Catherine Howard Revisited: Promiscuous Queen or Just Seventeen?
Hampton Court Palace from across the Thames. Catherine Howard is said to haunt the Haunted Gallery. (Personal Photo, 2024).
Editor’s Note: This blog was produced for Emily’s MA Public History project Period Dramas: Site and Screen. The blog posts included on its interactive map use Hidden Histories as their host platform.
Key Locations:
📍Hampton Court Palace
The Haunted Gallery at Hampton Court Palace certainly has an eery feel to it, one many visitors have experienced during their tour of the old Tudor palace. While it can be chalked up to circumstance or the inevitable draftiness of a 500-year-old building, much of that unnerving, supernatural feeling is linked to the story of one of the Palace’s famous former inhabitants—Catherine Howard, fifth queen to Henry VIII. Whether or not her spirit actually stalks the halls, the details of Catherine’s life would still be haunting, ghost story or no. Retracing where the harrowing events happened that caused her ghost to apparate would only add to the effect.
In the famous nursery rhyme, Catherine Howard is the second “beheaded” queen, having suffered the same fate as her first-cousin and predecessor, Anne Boleyn. While Anne Boleyn’s case has been revisited in the subsequent centuries, reclaiming some of her tarnished reputation, Catherine Howard has rarely been given such grace, being widely portrayed as a frivolous, young queen who was every bit the scandalous adultress her contemporaries made her out to be. Young she definitely was—thoughtless, however, is up for further debate.
Hampton Court not only saw her downfall, but also Catherine’s attempts to define her queenship as distinct, yet precedented.
To reexamine Catherine’s story, it is important to contextualize the circumstances of her queenship. These circumstances lie not just in her age, but in the physical timing of her marriage to Henry. Catherine may be ⭑Wife No. Five⭑, but she is not as removed from Henry’s earlier queens as one would think.
Specters of Queenship in Catherine’s Reign
Catherine Howard became queen (at Hampton Court, no less) in the summer of 1540, which had been a momentous year for the English queenship in and of itself. It was the first time in nearly three years that a woman sat beside Henry on the throne. Jane Seymour, third queen and mother to Henry’s only son, Edward, had died after giving birth in October 1537 (also, coincidentally, at Hampton Court), and Henry had not considered replacing her until then. But it was not Catherine Howard who was Jane’s immediate replacement—it was Anne of Cleves, who had traveled from Germany only to serve six months as Henry’s wife. Rumors of Catherine and Henry’s involvement followed almost immediately after his marriage to Anne, coloring what little time Anne had on the throne. In fact, Henry was divorced from Anne and married to Catherine in the same month, nearly overlapping their reigns as he wasted no time replacing Anne with a wife that he actually desired to be married to.
Emily at the high table in Hampton Court’s Great Hall. This is where the King and Queen would have been seated in the places of honor at court. (Personal Photo, 2024).
So, while Catherine may not have been the queen directly after Jane, she still would have been viewed in the context of Henry’s third queen, as Anne of Cleves simply didn’t have much time to make her mark on the role. With Anne quickly accepting her new—arguably better—position as Henry’s “sister” and carving out an independent life for herself with her divorce settlement, Catherine Howard took over the role of queen very much in the shadow of Jane Seymour, who had been all but sainted in the Tudor collective memory. The links between the two queens can shed light not only onto Catherine’s queenship, but the queen herself.
Catherine’s queenship was entrenched in symbolism from the very beginning; her marriage to Henry occurred on the same day Thomas Cromwell was executed. Cromwell had brokered the ultimately unhappy marriage of Henry to Anne of Cleves, and his death symbolized not only an end to his life, but an end to Anne’s queenship that Catherine sought to replace.
Given Henry’s apparent affection for Catherine, as reported by several ambassadorial accounts from the time, Catherine may have been viewed as a more permanent replacement for Jane Seymour as queen—that Anne of Cleves was more of a fluke, not someone to compare to the beloved queen, as Catherine then would be. There is evidence that Catherine understood this connection more than her critics gave her credit for. Jane was viewed as the ideal queen: submissive, faithful and fertile. These were the shoes Catherine had to fill, and fostering connections between herself and this previous queen was a shrewd tactic in doing so.
