Henry VIII's Last Victim (28 page)

Back in the household of the Dowager Duchess of Norfolk, she had enjoyed liaisons with her music teacher, Henry Manox, and a gentleman page, Francis Dereham. She had even welcomed the latter into the Maidens’ Chamber, and ‘such puffing and blowing’ had emanated from her bed that few of her chamber-mates could sleep.
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The ladies, many of whom experienced similar pleasures, had gossiped, and the men had regaled each other with details of their conquests. ‘I know her well enough,’ Manox had bragged, ‘for I have had her by the cunt, and I know it among a hundred.’
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But no one dared to spill these tales when Catherine was being courted by Henry. That fact probably led her to believe that no one would do so now she was Queen, and that the risks with Culpepper were worth taking.

Catherine was out of her depth in the murky waters and factional crosscurrents of Henry’s Court. She cared not one jot for politics and seemingly thought little of religion either. Yet her position as Queen of England made her involved whether she liked it or not. There was a direct correlation between her royal status and the ascendancy of the Howards and their conservative allies. When John Lascelles heard from his sister about Catherine’s activities in the Maidens’ Chamber, he immediately informed Archbishop Cranmer, who then turned to Edward Seymour for advice. Both agreed to dig deeper. The royal couple returned from their progress at the end of October 1541. A few days later, on All Saints Day, the King gave a prayer of thanks ‘for the good life he led and trusted to lead’ with Catherine.
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The following day he received a note from Cranmer. It told him about Manox and Dereham, but not yet about Culpepper.

Henry refused to give credence to the allegations and initiated a secret investigation to expose the slanderers. Catherine’s old chamber-mates now fell over themselves to reveal the truth. Under interrogation,
Manox’s bravado dissipated and he swore that while he had enjoyed many liberties with Catherine, he had never slept with her. Dereham, on the other hand, ‘confessed that he had known her carnally many times, both in his doublet and hose between the sheets and in naked bed, alleging such witnesses of three sundry women one after another that had lien in the same bed with them when he did the acts’.
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Even with the knowledge of Catherine’s promiscuity, Henry was willing to spare her. The revelations were abhorrent, but they referred to events that had happened before the royal marriage. Then Culpepper’s name came up. And that was it.

It is impossible to know whether Catherine and Culpepper had engaged in a full-blown affair. Both denied that it had gone beyond words. But the will was clearly there – ‘if I had tarried still in the Maidens’ Chamber,’ Catherine had told Culpepper, ‘I would have tried you’ – and their nocturnal trysts pointed to a way.
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As the investigation proceeded, a letter from Catherine to Culpepper was unearthed: ‘I never longed so much for [a] thing as I do to see you and to speak with you . . . It makes my heart to die to think what fortune I have that I cannot be always in your company . . . I would you was with me now that you might see what pain I take in writing to you. Yours as long as life endures, Catherine.’
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Even if she had not surrendered her body to Thomas, Catherine had clearly given him her heart. This was the bitterest pill for Henry. Cuckolded, betrayed and publicly humiliated, his wrath now knew no bounds.

On 1 December 1541 Dereham and Culpepper were tried and found guilty of treason. Nine days later they were executed at Tyburn and ‘their heads set on London Bridge’.
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The King then turned on the Howards. The Dowager Duchess of Norfolk, her daughter the Countess of Bridgewater, her son Lord William Howard, his wife Margaret and many others from the Duchess’ household were tried for misprision (concealment) of treason. All were found guilty and sentenced to perpetual imprisonment and forfeiture of goods.

