Why Catherine Howard Lost Her Head

Poor Catherine Howard. She was smart, intelligent and undeniably beautiful, but ultimately no match for the vicious Henry VIII. She was certainly a victim but was she totally blameless? Joining Kate today is the always-fabulous historian Gareth Russell https://www.garethrussell.co.uk/, author of Young and Damned and Fair: The Life of Catherine Howard, Fifth Wife of King Henry VIII, to help us find out more about this short-lived Queen of England. Voting is now open for the Listener's Choice Award at this year's Podcast Awards. Click here to place your vote! Thank you! https://open.spotify.com/s/xhg6PJa This episode was edited by Hannah Feodorov. The producer was Stuart Beckwith. The senior producer was Freddy Chick. Sign up to History Hit for hundreds of hours of original documentaries, with a new release every week and ad-free podcasts. Sign up at https://www.historyhit.com/subscribe. You can take part in our listener surveyhere https://www.surveymonkey.co.uk/r/6FFT7MK. All music from Epidemic Sounds. Voting is now open for the Listener's Choice Award at this year's Podcast Awards! UK & Ireland listeners please place your vote on the Spotify mobile app here: https://open.spotify.com/s/xhg6PJa Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy https://acast.com/privacy for more information.

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Kate Lister?

  Do you want even more shocking and scandalous history? Like why the ancient Greek statues had such small manhoods? Or what went on behind closed doors in the Georgian era? Well, sign up to History Hit, where you can see me discover the scandalous side of history, as well as hundreds of hours of original documentaries, plus new releases every week, covering everything from prehistoric Scotland to the Treaty of Versailles. Sign up to join me in locations around the world and explore the past. Just visit historyhit.com/subscribe.

• 0:35Kate Lister?

  Hello, my lovely betwixters, it's me, Kate Lister. Welcome back to Betwix the Sheets. Hello, how fabulous it is to see you once again, you little historical pervert. Yeah, I know, I know what you really are, I know why you're here, that's why I'm here as well. But before we can go any further together, I do have to tell you, this is an adult podcast book about adults, other adults, about adult things and adult ways, covering a range of subjects, and you should be an adult too. Do you feel safer? I certainly feel safer. Right, let's crack on.

• 1:22Kate Lister?

  Young people make mistakes all the time, that is just part of the deal. But what if you're married to Henry VIII and you are constantly watched by the fearsome Tudor court? Was Catherine Howard, aka Henry's fifth wife, smarter than we give her credit for? How much of a royal mistake did she really make? And what happened in those secret meetings with Thomas Culpepper behind Henry's back? Joining me today is fellow superfan of Catherine, the spectacular, wonderful historian and author Gareth Russell. Axes at the ready, everybody, let's do this.

• 2:04Kate Lister?

  Well, hello and welcome back to The Twixt the Sheet. It's only Gareth Russell. How are you doing, lovely?

• 2:09Speaker 01

  Very well. Thanks for having me.

• 2:10Kate Lister?

  Well, thank you for coming back. You are a firm favourite with our listeners.

• 2:14Speaker 01

  Thank you. It's, um, it's one of my favourite podcasts. I shouldn't say that, but it is. It is. Yeah, yeah, no, I should.

• 2:19Kate Lister?

  It's all right.

• 2:19Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's okay. It's safe.

• 2:21Kate Lister?

  I won't tell them.

• 2:22Speaker 01

  Thank you.

• 2:25Kate Lister?

  We're here to talk about one of my favourites, actually, because I've got so much sympathy for

• 2:29Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:29Kate Lister?

  Catherine Howard.

• 2:30Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:31Kate Lister?

  Catherine Howard. God love her.

• 2:33Speaker 01

  Yeah, no, she was, um, I sort of felt like sort of slightly manipulated by some sort of spectral force into writing a biography of her, because I

• 2:41Kate Lister?

  Did you? How did that come about then?

• 2:43Speaker 01

  Because I, I was doing my post grad and I went to my supervisor and so I thought about doing something on the Queen's household, because I'd done a little bit before as medieval studies, but I'd written a little bit about, um, the Queen's gold and the tax on the Jewish community for Eleanor of Castile and Eleanor of Provence. And so I was sort of looking to do more in the Queen's household. And I said, what about doing something, you know, looking at how it functioned over a period of time, say from like Margaret of Anjou to Catherine Power, like the tail end really of the Middle Ages. Uh, and my supervisor barely looked up and he said, that's insanity.

• 3:17Kate Lister?

  Well, thank you for that.

• 3:18Speaker 01

  I was like, so on a maybe pile?

• 3:21Kate Lister?

  So you're saying there's a chance?

• 3:22Speaker 01

  Yeah, like a, a backup. I love it. He said, actually, for, for this kind of thesis, what they want is deep dive.

• 3:29Kate Lister?

  Right.

• 3:30Speaker 01

  And trying to do Margaret of Anjou to Catherine Power, you'll be doing

• 3:32Kate Lister?

  Too much.

• 3:32Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah. So he said, look, um, pick a queen who wasn't there for a long amount of time. Henry VIII has provided you with a few, um, and we'll study her household. And so I, I looked at pretty much about three, four and five, um, and thought, well, Catherine could work because you have a household being formed, a household in residence, a household in tour, and then a household under strength. So there could be four thesis chapters.

• 3:57Kate Lister?

  Yep.

• 3:58Speaker 01

  And there was never really any intention of finding anything different about her rise. It was to be the household. But as I did the research, I thought, actually, the role of the family's been exaggerated. The role of the household has been underplayed. She seems a bit different. And so that ended up becoming the basis of my first, like, sort of full length biography. So that it was always, it kind of felt like I was bounced into Catherine and it was, And then I ended up, you know, five years obsessively studying her.

• 4:25Kate Lister?

  Wow, that's a long time.

• 4:27Speaker 01

  We'll come back with a thesis and then the book. So yeah, it was, it was, it was a lot longer than she was actually queen. And I kind of.

• 4:33Kate Lister?

  That is, isn't it?

• 4:34Speaker 01

  Yeah. And I kind of went into full, like, I retraced her route through the north of England. I would only stay in like places that were a bit ye old worldy.

• 4:43Kate Lister?

  Yeah. Oh, you, you went method.

• 4:44Speaker 01

  I went, well, and it was terrible because I got to York during a heatwave and I was in the top floor. And I, they gave me like three fans. I was barreling around that room like a character in a Tennessee Williams play. Like just complaining about the heat or the whiskey in my hand.

• 5:01Kate Lister?

  Love it.

• 5:02Speaker 01

  So, yeah, it, but it, it, she was just, she was really good company. And I remember like the night I finished the book, I was like, wow, this was like a big chunk of my life. Yeah.

• 5:11Kate Lister?

  I think of all the queens, and maybe you can disabuse me of this notion, of all of Henry's little gaggle of queens. She's the one that we, we sort of know the least about because it's, it's, she wasn't queen for very long. She was, she was never supposed to be the queen. She was very young. It seemed like a random pick for Henry to have done it anyway. And then it's over as quickly as it started.

• 5:32Speaker 01

  Yeah, exactly. I think the chronology is really important there. It does lead to this longstanding but inaccurate claim that we don't really have the evidence. Actually, because of the interrogations.

• 5:42Kate Lister?

  Ah, see, I don't have the evidence. That was, that's what.

• 5:45Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's like this mountain. I was like, trust me, as someone who went mad at the National Archives, like batshit mad. Yeah.

• 5:51Kate Lister?

  Okay.

• 5:52Speaker 01

  So it's, it's there. And actually, some of it's quite moving. And you can see that it's really interesting how they do the interrogation. So because this isn't a prearranged plot, they're actually responding to information. They separate the witnesses into two groups and there's two sets of questioners and they're not allowed to compare notes.

• 6:06Kate Lister?

  Oh my God, that's what parents do with children. It's like separate them and then interrogate.

• 6:11Speaker 01

  Which is how they figure out some of Catherine's.

• 6:15Speaker 01

  Lesley Fair attitude towards the truth. Lesley Fair.

• 6:18Kate Lister?

  Oh my god, now that is new information.

