January 14, 2025 • 32 mins
Katherine Howard was the fifth wife of King Henry VIII.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Welcome to Noble Blood, a production of iHeartRadio and Grim
and Mild from Aaron Mankie. Listener discretion advised Danish Sports Here.
I am still on maternity leave and so we're continuing
the archival series on the six Wives of Henry the Eighth.
Today's episode is focused on Katherine Howard, the teenager that
(00:24):
King Henry the Eighth fell in love with, who ultimately
spoiler alert, lost her head. But was she actually guilty
of what the king accused her of enjoy.
Speaker 2 (00:39):
On November eighth, fifteen forty one, Queen Katherine Howard was
brought to a small room to sit opposite Thomas Cranmer,
Archbishop of Canterbury. The archbishop had assured King Henry the
Eighth a few days prior that his interrogation would be
harsh and merciless, that he would import on the King's
(01:02):
young bride the severity of her crimes and scare her
into full honesty. But when Cranmer saw the young girl,
he felt his resolve drain away. She was weeping, already
frantic with grief and terror, her bloodshot eyes darting around
the room as if an executioner's blade could appear at
(01:25):
any moment. But she also looked so small, so young.
She was a nineteen year old girl, and she was
in a chair that looked far too big for her.
Cranmer really had all the information already that his investigation
really needed. Only two weeks ago, the allegations had just
(01:46):
been a rumor, a single rumor from a single source.
The claim was this that the new Queen had been
less than virginal when she had married the king. Some
one had informed the archbishop that in Catherine's home growing up,
she had not one but two affairs, first with her
(02:08):
music teacher and then with her grandmother's secretary. Did you
or did you not? Cranmar began as soon as Catherine
had caught her breath, have a sexual relationship with your
music teacher, Henry Mannox when you were living with your grandmother,
the dowager Duchess in Lambeth. Katherine wailed, no, sir, it
(02:32):
was a flirtation, that's all. He never knew me in
the way a husband knows his wife. I have only
ever been true to King Henry. And what of a secretary.
Some time later, a man named Francis Diurham. Did you
know him intimately? Catherine's breath began to quicken erratically. Cranmer
(02:56):
noticed her cheeks and dressed sleeves were both wet with tears.
Be honest, child, Cranmar said, The Lord is merciful to
those who are honest. As almost an afterthought, he added,
I have already spoken to both men. Catherine didn't respond,
(03:16):
and Cranmar continued, you and Dearham called each other husband
and wife? Did you not? Catherine nodded, Were you formally
bound to Denham? The archbishop continued, still unable to quite
locate the harsh tone that he had rehearsed. Did you
lie with him? Once more? Catherine nodded her head. We
(03:40):
did lie together two or three times in my bed
in the maiden's chamber when I lived in Lambeth. But
I never betrayed King Henry. I never betrayed my husband
or sinned against him in any way. But she had
already said enough. She had betrayed the king, betrayed him
by pretending to be a virgin in a lie by omission,
(04:04):
humiliated the king by now letting the whole world know
that he had been fooled by a teenager. Catherine broke
down in sobs. As he left, the archbishop quietly whispered
to the guards that they should remove any items from
her chamber that might allow her to commit suicide. Catherine
(04:25):
Howard and King Henry the Eighth had only been married
about sixteen months, and now with her past revealed, she
knew that her time as queen was over. With Henry's history,
she would be lucky to make it out with her
head for a little while. It seemed as though she might.
After her interrogation, Catherine was sent away from court to
(04:49):
Sion Abbey. It seemed as though the King was going
to show her mercy. Her arrangement with Frantis Dearham could
technically qualify as a pre contract, would mean her marriage
to Henry was invalid, getting him off the hook easy.
Catherine would have to give up her jewels and possessions
and live in exile, away from court for the rest
(05:09):
of her life. It looked as though that was what
was going to happen. It looked that way for exactly
three days. Three days after Catherine Howard's interrogation, Frantis Dearham revealed,
under torture something else about Queen Catherine, something that the
King wouldn't be able to look upon with mercy. From
(05:35):
that moment, Catherine's fate was sealed. I'm Danish Schwartz and
this is noble blood. When Katherine Howard, motherless girl, was
(05:55):
eight years old, she was sent to live at the
estate of her father's stepmother, her step grandmother, the Dowager
Duchess of Norfolk. The Dowager Duchess seemed to collect wards.
She had about a dozen or so girls under her care,
mostly the daughters of poorer relations, and the idea was
(06:17):
that under the Dowager Duchess's supervision, the girls would learn
the skills of court and aristocracy, although in effect supervision
was a little lax. The year Katherine Howard turned thirteen,
two major things happened. First, her cousin Anne Boleyn was
(06:38):
beheaded for adultery during her marriage to King Henry the
eighth Second, Katherine Howard began a flirtation with her music teacher,
a man named Henry Mannox, who had been hired to
teach the girls how to play the Virginals. Mannox was
exactly the type of man Catherine would fall in love
(07:01):
with for the rest of her life. He was every
stereotype of a poetic musician, moody, romantic, wildly passionate. We
don't know how old Mannix was at the time. He
could have been a teenager himself somewhere around nineteen, or
he could have been approaching forty. Either way, it was
(07:23):
not a relationship that an extremely young aristocratic woman should
have been engaged in, especially not in a world in
which a woman's sexual purity was her primary currency. Catherine,
for her part, refused to let Mannox go all the way.
The relationship occurred mainly in the hiding spots around the
(07:47):
estate grounds, where they could kiss each other and whisper
words of love into each other's ears. That's where the
Dowager Duchess found them kissing in an alcove near the chapel.
