The King reacted in a most unexpected fashion. Instead of turning wroth and violent, he was ‘much perplexed’, and such was his love and ‘constant opinion’ of his young wife’s character, that he dismissed the letter as a slanderous forgery. All the evidence points to the fact that Henry placed absolutely no faith in the report, for he continued in high spirits for the rest of the week, and simply ordered an investigation of the story so as to search out the source of the rumour, and protect the Queen from idle tongues and malicious gossip. Quietly he ordered William Fitzwilliam, Earl of Southampton and Lord Privy Seal, back to
London
to re-examine Lassells, who stuck to his story. Still unconvinced, the King sent
Southampton
down to
Sussex
to interview Mary Hall, while Sir Thomas Wriothesley rounded up Dereham and Manox. Not a breath of what was occurring was allowed to leak abroad.
Southampton
gave out that he was headed to
Sussex
for a hunting expedition; Wriothesley detained Francis Dereham on the pretext of his having committed piracy while in
Ireland
the previous year; and no one noticed the arrest of someone so insignificant as Catherine’s former music teacher. Suddenly the figment of Henry’s fantasy was shattered when Manox confessed that he, ‘had commonly used to feel the secrets and other parts of the Queen’s body’, and Dereham blurted out the truth about his relations with Catherine, admitting he ‘had known her carnally many times, both in his doublet and hose between the sheets and in naked bed’.
14
On Saturday
Fitzwilliam returned from his interview with Mary Hall, who confirmed all that her brother had said. The rump of the privy council was in session when the Lord Privy Seal arrived, and it continued to meet far into the afternoon, listening to the Earl’s report and arranging for absent members of the council to return post-haste to
London
. In the face of the mounting evidence, Henry remained incredulous, the thick hide of his egotism acting as protection against the knowledge that his wife was not an innocent ‘jewel of womanhood’ who had loved him with ‘perfect love’. As yet the only action that he was willing to take was to order the Queen to keep to her chambers and wait upon the King’s pleasure.
15
At this point legend takes over; if Mistress Catherine Howard lacks most of the essential and fitting characteristics of a romantic heroine, she at least has a ghost. At
Hampton Court
there is what is described as the ‘haunted gallery’, which adjoins the Queen’s chambers and Henry’s chapel. It was there that the Queen is said to have eluded her guards and sought out her husband, who was hearing Mass. Just as she reached the door, she was seized and forced back to her chambers, while her screams resounded up and down the gallery. This presumably is the explanation of the female form, dressed in traditional white, which drifts down the gallery to the door of the chapel, and then hurries back, ‘a ghastly look of despair’ upon its face and uttering ‘the most unearthly shrieks’, until the phantom disappears through the chamber door at the end of the gallery. Unfortunately, Catherine’s ghost has found the atmosphere of the twentieth century uncongenial and has manifested a marked reluctance to present itself in modern times.
16
If the Queen ever did endeavour to reach her royal spouse it must have been the morning of
London
, never to return until Catherine had been taken prisoner from
Hampton Court
. The King was still at great pains to conceal the scandal. On the pretext of a chase he ordered dinner in the open field outside the palace, and there secretly met the Lord Chancellor and the Duke of Norfolk, who had been ordered to return the previous evening. Then, without returning to the palace, Henry stepped aboard a small barge and was rowed downstream to
London
, where he met the Privy council in an all-night emergency session at the Bishop of Winchester’s residence in Southwark. There the monarch was confronted with indisputable proof, wrung by Wriothesley from Manox and Dereham.
‘No pain so fervent, hot or cold as is a man to be called cuckold.’
17
Henry was stunned by the revelation, and there is something pathetic in the picture of an elderly giant struck down by the knowledge of his wife’s infidelities. It seems incredible that he had never guessed, or that he refused to believe until disbelief was no longer possible. Henry, in the autumn of his career, had been captivated by Catherine’s vitality, gaiety and determination to enjoy every moment of life to the full. Her fascination had never included the attraction of wit or great beauty; instead, what King Hal prized most highly was the image of youth that he himself had lost. Suddenly the tough armour of self-esteem that wards off the small voice of doubt and fear, was ripped aside. As the King sat listening to the evidence during that extraordinary meeting at
Winchester
’s house, the old Henry of consummate conceit and boundless energy died. For a moment he raged in black despair, and it seemed as if his love had turned to consuming hate, for he shouted for a sword with which to slay the girl who had betrayed him, and he swore aloud that she would never have ‘such delight in her incontinency as she should have torture in her death’. Suddenly, the royal wrath turned to tears of self-pity, and the council was acutely embarrassed by the sight of the cuckold spouse weeping, ‘which was strange in [one of] his courage.’ Tearfully he regretted his ‘ill-luck in meeting with such ill-conditioned wives’, and true to form, he shifted the responsibility, blaming his council for ‘this last mischief’.
18
The days of sustained indignation and righteous disavowal had vanished. Perhaps he was too old and too hurt to desire vengeance; perhaps even now he was unable to accept the terrible truth that his marvellous illusions had been shattered; perhaps, after all had been revealed, he could not stop loving his fifth wife. Whatever the cause, Catherine Howard fared better than her cousin, Anne Boleyn, who was dispatched with callous disregard, and it was reported that Henry ‘would bear the blow more patiently and compassionately’ than expected and ‘a good deal more tenderly than the Queen’s own relatives’ desired.
19
Possibly Chapuys was correct when he wrote that the King’s ‘case resembles very much that of the woman who cried more bitterly at the loss of her tenth husband than she had on the death of the other nine put together, though all of them had been equally worthy people and good husbands to her: the reason being that she had never buried one of them without being sure of the next, but that after the tenth husband she had no other one in view, hence her sorrow and her lamentations.’
