This Was the Life of Catherine Howard | Year 1542 | Before Her Execution Was Worse Than Death

PART 2:

Her uncle, the Duke of Norfolk, one of the most powerful men in England, needed a pawn. Henry VIII had just married his fourth wife,  Anne of Cleves, and from the very first meeting he was openly despising her, calling her the Flanders mare. The dukesmelled blood in the water. If the king was soon going to want another woman, he was going to be the one to put her right in front of him.

 He sent for his niece, bought her new dresses, taught her how to smile in the way that pleased the monarch, and introduced her at court as a lady-in-waiting to the despised queen. Henry VIII was at that moment 49 years old. In his youth, he’d been one of the handsomest men in Europe. Nothing of that king remained.

 He weighed about 330 lb. He had an open, pus-filled ulcer on his leg that gave off a stench so strong that the ladies of the court would hold perfumed handkerchiefs to their faces when he walked into the room. He had ordered the beheading of his second wife, Anne Boleyn, Catherine’s own cousin, just 6 years before. The wooden block where Anne’s head had fallen still kept the mark of her neck.

 And though Catherine did not yet know it, that very same block would one day sit inside her own cell. Thatwas the man Catherine, just 17 years old, had to smile at during an autumn banquet.  The king looked at her. The king stopped speaking in the middle of a sentence. He called her that very same night his rose without a thorn.

 16 days after annulling his marriage to Anne of Cleves, on the 28th of July of 1540, the king of England married Catherine Howard. She was 17. He was 32 years older than her. The first few months were a dream dressed in silk. Catherine received jewels that had once belonged to Jane Seymour. She received gowns embroidered in gold.

 The king called her my jewel, my rose, my little queen. Every morning, the first thing he asked to know was how she had slept. But behind that gilded door, the reality was something else. The king could barely climb the stairs anymore. They carried him in a chair with wheels. Yes, your majesty.  when he entered the queen’s chamber, the smell of the ulcer arrived before he did.

 Catherine had to smile, help him lie down, bear the weight of that sick man on her small body, kiss him on the forehead, and tell him he was the most handsome man in the world. If she failed, he wept. If she kept failing, he shouted. And everyone at court remembered what had happened to Anne Boleyn. Think about that. 17 years old, she already knew abuse, deception, abandonment.

 And now she went to sleep every night knowing that a single mistake would put her on the same scaffold where they had killed her cousin. It was in the spring of 1541 that Catherine made the mistake that would kill her. Among the gentlemen of the king’s privy chamber, there was a young man named Thomas Culpepper. About 25 years old, tall, light-eyed, easy smile.

A distant cousin of Catherine’s. They had known each other since childhood. And now they were meeting again in the corridors of Hampton Court. And he was looking at her the way no man had ever looked at her before. Not with Manox’s violence, not with Derham’s lies, not with the king’s sick hunger. He was looking at her the way you look at a person.

 Jane Boleyn, Catherine’s lady-in-waiting, widow of George Boleyn, sister-in-law of the very same Anne Boleyn who had died in the tower, carried a heart full of old resentments and a special talent for secrets. She was the one who began arranging the meetings. She opened back doors. She distracted the other ladies. She waited in the corridors while Catherine and Thomas Culpepper talked, whispered, sometimes held each other.

 There was never any definitive proof that they had actually consummated the adultery, but there were letters. And in a court where the king could kill with a signature, letters were enough. One of those letters, written by Catherine’s own hand, is still preserved in the British archives. She told Thomas that her heart ached every time she thought she could not be with him.

She signed it in her rounded girlish handwriting, “Yours as long as I live.” Remember that phrase, “Yours as long as I live.” because that letter would become the evidence that signed the death sentence of them both. In the autumn of 1541, the king and Catherine made a royal progress through the north of England.

During that progress, Catherine would slip out at night through corridors Jane Boleyn had prepared. She would meet Culpepper in empty rooms, sometimes lit only by a single candle. She would return to her own chamber just before dawn, her heart beating so hard that sometimes she had to lean against the walls to keep from fainting.

