As the order went out for Culpeper’s immediate arrest, Katherine was to be sent from the palace to Sion House, a converted convent a few miles east of Hampton Court, but she was not to be alarmed and given plenty of time to pack. Henry did not want to move too fast in case these new charges were no more than the malicious gossip he had believed the first rumours to have been.
Two days after the council meeting Henry was attending mass with most of the court when Katherine was given the news of her impending detainment. Frantic, she broke loose from her guards and ran screaming through the vast halls of Hampton Court towards the chapel – shouting her husband’s name as she ran. The guards caught up with her as she started banging her fists against the thick oak door, shouting for Henry to save her. Undoubtedly everyone in the chapel heard her, but no one so much as turned their head. Henry VIII would never see his rose without a thorn again.
As Katherine was shipped off to Sion with only Lady Rochford, three other women and the guards to attend her, Thomas Culpeper was being ‘put to the question’ in the Tower. He was racked mercilessly. At first, he adamantly denied sleeping with Katherine, insisting that the most attention she had shown him was to call him her ‘sweet little fool’ and to give him a cap and a ring. To refresh his memory a knotted rope was placed around his head and tightened until the knots dug into his eyes until they exploded. Finally he confessed, admitting that Lady Rochford had encouraged his affair with the queen, made all the arrangements for their meetings, and carried letters back and forth between them. There was no doubt he was finally telling the truth, the king’s agents had already discovered a letter in his apartment that corroborated his story and would provide all the evidence the court would need to convict him. Written in Katherine’s own childish scrawl it read:
Master Culpeper,
I heartily recommend me unto 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 speak to you . . . 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. . . . I trust . . . that you will come when my Lady Rochford is here for then I shall be best at leisure to be at your commandment . . . 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
The arrest of Lady Rochford was ordered to take place immediately. Then it would be Katherine’s turn to answer some questions.
Isolated at Sion House, Katherine had no idea of Dereham, Manox or Culpeper’s confessions nor the dire effect they were having on her future. She must, however, have had some idea of how desperate her situation was becoming when the king’s deputation came to question her. Among those present were Archbishop Cranmer, Bishop Gardiner, the Earl of Sussex and her uncle the Duke of Norfolk.
At first Katherine denied everything, insisting, as her husband had done, that it was all gossip and lies concocted by jealous rivals and servants; but Katherine was no intellectual match for her inquisitors. Finally, she confessed to her pre-marital indiscretions with Manox and Dereham, saying that Dereham had used her ‘in such a sort as a man doth his wife, many and sundry times’. Cranmer asked her if she had intended to marry Dereham, and that if she had, it would make her marriage to Henry invalid and it could be annulled, relieving her of any further guilt. Katherine steadfastly denied she had any ties to Dereham, insisting that she was married to Henry and was the rightful queen. What she obviously did not realise was that she was throwing away her one chance to save herself. If her marriage was invalid, any post-marital affairs could be swept under the carpet; if she were legally the queen, she had committed a crime that carried the status of treason.
But she consistently denied any affairs after her marriage. Cranmer was so moved by her terror that he did not press the point, nor did he mention her letter to Culpeper. They had the proof and there was obviously no point in bringing it up just to terrify her. In his report on the questioning, he said, ‘Her state it would have pitied any man’s heart to see . . . for fear she would enter into a frenzy.’ Cranmer and the others repeated their questioning well into the evening, but it was obvious that the queen was near hysterics and would not tell them anything new.
Desperate to make all the bad things she had brought on herself go away, Katherine wrote the following letter to her husband:
I, Your Grace’s most sorrowful subject and most vile wretch in the world . . . do only make my most humble submission and confession of my faults. . . . My sorrow I can by no writing express, nevertheless I trust your most benign nature will have some respect unto my youth, my ignorance, my frailness, my humble confession of my faults, and plain declaration of the same referring me wholly unto Your Grace’s pity and mercy. . . . I most humbly beseech you to consider the subtle persuasions of young men and the ignorance and frailness of young women.