The Dowager Duchess slapped Catherine twice and forbade the couple
from ever seeing each other again. The warning didn't deter
(08:09):
the pair. I don't know why you're still seeing her,
said Mary Lassal's one day to Mannox. Mary Lassles was
another young woman under the Dowager Duchess's lack supervision, but
lower ranked than Katherine, and so she felt a sort
of kinship with Mannox, who was more or less a servant.
(08:29):
She's much too high born for you, Mary said, she's
never going to marry you. You know that right. Mannox
sneered and curled his lip. He took a step closer
to Mary Lassal's and told her that he already knew
Catherine Howard by her private parts. And he said, she's
(08:49):
already promised her maiden had to me. From Mary Lassal's
word got around and back to Catherine Howard what Mannix
had said. She ended their relationship. The next day in
the estate's orchard. Mannix pleaded that he was just so
far in love with her that he didn't know what
(09:10):
he said, but Catherine didn't care. Besides, Mary Lassell's had
been right. She was too high born for him. That's
why teenage Catherine felt as though she was a much
better fit for Francis Dearham, the Dowager Duchess's secretary. Durham
(09:31):
already had a reputation and seduced a good percentage of
the women at the estate, including Catherine's own secretary. In fact,
it was she who recommended Dearham to Catherine, praising him
so highly that Catherine couldn't help but be intrigued. It
was the type of whirlwind passion that only a teenager
(09:53):
can have. Within months, they were calling each other husband
and wife, planning for an imaginary future together. They sent
each other gifts and wrote each other letters. Katherine, still
under her grandmother's custody, didn't have the income to buy
the dresses she wanted, and so Dearham bought her beautiful
(10:14):
fabric and taught her which dressmaker to go to. I'll
pay you back, I promise, Catherine said. Durham just smiled.
Though the girls at the dowager Duchess's estate slept in
a single room, the maiden's chamber, and though the girls
(10:34):
usually slept to a bed, there were still ways for
girls to entertain male visitors. The maiden's chamber was locked
every night, to preserve the girl's virtue, of course, but
Catherine had an answer for that. While her friends giggled
and encouraged her, Catherine snuck into the dowager Duchess's chamber
(10:57):
while her stepgrandmother was sleeping and stole the key, quickly
making a copy and replacing it. Men snuck into the room.
Then Katherine wasn't the only one of the Wards who
had an illicit boyfriend. The men brought with them wine, strawberries,
and d apples, and the boys and girls would laugh
and talk or sneak off to beds together until one
(11:19):
or two in the morning. We can be almost certain
that Dearham and Katherine, who by this point had been
spending every moment together, were having sex. Durham privately assured
his friends that he knew enough to ensure that Katherine
wouldn't get pregnant. Meanwhile, Mannox, bitter music teacher, was furious
(11:42):
at Katherine and her new paramore. In his neatest script,
he wrote a letter to the Dowager Duchess informing her
that if she were to come to the Maiden's chamber
an hour or so after she normally went to bed,
she would see something she wouldn't like very much, involving
a certain one of her secretaries. Mannix anonymously left the
(12:06):
note in the Dowager Duchess's pew in the chapel so
she would find it. That night, she stormed into the
Maiden's chamber to catch not Catherine and Dearham, but a
man named Hastings, another one of her secretaries, who had
already been caught once flirting with one of the other girls.
(12:27):
Catherine was in the clear, but Catherine knew who the
note had been written by, and she knew that it
had been intended for her, and Dearham agreed. Puffing out
his chest. Dearham confronted Mannox, telling him that his behavior
made it appear as though he'd never loved Catherine at all.
(12:47):
Mannox called him a cab. Two jealous men dressing each
other down over their secret love affair. It was like
a scene from Gossip Girl, half a millennium before its time.
People knew that Dearham and Catherine were having an affair
people other than the Dowager Duchess. But people also liked Catherine.
She was vivacious and funny and entertaining. Plus she was
(13:11):
high ranking. They had no reason to rat her out
or risk incurring the wrath of her grandmother for being
the ones to deliver the bad news. But like almost
all wildly passionate love affairs, the one between Dearham and
Catherine became less exciting. Catherine stopped being entranced by Dearham
(13:31):
when she was presented with a new gilded opportunity. Her
family connections had secured her a position as a lady
in waiting for the new Queen Anne of Cleaves, who
would be arriving to England later that fall. In the
same apple orchard where she had broken up with Mannix,
Katherine Howard told Dearham that she was leaving. His version
(13:55):
of the story involves her weeping with sorrow. Her version
is her losing her temper at his insistence that they
stay together. It's possible both occurred. She cried, and she
lost her temper, and she left Dearham, thinking that there
was still a chance they were going to end up together.
But there wasn't. She was just going. Catherine had grown
(14:22):
up thinking her house in Lambeth was grand. She had
no idea what would await her at the court of
Henry the Eighth. So many people, so many dances, so
much food, so much to learn for the confident girl
who had only ever been the queen Bee of the
band of teenagers in the maidens Chamber. She was paid
(14:44):
ten pounds a year. With her first paycheck, she sent
money back to Dearham to repay him for the fabric
he had bought her. The new Queen of England, Anne
of Cleaves wasn't set to arrive for another few months.
In the meantime, the new ladies got to know each
other and got to know the men of court. For Katherine,
(15:06):
that meant being instantly drawn to a gentleman named Thomas Culpeper.
Culpeper was tall and athletic, the type of man that
Henry kept around him because he made him feel young again. Culpeper,
for his part, had an incredibly checkered past. There was
a rumor about him being convicted of raping a woman
(15:29):
in the village and murdering a villager who saw them,
only to get off without consequences with a royal pardon.
Catherine knew none of that. She only saw the handsome,
charismatic man that women seemed to gravitate towards, like hummingbirds
to a flower, and Culpeper saw Katherine a stunningly gorgeous
(15:52):
girl of sixteen. Every contemporary description of Catherine Howard has
that in common, the understanding that Catherine was uniquely pretty.
For a few weeks, Culpeper and Catherine engaged in a
typical court flirtation. Catherine would report back to her fellow
(16:12):
ladies in waiting, giggling helping to decipher everything that Culpeper
had said to her that day. Catherine knew that her
virtue at court would be essential in ensuring that she
make an advantageous marriage, and so when Culpeper started making
sexual overtures expecting her to come to bed, she declined,
(16:33):
even as he professed his courtly love. If he loved her,
Catherine believed he would understand, but Culpeper wasn't a man
accustomed to sexual rejection or even delay. With Catherine's refusal,
he shrugged and set his sights upon a new girl.
It was Catherine Howard's first time getting her heart broken.
(16:57):
The other ladies in waiting saw her her spend days
crying and ripping up his letters. Luckily, Catherine wouldn't have
to wallow too long in heartbreak. Almost immediately after Anne
of Cleaves arrived in England, Henry the eighth decided that
he didn't care for her and set about trying to
(17:19):
arrange an end to their arranged marriage. In the meantime,
the king began doting on his new brides, very pretty,
very young lady in waiting Katherine Howard. He sent gifts
and gave her land. Everyone saw, including Anne, of Cleaves,
but she hoped it was just an affair. It wasn't.
(17:42):
Henry secured the annulment from Anne of Cleaves within a
few months and married Catherine Howard so quickly afterward that
people assumed that she must be secretly pregnant. In fact,
Henry was just absolutely besought it with his new bride,
who was just sixteen or seventeen years old. Henry was fifty.
(18:05):
They were married the very same day that Henry's former minister,
Thomas Cromwell was executed for securing the disastrous marriage to
Anne of Cleves. The middle aged Henry was so amorous
to Catherine Howard that it almost embarrassed the rest of court.
(18:28):
He didn't take his hands off of her in public,
caressing her almost constantly, to the point where ambassadors noted
that he had never been this publicly affectionate with any
of his wives to this extent before. Of course, Henry
believed that his young bride was a virgin and that
he was the only man she had ever laid with.
(18:49):
Catherine was so young and so beautiful that she made
Henry feel as though he were back in his prime,
even as it became exceedingly obvious that he was not
pain in his legs from his long troublesome ulcers kept
getting worse. Henry had difficulty with impotence in the bedroom,
even as he made his attraction to Catherine increasingly obvious
(19:13):
outside the bedroom. Henry's doctors advised him to spend time
away from his new bride so that he could recuperate.
In the meantime, they put him on a weight loss
regimen and wrapped his injured leg in boiled olive leaves
and mirth. Henry's ill health and generally mercurial nature, combined
(19:34):
with his shame at his inability to perform in the bedroom,
meant that he spent most nights away from Catherine. A
year into their marriage, Catherine had no pregnancy to show
for it. Catherine knew full well what happened to queens
who didn't give Henry sons. As her relationship with the
(19:55):
king continued to strain, Catherine began to shut herself away,
unhappy and anxious, refusing to go to dances. Uncertain of
her future position. That summer, strain or not, Catherine was
to accompany Henry on the Northern Progress, a show of
force and majesty to the rebellious northern parts of the country. Catherine,
(20:20):
as the beautiful young Queen, was an essential prop for
the outing, to make Henry look all the more vital
and powerful with her at his side. But Catherine took
ill on the journey, spending days and nights alone in
her room. When the King sent a servant to her
chamber one night, he found it bolted. The queen's ladies
(20:42):
fretted about her listlessness, but they also whispered about the
way she gazed down from her window at Thomas Culpeper,
the young handsome man in the King's entourage, who had
caught her eye from the moment that she had arrived
at court. The way she looked at him with her
hand cupped in her palm, it was almost like love.
(21:06):
When the trip to the north of the country ended
and they all returned to Hampton Court on October twenty ninth,
Henry gave a speech giving hearty thanks for his good
life with Catherine and his trust in their happy future together.
The very next day everything would fall apart. Do you
(21:28):
remember Mary Lassal's the girl from Catherine's time with the
Dowager Duchess Away from court. Mary Lassell's brother John was
reprimanding her for not being able to secure a position
in the new queen's household. Didn't you two know each other?
John scoffed at her. Mary Lassal's bristled at her brother's derision. Yes,
(21:52):
I knew her. I wouldn't even want to be in
that household under a queen like her. I remember how
she behaved back when she was in the Lambeth. John
paused and asked for more details. Mary Lassal's told him
about Henry Mannox and Francis Dearhan. Everybody knows the queen
(22:13):
wasn't so pure when she married the king, Mary said.
John stopped in his tracks and demanded that Mary tell
him everything she knew, and John Lassal's, a devout Protestant reformer,
went to tell the Archbishop, Thomas Cranmer. Cranmer was in
a delicate position. On one hand, this was just a rumor,
(22:37):
and he didn't want to incur Henry's wrath over nothing.
But on the other hand, if he didn't tell Henry
and somehow word got out, he would be responsible. And
so on November two, in incredibly measured words, Cranmer put
the delicate claims in writing in a letter and left
(22:59):
it on Henry's seat in chapel. Henry was, of course outraged.
He didn't believe the rumors for a moment, but still
he demanded a full investigation. Mannix and Dereham both confessed.
On November sixth, Without telling Catherine, Howard Henry the Eighth
(23:21):
left Hampton Court and rode to Greenwich. She would never
see him again. Once Henry was done with a wife,
he wanted her out of sight. At Greenwich, Henry held
a midnight meeting that lasted for six hours, in which
he and his ministers decided what to do. At one point,
(23:45):
Henry broke down in tears. Why have I had such
bad luck in meeting these ill conditioned women, he cried.
He grabbed a sword. Maybe I should just go and
kill her myself. However much play measure she had in
her sins, it won't be half as much as her
torture in death. Henry's men subdued him. He really had
(24:08):
been in love, he thought, with his beautiful young fifth wife.
The next day, Catherine knew something was a mess. No
one had told her anything. The investigation had been completely secret,
but Henry was gone and had left no word about
where he was. She could sense something in the air.
(24:30):
When her musicians started to play, she silenced them. It's
no time for dancing, she said. That night she was
brought before Thomas Grandmar where she confessed. Henry showed mercy
enough that Catherine should be spared death and a real
imprisonment in favor of a life of exile at Cyan House.
(24:53):
But then, on November eleventh, under torture, Francis Dieham said
something knew. No, he promised he had never slept with
the Queen while she was married to the king, but
everyone knew Thomas Culpeper did. Now there is no part
evidence to prove that Thomas Culpeper and Catherine actually slept together.
(25:18):
She went to the grave denying it, but soon details
began to emerge. In the spring after her wedding, feeling
distant from Henry and lonely at court, Catherine and Thomas
began exchanging love letters. They sent little gifts back and forth.
(25:39):
Their letters became more and more emotional and personal. I
trust in you that you will always be as you
have promised me, Catherine wrote. She signed the letter yours
as long as life endures, and that summer Culpeper had
been in the large group of courtiers accompanied Henry and
(26:01):
Catherine on the northern progress. Had she really been sick
when she insisted on staying alone in her room? Ladies
were interrogated. Jane Rockford confessed that at one of the stops,
Culpeper used a secret door that led up backstairs directly
(26:22):
to Queen Catherine's bedchamber. Other ladies were interrogated about whether
Katherine and Culpeper were having an affair. I don't know
for certain, when lady said, I am inclined to believe
the Queen except accept the Archbishop prompted, except the way
(26:43):
she looked at Culpeper from her window. I would have
believed her if I hadn't seen the way she gazed
at him. Catherine had been in love, and she hadn't
been able to hide it. Derham was hanged, quartered and disemboweled. Culpepper,
(27:07):
as a gentleman, was simply beheaded. Meanwhile, Catherine waited at
Sion House, knowing her fate would be arriving swiftly. In January.
An act of attainder made it treason for a woman
to marry the king without plain declaration of having previously
lived an unchased life. That was it. The final peace
(27:32):
had been put into place to ensure that Catherine would
receive the death that Henry wanted for her. Anne Boleyn
had been taken to the Tower of London under full
light of day. Katherine had the privilege of arriving at night,
although when the guards arrived at Sion House to take
her to the barge, she collapsed in a fit of panic.
(27:55):
Lucky it was dark during her boat ride down the Thames,
or else she would have seen the rotting heads of
Francis Dieham and Thomas Culpeper leering down at her from
London Bridge. That night, locked in the Tower of London,
she heard the gates clang shut and the locks on
(28:16):
the doors turn. She was told that she would be
killed two days later. After her final confession, Catherine made
a request that the guard taken aback couldn't refuse. She
asked for the block that she would be beheaded on
to be brought to her chamber so that she could practice.
(28:39):
Catherine wanted to at least die with grace or as
little humiliation as possible, and she had heard stories of
botched executions, including the execution of Thomas Cromwell, on which
it took four or five, even as many as ten
strokes for the head to fully come off, and so
(29:01):
for hours. On her last day on earth, Katherine Howard
kneeled in her cell at the Tower of London and
raised and lowered her pretty neck on the black block.
When the time finally came and she was escorted to
the very spot where her cousin Anne Boleyn had died
(29:23):
only six years earlier, Catherine knew exactly what to do.
Though she shook, she lowered her head into the valley
of the block with well practiced ease, and the executioner
took her head off with a single blow. She had
gone from orphan to lady, to queen to dead in
(29:45):
two years. Catherine Howard hadn't yet reached her twenty first birthday.
That's the very short, tragic life of Catherine Howard. Stick
around after a brief sponsor break to hear a little
(30:06):
bit more about the consequences of the investigation of Catherine's infidelity.
Dearham Culpepper, Jane Rockford, and of course Katherine lost their
lives in the aftermath of the investigation of Catherine's affairs,
(30:31):
but there are two ladies whose fates fascinate me. During
the course of the investigation, two of Catherine's ladies were
caught gossiping idly about the king. What kind of man
is this king?
Speaker 1 (30:44):
I mean, how many wives will he have?
Speaker 2 (30:47):
The two women were jailed for their words, which just
goes to show if I had been alive in Tutor, England,
with the way that I talk casually to my friends
about my research for this podcast, things would not have
ended well for me. I also want to offer a
quick note about Catherine Howard's age and her sexual activity.
(31:10):
It's troubling it isn't quite possible to apply our modern
understanding of the age of consent onto the behavior of
historical figures. In the sixteenth century, five hundred years ago,
a girl was considered a woman as soon as she
began having her period, and a teenager marrying a man
twice or even three times her age, far from being
(31:32):
seen as an active abuse or pedophilia, was unfortunately incredibly common. Still,
it's important to understand that these are real people, that
Catherine was a teenager, and her decision making and experiences
were those of someone incredibly young. Personally, I find it
(31:53):
most helpful. Not to make broad declarations about Catherine as
a villain or a victim, but just to do my
best to try to understand her with the most empathy
I possibly can.
Speaker 1 (32:11):
Noble Blood is a production of iHeart Radio and Grim
and Mild from Aaron Mankey. Noble Blood is hosted by
me Dana Schwartz, with additional writing and research by Hannah Johnston, Hannahswick,
Courtney Sender, Amy Hit and Julia Milaney. The show is
edited and produced by Jesse Funk, with supervising producer rima
(32:34):
Ill Kali and executive producers Aaron Manke, Trevor Young, and
Matt Frederick. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app,
Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
Welcome to Noble Blood, a production of iHeartRadio and Grim
and Mild from Aaron Mankie. Listener discretion advised Danish Sports Here.
I am still on maternity leave and so we're continuing
the archival series on the six Wives of Henry the Eighth.
Today's episode is focused on Katherine Howard, the teenager that
(00:24):
King Henry the Eighth fell in love with, who ultimately
spoiler alert, lost her head. But was she actually guilty
of what the king accused her of enjoy.
Speaker 2 (00:39):
On November eighth, fifteen forty one, Queen Katherine Howard was
brought to a small room to sit opposite Thomas Cranmer,
Archbishop of Canterbury. The archbishop had assured King Henry the
Eighth a few days prior that his interrogation would be
harsh and merciless, that he would import on the King's
(01:02):
young bride the severity of her crimes and scare her
into full honesty. But when Cranmer saw the young girl,
he felt his resolve drain away. She was weeping, already
frantic with grief and terror, her bloodshot eyes darting around
the room as if an executioner's blade could appear at
(01:25):
any moment. But she also looked so small, so young.
She was a nineteen year old girl, and she was
in a chair that looked far too big for her.
Cranmer really had all the information already that his investigation
really needed. Only two weeks ago, the allegations had just
(01:46):
been a rumor, a single rumor from a single source.
The claim was this that the new Queen had been
less than virginal when she had married the king. Some
one had informed the archbishop that in Catherine's home growing up,
she had not one but two affairs, first with her
(02:08):
music teacher and then with her grandmother's secretary. Did you
or did you not? Cranmar began as soon as Catherine
had caught her breath, have a sexual relationship with your
music teacher, Henry Mannox when you were living with your grandmother,
the dowager Duchess in Lambeth. Katherine wailed, no, sir, it
(02:32):
was a flirtation, that's all. He never knew me in
the way a husband knows his wife. I have only
ever been true to King Henry. And what of a secretary.
Some time later, a man named Francis Diurham. Did you
know him intimately? Catherine's breath began to quicken erratically. Cranmer
(02:56):
noticed her cheeks and dressed sleeves were both wet with tears.
Be honest, child, Cranmar said, The Lord is merciful to
those who are honest. As almost an afterthought, he added,
I have already spoken to both men. Catherine didn't respond,
(03:16):
and Cranmar continued, you and Dearham called each other husband
and wife? Did you not? Catherine nodded, Were you formally
bound to Denham? The archbishop continued, still unable to quite
locate the harsh tone that he had rehearsed. Did you
lie with him? Once more? Catherine nodded her head. We
(03:40):
did lie together two or three times in my bed
in the maiden's chamber when I lived in Lambeth. But
I never betrayed King Henry. I never betrayed my husband
or sinned against him in any way. But she had
already said enough. She had betrayed the king, betrayed him
by pretending to be a virgin in a lie by omission,
(04:04):
humiliated the king by now letting the whole world know
that he had been fooled by a teenager. Catherine broke
down in sobs. As he left, the archbishop quietly whispered
to the guards that they should remove any items from
her chamber that might allow her to commit suicide. Catherine
(04:25):
Howard and King Henry the Eighth had only been married
about sixteen months, and now with her past revealed, she
knew that her time as queen was over. With Henry's history,
she would be lucky to make it out with her
head for a little while. It seemed as though she might.
After her interrogation, Catherine was sent away from court to
(04:49):
Sion Abbey. It seemed as though the King was going
to show her mercy. Her arrangement with Frantis Dearham could
technically qualify as a pre contract, would mean her marriage
to Henry was invalid, getting him off the hook easy.
Catherine would have to give up her jewels and possessions
and live in exile, away from court for the rest
(05:09):
of her life. It looked as though that was what
was going to happen. It looked that way for exactly
three days. Three days after Catherine Howard's interrogation, Frantis Dearham revealed,
under torture something else about Queen Catherine, something that the
King wouldn't be able to look upon with mercy. From
(05:35):
that moment, Catherine's fate was sealed. I'm Danish Schwartz and
this is noble blood. When Katherine Howard, motherless girl, was
(05:55):
eight years old, she was sent to live at the
estate of her father's stepmother, her step grandmother, the Dowager
Duchess of Norfolk. The Dowager Duchess seemed to collect wards.
She had about a dozen or so girls under her care,
mostly the daughters of poorer relations, and the idea was
(06:17):
that under the Dowager Duchess's supervision, the girls would learn
the skills of court and aristocracy, although in effect supervision
was a little lax. The year Katherine Howard turned thirteen,
two major things happened. First, her cousin Anne Boleyn was
(06:38):
beheaded for adultery during her marriage to King Henry the
eighth Second, Katherine Howard began a flirtation with her music teacher,
a man named Henry Mannox, who had been hired to
teach the girls how to play the Virginals. Mannox was
exactly the type of man Catherine would fall in love
(07:01):
with for the rest of her life. He was every
stereotype of a poetic musician, moody, romantic, wildly passionate. We
don't know how old Mannix was at the time. He
could have been a teenager himself somewhere around nineteen, or
he could have been approaching forty. Either way, it was
(07:23):
not a relationship that an extremely young aristocratic woman should
have been engaged in, especially not in a world in
which a woman's sexual purity was her primary currency. Catherine,
for her part, refused to let Mannox go all the way.
The relationship occurred mainly in the hiding spots around the
(07:47):
estate grounds, where they could kiss each other and whisper
words of love into each other's ears. That's where the
Dowager Duchess found them kissing in an alcove near the chapel.
The Dowager Duchess slapped Catherine twice and forbade the couple
from ever seeing each other again. The warning didn't deter
(08:09):
the pair. I don't know why you're still seeing her,
said Mary Lassal's one day to Mannox. Mary Lassles was
another young woman under the Dowager Duchess's lack supervision, but
lower ranked than Katherine, and so she felt a sort
of kinship with Mannox, who was more or less a servant.
(08:29):
She's much too high born for you, Mary said, she's
never going to marry you. You know that right. Mannox
sneered and curled his lip. He took a step closer
to Mary Lassal's and told her that he already knew
Catherine Howard by her private parts. And he said, she's
(08:49):
already promised her maiden had to me. From Mary Lassal's
word got around and back to Catherine Howard what Mannix
had said. She ended their relationship. The next day in
the estate's orchard. Mannix pleaded that he was just so
far in love with her that he didn't know what
(09:10):
he said, but Catherine didn't care. Besides, Mary Lassell's had
been right. She was too high born for him. That's
why teenage Catherine felt as though she was a much
better fit for Francis Dearham, the Dowager Duchess's secretary. Durham
(09:31):
already had a reputation and seduced a good percentage of
the women at the estate, including Catherine's own secretary. In fact,
it was she who recommended Dearham to Catherine, praising him
so highly that Catherine couldn't help but be intrigued. It
was the type of whirlwind passion that only a teenager
(09:53):
can have. Within months, they were calling each other husband
and wife, planning for an imaginary future together. They sent
each other gifts and wrote each other letters. Katherine, still
under her grandmother's custody, didn't have the income to buy
the dresses she wanted, and so Dearham bought her beautiful
(10:14):
fabric and taught her which dressmaker to go to. I'll
pay you back, I promise, Catherine said. Durham just smiled.
Though the girls at the dowager Duchess's estate slept in
a single room, the maiden's chamber, and though the girls
(10:34):
usually slept to a bed, there were still ways for
girls to entertain male visitors. The maiden's chamber was locked
every night, to preserve the girl's virtue, of course, but
Catherine had an answer for that. While her friends giggled
and encouraged her, Catherine snuck into the dowager Duchess's chamber
(10:57):
while her stepgrandmother was sleeping and stole the key, quickly
making a copy and replacing it. Men snuck into the room.
Then Katherine wasn't the only one of the Wards who
had an illicit boyfriend. The men brought with them wine, strawberries,
and d apples, and the boys and girls would laugh
and talk or sneak off to beds together until one
(11:19):
or two in the morning. We can be almost certain
that Dearham and Katherine, who by this point had been
spending every moment together, were having sex. Durham privately assured
his friends that he knew enough to ensure that Katherine
wouldn't get pregnant. Meanwhile, Mannox, bitter music teacher, was furious
(11:42):
at Katherine and her new paramore. In his neatest script,
he wrote a letter to the Dowager Duchess informing her
that if she were to come to the Maiden's chamber
an hour or so after she normally went to bed,
she would see something she wouldn't like very much, involving
a certain one of her secretaries. Mannix anonymously left the
(12:06):
note in the Dowager Duchess's pew in the chapel so
she would find it. That night, she stormed into the
Maiden's chamber to catch not Catherine and Dearham, but a
man named Hastings, another one of her secretaries, who had
already been caught once flirting with one of the other girls.
(12:27):
Catherine was in the clear, but Catherine knew who the
note had been written by, and she knew that it
had been intended for her, and Dearham agreed. Puffing out
his chest. Dearham confronted Mannox, telling him that his behavior
made it appear as though he'd never loved Catherine at all.
(12:47):
Mannox called him a cab. Two jealous men dressing each
other down over their secret love affair. It was like
a scene from Gossip Girl, half a millennium before its time.
People knew that Dearham and Catherine were having an affair
people other than the Dowager Duchess. But people also liked Catherine.
She was vivacious and funny and entertaining. Plus she was
(13:11):
high ranking. They had no reason to rat her out
or risk incurring the wrath of her grandmother for being
the ones to deliver the bad news. But like almost
all wildly passionate love affairs, the one between Dearham and
Catherine became less exciting. Catherine stopped being entranced by Dearham
(13:31):
when she was presented with a new gilded opportunity. Her
family connections had secured her a position as a lady
in waiting for the new Queen Anne of Cleaves, who
would be arriving to England later that fall. In the
same apple orchard where she had broken up with Mannix,
Katherine Howard told Dearham that she was leaving. His version
(13:55):
of the story involves her weeping with sorrow. Her version
is her losing her temper at his insistence that they
stay together. It's possible both occurred. She cried, and she
lost her temper, and she left Dearham, thinking that there
was still a chance they were going to end up together.
But there wasn't. She was just going. Catherine had grown
(14:22):
up thinking her house in Lambeth was grand. She had
no idea what would await her at the court of
Henry the Eighth. So many people, so many dances, so
much food, so much to learn for the confident girl
who had only ever been the queen Bee of the
band of teenagers in the maidens Chamber. She was paid
(14:44):
ten pounds a year. With her first paycheck, she sent
money back to Dearham to repay him for the fabric
he had bought her. The new Queen of England, Anne
of Cleaves wasn't set to arrive for another few months.
In the meantime, the new ladies got to know each
other and got to know the men of court. For Katherine,
(15:06):
that meant being instantly drawn to a gentleman named Thomas Culpeper.
Culpeper was tall and athletic, the type of man that
Henry kept around him because he made him feel young again. Culpeper,
for his part, had an incredibly checkered past. There was
a rumor about him being convicted of raping a woman
(15:29):
in the village and murdering a villager who saw them,
only to get off without consequences with a royal pardon.
Catherine knew none of that. She only saw the handsome,
charismatic man that women seemed to gravitate towards, like hummingbirds
to a flower, and Culpeper saw Katherine a stunningly gorgeous
(15:52):
girl of sixteen. Every contemporary description of Catherine Howard has
that in common, the understanding that Catherine was uniquely pretty.
