The Six Wives of Henry VIII | Catherine Howard

Before his divorce to Anne of Cleves Henry had already found her replacement, Catherine Howard.

The youngest of Henry’s wives, Catherine was the pretty, teenage lady-in-waiting to Anne and he was captivated. Henry was 49 and she was probably only 16 or 17 years old. He called her his ‘rose without a thorn’ and she probably wasn’t too excited by her fat and old new admirer.

Even if she didn’t want to be married to old Henry, you couldn’t say no to the king and so 19 days after his divorce from Anne he married Catherine. Henry was head over heels for her but Catherine had a bit of a naughty past that Henry didn’t yet know about. Catherine came from the powerful Howard family, but her parents were relatively poor, living off handouts from wealthier relatives.

To help with costs she was sent to live with her step-grandmother. Her grandma had taken in quite a few young, unmarried, girls and had a large dormitory where the girls all slept and lived together. The grandma was not very strict however and the girls got up to all sorts. Some of the girls even had late sexy night male visitors. Catherine, influenced by this had a relationship with her music teacher, Henry Mannox and then her grandmother’s secretary, Francis Dereham.

In 1539, after moving closer to court, Catherine’s attentions turned to the hot, young Thomas Culpeper. But this relationship was not to go any further as she had caught Henry’s eye and there was no going back.

After their marriage Henry was bananas about Catherine, she was young and fun and gave him a new lease on life. But when he became sick almost a year into their marriage, Catherine began her affair with Culpeper. She didn’t do a great job of hiding it though, and pretty soon it came out that the Queen had been unfaithful. At first, Henry didn’t believe the accusations, but as it soon became apparent it was true, Henry became enraged. He asked for a sword so he could kill her himself. She’d broken his heart and made a fool out of him and this was not to be treated lightly.

Mannox, Dereham and Culpeper were all tortured into confessing and sentenced to death. For the crimes of not being a virgin before marrying the King and for cheating on him she was sentenced to death and executed. She had been queen for eighteen months and was no more than 19 years old.

In history, people have typically been pretty harsh on Catherine. She’d seen what happened to Anne Boleyn, her first cousin, so surely she should have known better. But (and this is my opinion rather than history) Catherine was only human, a teenager who was married to an overweight man forty years her senior, so I think she deserves a bit of sympathy.