Catherine Howard by Smith Lacey Baldwin

Author:Smith, Lacey Baldwin [Smith, Lacey Baldwin]
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Tags: History
Publisher: Amberley Publishing
Published: 2011-11-09T16:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER 6

‘Harry With the Crown’

Henry and Catherine were married on 28 July 1540. Heads had fallen, the international scene had been confounded, and the world cynically speculated upon the life expectancy of this fifth wife of the lusty Harry. The wedding itself was a hurried and unproclaimed affair, and Catherine plighted her troth to Henry on the same day that Thomas Cromwell lost his head. The words of the marriage ceremony, by which the royal spouse took this second Howard bride to be his lawful wedded wife, were those of the time-honoured formula. Catherine murmured in response to Henry’s promises: ‘I, Katherine, take thee, Henry, to my wedded husband, to have and to hold from this day forward, for better for worse, for richer for poorer, in sickness and in health, to be bonair and buxom in bed and at board, till death us depart.’1

The marriage of a king was customarily a matter of State and public rejoicing – a moment heavy with religious and political significance, in which the deity was called upon to bless with the fruits of matrimony the union of man and woman into ‘one flesh and body’. The state of wedlock was ‘a high and blessed order ordained of God in Paradise’, and husband and wife were cautioned to use the nuptial bed ‘more for the desire of children, than bodily lust’.2

Legends are born in the imaginations of men and mirror the reputation of heroes, and the story of Henry’s marriage proposal to Catherine has most of the attributes of a first-class fairytale. King, so the poets inform us, ‘went every day to see his son, and one day in the afternoon he entered the room when all the ladies were there’, and called Catherine Howard to him. She knelt before her lord, ‘waiting to see what the King could want with her’. Henry wanted a good deal, for he ‘held out his hand to her and raised her up, saying, “Catherine, from now henceorward, I wish you never to do that again, but rather that all these ladies and my whole kingdom should bend the knee to you, for I wish to make you Queen”.’ Mistress Howard was too stunned to answer and merely made a low bow in reverence to this divine monarch who had asked to be her husband. Henry then hastened to inform the council of his will, and his advisers humbly assured him that ‘if your Majesty so wills it we shall be content; what pleases your Majesty pleases us.’ What pleased the sovereign was to be wedded the following day and he ‘sent for the Bishop of London to come and marry him’.3 The fact that there is hardly a grain of truth in this fable does not in the least detract from the account, but it should be noted for the records that Henry knew Catherine for at least three months before their marriage, while a week before the ceremony it was rumoured that the lady herself was enceinte.

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