For a few weeks, Culpeper and Catherine engaged in a
typical court flirtation. Catherine would report back to her fellow
(16:12):
ladies in waiting, giggling helping to decipher everything that Culpeper
had said to her that day. Catherine knew that her
virtue at court would be essential in ensuring that she
make an advantageous marriage, and so when Culpeper started making
sexual overtures expecting her to come to bed, she declined,
(16:33):
even as he professed his courtly love. If he loved her,
Catherine believed he would understand, but Culpeper wasn't a man
accustomed to sexual rejection or even delay. With Catherine's refusal,
he shrugged and set his sights upon a new girl.
It was Catherine Howard's first time getting her heart broken.
(16:57):
The other ladies in waiting saw her her spend days
crying and ripping up his letters. Luckily, Catherine wouldn't have
to wallow too long in heartbreak. Almost immediately after Anne
of Cleaves arrived in England, Henry the eighth decided that
he didn't care for her and set about trying to
(17:19):
arrange an end to their arranged marriage. In the meantime,
the king began doting on his new brides, very pretty,
very young lady in waiting Katherine Howard. He sent gifts
and gave her land. Everyone saw, including Anne, of Cleaves,
but she hoped it was just an affair. It wasn't.
(17:42):
Henry secured the annulment from Anne of Cleaves within a
few months and married Catherine Howard so quickly afterward that
people assumed that she must be secretly pregnant. In fact,
Henry was just absolutely besought it with his new bride,
who was just sixteen or seventeen years old. Henry was fifty.
(18:05):
They were married the very same day that Henry's former minister,
Thomas Cromwell was executed for securing the disastrous marriage to
Anne of Cleves. The middle aged Henry was so amorous
to Catherine Howard that it almost embarrassed the rest of court.
(18:28):
He didn't take his hands off of her in public,
caressing her almost constantly, to the point where ambassadors noted
that he had never been this publicly affectionate with any
of his wives to this extent before. Of course, Henry
believed that his young bride was a virgin and that
he was the only man she had ever laid with.
(18:49):
Catherine was so young and so beautiful that she made
Henry feel as though he were back in his prime,
even as it became exceedingly obvious that he was not
pain in his legs from his long troublesome ulcers kept
getting worse. Henry had difficulty with impotence in the bedroom,
even as he made his attraction to Catherine increasingly obvious
(19:13):
outside the bedroom. Henry's doctors advised him to spend time
away from his new bride so that he could recuperate.
In the meantime, they put him on a weight loss
regimen and wrapped his injured leg in boiled olive leaves
and mirth. Henry's ill health and generally mercurial nature, combined
(19:34):
with his shame at his inability to perform in the bedroom,
meant that he spent most nights away from Catherine. A
year into their marriage, Catherine had no pregnancy to show
for it. Catherine knew full well what happened to queens
who didn't give Henry sons. As her relationship with the
(19:55):
king continued to strain, Catherine began to shut herself away,
unhappy and anxious, refusing to go to dances. Uncertain of
her future position. That summer, strain or not, Catherine was
to accompany Henry on the Northern Progress, a show of
force and majesty to the rebellious northern parts of the country. Catherine,
(20:20):
as the beautiful young Queen, was an essential prop for
the outing, to make Henry look all the more vital
and powerful with her at his side. But Catherine took
ill on the journey, spending days and nights alone in
her room. When the King sent a servant to her
chamber one night, he found it bolted. The queen's ladies
(20:42):
fretted about her listlessness, but they also whispered about the
way she gazed down from her window at Thomas Culpeper,
the young handsome man in the King's entourage, who had
caught her eye from the moment that she had arrived
at court. The way she looked at him with her
hand cupped in her palm, it was almost like love.
(21:06):
When the trip to the north of the country ended
and they all returned to Hampton Court on October twenty ninth,
Henry gave a speech giving hearty thanks for his good
life with Catherine and his trust in their happy future together.
The very next day everything would fall apart. Do you
(21:28):
remember Mary Lassal's the girl from Catherine's time with the
Dowager Duchess Away from court. Mary Lassell's brother John was
reprimanding her for not being able to secure a position
in the new queen's household. Didn't you two know each other?
John scoffed at her. Mary Lassal's bristled at her brother's derision. Yes,
(21:52):
I knew her. I wouldn't even want to be in
that household under a queen like her. I remember how
she behaved back when she was in the Lambeth. John
paused and asked for more details. Mary Lassal's told him
about Henry Mannox and Francis Dearhan. Everybody knows the queen
(22:13):
wasn't so pure when she married the king, Mary said.
John stopped in his tracks and demanded that Mary tell
him everything she knew, and John Lassal's, a devout Protestant reformer,
went to tell the Archbishop, Thomas Cranmer. Cranmer was in
a delicate position. On one hand, this was just a rumor,
(22:37):
and he didn't want to incur Henry's wrath over nothing.
But on the other hand, if he didn't tell Henry
and somehow word got out, he would be responsible. And
so on November two, in incredibly measured words, Cranmer put
the delicate claims in writing in a letter and left
(22:59):
it on Henry's seat in chapel. Henry was, of course outraged.
He didn't believe the rumors for a moment, but still
he demanded a full investigation. Mannix and Dereham both confessed.
On November sixth, Without telling Catherine, Howard Henry the Eighth
(23:21):
left Hampton Court and rode to Greenwich. She would never
see him again. Once Henry was done with a wife,
he wanted her out of sight. At Greenwich, Henry held
a midnight meeting that lasted for six hours, in which
he and his ministers decided what to do. At one point,
(23:45):
Henry broke down in tears. Why have I had such
bad luck in meeting these ill conditioned women, he cried.
He grabbed a sword. Maybe I should just go and
kill her myself. However much play measure she had in
her sins, it won't be half as much as her
torture in death. Henry's men subdued him. He really had
(24:08):
been in love, he thought, with his beautiful young fifth wife.