• 6:20Speaker 01

  Lesley Fair actually was the working title. No, it's the, it's her kind of, it's how they figure out she lies.

• 6:26Kate Lister?

  Right.

• 6:26Speaker 01

  And how they figure out other people are lying because they can directly compare them.

• 6:31Kate Lister?

  Okay, we're going to get to this, we're going to get to this. I suppose what I mean is that she doesn't have that like Catherine of Aragon who spoke a million languages and is the daughter of this person, that person and you know, lives in, is so impressive. Or Amberlin, who was equally as impressive in her own way. And then there's Catherine and she's quite pretty. And it's sort of like, like where does she even appear from?

• 6:54Speaker 01

  So there was a bit of a debate for a while about when she was born. And in the 1990s and early 2000s, a date of 1525 was settled, which is way too late.

• 7:06Kate Lister?

  Is that like by rock, papers, scissors, a group of historians just came one out?

• 7:09Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 7:09Kate Lister?

  Right, okay.

• 7:10Speaker 01

  And then it stuck. And it would mean she was like 14, 15 when she got married, which is.

• 7:16Kate Lister?

  It's not inconceivable, but it's young.

• 7:18Speaker 01

  It's very young. The problem is that she would have been too young to join the ladies winning, ladies and women.

• 7:23Kate Lister?

  Ah, well done, yes.

• 7:25Speaker 01

  So it has to be 16 because they don't want an ambassador on the basis of age.

• 7:29Kate Lister?

  Okay.

• 7:29Speaker 01

  So, but the, the other, which is bizarre, which is given all the problems we have in sugar history, sometimes you would kill for a firm source in someone's age.

• 7:39Kate Lister?

  Yep.

• 7:41Speaker 01

  And the French ambassador specifically states that she was 18 in 1540 and he met her on many occasions. He was her guest at hunting weekends. So actually the much older, traditional date of birth of 1522, maybe at a push 1523, but almost certainly 1522 is when she's born. She's born to the younger son of the second Duke of Norfolk, Edmund Is.

• 8:05Speaker 01

  Bit of a shagger, a bit of a drinker. He's just a bit of a sort of jock and he torches his career at court because I, one of the things I found was the score sheet for the 1511 joist and he's the only one that beat Henry VIII and after that.

• 8:18Kate Lister?

  Oh, that's just a rookie mistake.

• 8:20Speaker 01

  He obviously, like the lust for victory takes over. So Edmund's always sort of middling of the road. He does get into debt. Catherine's almost certainly born in Lambeth and that's how she's referred to Catherine Hard of Lambeth. And her mother dies when Catherine's probably about five or six.

• 8:40Speaker 01

  Edmund is constantly asking his relatives for help and then he finds the sort of alpha organised niece, Anne Boleyn, who says, well, I'll do it. And she gets him a job in the colonial administration in Calais and he goes there and Catherine is sent to live with his stepmother, the Duchess of Norfolk. We do know that Edmund suffered a little bit from incontinence later in life. We there's a letter to his host, Lord of Midley Lyle, saying that he can't come to dinner that night because last night I did be piss my bed for which my wife hath sore beaten me. So he marries again.

• 9:16Kate Lister?

  That's too much information there.

• 9:17Speaker 01

  I feel, yeah, Lady Lyle was like.

• 9:19Kate Lister?

  My, my schedule won't permit, it's fine.

• 9:20Speaker 01

  Decline with regrets.

• 9:23Kate Lister?

  Imagine, to be fair, that's completely, you can't argue with that.

• 9:26Speaker 01

  No, she can't be like, listen, bring a pal.

• 9:28Kate Lister?

  In fact, that might actually be one you keep in your back pocket because nobody can argue with that. It's like piss the bed and got beaten up.

• 9:37Kate Lister?

  No one's going to dispute that. So that's fine.

• 9:39Speaker 01

  I'll rearrange my plasma.

• 9:42Kate Lister?

  You deal with that, it's fine.

• 9:45Speaker 01

  I just like, Arthur, we are never inviting them again.

• 9:47Kate Lister?

  Nope, never, never. Wow, okay.

• 9:49Speaker 01

  Maybe he didn't want to be invited, but maybe he hated on her Lyles dinner parties. It was like, do you know what? I'll tell her I pissed myself and then.

• 9:56Kate Lister?

  All right, you're painting a picture. Okay, so this is the dad.

• 9:59Speaker 01

  So this is Edmund. Her mother is called Joyce, but the Howards insist on referring to her in their genealogies as Jo Castor. But it was Joyce. She comes from a pretty large family. One of her brothers, Henry, goes with her. They're sort of all farmed out to relatives.

• 10:15Kate Lister?

  Yeah, this seems a little unstable, this childhood.

• 10:17Speaker 01

  So she, and when she gets the daughter or duchesses, Agnes is, you know, thriving in widowhood.

• 10:25Kate Lister?

  This is the woman she's staying with, right?

• 10:28Speaker 01

  So Agnes has bejeweled sort of initials of her A in diamonds. She loves being a fabulously rich widow.

• 10:35Kate Lister?

  She's living the life.

• 10:36Speaker 01

  Loves it. And also, she is someone that people want to get their daughters with because the Victorian sort of painter is like ramshackle, derelict guardian. But actually, everyone wants to send their daughter there because Agnes takes such good care of them. She pays for beds for them.

• 10:50Kate Lister?

  How old is Agnes?

• 10:52Speaker 01

  Agnes is in her mid 50s.

• 10:54Kate Lister?

  Okay.

• 10:55Speaker 01

  So, yeah, she's, and she brings in a lot of dependents from Lincolnshire and Norfolk, where her family are originally from. So she divides her time between Chesworth in Surrey and then Agnes also has use of the family townhouse, Norfolk House in Lambeth. So that's really where she divides her time. We used to think, again, you will, I hesitate to say this because you know who the culprits are, but the Victorians.

• 11:20Kate Lister?

  Yes.

• 11:20Speaker 01

  So the Victorians create a narrative in which Catherine's first physical relationship is in about 1536. And they seem to pick that because they think it's a dramatic moment because her cousin Anne Boleyn's just been executed.

• 11:33Kate Lister?

  That sounds like the Victorian.

• 11:35Speaker 01

  They're like, oh, that must have been when it was.

• 11:37Kate Lister?

  Yes.

• 11:39Speaker 01

  And then what, what then happens is when we have this moment colliding in the 1990s, that they're being born in 1525, that makes her 10 or 11. So it becomes a story of abuse, of child abuse. So.

• 11:51Kate Lister?

  Are any of those true?

• 11:53Speaker 01

  No, they're not. So I should say, I really do not agree with the maniacs theory being, but it being sort of child sexual abuse. The reason being that maniacs is referred to as young maniacs. So he is.

• 12:05Kate Lister?

  Who is maniac?

• 12:06Speaker 01

  So he is a musician. He's in Sofible, by the way. He, he's the kind of person who had house parties, like, do you want to hear a song I wrote?

• 12:12Kate Lister?

  Oh, no. Oh, no. Yeah.

• 12:14Speaker 01

  No, never.

• 12:15Kate Lister?

  No, I don't ever. Shut up.

• 12:16Speaker 01

  Ever.

• 12:17Kate Lister?

  No. Oh, now he's playing the guitar.

• 12:18Speaker 01

  They're like, ah, who would let him bring the guitar in? Joe Casta? Thought we talked about? No? Okay, cool. So Henry Mannix is hired with another young man in the household to teach Catherine and another girl music. So it's

• 12:33Kate Lister?

  This sounds like a disaster.

• 12:35Speaker 01

  Yes. So for us, obviously, particularly when we're looking at imbalances in relationships, he sounds like a music teacher.

• 12:42Kate Lister?

  Right.

• 12:43Speaker 01

  It's really more that they play music together, but Mannix is just dreadful. Anyway, he is called Young Mannix. He's not yet married. And though he does have someone in Lambeth who he's telling he wants to marry.

• 12:55Kate Lister?

  Right.

• 12:57Speaker 01

  It also wasn't fifteen thirty six, it was fifteen thirty eight. And the reason we know that is that a servant mentioned that it started at the point she arrived. So I had to go obsessive.

