his queens to be accused of inflicting impotence on her husband the king.