After Dark: Myths, Misdeeds & the Paranormal - The Brutal Murder of Catherine Howard

Episode Date: August 24, 2026

Today we're delving back into the After Dark vaults to revisit our classic episode on the death of the short-lived Tudor queen.In 1540 Henry VIII was getting old, and his eyes turned to teenager Catherine Howard.He fell hard and fast for Catherine - his "rose without a thorn" - but when he found out about her past, all hell broke loose.Amidst all the panic and confusion, who was this young woman who rose to be queen? Why did Henry VIII want her killed? And how should we remember her?Joining Anthony and Maddy is author and historian Gareth Russell, to help us get to know this woman.This episode was edited by Tim Arstall and produced by Stuart Beckwith. The senior producer was Freddy Chick.UK listeners: voting is now open for the Listener's Choice Award at this year's Podcast Awards! Click to place your vote on the Spotify mobile app: https://open.spotify.com/s/xhg6PJaSign 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 survey here.All music from Epidemic Sounds.After Dark is a History Hit podcast.History Hit is part of Little Dot Studios, a Certified B Corp™Voting is now open for the Listener's Choice Award at this year's Podcast Awards. Click to place your vote on the Spotify mobile app: https://open.spotify.com/s/xhg6PJa Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Hello After Dark listeners. It is I, Anthony Delaney, one of your co-hosts from, of course, After Dark. Now listen, we have some good news. We have been shortlisted for the top 20 in the Listeners Choice Award category for this year's British Podcast Awards. Now, we made the top, I think it was five last year. So we are greedy historians and we want to make that top five again. This year, things are slightly different though. You can only vote for us in this long list in the Spotify app. And you'll find a link in this week's episode that'll take you to vote for us. As a matter of fact, you can vote for us three times. So if you feel so inclined, please do that. We want to make that top five. We're going to smash it this year. I think we're going to take it, he said, with absolutely no confidence. But lend us your vote and we'll see how well we get on. Heading for the top five, I know we can do it. In Henry VIII's court, every corridor is like a cheeseboard. What? Huh?

What? Is it chess board? It's so chessboard. It's so chessboard. Does it say cheese? Did you please tell me you misread it? Oh my God. I'm going home. Leave that in. Whoever is recording this, that has to stay in. Everything's like a cheeseboard.

And Catherine Howard, Cam and bear it. In Henry VIII's court, every corridor is like a chessboard. Alliances are struck at supper and broken by sunrise. A misplaced laugh can make an enemy. Into this crossfire steps Catherine Howard, young, dazzling, flirtatious, and held in such unreasonably high regard that a fall is almost inevitable. It's a fragile world where loyalty becomes tested by oaths, and where a memory or a meeting can count as treason.

Who profits when such a young queen is killed? The increasingly disturbing king, or rivals watching from the shadows. This episode follows the threads of gossip in a merciless world, that implicates a teenage queen and all those around her. From the dark heart of the Tudor Court, this is after dark. Before dawn, the tower runs cold through the stone. Catherine Howard sits awake, listening to the crows gather and the bells toll outside, fingers pressed to the grain of the table.

The lieutenant's men wait behind the door, within a small fire gutters, a queen's last luxurial. Except she is no longer Queen. Stripped of titles, her young mind spins from the endless questions she's faced. She's experienced far too much in her short life. In an attempt to make sense of all that's happened, her memories mix with accusations which come and go like ghosts, a careless youth that became evidence, a young love that became treason. Her cousin, Anne Boleyn, faced a similar fate and lies yards from where Catherine now sits. The kingdom calls what comes next justice.

It's also called treason. When the key turns, Catherine stands. Her final prayers whispered and walks towards the green in silence. The only choice she's now able to make. Do after dark, my name's Anthony. And I'm Maddie. And today we are.

giving you what you want, which is more tutors. We know that you love our tutor history episodes. We have had Philip Gregory recently, of course. We also constantly have the brilliant Tracy Borman back to talk about. Constantly, it sounds like you're sick of her. No, never sick of Tracy Borman, never sick of Chris Borman. She's one of our favorite guests, like 100%. Yes. And now we have another favorite tutor historian guest. And that, of course, is proper introduction this time because you will have heard him in a previous episode where I totally spill the beans on who we were talking to. And that of course is Gareth Russell, who is the historian and author of a young and damned and fair, the life and tragedy of Catherine Howard

at the court of Henry VIII, here to tell us about the tragic death of Catherine Howard. Welcome to After Dark, Gary. Thank you. Proper introduction this time. Proper introduction. This is interesting because when we come to talk about the wives of Henry the 8th, probably, you'll be a better place to answer this. She being Catherine Howard is probably further down the list of the wives that people are most familiar with, right? Yeah. Tell us who she is in this world at this time. So Catherine is the younger daughter of a younger son of the former Duke of Norfolk.

Oh my God. The younger daughter of a younger son of the former Duke of Norfolk. So we're not expecting huge things here. No, so there's a good name, but not a lot of money. Her father, Edmund, was Justice of the Peace, here with the Battle of Floodden, but had never really prospered. The good name only took him so far. she had been sent to live with her step-grandmother's award, fairly standard among the English aristocracy,

and she makes her court debut in the winter of 1539 to serve as a maid of honour, which is the unmarried ladies and wedding to Henry's incoming fourth wife, Anne of Cleaves. Catherine is there a little before her employer. They had expected Anne of Cleves just before Christmas, but she's coming from Germany and the weather is terrible, so she's delayed. she becomes an active lady in waiting, if you like, in January of 1540. And at some point, probably around March or Easter, Henry shows an interest in her. The marriage to Anne of Cleaves is annulled in July. Catherine becomes queen at the end of July.

Wow. Yeah, it's very quick. That is quicker than I realised. And that is a major part of the ingredient because she is not stupid. And there's often this poor little Catherine as if she had no education. And I like to rescue her from the shadow of the eye. as best I can. She was an extremely skilled negotiator of etiquette. And if you read Tudor etiquette manuals that they were taught from, these are, I mean, they're like the crystal maze.

They're so complex. They're a bit like a cryptex, really. You're always having to figure out how things move and who people are. And she wins applause for how deftly she handles it. So she's very aware of the elite that she moves in. There's a bit of debate around her age, but in fact, there probably shouldn't be a massive debate on it because of all of Henry's wife. she is the one that we have a specific comment on her age from someone who was pretty well placed to know who was the French ambassador to England who saw her in several hunting weekends and obviously at court regularly and he states that she was 18 very firmly so and this is the moment when she marries.

Yes, 1540. He's writing in 1541 but it's about 1540 when he read. And Henry's what age at this time? 49. So it's a big gap. It's not big enough that people comment on it by contemporary standards. But it is substantial. There's an idea that he was in really terrible health by this point. He's not quite there yet.

It's really after her that it accelerates. Or actually probably she gets her first whiff of how bad it will get halfway through the marriage. Literally the first whiff. Literally the first whip. So they marry in summer. She is immediately the change in mood is palpable. He'd been unhappy in his fourth marriage. He's euphoric in his fifth.

The Christmas of 1540 is kept at Hampton Court. And you get a real sense and you go there. it is a palace indelibly associated with the peaks and troughs of Catherine's queenship. She wins hands across the board applause for how well she handles that because she's forced by her husband to host his ex-wife Anne of Cleave so they can show off to the diplomatic core how generous Henry is and Anne's accepted this. And she, I mean, she's a masterful, masterful first lady for want of a better term. And then at Lent, three quarters of a year after the marriage, the first whiff hits. And Henry,

is very ill at Hampton Court and it goes into lockdown and she is there but she's not like to see him no one is allowed to come in no one is allowed to go out and two of her brothers Charles and George now work for the king in his privy chamber and I would be very surprised if they had not told her how close he had come to death and so at Easter so holy week actually monday Thursday so right after Henry has recovered from his lenten spell of ill health Catherine reaches out to a former admirer, a former beau that she'd been involved with before she met Henry, who also works for him called Thomas Culpepper,

and they meet in the corridor leading to her private rooms, and she gives him a hat. And Culpeper makes a joke saying, alas, madam, why did you not do this when you were a maid? Which is, why didn't you do this when you were single? And Catherine gets a bit miffed and doesn't speak to him for a while. But then there's a massive public relations campaign for the monarchy, a progress through the north,

which had rebelled against Henry a few years earlier, And this is a policy of honey and vinegar. They will forgive the former surviving rebels, but only in condition that the north publicly prostrates itself to the king. So Catherine is on tour off the north, and they're moving between house and house at this point. And she, through her favourite lady in waiting lady Rochford, starts to arrange nocturnal meetings with Thomas Culpepper throughout the progress.

A dangerous game. A dangerous game. And then in August, they reached the key to the north. north, Pontefract Castle, and when she is in residence there, she's a long stint there. She's about two weeks at Pontefract. Her lady's in waiting to tell her that someone else has arrived, a man called Francis Deerum, who had worked for the step-grandmother and had fallen out with her. And Catherine and Francis had had a sexual relationship before. There are debates about the nature of that. Certainly, there is a long account from Catherine that it was very serious indeed.

and her grandmother and her aunt, I say grandmother, step-grandmother, such a cumbersome term, had the dowry, Duchess, Norfolk, and the Countess of Bridgewater, from the minute Catherine had become queen had tried to keep Francis quiet. And they had entered into a sort of hush money deal with him,

which is that he would hand over all the love letters that Catherine had sent to him and the poetry he'd written about her, put it in a chest, the Duchess would keep the chest, and he would keep the key. So it's sort of like mutually assured destruction. Oh, wow.

but he very much wanted to work for Catherine and obviously the Duchess and the Count just knew this was a terrible idea eventually he got sick of them putting him off and putting him off and so he rode north from London to Pontefract so you think of how many times he had an opportunity to think this is a lunatic idea turn around and he blackmills her into giving him a job as gentleman usher and he starts making comments about how well

he's known the Queen before she starts bribing him to be quiet it's like this man doesn't live in the Tudor world no no but again know who Henry the 8th. Yeah, exactly. But to me, this he just could not handle her. I mean, I'll come onto my theories about Francis Derm in a minute, which is, again, the joy of doing this.

And again, I will be saying, I know it's thrown around a lot, but the term narcissist. Anyway, so there's a lot brewing. The ladies in wedding are really irritated because Lady Rochford is now the favourite. That's because she's all the Queen's secrets. Catherine is getting really antsy with her staff because she's sleep deprived because she's meeting Thomas Culpeper at night. She's threatening to fire the maids who forget her. her new instructions, and she's trying to cover things up. And at the same time, Francis Durham

is dropping heavy-handed hints. And then they get back to London. And all of these, like, little plates are spinning on the top. And someone comes in and knocks them over from outside. And it is an evangelical creature called John Lassels, whose sister had worked for the Diodger, Duchess of Northbrook when Catherine was there and knew all about Catherine and Francis, told her brother, who went to the Archbishop of Canterbury and told him, and said, from what I understand, they had agreed to marry and they did have sex together, which under contemporary religious law, it means that she was legally ineligible to marry anybody else. The Archbishop of Canterbury Thomas Cranmer is a man of deep faith, but a limited spine.

And in a panic, he goes and he leaves a note for Henry at Hampton Court, explaining this, Henry orders an inquiry. And to the Archbishop's shock, this man is now working for the Queen, her alleged former fiancée. And so that's where the investigations begin. So that's a gallop through who Catherine is. Isn't it so insidious, actually, and insipid in many ways, where you're like the titill-tattle, tell-tale, double standards world that this woman enters into. And I was just getting so anxious by proxy when you're talking about these spinning plates, Gareth, about going shit.

Yeah. Like already she's in trouble. And these men who are pushing her around because they want power now. and they're, you know, they just want to manipulate her. Francis also cannot, we cannot let her go. I mean, it's really an obsessive relationship from his part. Well, let's talk about that because it seems to me that Catherine, more so maybe than Henry's other queens, her downfall is her past as much of her present.

Yes, it is, absolutely. In a way that it isn't necessarily for the other queens. Yes, they bring baggage with them, but it's the events once they're married that kind of lead to that downfall. Will you tell us something a little bit about her past, and in particular her sexual past? because this has been so kind of, it's been made so titillating in her own moment and her own lifetime. But, I mean, it's quite troubling.

You talked earlier about her age and she's only 18 by the time she's married to Henry. I'm looking at my notes. I'm looking at the age that she is when she has her first supposed sexual experience with her music teacher. Can you tell us about her relationship to her own sexuality and to men?

So I pushed back against the idea of them being seen as either child abuse or sexual coercion for a number of reasons. And I still, I suppose, you'll have had this yourself, I think. You take things out of episodes or books and you think, should I have? I'm not sure. And I had a much more speculative section on Francis in particular talking about how I think the idea that it was sexually coercive misses the point of why it was dangerous. It was just a dangerous in a different way. And I still think it was probably the right thing to take it out and then leave it because it was so psychological in its basis. So I'll explain my own taking it. So the standard narrative that we have is that in about 1536, Catherine embarked

upon some kind of sexual entanglement with her music tutor, a man referred to in the documents as Young Manix. Henry Manix is his name. And how old is she in this moment? She would have been, if 1536 is correct, about 14. Actually, the evidence that we have, because we know that basically the person who identifies this doesn't come into the household. And it's very complicated. Another relative joins in. Looking at that timetable, actually, it must have been the spring of 1538. So Catherine would have been about 16 at this point. Manix would have been probably in his early to mid-20s. Solely because of young. Obviously, that is permeable. He could have been a little bit younger. So that separates it from the darkest version, because it's all date dependent with Manix, really,

in which case it could have been pedophilic if you moved the dates around of her being younger and him being older and also the date earlier. So that's important to acknowledge that that is more based on a date of birth that doesn't work for her

and also a chronology that doesn't work for him. But that doesn't mean that simply because it's not the worst case scenario that it's not a bad scenario. So I think that's important to look at. So they do not have sex.

There is, judging from what Manick said, there's sort of foreplay in digital penetration that is what he admits to this other woman in the household and it gets back to Catherine and she breaks it off and he manics like most

douchebags as a crier when he's caught and he's like but I love you so much and Catherine's very much off the opinion that's a you problem so you insulted me and embarrassed me which is quite powerful for you know potentially a 16 year old I love how she cuts the cord because when she's ready to cut it's done

and they're both Francis Durham and Henry Manix are criers. Like, I love you so much. I only did it because I love you. And she's like, that is so irrelevant to me. Which, I mean, I don't want to dismiss a potential power dynamic that's a little bit troubling. Yeah. And, you know, there is an age gap. Obviously, our age of consent today is different from, you know, so there's a lot going on here.

But to me, what you're saying is that she has some ownership over her own fate, her own, in terms of the context she's living in. and in terms of the relationships that she's having and she is maybe willing and consenting to have some kind of sexual relationship, but then when they overstep, she has enough self-power and self-awareness to say, no, thank you.

Also, there's an imbalance of class. Yes. So she is, she's of the higher class. But what I will say is, it's interesting to paraphras a line from House of the Dragon. Important text. Absolutely.

Reference in the footnotes. Essentially, what she is doing is building, a window inside her own prison cell because these men will, yes, within the dynamic of their relationship, she can say no and she can end it when she wants to, but ultimately it will be them that have the power to destroy her life. So that's kind of within the minutiae, certainly, but in the broader spectrum of things, excuse me, no. Yes, it's not untroubling. No, it's not untroubling. So with Francis Durham, I think, again, I always say that narcissism is overused and then I overuse it, but I do really think that I'm going to, I think I would do a podcast

episode at some point myself about, does he fit? Just to discuss it with listeners, does it fit the dynamic of a narcissistic relationship? And he really, really does. She ends things with Manix. Deeram is in the household as a ward. He's the younger son of a wealthy family from Lincolnshire, so he's more on her level. And there does seem to be discussion of marriage. It is consummated. Catherine steals the key from her grandmother's room to make a key so he can visit her. There's sort of picnics he steals like apples and strawberries, all of which some people present as quite lovely. I don't see it that way. I think really early on you see love bombing with him. So she has no money of her own, as I say, a younger daughter, younger son. Francis gives her money

to go and buy silk flowers from a tailor in Lambeth and get clothes. But he then starts, so the first little whisper of that being love bombing rather than loving is that it's through her clothes. So Francis goes to the tailor in Lambeth. I think Mrs. Johns is her name. And he tells her what to stitch into the clothing. And he stitches floral symbols for unbreakable love. And that's not what Catherine asked her to do. It's intense. Yeah. So you start to see in her one of the confessions I uncovered that had me published in a long time, there's a paragraph from like, oh, I can so feel her frustration with him, where she, you know, he starts talking about marriage and Catherine is trying to politely slow this march to the altar. And he's becoming obsessive. And she wants out, I think,

and she finds a way out when the king's marriage is announced because the Queen's household hasn't existed since James Seymour died in 1537. So this lasts for about a year. And Catherine tells later, she says, all who knew me know how desirious I was to come to court. And she tells him that it's over. He again is a crier. I'm so bored of him already. Like, my God. I have to remind myself that Francis Durham died a really hideous death.

