Young and Damned and Fair: The Life and Tragedy of Catherine Howard at the Court of Henry VIII. Gareth Russell

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СКАЧАТЬ ale, and mead fuelled the party spirit – the English had a reputation for being great drinkers – while entertainments marked each passing day. Midnight Mass on Christmas Eve was a tradition that stretched back a millennium by the time Catherine huddled inside the local chapel to commemorate the Saviour’s arrival. A troupe of itinerant actors might arrive, or have been sent for, to perform a nativity play, another tradition which has survived but evolved to the present day. Symbolism and sentiment pervaded a Tudor Christmas – the holly hung throughout the house emphasised the presence of Easter in the Christmas story, sorrow amid joy, with the holly’s prickles alluding to Christ’s crown of thorns at His crucifixion, and its berries to His spilled blood. Saint Francis of Assisi had taught that even animals should share in the joyfulness of the season, originating the custom that cattle, horses, and pets should be given extra food on Christmas morning, and sheaves of corn should be left out to feed the birds struggling through winter.36

      In the manor house’s rooms, boughs were built and hung by servants and members of the family. Evergreens were bound together and little gifts wrapped around them, with holders for candles added before the whole thing was hoisted high enough for people to stand underneath it. Mistletoe dangled from the centre of the bough, thus explaining its nickname ‘the kissing bough’. The evergreen bough’s candles were lit for the first time on Christmas Eve, then again every night until Twelfth Night, the colloquial name for the Feast of the Epiphany, when the Magi had arrived at the manger in Bethlehem.37 The boughs were a source of mirth and merriment throughout Yuletide, with mummers or musicians often ending their performance beneath them for comic effect or hopeful flirtatiousness. Unfortunately, Catherine soon took to kissing musicians, in other parts of the house, without the excuse of Christmas revelry.

      To tell the story of Catherine’s early romances and the role her family’s servants played in them, it is necessary to introduce her aunt, Katherine, a regular presence after Catherine left Edmund’s care but one who has hitherto been almost completely ignored in most accounts of Catherine’s life. The elder Katherine Howard’s impact on the journey of the younger was significant, and both began spending more time with the dowager in the same year. Katherine’s betrothal to Sir Rhys ap Gruffydd before her father’s funeral in 1524 has already been mentioned; the marriage ended in a tragedy that nearly destroyed Katherine.

      A year after her father’s death and a few months into her marriage, the elder Katherine Howard’s grandfather-in-law died. An early supporter of the Tudor claim to the throne and a stalwart loyalist ever since, the old man’s position as the monarchy’s satrap in south Wales was expected to pass to his grandson and heir, Rhys, who was in his early twenties.38 However, mourning had barely concluded before the government appointed the thirty-six-year-old Lord Ferrers instead. The decision was widely perceived as a humiliation for a family who had devoted their lives to serving the Tudors, and the sting worsened when young Rhys was excluded from the council that advised the royal household’s outpost in Wales. The marriage between Katherine and the attractive but hotheaded Rhys was a happy one, and she was outraged on her husband’s behalf, particularly since she believed that the decision to elevate Lord Ferrers, who had, after all, been judged too incompetent to serve as her brother’s successor as Lord Lieutenant of Ireland four years earlier, was part of a deliberate policy to humble her husband’s family.39 When Rhys and two of his servants were set upon by an unknown gang as they travelled past Oxford University, she began to suspect that Ferrers meant to harm or kill him.40 Rhys and his family were popular in Wales; a contemporary noted that ‘the whole country turned out to welcome him, and this made Lord Ferrers envious and jealous’. When Ferrers overplayed his hand and arrested Rhys for disturbing the peace, Katherine rallied hundreds, including the Bishop of Saint David’s and many representatives of the local gentry, who marched with her on Carmarthen Castle.41 Katherine threatened the castle under cover of darkness, making sure to display her strength through the guise of delivering a message that asked for her husband and his men to be freed. If they were not, then she promised Ferrers that her men would burn down the castle door to fetch them, a threat which rather undercut her claims that she had no intention of causing further disturbances. Ferrers managed to disperse Katherine’s supporters, but the lull was temporary. Chaos began to spread in the region. Servants of the two factions were ambushed and killed, Rhys was freed, only to be taken once more, Katherine and her men attacked one of Ferrers’s homes, lives were lost and property ruined. In his letters to his superiors in London, Lord Ferrers described Katherine and Rhys as leaders of a ‘great Rebell[ion] and Insurrection of the people’.42

      Eventually, Rhys was arrested one last time and brought to London to stand trial for treason. He was accused of discussing prophecies that concerned the downfall of the king and of conspiring with Scotland to foment another invasion. One of his own servants provided evidence against him. The case, which resulted in a conviction, was overseen by an on-the-rise Thomas Cromwell, who also helped to arrange some of the logistics of Rhys’s execution on 4 December 1531. It is unclear to what extent Rhys had been driven to contemplate allying with a foreign power in order to recapture his family’s position in south Wales; the common view at the time seems to have been that he was ‘cruelly put to death, and he innocent, as they say, in the cause’.43 Allegations of financial corruption, his feud with Lord Ferrers, and the resultant threat to peace in Wales made his destruction a matter of convenience for the central government.

While we may never know exactly how much his own actions brought about Rhys’s death, we can be certain of the devastating effect it had on his widow. She had been intimately involved in her husband’s quarrel, and so the possibility that she would be accused of complicity in his alleged treason was tangible. Left to forge prospects for their three young children – Anne, Thomas, and Gruffydd – and fearful for herself, Lady Katherine followed in the footsteps of her elder brother Edmund and flung herself on the mercy of their niece, Anne Boleyn.44 Once again, the family’s dark-eyed golden girl did not disappoint.45 She may even have tried to limit the damage for her aunt and young cousins shortly before Rhys’s execution. Rhys had been attainted at the time of his conviction, meaning that the Crown could seize his goods and property, but his act of attainder specifically and unusually made provisions for his widow, who was left with an annual income of about £196.46 If Anne could not save Rhys, she worked hard to salvage his family’s situation. It is incorrect that his two boys, both under the age of seven, were packed off to live in the care of another family, as has been stated. All three of the siblings stayed in their mother’s care, and she swiftly married Lord Daubeney, a widower nearly two decades her senior. Anne Boleyn had not had much time to deploy her matchmaking skills, and the sickly Daubeney was hardly as easy on the eye or heart as Rhys had been, but he enjoyed royal favour, and in such pressing circumstances that was more important than personal preference.47 A few years later, Daubeney was created Earl of Bridgewater by Henry VIII, making Katherine a countess, but the marriage that saved her from going under with her first husband was not a happy one.* It was mutually miserable to the point that within three years the pair were living apart and complaining about one another to anyone who would listen.48 The countess’s sons joined Catherine as their grandmother’s wards, though they had ample opportunity to see their mother who, accompanied by her maid, Mistress Philip, began to spend much of her time residing with her mother.49

      The countess’s case showed the extent to which the new queen’s loyalty to her family could prove invaluable. It was not the same thing as СКАЧАТЬ