The king in the next room snored with his bandaged leg propped up on a pillow. During those months, Catherine had something resembling happiness. A brief, borrowed, dangerous happiness. The only kind she would ever have in her entire life. But dark corridors have eyes. A man named John Lassells, a political enemy of the Howard family, had a sister who had once been one of the girls in that common dormitory.

She had seen it all. Manox, Derham, the promises, and she told her brother. Lascelles saw in that information a golden opportunity. He wrote a letter. The letter reached Thomas Cranmer, the Archbishop of Canterbury. Cranmer read every line twice. He trembled, and he waited for the right moment. He found it on the first day of November, 1541,the Feast of All Saints.

 The Queen was attending mass in the RoyalChapel of Hampton Court. Cranmer, his hands wet with sweat, placed the letter on the monarch’s prayer cushion. He did not have the courage to speak face-to-face. He let the paper speak for him. Henry VIII read it. He read it again. He walked out of the chapel without saying a single word.

 Locked in his private apartments, the King wept for hours. Then he called for a sword. He said he wanted to kill her himself. His ministers calmed him down. They reminded him that a king does not murder. A king executes. They found Catherine that afternoon rehearsing a dance. They told her the King did not wish to see her, that she should return to her rooms.

 She did not understand. She asked for her husband. She asked if she had done something wrong. No one answered. The doors were locked from the outside. The guards stopped calling her your majesty. They began to call her simply madam. That one word, madam. She knew what it meant. Anne Boleyn had heard the same word six years earlier.

That night Catherine managed to break free for a moment. She ran down the gallery toward the chapel where Henry was praying. She screamed his name. She wanted to throw herself at his feet. The guards caught her before she reached the door and dragged her back by her hair. That gallery in Hampton Court is still called the Haunted Gallery today.

 Many visitors claim to have heard the screams of a woman at dusk. Thomas Culpepper, Francis Dereham, and Jane Boleyn were arrested. In the Tower of London, the interrogations began. On Dereham, they placed the thumbscrews, an instrument that slowly crushed them until the bones cracked like dry twigs. They stretched his body on the rack.

 He confessed everything. Culpepper was tortured, too. He confessed there had been meetings. He confessed there had been letters. He denied until his very last breath that he had ever actually lain with the Queen. They didn’t believe him. He, being a nobleman, was granted the quick death.

 He was beheaded on the 10th of December. Dereham, on the other hand, was given the death reserved for common traitors. The grim details are documented in the trial records. Their heads were mounted on spikes above London Bridge. While this was happening in London, Catherine knew nothing of it. They had moved her to Syon Abbey, an old nunnery emptied during the dissolution of the monasteries.

 They took away almost all of her ladies. They forbade mirrors. They forbade colored dresses. She could only wear black. They forbade news from the outside. For weeks, she did not know that Culpepper and Dereham were dead. Your grace.  finally told her, she did not cry. She stared at the wall for several hours without moving.

 The maid who cared for her later said that on that day, the Queen aged 10 years in a single afternoon. She lived like that for 3 months in silence, alone, not knowing when they would come for her. November passed. December. January. Catherine was still alive. The king could not make up his mind. Some nights Henry VIII would get drunk and mumble that perhaps he could forgive her, that she was so young, that she was his rose.

 Other nights he would sign the execution order and tear it up the next morning. Parliament, exhausted by the monarch’s indecision, passed on the 21st of January, 1542, a law that allowed the king to condemn someone to death without the need of a trial. His signature was enough, and this time he signed without tearing up the paper. On the 10th of February, three men arrived at Syon Abbey.

 They told Catherine to gather her things, that they were moving her to the Tower of London. She looked at them, understood, and began to scream. She tried to hide under the bed. She tried to grab the curtains. The three men had to hold her between them and carry her, almost suspended, down to the garden where the boat was waiting.

The River Thames was covered in a thick, gray fog, and when the boat passed under London Bridge, Catherine lifted her eyes, and she saw them, the two heads. Culpepper’s, already almost a skull with strands of light hair still clinging to it. Dereham’s, mouth slightly open as if still begging for mercy.

 The man who had given her the first lie of her life, and the man who had given her the only truth. Side by side, rotting above the bridge.