• 13:10Kate Lister?

  Okay.

• 13:11Speaker 01

  So she was brought into the household to look after Catherine's cousin, Agnes, who is brought in when her father goes on a diplomatic mission. And he goes on the diplomatic mission in early fifteen thirty eight.

• 13:24Kate Lister?

  So how old would she have been?

• 13:25Speaker 01

  So Catherine's about sixteen at this point.

• 13:26Kate Lister?

  Sixteen and he's.

• 13:28Speaker 01

  He's probably early twenties, I think, maybe a little.

• 13:31Kate Lister?

  Young enough to be being called young.

• 13:32Speaker 01

  This is it. So I would, I always err on the side of making him a little bit older, just so it doesn't look like you're making excuses. I will, that, what is the oldest credible date? I think probably.

• 13:42Kate Lister?

  Still be called young.

• 13:43Speaker 01

  Twenty one, I think is probably, I think for the tutors, young is usually.

• 13:48Kate Lister?

  I think teens.

• 13:49Speaker 01

  He could have been her age.

• 13:51Kate Lister?

  No older than.

• 13:52Speaker 01

  Twenty, twenty one. Let's say twenty one. So he's, and I.

• 13:55Kate Lister?

  Like I have any kind of expertise in this at all, but yeah, I agree.

• 13:57Speaker 01

  But yeah, it is. Well, I spoke to a couple of people who, who have written about like musicians and music lessons. And he, they said, there's, you're looking at early twenties at the latest, if he's still young Mannix.

• 14:10Kate Lister?

  Right, okay.

• 14:11Speaker 01

  And that would have been a standard age for her to have been learning and for him to have been teaching. Once you get into other subjects, it's very different. So things like rhetoric or Latin or theology, but music is, is sort of almost here treated, excuse me, more as a pastime, a necessary one for them to learn. Dancing's actually apparently pretty similar, and so is fencing. But anyway, I digress. They start.

• 14:36Speaker 01

  A physical relationship.

• 14:39Kate Lister?

  How do we know this?

• 14:40Speaker 01

  Um, because uh, one of the servant in question is horrified when she finds out and says that you're, you are a servant and she is the niece of a duke and her family will kill you.

• 14:53Kate Lister?

  That's, yeah, okay, that's.

• 14:54Speaker 01

  She was like, watch out. She kind of reaches out to him because they're both of the same social class and there's a sense of solidarity.

• 14:59Kate Lister?

  Like, what the fuck?

• 15:00Speaker 01

  She's like, you cannot be sleeping with her.

• 15:02Kate Lister?

  Yeah.

• 15:02Speaker 01

  And he says, oh, we haven't yet.

• 15:05Kate Lister?

  Right.

• 15:05Speaker 01

  Um.

• 15:06Kate Lister?

  He might be lying now.

• 15:07Speaker 01

  He could have been. He, he does. I don't think I can say like the worst word. Can I say the C word?

• 15:13Kate Lister?

  Oh, please.

• 15:13Speaker 01

  Yeah. So he says, I have had her by the cunt and would know it amongst a hundred. Um, so it has probably been digital penetration at this point, but he, um, someone tells Catherine, this is, this is the first example of the Catherine that I love, which is like, ah, your tears are not my problem. So he has been asking her to go all the way and she has said yes, and then changed her mind and it hasn't happened. Someone then tells her, he has told this new servant, who's quite puritan and quite godly and really judges Catherine, what's been going on between you? So she says, Malax, let's go for a little walk in the orchard, which is where Catherine likes to do her breakups. And.

• 15:51Kate Lister?

  You've got to have a good location.

• 15:52Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah. She was like, isn't it lovely? By the way, we are never going to happen, ever.

• 15:57Kate Lister?

  Oh, wow. Okay.

• 15:58Speaker 01

  Uh, and he starts crying and she said, why are you crying? You're the one, I'm the one who was insulted. This is really, I have no idea why your face is wet.

• 16:05Kate Lister?

  Yeah.

• 16:05Speaker 01

  Um, and he says, like, I only did it because I love you. She says, that's not really how that works. Um, and she, she breaks it off with him. Um, and she was like, that's, we're, we're done.

• 16:16Kate Lister?

  Oh, he's one of those.

• 16:17Speaker 01

  He's, yes, he's just toxic, whiny poison.

• 16:22Kate Lister?

  Crying.

• 16:22Speaker 01

  I'm like, why are you, why are you crying? You did this.

• 16:25Kate Lister?

  Yeah.

• 16:26Speaker 01

  So she then, not long after, probably the tail end of fifteen thirty eight, she starts up a relationship with someone who's a little bit more socially appropriate. His name is Francis Durham.

• 16:35Kate Lister?

  Francis Durham.

• 16:36Speaker 01

  He is from Norfolk. He is a younger, I think youngest son of a gentry family. You have to go deep into family trees for this. And but but interestingly, we have, he's one of nine children, and we have the first six have dates of birth, but the youngest three, all of whom died outside of Norfolk, don't. So it was a genealogical survey that they got these from. So sister Dorothy marries in Oxfordshire, Jane joins a convent, and Francis ends up going to join the the daughter Duchess. But we know that he is still a child, considered a child in about fifteen thirty, and that he is given a livery by the Duchess in fifteen thirty six. So he's probably, I would say, if I had to guess,

• 17:20Speaker 01

  he's born about fifteen, eighteen, fifteen, nineteen, so three, four years older than her. That is the last good thing I can say for him. He's, he is a prick.

• 17:28Kate Lister?

  Really? Oh, she has a type then?

• 17:30Speaker 01

  I would say if, I mean, in conversations, you can be more relaxed than you would be in writing. I would say he checks a lot of the boxes for narcissism.

• 17:38Kate Lister?

  Really?

• 17:39Speaker 01

  Yes. So with the child.

• 17:41Kate Lister?

  Explain.

• 17:42Speaker 01

  So the so one theory that this, by the way, is of all the things I've written, there's one sentence in my biography of her that I wish I'd been more tactful with. I don't use where I sort of said like this idea that she was a victim of paedophilia and then of of rape by Durham is only possible if you ignore all the evidence. And I just wish that I had said, phrased it differently. It sounded like I was being very dismissive

• 18:05Kate Lister?

  Right.

• 18:05Speaker 01

  of the issue.

• 18:06Kate Lister?

  Okay.

• 18:08Speaker 01

  But the the modern theory that Francis raped her is just not sustainable, partly because we have testimony from people who said, like, they moved bed because the signs of Catherine and Francis enjoying themselves behind the curtains was too much. Catherine stole the key to the bedroom to let him in. But I think there is a binary of these relationships where we think, obviously, if it's a coercive relationship, it is unhealthy. Consensual is healthy, but there is also consensual and unhealthy.

• 18:39Kate Lister?

  That's true.

• 18:40Speaker 01

  And Francis, to me, falls into the third category. So my market stall on the narcissism thing is that they start up in late 1538. He's very good looking. He's already shagged someone in the household called Joan Bulmer, who is telling Catherine like, oh, he's like 10 out of 10. They do sleep together. Catherine is infatuated, but not so much that she sort of loses the run of herself.

• 19:07Speaker 01

  Francis does a kind of love bombing thing, which is Catherine has no money of her own. So he's like, I'll give you money. She loves fashion and so he gives her money for the silk woman of Lambeth. And she gets, I think, a turning point. It's a really little comment that she makes in a later letter, but I thought, oh, that's interesting.

• 19:42Kate Lister?

  Hello, betwixters. I am jumping in here because I have some very exciting news. Betwixt the Sheets has set up camp on YouTube. That's right. It took us a while, but we are there now. So if you are the kind of person who likes to see your podcasts as well as hear your podcasts, you can now go and find us right there. And the link is in the show notes. And please remember to like and subscribe because the people in charge of the money really do like that. Right, let's get on with it.

• 20:25Speaker 01

  It's quite fashionable in 1539 when this is happening. There's sort of silk flowers have become a thing and she gets one made for herself. But Francis goes behind her back and tells the silk woman to turn it into the, to change the floral design. So that the flowers used are the language of, forget me not, it's like eternal love.

