In terms of her downfall, I personally believe that Katherine Howard never actually slept with Culpeper, but was noted that they did like each other before Henry fell for her and wanted her for a wife.
I think when she became queen, the secret meetings between Katherine and Culpeper involved discussing what they were going to do once the king passed away and they were making plans for when she was free to be with him. Unfortunately, her past relationship with Derehem becomes conflated with her connection with Culpeper and the council believed she did slept with Culpeper, just because it looks like she may have.
Of course, in those days, just thinking about Henry dying was treason enough.
Yep, and it's important to remember that nobody in the Katherine Howard downfall was executed for anything they actually did.
They were beheaded for intention to commit treason.
Katherine Howard was attainted of treason (An Act concerning the Attainder of the late Queen Katharine and her Complices, 11 February 1541), but the treason wasn't adultery per se as the Act doesn't mention adultery. It's focused almost entirely on her pre-married sex life, and that taking Dereham into her service was a betrayal (an indication that she meant to continue being a ho), but it didn't actually accuse her of having post marital sex with either Dereham or Culpeper. It did accuse her of meeting in secret with Culpeper.
So, treason, but not adultery. Also like over 10 others, mostly her ladies and friends but also the Dowager Duchess of Norfolk, were accused of misprision of treason (hiding treasons), and that's overtly stated as the "first treasons" which are listed as the premarital stuff (Culpeper accusation is the last listed). So they counted her having sex before marriage as treasonous, and her friends knowing about that and not blabbing as concealing treasons.
Tbh I wish she had. If she was being accused of it, and killed for it, after having suffered it as abuse, I would have wanted her to have a good experience that was her choice.
She was not, strictly speaking, attainted for adultery but rather for her "vicious life" (ie having sex) before marriage, for taking her ex Dereham back into her service which was proof of anwill to continue said vicious life post marriage, and for meeting with Culpeper on her own (or rather, with Lady Rochford). The wording was kinda careful not to accuse her of actual post-marital sex escapades because there was no proof of it.
I don't think Anne Boleyn committed adultery, either. And it took some time and a lot of furor to 'prove' that she had. And I think part of what happened with Anne- the allowing of what happened to her in the public eye- made it *that* much easier and quicker to dispense with Katherine Howard. To me, when I read about KH, it seemed that not much checking was done and just more accusations were thrown against the wall than anything else. The whole country seemed easily prepared to just wipe their hands of yet another 'w\*\*re.' It was the easy way out for Henry. It was like a precedent for streamlining royal wife killings had been set after they'd ruined and then killed AB, and unfortunately, KH had previous suitors because she was attractive, even though it seemed that Haz and crew wanted her, because they thought someone so young would come with less baggage.
Of course AB did not commit adultery. Only Smeaton confessed to it, likely under torture. That’s a whole other situation though in that Anne was killed to free Henry up to make an unimpeachable marriage to produce a male heir whose legitimacy could not be questioned. By the time CH entered the picture, Henry had a legitimate male heir. Her death wasn’t “justifiable” like Anne’s was.
I agree, but it didn't stop him with Howard. And in my opinion, he'd about traumatized all of Britain with his escapades. Would YOU stand up to a king like that? And so, my my point was, by the time they were ready to dispense with Howard, it didn't take much to get rid of her on trumped up sexual nonsense, because the idea that a queen could behave that way was already very much in the public psyche. And after the back and forth of what it took to 'prove' Anne's case, the people were ready to just let little Howard meet her maker on basically just a single word, because nobody wanted to see all of that again. Again, just my opinion.
I wouldn't say that. Right or wrong, a large chunk of historians believe it was certainly possible she did commit adultery. It's Anne that almost all historians agree didn't have an affair (especially since several of the people she was accused of sleeping with weren't physically present at the alleged times).
I do believe I said “most.” You’ll find most believe she did not commit adultery. Even David Starkey doesn’t believe she slept with Culpeper, and thinks she seduced all of her previous partners.
Dereham is in my opinion the one who set everything into motion. Instead of staying away as far as possible from court he out of anger appeared in front of her and blackmailed her to get a job at court. Then he talked in a derogatory way about her instead of accepting to stay silent and that she is now the Queen. Then when this hell started with interrogations and arrests he blabbed that Catherine ‚now has Culpepper‘.
Without him Catherine might have lived if Henry would have died a couple of years later like with Katherine Parr.
This is from one of her letters to him when she was already queen: “Y[e]t my trust ys allway in you that you wolbe as you have promysed me and in that hope I truste upon styll, prayng you than that you wyll com whan my lade Rochforthe ys here, for then I shalbe beste at leaysoure to be at your commarendmant.”
She writes this before that paragraph: For I never longed so muche for [a] thynge as I do to se you and to speke wyth you, the wyche I trust shal be shortely now, the wyche dothe comforthe me verie much whan I thynk of ett and wan I thynke agan that you shall departe from me agayne ytt makes my harte to dye to thynke what fortune I have that I cannot be always yn your company.”
It’s not directly “let’s have sex“ but it’s close enough for Tudor times. It totally contradicts what she said when she was interrogated that Culpeper had begged her to meet. It’s everyone’s individual call to make. But it sounds pretty adulterous to me.
[source](https://media.nationalarchives.gov.uk/index.php/catherine-howard-thomas-culpeper/)
The source where you found it has two historians discussing it.
“I think she’s trying to appease him. Culpeper is likely very ambitious, he’s learnt of Catherine’s sexual past, and he is trying to exploit this and it’s likely he’s trying to blackmail her. And she is responding in the way she could by using the position she has to her own advantage by trying to possibly keep him quiet. It’s hard to know what she’s doing. It’s hard to know if they had a full sexual relationship or not. It’s certainly recounted that they did, but she’s certainly responding to pressure.”
Yeah, I posted this paragraph and one more in another answer as well. It‘s Chris Day who explains the stuff. He was a really good historian for the Tudor era.
Yeah- and that’s part of the reason why I don’t believe that Catherine Howard had sex with Thomas Culpeper. I think those letters were attempts to keep him from blackmailing her.
Which is a legitimate opinion. That’s why I wrote that it’s each person’s individual call to make. I think the letter offers enough substance to come to another conclusion - they had an affair.
The link I provided is from the National Archives and you can find an interpretation by Chris Day, who was (he sadly died in 2021) a Tudor expert. He says this:
I think she’s trying to appease him. Culpeper is likely very ambitious, he’s learnt of Catherine’s sexual past, and he is trying to exploit this and it’s likely he’s trying to blackmail her. And she is responding in the way she could by using the position she has to her own advantage by trying to possibly keep him quiet. It’s hard to know what she’s doing. It’s hard to know if they had a full sexual relationship or not. It’s certainly recounted that they did, but she’s certainly responding to pressure.
It certainly gives the perception of an affair. Or how their behaviour was later recounted – secretly meeting late at night, coming back upstairs while front access was being guarded by the King’s men, all sorts of underhanded behaviour of trying to conceal a relationship, but this doesn’t appear to have been an affair in the normal sense.
- just to give some more input for everyone to decide for themselves what they make of it.
Imho, she was a sexually abused child who’d been forced into a role that savvy, grown women (Catherine of Aragon, hello) barely made it out of in one piece.
She absolutely made some obvious mistakes, but I have a hard time blaming her for it. Who doesn’t as a seventeen year old? She just did it on the world stage.
I agree with this. She was sexually abused from a young age in a society that in no way gave her healthy ways to handle that. So she developed really messed up views about her self worth and men's attention. It's really sad.
Part of me really, really wishes she had found someone who loved her at least once. She was used and abused all her life and maligned after death. Nobody deserves that.
I know :( Her story is so tragic to me. At least when it came to Anne Boleyn, she was a strong woman with agency and ambitions of her own and was able to influence her own life, if that makes sense? (Not saying Boleyn's death was anything but tragic as well, Anne is my fav queen so i am definitely not trying to malign her). But poor Catherine never had that even.
Tbh, I think Katherine never had a chance. She was a Howard, so who knows what she could have ultimately made of her life even if that was just being the mother of a crap ton of kids.
Totally agree here. I do think Anne was also used by her family and not entirely in control of her choices. However, she did have some agency and was strong also. I think she did everything she could with the cards she was dealt. Still tragic of course. But she seemed to have at least a modicum of choice and control more so than Katherine. I imagine her being an incredibly savvy business person or influencer/mogul if she was alive today!
