The Brutal Murder of Catherine Howard

After Dark: Myths, Misdeeds & the Paranormal

This episode of After Dark explores the tragic life and execution of Catherine Howard, Henry VIII's fifth wife, delving into the political i

Key takeaways

• Catherine Howard was not an uneducated or naive teenager but a skilled negotiator of court etiquette and social dynamics.
• Her marriage to Henry VIII at age 18 was swift and marked by euphoria, yet it quickly unraveled due to the king's deteriorating health and paranoia.

Main topics

• The Tudor court as a dangerous political arena
• Henry VIII's deteriorating health and its impact on his marriage to Catherine Howard

Notable quotes

In Henry VIII's court, every corridor is like a chessboard. Alliances are struck at supper and broken by sunrise.

Conclusion

Catherine Howard's story is a poignant reminder of how power, jealousy, and fear can destroy even the most innocent. Her

Transcript preview

Speaker 3 (0:01) Hello, After Dark listeners. It is I, Anthony Delaney, one of your co-hosts from, of course, After Dark. Now, listen, we have some good news. We have been shortlisted for the top 20 in the Listener's Choice Award category for this year's British Podcast Awards. Now, we made the top, I think it was five last year. So we are greedy historians and we want to make that top five again. This year, things are slightly different, though. You can only vote for us in this long list in the Spotify app. and you'll find a link in this week's episode that'll take you to vote for us. As a matter of fact, you can vote for us three times. So if you feel so inclined, please do that. We want to make that top five. We're going to smash it this year. I think we're going to take it, he said with absolutely no confidence. But lend us your vote and we'll see how well we get on. Heading for the top five. I know we can do it. Speaker 4 (1:05) In Henry VIII's court, every corridor is like a cheese board. What? Speaker 2 (1:10) Huh? What? Is it chess board? It's Speaker 3 (1:13) so chess board. Does it say cheese? Did you please tell me you misread it? Speaker 1 (1:18) Oh Speaker 3 (1:18) my God. I'm going Speaker 4 (1:20) home. Speaker 3 (1:22) Leave that in. Speaker 4 (1:24) Whoever is Speaker 3 (1:25) recording this, that has to stay in. Everything is like a cheese board. And Catherine Howard, Cam and Barrett. Speaker 4 (1:39) In Henry VIII's court, every corridor is like a chessboard. Alliances are struck at supper and broken by sunrise. A misplaced laugh can make an enemy. Into this crossfire steps Catherine Howard, young, dazzling, flirtatious, and held in such unreasonably high regard that a fall is almost inevitable. It's a fragile world where loyalty becomes tested by oaths and where a memory or a meeting can count as treason. Who profits when such a young queen is killed? The increasingly disturbing king, or rivals watching from the shadows? This episode follows the threads of gossip in a merciless world that implicates a teenage queen and all those around her. From the dark heart of the Tudor court, this is After Dark. Speaker 4 (2:32) Before dawn, the tower runs cold through the stone. Catherine Howard sits awake, listening to the crows gather and the bells toll outside, fingers pressed to the grain of the table. The lieutenant's men wait behind the door. Within, a small fire gutters, a queen's last luxury. Except she is no longer queen. Stripped of titles, her young mind spins from the endless questions she's faced. She's experienced far too much in her short life. In an attempt to make sense of all that's happened, her memories mix with accusations which come and go like ghosts. A careless youth that became evidence. A young love that became treason. Her cousin, Anne Boleyn, faced a similar fate and lies yards from where Catherine now sits. The kingdom calls what comes next justice. It's also called treason. When the key turns, Catherine stands, her final prayers whispered, and walks towards the green in silence. The only choice she's now able to make. After Speaker 3 (4:12) dark, my name's Anthony. And Speaker 4 (4:13) I'm Maddie. Speaker 3 (4:14) And today we are giving you what you want, which is more Tudors. We know that you love our Tudor history episodes. We have had Philippa Gregory recently, of course. We also constantly have the brilliant Tracey Borman back. Constantly? Speaker 4 (4:26) It sounds like you're sick of her. No, never sick of Tracey Borman. Speaker 3 (4:29) Never sick of Tracey Speaker 4 (4:30) Borman. Speaker 3 (4:30) Stop coming on our show. She's one Speaker 2 (4:31) of Speaker 3 (4:31) our favourite guests, like 100%. Yes. And now we have another favourite Tudor historian guest. And that, of course, is proper introduction this time because you will have heard him in a previous episode where I totally spilled the beans on who we're talking to. And that, of course, is Gareth Russell, who is the historian and author of Young and Damned and Fair, the Life and Tragedy of Catherine Howard at the Court of Henry VIII, here to tell us about the tragic death of Catherine Howard. Welcome to After Dark, Gareth. Thank you. Proper introduction this time. Proper introduction. This is interesting because when we come to talk about the wives of Henry VIII, probably, you'll be better placed to answer this, she being Catherine. Howard, is probably further down the list of the wives that people