And to pepper my remarks with some charity. But he is the author of his own tragedy and other peoples, which I have to remind myself. We've all had a boyfriend like this, I think. Get away from me. Like just, yeah. I'm like, I'm crying. And you're like, that's sad. That's a you problem.

But it's not my job to buy you tissues. Yeah. Yeah, we're done. I don't think I've ever been wandered into that territory. Oh, lucky you. Yeah. No, no, no, no. It's sort of the...

My tolerance is low. Yeah. Well, her tolerance is... Well, that's true. Low. But her tolerance is very low, actually. I also, when people talk about them, I'm like, please give her the breakup moment. Like, please talk about it.

Because her whole life was snatched from her by her husband and these two men. And I love the moment of that. By the way, she takes them to the same spot to dump them. She takes them in, she takes them in, she's like, do you want to go to the orchard? I was going to say, we need to go to the lake or the orchard or whatever.

Because the orchards where I press rotten fruit, Francis. So Francis, but Francis is, cannot seem to accept that she has done. And he says, but I love you, you're my wife. I'm going to leave you my savings, £100. And she's like, but again, that's what you do. It's marking his territory.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Correct. So then she goes to court and she has a bit of a flirtation with Thomas Culpepper. He wants to have sex and she says no, she's not ready. So then he moves on to someone called. She really doesn't know herself. Yeah. I love Catherine.

The other thing that she has in this that I'm seeing throughout these sexual relationships, these emotional relationships and then this desire to get to court is that she is understanding pathways of power. Yes, yes. In ways that we don't often acknowledge with women in the tutor court. She's going, there's agency over there, I'm going over there. Yes. You know, or I'm going away from that. And also, she's very beautiful.

So that is currency. Yeah. So it, you know, the diary is not there. It's not going to be there. So she has the name. She's her diary. She is her own diary. And she realizes that the younger son of the Lincolnshire gentry is not for her.

Also, I think she genuinely is bored of him. And we don't, we never allow these women the right to just be bored. But this is the idea of being saddled to you from my, whole earthly life is more than I can bear. And, and I, I just, is that what you say in? I, I, um, I don't believe in reincarnation, so I can't risk this. Yeah, this is not a permanent state that I'm prepared to do. Um, I don't get to do this again. I'm all like on a one way ticket here, guys. This is an advanced single ticket. I can't train it in. So, um, I wish you well, but don't ever contact me again. So she does. And Thomas Club ever sleeps as someone else.

so Bess Harvey. And Catherine is actually genuinely hurt. And she cries in front of the other ladies and wedding about how humiliated she feels. But then the king becomes interested in life moves on to what we discussed earlier. What is her feeling when Henry becomes interested? Because, you know, we're three wives in. Four wives in at this point. Three and a half.

He's about to chuck number four. Yeah, yeah. Okay, yes, that's true. And, you know, there's an obvious pattern. Yes. Nothing is ending well for these ladies. Yeah, yeah. Is she thinking this is the agency that I've been searching for?

This is great. Or is she thinking, shit? It could be a mixture of both, but I think it's the first one. I really do. Because how are you going to not be the queen? Exactly. And also, I think one question is often asked. And again, this is speculative just for your listeners.

I think it's something I always wonder. If I was writing a novel, I would put this conversation in because I think it's credible fiction or credible, kind of factual, or factual, whatever. People will often say to me, how could she have done this, knowing what happened to Jan Ballin, who was her first cousin on her father's side? And I will always say, do you think Ambelin did? And then they'll say no. And I'll say, well, then why would you think she did?

So she is actually, she has people around her, including her step-grandmother, who were very fond of Ambelin. The Countess of Bridgewater was very close to her at one point, Catherine's aunt. There is no way that Catherine wasn't told that there was at the very least vibrant doubts about Anne-Belan's guilt. And has she heard the comment Henry made to Jane Seymour, which is what Anne did, the reason why she lost her head was because she meddled in politics. politics, which Catherine never does.

She does not touch politics the 10-foot barge pole. So to me, she actually did learn the lesson of Ambulin, which is apolitical, a political, a political, a political. And because she knows herself, maybe she's thinking, I can handle this. I'm going to do a job. Like, actually, I'm made for this. I'm going to be the one who does it. It's the same thing of, like, you know, people, when you look at, like, don't smoke, you think it applies to everyone but you. You know, like, there's, it's very, people always think they will be the exception.

Yeah, of course. And also, that. there are fairly limited ways she can get rid of this. It's like, do you know what, actually, I don't want to be in this flight, but I am now, so I may as well see, can I fly first class? That's sort of the way I look at it. But the really interesting thing is it's an accident that he falls for her. So this idea of her being the pawn moved in the chessboard by her uncle, the Duke of Norfolk,

is not true because Norfolk's not in the country when Henry notices her for the first time. He's in a diplomatic mission to France. And a really interesting letter I discovered is he's told by Francis, his sister, Queen Marguerite, if you want to get a good relationship with the King of France, you need to please his mistress. And Norfolk thinks it's ridiculous. What influenced a royal mistress have? So at this point, he's still, even on the cusp of Catherine's assent, isn't that playing the

chessboard that way. Or the cheese board. Crucially. And he's in France. Thank you for ensuring that that edit makes it in. Now we can't lose it. He is in the land of cheese. Yes.

He's in France. And he is picking up some absolutely delightful little numbers from the one. From our own. But back home, some serious cheddar is being made. Thank you for going with this. Thank you so much. I'm giving. I'm leaving you both to do. So when he, so I think, I mean, and the statements from within the family imply that Henry is caught by her beauty.

And then the grandmother and the aunt give her advice on how to behave. And then the uncle comes back and they sort of, I don't think they stack the deck, but they play the cards dealt to them. And Norfolk seized this opportunity to use Catherine's rising favor to attack Thomas Cromwell, who is destroyed in the downfall of Queen Anne of Clea. And just to, you know, when you said the grandmother and the aunt is, yeah, the grandmother and the aunt are seeing this person that's kind of telling her how to behave. Are they doing that with you could be queen or take this position as mistress and queen? Queen, I think, yes.

Because they move her back to the grandmother's house out of court for propriety sick. See, I love that. That's good. And also it's like, there's like, oh my God, you're going to be queen and we're going to have to cover up that Francis deerem chap. So he has, now, the sources differ on whether he has a temper tantrum and runs away or they nudge him into running. But he runs all the way to Dublin. And he works as a merchant. But that is later categorized as piracy. So Catherine Hard and the pirate chap is a novel that no one's written yet. So he's in Ireland for a while. Probably I would say he goes south for a bit because that's where more of the ports would have been. but he vanishes and everyone's thoroughly relieved. And so that in a nutshell, there's really three, Henry Manix, Francis Durham, Thomas Culpepper, and the ghosts of all three will come back.

But from my own sake, I really do think the rot begins with Francis Durham and it's him that sets everything in motion. That's my own interpretation. It's so, I was thinking then as you were talking like, Henry should just do vetting of the queens, like proper vetting where he looks, if this is a concern for him,

Then I also think, why the hell is her sexual past of any interest to her and get a grip? So this is the thing that actually when she falls, the people of London agree with you. So there's a law brought in where the Imperial Habsburg ambassador is like, great, and I can only marry widows, which is what a sixth wife is, that you have to disclose your sexual history if you're not a virgin before you marry into the royal family. And it's so unpopular with the people that Edward the sixth repeals it. And even though it's affecting, in fact, what one person every generation or in Henry's case every three years. It's still outrageous. What someone said, one of the complaints in London was, what did he expect her grandmother to do? Why is it the grandmother's job to tell him that?

What grandmother would do that and reveal the past? And so there is actually that people are not completely sold on Catherine having been in the wrong with this. And this is a very imperfect modern comparison. But it's sort of like how they view it is someone having done. done weed and then they become have a political career later and you're like okay it's not like it's not ideal what she did but come on you know it's that sort of thing yeah and all of a sudden now it's something that we're pretending to be outraged about because there's someone significant and she didn't know that that's what was going to happen but i did a sort of speaking to her

recently where we retraced part of her route and we did the the coach trip up from london to lincolnshire and then we ended up with pontiffraight and i remember looking up being like this has taking the guts of a day on a bus, how many times did Francis have to stop in the way up when he left London to get her at Pontefract? How many times did he stop at an inn and think, yeah, I'm going to keep going. Yeah.

To me, that is obsessive, and he is obsessed with her. And a complete lack of self-awareness. Like, it's regardless of, you know, we've talked about how could, you know, did she think she could be the one who had the agency did to make the queenship of success. Okay, no one has a crystal ball, but you cannot tell me by the summer

of 1541. There is anyone in Western Europe who is looking at Henry the 8th and thinks, do you know what? Compassionate, forgiving, easygoing. Not a cuddly guy, I think is a fairly safe assessment. What is Francis Durham doing? So to me, again, like I understand concerns about modern language being used. And it's a fair debate to have, but also the history is just the story of the past or the words of the present. It might not be what we think stalking looks like, but it's an awful lot like it. to follow her to where she is, to blackmail her into giving her a position, to use their shared past against her.

That is stalking. He would be posting revenge porn. 100%. It's very much, no one will ever love you like I love you. I own you. I have the receipts. Oh big, no one loves me.

Yeah, please back off. Yeah, please get. Yeah, exactly. And he has the receipts in this chest. Sure. And you've taken us right up to this moment now, Gareth, which is, the pivotal moment just before the downfall.

So we've seen the threats mount. Now we're here. These letters. We have Francis. She's back in London from Pontefract. How does this downfall unfold? So the first, it really begins on All Souls Day, the Feast of the Dead, when Henry gets the letter.

How fitting. I know it really is. Well, it's sort of, it's like Halloween, all hallows and then, or all saints, and then all souls. And in traditional belief, it's the day when the veal between the living and the dead is at its thinnest. And in some belief, it's when the gits of purgatory open the other way and the unquiet dead and the ghosts are all around us. And certainly all of Catherine's biographical ghosts.

They're all coming back to haunter. So when the Archbishop starts the investigation, the first red flag is the king of all red flags, Francis Durham. And they cannot understand why he is working for her if what they've heard is true. That they don't want Catherine to know there's an investigation yet because at this stage, they still think they don't want to offend her. her. And that's so interesting as well. They don't look at that situation and think maybe he's pressuring her into a job. They're like, why would she have him anywhere near her? There's like shame on her. That isn't even taken into consideration. No, I don't even think it would have crossed their mind. No, no, no. But they have a good legal excuse to arrest him and not raise her suspicion,

which is the piracy in Ireland. So he's taken and Catherine doesn't, if she notices he's gone at this stage, I mean, they're back at Hampton Court, it's full household. And then they start asking questions of one of her maids, a woman Catherine Tilney, who had also lived and worked for the Diet of Dautus of Norfolk. And then they tracked on Henry Manix in Lambeth and get the

information from him. They come to Catherine and she initially, so it's headed by the Archbishop of Canterbury, the Bishop of Winchester and the Duke of Suffolk. And they ask her and she flatly denies it. And she says there is no truth in this, that is a lie. And

it would have been difficult for her to stick to it with the amount of evidence they uncovered. So what they do is, what they do with Ambellin, which is they cut off oxygen. They cut off the outside world. And they reduce her staff. They keep her in her rooms at Hampton Court. And she panics.

And she cracks. And she starts, the Archbishop Canterbury comes. And he admits, I let her contradict herself. So that you can see she's lying. And she does tell multi. I mean, the versions keep changing. Even her versions. Oh, yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. There's about five different versions. So she's panicking. She is in complete meltdown. Melton. And it's so heartbreaking because the rooms were, you know, she's rattling around these rooms. And she gives three full confessions.

The third of which is the shortest. The first was apparently long, but it's missing. The third one is the most famous one. But the second one should I put in the book in full length because I think I would like people to have as a source because it's quite tricky to track down is the longest. And it's really a wonderful thing to have. because it is her full, it's her voice. And a lot of what she liked with her clothes and, you know, it made me a bit emotional reading it because I kind of felt I could have been friends with her.

And he was a real, he was a real person, like a really vibrant person. And, and someone also was a bit sharp. Like she could be difficult to work for. And I love, I love that in her like 19 or 20 years of life, we still managed to get sharp edges. Like we got a person. We got it. Yeah. She's there on the page and you've met her. Exactly.

And I'm so glad he didn't smooth. Because sometimes tragedy smooths away the edges. And that's as much of a tragedy. Because losing them to the shadow of death is losing them in another way. And that's what Henry does to these women, right? He grinds them down. He just strips them bare of the power, the intellect, the personality, everything. He just takes it off from them.

And we can do that when we, the thing is, a victim does not need to be a victim entirely. Yes. We should acknowledge that they are victimized by this. But it's not restoring them to just. Love that, Gareth. You know, we call it on After Dark, we refer to this a lot, the girl bossification of these people. Yeah, it's like if they become this one monolithic thing. Yeah, they either have to be super powerful and like, oh, go girl.

Or it's the opposite where they're just nobody, they're just fiction they fall by the wayside. And I think Catherine is so complex and so interesting. And I, you know, spent, I did my post-graduate dissertation on her and then I went into writing the book. So I spent, I think, about five years with her, which is twice as long that she was politically active for it. And when I, when I finished, I. the book, I just remember this like Vath, I checked into a hotel to finish it. And then all of a sudden, you missed it. I was like, where is she? Like, this has been my company for five years. But actually, there's a line in Brideshead or a visit little room, but it's about Julia Flight. And they talk about,

you know, she, there she is standing on the edge of the pool of life, like a kingfisher humming around in the evening. And she doesn't realize that she's the heroine and a dark fairy tale. And that this titanic servant of hers is actually a monster being belched forth that will do her command, but will bring her them in an unwelcome way. I've butchered that quote but that to me that to me was Catherine. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. That was the heroine at the dark fairy tale. To be more specific with the downfall, she contradicts the confessions blatantly contradict each other and Kramer is using those as proof to the king that she has done something wrong. And then in her fear, she makes a decision that is foolish but understandable, which is that she

she realizes that they're only looking into Francis and her terror must have been what if they find out about the meetings with Thomas Culpepper. So she tries to throw them off Culpepper's scent by saying Deeran was jealous of Culpepper and I just thought that was ridiculous because obviously he's nothing to me. And because the confessions have contradicted each other, the Archbishop cannot understand why she would mention him at all. The lady doth protest too much. Exactly. So they they order a search of Catherine's, of Thomas Culpeper's room at Hampton Court and they find a love letter that Catherine wrote to him after. Thomas, what are you doing?

Well, why is he keeping it? Well, yeah, exactly. Why is he keeping it? That's insurance. Yeah, and I do think this is my other counterfactual, and again, can't prove it, but I do think it's a credible thing. Thomas Culpeper, when he's taken in for questioning, says, we hadn't slept together yet, and I believe him.

I think that was true. I think they hadn't done the deed yet. I think this is the dress rehearsal for Catherine Parr and Thomas Seymour. I think Catherine thinks she's about to become a widow. rid yourself of the knowledge he makes it to 1547 he's almost died that year yeah it is very common for widows of the upper classes to marry beneath them socially to marry it for choice gender and class balance each other look at mary belin look at margaret tudor mary chitter the elder chiquette of luxembourg they all do it i think katherine hard is preparing to become diature queen and i think

thomas culpepper knows he could be hugely wealthy they're definitely a very attractive to each other. They joke about their past sexual history to each other. They make sort of quite saucy jokes with each other. There's also moments where he confesses he loves her. There's a lot in this. It's really that rush of being in love at 19. It's quite touching. It is. Let them have it. Let them have those night meetings and I try not. I don't, I mean, there's something, we don't need to make this story any more tragic than it is. If you can find a moment of light in her story, let it shine. Because there's enough, the sunsets gathering. in. And so they then arrested

Lerodchford. They interrogate the servants in three groups, so there's no cross-contamination of testimonies. Because the councillors don't know which way this is going to go. This is something that always shocks me about the Tudor world that whenever anyone's being investigated and the wolves kind of closing, it's so efficient. Yeah, yeah. They actually do it very well. Well, because at this point, they're like, scary and all of it is.

Yeah. It's done well. Well, you don't want to look like you are inefficient through lack of loyalty. Henry is quick on spotting people who seem insufficient in zeal. So they break themselves off. They also, they don't allow councillors to question in different groups.