Her uncle, the Duke of Norfolk, one of the most powerful men in England, needed a pawn. Henry VIII had just married his fourth wife, >> [music] >> Anne of Cleves, and from the very first meeting he was openly despising her, calling her the Flanders mare. The duke [music] smelled blood in the water. If the king was soon going to want another woman, he was going to be the one to put her right in front of him.

 He sent for his niece, bought her new dresses, taught her how to smile in the way that pleased the monarch, and introduced her at court as a lady-in-waiting to the despised queen. Henry VIII was at that moment 49 years old. In his youth, he’d been one of the handsomest men in Europe. Nothing of that king remained.

 He weighed about 330 lb. He had an open, pus-filled ulcer on his leg that gave off a stench so strong that the ladies of the court would hold perfumed handkerchiefs to their faces when he walked into the room. He had ordered the beheading of his second wife, Anne Boleyn, Catherine’s own cousin, just 6 years before. The wooden block where Anne’s head had fallen still kept the mark of her neck.

 And though Catherine did not yet know it, that very same block would one day sit inside her own cell. That [music] was the man Catherine, just 17 years old, had to smile at during an autumn banquet. >> [music] >> The king looked at her. The king stopped speaking in the middle of a sentence. He called her that very same night his rose without a thorn.

 16 days after annulling his marriage to Anne of Cleves, on the 28th of July of 1540, the king of England married Catherine Howard. She was 17. He was 32 years older than her. The first few months were a dream dressed in silk. Catherine received jewels that had once belonged to Jane Seymour. She received gowns embroidered in gold.

 The king called her my jewel, my rose, my little queen. Every morning, the first thing he asked to know was how she had slept. But behind that gilded door, the reality was something else. The king could barely climb the stairs anymore. They carried him in a chair with wheels. Yes, your majesty. >> when he entered the queen’s chamber, the smell of the ulcer arrived before he did.

 Catherine had to smile, help him lie down, bear the weight of that sick man on her small body, kiss him on the forehead, and tell him he was the most handsome man in the world. If she failed, he wept. If she kept failing, he shouted. And everyone at court remembered what had happened to Anne Boleyn. Think about that. 17 years old, she already knew abuse, deception, abandonment.

 And now she went to sleep every night knowing that a single mistake would put her on the same scaffold where they had killed her cousin. It was in the spring of 1541 that Catherine made the mistake that would kill her. Among the gentlemen of the king’s privy chamber, there was a young man named Thomas Culpepper. About 25 years old, tall, light-eyed, easy smile.

A distant cousin of Catherine’s. They had known each other since childhood. And now they were meeting again in the corridors of Hampton Court. And he was looking at her the way no man had ever looked at her before. Not with Manox’s violence, not with Derham’s lies, not with the king’s sick hunger. He was looking at her the way you look at a person.

 Jane Boleyn, Catherine’s lady-in-waiting, widow of George Boleyn, sister-in-law of the very same Anne Boleyn who had died in the tower, carried a heart full of old resentments and a special talent for secrets. She was the one who began arranging the meetings. She opened back doors. She distracted the other ladies. She waited in the corridors while Catherine and Thomas Culpepper talked, whispered, sometimes held each other.

 There was never any definitive proof that they had actually consummated the adultery, but there were letters. And in a court where the king could kill with a signature, letters were enough. One of those letters, written by Catherine’s own hand, is still preserved in the British archives. She told Thomas that her heart ached every time she thought she could not be with him.

She signed it in her rounded girlish handwriting, “Yours as long as I live.” Remember that phrase, “Yours as long as I live.” because that letter would become the evidence that signed the death sentence of them both. In the autumn of 1541, the king and Catherine made a royal progress through the north of England.

During that progress, Catherine would slip out at night through corridors Jane Boleyn had prepared. She would meet Culpepper in empty rooms, sometimes lit only by a single candle. She would return to her own chamber just before dawn, her heart beating so hard that sometimes she had to lean against the walls to keep from fainting.