• 20:43Kate Lister?

  Oh, it's weird.

• 20:44Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 20:44Kate Lister?

  Yeah, I don't like that.

• 20:45Speaker 01

  Catherine's like, I didn't want that, I wanted a rose.

• 20:47Kate Lister?

  Yeah, yeah, that's, that's a weird thing to have done.

• 20:49Speaker 01

  Yes, that, and so she, I think many people, so he then moves from that kind of love bombing into using the love to control. And then he gets into, well, we'll get married.

• 21:02Kate Lister?

  He's richer than her, right?

• 21:03Speaker 01

  He, yes, he, he will have more than she will.

• 21:07Kate Lister?

  Okay.

• 21:07Speaker 01

  But she is much more high ranking than he is.

• 21:09Kate Lister?

  Right. So she's more high ranking, but he's richer and older. Okay. Yep.

• 21:12Speaker 01

  So he's, and he has this sort of like, you know, he, he certainly has charisma. I have to say, I mean, I have to remind myself Francis Derrham died a terrible death. I moderate my tone. I find him so insufferable. And I think in many ways, the, again, it's just this thing of just because you have feelings, it is not the world's responsibility to respond to them.

• 21:35Kate Lister?

  Manage your feelings.

• 21:36Speaker 01

  Yeah. It doesn't matter how much you're in love. They have to love you back.

• 21:38Kate Lister?

  Yeah.

• 21:39Speaker 01

  So he's sort of talking in front of all these other, you know, bright young things in the Duchess's household. We're going to get married.

• 21:44Kate Lister?

  And they're all just hanging out in the Duchess's house.

• 21:46Speaker 01

  They're stealing, they're stealing picnic stuff. They're having late night picnics and whatever.

• 21:50Kate Lister?

  Right. Okay.

• 21:51Speaker 01

  And Francis says, Catherine starts saying, oh, what if my, you know, my, my lady should hear this. And he was like, oh, well, by St. John will be wed. And Catherine's like, oh, this is moving quite fast.

• 22:02Kate Lister?

  Yeah, that's, it's, it's a bit much.

• 22:04Speaker 01

  This is all, and what often happens in these relationships, I think, is that they go from intense affection to suffocating. What's, what's thrilling adoration at the start doesn't always last that way.

• 22:14Kate Lister?

  Yeah.

• 22:15Speaker 01

  The Duchess does find them kissing one day and to give her credit, she is a true Democrat. She punches both of them.

• 22:26Speaker 01

  You know, the blows fall with, with a classless vigor, I think.

• 22:30Kate Lister?

  Okay.

• 22:31Speaker 01

  But Catherine then, I think, is, I think, reading between the lines, she's struggling to find a way out of this.

• 22:39Kate Lister?

  We, I've, well, I was gonna say, we've all done it, but I don't know if we've all done it. But yeah, I've definitely done that. It's hurtled headlong into relationships. It's so intense.

• 22:45Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 22:46Kate Lister?

  And then by the time you realize, oh God, you're mental.

• 22:48Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 22:48Kate Lister?

  It's like, it's very difficult to get out of it now.

• 22:50Speaker 01

  Oh, you're fuck nuts and see it. Yeah.

• 22:51Kate Lister?

  Yeah. You're, you're, you're a crazy person and I don't like this anymore.

• 22:55Speaker 01

  So she has to go. Now, the problem is, that we'll come back to haunt her, is were the discussions of marriage serious? And she insists they were not because she didn't take them seriously.

• 23:07Kate Lister?

  Right.

• 23:07Speaker 01

  But under canon law, if you have that commitment and you sleep together, it kind of prevents you marrying someone else. So that's the, the first of the grenades to be stopped by Derrham.

• 23:20Speaker 01

  In late fifteen thirty nine, the Duke of Norfolk gets in touch with his stepmother and says, the king is preparing to marry again. They're going to reconvene the queen's household. I have managed to secure four of the maids of honour places, two for one of his wards, one for another relative. He said, is there someone? What about Edmund's daughter? And the daughter says, yeah, she's very beautiful, great singer, brilliant dancer. She, and she, she really, really wants to go to court. I mean, she says later, all who knew me knew how desirous I was to go to court. But it also provides her with the perfect get out of jail free card because she can tell Frances, I've been, I have to go, babe.

• 23:57Kate Lister?

  I have to go.

• 23:57Speaker 01

  Why are you crying?

• 23:58Kate Lister?

  Wish she could come.

• 23:59Speaker 01

  Yeah. So he starts.

• 24:00Kate Lister?

  So wish she could come.

• 24:01Speaker 01

  She does it in the orchard. He cries. She's like, here, here we are again.

• 24:06Kate Lister?

  Can't hate a crier.

• 24:07Speaker 01

  And he was like, I love you more than life itself. And she's like, oh.

• 24:11Kate Lister?

  Oh, oh, squish, squish.

• 24:15Speaker 01

  So I, the boat's actually waiting. So, so off she goes.

• 24:22Kate Lister?

  I'll think of you often.

• 24:23Speaker 01

  She was like, miss you, Philip.

• 24:28Speaker 01

  So she goes off to court and while she is still a lady in waiting to Anne of Cleves, she has a brief fling with sort of the number one bad boy, hottie Thomas Culpepper.

• 24:40Kate Lister?

  Okay.

• 24:40Speaker 01

  And he wants them to start doing the horizontal tango. And she says, actually, no, it's a bit too soon for me.

• 24:46Kate Lister?

  Yeah.

• 24:46Speaker 01

  So he then shags somebody else and she's very, she's quite bewildered by this and she does cry, which is apparently she's not much of a crier. And then Frances hears about Thomas, comes up to court and is like, if I, you know, you said you would marry me.

• 25:00Kate Lister?

  Fucking guy.

• 25:01Speaker 01

  She was like, oh, wow. The boat comes in two directions.

• 25:03Kate Lister?

  I can't believe you're here. Look at you.

• 25:05Speaker 01

  Specifically, who let you in? So.

• 25:08Kate Lister?

  Jeez, oh, no.

• 25:09Speaker 01

  He, he starts, he's like, you know, you said you love me. And she was like, yeah, I also said I wanted a flower in the ship of a rose and that didn't happen either.

• 25:18Kate Lister?

  That didn't happen either.

• 25:19Speaker 01

  So here we are.

• 25:20Kate Lister?

  Wow. Oh, this is awkward. Okay.

• 25:22Speaker 01

  Then around Easter of 1540, just after the collapse of the Thomas Culpeper liaison and Francis having a shit fit.

• 25:30Kate Lister?

  At any point in this, by the way, is it, is anyone expecting that she's going to marry the king?

• 25:34Speaker 01

  No. So Easter 1540, the king's like, wow, she's stunning. The dodger Duchess of Norfolk and Catherine's aunt, the Countess of Bridgewater, who I love, has very sort of 1930s old Hollywood vibes, like always glamorous, but could punch you in the face and feel no regret.

• 25:49Kate Lister?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 25:50Speaker 01

  They both know what's happened and so does her uncle William and they're like, oh.

• 25:55Kate Lister?

  That's a lovely thought.

• 25:57Speaker 01

  Oh, what could possibly go wrong? So Francis is sort of politely advised to go to Ireland. And he does go to Ireland and this is, I mean, to give him credit, this is one part of the story where I think actually this is, it could be a bit cooler. And he becomes a pirate. Yeah, like, that's a bit interesting.

• 26:20Kate Lister?

  That's an interesting thing.

• 26:21Speaker 01

  So yeah, he works as a pirate off the coast of Ireland. And there's this whole thing about with the aristocratic families in Ireland, what is unregistered trade? What is piracy? It's all very nebulous.

• 26:31Kate Lister?

  Right.

• 26:31Speaker 01

  And so Francis goes and makes a bit of money for himself, but he leaves his money with Catherine, which will later be used as proof that he sees her as his wife to be. She's like, I might spend this guy's.

• 26:41Kate Lister?

  Yeah.