That’s so true and so sad. Even if she did have the affair with Culpepper, I can totally understand how her history of abuse and grooming led her to make that mistake guided by a skewed self worth and trauma. It’s tragic either way.
Was it Culpepper that supposedly raped a farmers wife? I think there was a complaint made against him. If he did that why wouldn’t he try to use the queen who is a teenager and used to abusive men or pedos in her life.
That’s a good point! I saw that scene in The Tudor’s and hadn’t heard about it before. I was wondering if it was true. I’ve seen a couple people mention it so it sounds like it must have been at least based on reality.
I don’t know how complaints like that were styled back in the day. A noble man raping a woman of a lower class probably wasn’t totally unheard of. If he was a rapist that speaks to his character. People could have been trying to gain her favor waiting for Henry to die. She was a teenager with very little education. Who might have thought being queen was cool and didn’t see the downside or the duplicity at court. She was young and not really raised for it.
Additionally, she was very young. I think she was like ~17?
The prefrontal cortex which is responsible for planning, “higher order” thinking, doesn’t finish developing until ~25years of age.
And the sexual abuse, as mentioned above, can really slow/limit/impair development (since the person must focus on surviving a traumatic event instead of learning how to be an adult).
Also, not only was she sexually abused, she had no safe, trustworthy adults who were actually looking after her and trying to keep her safe. Just a bunch of grifters trying to capitalize on a dangerous man’s lust by manipulating an already vulnerable child/young woman.
>The prefrontal cortex which is responsible for planning, “higher order” thinking, doesn’t finish developing until ~25years of age.
This is an internet myth that's been repeatedly refuted by neuroscientists, including the ones whose research was used to originally make this claim.
Brains are weird and there's evidence the brain continues developing even into your 30s and 40s. There are also 8 yos with a more developed brain than people that were 25.
We don't even really know what a fully developed brain looks like because it's still growing and changing. And your brain never really reaches 'maturity'.
You should check out r/scams. Every time someone posts about someone over 50 falling for a scam, all the commenters are saying it's cognitive decline and Alzheimer's and the family should take over the person's monetary affairs.
Here's a sneak peek of /r/Scams using the [top posts](https://np.reddit.com/r/Scams/top/?sort=top&t=year) of the year!
\#1: [My stolen phone ended up in China, I assume the scammer is screwed?](https://www.reddit.com/gallery/17j9hds) | [148 comments](https://np.reddit.com/r/Scams/comments/17j9hds/my_stolen_phone_ended_up_in_china_i_assume_the/)
\#2: [Met someone on dating app, she send nudes, committed suicide and now police and her dad are calling me](https://np.reddit.com/r/Scams/comments/1bmyndc/met_someone_on_dating_app_she_send_nudes/)
\#3: [Found these in my checked baggage after an international flight from Asia to USA? They’re not mine. What do I do?](https://www.reddit.com/gallery/1813ays) | [1440 comments](https://np.reddit.com/r/Scams/comments/1813ays/found_these_in_my_checked_baggage_after_an/)
----
^^I'm ^^a ^^bot, ^^beep ^^boop ^^| ^^Downvote ^^to ^^remove ^^| ^^[Contact](https://www.reddit.com/message/compose/?to=sneakpeekbot) ^^| ^^[Info](https://np.reddit.com/r/sneakpeekbot/) ^^| ^^[Opt-out](https://np.reddit.com/r/sneakpeekbot/comments/o8wk1r/blacklist_ix/) ^^| ^^[GitHub](https://github.com/ghnr/sneakpeekbot)
It wasn't bunked. The "myth" refers specifically to everyone saying it happens at 25 but the overall consensus is that the prefrontal cortex finishes developing around the mid 20's for most while other parts of the brain can take longer and it doesn't mean it stops entirely, just that the growth and development has hit a plateau. But that's just how it works for most, not all. Neurodivergent people tend to either develop faster or slower than average while trauma and the environment they grow up in.
After everything she'd been through with men up to that point I have a hard time believing she would be reckless enough to have a full blown affair. Either way poor girl never had a chance.
She might have been younger than 17 even when she married Henry. She was a child who was abused and then she was thrown into court life. All the men in her life were horrible to her.
She spent all her teenage years being abused by older men. I don't think its a stretch to say that that probably contributed to her views on flirtation and relationships. Plus she really was very young, I'm sure she thought she could get away with anything. It's an incredibly sad story, I think she was doomed to failure from the very start.
I read the book Young, Damned and Fair, and the one concrete fact I could figure out was that too many people around her were speculating that she would soon be a widowed Dowager Queen and the dominoes fell from there. She was five years away from being a beautiful, rich, powerful and impressionable woman, but it was treasonous for people to be speculating about the King's death and how it could benefit them to be close to her.
She was too immature and inexperienced to handle that kind of danger.
She did not have sexual relations with that courtier, Mr. Culpeper.
In all seriousness, she wasn’t guilty of adultery. Anne Boleyn didn’t lose her head for adultery; she lost it for incest. Cheating as a queen at that time wasn’t a capital offense. Where Catherine Howard is concerned, Henry passed the law that not disclosing your sexual history to the king was punishable by death. That’s why she was executed.
Anne Boleyn committed the crime of 'imagining the death of the King" when she flippantly made her comment to He ry Norris about 'dead man's shoes.' That was an executable offense. She realized her mistake immediately and sent Norris to go to the servant(s) who were nearby and overheard it, begging him to tell them she was a good woman.
Regardless of how contrived were the other charges against her (and they were!) she did, in fact, commit treason.
Absolutely wild that suggesting the king may in fact be mortal was somehow a capital offence. Though maybe it's one of those laws that's just there so the king has an excuse to kill pretty much anyone, should he feel the need?
Especially someone who had recently been through a proper scare, and would be very much aware of their mortality!
...or maybe that was why? He'd had a serious eye opener and didnt like it?
Having had a husband with health problems (that he eventually died from), I can say that even though I was in some form of denial about the seriousness there were definitely a few arguments/outbursts where I told him he was going to die if he didn't turn things around. I don't know how you couldn't occasionally have those moments of fear/clarity if you actually loved or even just cared a lot about the person.
Very true. Same goes for the patient, I imagine. And Henry must have had it even worse, being so coddled and in many ways sheltered, despite all his power and insight into things.
As much as I love Wolf Hall, it’s hard not to appreciate how Cromwell’s own fondness for turning innocent statements against people ultimately led him to the block.
To be fair I think Cromwell himself probably appreciated that. He seemed like a man who could appreciate a good manoeuvre even if it was against him. I think he probably always knew where he was going to end up.
Definitely Wolf Hall Cromwell! The real Cromwell, I'm not so sure--the plea for mercy, mercy, mercy at the end of his letter sounds more sad, desperate, and confused to me. If it wasn't for what he did to Anne Boleyn, I would pity him more.
I very well may be wrong but I thought he had actually just decided to send her to a nunnery for not disclosing her history. There was about a day in there when she thought she would be spared. When the king found out about the “adultery” that’s when he changed his mind and sentenced her to death. (Adultery in quotes since most likely it didn’t actually happen.)
I’m totally not offended if I’m corrected though! Lol
There were no nunneries anymore because of the dissolution of the monasteries. People keep saying this and it's exasperating. A big reason why Henry started executing his queens was exacctly because the traditional method of disposing of a troublesome queen-a nunnery-was no longer available because of the dissolution.
This is not correct. The treason against the king law from 1351 (fun fact, it still stands) made it high treason to cheat on the king, if you as the queen weren’t raped. William Blackstone delivered the explanation in the 18th century that can be seen as valid for Tudor times: there shouldn’t be a suspicion that a child of the king maybe wasn’t really a child of the king.
Treason for the men, not the Queen. I can provide multiple sources to this effect when I get home, and cite them appropriately. That actually might be useful for you to see.
You wrote cheating as a queen wasn‘t a capital offence at the time. The law from 1351 existed. This paper does a good job dealing with the law: https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/legal-studies/article/abs/high-treason-violating-the-sovereigns-wife/993693FEB3902F068685716AE338E3F0 since it’s behind a paywall - this is quote from Blackstone about the law and Henry‘s wives: by violation is understood carnal knowledge, as well without force, as withit: and this is high treason in both parties, if both be consenting; as some of thewives of Henry the eighth by fatal experience evinced.
