CHAPTER 23
ON JULY 28, 1540, THREE WEEKS AFTER THE ANNULMENT OF HIS marriage to Anne of Cleves, Henry married his fifth wife, Katherine Howard, at Oatlands Palace in Surrey.1 She was the nineteen-year-old niece of Thomas Howard, duke of Norfolk. By November, Marillac was writing to the French king, “The new Queen, has completely acquired the King’s Grace and the other [Anne of Cleves] is no more spoken of than if she were dead.”2
Yet Anne was “loved and esteemed” by the people and, having readily accepted her new status as the “King’s sister,” was welcomed at court. She arrived at Hampton Court on January 3 and was admitted to the queen’s presence. “Lady Anne approached the Queen with as much reverence and punctilious ceremony as if she herself was the most insignificant damsel about Court … all the time addressing the Queen on her knees.” Katherine “received her most kindly, showing her great favour and courtesy.” The king then entered the room and, “after making a very low bow to Lady Anne, embraced and kissed her.” They all sat down to supper at the same table with “as good a mien and countenance and look[ed] as unconcerned as if there had been nothing between them,” as the two queens danced and drank together.3
Relations between Mary and Katherine Howard were initially fraught. The new queen was a cousin of Anne Boleyn and five years younger than Mary. On December 5, Chapuys told the emperor’s sister that the queen had tried to remove two of Mary’s attendants because she believed that the princess was showing less respect to her than to her predecessors. Mary’s behavior evidently improved, as it was soon reported that she had “found means to conciliate” Katherine and “thinks her maids will remain.”4 Though they were too different in temperament and too similar in age to ever be close, relations began to settle down. “A week ago,” on May 17, the imperial ambassador reported, “the King and Queen went … to visit the Prince [at Waltham Holy Cross in Essex] at the request of the [Lady Mary], but chiefly at the intercession of the Queen herself.” It proved a successful visit, and “upon that occasion” the king granted Mary “full permission to reside at Court, and the Queen has countenanced it with a good grace.”5
But ever present were reminders of her father’s vengeance and the price Mary might pay for her perceived disloyalty. The following year, sixty-eight-year-old Margaret Pole, the woman whom Mary had referred to as her “second mother,” was taken to the scaffold on the slope of Tower Hill. She had been attainted in 1539 without ever having been tried. At seven in the morning of May 27, 1541, she was brought out to die. She commended her soul to God, prayed for the king, and requested to be remembered to the “Princess Mary.” She then placed her head on the block. In the absence of the usual Tower executioner, “a wretched and blundering youth … literally hacked her head and shoulders to pieces.”6
Thinking now in his old days, the King felt after sundry troubles of mind which have happened unto him by marriages, to have obtained such a jewel [Katherine] for womanhood and very perfect love towards him … and showed outwardly all virtue and good behaviour.7
Yet unbeknown to the king, Katherine had had relationships before she was married, when she had been part of the household of her step-grandmother the dowager duchess of Norfolk: first in 1536, when she was fourteen, with her music teacher, Henry Manox, and then two years later with Francis Dereham, a kinsman of her uncle the duke of Norfolk. Upon becoming queen, Katherine resumed her illicit liaisons. Dereham returned to court as her private secretary, and Thomas Culpepper, a gentleman of the king’s Privy Chamber, began regularly meeting with her in her chamber. By October 1541, Cranmer, the archbishop of Canterbury, learned of Katherine’s continuing behavior, and, on November 2, he presented Henry with a written statement of allegations. The king was initially disbelieving, but after Manox and Dereham were questioned, he was forced to accept the fact of Katherine’s adultery.
