KATHERINE HOWARD GALLERY

For copyright reasons some of the following images are similar, but not identical to, those in the Katherine Howard book.

PORTRAIT OF A YOUNG WOMAN, CURRENTLY THOUGHT BY SOME TUDOR HISTORIANS TO BE KATHERINE HOWARD, AND A SUIT OF ARMOUR WORN BY HENRY VIII ON CAMPAIGN IN FRANCE THE YEAR AFTER HER DEATH.

© Both images courtesy of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York.

Writing in gold lettering on the portrait from the workshop of Hans Holbein the Younger states it is of a 17-year-old, but recent claims that it could be of Katherine Howard are not substantiated. Of the few images put forward as possible portraits of Katherine, none can be positively identified, including the miniature in the Royal Collection where the sitter is thought to be wearing jewellery which formerly belonged to Jane Seymour.

I have used the version above in the book Queen Katherine and the Howards because the obvious youth of the sitter reminds us of how young the real Katherine Howard still was (not more than 21) when her life was cut short in February 1542. Although the granddaughter of a duke, it is doubtful whether an expensive portrait of her would have been commissioned before she married. The accounts of Henry VIII do not show that he commissioned such, although it is not out of the question that there was a portrait, later destroyed on his orders.

Over six feet in height, Henry VIII was tall for his times, but this suit of his field armour he wore on the French campaign the year after Katherine’s execution shows how his once fine figure was definitely a thing of the past. The suppurating and painful leg ulcers of his middle age prevented exercise, which in turn led to an inevitable gain in weight and other debilitating medical conditions.

IMPORTANT PLACES IN KATHERINE HOWARD’S STORY

HER LOCAL CHURCH BESIDE LAMBETH PALACE

The church of St Mary-at-Lambeth is now deconsecrated and is the location of the Garden Museum. Duchess Agnes was eventually laid to rest in a fine tomb, of which no trace remains, in the Howard chapel which is now the museum bookshop, where may be seen Anne Boleyn’s mother’s ledger stone, discovered in the church in 2018.

The red brick Morton Gate, the main entrance to Lambeth Palace, has hardly changed since Katherine lived nearby in the 1530s. It was at this palace that urgent meetings were called when Katherine’s misdemeanours were discovered, and the agitated Duchess Agnes, watching the comings and goings from her mansion across the road and sensing something was very wrong, sent a servant to the palace to ask her stepson, the 3rd Duke of Norfolk, if he wished to stay overnight at her house, an offer he politely turned down.

GAINSBOROUGH OLD HALL, LINCOLNSHIRE

It would seem from descriptions of Norfolk House and excavation reports of the site in the 1990s before the Novotel was built, that Duchess Agnes’s house was of a similar style to this. While on the Northern Progress, Henry VIII and Katherine Howard are believed to have stayed at Gainsborough Old Hall, which must have reminded her of her former home with her step-grandmother in Lambeth. It is believed Katherine could have been accommodated in the tower, an expensive status symbol on the fashionably brick clad east range of the house. She was later accused of arranging secret liaisons here with Culpeper, which is possible, but not corroborated.

Gainsborough Old Hall. Left: north façade; right, the east range where Katherine is thought to have slept in the tower in August 1541. © Marilyn Roberts

The ongoing tradition that while on this visit Henry first met Katherine Parr still persists, although in reality it was already five years since she had left the house as the unwanted young widow of the elder son and heir to Lord Burgh. Her second husband was John Neville, Lord Latimer of Snape Castle in Yorkshire, and she caught Henry’s attention only after Latimer’s death and Katherine Howard’s execution.

GREENWICH PALACE

Etching showing how Greenwich Palace would have looked when Katherine went there as a maid of honour. Image Public Domain

When Katherine Howard became a maid of honour she was based at Greenwich Palace, where she first met Anne of Cleves, the king’s fiancée, who arrived in January 1540 to a spectacular reception after a long and tortuous journey from her home land. Two days later, on twelfth night, Katherine and the other maids of honour would have helped Anne dress for her wedding.

The covered boat is of the type that would have conveyed Katherine from house arrest at Syon to the Tower of London in February1542, making the traditional claim  that she saw the severed heads of her former lovers Francis Dereham and Thomas Culpeper impaled on London Bridge most unlikely.

THE BISHOPS’ PALACE, LINCOLN

The Bishops’ Palace, Lincoln, with the cathedral towers visible behind. © Marilyn Roberts

It was here on the busy day in August 1541 that Queen Katherine wore the lovely sparkling cloth of silver gown in the cathedral and then attended a lavish reception in the palace where she and Henry were lodged. Sadly, it was her secret meeting here after dark that day with a young man Henry believed to be his faithful friend, that led to the spiral of events that brought about her death.

HAMPTON COURT PALACE

Image believed to be in the Public domain.

Katherine was interrogated here by Archbishop Cranmer and her uncle the Duke of Norfolk, among others, before being kept under house arrest at Syon and finally incarcerated in the Tower of London prior to execution.