Early Modern Britain

Part 4: Catherine Howard / Katherine Parr

Dowager duchess of Norfolk

Step-grandmother of Catherine Howard, the dowager duchess brought up Catherine after her mother had died and her father kept falling into debt.

She probably engineered Francis Dereham's promotion to secretary at Hampton Court to buy his silence when Henry married Catherine. However, when his indiscretions were uncovered, she was implicated and, with the fall of Catherine, she was imprisoned in the Tower, before later being released.

Francis Dereham

A handsome retainer who was popular with the women, Francis Dereham was a wealthy gentleman.

He confessed to his relationship with Catherine, which had started in the days in which she lived at the dowager's home and lasted until Catherine was made lady-in-waiting to Henry's fourth wife, Anne of Cleves. Thomas Cranmer discovered this and the resulting confessions by Dereham and others who were implicated, including the dowager duchess of Norfolk, led to the fall of the queen herself.

Francis died a traitor's death at the Tyburn gallows, being being hanged, drawn, and quartered on 10 December 1541.

Sir Thomas Seymour

Thomas Seymour was Henry VIII's brother-in-law by virtue of his sister, Jane, Henry's third wife. He was the son of Sir John Seymour and younger brother of Edward Seymour, who became protector of England on Henry's death.

In 1547 he was made admiral and married the dowager Queen Katherine. After Katherine died, he set his sights on marriage to Princess Elizabeth, but was charged with treason by his brother Edward and was executed in 1549.

Stephen Gardiner

Stephen Gardiner was born in 1483, becoming Thomas Wolsey's secretary and then bishop of Winchester in 1531.

He tried to expedite Henry's divorce from Catherine of Aragon by visiting Rome, and agreed with the king's supremacy in the nation. But he disagreed with much of the rest of the Reformation, and under Mary I he attacked Protestants ruthlessly.

Anne Askew

Born in Grimsby, Humberside, Anne Askew converted early to Reformation ideas. After preaching in London and handing out Protestant leaflets she was arrested and taken to the Tower.

At the age of tenty-five and tortured on the rack as a heretic she became a Protestant martyr when she was burned to death for heresy in 1546. Unable to walk to her death after her torture, she was strapped to a chair and fastened to the stake to hold her upright. She steadfastly refused to recant.

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