Catherine Howard’s life is comprehensible only in terms of her family; she was born a Howard, a member of a clan whose predatory instincts for self-survival, urge towards tribal aggrandizement, a sense of pompous conceit, and dangerous meddling in the destinies of state, shaped the course of her tragedy. Her career begins and ends with the illustrious house of Howard, which had its origins back in the shadowy years of the fifteenth century.
Every age has its pushing young particles, families who are grasping after the golden apple of social respectability. But the early decades of the sixteenth century experienced something approaching a social revolution where upstart and adventurer, caitiff and villain, successfully rubbed shoulders with pedigreed nobles and peers of ancient lineage. No longer was it possible to discern a gentleman by dress alone, and one sixteenth-century snob inelegantly compared the social aspirants of his day to hatters’ blocks, since they ‘wear what is worthier than themselves.’
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Lacking in social status and family inheritance, the new courtiers who garnished the Tudor court and the parvenu gentlemen who found favour in the eyes of a
nouveau riche
dynasty were quick to manufacture what they could not claim by blood. Imposing pedigrees could always be devised, so long as sufficient money and political influence were available to induce a quizzical society to accept what it knew to be fabricated. Brute force, not legitimacy, lucre not blood, had entrenched the Tudor monarchs upon the throne of
England
, and when the royal person sanctioned the work of eager and artful genealogists there were few subjects so bold as to challenge the subsequent document. It took but a minimum of artistry to contrive a series of noble forbears, and the royal heralds were pestered with the questionable armorial assertations of obscure families whose sudden rise to political and social distinction made it mandatory that they be ‘right worthily connected’.
In theory the
College
of
Arms
granted the privilege to bear arms and the dignity of a gentleman only to those ‘of good name and fame and good renown’ who could substantiate their gentle breeding with an annual rental of £10. In actual fact there was constant complaint that grants of arms were being issued ‘to vile persons, bondsmen, and persons unable to take upon them any honour of noblesse’. The ancient order was constantly endeavouring to exclude those of more recent origin, and Hugh Vaughan, gentleman usher to Henry VII, was barred from jousting before the King by those of more credible ancestry because he ‘was no gentleman nobled to bear arms’.
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Not even his newly-conceived pedigree, properly sanctioned by the Garter King-of-Arms, was sufficient to win him recognition, until Henry decreed that his gentleman usher should joust with whom he pleased and should bear the arms issued him by the royal herald. Criticism was easily stifled when men became gentlemen by royal mandate. Only towards the end of the century did the social circulation begin to contract and claimants to gentle status have to prove their rights with more factual evidence.
Even the Howards, who joined in their veins the blood of the most honoured families of the realm, had once been viewed by those of more ancient descent as social upstarts. Until marriage and political power had secured their house, they were held as new and strange men, ‘wild as a wild bullock’.
3
A fortunate marriage and a series of propitious deaths miraculously translated them from stolid
East Anglia
stock into the heirs to the dukedom of
Norfolk
. Unimpeachable as their pedigree was, the Howards, like others of their kind, were not above a certain amount of ancestry manipulation, and by the seventeenth century they were asserting Saxon and early Norman blood as their heritage. The actual series of events, however, that elevated their house to noble pre-enunence commenced only in the year 1398, when Thomas, Lord Mowbray, tenth Earl and first Duke of Norfolk, was banished from the realm as a consequence of his political rivalry with Henry, Duke of Hereford, first cousin to Richard II. A year later, exiled and a vagrant in
Central Europe
, he died of what the chroniclers romantically describe as a broken heart, and the rights to the Dukedom passed to his four children – Thomas, who was conveniently executed five years later; John, who succeeded his brother; and two daughters, Isabel and Margaret. It is at this point that the Howards began the series of marriages that was to transform them into the most powerful dynasty of the sixteenth century, second only to the Tudors themselves, for Sir Robert Howard had the foresight to marry Margaret Mowbray. Auspicious as this union was, it could hardly have included ducal aspirations, since John Mowbray was presented with both a son and a grandson to carry on his name and title. Three generations passed, and suddenly in 1475 the last of the male Mowbrays died, and the rights to the barony and Dukedom were eventually bestowed upon the son of Sir Robert Howard and Margaret Mowbray.
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This Howard child proved to be an exceptional man. Most men acquired wealth and power during those closing years of the fifteenth century by wearing their honour upon their sleeve and putting their military reputation up for auction to the highest bidder. John Howard was different; it was through steadfast devotion to the Yorkist cause during the civil Wars of the Roses, that he earned the trust of both Edward IV and Richard III. Armed with a sword in one hand and a bag of gold in the other, he joined the Yorkist ranks in 1461; twentytwo years later that consistency was finally acknowledged when Sir John, as co-heir to the Mowbray estates and titles, became the first Howard Duke of
Norfolk
, while his son, Thomas, was created Earl of
Surrey
.
The Howard star so fortunately born of a propitious marriage a hundred years before now went into sudden and disastrous eclipse. Loyalty to the Yorkist crown had engendered fame and honour in success; in defeat it led to imprisonment and death. On
Norfolk
and his son fought for their liege lord, King Richard. The Duke was killed with his master, while Thomas was brought a prisoner to the Tower, his title and rights to the dukedom attainted by Act of Parliament, and his estates forfeited to the new sovereign.