So they can't be influenced with what the other group have said. So it's subdivided into these three groups. And Henry is convinced that Francis Durham has come to court hoping for his death so that he can resume a sexual relationship and marry Catherine. And so actually it's Durham.

who's tortured to get that information. Culpepper is not. They are executed the same day on the 10th of December, but Culpeper gets the axe and Francis Durham is hanged drawn and quartered. One of his friends, Robert Damport, has lost half of his teeth being ripped out

trying to get him to testify that that was the plan. And it's very clear from the surviving documentation that Henry was pushing the interrogation at every stage. So they've dealt with the men. Most of Catherine's immediate family apart from the Duke of Norfolk are imprisoned.

The Countess of Bridgewater, emerges as sort of someone staring at the barrel of a loaded gun and shrugging. And she just refuses to buckle. She thinks the councillor beneath her. And neither the Dodge or Duchess nor the Countess of Bridgewater will say that Catherine's anything wrong. And they could have stayed themselves by saying she was a harlot. She tricked us.

Nope. They will not abandon her. Uncle William, the Duke's younger brother, is summoned back from his embassy to France. And they're going to seize all his silverware. And they're like, where is it? He was like, I lost it. he was a storm coming back and it fell to the bottom of the sea. If you can find it, you're welcome to it.

It's definitely hidden in one of the Howard's gardens because all of them are suspiciously financially comfortable when they go to prison. Yeah, yeah, good for them. So I enjoy that. So they're imprisoned and the Dodger Duchess, the Countess, Catherine and the imprisoned Lydia Rochford, they need Parliament because of their rank. And so one of the most important parliaments of Henry's reign, that line, that line. last parliament is reconvened for the start of 1542, specifically to deal with the downfall of Queen Catherine. And the House of Lords, when they reconvene in January, have questions about this. And when people say what Catherine had done clearly was death penalty offence, how could she be so

stupid? Yes, it was unwise. No question of that. Understandable, but unwise. However, the House of Lords know more than you or I or anyone watching this will do about the law at the time they're living it. And the House of Lords have serious questions about the legality of Catherine going to the block. They are not convinced that this is legally mandated. They ask questions. We're not sure that this qualifies as treason. And Henry sends his Lord Chancellor and basically says the King wants this. And it will be done. And so an act of a tender has passed to condemn Lady Rochford and Queen Catherine to death by beheading. Lady Rochford has suffered a complete mental breakdown in prison. So they pass a new law saying that you can legally execute the insane for the first time

in English history. Lots of debate about was she pretending to be insane to get off. We don't know. All we know is that Henry changed the law to get this done. Again, the efficiency of his desire to Henry smash. There is a maniacal push for the blood sacrifice to be given for the king having been humiliated. It's like a visceral response in him, isn't it? It's like everyone must die. I can't acknowledge that I'm a bit pissed off about this. So just kill them. And even the King of France doesn't think this is going to happen. He thinks Catherine will be sent to rot into irrelevance

and old age in the countryside somewhere. But Henry wants the death penalty. So it's pushed through. Catherine has spent the last winter of her life under house arrest at a disused convent at Zion, which is now on the site of the Duke of Northumberland's residence, Zion House, is on the site of where this convent was. And on the 10th of February, 1542,

she realizes there is, she's not going to be pardoned. She's not going to survive this. And they come and they tell her that they're taking her to the Tower of London. And she has a complete breakdown. And they drag her out to the wedding boat. And they row her up to the Tower of London. But Catherine had always been someone, that breakdown as understandable as it is,

is all sort of character. This is someone who dazzled on the international stage of that Christmas. And again, Henry has ground her down to the bare minimum. So she is going to leave as she wants to leave. and she wants to be note perfect in the final performance of her life. So she does what any good performance does and she rehearses. So she asks them after her final confession with Father White, where she again reiterates apparently that she did not commit adultery.

She asks would they bring the block to her room so she can rehearse the execution? And she does. She rehearses it. Genuinely gives me shivers, that's something so, wow. It's still that young woman in the orchard. And the one who knows herself and knows what she needs to get through this. You have put me in this position, but I will walk out of it how I want to. I didn't want to take this journey, but I will be walking my own way through it.

That's the Catherine, I think, I came to know. And she doesn't say that famous sort of, it's the let them make cake of tutor history. If I die the wife of a king, but I'd rather die the wife of Culpeper. There's an eyewitness account from a Calais merchant called Otwell Johnson. He says that she was brave. and both her and Nidie Rothford made right good Christian ends which means sort of pious,

conventional and dignified. Are they all those women executed together? No, the Georgia Duchess and the Countess were sentenced to life imprisonment and then once the blood is spilled, Henry Swift loses interest and then they're released in May. Yeah, they're irrelevant to him. They've been punished and the real punishment is happened.

Because they didn't humiliate them, so he just... And then they go off and the Dodger Duchess lives for three more years, the Countess for another decade. And William is later back in court. Uncle William, who's hid the silverware, becomes a favourite of Mary the first and Elizabeth the first, and will die at Hampton Court, where it all started in 1573. But to my point, he looks after his mummy and his sister, and I think it's the missing silverware. So because everything all their goods were seized, but they're comfortable. So do you know what? I mean, the hard's got

a rough wrap, but those three. Good for them. Yeah. And I suppose, you know, talking about Catherine, as I say, sharp edges and light where you can. But to people who often think of her as, you know, per little Catherine or the kind of like frivolous airhead, you have to have something of steel within you to rehearse your own execution. Yes. So I think there was, and interestingly on that final tour of the north, there are sources that have since been lost to us,

but a 17th century bishop, Gilbert Burnetsal, and where he did transcribe documents that have survived at the present, we saw he did them perfectly. he saw sources that vanished in a 1731 fire, an accidental library fire, about the tour of the north. And he refers to her as fair and beloved Queen Catherine who grew to have more influence. So I think before the mistakes that she did make, but also the many more mistakes that people around her made, I think we started to see her growing in political heft. And she'd interceded for Thomas Wyatt, who was a reformist and John Wallop, who were a conservative to be pardoned.

she had reached out to reformist bishops and said, don't worry, I know I come from a more conservative family, things will be fine. It's something to paraphrase Queen Mary in the Crown. Doing nothing is the hardest thing of all. There is a wisdom and a discipline that comes from neutrality. It takes a great amount of discipline to be politically neutral in an environment like that and to be bipartisan, which she was.

