The Boleyn Women: The Tudor Femmes Fatales Who Changed English History (29 page)

And when my beauty began to be shent;
Not with mine own harm sufficed or content,
Contrary to God, I must needs confess,
Other I enticed by a sample of my wretchedness.
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She may simply have liked her royal kinswoman and was flattered by the confidence that the queen placed in her. It was a highly dangerous game as even Catherine realised. In her letter she begged that Culpepper be good to her male servant who brought the letter as ‘I do know no one that I dare trust to send to you’. As queen, Catherine was never alone and always watched, something of which the highly experienced courtier, Jane Rochford, should have been aware. She threw caution to the wind in her behaviour, taking a cramp ring from the queen to send as a token to Culpepper, as well as purchasing a pair of bracelets for the queen to give.
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Much of the evidence of Jane’s conduct in relation to the queen’s love affair survives from Henry VIII’s summer progress in 1541 when, for the only time in his reign, he ventured to the north of his kingdom, travelling up into Lincolnshire and Yorkshire with his queen and court. When the details of the affair later began to emerge, Catherine laid the blame squarely at Lady Rochford’s door, claiming that she had only embarked on a relationship with Culpepper due to Jane’s urgings, with the queen claiming that ‘Lady Rochford hath sundry times made instance to her to speak with Culpepper declaring him to bear her good will and favour’.
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Faced with this nagging and Jane’s assurance that Culpepper ‘desired nothing else but to speak with her and that she durst swear upon a book he meant nothing but honesty’, Catherine claimed that she consented to meet with the young man in a little gallery at the top of the stairs at Lincoln at ten or eleven o’clock at night. There is no doubt that Jane was deeply involved in Catherine and Culpepper’s affair, with her contemporary, Edward Hall, recording that it was she who conducted Culpepper to the queen’s chamber at Lincoln, where they ‘were there together alone, from eleven of the clock at night, till four of the clock in the morning’, something which suggests that Jane may have withdrawn to a side room during the meeting. It seems highly improbable that Catherine embarked on her affair only at Jane’s urging and, more likely, it was Catherine who urged her kinswoman to secure a meeting.

Once involved, Jane relished her role in assisting the lovers, on one occasion allowing the pair to make use of her own chamber at York.
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Catherine and Jane were both fully aware of the danger that they were in if they were discovered, with the queen later claiming that she said to Jane, ‘Alas madam this will be spied one day and then we be all undone,’ to which Jane replied, ‘Fear not madam let me alone I warrant you.’ Jane was present at most of the couple’s meetings, although she would often ‘sit somewhat far off or turn her back’.
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Given the late-night nature of the trysts, she also on occasion fell asleep. She would also sometimes remain in the bedchamber that she shared with the queen while Catherine met with Culpepper in a private place.
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That Jane was a very active participant in Catherine Howard’s treason is clear from the fact that, during the progress, she would take it upon herself to search out the back doors in every house they stayed in, ensuring that Culpepper was able to visit the queen in secret.
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When they came to Greenwich, she was able to assure her mistress that ‘she knew an old kitchen wherein she might well speak with him’.

The end of Catherine’s queenship came swiftly and brutally. That autumn, Archbishop Cranmer was approached by a young gentleman named John Lassells who informed him that his sister, Mary Hall, had been raised with Catherine in the household of the Dowager Duchess of Norfolk and had reported to him that the queen had been ‘light of living’ and had had sexual relationships with two young men in the household, Henry Manox and Francis Dereham.
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Cranmer was shocked by what he heard and, on 2 November, handed a letter containing the allegations to the king. Henry was still besotted with his pretty young wife and refused to believe them, instead ordering an investigation in order to clear his bride’s name. To his horror, he found that Lassells’s claims were true and, devastated, the ageing king burst into tears, demanding a sword to slay his wife himself.

Catherine had been entirely oblivious to all that was happening and she was therefore horrified when, on 4 November, guards burst into her chamber at Hampton Court while she was practising her dance steps. As the musicians fell silent, the stunned queen was told that ‘it is no more time to dance’. Both Catherine and Jane must have been terrified, and it was with relief that they greeted the news that only the queen’s past life was the subject of the investigations.

Jane is likely to have been aware that Catherine Howard was not the innocent young virgin that Henry VIII had thought he had married, something which became all too evident when the court returned from the northern progress. The Dowager Duchess of Norfolk’s household at Horsham had been home to a number of young girls and Catherine mixed with both gentlewomen, such as herself, and servants, sharing a dormitory room with the other unmarried women. Although Catherine received little formal education, her step-grandmother arranged for a neighbour, Henry Manox, to teach her to play the virginals. Manox was far beneath her socially but he seduced the young girl and, according to his later testimony, the couple fell in love with each other. The duchess found them alone together one day and, after beating Catherine, ordered them to separate. The relationship was never consummated but Catherine herself later admitted that ‘at the flattering and fair persuasions of Manox being but a young girl suffered him at sundry times to handle and touch the secret parts of my body which neither became me with honesty to permit nor him to require’. Manox was dismissed when the duchess caught him and Catherine alone in her chapel chamber. Probably hoping to marry Catherine, he followed the household when it moved to Lambeth.

Catherine lost interest in Manox at Lambeth when she met a young kinsman of hers, Francis Dereham. Although not of equal status to Catherine, Dereham was higher born than the lowly Manox. He was also young and handsome and a particular favourite of Catherine’s step-grandmother. Many of the girls in the duchess’s household had lovers and, while the maidens’ dormitory was locked at night, the key was easily stolen. The young men of the household were then free to come and go as they entertained their lovers with picnics before sleeping with the girls. Catherine had been very young at the time of her flirtation with Manox, but when she met Dereham she was ready for a full affair. She later admitted that

Francis Dereham by many persuasions procured me to his vicious purpose and obtained first to lie upon my bed with his doublet and hose and after within the bed and finally he lay with me naked and used me in such sort as a man doth his wife many and sundry times but how often I know not and our company ended almost a year before the King’s majesty was married to my lady Anne of Cleve and continued not past one quarter of a year or little above.

Catherine and Dereham’s relationship was consummated and Dereham later claimed that the pair became engaged, although Catherine, aware of her higher status, denied this. The couple referred to each other as husband and wife and exchanged love tokens, with Dereham lending Catherine the substantial sum of £100.

There was little privacy in the duchess’s household and the affair was soon common knowledge. Henry Manox was jealous of the new relationship and wrote to Catherine’s step-grandmother setting out the details of the affair. Rather than passing it directly to the duchess, Manox left it on her pew in her chapel where Catherine found it and showed it to Dereham. The precaution of destroying the letter was perhaps not necessary as the duchess already knew of the relationship. According to Katherine Tylney, one of the girls in the household, the duchess once ‘found Dereham embracing Mrs Katherine Howard in his arms and kissing her, and thereat was much offended and gave Dereham a blow, and also beat the queen [Catherine] and gave Joan Bowmar a blow because she was present. When Dereham was wanted the duchess would say, “I warrant you if you seek him in Katherine Howard’s chamber you shall find him there.”’ Under interrogation, Catherine signed a confession, admitting to her past and that she had, indeed, had lovers before her marriage to the king.
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Catherine’s conduct had been immodest, but it was hardly treason since she admitted that her relationship with Dereham had finished nearly a year before the king married Anne of Cleves and had only, in any event, lasted for around three months. She and Jane may therefore have hoped that nothing worse would be discovered. For Jane, the danger that she was in may only have become clear on 13 November 1542 when Sir Thomas Wriothesley, the king’s secretary, came to Hampton Court.
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He immediately set about calling Catherine’s ladies, gentlewomen and servants to him in the great chamber. Jane, whose name had not by then been linked to the enquiry, was among the group who met to hear of ‘certain offences that she [Catherine] had done in misusing her body afore the king’s time’. He then discharged the queen’s household and, the next day, Catherine was taken as a prisoner to Syon Abbey while the king decided what to do with her. She was still technically queen, but not accorded the honours associated with the role. Instead, Catherine was permitted only four gentlewomen and two chamberers to attend her, while she was allowed only six French hoods with gold trim but no jewels. Before her name had been mentioned in the enquiry, Jane remained with the queen, with the pair finding time to speak candidly to each other. Jane, terrified, advised Catherine to say nothing of Culpepper, reminding her that her interrogators ‘would speak fair to you and use all ways with you but and if you confess you undo both yourself and others’.
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To hammer home her point, Jane declared that ‘I will never confess it to be torn with wild horses’.

Although in her confession Catherine swore that after her marriage she ‘intended ever during my life to be faithful and true unto your majesty after’, it soon became apparent to those carrying out the investigations that this was not the case, with Culpepper’s name soon being mentioned in the enquiry. Catherine always denied that she had actually consummated her relationship with Culpepper, but the evidence certainly suggests that the meetings between the pair were not innocent. Jane herself, in her own deposition, stated that she believed that the couple had sexual relations.
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The suspicion of adultery was very different to Catherine’s pre-marital activity and both Culpepper and Jane were quickly apprehended. Given the fact of Anne and George, Jane can have been in no doubt as to what her likely fate was to be.

Jane already had a certain notoriety as ‘the widow of that nobleman who was capitally punished, as you know, for incest with his sister, Queen Anne’.
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Damned by association, it was easy for her contemporaries to believe in her guilt. When word reached Chapuys, on 19 November, that she had been the ‘intermediary agent for such love appointments’, he also referred to George’s earlier fate in his despatch.
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It has been suggested that she suffered some kind of nervous breakdown while in prison.
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According to Chapuys, she lost her reason on the third day of her imprisonment, something that meant that she was not fit to be tried with Culpepper and Dereham early in December as expected.
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Jane well remembered what had happened to her husband and his sister after they were imprisoned and she must have been terrified. It would have been no consolation to her that the king sent his own doctors to her every day in a bid to ensure that she recovered her reason: this attention was not due to any pity that Henry felt for her. Instead, he wanted to ensure that she had sufficient reason to allow him to try and, in all probability, execute her. Evidently her sanity was still in doubt as, in February, he had Parliament pass an Act that stated that, since it was difficult to tell the difference between real and feigned madness, in cases of treason, the accused could be tried and condemned whether mad or not.
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There can be no doubt that this was aimed at Jane. It may be that her lack of sanity was rather questionable anyway, particularly as she had lucid intervals.
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The Act itself noted that madness could be feigned and Chapuys recorded that Jane recovered her reason at ‘the very moment’ she was told that she was to die.
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Given that this ‘recovery’ was made as soon as it became apparent that the king meant to execute her regardless of her state of health, it does seem highly likely that her condition was feigned. She certainly appeared sane enough to bystanders on the scaffold.

At his trial, Culpepper maintained that it was Catherine, through Jane, who had made all the advances and that he had merely bowed to royal pressure to meet with the queen, who had assured him that she ‘pined for him, and was actually dying of love for his person’.
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Trying to shift the blame to Catherine did not save him. Culpepper and Dereham died together at Tyburn on 10 December 1541, for their offences with the queen. Later that month Catherine’s uncle, Lord William Howard and his wife, along with Catherine’s friend, Katherine Tylney, and others were tried and convicted of assisting her in relation to her affair with Dereham.
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Catherine’s step-grandmother, the aged Dowager Duchess of Norfolk, was sent to the Tower at the same time.
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Jane and Catherine, in their separate prisons, must have known that it was only a matter of time before their own fates were decided.

Parliament opened on 15 January 1542 to consider the matter of the queen. Although Catherine still had hopes of her life, it was considered ominous that she was still at Syon Abbey, with an increased guard.
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Unlike her husband and sister-in-law nearly six years before, Jane was not given even the show of a trial, instead being condemned by Parliament in the same Act of Attainder as the queen. It is clear, from its wording, that Henry was as furious with Jane as he was with Catherine, with the Act declaring that