• 26:42Speaker 01

  Maybe in some flowers I want. And then in July 1540, Henry's divorce to Anne of Cleves goes through, or in Olmend, and Catherine marries him. And initially, it, everything looks fine, but.

• 26:58Kate Lister?

  What's the appeal?

• 27:00Speaker 01

  Of Catherine.

• 27:01Kate Lister?

  Yeah.

• 27:01Speaker 01

  She's incredibly beautiful.

• 27:03Kate Lister?

  She's a hottie.

• 27:04Speaker 01

  Yeah. So it's in fairness, because we, there's all this, I don't really know if there is a portrait of her that survived. But, but the consistent thing is, um, like one of the Habsburg diplomats arrives a year after she's dead and someone who knew her said she was the most beautiful woman I'd ever seen, the most beautiful woman of her time. A palace servant writes later, he said that she was a blazing beauty.

• 27:24Kate Lister?

  Wow. Okay. So like a real hottie hottie.

• 27:26Speaker 01

  A real stunner. The French ambassador says, oh, she's not as beautiful as some of the women in France, but he's.

• 27:30Kate Lister?

  Yeah, but he's French.

• 27:31Speaker 01

  He's the dissenter voice. Every, the less famous quotes, they're all about her being incredibly beautiful.

• 27:36Kate Lister?

  It does seem like men are like falling at her feet.

• 27:38Speaker 01

  Yeah. She, and also she, this, I.

• 27:41Kate Lister?

  This girl can catch a dick whenever she wants.

• 27:42Speaker 01

  She absolutely, and, and sometimes a crime. She's, she's, she's, I always try with Catherine because it's so tragic in the end. I try to be like, don't feel, I know this sounds a bizarre thing to say, don't feel too sorry for her too soon. Because what you're then doing is allowing death to shadow the life.

• 28:00Kate Lister?

  Yeah, you're reading it in reverse.

• 28:01Speaker 01

  Yeah, she's got so much life, like she loves life and she is just

• 28:07Speaker 01

  the kind of person you want to go on a night out with. She's very charismatic. She's a real sense of herself, which I love. And she's really, really good at being queen consort. So she's got a good grasp of etiquette. So she always knows what to do in any situation. When she doesn't, she'll check with the chamberlain. This is how, how does she host Anne of Cleves is tricky. So they go through the old records to see what they can do.

• 28:32Speaker 01

  But she, she and her grandmother or step grandmother, her aunt and her uncle, William, not the Duke. They all know about this thing with Francis and they're, they're.

• 28:41Kate Lister?

  Oh, that's a difficult family meeting, that one.

• 28:43Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 28:44Kate Lister?

  What do we do about this?

• 28:45Speaker 01

  What do we do about this guy? And he comes back in November of 1540. And he's like, I want to work for her at court. And they're like, oh.

• 28:52Kate Lister?

  Oh, that's a terrible idea.

• 28:54Speaker 01

  Wouldn't it just be more fun to like, I don't know, replace our shoes with rocks and dump into the river?

• 28:58Kate Lister?

  Wow, that's a terrible idea.

• 29:01Speaker 01

  So they are treading water really at this stage.

• 29:04Kate Lister?

  They are trying to keep him sweet.

• 29:06Speaker 01

  So at All Hallows, Lord William, Uncle William, brings him to court to meet the Queen. And the dodger dodger says, just be nice, just smile, get through it. We'll have to throw crumbs here to this demented mallard.

• 29:16Kate Lister?

  They're placating him, aren't they?

• 29:17Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 29:17Kate Lister?

  Because he can, they know that he can, he has information that could blow this all up.

• 29:21Speaker 01

  Literally.

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• 30:21Speaker 01

  Catherine meets him at all Hallows, he goes back and starts technically working for the Dodger Duchess. And I think what they say to him is, look, just at the moment, there's no vacancies. We can't do anything in her household that attracts suspicion. Leave it with us. They are just playing for time. The Dodger Duchess, I think, very clearly hammers out a deal with him. In fact, it is clearly. There is a chest at her home in London, where Francis's love letters to, sorry, from Catherine are put, the poems he wrote about her, everything to do with her relationship is put into this chest. The Duchess will keep the chest and Francis will keep the key. So it's like mutually assured destruction.

• 31:00Kate Lister?

  Right. I would have just burnt it.

• 31:03Speaker 01

  Yeah, she, I think later she looks back on it and thinks, fuck. Yep. So, but she's trying to assure him, we are not trying to screw you over here. And it works until the next summer. And Francis loses his mind, or what we could jokingly refer to as his mind, and says, I want to work for her. Why has this not happened?

• 31:27Kate Lister?

  This is cruising into stalker territory now.

• 31:29Speaker 01

  This is what I mean. I think this follows that narcissistic trait quite smoothly.

• 31:33Kate Lister?

  Like, how dumb is this? Shmarch the king, shut the fuck up.

• 31:35Speaker 01

  Well, in fairness, it's a king like Henry VIII, who has such a reputation for being kind and cuddly. So.

• 31:40Kate Lister?

  It's like of all the kings, like go for a stroll down traitors, whatever it is, and see the heads on spike, you mad twat.

• 31:47Speaker 01

  Yep. So the Duchess is like, are we really doing this? He, and I always try to tell people, or myself included, think about travel, think about time. So Francis says, I want to see her. By this point Catherine is on a tour of the north. She's at Pontefract with the king. He has the shit fit in London and travels north. You think how many days he had and nights and inns and to think, what am I doing? Turn back. No, he turns up at Pontefract and.

• 32:17Speaker 01

  Catherine's like, ah.

• 32:18Kate Lister?

  Oh, it's this guy again.

• 32:20Speaker 01

  What fun. So she has to think quickly and it's not true. He becomes her secretary. That's a literal myth. He becomes a gentleman usher, which is sort of someone.

• 32:30Kate Lister?

  So he needs an accident. He needs an accident fast.

• 32:32Speaker 01

  So he becomes very close friends with someone else on the staff who had previously worked for the Duchess. A woman called Catherine Tilney, who he's distantly related to, and she seems to tell him, listen, the Queen is behaving a bit oddly. Because by this point Catherine has restarted nighttime meetings with her former flame, Thomas Culpepper.

• 32:53Kate Lister?

  See, now Catherine, I might have some questions for you here.

• 32:55Speaker 01

  I so.

• 32:56Kate Lister?

  This, up to this point, I'm, I'm not blaming her.

• 32:59Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 33:00Kate Lister?

  I'm completely on your side. You weren't supposed to be Queen. No one thought you were going to be Queen.

• 33:04Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 33:04Kate Lister?

  There was a handsome music teacher who hasn't been fingered by a music teacher. I mean, really, right?

• 33:10Speaker 01

  I probably.

• 33:11Kate Lister?

  Nobody knew.

• 33:12Speaker 01

  I think I started nodding too soon.

• 33:14Kate Lister?

  He's like, yes, yes.

• 33:18Kate Lister?

  I should have said musician instead of music teacher. Sounds terrible. Right? Okay. Like, like I'm on her side here, actually. And she was like, right, but now, but shit, I am going to go to court now.

• 33:29Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 33:29Kate Lister?

  Fuck, I didn't know. If she'd known that this was on the cards, none of this would have happened. She would have deported herself completely, I think, differently. And so I'm completely on her side. But now, again, what you said with him being so cuddly and understanding Henry VIII. Did you not see what happened to the last one?

• 33:45Speaker 01

  Well.

• 33:46Kate Lister?

  Catherine?

• 33:46Speaker 01

  This is my, this is my theory. So I have two theories on this.

• 33:49Kate Lister?

  She's very horny.

• 33:51Speaker 01

  Three, I have three theories.

• 33:54Kate Lister?

  Think of it from my point of view. I was very horny.

• 33:56Speaker 01

  Well, at nineteen, like when you fall in love, you're often a lunatic.

• 33:59Kate Lister?

  Oh God, you are, aren't you?

• 34:00Speaker 01

  You know, like I have, we have to find.

• 34:01Kate Lister?

  Like I could.

• 34:02Speaker 01

  The prefrontal of it all. Yeah.

• 34:03Kate Lister?

  I think about some of the things I did and said when I was nineteen.