I was so desirous to be taken unto Your Grace’s favour, and so blinded by the desire of worldly glory that I could not . . . consider how great a fault it was to conceal my former faults from Your Majesty, considering that I intended ever during my life to be faithful and true unto Your Majesty ever after.
Nevertheless, the sorrow of my offences was ever before my eyes, considering the infinite goodness of Your Majesty toward me, which was ever increasing and not diminishing.
Now, I refer the judgement of mine offences with my life and death wholly unto your most benign and merciful grace, to be considered by no justice of Your Majesty’s laws but only by your infinite goodness, pity, compassion and mercy – without which I acknowledge myself worthy of the most extreme punishment.
Not realising that Henry already knew about her letter to Culpeper, Katherine conveniently neglected to mention her ongoing affairs in this plea for mercy. The absence of a full confession only worsened her cause.
By 13 November, everyone who had waited on the queen while she lived at Hampton Court had been questioned and re-questioned. Lady Rochford had been removed from Katherine’s household at Sion and taken to the Tower. Although there is no evidence that Rochford was tortured she completely lost control of herself under cross-examination. On the verge of mental collapse and willing to do anything to save her own scheming life, she signed a confession accusing virtually everyone even remotely associated with either Katherine or Culpeper. More significantly, she revealed that Culpeper and the queen were having sexual relations even while the royal party was on progress. She also admitted that she had made arrangements for the two to meet at nearly every castle and great house visited during the course of the tour where she, or a servant acting on her orders, ferreted out back stairs, dark passageways and secret doors through which the teenage queen’s lover could find his way to her without any chance of running into Henry or his court officials. She also confirmed Culpeper’s story that she had carried love letters between the two. It was corroborative testimony, it was damning and it was all the evidence needed to convict the queen of treason.
Although there was no hard evidence that either Manox nor Dereham had had sex with Katherine after her marriage, their past record with her, combined with their presence in her royal household, was enough to make them more than marginally suspect. Hurt and enraged, Henry ordered that they be tried for high treason along with Culpeper. To suppress any gossip that he was simply trying to get rid of another unwanted wife, he also commanded that their trials be held in open court.
On 1 December 1541, Thomas Culpeper, Edward Manox and Francis Dereham were arraigned in London’s Guild Hall on charges of ‘presumptive treason’. Culpeper was additionally charged with criminal intercourse with the queen. Although all three initially entered pleas of ‘not guilty’, when faced with the mountain of evidence against them they finally admitted their guilt. Culpeper made a final statement to the court, saying, ‘Gentlemen, do not seek to know more than that the King deprived me of the thing I love best in the world and, though you may hang me for it, she loves me as well as I love her, though up to this hour no wrong has ever passed between us.’ In light of the evidence, it was a useless effort. All three were convicted as charged. The sentence was death. In an attempt to wring any last bit of information out of the men ten more days of senseless torture and questioning followed their sentencing.
Through the long weeks of investigation, arrests, questioning and trials, Henry had retained his composure. But in a council meeting shortly after Culpeper, Dereham and Manox’s trial, his over-wrought state got the best of him during a meeting of the council. Suddenly demanding that someone bring him a sword, the king flew into such a rage that his ministers thought he had finally snapped. Shouting and screaming, Henry cried, ‘That wicked woman! She never had such delight in her lovers as she shall have torture in death!’ As his terrified advisers watched with ashen faces, the man who had single-handedly reshaped the English church, defied France and the Pope and discarded three previous wives shook, wept and finally vomited on the council table before his guards could restrain him and lead him from the room sobbing, ‘Why must so sweet a thing die?’ For all his past cruelty and callous behaviour, there is no doubt that Henry VIII was desperately in love with Katherine Howard; now she had betrayed him and he was too old to rebuild his life.
Ten days after their trial, Culpeper, Dereham and Manox were taken to Tyburn to die. As a concession to his rank, Culpeper, blinded by his torture, was led to the block for a swift end. The other two were hanged, drawn and quartered as common traitors. Their three heads were then placed on pikes and displayed on London Bridge.