are most familiar with, right? Yeah. Tell us who she is in this world at this time. Speaker 2 (5:21) So Catherine is the younger daughter of a younger son of the former Duke of Norfolk. Oh my God. The younger daughter of Speaker 3 (5:30) a younger son of the former Duke of Norfolk. So we're not expecting huge things here. No, Speaker 2 (5:34) so there's a good name, but not a lot of money. Her father, Edmund, was a justice of the peace, hero of the Battle of Flodden, but had never really prospered. The good name only took him so far. She had been sent to live with her step-grandmother as a ward, fairly standard among the English aristocracy. And she makes her court debut in the winter of 1539 to serve as a maid of honour, which is the unmarried ladies-in-waiting to Henry's incoming fourth wife, Anne of Cleves. Catherine is there a little before her employer. They had expected Anne of Cleves just before Christmas, but she's coming from Germany and the weather is terrible, so she's delayed. She becomes an active lady-in-waiting, if you like, in January of 1540. And at some point, probably around March or Easter. Henry shows an interest in her. The marriage to Anne of Cleves is annulled in July. Catherine becomes queen at the end of July. Wow. Speaker 3 (6:25) Yeah, Speaker 2 (6:25) it's very quick. That is quicker than I realised. That is a major part of the ingredient because she is not stupid. And there's often this poor little Catherine as if she had no education. And I like to rescue her from the shadow of the axe as best I can. She was an extremely skilled negotiator of etiquette. And if you read Tudor etiquette manuals that they were taught from, these are, I mean, they're like the crystal maids. They're so complex. They're a bit like a cryptex, really. You're always having to figure out how things move and who people are. And she wins applause for how deftly she handles it. So she's very aware of the elite that she moves in. There's a bit of debate around her age, but in fact, there probably shouldn't be a massive debate on it because of all of Henry's wives, she is the one that we have a specific comment on her age from someone who was pretty well placed to know, who was the French ambassador to England, who saw her in several hunting weekends and obviously at court regularly. And he states that she was 18, very firmly. And this is the Speaker 4 (7:25) moment when she marries Henry? Speaker 2 (7:26) Yes, 1540. He's writing in 1541, but it's about 1540 when he writes. And Henry's what Speaker 4 (7:30) age at this time? Speaker 2 (7:31) 49. Well, so it's a big gap. It's not big enough that people comment on it by contemporary standards, but it is substantial. There's an idea that he was in really terrible health by this point. He's not quite there yet. It's really after her that it accelerates, or actually probably she gets her first whiff of how bad it will get halfway through the marriage. Literally the first whiff. Speaker 4 (7:54) So Speaker 2 (7:54) they marry in summer. She is immediately, the change in mood is... palpable. He'd been unhappy in his fourth marriage. He's euphoric in his fifth. The Christmas of 1540 is kept at Hampton Court, and you get a real sense when you go there. It is a palace indelibly associated with the peaks and troughs of Catherine's queenship. She wins hands across the board applause for how well she handles that, because she's forced by her husband to host his ex-wife, Anne of Cleves, so they can show off to the diplomatic corps how generous Henry is, and Anne's accepted this. And she, I mean, she's a masterful, masterful first lady, for want of a better term. And then at Lent, three quarters of a year after the marriage, the first whiff hits and Henry is very ill at Hampton Court and it goes into lockdown. And she is there, but she's not allowed to see him. No one is allowed to come in. No one is allowed to go out. And two of her brothers, Charles and George. now work for the king in his privy chamber. And I would be very surprised if they had not told her how close he had come to death. And so at Easter, so Holy Week actually, Maundy Thursday, so right after Henry has recovered from his Lenten spell of ill health, Catherine reaches out to a former admirer, a former beau that she'd been involved with before she met Henry, who also works for him, called Thomas Culpepper. And they meet in the corridor leading to her private rooms and she gives him a hat. And Culpeper makes a joke saying, alas, madam, why did you not do this when you were a maid? Which is, why didn't you do this when you were single? And Catherine gets a bit miffed and doesn't speak to him for a while. But then there's a massive public relations campaign for the monarchy, a progress through the north, which had rebelled against Henry a few years earlier. And this is a policy of honey and vinegar. They will forgive the former surviving rebels, but only in condition that the north publicly prostrates itself to the king. So Catherine is on tour. off the north, and they're moving between house and house at this point. And she, through her favourite lady-in-waiting, Lady Rochford, starts to arrange nocturnal meetings with Thomas Culpepper throughout the progress. A Speaker 4 (9:58) dangerous game. Speaker 2 (9:58) A dangerous game. And then, in August, they reach the quay to the north, Pontefract Castle, and when she is in residence