• 34:06Speaker 01

  I mean, I've said this before, but if I was frozen in time, to be remember who I was in love with at seventeen and then at nineteen.

• 34:12Kate Lister?

  Oh my God. Like you are an idiot.

• 34:14Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 34:14Kate Lister?

  Like you, youth is a wonderful, you have a tight jawline and a high ass, but you are an idiot.

• 34:19Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 34:19Kate Lister?

  You like, you are so stupid.

• 34:21Speaker 01

  You waste them both.

• 34:22Kate Lister?

  Right?

• 34:22Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 34:23Kate Lister?

  We are all sluts and we're dumb sluts as well. That's the problem with youth.

• 34:28Speaker 01

  But we wonder, should that have been the motto of some of the, someone at the sugar court? Yes.

• 34:34Speaker 01

  Actually, it's much more beautiful in the original Latin.

• 34:38Speaker 01

  So I have two theories. One, people always say about Anne Boleyn, like, how could she have made this? I think we're asking the question the wrong way. So if we are pretty certain that Anne was innocent.

• 34:49Kate Lister?

  Yeah.

• 34:50Speaker 01

  People in Catherine's household and her family will have known that even more. And Henry did threaten his third wife, Jane Seymour, by saying she lost her head because she meddled in affairs of state. I wonder how someone sat her down and said Anne's problem was not the bedroom, it was the council chamber. Do not argue about politics with him. Do not outshine him. That's why she fell. Because in public, Catherine is like Teflon. There is no scandal. She doesn't pick a side politically. She's Switzerland of neutrality when it comes to queens. Is that what she's trying to avoid? And the fact that she's then told, oh, it had nothing to do with what Anne was doing privately, does she take the wrong, or at least only half the right lesson from it?

• 35:28Kate Lister?

  But she also knows that she had a head cut off.

• 35:30Speaker 01

  This is where that argument of mine does get a little bit harder to get over the finish line. I won't lie to you.

• 35:35Kate Lister?

  Yeah.

• 35:35Speaker 01

  It's got, it's got a couple of truncations in it. But the turning point for her is at Lent of 1541. So it's just before, it's sort of February, March. Henry gets very, very ill at Hampton Court and nearly dies. And her elder brothers, Charles and George, are in the Privy Chamber. So it's inconceivable that she didn't know how close he came to dying.

• 35:58Kate Lister?

  How old is Henry at this?

• 35:59Speaker 01

  Henry turns, he's 49, he's about to turn 50.

• 36:03Kate Lister?

  How health, I mean, he's very poorly at that point, but in general, how's his health doing at this point?

• 36:07Speaker 01

  It's not as bad as some people think it is, but he's not, I think the fact that the causes of the illness are not completely trampled after 1541. So we know he lives to 1547. I don't think that she thinks this. I think she thinks she's about to be a widow anytime. I'd like to think of Catherine Hard and Thomas Culpepper as the Catherine Parr and Thomas Seymour who didn't get away with it.

• 36:28Kate Lister?

  Oh, okay. Does she have sex with Culpepper?

• 36:32Speaker 01

  I, some people think I'm being overly generous to her or too naive. I actually don't think so. And I think.

• 36:37Kate Lister?

  Make your case.

• 36:38Speaker 01

  So when Culpepper is questioned, he says, oh, we hadn't yet.

• 36:43Kate Lister?

  Okay, okay.

• 36:44Speaker 01

  And Edward Seymour was like, oh, already too much.

• 36:46Kate Lister?

  Yeah, yes, that's not helping. A just a flat no.

• 36:49Speaker 01

  So Lydian Rochford does, who is Lydian Whitting, who arranges it, does think that they did.

• 36:53Kate Lister?

  Right.

• 36:54Speaker 01

  But Catherine sort of swears at the very end, they didn't. Culpeper says they hadn't yet. I think from what I've read of these nocturnal meetings, they were circling closer to it. The only reason they didn't is because they got caught.

• 37:09Kate Lister?

  See, this is not, don't make me be on Henry's side about this, but like this is an emotional affair at least.

• 37:14Speaker 01

  Oh, without question, without, I mean, they joke about, what's quite lovely when you read some of the things they said to each other was there's some really romantic moments. But there's also like, they get to talk about exes who annoyed them.

• 37:27Kate Lister?

  A lot in common.

• 37:28Speaker 01

  Yeah, like Thomas talks about Bess Harvey, who's like really desperate. Catherine does this quite bitchy thing to Bess Harvey, so that, um, basically he refers to like Bess Harvey as his tenement because he like, what the rent was. But Bess isn't too shinerly dressed, so Catherine sends her a really lovely dress and then tells Thomas that she did it so that his tenement would have a better facade. Which isn't, I know, it's a bit, and then she also, um, he asked for some bracelets, like that as a gift or something. And she's like, why would you need them? Your arms are kept warm by other women. So she's getting up, but she's like, she remembers what happened last time with them.

• 38:06Speaker 01

  But they have, they talk about Bess and they talk about, seem to have talked about Francis and, you know, Catherine does say to him, you know, if I was still in the maidens chamber at Lambeth, I'd have tried you.

• 38:18Speaker 01

  So I think it's circling closer to it. And then thanks to Francis, it never happens. So he's joined the court. He keeps making these really arrogant, he's rubbing everyone up the wrong way. Saying that he'd known Catherine long before they did. He knew her better than they ever would. Catherine's starting to press like three pounds here, 10 pounds here into his hands, saying, take care of what words you speak. The household is one that's predicated on etiquette. So they notice that these things are odd. What is, why is this gentleman usher allowed to behave this way?

• 38:47Kate Lister?

  Yeah.

• 38:48Speaker 01

  And then they get back from the tour, they go to Hampton Court and the Archbishop of Canterbury, Thomas Cranmer is like. While you were away, I was in charge of the government. As you know, the brother of the pushy servant who warned Henry Mannix came to him and was like, my sister has told me what the queen got up to before she got married.

• 39:06Kate Lister?

  Oh, you fucking grass.

• 39:08Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah.

• 39:09Kate Lister?

  What, what happened to, if anybody objects, speak now or forever hold your peace?

• 39:14Speaker 01

  If it makes you feel better, he was later burned for heresy. So, you know, we take our wins where we may.

• 39:19Kate Lister?

  Snitches get stitches.

• 39:25Speaker 01

  Oh.

• 39:26Kate Lister?

  You grass.

• 39:27Speaker 01

  Yeah, absolutely. Burn. So, yeah, he gets burned in fifteen forty six for heresy, but he goes to Thomas Cranmer and says, my sister has said, basically, he had asked the sister, why have you not asked for a job on the queen's service? Like, come on. And she was like, well, because she's a woman of such light morals, I don't want to be associated with her. He tells the Archbishop, the Archbishop passes this information on to the king because he's wetting himself. Yeah, yeah. There's early November fifteen forty one. He sends a couple of councillors to this lady's house and asks her for details and she gives the names, Henry Mannix. And then she's in the other one after Henry Mannix was this guy Francis Durham. That's then brought back to the court and someone

• 40:08Speaker 01

  says, is that not the annoying gentleman usher? Why, why on earth would she give him a job unless they're, they're starting it back up again. So, they, Catherine is detained in her rooms, still unaware of what's happening. They go and talk to Mannix. It becomes very clear from Mannix's testimony and everyone else that, yes, there had been some fooling around, but there hadn't been full consummation. So, they can't do anything. It's, it's, they let him go.

• 40:36Kate Lister?

  Right.

• 40:37Speaker 01

  They then divide the servants up who served the grandmother. And they bring Francis in for questioning to make sure Catherine doesn't know what's happening. They lift him on a charge of piracy.

• 40:47Kate Lister?

  Right.

• 40:47Speaker 01

  Take him to the Tower of London. And he at this stage is not tortured. But they bring in Edward Waldegrave and Robert Davenport, who were two friends of his, and they separate them. And they basically give exactly the same testimony about what has happened. They then go.

• 41:06Speaker 01

  To Norfolk House, where with the worst timing in the world, they arrive as the Duchess of Norfolk has broken up in the chest and has just managed to stuff the worst of the documents into the fireplace. And she's like, oh my God, you were coming.

