Catherine Howard- Wife and Mistress, page 1
Catherine Howard
Henry’s Fifth Failure
D. Lawrence-Young
Copyright © D. Lawrence-Young
The right of D. Lawrence-Young to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988.
This edition published in 2018 by Sharpe Books.
To the two most important and supportive women in my
writing career:
My ever-loving wife, Beverley Stock
My assiduous and perspicacious editor, Marion Lupu
Table of Contents
Author’s note
Prologue
Chapter One:
Catherine Howard: From Birth to Horsham
Chapter Two:
Robert Butcher: From Birth to the Tower
Chapter Three:
Catherine Howard: Making Music with Mannox
Chapter Four:
Robert Butcher: A soldier and Mollie
Chapter Five:
Catherine Howard: Francis Dereham
Chapter Six:
Robert Butcher: The Trial and execution of Bishop Fisher
Chapter Seven:
Catherine Howard: Dereham, Mannox and a Masque
Chapter Eight:
Robert Butcher: The Trial and Execution of Sir Thomas More
Chapter Nine:
Catherine Howard: Walking and Dancing with Francis Dereham
Chapter Ten:
Robert Butcher: The Trial and Execution of Anne Boleyn
Chapter Eleven:
Catherine Howard: More of Francis Dereham
Chapter Twelve:
Robert Butcher: The Pilgrimage of Grace
Chapter Thirteen:
Catherine Howard: Jane Seymour and Francis Dereham
Chapter Fourteen:
Robert Butcher: Fighting in Ireland
Chapter Fifteen:
Catherine Howard: The Trials of Loving Francis Dereham
Chapter Sixteen:
Robert Butcher: Enter Anne of Cleves
Chapter Seventeen:
Catherine Howard: Lady-in-Waiting
Chapter Eighteen:
Robert Butcher: Overhearing a Plot
Chapter Nineteen:
Catherine Howard: The King’s Rose Without a Thorn
Chapter Twenty:
Robert Butcher: Exit Cromwell and Enter Culpepper
Chapter Twenty-One:
Catherine Howard: A Progress with Tom Culpepper
Chapter Twenty-Two:
Robert Butcher: The End of Two Tales
Epilogue
Acknowledgements
Bibliography
Author’s note
I have always been fascinated how fate can bring people together. Their meeting may be planned or at random but it can result in changing their lives in an unexpected way. I find this even more fascinating when this happens to two people who come from quite different backgrounds. The results of such meetings may be positive: a man and a woman from different cities, even from different countries, who decide to get married, or teachers who inspire their weaker students to succeed. In contrast, some of these meetings may result in tragedy, such as a mother who is killed by a bank-robber simply because she is in the wrong place at the wrong time or when a drunken driver maims or kills a child walking home from school. Examples of such random meetings, both positive and negative, are endless.
Catherine Howard – Henry’s Fifth Failure is a novel which features this ‘random meeting’ motif. It is not the first novel about Henry VIII’s fifth wife and I’m sure it won’t be the last. The story of how she rose and fell so dramatically will always entice writers to tell and retell it. However, I have not written this novel merely to tell Catherine Howard’s story. I have written it to illustrate this ‘random meeting’ motif and to show the cruel and violent situation that formed the background of her bright life and brutal death.
I hope I have succeeded and will be pleased to receive your comments, positive or otherwise, at: dlwhy08@gmail.com or at: www.dly-books.weebly.com
D. Lawrence-Young
Jerusalem, Israel
August 2018
Prologue
My name is Catherine Howard and I’m not yet twenty years old. In a few days' time, I'm going to be put to death. I’m going to be executed. I'm now being held as a prisoner in Syon Abbey, an old palace on the south side of the River Thames. Tomorrow, I've been told, I'm to be put onto a barge and taken down the river to the Tower of London. There I am to stay overnight and the next morning I am to be escorted to the scaffold on Tower Green. And there, in front of hundreds of people, they will cut off my head.
Why? you may ask. The answer is simple. All I wanted to do was to find some love and excitement with my two lovers, Francis Dereham and Thomas Culpepper. Is that such a bad thing – for a vivacious young girl to look for love and excitement? No, I'm sure you'd agree, normally it isn’t. Thousands, if not millions of young girls have been doing this since the beginning of time – this search for warmth and close companionship. In my case, however, it was a crime. It was a crime because my husband was the King of England, King Henry the Eighth. When you are the Queen of England, as I was for eighteen months, you have no right at all to look for love and affection outside the marriage bed, even though your husband is grossly overweight, impotent, sick and thirty years older than you.
This is how it happened.
Chapter One:
Catherine Howard: From Birth to Horsham
With my eyes fixed on some vague point in the distance, I, Catherine Howard, was lost in thought. What has my life been all about? I wondered. They say I was born in 1524 or thereabouts and, as for where I was born, well, that depends upon whom you ask. Different people in my family have told me different things. Some say I was born in Wingate, a small town in County Durham in the north of England. Others say I was born in London. But as I may have told you, the question of my date and place of birth doesn’t interest me overmuch.