Norfolk and Surrey were vulnerable. From the moment he received news of his niece’s disgrace, Norfolk had done everything possible to disentangle himself from her and prove his loyalty to the King. He had assisted Cranmer in the interrogation of Catherine and had recommended she be burnt alive. He had been one of the chief informers against the Dowager Duchess of Norfolk and had gone to Lambeth in person to ransack Dereham’s coffers. Norfolk also officiated at the trial
of Dereham and Culpepper and laughed throughout their examinations ‘as if he had cause to rejoice’. The French ambassador, Marillac, was disgusted by Norfolk’s demeanour and surprised too by Surrey’s attendance at the trial and the behaviour of the brothers of Catherine and Culpepper, who paraded around London on their horses. ‘Such is the custom of this land,’ he informed Francis I, ‘and it must be done to show that they do not share the crimes of their relatives and, more importantly, that they are faithful to the King, their sovereign.’
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Henry VIII still needed some convincing. In his report, Marillac noted that Norfolk had left Court for Kenninghall, ‘which makes people think ill and at least that his influence is much diminished’. Of Norfolk’s future, Marillac observed just over a week later, ‘many presume ill and none good’.
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It took a letter of abject grovelling, extreme even by the standards of Henry’s Court, to extricate Norfolk from the King’s suspicion. It reveals much about the Duke’s character, his priorities and his instinct for self-preservation. The ‘false and traitorous proceedings’ of his imprisoned Howard relatives, Norfolk began, coupled with

the most abominable deeds done by two of my nieces against Your Highness hath brought me into the greatest perplexity that ever poor wretch was in; fearing that Your Majesty, having so often, and by so many of my kin, been thus falsely and traitorously handled, might not only conceive a displeasure in your heart against me and all other of that kin, but also, in manner, abhor to hear speak of any of the same.

Wherefore, most gracious Sovereign Lord, prostrate at your feet, most humbly I beseech Your Majesty to call to your remembrance that a great part of this matter is come to light by my declaration to Your Majesty, according to my bounden duty, of the words spoken to me by my mother-in-law when Your Highness sent me to Lambeth to search Dereham’s coffers; without the which I think she had not be[en] further examined, nor consequently her ungracious children. Which my true proceedings towards Your Majesty considered, and also the small love my two false traitorous nieces and my mother-in-law have borne unto me, doth put me in some hope that Your Highness will not conceive any displeasure in your most gentle heart against me that, God knoweth, never did think thought which might be to your discontentation.

Wherefore, eftsoons, prostrate at your royal feet, most humbly I beseech Your Majesty that by such as it shall please you to command, I may be advertised plainly how Your Highness doth weigh your favour towards me; assuring Your Highness that unless I may know Your Majesty to continue my good and gracious Lord, as ye were before their offences committed, I shall never desire to live in this world any longer, but shortly to finish this transitory life, as God knoweth, who send Your Majesty the accomplishments of your most noble heart’s desires.

Scribbled at Kenninghall Lodge, the 15th day of December, with the hand of

Your most humble Servant

and Subject,

T. NORFOLK.
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Catherine had no one to protect her now. On 11 February 1542 she was found guilty of treason by an act of attainder. The following day she asked for the block to be delivered to her cell in the Tower. She spent the evening rehearsing her execution. The next morning, just after seven o’clock, she was led from the Tower to the scaffold. All the King’s councillors were there apart from the Duke of Suffolk, who was unwell, and the Duke of Norfolk, who was skulking at Kenninghall. Surrey took his father’s place and watched as his little cousin, to whom he owed all his recent promotions, placed her neck on the block for the last time.
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It is around this time that Surrey is thought to have composed one of his most vitriolic, and autobiographical, poems. Taking the form of a beast fable, it is a thinly veiled attack on the Seymours. They were the kind of recently ennobled family that Surrey resented. He did not regard them as social equals, but, as needs must at the Henrician Court, he had helped his father in soliciting their friendship at the time of Jane Seymour’s marriage to Henry VIII and her brother Edward’s elevation to the Earldom of Hertford. A marriage had even been proposed between Surrey’s sister and Edward’s younger brother in 1538 and, although nothing had come of it, cordial relations had been maintained and the two families had dined together frequently.

