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The Wives of Henry VIII: Katherine Howard, Part I

© Ellen McDaniel-Weissler

Henry liked to call Katherine Howard his "rose without a thorn". She was to be the solace of his old age; to reinvigorate his flagging virility and make him young again. She was the fantasy of every middle-aged man - delicate, sweet, endearing, full of laughter and fun, with a lovely, alluring figure and an attitude toward her aging lover which combined sexual flirtatiousness with hero worship. Nearly ten years younger than Henry's daughter Mary, her butterfly flutterings through the massive palaces at Greenwich and Whitehall must have made the courtiers laugh behind their hands as they watched their gouty, lumbering old king following her foolishly through the courtship dance. But she made Henry feel alive and daring, and he felt that to grow old with her at his side would be no burden at all.

His courtship of her was open and swift, once his marriage to Anne of Cleves was annulled. He chose for their wedding day, ironically enough, the same day on which Thomas Cromwell went to the block - 28 July, 1540, a scant 19 days after his previous marriage officially ended. (Henry was nothing if not efficient.) Henry and Katherine were married secretly by Bishop Bonner at the Palace of Oatlands in Weybridge, Surrey, and the secret was not publicly revealed for ten days afterwards, so that the doting king and his new bride could enjoy a honeymoon in solitude. But while the newlyweds enjoyed their tete-a-tete, it was to become rapidly evident that a new wind was blowing through the politics of court.

With Katherine's ascent to the throne the conservative Howard faction once again rose to prominence. Though Thomas Howard, Duke of Norfolk, had never particularly liked his Protestant-leaning niece Anne Boleyn, he had gladly taken advantage of the favor shown him during her brief reign. His plummet from grace after her execution had lasted up to and through the marriage with Anne of Cleves, which had brought Henry even closer to the Protestant powers in the world, although the king continued to consider himself a good and pious orthodox Catholic, despite his break with the Pope.

Now that Katherine Howard was on the throne, the Catholic Howard party was back in favor at court, and Henry, with their influence at his back, would begin the conservative backswing which was to terrorize his more Protestant subjects and confuse his supporters for the rest of his life. Having spent nearly a decade dissolving monasteries, unseating Catholic church authorities, casting monks and nuns out onto the land and despoiling the goods and estates of the Catholic church in England, Henry now did a volte face and began routing out "heretics" - people who leaned too far toward Lutheranism or other Protestant beliefs for the king's comfort - and executing them or persecuting them into fleeing the country. Thus Henry managed to bring to martyrdom people in all camps during his reign - Protestants, Catholics, those who opposed his divorce from Catherine of Aragon, those who opposed his marriage to Anne Boleyn - in fact, those who opposed his will in any way. It is no surprise that his motto was "Dieu et mon droit" - God and my will.