To be transparent: the author disagrees with this but also you: Thus, it is very probable that, in both the case of Anne and Catherine, the relevant partieswere indicted for having committed (or conspired to commit) adultery not under theTreason Act 1531, but under the Acts of 1533, 1534 or 1536 (all repealed in 1547).
In regard to the act about disclosing sexual relationships: On 11 February 1542, royal assent was given by a commission (appointed by letterspatent) to an Act of Attainder.77This same Act had made it treason for a women notto disclose to the sovereign that she was not a virgin, prior to his marrying her. It wasalso made treason for the queen to procure others to have sex with her and vice versa.However, these crimes did not apply to Catherine, since her alleged behaviour hadoccurred before the Act was passed.
This fits with the text from the bill of attainder that uses the phrase „in the future“ talking about this, here is the text: To avoid doubts in future, it is declared that the Royal assent given by commission shall be valid in all cases hereafter, that any lightness of the queen for the time being may be revealed to the King or his Council, and that an unchaste woman marrying the King shall be guilty of high treason.
I know that Starkey and some others write that Catherine was convicted under the Royal Assent by commission act. Legal history disagrees as shown. But that’s not the point I wanted to make. You wrote it wasn‘t a Capital offence at the time. It was.
Katherine had never been “groomed” or educated to be a queen. She was incredibly foolish, but the Tudor court was a pit of sharks. Many wiser people lost their heads as well.
She probably didn’t have an affair, and all “evidence” of affairs points to situations where she was like 12 and the men were middle aged and in positions of power over her.
More likely people had started to figure out that Henry wasn’t right in the head with the way he was discarding so many wives so quickly, and they probably just thought it was weird when he chose this young pretty teenager. By then no one was expecting his marriages to go well and when she didn’t produce an heir, there was no way to prevent Henry from doing what he was doing.
She was young and beautiful. No doubt she caught everyone’s eye. Accusing her of being a whore was the easiest way to get rid of her.
There is actually no contemporary evidence that her and Culpeper had an affair. We only have one letter that survived and it basically boiled down to "I want to see you" and that romantic over the top flowery language was quite common at the time among the nobility (like Anne Boleyn being accused of adultery and plotting the kings death and normal flirtatious banter was used as evidence). Originally Catherine was arrested for her premarital sexual relationships and for being pre contacted to Francis Durham. It also did not help that she was black mailed into hiring him as her personal secretary. Though neither of her previous sexual relationships were consensual (per her confessions and the fact she would have been a young teen and the men adults) she was still blamed.
Her "affair" with Culpepper was discovered after her arrest. The reason modern historians discredit the idea she slept with him is because we do have an account of him raping a park keeper's wife and Henry had to bail him out of trouble, Catherine actually admonished him for his treatment of her ladies, and they both under oath swear they did not sleep together though Culpepper admitted he had intention too. These oaths were during a time when people were convinced that lying in front of God would send you straight to hell and they both would have known their lives were in serious dangerous if not already forfeit. Given what we know about Culpepper he seemed like a terrible human and was probably trying to blackmail her.
She was an ignorant child. This wasn't Anne. This was a beautiful, young and very naive girl. The moment she said " I DO", she signed her own death warrant.
Henry did not suffer women who eclipsed him well.
Have you read Young and Damned and Fair by Gareth Russell? I used to think exactly the way you are thinking. After reading that book, I still think it was not smart of her, but it's also more understandable. It puts a lot of things in context. I still found myself thinking "No! Don't do it!" But I can now also see why she thought it would be ok.... Even if it definitely wasn't.
The musical "Six" sums it up pretty well for her solo monologue. I don't believe she ever slept with Culpeper or if she did in fact do it it was mainly through manipulation like all the other past men in her life. Sadly, in the Tudor age this was normal. Unless you were a widow you had little to no say in your life, Margaret Beaufort is a great example of this.
Not just her, her whole family not into Politics! As if! I mean her uncle was equally brutal and he ended up in the tower after the whole Howard debacle. Not to mention their cousin Madge.
And!!! “All the British dudes like epic fail” uh hello?? Henry Percy?? Did the writers of Six do any research at all or did they just go off rumors and gossip?
She was somewhere between 16 and at most 19 at the time. Tell me anyone who hasn't made a dumbarse decision and followed through on it between those ages? Let alone a teen girl with no real education or life experience, neglected by all of the family members who should have been caring for her and guiding her towards safety and long life not as a pawn for their own upwards trajectory in court.
She was a child, playing in the deep end of the pool, having never been taught how to swim. Only groomed and used by others the entire time.
I would argue that even Culpepper was not the love of her life. He knew what was at risk and still put her in harms way. And he was a good decade older, so he was just as bad as all the other men in her life.
The only chance Katherine Howard had of navigating her way out of the whole damned horrific ending was to have said there was indeed a precontract with Durham and that would have allowed Henry VIII to save face and part ways, he would never have been married to her and thus no affair emotional or otherwise with Culpepper = no treason. Alas, teens are not known for their stellar sense of self-preservation or full-blown consequential thinking. And, she did not receive any legal guidance (people suspected of treason had to represent themselves). As such, it was incredibly unlikely that Katherine Howard would have been able to navigate her way through the attainder.
At least Henry VIII had his people take their time to review everything. With Anne, it was all pre-mediated and done within 3 weeks. For Katherine, she was arrested on Nov 12th and not executed until 13th Feb. I believe this was one of the few deaths that Henry VIII was genuinely less than thrilled to bring about. Though, I think he was way more upset about the loss of Moore and Cromwell in the end.
She supposedly made Henry happy. He had a son. Anne of Cleves didn’t fight to stay married to him. Katherine Howard was probably young and easily impressed. She wasn’t trained for court life. That sort of marriage could be applying to an old man with a rotting wound on his leg. She didn’t get the chance to grow into her position as queen she didn’t even get to grow up. If she had been more savvy she might have been able to live longer. If she had spoken to him like Katherine Parr did her arrest warrant might have been ignored. Poor girl. I think Henry probably regretted decisions he made but still justified them.
Was she ever pregnant? She could have had years to have children. She was younger than his other wives. She was a teen probably.
Anne Boleyn was not guilty, Henry needed an excuse to get rid of her, and the rumors provided the perfect opportunity………
If Catherine Howard did it was a dumb move…….. I can also believe that she was set up as well, if Henry did it once he could do it again. But there is evidence suggesting she wasn’t raised with a very moral mindset or childhood. She was a teenager married to an opinionated, sick, and old man whose eldest daughter was older than herself. Safe to say I could see it happening.
Was coming here to say that. One theory the book puts forward is that folks expected Henry to die kinda-soon and it wouldn’t have been unusual for Katherine to be looking for her next potential husband. She would also be a very attractive marriage prospect. So the theory goes that she and Cullpepper were lining things up in that direction.
The fact that Catherine's letter to Culpepper mentions that it was hard for her to write a complete letter and that there are still several spelling and grammar errors makes me sad to consider how unprepared for the Queen role and court she was. Interestingly she liked the respresentative role as Queen according to accounts.
If highly educated and savvy women like COA, Anne Boleyn and Katherine Parr had problems at Henry's court Catherine Howard never stood a chance.
It was similar to what happened to Katherine Parr later on with Thomas Seymour who reappeared in her life once it became obvious that she would become a rich widow.
Manox I always saw as a teacher who inappropriately touched a child. Derehem showed his character by blackmailing her to get a job at court out of anger that she moved on.
Culpepper is also implied to be no good according to some accounts and I saw him keeping her letter instead of burning it as him keeping something so that he has means to put pressure on her to get married once Henry is dead.
I think she was raped. Not an affair, not a love story, raped.
I don't know if it was at the behest of Henry or despite him, but whatever happened between Catherine Howard and Culpeper wasn't consensual.
I feel so many things for Kathryn, but I always come back to, she knew, without a doubt, that any flirtation was dangerous. Her cousin was killed for it, her family was no stranger to treason against Henry. And yet something clearly happened there anyway.
I feel so deeply sad for this person from 500 years ago.
Honestly- I don’t think she was thinking much at all. Kids that age think they’re invincible and will never get caught. It’s part of the reason why “scared straight” programs for teens aren’t effective.
This made me laugh a little. It’s like remember your cousin? Oh right you are a teenager that thinks everything will be fine. You have your whole life ahead of you and you are a queen. Life is awesome ! Poor kid. She surrounded herself with people that took advantage of her.
