Katherine Howard: A New History by Byrne Conor

Author:Byrne, Conor [Byrne, Conor]
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Publisher: MadeGlobal Publishing
Published: 2014-08-12T16:00:00+00:00

The sheer amount of expensive jewellery Katherine enjoyed is incredible. She also made presents of jewellery to her ladies, including to both of the king’s daughters and to his niece Lady Margaret Douglas.28

In view of Katherine’s inventory, it has subsequently been theorised that the sitter must be the queen. However, there are noteworthy issues, namely the sitter’s age and her appearance. According to the French ambassador, who met Katherine in the autumn of 1540, the new queen was ‘small and slender’, even ‘very diminutive’, whereas Holbein’s sitter appears to have been bulkier in build. Katherine’s beauty was also consistently remarked upon, with the court observer William Thomas, for example, describing her as ‘a very beautiful gentlewoman’.29 George Cavendish also repeated Katherine’s ‘beawtie’ in his Metrical Visions.30 Holbein’s sitter wears a matronly, serious expression, and appears worn and tired, which must further call into question whether the sitter actually is the ‘beautiful’ Katherine. Although the lavish costume and expensive jewellery certainly indicate that the sitter was extremely well-born, probably royal, and definitively rules out Elizabeth Cromwell, it may not necessarily represent Queen Katherine. If the portrait dates from the late 1530s rather than the early 1540s, it is possible that it depicts a different royal woman, for during this period there were four other royal women at Henry VIII’s court, all of whom could have been the sitter in this portrait. These women were Mary Tudor, daughter of Henry VIII and aged twenty in 1536-7, Lady Margaret Douglas, niece of Henry VIII and aged twenty in 1535-6, Frances Brandon, niece of Henry VIII and aged twenty in 1537-8, and her younger sister Eleanor, aged twenty in 1539-40. It is noteworthy that Holbein’s portrait was originally identified as a portrait of Eleanor Brandon, Countess of Cumberland, and later as Mary Tudor.31

It is also interesting that the portrait was found in the collection of the Cromwell family.32 Although Katherine herself may not personally have played a prominent role in Thomas Cromwell’s downfall, it would have been extraordinary for the Cromwell family to have owned a portrait of the woman associated most closely with his downfall and execution, particularly in terms of her Catholic beliefs, which would have been unacceptable by the reformist Cromwell family. If one takes this further, not only may the sitter have had some connection with the Cromwells, but her religious beliefs were surely Protestant, for Thomas Cromwell was associated with the suppression of Catholicism within England and, thus, it is highly unlikely that his family would have retained a portrait of a Catholic sitter, at a time of violent conflict between Catholics and Protestants. If this thinking is correct, then Katherine Howard must be completely ruled out as the sitter in view of several points: her age, her religious beliefs, her appearance and the dating of the portrait.

It is likely that this portrait was painted between 1535 and 1540. At that particular point the fortunes of Princess Mary were singularly random, for while she had been in disgrace during

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