Catherine Howard: Her Former Music Teacher Was Answering Questions

Catherine Howard had become Queen of England. Her former music teacher was now answering questions about their intimacy. A woman from her old household was naming the people who could tell the king more.

On 5 November 1541, royal investigators examined Mary Hall, born Lascelles, and Henry Manox about Catherine Howard’s life before her marriage to Henry VIII. They were looking back into the household where she had grown up. Music lessons, messages and allegations about the keys to the women’s chamber were becoming evidence in an inquiry into the king’s wife.

Catherine had lived under the care of Agnes, Dowager Duchess of Norfolk, her father’s stepmother, after losing her mother while young. The Duchess maintained households at Horsham in Sussex and Lambeth near London. Catherine belonged to a powerful family, but to a branch with little money. Her upbringing depended on a relative whose establishment brought together gentlewomen, servants and the men employed to teach her music.

Manox had been appointed, with another man named Barnes, to teach Catherine the virginals, a keyboard instrument. By November 1541, the pupil had become the king’s fifth wife. The teacher could be summoned to explain what had passed between them.

She had married Henry in July 1540. Earlier in 1541, she had successfully pleaded with him to pardon prisoners. Other people’s futures could depend on a word from her. Her own now depended partly on what people from her former household were prepared to say.

The information that set the inquiry in motion had passed between a brother and sister. John Lascelles had suggested that Mary seek service with the queen. Mary declined, speaking instead about Catherine’s earlier conduct. John took the information to Thomas Cranmer, Archbishop of Canterbury, and Cranmer put the allegations before Henry in writing.

Henry initially thought the story had been fabricated. He ordered it investigated.

Catherine was at Hampton Court as the inquiry reached back into her earlier life. Mary’s examination concerned a household she had known in more than one capacity. She had been nurse to Lord William Howard’s child, spending time in his household and the Duchess’s, and had later served the Duchess as a chamber attendant.

Her account reached back several years, to a time when Catherine was still called Mistress Katherine Howard. Mary alleged an intimacy between Catherine and Manox and said that she had remonstrated with him. She also named women who, she said, had carried tokens between them.

Then came the keys.

According to Mary, the Duchess had the keys of the gentlewomen’s chamber brought into her own room at night. Catherine, she alleged, would come in and take them. The keys were supposed to remain with the woman in charge. Years later, Mary was explaining to royal investigators how that control had allegedly been evaded.

She was also questioned about Francis Dereham, another man from Catherine’s earlier life. Part of her account came from what a woman named Alice Wilkes had told her about Catherine and Dereham. Mary said she had told only her brother about these matters. Now she supplied the names of others who could tell more, including the old porter and the Duchess’s chamber attendant.

The household had contained many people. The inquiry could move from one to the next.

At Lambeth that same day, Manox was examined before Cranmer and Sir Thomas Wriothesley, one of the king’s principal secretaries. He acknowledged his own intimacy with Catherine. He also claimed that she had loved him, and described Dereham’s involvement with her. This was the teacher’s account of his former pupil, given while he too was being questioned.

Manox also described a warning he and Barnes had once sent anonymously to the Duchess. They had urged her to visit the women’s chamber after retiring for the night. In his telling, the Duchess had angrily challenged her women, and Catherine had obtained the letter and shown it to Dereham. A warning once intended for the head of the household was now being described to the archbishop.

His statement named more people who could speak about Catherine and Dereham. Among them was Katherine Tilney, who had gone on to serve Catherine as queen. The earlier household and the royal one were connected by people who had known her in both. Becoming queen had given Catherine a new position. It had not separated her from everyone who remembered the old one.

On the fifth, these two examinations concerned her life before Henry. Catherine had not been condemned. But the king had asked his officers to investigate, and the answers were arriving through the people who had once lived around her.

In the days that followed, Catherine herself was questioned. The inquiry widened to secret meetings with Thomas Culpeper, a gentleman of Henry’s privy chamber, during her marriage. Allegations about her conduct as the king’s wife brought a further and dangerous stage beyond the earlier relationships described by Mary and Manox.

Catherine lost her position as queen and was eventually taken to the Tower of London. The woman who had been able to ask Henry to pardon prisoners now faced her own sentence. On 13 February 1542, she was beheaded on Tower Green.