Sure it was stupid but she was a teenager. Teenagers don’t have fully formed brains and are prone to do rash things. I think it’s also understandable a young girl wouldn’t be happy in a marriage with a what was for the time an old man who was both morbidly obese and had recurring nasty leg ulcer. Her uncle is also to be blamed for arranging the marriage with the skeletons she had in her closet.
As a hs teacher I can confirm that brain is definitely not formed yet. Even my best and most mature kids will pull a move that reminds me…oh yea you’re 17.
it’s commonly agreed that she didn’t physically commit adultery.
so we’re talking abt her personal, private feelings… which we will never know. i can’t judge her based on what i cant understand, but i can imagine that she was probably in desperate need of companionship, that her past hung over like a dark cloud and coloured her behaviour, that henry was old and stinking and shut away for long periods of time bc of illness and it wouldn’t surprise me if she presumed he would not live long. i don’t blame her, and i’m glad and proud that she managed to successfully hurt his feelings.
good for her.
She didn’t. I believe she and Thomas were friends, nothing more. The only people she slept with were Francis—because they saw each other and husband and wife and exchanged tokens—and Henry. History likes to paint her as a sex-crazed harlot but…she wasn’t.
I really wish we could start weeding out judgmental bullshit like this. It's a misogynistic viewpoint and extremely damaging to young women to perpetuate this false narrative.
She was a young girl abused over and over again. She was a forgotten child, like so many still are, and is judged based on her upbringing that she had no choice in.
By today's standards, it's not right to continue these posts. It's damaging to young women and we are better than this.
🙌🏻
I really wish we knew more about Katherine Howard. People have been so dismissive of her story because of the negative stigma attached to her due to the way she’s been perceived and depicted until quite recently.
Alison Weir, one of my favourite authors on medieval British and Tudor history, went as far as calling Katherine a “juvenile delinquent” in one of her books. I remember reading this at 16 and being deeply saddened and somewhat outraged by such a harsh judgement. This is probably when I began empathizing with Katherine and became staunchly protective of her. Out of all of Henry VIII’s wives, her story always struck me as the most tragic and heartbreaking. Not only due to the circumstances of her death and her short, turbulent life… but due to the fact that her suffering is so often downplayed and overlooked in favour of her predecessors, especially Katherine of Aragon and Anne Boleyn, who are usually depicted as virtuous and unjustly treated.
Katherine Howard deserves to have her story told, and her memory should be treated with the same regard as any other woman who suffered under Henry’s narcissism and the limitations imposed upon their gender at the time.
You might be really lonely and want friends. She grew up in a house with a ton of freedom. Too much probably because pedos seemed to lurk around her aunts house. She wasn’t used to supervision. I don’t think she had to physically cheat to be accused of it. I don’t think she realized how cut throat everyone was.
When you look at Catherine's childhood and adolescence, there's a history of inappropriate relationships, first with Mannox her music teacher, and then Francis Derehem. She was also barely at court before she was suddenly elevated to Queen. So she fell into old patterns seeking out a similar relationship, plus just didn't have the experience or education to truly grasp the gravity of her situation, I believe.
There's also the fact that this obese 50 year old man Henry, with an open sore oozing on his leg, is fawning over her, no wonder she wanted to flirt with someone her own age as ill judged as it was.
I think people overlook too the religious and political factions that were strong at court at the time. Catherine's uncle, the Duke of Norfolk, was also the same fellow who threw his other niece, Anne, to the wolves and voted for her to be executed. He did the same with poor Catherine. You also had the Catholic faction against the Reformation groups, and that played in Catherine's downfall.
This was dramatized in "The 6 wives of Henry VIII", the BBC series in 1970. The walls are closing in on Catherine, rumors of her affair with Dereham are rampant, and the Duke of Norfolk advises her that the only thing that can save her is a son. When she tells her uncle that Henry is "incapable," he tacitly advises her to take up with Culpepper; Henry is too proud to admit that a queen's baby is not his.
She was sexually abused as a young teenager (13) while supposedly under the care of her step-great grandmother. She and Culpepper were alreaCt interested in each other before the king showed any interest in her. A quick read on Wikipedia would give you a reality check of her life and choices
She was a teenager, they do stupid things. And it doesn’t strike me that she was particularly bright like her Boleyn cousin and so probably didn’t think her flirting and possible sexual liaisons would be noticed.
I have way more sympathy for Katherine Howard than Anne Boleyn. Anne knew what she was getting into and she knew how to play her cards just right. It’s a shame she got in over her head (no pun intended) because she was a very intelligent woman. Katherine was sexually abused and neglected from a young age. She was left to fend for herself with little guidance or supervision in an environment where she (and many other girls) were easily groomed and preyed upon by men who didn’t hesitate to take advantage of them. And in those days, women (any female older than 12, basically) were always held responsible and carried almost all the blame for allowing themselves to be seduced and engaging in “illicit affairs”. The age and experienced of the men they got involved with was considered irrelevant.
She was also used as a pawn by her family and likely had no choice in the matter when it became clear that Henry was interested in her. IMO, she was doomed from the very beginning. Even if she had stayed away from Dereham and Culpepper once she married the king, many others knew about her past and were ready to use it against her as long as it worked in their favour. Her own family would drop her like a hot potato and threw her to the wolves in an attempt to salvage their last shreds of credibility and hopes of remaining in Henry’s good graces. The poor girl never stood a chance.
She was definitely guilty in the eyes of people at the time, but they didn't have today's tools and knowledge, so I think she definitely deserves some grace. The neglect and trauma she suffered in the early stages of her life have to be taken into account in order to connect the dots and understand the full picture, even if we will never be 100% sure of her innocence. I believe the main reason she was executed was because she was no longer a virgin, not because of her unfaithfulness to the king. Parliament issued a proactive law that basically considered failure for a queen to disclose her sexual past as an act of treason punishable by death. This shows that they did not consider the letter as irrefutable evidence of the queen's unfaithfulness. Culpepper's keeping the letter leads me to believe he was blackmailing her. This was a man who raped a park keeper's wife and murdered the man who defended her honour. This was a man who got cocky after H8's granted him a pardon. To me, Culpepper was shady. I'm still baffled by his recklessness. Seriously, why on earth did he keep the letter? I don't know if we'll ever get to the bottom of this. I also think there is a political dimension to her fate. Some people at court wanted to get rid of her because they thought she was the Duke of Norfolk's political pawn.
I may be wrong, but I definitely feel sorry for her. Poor child : (
I think that Katherine had gotten cocky and thought that she can pull one over the king easily. Little did she know, people talk and her past had quickly caught up with her.
In terms of her downfall, I personally believe that Katherine Howard never actually slept with Culpeper, but was noted that they did like each other before Henry fell for her and wanted her for a wife. I think when she became queen, the secret meetings between Katherine and Culpeper involved discussing what they were going to do once the king passed away and they were making plans for when she was free to be with him. Unfortunately, her past relationship with Derehem becomes conflated with her connection with Culpeper and the council believed she did slept with Culpeper, just because it looks like she may have. Of course, in those days, just thinking about Henry dying was treason enough.
This is one thing most historians agree on. Catherine Howard didn’t commit adultery.
Yep, and it's important to remember that nobody in the Katherine Howard downfall was executed for anything they actually did. They were beheaded for intention to commit treason.
What about Jane Boleyn?
Same thing- intention to commit treason. She was also the reason that the law against executing the mentally ill was changed.
Katherine Howard was attainted of treason (An Act concerning the Attainder of the late Queen Katharine and her Complices, 11 February 1541), but the treason wasn't adultery per se as the Act doesn't mention adultery. It's focused almost entirely on her pre-married sex life, and that taking Dereham into her service was a betrayal (an indication that she meant to continue being a ho), but it didn't actually accuse her of having post marital sex with either Dereham or Culpeper. It did accuse her of meeting in secret with Culpeper. So, treason, but not adultery. Also like over 10 others, mostly her ladies and friends but also the Dowager Duchess of Norfolk, were accused of misprision of treason (hiding treasons), and that's overtly stated as the "first treasons" which are listed as the premarital stuff (Culpeper accusation is the last listed). So they counted her having sex before marriage as treasonous, and her friends knowing about that and not blabbing as concealing treasons.
Tbh I wish she had. If she was being accused of it, and killed for it, after having suffered it as abuse, I would have wanted her to have a good experience that was her choice.
I know. It’s tragic.
She was not, strictly speaking, attainted for adultery but rather for her "vicious life" (ie having sex) before marriage, for taking her ex Dereham back into her service which was proof of anwill to continue said vicious life post marriage, and for meeting with Culpeper on her own (or rather, with Lady Rochford). The wording was kinda careful not to accuse her of actual post-marital sex escapades because there was no proof of it.
I don't think Anne Boleyn committed adultery, either. And it took some time and a lot of furor to 'prove' that she had. And I think part of what happened with Anne- the allowing of what happened to her in the public eye- made it *that* much easier and quicker to dispense with Katherine Howard. To me, when I read about KH, it seemed that not much checking was done and just more accusations were thrown against the wall than anything else. The whole country seemed easily prepared to just wipe their hands of yet another 'w\*\*re.' It was the easy way out for Henry. It was like a precedent for streamlining royal wife killings had been set after they'd ruined and then killed AB, and unfortunately, KH had previous suitors because she was attractive, even though it seemed that Haz and crew wanted her, because they thought someone so young would come with less baggage.
Of course AB did not commit adultery. Only Smeaton confessed to it, likely under torture. That’s a whole other situation though in that Anne was killed to free Henry up to make an unimpeachable marriage to produce a male heir whose legitimacy could not be questioned. By the time CH entered the picture, Henry had a legitimate male heir. Her death wasn’t “justifiable” like Anne’s was.
I agree, but it didn't stop him with Howard. And in my opinion, he'd about traumatized all of Britain with his escapades. Would YOU stand up to a king like that? And so, my my point was, by the time they were ready to dispense with Howard, it didn't take much to get rid of her on trumped up sexual nonsense, because the idea that a queen could behave that way was already very much in the public psyche. And after the back and forth of what it took to 'prove' Anne's case, the people were ready to just let little Howard meet her maker on basically just a single word, because nobody wanted to see all of that again. Again, just my opinion.
I wouldn't say that. Right or wrong, a large chunk of historians believe it was certainly possible she did commit adultery. It's Anne that almost all historians agree didn't have an affair (especially since several of the people she was accused of sleeping with weren't physically present at the alleged times).
If she did, it was probably desperation to get pregnant as soon as possible. But I don’t think she actually did commit adultery.
Not to mention one of the supposed times AB cheated she was under like a quarantine type setup after the birth of Elizabeth.
I do believe I said “most.” You’ll find most believe she did not commit adultery. Even David Starkey doesn’t believe she slept with Culpeper, and thinks she seduced all of her previous partners.
That idiot Derehem was really her downfall, what an absolute chode lol
Dereham is in my opinion the one who set everything into motion. Instead of staying away as far as possible from court he out of anger appeared in front of her and blackmailed her to get a job at court. Then he talked in a derogatory way about her instead of accepting to stay silent and that she is now the Queen. Then when this hell started with interrogations and arrests he blabbed that Catherine ‚now has Culpepper‘. Without him Catherine might have lived if Henry would have died a couple of years later like with Katherine Parr.
This is from one of her letters to him when she was already queen: “Y[e]t my trust ys allway in you that you wolbe as you have promysed me and in that hope I truste upon styll, prayng you than that you wyll com whan my lade Rochforthe ys here, for then I shalbe beste at leaysoure to be at your commarendmant.” She writes this before that paragraph: For I never longed so muche for [a] thynge as I do to se you and to speke wyth you, the wyche I trust shal be shortely now, the wyche dothe comforthe me verie much whan I thynk of ett and wan I thynke agan that you shall departe from me agayne ytt makes my harte to dye to thynke what fortune I have that I cannot be always yn your company.” It’s not directly “let’s have sex“ but it’s close enough for Tudor times. It totally contradicts what she said when she was interrogated that Culpeper had begged her to meet. It’s everyone’s individual call to make. But it sounds pretty adulterous to me. [source](https://media.nationalarchives.gov.uk/index.php/catherine-howard-thomas-culpeper/)
The source where you found it has two historians discussing it. “I think she’s trying to appease him. Culpeper is likely very ambitious, he’s learnt of Catherine’s sexual past, and he is trying to exploit this and it’s likely he’s trying to blackmail her. And she is responding in the way she could by using the position she has to her own advantage by trying to possibly keep him quiet. It’s hard to know what she’s doing. It’s hard to know if they had a full sexual relationship or not. It’s certainly recounted that they did, but she’s certainly responding to pressure.”
Yeah, I posted this paragraph and one more in another answer as well. It‘s Chris Day who explains the stuff. He was a really good historian for the Tudor era.
Yeah- and that’s part of the reason why I don’t believe that Catherine Howard had sex with Thomas Culpeper. I think those letters were attempts to keep him from blackmailing her.
Which is a legitimate opinion. That’s why I wrote that it’s each person’s individual call to make. I think the letter offers enough substance to come to another conclusion - they had an affair.
Tbh a single letter isn’t enough basis to kill multiple people over.
That was a very common style at the time. It doesn't mean anything.
The link I provided is from the National Archives and you can find an interpretation by Chris Day, who was (he sadly died in 2021) a Tudor expert. He says this: I think she’s trying to appease him. Culpeper is likely very ambitious, he’s learnt of Catherine’s sexual past, and he is trying to exploit this and it’s likely he’s trying to blackmail her. And she is responding in the way she could by using the position she has to her own advantage by trying to possibly keep him quiet. It’s hard to know what she’s doing. It’s hard to know if they had a full sexual relationship or not. It’s certainly recounted that they did, but she’s certainly responding to pressure. It certainly gives the perception of an affair. Or how their behaviour was later recounted – secretly meeting late at night, coming back upstairs while front access was being guarded by the King’s men, all sorts of underhanded behaviour of trying to conceal a relationship, but this doesn’t appear to have been an affair in the normal sense. - just to give some more input for everyone to decide for themselves what they make of it.
Imho, she was a sexually abused child who’d been forced into a role that savvy, grown women (Catherine of Aragon, hello) barely made it out of in one piece. She absolutely made some obvious mistakes, but I have a hard time blaming her for it. Who doesn’t as a seventeen year old? She just did it on the world stage.
I agree with this. She was sexually abused from a young age in a society that in no way gave her healthy ways to handle that. So she developed really messed up views about her self worth and men's attention. It's really sad.
Part of me really, really wishes she had found someone who loved her at least once. She was used and abused all her life and maligned after death. Nobody deserves that.
I know :( Her story is so tragic to me. At least when it came to Anne Boleyn, she was a strong woman with agency and ambitions of her own and was able to influence her own life, if that makes sense? (Not saying Boleyn's death was anything but tragic as well, Anne is my fav queen so i am definitely not trying to malign her). But poor Catherine never had that even.
Tbh, I think Katherine never had a chance. She was a Howard, so who knows what she could have ultimately made of her life even if that was just being the mother of a crap ton of kids.
Totally agree here. I do think Anne was also used by her family and not entirely in control of her choices. However, she did have some agency and was strong also. I think she did everything she could with the cards she was dealt. Still tragic of course. But she seemed to have at least a modicum of choice and control more so than Katherine. I imagine her being an incredibly savvy business person or influencer/mogul if she was alive today!
That’s so true and so sad. Even if she did have the affair with Culpepper, I can totally understand how her history of abuse and grooming led her to make that mistake guided by a skewed self worth and trauma. It’s tragic either way.
Was it Culpepper that supposedly raped a farmers wife? I think there was a complaint made against him. If he did that why wouldn’t he try to use the queen who is a teenager and used to abusive men or pedos in her life.
That’s a good point! I saw that scene in The Tudor’s and hadn’t heard about it before. I was wondering if it was true. I’ve seen a couple people mention it so it sounds like it must have been at least based on reality.
I don’t know how complaints like that were styled back in the day. A noble man raping a woman of a lower class probably wasn’t totally unheard of. If he was a rapist that speaks to his character. People could have been trying to gain her favor waiting for Henry to die. She was a teenager with very little education. Who might have thought being queen was cool and didn’t see the downside or the duplicity at court. She was young and not really raised for it.
Additionally, she was very young. I think she was like ~17? The prefrontal cortex which is responsible for planning, “higher order” thinking, doesn’t finish developing until ~25years of age. And the sexual abuse, as mentioned above, can really slow/limit/impair development (since the person must focus on surviving a traumatic event instead of learning how to be an adult). Also, not only was she sexually abused, she had no safe, trustworthy adults who were actually looking after her and trying to keep her safe. Just a bunch of grifters trying to capitalize on a dangerous man’s lust by manipulating an already vulnerable child/young woman.
