Mary Tudor - Anna Whitelock [54]
CHAPTER 23
MORE A FRIEND THAN A STEPMOTHER
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,