Falling: Katheryn Howard Indicted for Treason

On December 1, 1541, Katheryn Howard’s indictment was issued, and the men accused with her were tried and convicted of treason.

Katheryn’s only real crime had been that she wasn’t the chaste and pure “rose without a thorn” her husband believed her to be. It broke Henry’s heart, and utterly destroyed her value in his mind.

Worse, it embarrassed him because he’d made such a fool of himself over her, publicly thanking God only a few days prior that he’d finally found such a perfect wife. It called into question his claim that his first wife, Katharine of Aragon hadn’t been a virgin on their wedding night by proving he couldn’t tell.

Francis Dereham’s only crime had been to sleep with an unmarried young woman he wanted to marry, years before the king even noticed her. Upon his return to England after going off to make his fortune, he discovered the young woman he considered to be his betrothed was now Queen of England.

Katheryn appointed Dereham one of her secretaries, perhaps to keep him quiet about their past. The indictment pointed to this as evidence Katheryn intended to continue her “sordid lifestyle.” Katheryn was already doomed, even before the investigation uncovered the fact she’d been meeting with Thomas Culpepper in secret.

When the king discovered Katheryn hadn’t been a virgin when they married, he went into such a violent rage his councilors feared for him. Weeping and storming, he screamed for a sword to be brought to him so he could slay her himself, swearing she’d have just as much agony in death as she’d had pleasure in her lover.

And then he broke down into to tears and blamed his council for this long, sad parade of “ill-conditioned” wives he’d gone through. Their response isn’t recorded.

Adultery was never proven, but Culpepper had admitted that he would have “done ill” with the queen if she had been amenable. For her part, Katheryn always claimed their meetings were strictly platonic and she had no intentions of committing adultery. She said she’d never wanted to meet with Culpepper, but had been badgered into it by one of her ladies, Jane Rochford.

Katheryn never explained what Culpepper wanted from these meetings, and some scholars have speculated that he may have been subtly blackmailing her to remain silent about her past.

Dereham and Culpepper were found guilty, but the verdict was never really in question. Their trial isn’t even described in the records of the day. It was more or less a formality. What the king wanted, he would get, and he wanted all of the people involved in this affair dead.

Henry had once liked Culpepper a great deal. Culpepper slept in the king’s bedchamber, a position of high favor. (He may have even pardoned Culpepper for rape and murder, but the identification is questionable.) He commuted Culpepper’s sentence to simple beheading.

However, he declared that Dereham, the man who had taken Katheryn’s virginity, “deserved no such mercy.” Dereham would suffer the full agonies of a traitor’s death by drawing and quartering.

It was a prolonged, gruesome, and hideously painful end, meant to teach a dark lesson to the watching crowd. But what lesson were they to draw from this execution? Not to sleep with a girl if she might eventually be desired by the king?

Katheryn wasn’t to be given a trial. Henry didn’t want the public spectacle of a queen pleading for her life again. After all, Anne Boleyn’s dignified behavior during her trial and execution had won her such sympathy that she was more popular now than she’d ever been in life.

He decided he would condemn Katheryn by Act of Attainder, which was essentially making her death sentence a law via Parliament. He’d retroactively made it treason for any woman to conceal her sexual history once he’d expressed an interest in marrying her.

He’d also make it legal for him to execute insane persons, because the woman who’d helped Culpepper arrange meetings with the queen, Jane Rochford, appeared to have gone mad under the stress of her imprisonment.

Culpepper and Dereham would be executed at Tyburn a little more than a week after their condemnation. Poor Katheryn would have to languish for months in Syon Abbey, waiting for her sentence to be passed by Parliament.

She may have hoped the king would change his mind as the long, dismal months of winter ticked by. If so, she was sadly mistaken. Henry had already moved on and the court was already speculating on who would be the next queen.

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