The victory of the Earl of Richmond at Bosworth augured nothing but continued civil strife – a prolonging of that unsavoury feudal game which had commenced sixty years before as factional rivalry over who should whisper self-interested advice into the King’s ear and had deteriorated into open civil war to decide which parry candidate should actually wear the crown. Behind the rival sovereigns stood the great baronial families, who sought to use the royal government to enlarge their estates, arrange their family alliances, assure their inheritance, and maintain their political and social influence. Thus the Wars of the Roses were marked more by the rifling of the royal coffers and the confiscation of land than by rapine and destruction. Bosworth was but another swing of the pendulum, and in the act of attainder against Thomas Howard, the supporters of the red rose of the house of
Lancaster
had what they wanted – the estates of their enemies. The old Duke of Norfolk was dead, while his son was little more than a political cipher, the fallen creature of a fallen monarch. Consequently Thomas was allowed to keep his head, and even in the midst of deprivation he was not totally bereft of comfort. The new King was surprisingly generous and paid to the Lieutenant of the Tower forty shillings a week for the Earl’s board and keep, and a further seven shillings and sixpence to maintain his three servants. Considering that the normal fee ranged between three and six shillings a week, it would appear that Thomas Howard lacked little except his freedom.
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At this juncture historical fact gives way to family fable – legends that have the ring of truth but may be little more than Howard efforts to revamp history more to the family’s tastes. Presumably there were two occasions on which the attainted Earl came to the attention of Henry VII. The first story involves the Battle of Bosworth when
Surrey
was brought captive before the Conqueror. Henry Tudor is purported to have reproached his prisoner for having fought for that ‘tyrant’, Richard III; in answer, Thomas Howard said: ‘He was my crowned King, and if the Parliamentary authority of
England
set the Crown upon a stock I will fight for that stock. And as I fought then for him, I will fight for you, when you are established by the said authority’.
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Verisimilitude is a deceptive matter, and on the face of it Howard’s words were uncharacteristic of his age and most certainly unwelcome to the ears of a new monarch who claimed his crown by God, by right and by conquest, and not by the authority of parliament. On the other hand, Henry VII recognized the legal dilemma involved, for how could the Earl of Surrey be attainted for high treason for supporting in battle his legal sovereign? A solution was discovered by the simple expedient of maintaining the fiction that the new reign had commenced the day before the Battle of Bosworth so that, legally, all those who had fought against Henry had in fact committed treason against their liege lord.
Might was quite capable of creating its own right, but once the throne had been secured, Henry VII may well have appreciated the value of fostering those who supported the crown, irrespective of the man who wore it. In the long run Thomas Howard was a more reliable and useful instrument of the monarchy than the two
Stanleys
, whose actions at Bosworth had won Henry his crown but who operated in the tradition of the irresponsible right of aristocracy, as opposed to the divine right of kings. Nor was it accident that the Earl of Surrey was eventually liberated from his confinement in the Tower and became a devoted Tudor work-horse, while Sir William Stanley in 1494 ended his life on the scaffold, having connived at treason against the Tudor crown.
The second episode fits the same pattern of events. In 1487 the Earl of Lincoln, nephew of Edward IV and Richard III, staged one of the last efforts of the Yorkist faction to regain the throne. When the Earl landed in
England
, it first appeared as if the sides would be evenly matched, and before the decisive battle was fought, rumours were circulated that Henry Tudor had in fact met the Yorkist forces and been defeated. In the face of these reports, the Lieutenant of the Tower offered Thomas Howard his freedom. In an excess of what the Howard records prefer to regard as virtuous devotion, Thomas stoutly maintained that ‘he would not depart thence unto such time as he that commanded him thither should command him out again.’
Fortunately for the Howards, this was one occasion in which a quixotic sense of honour, or more probably an acute sense of caution, coincided with self-interest; shortly afterwards Henry VII returned to
London
, following a smashing victory in which the Earl of
Lincoln
was left, like his equally unfortunate uncle, dead upon the field of battle. Henry was stronger than ever, and Thomas Howard was far safer within the confines of the Tower than abroad, the subject of Tudor wrath. As legend has it, Henry was so impressed by the ‘true and faithful service’ that Thomas had rendered his previous sovereign, and by his actions while a prisoner in the Tower, that he released the Earl after three and a half years of captivity and restored to him his title and estates.’
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The King, however, with characteristic restraint, returned only the lands of
Surrey
’s spouse. The Howards had to prove their devotion to the new dynasty many times over before such suspicious monarchs were ready to reward them with a complete restoration of their lands and titles. The dignity of Earl Marshal had to wait another eleven years, while the final and highest estate, the dukedom of
Norfolk
, was not restored until Thomas Howard and his sons had indicated their loyalty beyond a shadow of a doubt, and had successfully written off the sins of the family by their victory over the Scots at the Battle of Flodden Field in 1513. Then and only then did the family regain the position it had held a generation before in 1483.
Long before the Howards won back their ancient titles, the family had been systematically fortifying its political and social position through marital alliances with the most vigorous and distinguished families of the century. Marriages may be formed in heaven while politics remains the concern of this world, but under the Tudors, the two were intimately related. During the medieval past, the control of government rested largely with the independent baronial clans and over-powerful magnates, who at times successfully transformed the monarchy into a political football. Later, in the seventeenth century, factions within the House of Commons would determine national policy, but under the Tudors there developed within the framework of royal absolutism a variety of family politics in which matrimonial and political aIliances marched hand in hand. The system retained noticeable feudal overtones in structure and organization, however the aim was no longer the custody of the royal person but simply the control of the approaches to the throne. The days had long since vanished when the earls of Northumberland and Warwick could muster private armies, intimidate royal justices, corrupt the laws of the realm to their own advantage, and demand as their feudal right entry into the royal council.