there... She's a long stint there. She's about two weeks at Pontefract. Her ladies-in-waiting tell her that someone else has arrived, a man called Francis Derham, who had worked for the step-grandmother and had fallen out with her. And Catherine and Francis had had a sexual relationship before. There are debates about the nature of that. Certainly there is a long account from Catherine that it was very serious indeed. And her grandmother and her aunt, I say grandmother, step-grandmother, such a cumbersome term, had her, the daughter of Duchess Speaker 1 (10:39) of Speaker 2 (10:39) Norfolk and the Countess of Bridgewater, from the minute Catherine had become Queen, had tried to keep Francis quiet. And they had entered into a sort of hush money deal with him. which is that he would hand over all the love letters that Catherine had sent to him and the poetry he'd written about her, put it in a chest. The Duchess would keep the chest and he would keep the key. So it's sort of like mutually assured destruction. Oh, wow. But he very much wanted to work for Catherine. And obviously the Duchess and the Countess knew this was a terrible idea. Eventually he got sick of them putting him off and putting him off. And so he rode north from London to Pontefract. So you think of how many times he had an opportunity to think this is a lunatic idea to turn around. And he blackmails her into giving him a job as Gentleman Usher. And he starts making comments about how well he's known the Queen before. She starts bribing him to be quiet. Speaker 4 (11:25) It's like this man doesn't live in the Tudor world. No, no. Look around. Or know Speaker 2 (11:29) who Henry VIII is. Yeah, exactly. But to me, he just could not handle her. I mean, I'll come on to my theories about Frances Dermot in a minute, which is, again, the joy of doing this. And again, I will be saying, I know it's thrown around a lot, but the term narcissist. Anyway, so there's a lot brewing. The ladies in Wedding are really irritated because Lady Rochford is now the favourite. That's because she's all the Queen's secrets. Catherine is getting really antsy with her staff because she's sleep deprived because she's meeting Thomas Culpepper at night. She's threatening to fire the maids who forget her new instructions as she's trying to cover things up. And at the same time, Francis Durham is dropping heavy handed hints. And then they get back to London and all of these little plates are spinning on the top and someone comes in and knocks them over from outside. And it is an evangelical preacher called John Lassels, whose sister had worked. for the Dowager Duchess of Norfolk when Catherine was there and knew all about Catherine and Francis, told her brother, who went to the Archbishop of Canterbury and told him, and said, from what I understand, they had agreed to marry and they did have sex together, which under contemporary religious law, it means that she was legally ineligible to marry anybody else. The Archbishop of Canterbury, Thomas Cranmer. is a man of deep faith, but a limited spine. And in a panic, he goes and he leaves a note for Henry at Hampton Court explaining this. Henry orders an inquiry. And to the Archbishop's shock, this man is now working for the Queen, her alleged former fiancé. And so that's where the investigations begin. So that's a gallop through who Catherine is. Speaker 3 (12:59) Isn't it so insidious, actually, and insipid in many ways, where you're like the... tittle-tattle telltale double standards world that this woman enters into and i was just getting so anxious by proxy when you're talking about these spinning plates gareth about going shit yeah like already she's in these Speaker 4 (13:22) men who are pushing her around because they want power Speaker 2 (13:25) now and they're you know they just want to manipulate yeah francis also cannot we cannot let her go i mean it's really an obsessive relationship from his part Speaker 4 (13:33) Let's talk about that because it seems to me that Catherine, more so maybe than Henry's other queens, her downfall is her past as much as her present. Yes, Speaker 2 (13:43) it Speaker 4 (13:43) is, absolutely. In a way that it isn't necessarily for the other queens. Yes, they bring baggage with them, but it's the events once they're married that kind of lead to that downfall. Will you tell us something a little bit about her past and in particular her sexual past? Because this has been so kind of, it's been made so titillating in her own moment in her own lifetime. Speaker 4 (14:01) I mean, it's quite troubling. You talked earlier about her age and she's only 18 by the time she's married to Henry. I'm looking at my notes. I'm looking at the age that she is when she has her first supposed sexual experience with her music teacher. Can you tell us about her relationship to her own sexuality and to men? Speaker 2 (14:19) So I pushed back against the idea of them being seen as either child abuse or sexual coercion for a number of reasons. And I still, I suppose you'll have had this yourself, I think. You take things out of episodes or books and you think, should I have? I'm not sure. And I had a much more speculative section on Francis in particular, talking about how I think the idea that it was sexually coercive misses the point of why it was dangerous. It was just dangerous in a different way. And I still think it was probably the right thing to