So I like to remind people of that. And I also like to remind them of, yes, someone meeting late at them. night and writing love letters and being a bit unwise and as many of us I mean my god if i was remember who i was in love with at 19 yeah if i was remember who i was in love with at 19 good god yeah yeah yeah yeah that's let's not be judged for that listen you're old enough you're like i don't know who he's talking about you're old enough to make decisions but you are not old enough to make good ones no exactly or to have to live the rest of your life with those

consequences? Or to have the rest of her life snuffed out because of them. So I liked to remind myself and people of the woman rather than poor little Catherine. Because I think that's the dust that Henry ground her into and we've tried to stitch her back. And to me, the Catherine I got to spend five years with, I understood why some of her maids found her insufferable and inconsiderate. And I understood why the imperial ambassador who worked for the Habsburgs, who knew a thing or two about etiquette, find her seriously impressive and dignified. She's all of those things. And at the end, the best tribute I think we can give to her downfall is its rebuttal and to say it's just part of the story. I'm going to join you in another reframing of her. And it sounds to me based on this conversation,

because I only very little about Catherine Harbour before we had this conversation. Now I know loads, but it sounds like the gays would have loved her. Yeah. Yeah. Do you know what I mean? Yeah. She is one of those that we would have flocked to. and just being like, we choose her. Yeah. That is a place we would have felt safe and inspired. I always feel that about Anne. And it's interesting that they are cousins.

Yes, but here's the thing. Anne Boleyn is an older gaze icon. She's the Joan Crawford of the church. I would not have flock to Anne. No. Also, Anne is out for herself in a way that Catherine isn't necessarily... Anne would have had a close coterie of gay friends who she saw in the Riviera. Yeah, that's exactly it.

Yeah. But she... But still made a vote against gay marriage. Yeah, yeah. No, gay marriage she would be fine with because she would love to have been able to say, I'm so, just like, at least one of her friends be like, yeah. I assume you're against it because otherwise her husband would have married you.

And she would never have gone to your pride match because she just trusts mobilisation of the masses. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So she's clustered. This is it. The minute someone came near her with body glitter, she was like, this is bespoke. And I need you to get away. I'm an ally, but not that kind of. Yes, yeah. I'm an ally for a letter writing campaign. I'm going to be a black and white

boy. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Absolutely. I'll mention it in vogue. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Catherine's on the float. On the ground. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I'm seeing real gay, gay icon with Catherine Howard. And also somebody who may be producers of the world unite and read Gareth's book and then make an adaptation because that's filmic. And it's very contained and it's, it's this, it's actually feels a little bit more robust. of a fight back against a system than maybe even Ambulin does to a certain extent

even though it's much shorter and much less definitional for a nation. But yes. You know, there's something individually feeling about it. Anne is brutally shattered and it is the tearing apart

of a political heavy wit. Yeah. And people will, I remember once having a discussion with a friend and they said, oh but Anne, you know,

I feel less sorry for her than Catherine because she was political. And I was like, that's fair enough, but that's not what they went after her for. If they had gone after her

for just treasoning heresy, fine. But they went as low as they possibly could. And it's the same that you see with many women. They go for the gynecological destruction. They go as basis as they can. And so that's why I think actually, Anne is a more savvy political operator than Catherine, but I feel sorry for them both because actually it is it is the, it's the destruction of Anne through something that she didn't do. It's the destruction of Catherine that she had done, but it was not, as bad as they made it out to B and B also it was not a crime and she did it. But at the end it is they both, the same man is responsible for the same conclusion, which does not happen anywhere else in the length and breadth

of the British monarchies, which is a husband publicly executes his wife. It's not normal. And we're always asking, how could Anne do it? How could Catherine do it? What did they do that made that possible? There is only one common unifying factor and it's hubby dearest. Yeah, absolutely. Also, concluding thought, Francis Deerum can absolutely get in the bin. I only feel, I mean, a brutal end. Not great. Wouldn't wish it on anyone. But I'm not sorry. No. I'm not sorry about it. Yeah. And he 100% brought that on himself. Well, and that's one thing actually. I mean, well, he did. He did. And he also, he didn't just bring it on himself.

Well. He's the kind of person who was, he was like, I'm going to jump in the water here with rocks in my pocket. And I'm going to hold on to her as I jump. that's the kind of So I think he's... God, that's petrifying. Yes. It's a sort of what did you think was going to happen. Listen, just a really good lesson from history or in life is simply because you are equipped with the ability to feel something

does not mean anyone is under an obligation to reciprocate. Yes, and if someone dumps you in an orchard, go with it. Yeah. Brew some cider and on you go, sweetheart. Yeah, it's enjoy your life as a pirate. I mean, you know, Calcanny's beautiful. Enjoy it. Yeah.

Yeah. Go back to Colkenny. Oh my gosh. She's my new favourite queen. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. I've overlooked her. I absolutely love her. If you have enjoyed this episode,

if Gareth has changed your mind about the queens of Henry VIII, then let us know in the comments. Leave us a five-star review, wherever you get your podcast. And if you want to hear more Tudor History or History from any other period, get in touch after dark at HistoryHip.com.

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