The Downfall of Katherine Howard

Jaxyn Kirian, Spring 2024

The Doomed Existence of Katherine Howard

Jaxyn Kirian, Spring 2024

Queen Katherine Howard was executed at the age of 19 for charges of adultery and treason. She had only been queen for a year before she was sent to prison. It is said that, in the night before her execution, Katherine had requested for a block to practice laying her head upon so that she may die with dignity. That hope was short lived, however, as the axeman missed chopping her head off twice, hitting her shoulder both times, before he finished the job. That was Katherine’s end, but where did her downfall begin and could she have avoided it?

Let’s start at the beginning. It is crucial to know how old Katherine was at certain points in her timeline in order to properly understand her exact role in important events and to determine if she had some control over them in the first place. The younger she was, the less likely Katherine could purposefully change her fate or manipulate those around her. The year and day of Katherine’s birth is unknown. Most conclusions place her birth date somewhere around 1518 and 1524. That would make Katherine at most 24 and at least 18 years old at the time of her execution. The most likely year is 1523, but only due to circumstantial evidence based on the ages of her fellow maids of honor when she joined court, and how she was not likely to be much older than them when she joined. For the point of this narrative, we will be assuming that 1523 is the correct year and make mentions of her age revolving around that. Keep in mind that she may have been a couple years younger or older than this guess.

Katherine was born to a very noble family: the Howard family. They were known for their service to the crown, most notably through contributing in battles and maintaining order in their designated lands. Katherine was first cousin to Queen Anne Boleyn and second cousin to Queen Jane Seymour. Due to Anne Boleyn’s own downfall and execution, the Howard family was desperate to prove themselves; Katherine’s part in this will become realized as she grows older and gets sent to court. Apart from this, not much is known about Katherine’s early life before she was sent to live with her wealthiest female relative.

When Katherine was 8 she was sent to live with her grandmother, the Dowager Duchess of Norfolk. There, she received education under private tutelage specifically chosen by her grandmother. Once she hit 13, she began taking music classes under a man named Henry Mannox. Again, Mannox’s age is unknown, but it is speculated that he would have been in his late thirties. Katherine and Mannox eventually participated in an affair. They were together for two more years before they split up, whether due to Katherine’s own gradual disinterest or the interference of her grandmother.

Once Katherine hit 15, she had embarked on a new relationship; this time with her grandmother’s secretary Francis Dereham. Dereham was much younger than Mannox at the age of 25, but still quite older than Katherine. Eventually, this too was broken off as Katherine was sent to court to attend to the future Queen Anne of Cleves. Katherine would stay in the Queen’s service for about a year before Anne of Cleves was divorced by King Henry.

After the divorce of King Henry’s fourth wife, the King was interested in finding a new lady to wed. It just so happened that Katherine caught his eye. The two were married when Katherine was 17. At the same time, she caught the interest of Thomas Culpepper, a courtier of King Henry. The two became fast friends; however, that soon developed into being more. Whether Katherine herself wanted to enter into a relationship with Culpepper remains a mystery; there is evidence to suggest that she may have been blackmailed by Culpepper in her only remaining letter to him. That ultimately didn’t matter when it came to the verdict, and we know how that ends.

Now that we’ve laid out Katherine’s life, where exactly did her downfall begin? Was she doomed from birth, when she was arrested, or sometime in between? I believe it started from birth. Although she was born to a noble family, Katherine’s father was quite poor. As well as with Queen Anne Boleyn’s execution and the mark on the Howard’s name, Katherine started off as little as a pawn in her family’s game to further both them and her father. She didn’t have much of a chance to live a normal life from the start. Not to mention her later years, with several relationships with much older men when Katherine was a literal child. In this lifetime, we would shame those men; instead, a lot of people paint Katherine to be a wild manipulator. It’s easier to believe that she was the one manipulated by those around her who should’ve protected her instead. In short, there was no way Katherine could have avoided her untimely death; she would’ve had to have been born to an entirely different family in order to be set upon a better path.

Bibliography

Clark, Nicola. "Queen Katherine Howard: Space, Place, and Promiscuity Pre- and Post-Marriage, 1536-1541." Royal Studies Journal (RSJ), 6, no. 2 (2019), page 89-103.

Howard, Katherine. "Letter to Thomas Culpeper." 1541. The National Archives, SP 1/167 f. 143.

Kizewski, Holly. "Jewel of Womanhood: A Feminist Reinterpretation of Queen Katherine Howard." 2014.

Russel, Gareth. Young & Damned & Fair: The Life of Catherine Howard, Fifth Wife of King Henry VIII. New York: Simon & Schuster Paperbacks, 2016.

United Kingdom. "Special oyer and terminer roll and file of Thomas Culpeper and Francis Dereham." 1541-1542. The National Archives, KB 8/13/1.

Acknowledgements

I would like to thank the UAH Honors College for funding this study abroad research project. I would also like to thank the National Archives for allowing me to access their documents on-site.