All I know is that my father was Lord Edmund Howard, the third son of the Duke of Norfolk and my mother was Jocasta Culpepper, although sometimes she was also called Joyce Culpepper. The duke’s other niece, Anne Boleyn, became Henry the Eighth’s second wife, and so this meant that Anne and I were first cousins.
Although my father was a member of the illustrious and aristocratic Howard family, as one of the younger sons, he was not very rich and the little money that he was entitled to had to be shared with his brothers and sisters. In addition, he was not very careful with his money and he allowed it to trickle - if not flow - though his fingers. This meant that he was always in debt and was constantly borrowing from everyone he came in contact with. Naturally this was not good for his reputation and people said that he’d been forced to sell his first wife’s properties in Hampshire and Kent in order to pay back his loans.
Of course he tried to exploit the fact that he was a member of the Howard family, the leading noble family in the land but, in general, this did not help him very much. Even though he knew his way around the court and had organized the jousting tournaments for King Henry the Eighth’s first marriage, that is, to Catherine of Aragon, this did not help him later when he needed some serious financial support.
In addition to exploiting the Howard name, my father would also remind any would-be benefactor that he had fought for the king at the Battle of Flodden Field in 1513. There he had served as the Marshal of the Horse to His Majesty at the beginning of his reign.
None of this, however, really helped him to advance at court. Perhaps one of the reasons for this was that the Howards had supported King Richard the Third in the battle against the present king’s father at Bosworth in 1485. As a result, even though over fifty years had passed, the Tudors were still suspicious of the Howards.
Another reason that my father had not risen high at court was that Thomas Cromwell, the king's chancellor, had sent him abroad to France to become the Controller in Calais. While this appointment may have been seen as an important post, it meant that he was kept away from court and the centers of power. This meant that he was, not able to fight for his interests and possible promotion when an opportunity occurred.
Then three years ago, my father returned to England after the king had dismissed him from his post in Calais. Some malicious tongues say that this was due to his failure in carrying out his duties in a responsible manner, but I maintain it was all due to his failing health. When I met him on his return to London I immediately noticed that his usually ruddy face now looked pale and drawn.
“Father,” I couldn’t help saying. “You must be ailing. When did you last eat? And you look as though you haven’t slept for days. Are you sick?”
He tried to laugh this off. “Sick? It’s more like I was seasick. But fear not, Catherine, I’ll be over this in a couple of days.”
He was wrong. Very shortly after returning to London he collapsed and died. Of course, being a Howard, he had an impressive funeral which was very well attended. However, I had the impression that some of the lords who came did so just to see that there was one male Howard fewer at court.
His death meant that his third wife, Margaret Munday, was widowed after less than two years of marriage. But by then I was no longer a child and as she was not my real mother, I did not need her around me. And besides, I was not sharing the same roof with her any more. I was now living with my step-grandmother, Agnes, the Dowager Duchess of Norfolk, in her palace at Lambeth in a lovely building down by the Thames.
My true mother knew nothing about all this as she had died eight years earlier in 1531. Following the tradition of the time, I was never allowed to become attached to her. In accordance with the aristocratic custom, I was brought up by a series of governesses and usually saw my close family only on formal occasions or at religious festivals. This means that I cannot tell you much about my mother at all. All I remember was that she was pleasant enough to look at and I believe that she loved my father even though many people at court thought that he was an irresponsible spendthrift.
What I do remember from these early days is that wherever we lived, either in the north of the country or in London, I had always many other children to play with. There were at least five children from my mother’s first marriage but some of them had died young – a sad occurrence that happened very often in those days. However, I do remember playing with my step-brothers, John and Ralph, and also with my three step-sisters, Isabel, Joyce and Margaret. After my mother married my father, I was born as too were my brothers, Henry, George and Charles and my sisters, Margaret and Mary. Thus you can see that I always lived in crowded busy households where the noise and bustle of young children being ever-present.
My family was poor, not like beggars who had no food to eat nor clothes to wear but certainly we were much less affluent than the rest of the Howard family. My parents, therefore, thought it quite natural to send us on our different ways to grow up with other noble families or different members of the Howard family. As I’ve just said, I was sent to live with my step-grandmother, the Dowager Duchess, Agnes Howard. But I always called her Grandmother or Grandma. She lived in a large country home in Horsham, Sussex, some thirty miles south of London.
At first I enjoyed living in the green countryside. I found it all very new, interesting and peaceful especially after living for many years with the noise and bustle of London. From my room I could see the wooded hills of the South Downs as well as Chanctonbury Ring, the high tree-topped hill which I thought of as a mountain. It was about a dozen miles south of the dowager’s house and occasionally we used to go for rides to its base in a wagon and then climb up the chalky footpath to the top. There we would have a picnic, munching apples and cheese and drinking small ale while we looked out at the wonderful view spread out below. Even to this day, I can still remember standing there holding someone’s hand in case I was blown away. It was also from this high hilltop that I was able to see the sea from afar, a sea that I was told was called the English Channel.