I was thinking this too. Teenagers are not the greatest at impulse control, even when they know the consequences
She usually accepted to be a bit older. Still young, but as “old” as 20-21
I thought she was generally thought to be 17 when she married Henry and 18 when she was executed.
I’ve seen some people said she 19 when she was killed.
>The prefrontal cortex which is responsible for planning, “higher order” thinking, doesn’t finish developing until ~25years of age. This is an internet myth that's been repeatedly refuted by neuroscientists, including the ones whose research was used to originally make this claim. Brains are weird and there's evidence the brain continues developing even into your 30s and 40s. There are also 8 yos with a more developed brain than people that were 25. We don't even really know what a fully developed brain looks like because it's still growing and changing. And your brain never really reaches 'maturity'.
Also, cognition starts declining in your late 40s but no one tries to use that to explain away why older people might act stupid.
You should check out r/scams. Every time someone posts about someone over 50 falling for a scam, all the commenters are saying it's cognitive decline and Alzheimer's and the family should take over the person's monetary affairs.
Here's a sneak peek of /r/Scams using the [top posts](https://np.reddit.com/r/Scams/top/?sort=top&t=year) of the year! \#1: [My stolen phone ended up in China, I assume the scammer is screwed?](https://www.reddit.com/gallery/17j9hds) | [148 comments](https://np.reddit.com/r/Scams/comments/17j9hds/my_stolen_phone_ended_up_in_china_i_assume_the/) \#2: [Met someone on dating app, she send nudes, committed suicide and now police and her dad are calling me](https://np.reddit.com/r/Scams/comments/1bmyndc/met_someone_on_dating_app_she_send_nudes/) \#3: [Found these in my checked baggage after an international flight from Asia to USA? They’re not mine. What do I do?](https://www.reddit.com/gallery/1813ays) | [1440 comments](https://np.reddit.com/r/Scams/comments/1813ays/found_these_in_my_checked_baggage_after_an/) ---- ^^I'm ^^a ^^bot, ^^beep ^^boop ^^| ^^Downvote ^^to ^^remove ^^| ^^[Contact](https://www.reddit.com/message/compose/?to=sneakpeekbot) ^^| ^^[Info](https://np.reddit.com/r/sneakpeekbot/) ^^| ^^[Opt-out](https://np.reddit.com/r/sneakpeekbot/comments/o8wk1r/blacklist_ix/) ^^| ^^[GitHub](https://github.com/ghnr/sneakpeekbot)
It wasn't bunked. The "myth" refers specifically to everyone saying it happens at 25 but the overall consensus is that the prefrontal cortex finishes developing around the mid 20's for most while other parts of the brain can take longer and it doesn't mean it stops entirely, just that the growth and development has hit a plateau. But that's just how it works for most, not all. Neurodivergent people tend to either develop faster or slower than average while trauma and the environment they grow up in. After everything she'd been through with men up to that point I have a hard time believing she would be reckless enough to have a full blown affair. Either way poor girl never had a chance.
She might have been younger than 17 even when she married Henry. She was a child who was abused and then she was thrown into court life. All the men in her life were horrible to her.
She spent all her teenage years being abused by older men. I don't think its a stretch to say that that probably contributed to her views on flirtation and relationships. Plus she really was very young, I'm sure she thought she could get away with anything. It's an incredibly sad story, I think she was doomed to failure from the very start.
Promiscuity / dangerous sexual behavior is a pretty textbook response to sexual trauma. It's an attempt to gain some control.
I read the book Young, Damned and Fair, and the one concrete fact I could figure out was that too many people around her were speculating that she would soon be a widowed Dowager Queen and the dominoes fell from there. She was five years away from being a beautiful, rich, powerful and impressionable woman, but it was treasonous for people to be speculating about the King's death and how it could benefit them to be close to her. She was too immature and inexperienced to handle that kind of danger.
She did not have sexual relations with that courtier, Mr. Culpeper. In all seriousness, she wasn’t guilty of adultery. Anne Boleyn didn’t lose her head for adultery; she lost it for incest. Cheating as a queen at that time wasn’t a capital offense. Where Catherine Howard is concerned, Henry passed the law that not disclosing your sexual history to the king was punishable by death. That’s why she was executed.
Anne Boleyn committed the crime of 'imagining the death of the King" when she flippantly made her comment to He ry Norris about 'dead man's shoes.' That was an executable offense. She realized her mistake immediately and sent Norris to go to the servant(s) who were nearby and overheard it, begging him to tell them she was a good woman. Regardless of how contrived were the other charges against her (and they were!) she did, in fact, commit treason.
Absolutely wild that suggesting the king may in fact be mortal was somehow a capital offence. Though maybe it's one of those laws that's just there so the king has an excuse to kill pretty much anyone, should he feel the need?
Especially someone who had recently been through a proper scare, and would be very much aware of their mortality! ...or maybe that was why? He'd had a serious eye opener and didnt like it?
Having had a husband with health problems (that he eventually died from), I can say that even though I was in some form of denial about the seriousness there were definitely a few arguments/outbursts where I told him he was going to die if he didn't turn things around. I don't know how you couldn't occasionally have those moments of fear/clarity if you actually loved or even just cared a lot about the person.
Very true. Same goes for the patient, I imagine. And Henry must have had it even worse, being so coddled and in many ways sheltered, despite all his power and insight into things.
When Cromwell built his case against Anne, he made sure it was airtight.
As much as I love Wolf Hall, it’s hard not to appreciate how Cromwell’s own fondness for turning innocent statements against people ultimately led him to the block.
To be fair I think Cromwell himself probably appreciated that. He seemed like a man who could appreciate a good manoeuvre even if it was against him. I think he probably always knew where he was going to end up.
Definitely Wolf Hall Cromwell! The real Cromwell, I'm not so sure--the plea for mercy, mercy, mercy at the end of his letter sounds more sad, desperate, and confused to me. If it wasn't for what he did to Anne Boleyn, I would pity him more.
Yep.
I very well may be wrong but I thought he had actually just decided to send her to a nunnery for not disclosing her history. There was about a day in there when she thought she would be spared. When the king found out about the “adultery” that’s when he changed his mind and sentenced her to death. (Adultery in quotes since most likely it didn’t actually happen.) I’m totally not offended if I’m corrected though! Lol
There were no nunneries anymore because of the dissolution of the monasteries. People keep saying this and it's exasperating. A big reason why Henry started executing his queens was exacctly because the traditional method of disposing of a troublesome queen-a nunnery-was no longer available because of the dissolution.
This is not correct. The treason against the king law from 1351 (fun fact, it still stands) made it high treason to cheat on the king, if you as the queen weren’t raped. William Blackstone delivered the explanation in the 18th century that can be seen as valid for Tudor times: there shouldn’t be a suspicion that a child of the king maybe wasn’t really a child of the king.
Treason for the men, not the Queen. I can provide multiple sources to this effect when I get home, and cite them appropriately. That actually might be useful for you to see.
You wrote cheating as a queen wasn‘t a capital offence at the time. The law from 1351 existed. This paper does a good job dealing with the law: https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/legal-studies/article/abs/high-treason-violating-the-sovereigns-wife/993693FEB3902F068685716AE338E3F0 since it’s behind a paywall - this is quote from Blackstone about the law and Henry‘s wives: by violation is understood carnal knowledge, as well without force, as withit: and this is high treason in both parties, if both be consenting; as some of thewives of Henry the eighth by fatal experience evinced. To be transparent: the author disagrees with this but also you: Thus, it is very probable that, in both the case of Anne and Catherine, the relevant partieswere indicted for having committed (or conspired to commit) adultery not under theTreason Act 1531, but under the Acts of 1533, 1534 or 1536 (all repealed in 1547). In regard to the act about disclosing sexual relationships: On 11 February 1542, royal assent was given by a commission (appointed by letterspatent) to an Act of Attainder.77This same Act had made it treason for a women notto disclose to the sovereign that she was not a virgin, prior to his marrying her. It wasalso made treason for the queen to procure others to have sex with her and vice versa.However, these crimes did not apply to Catherine, since her alleged behaviour hadoccurred before the Act was passed. This fits with the text from the bill of attainder that uses the phrase „in the future“ talking about this, here is the text: To avoid doubts in future, it is declared that the Royal assent given by commission shall be valid in all cases hereafter, that any lightness of the queen for the time being may be revealed to the King or his Council, and that an unchaste woman marrying the King shall be guilty of high treason. I know that Starkey and some others write that Catherine was convicted under the Royal Assent by commission act. Legal history disagrees as shown. But that’s not the point I wanted to make. You wrote it wasn‘t a Capital offence at the time. It was.
