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King Henry VIII - Off with her head!

Lusty King Henry VIII had two of his wives executed
By David Cocksedge

MONARCHS OF the past possessed weapons of revenge unavailable to their humble subjects, and a queen who took lovers threatened the royal succession. Adultery was considered to be treason, and two of the six wives of Henry VIII were executed for the offence. The cases of Anne Boleyn and Kathryn Howard were very different, but you could refer to each execution as a judicial crime of passion.

Born in 1491, Henry VIII of England was the second son of Henry VII and Elizabeth of York. He married Catherine of Aragon (aged 23) in 1509, shortly after ascending to the throne. This was purely a union of political convenience. Henry was just 18, a lusty young man much given to athletic pursuits such as jousting, wrestling, hunting, wenching and traveling widely around the English countryside. They had one daughter, Mary, destined to become the fanatically Catholic “Bloody Mary” who had thousands of Britons burned at the stake during her reign (1553-1558).

Anne Boleyn was a comely young lady from Wiltshire with beautiful black eyes that soon captivated the young Tudor king. He wrote her some passionate love letters which have survived as evidence of real infatuation. He even had his marriage to the powerful Catherine annulled in order to marry the very English Anne. And though the first queen's failure to bear a male heir was a key reason for the divorce, Henry's love for Anne Boleyn clearly strengthened his resolve.

When Pope Clement VII (Catherine's nephew) refused to accept the divorce it sparked the immense upheaval of the English Reformation. But for Henry and the pregnant Anne, secretly married in January 1533, the union was not a success. The king's ardour soon cooled after the marriage and he started eyeing up pretty maidens around the court. Anne bore him a daughter (the future Elizabeth I) instead of the son he desired. A second child miscarried and a third (a boy) sadly died at birth.

The stillborn child was delivered on 29 January 1536 and the unhappy events seems to have set the wheels of vengeance moving, for on 2 May that year Anne Boleyn was sent to the famous Tower of London, charged with adultery.

Four young courtiers were cited as her lovers. These were Sir Francis Weston, Henry Norris, William Brereton and Mark Smeaton. The most sensational charge, however, was that Anne had enjoyed carnal relations with her own brother, Lord Rochford; an accusation instigated by his spiteful wife. All except Smeaton protested their innocence. But they all went to the block and were beheaded, Smeaton declaring on the scaffold that he “deserved to die.”

Anne persistently professed herself innocent of the charges. When she heard of Smeaton's last words she erupted with passion, declaring “Has he not cleared me of that public shame he has brought me to? Alas, I fear his soul suffers for it and that he is now punished for his false accusation!” She was tried and unanimously condemned by a court of thirty peers. The sentence carried with it an option for Henry – she could be burned at the stake or beheaded, according to the king's pleasure.

Henry considered himself a merciful man and opted for beheading. He even had an especially sharp blade imported from France even as Anne observed with sad vanity, “I have but a little neck.”

Anne went to the scaffold on 19 May 1536, behaving with courage and dignity. It was said that she had never appeared more beautiful than on that fateful day. Still professing her innocence, she graciously declared that the king had done her many favors: first in making her a marchioness, second in making her queen, and third in sending her to heaven. She then gave the executioner a gold sovereign in keeping with tradition, and he kneeled before her and begged her forgiveness for what he had to do. As she placed her head on the block, there was a loud sigh from the hundreds of London citizens gathered to watch the execution. After the expert death-stroke, a cannon shot was fired to signal her end and this was heard by the king as he galloped through woods nearby. His servants hunting with him reported that he reigned up suddenly and shouted, “My God! What have I done?”

It is easy to imagine the tragic Anne Boleyn as a victim of intrigue and circumstance. But note that her own uncle presided over the court of peers which found her guilty. They saw evidence which was subsequently destroyed. No-one, not even her own daughter Elizabeth (who became one of the most powerful monarchs in Europe during her 45-years reign), later tried to retrieve her reputation. Smeaton's confession, the silence of her friends, and the unanimous judgment all tend to suggest that she may well have been an unfaithful wife.

Still, callous statecraft clearly played its part in the affair. Henry craved a legitimate male heir and did not mourn his second wife's death. He was seen immediately after the execution wearing bright yellow garb with a feather in his cap. And the very next day he became betrothed to Jane Seymour, his third wife. She was to die not long after giving birth to the male child he so desperately desired. This was the sickly Edward VI (king from 1547 to 1553). His fourth wife, Anne of Cleves, lasted only as queen from January to July 1540. Henry only married her to effect a German alliance, but on first seeing her he found her so ugly that he never consummated the marriage. It was then that the ill-starred Kathryn Howard entered his life.

Kathryn was the orphaned daughter of a noble and gallant soldier, and had been brought up in the household of her grandmother, Agnes, Duchess of Norfolk. Various scheming parties brought her into the royal court, knowing that Henry would notice her immediately. They were right: the young girl (18) was beautiful and vivacious and Henry, now 49, fell passionately in love with her. He called her his ‘rose without a thorn' and she seemed to come fresh with all the innocence of virginal maidenhood. Unfortunately for all concerned this was an illusion.

Kathryn had in fact committed many youthful indiscretions. She was very skilful in the art of beguiling men. And almost immediately after wedding Henry in July 1540, her extensive sex life came to the attention of the king's councellors. A former maidservant in the Norfolk household had told her brother of Kathryn's indiscretions. The brother then approached Archbishop Thomas Cranmer with this disquieting information. The maid was summoned and told the Archbishop, “There is one Francis Dereham who was servant in my Lady Norfolk's house who has been in bed with her these many nights. And there hath been such puffing and blowing between them between the sheets that once in the house Kathryn's maidservant said to me that she could lie no longer with her for she knew not what matrimony meant.”

Nor was it just Dereham who had dallied with the pretty young English rose from Norfolk . A musician named Henry Mannock had also been one of her regular lovers. This was an awkward business. Cranmer himself had arranged the royal marriage and his reputation was at stake. He is said to have been ‘marvellously perplexed' as to what to do about the reports and called on two other high officials of state who were equally troubled. Cranmer, they finally decided, must inform the king, even if the tales were just malicious gossip. But Henry was besotted, and would probably be enraged at this information. An angry Henry VIII was not a man to be trifled with. He was in the classic position of being a much older man absolutely captivated by a new young wife. As the famous expression goes: ‘There is no fool like an old fool'.

Cranmer eventually decided to inform the king, but dared not face his sovereign in person. Instead he submitted a carefully written report, and waited in some trepidation for the storm to break. And so it did. Henry was indeed outraged. He refused to believe the report. His lovely Kathryn was entirely innocent and not capable of such deeds, he bellowed. He questioned his wife about it, and she was fierce in her denials. But though Henry desperately wanted to believe her, his obligations required that he secretly assemble a group of nobles to investigate the allegations closely. This was duly done. Dereham and Mannock, the maidservant and her brother were rounded up and questioned at length.

When the various reports were compiled, the picture looked very dark for Kathryn Howard. Francis Dereham had at one time even been betrothed to Kathryn and confessed ‘carnal knowledge' of her many times. Dereham was by all accounts something of a stud. He named three young ladies who had joined Kathryn and himself in some bedroom athletics – and over three hours, he had managed to satisfy them all. He also stated that Sir Thomas Culpepper, Kathryn's own cousin, was another of her casual lovers.

Henry VIII – bold scourge of the Pope in Rome – wept like a baby when he heard the news. For some time he was so overcome with emotion that he could not speak without breaking down. He dearly loved his beautiful young English Rose and tried desperately to discredit the stories. But the avalanche of truths was overpowering.

As investigations proceeded, it became clear that the entire household of the Duchess of Norfolk had conspired to keep up the illusion of Kathryn's chastity. Lady Jane Rochford (the spiteful wife of Anne Boleyn's executed brother) was reported to have encouraged Kathryn's youthful frolics. She too was arrested and questioned – and went to the executioner's block in due course.

As bitterly galling as this was to the cuckolded king, there was worse to come. Henry discovered that after marrying him, Kathryn had appointed the lusty Dereham to her own royal household, and that they had continued to meet in her private bedchamber on numerous occasions.

The spell of Henry's disbelief was broken and he had Kathryn formally arrested. When questioned, she persisted in her denials until confronted with the vast haul of confessions from many lovers and servants. Faced with their frank statements, she broke down and admitted her youthful indiscretions to Cranmer. But she still maintained that she had been faithful as a wife to Henry. However, this did not square with the evidence.

The young queen's confession was enough to seal the fates of the leading men in the case. Culpepper, a man of noble birth, was tried, tortured and beheaded. Dereham and Mannock, both lowlier paramours, were hanged and quartered in public – a horrible end: their entrails were cut out from their stomachs as they still lived. Assorted members of the Howard family and household were arrested on charges of ‘Misprision of treason', which translates as concealing their knowledge of an intention to deceive the king.

The poor wretched Kathryn Howard was now charged with adultery. But still the anguished king and his distressed councellors were reluctant to act decisively. The Lord Chancellor asked the lords for a delay in the trial proceedings. The queen, he said, must be given a chance to clear herself of the charges. The lords willingly agreed to the proposal. But within a few days, the king's own Privy Councellors pressed for a speedy resolution to the case. They did, however, add a clause which speaks volumes for King Henry's miserable state of mind. The king, they declared, need not actually attend Parliament as it assessed evidence; he need only sign the documents when judgment was passed. This unusual arrangement was suggested because the “sorrowful story and wicked facts if repeated before him might renew his grief and endanger His Majesty's health.”

Henry agreed to the proposal, which must have been a great relief to the lords. They would now be able to speak their minds freely without their impetuous sovereign glowering at them from behind his beard. As in the case of Anne Boleyn, the trial records were subsequently destroyed. But it appears that Kathryn did confess to the great crime that she had been guilty of “against God and a kind Prince – and against the whole English nation.” She asked no mercy for herself, only for the friends and relations who had been implicated with her. It was said that she had been inconsolable with grief when Francis Dereham was executed. Perhaps he was the only man in her short life that she had truly loved.

Kathryn Howard was executed by beheading on Tower Hill on 13 February 1542. We do not know how she faced her end. But we do know that Henry VIII had learned a bitter lesson. Though he had frolicked with many young maids in his youth, he was now considered to be an old man, stricken with gout and arthritis. He did not take any more frisky young nymphs to the altar. The following year he married the patient and motherly Katherine Parr, his sixth wife. She subsequently managed to outlive him when he died five years later, aged 56.

(Research: ‘britannia.com/history/monarchs).

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