Edward Seymour had been one of the first to hear Lascelles’ allegations against Catherine Howard and he had advised Cranmer to pursue them and reveal all to the King. He could hardly have done otherwise, but
Surrey seems to have taken his actions to heart. Surrey’s real venom, though, was directed at Seymour’s wife Anne, the daughter of Sir Edward Stanhope. She was a beautiful but haughty woman whom Surrey seems to have been attracted to and repulsed by in equal measure. Once, on 23 December 1539, they had enjoyed dinner
à deux
at Beauchamplace.
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Surrey’s poem reveals that Anne had recently snubbed him, perhaps, as Surrey’s first editor suggested, on the dance floor. The poem begins with a narrator surveying the scene:

A lion saw I there, as white as any snow,

which seemed well to lead the race, his port the same did show.

Upon this gentle beast to gaze it liked me

for still me thought it seemed me of noble blood to be;

And as he pranced before, still seeking for a make
^fn4

as who would say there is none here I trow
^fn5
will me forsake.
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The lion can be identified as Surrey, whose family emblem was the silver or white lion. He ‘seemed well to lead the race’ – a reference to his position as the Howard heir – and his apparent gentility immediately distinguishes him as one of ‘noble blood’. The lion’s confident quest for a mate draws him towards a she-wolf:

A fairer beast, a fresher hue beheld I never none,

Save that her looks were fierce and froward eke her grace.

The Stanhope emblem was the wolf and the Seymour country seat was called Wolf Hall. As Anne was twenty years older than Surrey, it may be that he is taking a swipe at her age in his reference to her fresh hue. Or it could be an allusion to the novelty of her husband’s Earldom. Anne’s ‘fierce and froward’ temperament was notorious.
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The wolf rebuffs the lion’s gracious advances ‘with spite and great disdain’.

Forthwith he beat his tail, his eyes begun to flame;

I might perceive his noble heart much moved by the same.

Yet saw I him refrain and eke his rage assuage

and unto her thus gan he say when he was past his rage:

‘Crewell, you do me wrong to set me thus so light

Without desert for my good will to show me such despite.

How can you thus entreat a lion of the race

that with his paws a crowned king devoured in the place?’

The final line is a reference to the Battle of Flodden in 1513, when Surrey’s father and grandfather triumphed against James IV of Scotland. The lion then gives further examples of his race’s innate sense of honour. He refers to Lord Thomas Howard, who died in the Tower ‘for his assured truth’ after his clandestine marriage to Lady Margaret Douglas. He was a ‘gentle beast’ who willingly sought death ‘for loss of his true love’. ‘Other there be,’ the lion continues in what is surely a reference to the Howards imprisoned in the Tower for the misprision of Queen Catherine’s treason, ‘whose life to linger still in pain / against their will preserved is that would have died right fain.’

These lines bristle with aristocratic self-justification. Various family members may have been persecuted, the lion argues, but their deeds were honourable. ‘But well I may perceive,’ he tells the wolf, ‘that nought it moved you / my good intent, my gentle heart, nor yet my kind so true.’ The wolf lady cannot possibly understand the values of a Howard. She is a common interloper who represents the craven qualities of the Court:

And thus behold my kind, how that we differ far;

I seek my foes and you my friends do threaten still with war.

I fawn where I am fed, you flee that seeks to you;

I can devour no yielding prey, you kill where you subdue.

My kind is to desire the honour of the field,

and you, with blood to slake your thirst of such as to you yield.

Wherefore I would you wist
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that for your coy looks

I am no man that will be trained nor tangled by such hooks.

The wolf is vicious and cunning. The lion, by contrast, is merciful and fair. He adheres to the ideology of ‘noblesse of courage’ proper to a Knight of the Garter: ‘I will observe the law that nature gave to me / to conquer such as will resist and let the rest go free.’
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The lion concludes his tirade by warning the wolf against crossing him again: ‘And if to light on you my hap so good shall be / I shall be glad to feed on that that would have fed on me.’ Then he dismisses her with contempt: