Henry VIII, King of England and Lord of Ireland, married the young Kathryn Howard in July 1540, crowning her his queen. He had her beheaded for high treason a year and a half later, in February 1542.

It all began when Kathryn’s uncle, Sir Thomas Howard third Duke of Norfolk, introduced her to court as a maid of honour to the king’s fourth wife, the German Anne of Cleves.

Kathryn had lost her mother when she was nine, and her father, Lord Edmund Howard, had entrusted her to the care of her aunt, Duchess Agnes Howard, widow of the second Duke of Norfolk. In the spacious mansion of Horsham, in the enchanting countryside of Sussex, Kathryn grew up in great freedom, with little education, and scarce control on the part of her aged aunt.

At thirteen she had a brief relationship with her music teacher, Henry Mannox. The duchess found them kissing beneath the staircase of the house: she was angry with them both, and sent him away.

Kathryn began another relationship, this time with a local gentleman, Francis Dereham, who wanted to marry her. But the girl moved to London, to her aunt’s residence in Lambeth Road. When she became queen, she appointed Francis her secretary.

Kathryn wasn’t a beauty like her cousin Anne Boleyn, Henry’s unfortunate second wife. But she was young, fresh, with sky-blue eyes, lovely copper-coloured hair, and a certain nonchalance which aroused the king’s interest. Soon infatuated with her, Henry had his marriage to his fourth wife, Anne of Cleves, annulled, and married Kathryn.

She was kind to him, now old and perhaps no longer able to sire children. Her attentions led him to believe that his new spouse really loved him. He felt rejuvenated, the sore on his calf, from which he had suffered for years – infected, putrid, treated with a poultice of crushed pearls and by cauterization, which drew from him screams of agony – appeared to be healing. And he was happy. “Kathryn is my rose without thorns,” he repeated dreamily before all the court. He showered her with gifts, designed new jewels for her, granted her lands, castles, even, it seems, the splendid palace of Hampton Court.

Among the king’s gentlemen of the bedchamber there was a certain Thomas Culpepper, handsome and ambitious. Kathryn fell in love with him, and he took advantage of this, perhaps in the hope of giving her a son who could become king. At court gossip and innuendo began to occur behind the king’s back.

During a visit by the sovereign to counties in the North, Kathryn sent Thomas a compromising letter. He was ill and she wrote to him “My heart pains me when I think that I cannot be with you. (…) Come to me when Lady Rochford is here, because then it will be easier for us to stay together. (…) I wish you could be with me to see the effort it takes to write to you (…)”.

The scandal erupted in the winter of 1541, following the letter by a friend, a certain Joan Bulmer, who had shared Kathryn’s years at Horsham, and who blackmailed her. By now everyone at court, except Henry, was aware of the situation. The Archbishop of Canterbury, Thomas Cranmer felt it his duty to enlighten the sovereign, even though he knew that it would break his heart. During the evening prayer of Compline in the splendid royal chapel with the azure ceiling decorated with gold stars at Hampton Court, he had a written note placed next to the prie-dieu. When the king read the straw-coloured paper he did not want to believe the accusations: he railed at Cranmer, ranted at a plot, at jealousy, at lies about the innocent Kathryn. He threatened revenge, hangings, the stake. But when Cranmer gave him detailed descriptions of events and circumstances – Horsham, Lambeth Palace, the relationship with the music teacher, with secretary Francis Dereham, the nocturnal encounters with Thomas Culpepper during his trip to the North and even there, at Hampton Court, the rendezvous over the last few nights – Henry ordered that a commission be set up, and that it should spare no-one.

The inquest confirmed the facts, the girls that had shared their time at Horsham with Kathryn were generous with details. Thomas Culpepper stated that once she had become queen, it was she who had come in search of him. Rifling through Thomas’ personal effects the imprudent letters were discovered, and thus the accusation of pre-marital relations changed into the terrible one of adultery. The penalty, death.

When the royal guards went to arrest her at Hampton Court, she was in her rooms, practising the steps of a new dance with her music teacher. She was told nothing, only that the king wished to see her no more. They took away her trunks, her chests, her caskets. When she realized that there no longer any hope, she fled from the guards and ran towards the king’s rooms, certain that he still loved her, that he would forgive her. She shouted, hammered on the door. Henry did not open it.

She was shut away at Brentford, in the old monastery of Syon House. Some days later she was told that she must die.

She was moved to London, to the Tower. When the barge passed under London Bridge she saw the impaled, rotting heads of Dereham and Culpepper. They had been there for two months, the stench was unbearable, the sight horrific.

On the morning of her execution, when they led her into the Tower courtyard, she was so weak that a guard had to support her. The scaffold was draped in black cloth with straw spread around. In that awful moment she was forced to recognize that that there was nobody who would defend her, no-one who cared for her.

She wished to ascend the steps by herself, asked pardon for her faults, urged obedience to the king. Perhaps she hoped until the end that the king would show mercy, and she looked around to see if a messenger might arrive. But it did not happen.

With a single blow of the axe her head was severed. It was retrieved, wrapped in a cloth, a black sheet was placed over the still-kneeling body, until a casket was brought. She was not yet twenty.

Her head and body were then taken to the Tower chapel, where her cousin Anne Boleyn had been buried.


Translated by Colin Sowden.