The king in the next room snored with his bandaged leg propped up on a pillow. During those months, Catherine had something resembling happiness. A brief, borrowed, dangerous happiness. The only kind she would ever have in her entire life. But dark corridors have eyes. A man named John Lassells, a political enemy of the Howard family, had a sister who had once been one of the girls in that common dormitory.

She had seen it all. Manox, Derham, the promises, and she told her brother. Lascelles saw in that information a golden opportunity. He wrote a letter. The letter reached Thomas Cranmer, the Archbishop of Canterbury. Cranmer read every line twice. He trembled, and he waited for the right moment. He found it on the first day of November, 1541, [music] the Feast of All Saints.

 The Queen was attending mass in the Royal [music] Chapel of Hampton Court. Cranmer, his hands wet with sweat, placed the letter on the monarch’s prayer cushion. He did not have the courage to speak face-to-face. He let the paper speak for him. Henry VIII read it. He read it again. He walked out of the chapel without saying a single word.

 Locked in his private apartments, the King wept for hours. Then he called for a sword. He said he wanted to kill her himself. His ministers calmed him down. They reminded him that a king does not murder. A king executes. They found Catherine that afternoon rehearsing a dance. They told her the King did not wish to see her, that she should return to her rooms.

 She did not understand. She asked for her husband. She asked if she had done something wrong. No one answered. The doors were locked from the outside. The guards stopped calling her your majesty. They began to call her simply madam. That one word, madam. She knew what it meant. Anne Boleyn had heard the same word six years earlier.

That night Catherine managed to break free for a moment. She ran down the gallery toward the chapel where Henry was praying. She screamed his name. She wanted to throw herself at his feet. The guards caught her before she reached the door and dragged her back by her hair. That gallery in Hampton Court is still called the Haunted Gallery today.

 Many visitors claim to have heard the screams of a woman at dusk. Thomas Culpepper, Francis Dereham, and Jane Boleyn were arrested. In the Tower of London, the interrogations began. On Dereham, they placed the thumbscrews, an instrument that slowly crushed them until the bones cracked like dry twigs. They stretched his body on the rack.

 He confessed everything. Culpepper was tortured, too. He confessed there had been meetings. He confessed there had been letters. He denied until his very last breath that he had ever actually lain with the Queen. They didn’t believe him. He, being a nobleman, was granted the quick death.

 He was beheaded on the 10th of December. Dereham, on the other hand, was given the death reserved for common traitors. The grim details are documented in the trial records. Their heads were mounted on spikes above London Bridge. While this was happening in London, Catherine knew nothing of it. They had moved her to Syon Abbey, an old nunnery emptied during the dissolution of the monasteries.

 They took away almost all of her ladies. They forbade mirrors. They forbade colored dresses. She could only wear black. They forbade news from the outside. For weeks, she did not know that Culpepper and Dereham were dead. Your grace. >> finally told her, she did not cry. She stared at the wall for several hours without moving.

 The maid who cared for her later said that on that day, the Queen aged 10 years in a single afternoon. She lived like that for 3 months in silence, alone, not knowing when they would come for her. November passed. December. January. Catherine was still alive. The king could not make up his mind. Some nights Henry VIII would get drunk and mumble that perhaps he could forgive her, that she was so young, that she was his rose.

 Other nights he would sign the execution order and tear it up the next morning. Parliament, exhausted by the monarch’s indecision, passed on the 21st of January, 1542, a law that allowed the king to condemn someone to death without the need of a trial. His signature was enough, and this time he signed without tearing up the paper. On the 10th of February, three men arrived at Syon Abbey.

 They told Catherine to gather her things, that they were moving her to the Tower of London. She looked at them, understood, and began to scream. She tried to hide under the bed. She tried to grab the curtains. The three men had to hold her between them and carry her, almost suspended, down to the garden where the boat was waiting.

The River Thames was covered in a thick, gray fog, and when the boat passed under London Bridge, Catherine lifted her eyes, and she saw them, the two heads. Culpepper’s, already almost a skull with strands of light hair still clinging to it. Dereham’s, mouth slightly open as if still begging for mercy.

 The man who had given her the first lie of her life, and the man who had given her the only truth. Side by side, rotting above the bridge.