In the hope of keeping Henry from further anxiety, the council assured him that he would not have to appear at Katherine’s trial. An Act of Attainder – essentially a warrant stripping Katherine of her rights – would be issued in his name and the trial undertaken through regular legal channels. The Act, drawn up in late January 1542, only seventeen months after Katherine’s marriage to the king, listed the charges and accusations against the queen in graphic terms, referring to her as ‘abominable, base, carnal, voluptuous and vicious’, and accusing her of deceiving the king when she ‘led him by word and gesture to love her . . . [and] . . . arrogantly coupled herself with him in marriage.’
On Friday 12 February, Katherine was moved by barge from Sion House to the Tower, 10 miles down the Thames. In the flotilla was the barge of the Lord Privy Seal, in which members of the council rode, the barge carrying the queen – who was dressed in black velvet – and the Duke of Suffolk’s barge crowded with soldiers. As they floated silently into London, they passed beneath London Bridge where Katherine undoubtedly saw the heads of her former lovers staring blindly down at her.
Taken through Traitors’ Gate, Katherine was led from the barge to an apartment in the building known as the Queen’s House, where Lady Rochford was already waiting for her in complete hysteria. Only hours before, Rochford had been told that her confession had not saved her from condemnation. She would not stand trial, but whatever punishment was handed down to Katherine would be hers as well.
As the women waited to hear their fate, both of them teetered on the edge of mental breakdown. Katherine’s uncle Norfolk commented that she ‘refuses to drink or eat and weeps and cries like a madwoman, so that they must take away things by which she might hasten her death’. A cynical and battle-hardened old soldier, Norfolk may have had little sympathy for his promiscuous niece, but he openly wept for his grieving king. Although Katherine was given the opportunity to appear at her trial, she refused. Still, she thought that if she could get a letter to Henry, he would save her. He had always given her everything she had wanted. Now, surely, he would save her life. She was wrong.
On Sunday evening, the head warden came with the news that she was to be executed the following morning. Amazingly calm, Katherine asked only two things. First, that her execution be held in private, away from the stares of the public and, secondly, that someone bring the block to her so she could practise laying her head on it with dignity. Both requests were granted. In a bizarre spectacle, the queen spent all evening repeatedly approaching the grim block, kneeling, praying and leaning forward.
Stepping on to the scaffold the next morning, Katherine Howard, the nineteen-year-old Queen of England, addressed the small clutch of noblemen who surrounded her. In her final address, she said ‘As to the act . . . for which I stand condemned, God and His holy angels take to witness my soul’s salvation, that I die guiltless. What sins and follies of youth I have committed I will not excuse, but am assured that for them God hath brought this punishment upon me, and will, in His mercy, remit them; for which I pray you, pray with me unto His Son and my Saviour Christ. . . . [B]y the journey on which I am bound, I have not wronged the King . . . sin blinded me and greed of grandeur; and since mine is the fault, mine also is the suffering.’ Finally, she asked that her family should not suffer for her crimes. Approaching the block, she died with the first stroke of the axe.
Next came Lady Jane Rochford who regained her sanity long enough not only to admit her part in Katherine’s downfall, but in being complicit in wrongly condemning her husband and Anne Boleyn to the end she herself was about to suffer.
On hearing of Katherine’s fate her predecessor, Anne of Cleves, said ironically, ‘she was too much a child to deny herself any sweet thing she wanted’.
After her death, Henry granted Katherine’s last request. Her family was freed from the Tower, but he confiscated large tracts of their vast estate holdings. After providing him with two such troublesome wives, the Howards would never find profit in Henry’s court again. The king himself never recovered from the ordeal either mentally or physically. Throughout his few remaining years he intermittently insisted that he saw and heard Katherine’s ghost running frantically through the hall leading towards the chapel of Hampton Court Palace where she had tried to reach him as he attended mass that morning in early November. He may have been right; hundreds of others have reported the same phenomenon in the centuries since.