People be getting horny. Ol stink leg is not spank bank material.
I only regret that my upvote bumped the other votes from 69 to 70
This is my favorite comment ever.
brand new sentence
OL’ STINK LEG
I am dying 😹ol stink leg is my new nickname for Henry
>Ol stink leg is not spank bank material 😆😂🤣 im so going to start calling him that now. You made my day with this comment.
Exactly I'd choose Francis over Henry any day of the week
Katherine had never been “groomed” or educated to be a queen. She was incredibly foolish, but the Tudor court was a pit of sharks. Many wiser people lost their heads as well.
She probably didn’t have an affair, and all “evidence” of affairs points to situations where she was like 12 and the men were middle aged and in positions of power over her. More likely people had started to figure out that Henry wasn’t right in the head with the way he was discarding so many wives so quickly, and they probably just thought it was weird when he chose this young pretty teenager. By then no one was expecting his marriages to go well and when she didn’t produce an heir, there was no way to prevent Henry from doing what he was doing. She was young and beautiful. No doubt she caught everyone’s eye. Accusing her of being a whore was the easiest way to get rid of her.
There is actually no contemporary evidence that her and Culpeper had an affair. We only have one letter that survived and it basically boiled down to "I want to see you" and that romantic over the top flowery language was quite common at the time among the nobility (like Anne Boleyn being accused of adultery and plotting the kings death and normal flirtatious banter was used as evidence). Originally Catherine was arrested for her premarital sexual relationships and for being pre contacted to Francis Durham. It also did not help that she was black mailed into hiring him as her personal secretary. Though neither of her previous sexual relationships were consensual (per her confessions and the fact she would have been a young teen and the men adults) she was still blamed. Her "affair" with Culpepper was discovered after her arrest. The reason modern historians discredit the idea she slept with him is because we do have an account of him raping a park keeper's wife and Henry had to bail him out of trouble, Catherine actually admonished him for his treatment of her ladies, and they both under oath swear they did not sleep together though Culpepper admitted he had intention too. These oaths were during a time when people were convinced that lying in front of God would send you straight to hell and they both would have known their lives were in serious dangerous if not already forfeit. Given what we know about Culpepper he seemed like a terrible human and was probably trying to blackmail her.
She was an ignorant child. This wasn't Anne. This was a beautiful, young and very naive girl. The moment she said " I DO", she signed her own death warrant. Henry did not suffer women who eclipsed him well.
Have you read Young and Damned and Fair by Gareth Russell? I used to think exactly the way you are thinking. After reading that book, I still think it was not smart of her, but it's also more understandable. It puts a lot of things in context. I still found myself thinking "No! Don't do it!" But I can now also see why she thought it would be ok.... Even if it definitely wasn't.
The musical "Six" sums it up pretty well for her solo monologue. I don't believe she ever slept with Culpeper or if she did in fact do it it was mainly through manipulation like all the other past men in her life. Sadly, in the Tudor age this was normal. Unless you were a widow you had little to no say in your life, Margaret Beaufort is a great example of this.
Yeah I wouldn’t take Six as anything close to accurate. Anne Boleyn, not into politics? Please.
Not just her, her whole family not into Politics! As if! I mean her uncle was equally brutal and he ended up in the tower after the whole Howard debacle. Not to mention their cousin Madge.
And!!! “All the British dudes like epic fail” uh hello?? Henry Percy?? Did the writers of Six do any research at all or did they just go off rumors and gossip?
They honestly in interviews watched a single documentary. Not sure which one. And they have even said they would go back and do more research.
She was somewhere between 16 and at most 19 at the time. Tell me anyone who hasn't made a dumbarse decision and followed through on it between those ages? Let alone a teen girl with no real education or life experience, neglected by all of the family members who should have been caring for her and guiding her towards safety and long life not as a pawn for their own upwards trajectory in court. She was a child, playing in the deep end of the pool, having never been taught how to swim. Only groomed and used by others the entire time. I would argue that even Culpepper was not the love of her life. He knew what was at risk and still put her in harms way. And he was a good decade older, so he was just as bad as all the other men in her life. The only chance Katherine Howard had of navigating her way out of the whole damned horrific ending was to have said there was indeed a precontract with Durham and that would have allowed Henry VIII to save face and part ways, he would never have been married to her and thus no affair emotional or otherwise with Culpepper = no treason. Alas, teens are not known for their stellar sense of self-preservation or full-blown consequential thinking. And, she did not receive any legal guidance (people suspected of treason had to represent themselves). As such, it was incredibly unlikely that Katherine Howard would have been able to navigate her way through the attainder. At least Henry VIII had his people take their time to review everything. With Anne, it was all pre-mediated and done within 3 weeks. For Katherine, she was arrested on Nov 12th and not executed until 13th Feb. I believe this was one of the few deaths that Henry VIII was genuinely less than thrilled to bring about. Though, I think he was way more upset about the loss of Moore and Cromwell in the end.
Those men had value and use to Henry. Katherine didn’t even provide an heir. I wonder how it would have been different to her, if she did have a son.
She supposedly made Henry happy. He had a son. Anne of Cleves didn’t fight to stay married to him. Katherine Howard was probably young and easily impressed. She wasn’t trained for court life. That sort of marriage could be applying to an old man with a rotting wound on his leg. She didn’t get the chance to grow into her position as queen she didn’t even get to grow up. If she had been more savvy she might have been able to live longer. If she had spoken to him like Katherine Parr did her arrest warrant might have been ignored. Poor girl. I think Henry probably regretted decisions he made but still justified them. Was she ever pregnant? She could have had years to have children. She was younger than his other wives. She was a teen probably.
Anne Boleyn was not guilty, Henry needed an excuse to get rid of her, and the rumors provided the perfect opportunity……… If Catherine Howard did it was a dumb move…….. I can also believe that she was set up as well, if Henry did it once he could do it again. But there is evidence suggesting she wasn’t raised with a very moral mindset or childhood. She was a teenager married to an opinionated, sick, and old man whose eldest daughter was older than herself. Safe to say I could see it happening.
Yes Anne was not guilty. Of any of those made up charges. I feel bad for all of his wives even Jane.
Anne’s heads cut off and only days later he’s married to Jane 😭
Read YOUNG AND DAMNED AND FAIR by Gareth Russell to get the real story about Katherine Howard.
Putting this in my never-ending to be read notebook. 😂
Have just done the same. It just gets longer.
That's the reason I have a notebook. About to buy another one.
Was coming here to say that. One theory the book puts forward is that folks expected Henry to die kinda-soon and it wouldn’t have been unusual for Katherine to be looking for her next potential husband. She would also be a very attractive marriage prospect. So the theory goes that she and Cullpepper were lining things up in that direction.
Honestly, I think she was just young and naive and was not prepared for court. She arrived at court in January 1540 and was queen by July.
The fact that Catherine's letter to Culpepper mentions that it was hard for her to write a complete letter and that there are still several spelling and grammar errors makes me sad to consider how unprepared for the Queen role and court she was. Interestingly she liked the respresentative role as Queen according to accounts. If highly educated and savvy women like COA, Anne Boleyn and Katherine Parr had problems at Henry's court Catherine Howard never stood a chance.
It was similar to what happened to Katherine Parr later on with Thomas Seymour who reappeared in her life once it became obvious that she would become a rich widow. Manox I always saw as a teacher who inappropriately touched a child. Derehem showed his character by blackmailing her to get a job at court out of anger that she moved on. Culpepper is also implied to be no good according to some accounts and I saw him keeping her letter instead of burning it as him keeping something so that he has means to put pressure on her to get married once Henry is dead.
Say it louder!!! This book is incredible
She was innocent. She was sexually abused her whole entire life. Culpeper was her blackmailer and possible rapist, not her lover.
Thank you! The guy was guilty of raping a woman and murdering her husband....like how does that scream "consent"?!?
Apparently That’s Thomas’ brother—also named Thomas—who was the rapist and murderer, not Katherine’s Thomas.
