“As long as life endures”: Revisiting the Evidence of Catherine Howard’s Guilt By Naomi Wallace Content Warning: This piece includes discussions of sexual violence On the eve of 13 February 1542, Catherine Howard, imprisoned within the walls of the Tower of London, sentenced to die on charges of high treason, had a final tragic request: she asked that the execution block be brought to her chamber for her to practice lying her head upon. The following morning, at no more than twenty years old, she met her death swiftly and with dignity. And so, we get the second wife of Henry VIII to be beheaded. Six years prior, another Queen of England, the second wife of Henry VIII, stood on the scaffold convicted of treason. But while it is widely acknowledged that Anne Boleyn was falsely accused, Catherine Howard rarely receives the same sympathy. She is remembered as simply the foolish young wife of Henry VIII, whose impulsiveness and promiscuity were her death sentence. Tracy Borman cruelly branded her an ‘archdeceiver with morals of a whore’, and many agree that she was responsible for her fate. This article aims to challenge such perceptions of Catherine and offer alternative interpretations of the evidence brought against her. In November 1541, not eighteen months after becoming Queen, Catherine Howard was accused of having sexual relations with two men before her marriage to the King; Henry Mannox and Francis Dereham, both of whom she had known whilst living in the household of the Dowager Duchess of Norfolk. Catherine confessed to having had carnal relations with them, however in her final confession she asserted that she had been sexually assaulted, which could very well be the truth given that both men were significantly older. Mannox had been her music teacher and abused her as an early teenager, and she stated in her confession that she ‘suffered him… to handle and touch the secret parts of my body, which neither became me with honesty for me to permit or for him to require.’ Equally, she claimed that Dereham had ‘procured [her] to his vicious purpose.’ Henry was furious that his innocent teenage bride, his ‘rose without a thorn,’ had a less than innocent past. When Dereham was interrogated, however, a graver allegation emerged - that the Queen had engaged in an adulterous affair with a courtier and gentleman of the Privy Chamber, Thomas Culpepper. The liaison between Culpepper and the Queen allegedly began on Maundy Thursday 1541, when
Catherine summoned him to her rooms and gifted him a cap, which, as Gareth Russell rightly observes, was ‘a flirtatious gesture’. She later sent food to Culpepper whilst he was sick, and the two met privately, aided by Jane Rochford, Catherine’s lady in waiting, on multiple occasions during the Court’s 1541 summer progress. Eyewitnesses of illicit meetings between the pair, confessions from Culpepper and Rochford, and a letter written by Catherine herself, were sufficient evidence to condemn them. Catherine’s letter is cited as proof of her love for Culpepper; but with a closer look, we see that it is not the smoking-gun it is often considered to be. Efforts to date the letter vary; Starkey suggests it was written from Greenwich in the spring of 1541, while some have placed it during the summer progress of the same year. Its usefulness as a source is limited by the fact that it is a piece of evidence untethered to a particular date, and therefore belongs to no definite context. Additionally, it is the only surviving piece of Catherine’s own writing. This again limits its merit, as we have no point of comparison to judge it against her usual tone or vocabulary. It is undeniable that the tone of the letter is overly friendly. Catherine says that ‘it makes [her] heart die to think what fortune I have that I cannot be always in your company,’ and wishes to see him, ‘praying you that you will come when my Lady Rochford is here.’ But while this admittedly does not look good for the Queen, it is not quite the brazen declaration of love that it has been lauded as. Adultery seems a hasty conclusion to jump to when Catherine essentially only says that she wants to speak with Culpepper. The affectionate expression, especially the sign-off ‘yours as long as life endures, Katheryn’ were not unconventional of the time, and therefore must not be judged from a contemporary perspective, in which such doting language would certainly be indicative of romantic desire. Furthermore, it seems unlikely that such conclusions would have been drawn if not for the accusations by which the letter was followed. Perhaps this teleological view has prompted an overstatement of the implications of its content. Alternative explanations for Catherine’s letter can be offered; the first considers the culture of the Tudor Court. Ladies were expected to engage in a flirtatious yet innocent game of courtly love with male courtiers. As Queen of England, Catherine needed be desirable
16