20
For Henry the end of life, if not of the reign, had arrived. He stepped forth from the meeting of the council a grey and crippled old man. He sagged; the bluster of his youth evaporated; and more and more the satanic began to obliterate the remains of what had once been an angelic countenance. The King suddenly had to confront the awful truth that he was old, and never again could hold a young girl’s fancy. There was nothing left except to seek solace in hunting – the one thing that the immense body could yet perform – and while his council struggled to discover the full depth of the Queen’s follies, Henry took to the field for ‘the purpose of diverting his ill humour’.
Distasteful as the situation was, the privy council had to act, and on the following day, 7 November, Cranmer and
Norfolk
were ordered to return to
Hampton Court
to interrogate Catherine and to arrange for her confinement to her chambers. It was carefully stipulated that they should not take ‘from the Queen her privy keys’, indicating that she was to have considerable freedom within the confines of her rooms. Though this was a sign of mercy, the effect was mitigated by the order to seize and inventory the Queen’s jewels. In the face of such ominous activity, Catherine dissolved into tears, denying everything and continuing in such a frenzy of ‘lamentation and heaviness’ that the Archbishop and the Duke were totally helpless, and deemed it wisest to retreat in the face of feminine hysterics. The following day Cranmer returned to resume the inquisition. He had originally intended to use severity, exaggerating the ‘grievousness of her demerits’, threatening her with the terrible picture of the punishment that ‘she ought to suffer’, and finally softening the impact of his words by extending the hope of royal mercy. The ecclesiastic, however, was alarmed that a ‘recital’ of her manifest sins, might drive Catherine into ‘some dangerous ecstasy’ so that ‘words of comfort coming last might peradventure have come too late.’ In between floods of tears and bouts of hysterics, Cranmer finally heard the full story.
The Queen’s confession and behaviour were regarded by the government as being far from satisfactory. She maintained that there had never been anything resembling a marriage contract between herself and Dereham, and, worse, she evidenced a disturbing tendency, the moment the Archbishop had left the room, ‘to excuse and temper’ her actions, and suggest that Dereham had forced his love upon her through, ‘violence rather than of her free consent and will’.
21
in fact, Catherine betrayed most of the characteristics of an infantile mind – imperious and categorical denial, then wild hysterics followed by abject confession, and finally qualifications and temporizing once the immediate danger had passed.
Despite the unsatisfactory nature of the confession, it was sufficiently damning. Catherine admitted that she and Dereham had called each other husband and wife and that there had been talk at Lambeth of their marriage. She allowed that Dereham had divers times:
lain with me, sometimes in his doublet and hose, and two or three times naked; but not so naked that he had nothing upon him, for he had always at the least his doublet and as I do think, his hose also, but I mean naked when his hose were put down.
22
Catherine also wrote a much more general statement of her faults, addressed to the King, in which she confessed her sins, acknowledged herself worthy of death, and referred judgment of her offences unto the King’s mercy. As a statement of guilt it leaves little to the imagination, and by itself was sufficient to warrant the death penalty:
I your grace’s most sorrowful subject and most vile wretch in the world, not worthy to make any recommendations unto your most excellent majesty, do only make my most humble submission and confession of my faults. And where no cause of mercy is given upon my part, yet of your most accustomed mercy extended unto all other men undeserved, most humbly on my hands and knees, [I] do desire one particle thereof to be extended unto me, although of all other creatures [I am] most unworthy either to be called your wife or subject. My sorrow I can by no writing express, nevertheless I trust your most benign nature will have some respect unto my youth, my ignorance, my frailness, my humble confession of my faults, and plain declaration of the same referring me wholly unto your grace’s pity and mercy. First at the flattering and fair persuasions of Manox, being but a young girl, [I] 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. Also Francis Dereham by many persuasions procured me to his vicious purpose and obtained first to he 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 Kings Majesty was married to my lady Anne of Cleves and continued not past one quarter of a year or little above. Now the whole truth being declared unto your majesty, I most humbly beseech the same to consider the subtle persuasions of young men, and the ignorance and frailness of young women. I was so desirous to be taken unto your grace’s favour and so blinded with the desire of worldly glory that I could not, nor had grace, to consider how great a fault it was to conceal my former faults from your majesty, considering that I intended ever during my life to be faithful and true unto your majesty after, and nevertheless the sorrow of my offences was ever before mine eyes, considering the infinite goodness of your majesty towards me from time to time, ever increasing and not diminishing. Now I refer the judgment of all mine offences with my life and death wholly unto your most benign and merciful grace, to be considered by no justice of your majesty’s laws but only by your infinite goodness, pity, compassion, and mercy, without the which I knowledge myself worthy of most extreme punishment.
23
So far everything was running according to the prescribed formula, for Catherine had produced a most abject and convincing, if not entirely accurate, confession. But one nagging problem remained – the Queen’s absolute refusal to acknowledge any form of marriage contract between herself and Dereham. For a moment it appeared as if the council and the King were working for a divorce based on the claim that a pre-contract between Dereham and Catherine invalidated the marriage with Henry. If this could have been established as a justification for divorce, the Queen’s life might have been spared, and the council was not altogether pleased by the thought that such an argument might, ‘serve for her defence’. Certainly Dereham pleaded innocent on the grounds that there had been such a promise of marriage. Even the Dowager Duchess was not particularly alarmed about the fate of her granddaughter, and argued that Catherine could not be executed for what had taken place at her house before the marriage with the King. She rather expected that the Queen would be sent back to her after the divorce; a possibility that the Duchess was anything but enthusiastic about. On 10 November current rumour reported that Henry was pretending ‘that Dereham had been actually betrothed to the Queen before her marriage, which is therefore invalid.’
24