Catherine was known for her love of fine things, but astute symbolism can be found underneath her glittering riches. Several items in her collection are believed to be from Jane’s former collection. While she may have simply owned, but not have used, many of the shared items, it is likely that Catherine wore jewels that belonged to the late queen in order to establish a comparison between the two women. By doing so, Catherine could have been seen as a continuation of the peace and security Jane’s queenship brought, at least in Henry’s mind.
In material culture, it was believed that in owning or touching an object, a person transferred a piece of themselves to it. Catherine, then, could be seen to wear physical manifestations of Jane, harkening back to her predecessor in the most tangible way possible. This is most apparent in a portrait that is believed to be of Catherine Howard, where she wears the same necklace Jane Seymour is seen to be wearing in her own portrait by Hans Holbein, the famous court painter. If the sitter is indeed Catherine, she would have fashioned a direct link to Jane in physically posing herself as queen in a similar fashion to how Jane did.
It is also important to note the short physical distance Catherine’s tenure as queen had to Jane’s. Catherine may have been the fifth wife of Henry VIII, but she came to the throne only three years after Jane’s passing. Jane would have still been present in the mind of Tudor England, especially as her son was set to inherit the throne. Catherine, then, came more on the heels of Jane’s rule than has usually been addressed. She was not contending with the remembrance of a queen long-since passed, but one who had interacted and left an impression with all the same people Catherine would.
Catherine and Anne(s)
Catherine’s connections to Henry’s other wives could also have influenced her queenship. Not only was Catherine quickly thrown into the role of queen, following a relationship with Henry that had only dated back months at the time, the woman she was replacing was still a part of the Tudor court. Unlike Anne Boleyn, Catherine Howard had direct interactions with her predecessor at court while she was queen. Some of Catherine’s display of riches can be interpreted as her trying to make her mark as queen—a singular role that only she had access to—and demonstrate that Anne of Cleves was more of a passing occupant of her now “permanent” position. This, coupled with her shared imagery to Jane, could indicate Catherine’s political savvy in establishing herself as a successor to Jane Seymour, rather than Anne of Cleves, during her time as queen.
Yet, on an unhappier note, ties to the doomed Anne Boleyn could not have been lost on Catherine. Not only did they share blood, but they shared similarities in personality—and enemies. After Anne’s death, several of her jewels were given to the future Mary I, whose mother had been ousted so Anne could be queen. Catherine had a similar distaste for Mary, and made it quite apparent, as Anne did. It is dramatic irony that they suffered the same fate, leaving Mary to relish in their misfortune. In this case, Catherine again followed the precedent of one of Henry’s former queens—one she would have done better to let lie.
An outdoor passageway at Hampton Court Palace (Personal Photo, 2024).
Hampton Court: Howard’s Haunt
Catherine’s fall ultimately occurred at Hampton Court Palace in October of 1541, only four years after the death of Jane Seymour. More pertinently, this came barely five years after the execution of Anne Boleyn in 1536, another event that the Tudors held in their collective, recent memory.
Catherine certainly would have remembered.
The ghost that is said to haunt the Haunted Gallery is Catherine on the day Henry discovered her infidelity as she raced to reach her husband and beg him for mercy. All of the work Catherine did to cement her position at his side was made null and void. Yet, while it is clear Catherine was guilty of adultery, she was also a teenager occupying the second-most important position at the Tudor court. This fact should not refute all of Catherine’s political abilities for a woman of that age, as seen through her connections to Henry’s other wives.
When visiting Hampton Court Palace, we can remember how its halls saw not just the downfall, but the attributes of Catherine Howard—even if we run into her harrowing ghost.
Further Reading:
Nicola Tallis, All the Queen’s Jewels 1445-1548: Power, Majesty and Display, (Taylor & Francis Group, 2022).
Stephanie Downes, Sally Holloway and Sarah Randles, eds, Feeling Things: Objects and Emotions through History (Oxford University Press, 2018).
“Haunted Gallery and Processional Route,” Historic Royal Palaces, https://www.hrp.org.uk/hampton-court-palace/whats-on/haunted-gallery-and-processional-route/