The Other Tudors (39 page)

On the death of Catherine Howard, Henry signed Lisle’s pardon and ordered his release. Tragically, Lisle died in the Tower the next day, supposedly ‘through too much rejoicing’ on being advised of his imminent release. Francis Sandford recorded the event in his
Genealogical History of the Kings of England
, published in 1707: ‘… receiving so great a pressure of Joy, his [Lisle] Heart was over-charged therewith, and the Night following … he yielded up the Ghost … this King’s Mercy was as fatal as his Judgements.’

With Lord Lisle’s death, Henry sent word to Honor Lisle that she was now at liberty, and in March she returned to England. She lived another 24 years, dying in 1566 at Tehidy, a house belonging to her grandson, Arthur, son of John and Frances Bassett. The house was also home to her son George Bassett, his wife Jacqueta Coffin, and their children, so her declining years were spent surrounded by her children and grandchildren.

Lord Lisle’s three daughters all married. The eldest, Frances, married first her stepbrother, John Bassett, and then Thomas Monk of Potheridge. By this union she was the great-grandmother of General Monk who played a key role in the Restoration of Charles II. Elizabeth married Sir Francis Jobson and produced four sons. Bridget married William Carden, and was widowed within 10 years. Thus the blood of the last Yorkist king continued.

Anne Bassett, thanks to the support of Henry VIII, remained a lady-in-waiting. She served Jane Seymour, Anne of Cleves, Catherine Howard and Catherine Parr. When Edward VI came to the throne, Catherine Parr continued to maintain a household, and Anne Bassett received an annuity for her post, a sum paid to her even though she did not actually attend the Queen Dowager. When Catherine Parr died, Anne retired from Court. She was not to appear again until she became a lady of the privy chamber for Mary I.

In 1554, Anne Bassett finally met her match. She married Walter Hungerford, the son of Baron Hungerford, a supporter of Thomas Cromwell, who had died on the scaffold in 1540. When they married, and with the addition of a gift of 5,000 Marks from Mary I, the title of baron that had been lost when his father was executed was restored to Walter along with family lands in Wiltshire, Somerset and Cornwall. The reestablished Baron Hungerford was 21 years old, and his Baroness was 33 when they married in Mary I’s private chapel at Richmond Palace.

Baron Hungerford was known as ‘The Knight of Farley’. His portrait, mounted and costumed for the hunt, has an inscription that states that at the commencement of the reign of Elizabeth I he was a ‘champion huntsman’ and, if the image does not lie, something of a dandy. The marriage ceremony between Sir Walter and Anne Bassett was a cheery affair, according to a letter written by Robert Swyfte to the Earl of Shrewsbury from London, dated 11 June 1554: ‘On Thursday last was married at Richmond, Basset the Queen’s maid, to Mr Hungerfurthe, son and heir of Lord Hungerfurthe, at which day the Queen showed herself very pleased, commanding all mirth and pastime.’
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Happiness was to be short-lived for Anne Bassett. The date of her death is not known, but within four years Hungerford was free to remarry and we must assume that Anne died during this period. There are no children recorded for the marriage.

Hungerford’s second marriage took place in July 1558, and as the new Lady Hungerford, Anne Dormer, was one of the queen’s ladies, Mary I made a grant to return more of the Hungerford lands. Anne was the sister of one of the Queen’s favourites, Jane Dormer, who had captivated and married Don Gomez Suarez, the Spanish Duke of Feria.

Several letters survive from Anne to her sister, ‘ye Right Honourable the Duches of Ferya her grase’. The marriage did not go well and the Hungerfords parted company in 1569. Baron Hungerford refused to pay his wife any alimony and took her children away from her. She was obliged to fight for an allowance and, after his death, for her widow’s jointure and her children’s inheritance: ‘… the aforesaid Anne (Lady Hungerford), before claim to dower, viz on the 22nd of September 1597, disagreed to her jointure, and prosecuted her writ to recover her rightful dower against Sir Edward Hungerford [Sir Walter’s brother and heir], who was commanded to restore to her “the reasonable dower which fell to her of the freehold of Farley, Wellow, Telford, Rowley, and Wittenham”. So Lady Hungerford finally defeated the machinations of her late husband and his instigators, and spent the remainder of her life in comfortable circumstances. She died, at Louvaine, in 1603.’ At least Anne had something to leave to her daughters, but the bulk of the estate still went to Sir Edward. Four years later, Edward too was dead, childless; the estates and title went to yet another Edward Hungerford, son of Lucy Hungerford, one of the despised daughters of that Sir Walter who married Anne Bassett.
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H
enry’s marriage to Catherine Howard was remarkably brief. Less than two years after the ceremony, in July 1540, Catherine was executed in the Tower. It turned out that Henry was not the only man who had found Catherine attractive, although he appears to have been one of the few she did not sleep with immediately. Catherine’s relatives saw to it that she kept the King at arm’s length and held out for the ultimate goal of marriage.

