“Henry adored Catherine, who restored to him the youth and vitality he thought he’d lost. There was nothing he would not do for her”

On the evening of Sunday 12 February 1542, Catherine Howard, queen of England, was told to prepare her soul, for she was to be put to death the following morning. She asked for the block to be brought to her room, saying that “she wanted to know how she was to place her head on it”. Then, having “tried and placed her head on it by way of experiment”, she made her confession. There was nothing to do now except wait as the last hours of her life passed away.

It was still dark when Catherine arose the following morning. Her ladies helped her to dress in a black velvet gown, a French hood, gloves and a furred mantle – it was almost as though this were just any other day. Then the constable of the Tower came and escorted her across the short distance from the queen’s lodgings to the scaffold.

Catherine addressed the crowd who had come to watch her die. She did not protest her innocence, but accepted the verdict of the law. When her ladies had removed her mantle and hood, she knelt in the straw and placed herself on the block that was now so familiar to her. The headsman struck off her head with a single stroke of the axe. Catherine Howard, the fifth wife and queen of Henry VIII, was dead. She was possibly as young as 17.

Catherine was the youngest of Henry’s wives and her reign had been one of the shortest. That she had become queen at all was remarkable. The daughter of a younger brother of the 3rd Duke of Norfolk, Catherine had few prospects. The best she could hope for was a good marriage with a minor nobleman and a life of domesticity – and she was placed into the household of her step-grandmother, Agnes, Dowager Duchess of Norfolk to be educated with this end in view.

Yet this new position was to prove a poisoned chalice, for, while living with the duchess, Catherine was sexually exploited by two men of the household. The first, Henry Mannock, was her music teacher; the second was the duchess’s gentleman usher, Francis Dereham. Both men took advantage of their position of authority in the household – and Catherine had no means of defending herself.

Redemption seemingly arrived when Catherine was selected to be a maiden of honour to Henry VIII’s new queen, Anne of Cleves. While at court she got to know a cousin, Thomas Culpeper, a gentleman of the king’s privy chamber. They quickly became firm friends, and gossip had it that they were to be married. However, Catherine was never to become Mrs Culpeper, for when King Henry’s marriage to Anne of Cleves broke down, he fell head over heels with her new maiden of honour. Within a matter of weeks – in what was a truly spectacular rise from obscurity to the seat of power – Catherine Howard had become his fifth queen.

Extended honeymoon

Henry adored Catherine, who restored to him the youth and vitality he thought he’d lost. After an extended honeymoon they settled into married life and Catherine showed every sign of becoming a good queen. But her past was about to catch up with her.

In the summer of 1541, the court embarked upon a royal progress to the north country. While they were away a courtier, John Lascelles, took the opportunity of some free time to visit his sister Mary. She had once worked for Duchess Agnes, and Lascelles suggested she apply for a place on Catherine’s staff. Mary, however, was unenthusiastic. She remembered Catherine’s earlier sexual