Katherine was in a crazed state, and at first denied it all, even that she had been as good as married to Dereham. Admitting that might have helped her, for it would have made her marriage to the King null and void. But the foolish girl thought that denying everything was safer.
In the end, she broke down and confessed what had taken place before her marriage. That was no crime, of course. But Dereham let slip that she had left him for Culpeper, and adultery was another matter. In a queen, it was high treason. Katherine would only admit that she had flirted with Culpeper, given him gifts and called him her 'little sweet fool'. Yes, she had sent him a letter ending with the words, 'Yours as long as life endures', but she firmly denied she had ever slept with him. She accused Lady Rochford of spreading that rumour, but Lady Rochford would not admit it.
Culpeper was arrested. He said he had met the Queen in secret many times, but that they had not 'passed beyond words'. But when the council were told that they had met in the privy, they believed the worst.
Katherine was doomed. Her servants were sent away. Her jewels were given back to the King. She was sent to Syon Abbey by the Thames, where she was well looked after but made to live quietly and dress in sober clothes. Her rich gowns and jewels had been taken from her. The Howard family fell from favour, and many of its members were sent to prison. Dereham and Culpeper were tried and beheaded.
Katherine did not face trial. Instead, the House of Lords condemned her as a traitor, who must forfeit her life and goods. Three months after her arrest, the lords came for her. This was when she realised that the King really did mean to have her put to death and, in panic, she refused to go with them. But they forced her into the barge, and took her to the Tower. They passed under London Bridge, where the rotting heads of Dereham and Culpeper had been set on spikes.
In the Tower, Katherine could not stop weeping. Then she calmed down and asked if the block could be brought to her, so that she could practise how to behave nobly at her death, to uphold the honour of the great Howard family. She went to the scaffold on 13 February 1542, so weak with fear that she could hardly stand. She told the crowd that she deserved a hundred deaths. Then she knelt, and the axe took off her head with one blow. Wrapped in a black blanket, she was buried near her cousin, Anne Boleyn, in the Tower chapel.
Chapter Five
Jane Parker, Lady Rochford (1542) - The 'Wicked Wife'
The claim that incest had taken place between Anne Boleyn and her brother, Lord Rochford, was said to have been made by his own wife, Jane, Lady Rochford. She helped bring to ruin not only her husband and his sister, but also Katherine Howard. Hers is one of the darker tales of the traitors of the Tower.
Jane Parker was the daughter of Henry, Lord Morley; her mother was a distant cousin of the King. She had been 'brought up in the court' from a young age, and was a maid of honour to Katherine of Aragon. In 1520, she had gone with Queen Katherine to 'the Field of Cloth of Gold', the famous meeting between Henry VIII and the King of France. Jane had become one of the court's young stars, and in 1522 she danced the role of 'Constancy' in a display with Anne Boleyn and others.
By the end of 1524, Jane had married George Boleyn. As a wedding gift, the King gave the couple a manor in Norfolk. The Boleyn family went up in the world after Henry VIII began courting George's sister, Anne Boleyn. George Boleyn became one of the most powerful men at court, loaded with offices and wealth, and in 1529 he became Lord Rochford.
Lady Rochford was for years a member of Anne Boleyn's circle, and from 1533 she served her as a lady-in- waiting. At Anne's crowning that year, Jane was given a special place with many great ladies.
An usher of the court, George Cavendish, who knew Jane but had no love for the Boleyns, took a poor view of her. He wrote that she had been brought up without a bridle, and left to follow her lust and filthy pleasure, wasting her youth. She had no respect for her marriage vows, and did not fear God.
Lady Rochford had a talent for plotting. She was to prove that over and over again. In October 1534, when Henry VIII was unfaithful to Anne Boleyn, Anne asked Jane to help her get rid of the King's mistress. The plan was to replace his mistress with Madge Shelton, the Queen's cousin, who would not be so much of a threat to Anne. But Henry found out, and Lady Rochford was dismissed from her post of lady-in- waiting and sent away from court. We do not know when, or if, she returned.
In October 1535, while the King and Queen were away on a tour of the kingdom, Mary, Henry VIII's daughter by his first wife, was seen in public. She was popular, and many felt sorry for the way she had been treated.
To show their support, 'a vast crowd of women, unknown to their husbands, came before her, weeping and crying that she was their true princess'. It was treason to say this, and their leaders were put in prison in the Tower. One of them was Lady Rochford. She does not appear to have been in prison there for long.
It has been said that speaking out in favour of Mary was surprising for Lady Rochford, when she knew her future lay with the Boleyns. But quite a few of their party had given up on them, put off by Anne's pride and sharp words. It also seems that Lady Rochford was jealous of her husband's close bond with his sister, the Queen, so her breaking with the Boleyns makes sense. If you were not for them, then you had to be against them, batting for the other side, the Lady Mary.
Sir Francis Bryan was one of the men who would help to bring about Anne's downfall. In 1536, when he and his friends were working against Anne, he visited Lady Rochford's father, Lord Morley. He may have gone to tell Morley that Lady Rochford had accused her husband and the Queen of incest. Bryan perhaps hoped to gain the support of the shocked father for the Lady Mary. He may have known that Morley was a friend of Mary.
With his wife and his daughter, Morley would visit Mary in June 1536. They spoke only of 'things touching to virtue'. Morley praised Mary in the books he gave her after that visit. When she became queen in 1553, he spoke of 'the love and truth that I have borne to your Highness from your childhood'. This shows he had been loyal to Mary long before June 1536.
Lady Rochford, it seems, had been swayed by her father's love for Princess Mary. Having been brought up at the court of Katherine of Aragon, she would have known Mary well. Lord Morley had held up the princess as a model of virtue and learning to his family. It is easy to see how Lady Rochford could have grown up loyal to Mary Tudor. It could be that she now saw herself as Mary's friend and hoped to see her named Henry's heir once more.
There was one other good reason why Lady Rochford could have come to hate the Boleyns in 1535. Her father had served the King's grandmother, the Lady Margaret Beaufort. In 1535, the Lady Margaret's great friend, the Bishop of Rochester, was put to death for being true to Queen Katherine. Lord Morley had been present in 1509 when Lady Margaret died during a Mass said by the Bishop. People blamed the Boleyns for the Bishop's fate, and it may well be that Lord Morley and his family did too. It seems that they, like so many others, had chosen to distance themselves from Anne and place their hopes for the future in the Lady Mary.
But in 1536, Lady Rochford went as far as to accuse her husband of incest with his sister, the Queen. Some writers have questioned this, but many sources of the time show that it was Lord Rochford's 'wicked wife' who betrayed this 'cursed secret' and was out for his blood. At his trial, Lord Rochford himself complained that he had been condemned on the word of 'only one woman'. What could have driven Lady Rochford to do that?
It seems their marriage was not happy. There were no children, though Lord Rochford had a bastard son. Rochford owned a book, an attack on women and marriage, that perhaps matched his own views on his wife. He had got it in 1526, within two years of his wedding, and the writer of the book dates his torments to the day he himself was wed.
Rochford had been at the royal court since his early teens at least. He was good-looking and loose in morals. Cavendish wrote that his life was 'not chaste', his 'living bestial'. He 'forced widows and maidens', and 'spared none at all'.
If he did not stop even at rape, then the word 'bestial' might well mean that he took part in buggery too. Cavendish refers to Rochford being unable to resist this 'vile' and 'unlawful deed'. On the scaffold, Rochford would confess that his sins were so shameful they were beyond belief, and he had known no man so evil.
Rochford may have forced his wife to submit to the kind of sex that outraged her. That was cause enough for her hatred. Some have said that Lady Rochford sought revenge on him after finding out that he had had gay sex