Catherine’s early life had been one of neglect and she suffered from lack of direction. One of the 10 children of Joyce Culpepper and Lord Edmund Howard, a younger brother of the Duke of Norfolk, Catherine spent her childhood in the house of her grandmother, the Dowager Duchess of Norfolk. Catherine’s mother had died when she was four years old and her father was a man of very little substance, emotional or financial. A letter from Lord Edmund Howard, demonstrates his sense of frivolity, as such an important letter reads:

According to Muriel St Clair Byrne, Edmund was ‘always in debt and the despair of his family’. His friends, however, seem to have come to his rescue and he was for a time, under Lord Lisle, Comptroller of Calais. This would have given Edmund an income; professional staff would have taken care of the day-to-day running of the Comptroller’s office. His daughter, Catherine, was to show a similar frivolous attitude to life.

Placed as a lady-in-waiting in the house of her grandmother, Catherine Howard’s first lover was Henry Mannox, her music teacher; Catherine was 14. About a year later, in 1537, she fell in love with Francis Dereham, a gentleman in the Dowager’s household. They may have considered marriage, since Dereham’s rank was that of a gentleman and Catherine, despite her Norfolk relatives, was from a poor but large family. Certainly, Dereham gave Catherine a series of lover’s gifts; they called each other husband and wife, and appeared before the other household members in this guise. There were no repercussions, however; Catherine is supposed to have said, ‘a woman might meddle with a man and yet conceive no child unless she would herself.’
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In any event, Catherine’s family managed to get her a place at court with Anne of Cleves and, once there, she caught the eye of the King.

Catherine is never described as beautiful. She was described as small and fairly pretty. What Catherine had was youth and vivacity, and she was a neglected child suddenly presented with a fairytale place at court. It must have reminded Henry of his own youth when he fell in love with Bessie Blount. Catherine, this joyful, loving, sparkling, sexy girl was just what Henry imagined he wanted. As to the rest, he could persuade himself that she was chaste and loving, both of which assumptions were, in this case, cruelly false. Catherine’s contrast with his wife, Anne of Cleves, must have been almost overwhelming.

The Howards set about advising Catherine on how to behave and told her to promise all, but to give nothing until the King married her. Either they did not know about her past, or presumed that she would be discreet. Henry, meanwhile, dazzled Catherine with a stream of rich gifts – which must have seemed like a dream come true to the Howards’ poor relation.

The annulment of Henry’s marriage to Anne of Cleves was granted on 9 July, and his marriage to Catherine took place on 28 July 1540, at the palace at Oatlands. Henry was besotted with her. Ralph Morice, Cranmer’s secretary, wrote, ‘The king’s affection was so marvelously set upon that gentlewoman, as it was never known that he had the like to any woman.’ The French Ambassador Marillac wrote to Montmorency in September 1540: ‘The King is so amorous of Catherine Howard that he cannot treat her well enough and caresses her more than he did the others.’
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Once she was married, Catherine proved herself to be a good bedfellow, but a poor companion. She was badly educated and relied on the King’s infatuation to keep him interested in her. Within a few months of the marriage, Henry became ill; his leg became so bad that it was believed that he might die. He did not want to be with Catherine while he was sick, possibly as it brought home to him how much older he was than his wife. At any event, when they resumed their life as husband and wife, the careless delight of the courtship and honeymoon had gone.

Catherine was given an enormous budget (£4,600 a year), and a household which was filled with her family and supporters. After a very short time, both Mannox and Dereham very unwisely joined her household; Dereham became her Usher of the Chamber and Private Secretary. They were joined by Joan Bulmer, who had shared a dormitory with Catherine in her childhood, and knew about Mannox and Dereham.

Catherine also gave places in her household as chamberers (chamber maids) to Alice Restwold, Katherine Tylney and Margaret Morton, all from the Duchess’s household. The more noble Ladies of the Chamber were rightly annoyed to see that these girls were apparently held in greater esteem than they were. It was inevitable in the Tudor Court, riven with intrigue, that her secret relationships with Mannox and Dereham became known to enemies of Catherine and the Howard faction.

Once she was queen, Catherine seems to have had an affair with Thomas Culpepper, the King’s body servant. They had known each other while she lived with the Dowager Duchess, as he was Catherine’s distant cousin. Seeing Henry VIII ailing and realising that his cousin might soon be Queen Dowager, Culpepper tried to secure her affections. Even if they were not lovers physically, they were looking forward to a time when they would be free to marry. Later, Catherine tried to claim that she had been pestered by Culpepper, but had not responded, but a letter she wrote to him suggests otherwise: