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Katheryn Howard: Henry's Thorny Rose (Part four) - Page 2

© Lyndal White

Still, apparently casting aside all unimportant opinions but his own, the warrant was finally signed on 10 February, 1542 and Katheryn was taken by barge to the Tower.

She apparently was faint and sickly during the journey, refusing to look upward to the Tower Bridge where the heads of her lovers who had been executed in December were spiked and rotting but her fear must have been totally overwhelming. Once ensconced in that godforsaken hell hole her only ambition was to "make a good death" and so called for a practice block. This sight would surely have softened the hardest of hearts and had Henry seen firsthand the ruthlessness of his rule one can only wonder whether he would have reversed his situation.

But essentially Henry was a coward. He ensured he never laid eyes again on Catherine of Aragon the woman who had thwarted his dynastic ambitions nor Anne Boleyn, the sorceress, so this chit of a girl presented no moral dilemma for him at all.

At the end of this solitary winter young Katheryn went bravely to her death on 13th February 1542 and in the fashion of the era impassioned a brief speech exonerating Henry from all wrong doing whilst stoically accepting her fate. Unlike Anne she was not accorded the mercy of a French swordsman but rather an English axe. A single stroke removed her head.

There is no mention of a coffin being provided for her so one can only assume there wasn't one. She lies near her cousin Anne under the floor of the Chapel of St Peter Ad Vincula within the Tower grounds, the place Victorian historian Lord Macauley would one day call "the saddest spot on earth".

This is a tale of supreme human tragedy, a tale of greed run amok and of dangerous liaisons. Katheryn's sorry tale becomes even sorrier when you realise there is no authenticated portrait of her, her time in the spotlight was so short no provision was made to preserve her likeness so she left nothing for posterity and that perhaps is the most miserable aspect of it all. This young girl simply disappeared, wrapped in her ruined reputation which one would hope would keep her protected from the fires of hell where Henry was certain he'd sent her. She just vanished as quickly as she'd arrived, she may not have ever existed at all except for the light that died in Henry's eyes which nothing would ever ignite again.

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