Five days later, at Hampton Court, Katherine was interrogated by her uncle, Norfolk, and Cranmer. At first she denied the allegations, but then she admitted the truth. In a letter of confession to the king, she begged for his mercy, describing her relationships with Manox and Dereham and explaining why she had not told him before they were married: “I was so desirous to be taken unto your grace’s favour and so blinded with the desire of worldly glory that I could not, nor had grace, to consider how great a fault it was to conceal my former faults from your Majesty.”8
In January, Katherine and Lady Rochford, her lady of the bedchamber, who had arranged illicit meetings, were declared guilty of treason. On February 10, Katherine was moved from Syon to the Tower, passing first beneath London Bridge, where the heads of Dereham and Culpepper, executed the previous year, were still displayed. Two days later, Sunday the twelfth, she was told to prepare herself for death. According to Chapuys, “she asked to have the block brought in to her so that she might see how to place herself, which was done, and she made trial of it.”9 Early the following morning, her preparations complete, Katherine knelt at the scaffold and her head was struck off.10
“This King has wonderfully felt the case of the Queen his wife,” Chapuys wrote. “He has certainly shown greater sorrow and regret at her loss than at the faults, loss or divorce of his preceding wives.”11 By April, it was reported that, since learning of his late wife’s conduct, he had “not been the same man” and was often to be found “sad, pensive and sighing.”12
Following Katherine Howard’s execution, Mary enjoyed far greater favor and presided over court feasts as if she were queen. As a New Year’s gift Henry presented her “with rings, silver plate, and other jewels” among which were “two rubies of inestimable value.”13 However, during those months, the princess suffered repeatedly from chronic ill health, linked to anxiety, depression, and irregular menstruation, although the symptoms varied widely from one episode to the next. In March and April, she had a “strange fever” that brought on heart palpitations and so afflicted her that at times “she remained as though dead.”14 On April 22, Chapuys told the queen of Hungary, “the princess has been seriously ill, and in danger of her life.”15 Yet Mary recovered and on December 17 was summoned to court for the Christmas festivities “with a great number of ladies … they work day and night at Hampton Court to finish her lodging.”16 Chapuys reported that the king “spoke to her in the most gracious and amiable words that a father could address to his daughter.”17
ON JULY 12, 1543, Mary and Elizabeth attended their father’s sixth wedding, in the queen’s Privy Closet at Hampton Court. As Thomas Wriothesley, secretary of the Privy Council, reported to the duke of Suffolk:
The King’s Majesty was married on Thursday last to my Lady Latimer, a woman in my judgement, for virtue, wisdom and gentleness, most mete for his Highness, and sure I am his Majesty had never a wife more agreeable to his heart than she is. Our Lord send them long life and much joy together.18
It was a small ceremony with some twenty people in attendance, presided over by Stephen Gardiner, bishop of Winchester.19 Henry’s bride, the twice-married Katherine Parr, a former member of Mary’s household, had come to the king’s attention during Mary’s frequent visits to court. Katherine had long-standing connections with the princess. Her mother, Maud, had been one of Katherine of Aragon’s ladies-in-waiting, and she had been named after the queen, who had stood as godmother at her baptism. It was soon apparent that Katherine Parr, only four years older than Mary, was to be “more a friend than a stepmother.” She sought to improve relations between Mary and her father, and soon Chapuys was reporting, “The King continues to treat her [Mary] kindly, and has made her stay with the new Queen, who behaves affectionately towards her.”20 Mary and Katherine were both learned women, and, despite Katherine’s evangelical sympathies, they enjoyed a close relationship and studied together.
In 1544, under Katherine Parr’s influence, Mary took up the translation of Erasmus’s Paraphrases on the Four Gospels. The scholar Nicholas Udall was the editor of the book; Katherine funded its publication, and Mary was one of the translators. Ill health prevented Mary from finishing work on the book, and her chaplain, Francis Mallet, eventually completed it. In a letter of September 20, Katherine inquired as to whether Mary wished it “to go forth to the world (most auspiciously) under your name, or as the production of an unknown writer?” adding, “You will, in my opinion, do a real injury if you refuse to let it go down to posterity under the auspices of your own name, since you have undertaken so much labour in accurately translating it for the great good of the public and would have undertaken still greater (as is well known) if the health of your body had permitted.” She continued, “I do not see why you should repudiate that praise which all men justly confer on you.”21 In his preface to the Paraphrases, Udall paid tribute to “the most noble, the virtuous, the most witty, and the most studious Lady Mary’s grace,” calling her “a peerless flower of virginity.”22
Based at court, Mary thrived in the favor of an intelligent and benevolent queen. When in February 1544 a ball was held during the visit of the Spanish grandee the duke of Nájera, Mary danced elegantly, dressed extravagantly in a gown of gold cloth under a robe of violet velvet with a coronal of large precious stones on her head. As Nájera described her:
The princess Mary has a pleasing countenance and person. It is said of her that she is endowed with very great goodness and discretion, and among other praises, I heard of her is this, that she knows how to conceal her acquirements; and certainly this is no small proof of prudence, since the real sage, who is aware of the extent of knowledge, thinks his own learning of too low an estimate to be boasted of, whilst those who have only a superficial acquaintance with learning exhibit the contrary, as they pride themselves in proportion to their acquirements and without imparting their knowledge, allow no one to be learned but themselves. The princess is much beloved throughout the kingdom, that she is almost adored.23
Despite being twenty years younger than Mary, Edward was fiercely protective of his elder sister. Writing to his stepmother, the six-year-old urged her to keep a careful eye on the princess: “preserve her, therefore, I pray you, my dear sister Mary,” from all the “wiles and enchantments of the evil one” and “beseech her to attend no longer to foreign dances and merriments which do not become a most Christian princess.”24 At the same time he praised Mary, telling her, “I like you even as a brother ought to like a very dear sister, who hath within herself all the embellishments of virtue and honourable station.” In the same way that he “loved his best clothes most of all, though he seldom wore them,” he explained, “so he wrote seldom to her, but loved her most.”25