© Unknown Artist – The National Portrait Gallery
Portrait of a Young Woman (often understood to be Katheryn Howard) by the Workshop of Hans Holbein the Younger
A commonly shared belief between Tudor history fans, particularly deriving from it’s depiction within Showtime’s The Tudors, is that Katheryn Howard, the fifth wife of King Henry VIII and his eldest daughter, the Lady Mary, shared a bitter court rivalry. Over the years, various historians such as Gareth Russell and Josephine Wilkinson have attempted to attest these rumours, employing contemporary accounts and theories. Whilst one may never be able to indicate how hostile this enmity was or why it was so, it is clear that the king’s new bride and his eldest daughter did not get off to a pleasant start.
Potentially up to five years younger than her step-daughter and first cousin to Anne Boleyn, the uncomfortable climate in which Mary found her new stepmother undoubtedly initiated fraught relations. The dealings experienced between Mary and Katheryn would have been acutely different to those shared with her other step-children, Elizabeth and Edward, as Mary was the only sibling to actively reside at court and experience an education fit for a future monarch, within the walls of Ludlow Castle.
It was clear that by the December of 1540 relations between stepmother and stepdaughter had soured greatly. Within a letter to Mary’s cousin Maria of Austria, Dowager Queen of Hungary, Imperial Ambassador Eustace Chapuys documented that relations soured as a result of Mary’s strikingly different treatment of Katheryn than that of her two preceding stepmothers. On account of this treatment, Katheryn supposedly threatened to dismiss two of Mary’s ladies. In his letter, written on the 5th December, Chapuys wrote that:
‘The Princess, having heard from me the attempt lately made to take away from her two of her maid-servants proceeded entirely from this new queen, who was rather offended at her not treating her with the same respect as the two preceding ones.’
However, Chapuys goes on to write that the two ladies ‘found some means of reconciliation … so she [Mary] thinks that for the present … her two maids will not be dismissed from her service.’
Albeit providing a largely unreliable source, the Chronicle of Henry VIII largely concedes with this, additionally providing insight as to why Katheryn received such little respect from Mary. According to the chronicle, the sour behaviours demonstrated was the result of Mary’s acknowledgement of Katheryn as a ‘mere child’. Furthermore, the unnamed author attributes Katheryn’s frustration to the ladies at court, who ‘paid as much court to Madam Mary as they did to the Queen.’ As a solution to his new brides hindrances, Mary was sent from court, where she lived in her own establishment alongside Prince Edward.
Unfortunately, it remains unclear as to what the condition of their relationship was throughout the Christmas season. Despite being yet to visit Katheryn, Mary sent her a present to which the King ‘has been very much pleased.’ In response to her gifts, Henry sent his eldest daughter ‘two magnificent new year’s gifts’, in both his name and Katheryn’s. According to historian Gareth Russell, the organisation of these gifts may have been done directly by Henry, rather than on his disgruntled wife’s behalf.
It is not necessarily specified why or when relations between the two intensified once again, but after the Christmas season, Katheryn perhaps put her recent threat of dismissal into action. In another letter to Maria of Austria, dated to the 6th February, Chapuys wrote of Mary’s ‘good health’ but ‘exceeding’ distress and sadness. This amassed from ‘the death of one of her favourite damsels, who … died of grief at her having been removed from her service by the King’s order.’ Although the Imperial Ambassador does not indicate that this ‘damsel’ was removed by the King at Katheryn’s directive, the closely-knit timing between the two events would indicate that this dismissal and was prompted by Mary’s previous dispute with her new stepmother. Nonetheless, active dismissal of her ladies had been a tool previously employed by Henry against his daughter. This had been executed in October 1533 as a result of her refusal to recognise Anne Boleyn or the Princess Elizabeth. Subsequently, Henry reduced both her household and annual allowance. Perhaps Henry capitalised on this punishment once again to chastise his eldest daughter.
In accordance with Russell, Katheryn’s attempts of restored relations with Mary came presently after rumours of pregnancy, which turned out to be untrue. Perhaps, anxieties over her future – potentially as a widow under the reign of one of her stepchildren – encouraged the young queen to heal their fraught rift.
After the dispute relating to Mary’s two unnamed ladies, relations seemingly cooled once again. On the 17th May, Chapuys reported of the King and Queen’s visit to the Prince Edward, which was ‘at the request of the Lady Mary.’ After the visit, Mary was granted ‘full permission to reside at Court’ and Katheryn countenanced Mary’s residence with ‘good grace.’ During their northern progress, Katheryn presented her stepdaughter with a clock, indicating the now warm nature of their relations. Contrastingly, the Chronicle of Henry VIII documents that during the final tenure of the Queen’s life, Mary did not return to court.
However, only for a few months more would Mary have to share the courtly spotlight with Katheryn. Previously unbeknownst to the king, when his ‘jewel of womanhood’ had resided in the household of her step-grandmother, the Dowager Duchess of Norfolk, Katheryn had enjoyed various illicit relationships. Firstly in 1536 with her music teacher Henry Mannox, and then with a previous kinsman of her uncle, the Duke of Norfolk, Francis Dereham. After moving to Ireland for a number of years, Dereham returned to Katheryn’s life during her northern progress, where she was accompanied by Mary. In an attempt to silence their liaison, Katheryn hired Dereham as her private secretary. Also during this time, Katheryn enjoyed regular meetings with Thomas Culpepper, a Gentleman of the King’s Privy Chamber. These meetings were orchestrated by Katheryn’s Lady-in-Waiting and widow of George Boleyn, Jane Rochford. By November 1541, Katheryn’s short reign as Queen came to an end after a letter, written by Katheryn’s previous companion Mary Lascelles and her brother John, documented her previous affairs. After learning of Katheryn’s scandalous past, Archbishop Thomas Cranmer informed the grief-stricken king. Albeit initially disbelieving, Henry was quickly forced to believe the allegations after Mannox and Dereham were implicated, of which the latter threw Thomas Culpepper into the fold of Katheryn’s adultery.
At Hampton Court, after initially denying the scandalous allegations facing her, Katheryn admitted the truth to Archbishop Cranmer and Norfolk. Katheryn begged for the mercy of the king, writing as to why she had not previously told him of her past. Katheryn wrote that she was ‘so desirous to be taken unto your grace’s favour and so blinded with desire of worldly glory that I could not … consider how great a fault it was to conceal my former faults.’
After a brief tenure at the dissolved abbey of Syon, Katheryn was moved to the Tower of London, where she passed the two rotting heads of Dereham and Culpepper. Two days later, Katheryn was informed of her impending death. According to Chapuys, she thus asked for the executioners block to be brought to her so that ‘she might see how to place herself.’ On the following day, 13th February, Katheryn’s head was stricken off.
Fortunately for Mary, it is said that her favour at court increased greatly after Katheryn’s grisly demise. According to Anna Whitelock in her biography of Mary, she presided over court feasts ‘as if Queen.’ After a worrying bout of illness, it is said that Henry ‘spoke to her [Mary] in the most gracious and amiable words that a father could address his daughter.’ Despite proving to never be the ‘same man’ that he had been before discovering Katheryn’s past, Henry remarried for the sixth and final time to Catherine Parr in July 1543.
It thus remains unclear to historians as to why relations between Katheryn and Mary were so fraught. However, Josephine Wilkinson theorises that Mary so amicably accepted Jane Seymour and Anna of Cleeves as a result of their predecessors, who were deceased by the time of their accession. Contrastingly, Anna remained alive and considerably wealthy by the time Katheryn was married to Henry. Whilst both Anna and Mary were raised as princesses and carried royal blood, Katheryn did not. The rumours of remarriage to Anna, rising pressure to produce a child and accommodate herself into the role of Queen may likely have knocked Katheryn’s self-confidence, initiating their unstable animosity. Moreover, the polar-opposite, personal element of their relationship must also be considered: where Mary was pious and serene, Katheryn was bubbly and frivolous. Mary was a number of years older than Katheryn, and she may have therefore resented her marital position, in which she had failed to achieve by the age of twenty-four. As cousin to Anne Boleyn and posing a high chance of producing the long-awaited Duke of York, further pushing her back in the line-of-succession, Mary had every reason to resent her younger stepmother. While the exact details and reasons for their hostility remain unclear, the uncomfortable relationship between Katheryn Howard and Mary Tudor was certainly tense and unpredictable.
In contrast to her enmity with Katheryn Howard, Mary would enjoy far more amiable relations with her final stepmother.
References:
Young & Damned & Fair: The Life and Tragedy of Catherine Howard at the Court of Henry VIII by Gareth Russell (p. 77-78, 91-92)
Mary Tudor: England’s First Queen by Anna Whitelock (p. 107-109)
Katherine Howard: The Tragic Story of Henry VIII’s Fifth Queen by Josephine Wilkinson (p. 102-105, 144)
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