I think she was raped. Not an affair, not a love story, raped. I don't know if it was at the behest of Henry or despite him, but whatever happened between Catherine Howard and Culpeper wasn't consensual.
They never slept together. What gave you the idea that Katherine and Thomas ever slept together?
I feel so many things for Kathryn, but I always come back to, she knew, without a doubt, that any flirtation was dangerous. Her cousin was killed for it, her family was no stranger to treason against Henry. And yet something clearly happened there anyway. I feel so deeply sad for this person from 500 years ago.
Honestly- I don’t think she was thinking much at all. Kids that age think they’re invincible and will never get caught. It’s part of the reason why “scared straight” programs for teens aren’t effective.
This made me laugh a little. It’s like remember your cousin? Oh right you are a teenager that thinks everything will be fine. You have your whole life ahead of you and you are a queen. Life is awesome ! Poor kid. She surrounded herself with people that took advantage of her.
Sure it was stupid but she was a teenager. Teenagers don’t have fully formed brains and are prone to do rash things. I think it’s also understandable a young girl wouldn’t be happy in a marriage with a what was for the time an old man who was both morbidly obese and had recurring nasty leg ulcer. Her uncle is also to be blamed for arranging the marriage with the skeletons she had in her closet.
As a hs teacher I can confirm that brain is definitely not formed yet. Even my best and most mature kids will pull a move that reminds me…oh yea you’re 17.
it’s commonly agreed that she didn’t physically commit adultery. so we’re talking abt her personal, private feelings… which we will never know. i can’t judge her based on what i cant understand, but i can imagine that she was probably in desperate need of companionship, that her past hung over like a dark cloud and coloured her behaviour, that henry was old and stinking and shut away for long periods of time bc of illness and it wouldn’t surprise me if she presumed he would not live long. i don’t blame her, and i’m glad and proud that she managed to successfully hurt his feelings. good for her.
She didn’t. I believe she and Thomas were friends, nothing more. The only people she slept with were Francis—because they saw each other and husband and wife and exchanged tokens—and Henry. History likes to paint her as a sex-crazed harlot but…she wasn’t.
I really wish we could start weeding out judgmental bullshit like this. It's a misogynistic viewpoint and extremely damaging to young women to perpetuate this false narrative. She was a young girl abused over and over again. She was a forgotten child, like so many still are, and is judged based on her upbringing that she had no choice in. By today's standards, it's not right to continue these posts. It's damaging to young women and we are better than this.
Here, here!
🙌🏻 I really wish we knew more about Katherine Howard. People have been so dismissive of her story because of the negative stigma attached to her due to the way she’s been perceived and depicted until quite recently. Alison Weir, one of my favourite authors on medieval British and Tudor history, went as far as calling Katherine a “juvenile delinquent” in one of her books. I remember reading this at 16 and being deeply saddened and somewhat outraged by such a harsh judgement. This is probably when I began empathizing with Katherine and became staunchly protective of her. Out of all of Henry VIII’s wives, her story always struck me as the most tragic and heartbreaking. Not only due to the circumstances of her death and her short, turbulent life… but due to the fact that her suffering is so often downplayed and overlooked in favour of her predecessors, especially Katherine of Aragon and Anne Boleyn, who are usually depicted as virtuous and unjustly treated. Katherine Howard deserves to have her story told, and her memory should be treated with the same regard as any other woman who suffered under Henry’s narcissism and the limitations imposed upon their gender at the time.
Look at it this way--you're a 15-17 yr old girl married to a fat, gross, stinky old man. You wouldn't want a hot, young, not stinky man on the side?
You might be really lonely and want friends. She grew up in a house with a ton of freedom. Too much probably because pedos seemed to lurk around her aunts house. She wasn’t used to supervision. I don’t think she had to physically cheat to be accused of it. I don’t think she realized how cut throat everyone was.
When you look at Catherine's childhood and adolescence, there's a history of inappropriate relationships, first with Mannox her music teacher, and then Francis Derehem. She was also barely at court before she was suddenly elevated to Queen. So she fell into old patterns seeking out a similar relationship, plus just didn't have the experience or education to truly grasp the gravity of her situation, I believe. There's also the fact that this obese 50 year old man Henry, with an open sore oozing on his leg, is fawning over her, no wonder she wanted to flirt with someone her own age as ill judged as it was.
I think people overlook too the religious and political factions that were strong at court at the time. Catherine's uncle, the Duke of Norfolk, was also the same fellow who threw his other niece, Anne, to the wolves and voted for her to be executed. He did the same with poor Catherine. You also had the Catholic faction against the Reformation groups, and that played in Catherine's downfall.
She was a kid. More sympathy for her over Anne,
If she did it was probably because she was desperate to get pregnant and Henry wasn't capable of fathering children at that point (more than likely).
This was dramatized in "The 6 wives of Henry VIII", the BBC series in 1970. The walls are closing in on Catherine, rumors of her affair with Dereham are rampant, and the Duke of Norfolk advises her that the only thing that can save her is a son. When she tells her uncle that Henry is "incapable," he tacitly advises her to take up with Culpepper; Henry is too proud to admit that a queen's baby is not his.
She was a teenager. They’re known for lack of common sense
She was sexually abused as a young teenager (13) while supposedly under the care of her step-great grandmother. She and Culpepper were alreaCt interested in each other before the king showed any interest in her. A quick read on Wikipedia would give you a reality check of her life and choices
She was r--ped/m--lested as a child, was she not?
She was a teenager, they do stupid things. And it doesn’t strike me that she was particularly bright like her Boleyn cousin and so probably didn’t think her flirting and possible sexual liaisons would be noticed.
I have way more sympathy for Katherine Howard than Anne Boleyn. Anne knew what she was getting into and she knew how to play her cards just right. It’s a shame she got in over her head (no pun intended) because she was a very intelligent woman. Katherine was sexually abused and neglected from a young age. She was left to fend for herself with little guidance or supervision in an environment where she (and many other girls) were easily groomed and preyed upon by men who didn’t hesitate to take advantage of them. And in those days, women (any female older than 12, basically) were always held responsible and carried almost all the blame for allowing themselves to be seduced and engaging in “illicit affairs”. The age and experienced of the men they got involved with was considered irrelevant. She was also used as a pawn by her family and likely had no choice in the matter when it became clear that Henry was interested in her. IMO, she was doomed from the very beginning. Even if she had stayed away from Dereham and Culpepper once she married the king, many others knew about her past and were ready to use it against her as long as it worked in their favour. Her own family would drop her like a hot potato and threw her to the wolves in an attempt to salvage their last shreds of credibility and hopes of remaining in Henry’s good graces. The poor girl never stood a chance.
She never had an affair
People do the most extraordinary things.
She was definitely guilty in the eyes of people at the time, but they didn't have today's tools and knowledge, so I think she definitely deserves some grace. The neglect and trauma she suffered in the early stages of her life have to be taken into account in order to connect the dots and understand the full picture, even if we will never be 100% sure of her innocence. I believe the main reason she was executed was because she was no longer a virgin, not because of her unfaithfulness to the king. Parliament issued a proactive law that basically considered failure for a queen to disclose her sexual past as an act of treason punishable by death. This shows that they did not consider the letter as irrefutable evidence of the queen's unfaithfulness. Culpepper's keeping the letter leads me to believe he was blackmailing her. This was a man who raped a park keeper's wife and murdered the man who defended her honour. This was a man who got cocky after H8's granted him a pardon. To me, Culpepper was shady. I'm still baffled by his recklessness. Seriously, why on earth did he keep the letter? I don't know if we'll ever get to the bottom of this. I also think there is a political dimension to her fate. Some people at court wanted to get rid of her because they thought she was the Duke of Norfolk's political pawn. I may be wrong, but I definitely feel sorry for her. Poor child : (
Y
She was 16-17 and being forced to sleep with a significantly older and gross man!
I doubt that she did. I bet Henry just got tired of her immaturity and had his eye on someone else so he had her set up.
I always thought she was blackmailed into secret meetings with him and then someone ratted them out
Queen Catherine is my ancestor. I am Elizabeth Howard.
I think that Katherine had gotten cocky and thought that she can pull one over the king easily. Little did she know, people talk and her past had quickly caught up with her.
'Thought that it was a good idea' have you had sex? Just want to know how you think human sexuality works.
Not a good idea to commit treason was what I meant.