“Does it go on forever?” I remember asking. “There must be so much water in it. It’s even wider than the Thames downstream from our house in Lambeth.”
My older brother, George, shook his head. “No, Catty, of course it doesn’t go on forever. France is on the other side. Don’t you know anything?”
“And do the French call it the English Channel as well?” I remember asking.
“Of course not,” he replied, sounding like a schoolmaster. “They call it ‘La Manche’ which means ‘the sleeve.’”
“And can’t the French cross it in boats and come over to England?” was my next question.
“Oh no, Catty. They wouldn’t dare do that now. Not with our King Henry on the throne. Once they did about four hundred years ago. Their King William the Conqueror crossed the Channel with a lot of men and boats but now we are too strong for them to try that again, aren’t we, Charles?”
My other brother nodded and puffed out his chest as if he himself were responsible for keeping the wicked French invaders at bay. Then he continued his sword fight with George while I stood there fascinated by the view as the light winds swished around my skirt and through the tall trees.
In addition to going for long walks in the lush countryside, we saw many things which we had never seen in London. Sometimes we visited the peasants and the local farmers who worked on my grandmother’s estate. I remember that on at least three occasions, we were invited into their small cottages to drink some milk and eat some pastries. The first time this happened I made everyone laugh when I asked whether the milk had really come from out of the black and white cow tethered outside.
“Yes, it does, milady,” the peasant’s daughter curtseyed and smiled. “And doesn’t it taste good?” she asked after I had drunk a beaker of it. “Aye, I milked the cow myself for your drink.”
“But how do you get the milk out? There are no spigots on it like on a barrel.”
At this, everyone burst out laughing and I put my hands to my face to hide my blushing cheeks.
“Meg, take Lady Catherine outside,” the girl’s father had said, “and show her where the milk comes from. Show her where the cow’s ‘spigots’ are.”
Meg took my hand and led me outside where the family’s cow was busily munching grass and a few little yellow flowers.
“Here, come close,” she directed me. “She won’t hurt you.” And she pulled me toward the cow’s warm flanks. Now that I was close to the animal, it looked much bigger than when I’d seen other cows in the surrounding fields. Now I could see her large brown eyes and the flies that were constantly flitting around her head. Suddenly, the cow – “We call her, Jane” – became aware of us both and raised her huge head, that is, huge to me, and stepped back a pace or two. This movement frightened me and I pulled my hand away from Meg’s and ran off to hide behind a nearby tree.
Meg laughed. “Don’t be scared milady. She won’t do you no harm. Just look at her. All she wants to do is eat.”
And it was true. Jane was just standing there, her head down again, munching on a fresh patch of grass. Occasionally she looked up, pushed her long tongue into each of her two nostrils and then continued with her meal.
I walked slowly back to Meg and took her hand. She showed me where the heavily veined udders were and explained that that was where the milk came from.
“Do you mean that they are like where a baby sucks from?” I asked, proudly pointing to my own budding breasts. “Like how Mistress Alice suckled my youngest brother when he was a baby?”
Meg nodded. “That’s right. But let’s go back inside now. It looks as though it’s going to rain.”
But as the summer stretched out into autumn and the rainstorms increased, washing the yellowing leaves off the trees and turning the footpaths into mud, I began to grow bored with country life. We couldn’t go outside to play or walk as much as we had done in the summer and the chalky paths became slippery and dangerous. As September merged into October and November, whole weeks would pass by without my leaving the house. Playing games such as marbles and Blind Man’s Buff or reading no longer interested me and I certainly had no desire to try my hand at writing stories or poems.
“As a daughter in the Howard family,” the duchess pointed out, “you will have to become skilled in the arts of reading and writing as well as sewing and embroidery. One day, we hope, after you are wed, you'll need to run a big household and for that you'll have to know your numbers and your letters.”
And so every morning when the skies were grey and it threatened to rain, my grandmother would sit me down as well as several of the other girls, and one of the men in her household would teach us the letters in the alphabet and simple arithmetic.
I did not like this very much especially as I was not very good at these skills. “Your letters are uneven,” my teacher would say. “I can hardly see the difference between your capital letters and your small ones. Look here, you must show that the capital C at the beginning of your name is much taller than as the rest of the letters. Can’t you see that?”
And so the winter dragged by, grey and slow, its boredom broken up only by the Christmas festivities and their preparation. However, despite the despair of my teacher, I did learn to write and to understand a little about numbers but I never enjoyed it. So long as the numbers were not too large nor the actions too complicated, I did succeed in learning some elementary addition and subtraction.
Similarly, I learned to master the art of reading but the stories I was given did not excite me.