• 41:20Kate Lister?

  Oh my God.

• 41:21Speaker 01

  Yeah. So she goes to the Duchess of Norfolk.

• 41:24Kate Lister?

  Shit.

• 41:25Speaker 01

  She's like, oh, hi.

• 41:27Kate Lister?

  Hi, please have a seat. I'm just making a fire over here.

• 41:31Speaker 01

  Hi, these are old.

• 41:34Kate Lister?

  Just kindling.

• 41:34Speaker 01

  They're kindling. How are you? How's the king? So she's taken in for questioning. So is the Countess of Bridgewater. Now to give both these of them credit, and Uncle William, actually, they will not shop her. They won't, they, they could have saved themselves by saying, oh, she's as duplicitous as Harlot. They shouldn't do anything wrong.

• 41:52Kate Lister?

  Wow. Okay.

• 41:53Speaker 01

  They, yeah, they all buckle, they all buckle down.

• 41:55Kate Lister?

  Yeah.

• 41:56Speaker 01

  Uncle William comes back from France and in one of my favorite stories, they're about to seize all their possessions. And they're like, where's your famous silver like collection? He's like, I lost it on the journey back.

• 42:07Kate Lister?

  Don't see that.

• 42:09Speaker 01

  The water was really choppy and it fell into the channel, but you are welcome to get it.

• 42:14Kate Lister?

  Oh, nice.

• 42:15Speaker 01

  Strangely, William lives very well for the rest of his life and no one's quite sure why. So that probably buried it in the orchard. So they're all brought in and Catherine is questioned and she makes three confessions specifically about Manex and Durham. The third, the first one is missing. The third one is the most famous one. The second one I found, it had been collated at the back of a collection of documents and just left there. And I lost my mind when I found it because it was, it's seven or eight pages long and she goes into detail about Francis and.

• 42:49Kate Lister?

  Wow.

• 42:51Speaker 01

  She remembers everything, the florist she mentions, the silk woman, everything she goes into it. And she essentially in this says, the talk of marriage was not sincere and I gave him a job because I had to, because I didn't know what else to do. Now she then later tries to change it and says that he, that she never did anything willingly with Francis, that everything was coercion. But she also, like she throws a lot of other people under the bus because essentially that meant other servants stood by and saw, like she.

• 43:25Speaker 01

  People, some people have said that I was too gentle on Catherine and that she was throwing dozens of people below her in the social hierarchy.

• 43:33Kate Lister?

  I would have done.

• 43:35Speaker 01

  Well, she was terrified and she was locked in her rooms and she was panicking. But the problem is the changes between those two confessions are so stark.

• 43:46Kate Lister?

  Oh, no.

• 43:47Speaker 01

  That they start to think, what else is she lying about? And she, in the panic where she makes the third confession, she does something lethal, which is, she says, Francis is delusional. Like, he thought I was having a thing with Thomas Culpepper, and that's ridiculous. And the Archbishop of Canterbury thinks, why would you, why on earth would she mention him?

• 44:07Kate Lister?

  Oh, no.

• 44:08Speaker 01

  So they.

• 44:09Kate Lister?

  Oh, no, Catherine.

• 44:11Speaker 01

  It was just, I remember, I remember the moment of staring at it in the, in like 3am, I think this wasn't allowed, being like, no, no, no, no, no. Like, I was.

• 44:20Kate Lister?

  Shouting at it.

• 44:21Speaker 01

  Yeah, like, no, don't do this. And so they order a search of Culpepper's rooms and they find a love letter that she wrote to him after the marriage. And so that's when it tumbles out about the, the late night meetings. And I, again, I can't believe I'm in the position like you were of having to briefly defend Henry VIII's government, but the re, the conclusions that they, that they get to are, I think, probably wrong, but they're not unreasonable.

• 44:43Kate Lister?

  Right.

• 44:44Speaker 01

  So a quirk of Catherine's historiography is she's actually never accused of adultery. She's accused of planning it.

• 44:52Kate Lister?

  Oh, okay.

• 44:52Speaker 01

  Which is enough by this.

• 44:53Kate Lister?

  That's enough, yeah.

• 44:54Speaker 01

  It's enough by this stage because she is technically encompassing the death of the king. Now, Henry, for reasons best known to himself, has taken against Francis more than Thomas because he thinks Francis getting the job in, in her household was about wanting to marry her.

• 45:13Speaker 01

  Pushing jurisprudence to and probably beyond its limits, Henry personally sanctions torture on Francis after the confessions. So like, you've got it, you've, they, they, they ripped teeth out of the mouth of one of his friends and he, that nothing that they provide contradicts what's came, came before.

• 45:29Kate Lister?

  Wow.

• 45:30Speaker 01

  It's really awful. And they, they go for trial at the Guildhall in London on the first of December, 1541. Thomas is given the axe and Francis is given hanging, drawing and quartering, which is why I always have to remember, because I find Francis just so heinous and awful.

• 45:48Kate Lister?

  But so frustrating because like none of this needed to happen. You silly, silly sod. Like what on earth are you doing?

• 45:53Speaker 01

  This is an odd comparison to make and I can't remember which American TV host made this, but it was about Kim Kardashian and I've always, it always stuck. It was about, I think, her stalking by an ex.

• 46:05Kate Lister?

  Right.

• 46:05Speaker 01

  And he said, people get so hung up on like whether you like the Kardashians, if you like reality TV or not. He was like, this is one of the wealthiest women in the world and she still can't stop this.

• 46:16Kate Lister?

  Yeah.

• 46:17Speaker 01

  And that's what I think with Catherine, I'm like, you were at the very apex of

• 46:23Speaker 01

  the social hierarchy and you could not tell Francis, fuck off.

• 46:26Kate Lister?

  To fuck off.

• 46:27Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 46:28Kate Lister?

  And he needed to fuck off so badly.

• 46:31Speaker 01

  And if, if that family had been half as ruthless as they, you sort of hoped they would have been, they'd have, they'd have made sure he didn't come back from Ireland, but they.

• 46:38Kate Lister?

  Yeah, quite frankly.

• 46:39Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 46:41Kate Lister?

  She's so hanged.

• 46:43Speaker 01

  Hand drawn and quartered. She is stripped of her title and spends her last winter under house arrest, it's a rural house arrest at Zion House that will, at this point is a disused Bridgetine convent and will, and it's gone now, but on the site of it is the Duke of Northumberland's London residence. She's then taken to the Tower of London and what's really heartbreaking, this is in February of 1542. I think by then she has convinced herself that she might be dismissed, annulled and pardoned.

• 47:18Kate Lister?

  Right.

• 47:19Speaker 01

  Because she starts struggling and they have to wrestle her into the boat from Zion House to take her to the Tower of London.

• 47:26Speaker 01

  She would have passed under the point, the, the bridge where Thomas and Francis's heads were, but, but it would have, but it was winter, so the sun would have set, she wouldn't have seen them.

• 47:35Kate Lister?

  Okay.

• 47:36Speaker 01

  She then is taken to the Tower of London where the, the constable, Sir John Gage is very good to her and, and is very kind. But she had always, in this moment where this bit of her resurrects itself, the perfect queen consort, and she asks for the block to be brought to her room so she can rehearse the execution.

• 47:54Kate Lister?

  Why?

• 47:55Speaker 01

  Yeah, so she wanted, she, two reasons, one, exit with dignity, and secondly, she also been queen when the Countess of Salisbury was like hacked apart by not, because, so I think she wanted to make sure this goes as smoothly as I can.

• 48:10Kate Lister?

  Cleanly.

• 48:11Speaker 01

  Yeah. The other thing about Catherine, this is one of the myths I keep busting, because people love it, is that when the Countess of Salisbury was in prison, Catherine allegedly sent her like fur slippers and dressing gowns to keep her warm. It's not the case, it was just the Queen's tailor, the constables sourced them, paid for them, they just used Catherine's tailor, it wasn't a gift from her. It would be too political for her to touch that, I think. But anyway, Catherine is executed on February the 13th, 1542. A few minutes later, her chief lady in waiting, Lady Rochford.

• 48:38Kate Lister?

  That's a weird story, that one, how that bitch ended up there is just like, that's such.

• 48:42Speaker 01

  Jane, what are you doing?

• 48:44Kate Lister?

  What on earth has happened here?

• 48:46Speaker 01

  You have, it's like one of those people who are like, you survived the Titanic and then all of a sudden you were like, I need to travel to Malissatania.

• 48:52Kate Lister?

  Like, what has happened here? She must have just been like, I don't know how this has happened.

• 48:58Speaker 01

  Yeah, well, my, again, if I was doing a novel, or writing a novel, I'm not sorry, my theory that I think Catherine was planning to marry Thomas Culpepper, so had George Boleyn lived, Jane Boleyn by 1539, 1538, 1539, would have been the Countess of Wurmond, which was in Ireland, but one of the wealthiest titles in Europe. So she would have had like, I think it was like a three thousand pound a year income. She would just have been rolling in wealth and a countess. Instead, she's in a hundred pounds per year, and if there is no queen consort's household, that's all she'll have. So I wonder, is she kind of embedding herself as Catherine's confidante? So when the darcher queen's household is set up, she has a very comfortable retirement home for the rest of her life.

• 49:38Kate Lister?

  So many bad choices being made here.

• 49:40Speaker 01

  There are, I'm, I'm being as generous as I can, I think.

• 49:43Kate Lister?

  Thing, it's interesting about, like, you know, the question that we always have to ask about Anne Boleyn is like, was she guilty? The answer is no. And with Catherine, it's much more complicated, because.

• 49:52Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 49:53Kate Lister?

  Kind of.

• 49:54Speaker 01

  Well, yeah, she was kind of, but what's, what I love is.

• 49:59Speaker 01

  It was kind of late in the research, but there was a moment of like blue blooded solidarity or like aristocratic trade unionism from the House of Lords where they tried to save her. And they were like, oh, actually, just given her status there, we're not really sure that actually what she's done. Yes, okay, she doesn't deserve to be queen anymore, but.

• 50:16Kate Lister?

  But yeah, when you break it down, all right, there was some shenanigans before Henry, but like that's surely that's not the end of the world.

• 50:23Speaker 01

  It's also not illegal at this stage.

• 50:24Kate Lister?

  And it's not illegal. I mean, I don't know, maybe she told some fibs about being a virgin or whatever.

• 50:28Speaker 01

  Yeah, but that's a sin, not a crime.

• 50:30Kate Lister?

  Right. And she's, she apparently hasn't shagged Culpeper. They're just having these meetings.

• 50:34Speaker 01

  The House of Lords were like, this is like, it's like saying you were going to murder someone.

• 50:38Kate Lister?

  Yeah, that's not a thing.

• 50:40Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 50:40Kate Lister?

  Except it kind of is a thing.

• 50:42Speaker 01

  Yeah, if you plan it and have the equipment. Yeah. But like, it's like, if you're like, I was gonna kick someone. It's like, it's not the, it's just not the same.

• 50:47Kate Lister?

  Yeah.

• 50:47Speaker 01

  Um, and you don't, at least technically in Christianity, you're not really supposed to punish people for things they haven't done. Like there's.

• 50:56Kate Lister?

  She could have been sent to a nunnery.

• 50:58Speaker 01

  Yeah, exactly. She sent her into rural rustication and let her, I mean, and at one point, the Habsburg ambassador thinks like she'll be allowed to rot into irrelevance. Like that's, that's what will happen. Um, the Habsburgs cannot, are like really surprised when it goes to come. This is when people say Catherine was so stupid, she must have known what was gonna happen. I'm like, well, if the House of Lords, the Habsburg Emperor and the governor of the Netherlands all think that that's not what's gonna happen.

• 51:21Kate Lister?

  This is too harsh.

• 51:21Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah. You know, so it's Henry's vicious, horrible, bloodstained little fingers that, that do this. And that was one thing I really took away from the book, which was

• 51:33Speaker 01

  he pushed it through.

• 51:34Kate Lister?

  Hmm. And he really did, didn't he?

• 51:35Speaker 01

  He really, he, he chased her into the grave.

• 51:38Kate Lister?

  Yeah, he changed the law so Lady Rochford could be executed because she was a crazy person by that point.

• 51:44Speaker 01

  Yeah, he wouldn't be, yeah.

• 51:45Kate Lister?

  He ordered torture of these men after the fact.

• 51:48Speaker 01

  And listen, I am, I think anyone watching this will see I am not a Francis Derrams town here.

• 51:54Kate Lister?

  No, you're not.

• 51:55Speaker 01

  But when you're, you know, when you're having someone being tortured for information that they've already provided.

• 52:00Kate Lister?

  They've already given to you. That's sadistic, isn't it? So as a final question then, although we could talk about this forever, I am team Catherine.

• 52:08Speaker 01

  Oh, definitely, yeah.

• 52:09Kate Lister?

  Team Catherine as well.

• 52:10Speaker 01

  And listen, the one thing I will say, I always started like throwing, because this is a horrible trait in her. But I always like to put, tell people that because I think one flaw rescues her from just being the footnote to your own death. Like, I like to give her a life.

• 52:25Kate Lister?

  Yeah.

• 52:25Speaker 01

  So she was the kind of person who I think might have been rude to waiters. So, which is like one of my least favorite traits of people, but she was quite rough. She could be quite demanding with her maids.

• 52:35Kate Lister?

  Okay.

• 52:36Speaker 01

  Yeah, like, stay up late. Why are you complaining? Why can't I remember the 13 new rules I've set? So, do you want to be fired?

• 52:42Kate Lister?

  Oh, one of the, okay.

• 52:42Speaker 01

  Yeah, so listen, we're not talking about a perfect person here at all.

• 52:45Kate Lister?

  No, no.

• 52:46Speaker 01

  But perfect's not, perfect's not history.

• 52:48Kate Lister?

  Yeah, you can't demand that from people. But how would you like her to be rehabilitated? I mean, because the enduring image of Catherine, I guess, is probably the one that's been left to us from that series, The Tudors, where she's like a 14 year old Swifty, just running around, just being stupid with blonde hair and...

• 53:06Speaker 01

  Someone who's, who is a victim and a great example of a victim, but is not a victim all their lives.

• 53:14Kate Lister?

  Yeah.

• 53:14Speaker 01

  And I think someone who, you know, by the standards of her day, 18, 19, 20, was an adult. But not a fully formed adult.

• 53:23Kate Lister?

  No.

• 53:23Speaker 01

  So somewhere between what she had been and what she could have been. And I think to me, that's sort of the tragedy. I think there, there's someone with an incredible spark.

• 53:34Speaker 01

  A real sense of self, you know, telling maniacs in Durham to jump, like, not my problem. And also someone who I think was a very dignified and elegant public queen consort, who, like many office at 19 and 20, made

• 53:50Kate Lister?

  Bad mistake.

• 53:51Speaker 01

  A really bad mistake that in your 30s or 40s would be inexplicable.

• 53:55Kate Lister?

  Yeah.

• 53:56Speaker 01

  But the, but the last thing I would say is the idea that she did something that she knew would end her life is just not true. People wiser and more experienced than her were shocked at how her story ended.

• 54:10Kate Lister?

  Gareth, you have been marvelous. Once again, thank you so much. Do people know more about you? Where can they find you?

• 54:15Speaker 01

  Instagram, underscore Gareth Russell, and then my website, GarethRussell.co.uk.

• 54:21Kate Lister?

  Well, fabulous. I might write my own book, Catherine Howard, Young Dumb Full of Cum.

• 54:32Kate Lister?

  Thank you for listening.

• 54:37Kate Lister?

  And if you like what you heard, don't forget to like, review and follow along wherever it is you get your podcasts. And if you wanted us to explore a subject or if you just wanted to say hello, then you can email us at [email protected]. This podcast was edited by Hannah Fyodorov and produced by Stuart Beckwith. The senior producer was Freddy Chick. Join me again, Betwixt the Sheets, the history of sex scandal in society, a podcast by History Hit. This podcast contains music from Epidemic Sound.