The next day, Catherine knew something was a mess. No
one had told her anything. The investigation had been completely secret,
but Henry was gone and had left no word about
where he was. She could sense something in the air.
(24:30):
When her musicians started to play, she silenced them. It's
no time for dancing, she said. That night she was
brought before Thomas Grandmar where she confessed. Henry showed mercy
enough that Catherine should be spared death and a real
imprisonment in favor of a life of exile at Cyan House.
(24:53):
But then, on November eleventh, under torture, Francis Dieham said
something knew. No, he promised he had never slept with
the Queen while she was married to the king, but
everyone knew Thomas Culpeper did. Now there is no part
evidence to prove that Thomas Culpeper and Catherine actually slept together.
(25:18):
She went to the grave denying it, but soon details
began to emerge. In the spring after her wedding, feeling
distant from Henry and lonely at court, Catherine and Thomas
began exchanging love letters. They sent little gifts back and forth.
(25:39):
Their letters became more and more emotional and personal. I
trust in you that you will always be as you
have promised me, Catherine wrote. She signed the letter yours
as long as life endures, and that summer Culpeper had
been in the large group of courtiers accompanied Henry and
(26:01):
Catherine on the northern progress. Had she really been sick
when she insisted on staying alone in her room? Ladies
were interrogated. Jane Rockford confessed that at one of the stops,
Culpeper used a secret door that led up backstairs directly
(26:22):
to Queen Catherine's bedchamber. Other ladies were interrogated about whether
Katherine and Culpeper were having an affair. I don't know
for certain, when lady said, I am inclined to believe
the Queen except accept the Archbishop prompted, except the way
(26:43):
she looked at Culpeper from her window. I would have
believed her if I hadn't seen the way she gazed
at him. Catherine had been in love, and she hadn't
been able to hide it. Derham was hanged, quartered and disemboweled. Culpepper,
(27:07):
as a gentleman, was simply beheaded. Meanwhile, Catherine waited at
Sion House, knowing her fate would be arriving swiftly. In January.
An act of attainder made it treason for a woman
to marry the king without plain declaration of having previously
lived an unchased life. That was it. The final peace
(27:32):
had been put into place to ensure that Catherine would
receive the death that Henry wanted for her. Anne Boleyn
had been taken to the Tower of London under full
light of day. Katherine had the privilege of arriving at night,
although when the guards arrived at Sion House to take
her to the barge, she collapsed in a fit of panic.
(27:55):
Lucky it was dark during her boat ride down the Thames,
or else she would have seen the rotting heads of
Francis Dieham and Thomas Culpeper leering down at her from
London Bridge. That night, locked in the Tower of London,
she heard the gates clang shut and the locks on
(28:16):
the doors turn. She was told that she would be
killed two days later. After her final confession, Catherine made
a request that the guard taken aback couldn't refuse. She
asked for the block that she would be beheaded on
to be brought to her chamber so that she could practice.
(28:39):
Catherine wanted to at least die with grace or as
little humiliation as possible, and she had heard stories of
botched executions, including the execution of Thomas Cromwell, on which
it took four or five, even as many as ten
strokes for the head to fully come off, and so
(29:01):
for hours. On her last day on earth, Katherine Howard
kneeled in her cell at the Tower of London and
raised and lowered her pretty neck on the black block.
When the time finally came and she was escorted to
the very spot where her cousin Anne Boleyn had died
(29:23):
only six years earlier, Catherine knew exactly what to do.
Though she shook, she lowered her head into the valley
of the block with well practiced ease, and the executioner
took her head off with a single blow. She had
gone from orphan to lady, to queen to dead in
(29:45):
two years. Catherine Howard hadn't yet reached her twenty first birthday.
That's the very short, tragic life of Catherine Howard. Stick
around after a brief sponsor break to hear a little
(30:06):
bit more about the consequences of the investigation of Catherine's infidelity.
Dearham Culpepper, Jane Rockford, and of course Katherine lost their
lives in the aftermath of the investigation of Catherine's affairs,
(30:31):
but there are two ladies whose fates fascinate me. During
the course of the investigation, two of Catherine's ladies were
caught gossiping idly about the king. What kind of man
is this king?
Speaker 1 (30:44):
I mean, how many wives will he have?
Speaker 2 (30:47):
The two women were jailed for their words, which just
goes to show if I had been alive in Tutor, England,
with the way that I talk casually to my friends
about my research for this podcast, things would not have
ended well for me. I also want to offer a
quick note about Catherine Howard's age and her sexual activity.
(31:10):
It's troubling it isn't quite possible to apply our modern
understanding of the age of consent onto the behavior of
historical figures. In the sixteenth century, five hundred years ago,
a girl was considered a woman as soon as she
began having her period, and a teenager marrying a man
twice or even three times her age, far from being
(31:32):
seen as an active abuse or pedophilia, was unfortunately incredibly common. Still,
it's important to understand that these are real people, that
Catherine was a teenager, and her decision making and experiences
were those of someone incredibly young. Personally, I find it
(31:53):
most helpful. Not to make broad declarations about Catherine as
a villain or a victim, but just to do my
best to try to understand her with the most empathy
I possibly can.
Speaker 1 (32:11):
Noble Blood is a production of iHeart Radio and Grim
and Mild from Aaron Mankey. Noble Blood is hosted by
me Dana Schwartz, with additional writing and research by Hannah Johnston, Hannahswick,
Courtney Sender, Amy Hit and Julia Milaney. The show is
edited and produced by Jesse Funk, with supervising producer rima
(32:34):
Ill Kali and executive producers Aaron Manke, Trevor Young, and
Matt Frederick. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app,
Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
Host
Dana Schwartz
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