(Introductory information about the Six Wives of Henry VIII is located in the summary information of the geocache for Katherine of Aragon, Henry VIII’s first wife. For those with interest, it may be interesting to read the information in that geocache description).
(REALLY SHORT) SHORTCUT SUMMARY: Katherine Howard was Henry VIII's fifth wife. Their story, which spanned two (2) years, is not complicated at all: "trash muffin" beautiful teenage girl from a noble family meets and delights middle-aged, lonely, sad, and ailing king. They marry, despite the fact that Henry is 34 years older than Katherine. Young trash muffin behaves like .....well.....a young trash muffin. She breaks the king's heart and makes him feel old, decrepit, and unloved. Also, he is extremely angry. He has her head chopped off. Story over.
FULL STORY: KATHERINE HOWARD - FIFTH WIFE
Katherine Howard was Henry VIII's fifth wife. Without question, the most important characteristic of the couple was their age difference: Katherine was three (3) decades - that's 30 years (actually, it was 34 years) - younger than Henry. Henry told his lifelong best friend Charles Brandon, the Duke of Suffolk, "Katherine makes me feel young again." Little wonder.
Katherine Howard was a member of a titled but poor family. Her father, Edmund Howard, was a younger son in a family of 21 children (yes, 21) in the powerful and noble Howard family (also the family of Anne Boleyn - Anne and Katherine were first cousins; Anne's mother and Katherine's father were siblings). Due to the law of primogeniture in England (first son inherits everything), Edmund Howard, (who was Son #3), his two (2) wives (they both died young), and their 11 children (Katherine was #10) had noble pedigree and absolutely positively nothing else.
When she was seven (7) years' old, Katherine's mother died, and Katherine was sent to live in the home of her wealthy and elderly grandmother, for both her basic childhood care (food, clothes, shelter) and in an attempt to prepare her for some kind of minor status in courtly life. Katherine's grandmother was the Dowager Duchess of Norfolk, who, in her younger days, cut quite a figure at court with her husband, the influential and filthy rich Duke of Norfolk.
It was thought that, because of her own courtly success, the Duchess could teach young women of noble families how to lead a rewarding life at a royal court. Unfortunately, the Duchess' household was crowded with young noble wanna-bees whose daily life went largely unsupervised. It was not a strict, disciplined environment in which virtuous, principled young ladies learned the womanly arts of running a large household and caring for children. Katherine did learn how to read and write in a limited way; she learned to sew and embroider; and she learned about and greatly admired the music of her time.
But what Katherine mostly learned to do was "to make merry!" She became, in today's lingo, a trashy party girl. Dance, drink, laughter, games, and romance filled her youthful nights. Katherine was 15 years old when she left her grandmother's home to join Henry VIII's court, and she had already had two (2) sordid love affairs with young men who worked for her grandmother. Historians describe her as "a silly and loose girl," "a wanton whore," and one (1) highly-respected historian of English royalty describes Katherine as a "juvenile delinquent."
In 1540, Katherine's uncle, the then-current Duke of Norfolk, arranged for his niece to go to London to become a lady-in-waiting to Anne of Cleves, Henry's fourth wife. Henry didn't much care for Anne of Cleves, whom he had agreed to marry sight unseen (except for a portrait of her face) in order to create a political alliance with a very important German province. Henry found Anne to be plain, dowdy, and smelly (see the Anne of Cleves geocache for that story), and their marriage was dissolved in six (6) short months.
At the same time, Henry's close friends, who wanted their king to recapture some of the merriment of his younger days (wine, women, and song), finagled the beautiful, happy, and vivacious 15-year old Katherine into Henry's company, and he was quickly smitten. In short order, Henry, age 49, and Katherine, age 15, were married.
Henry called Katherine his "blushing rose without a thorn," and he was very fond of her. She was a very attractive, sexy, chatty, friendly young woman who loved dancing, giggling, parties, new gowns, expensive jewelry - and lots of male attention. She was also an immature, empty-headed, and frivolous young woman who had very little understanding of the shark-infested waters in which she swam as the teenage queen in Henry's aging court. Rumors about young Katherine's silly, sleazy, and unsavory behavior began immediately upon her marriage to the king.
Long story short, the now morbidly obese, wheezing Henry could not keep up with his teenage wife in any way. He certainly couldn't dance with his perpetually ulcered leg wound; he found riding horses very uncomfortable, and he could not mount his horse without being heaved on and off the horse by several attendants, so he couldn't hunt or joust or just go riding; he tired early and was snoring in his royal bedchamber long before Katherine tired at all. When he wasn't attending to affairs of state, Henry liked to eat, drink, play cards, watch court entertainments, and shower young Katherine with groping kisses and royal jewels. Katherine had no outside interests -- she wasn't religious, she had no "causes," she didn't manage any part of the royal household; she never became pregnant in any of her relationships; she ignored Henry's children (his daughter Mary was three (3) years older than Katherine and absolutely despised the new queen). Katherine got bored pretty quickly in her marriage to Henry.
It is believed that Katherine entered into several playful relationships with the men in Henry's court. Some historians opine that Henry really did try to overlook the "rumors" of Katherine's affairs that came to him through court gossip and intrigue. Then Katherine began a genuine heartfelt love affair with one (1) of Henry's most trusted household courtiers, a young man named Thomas Culpepper. When Henry found out, Katherine's end began quickly. Henry was insulted and furious and broken-hearted, and his middle-age shortcomings were thrown into his face like handfuls of mud. He was humiliated by the younger generation, and he did not like it one iota. "Age and treachery will overcome youth and skill."
In the fall of 1541, Katherine Howard was arrested for treason (adultery as queen was treason under English law). She was lodged at Syon Abbey for two (2) months, where she hoped and prayed for Henry's forgiveness. Clergy who visited her there said she was "a most pitiable creature" and hysterical much of the time. Henry refused to go through a trial for Katherine, so, in January 1542, he and his advisors persuaded the English Parliament to pass a Bill of Attainder - an act in which a legislative body finds a person guilty of a crime without a trial - to find Katherine guilty of treason, punishable by death (this type of legislation is specifically prohibited by the U.S. Constitution and is obsolete and no longer used elsewhere in the world).
After the Bill of Attainder was passed, Katherine was moved to the Tower of London to await her execution by beheading. It came on February 13,1542. She had much weakened during her time in the Tower, and she was carried up some steps to the scaffold. She was able to stand, and she made a very short soft-spoken speech in which she said she had earned her punishment many times over; she asked for prayers for herself and also for King Henry (there are those who report that she also said, "I die a queen, but I would rather have lived the wife of Culpepper." Historians discredit this statement). The night before her execution, Katherine had asked the Tower superintendent to bring her the block upon which her head would rest, awaiting the axe blow(s), and for hours she practiced properly aligning her head and neck on the block so she could "die quickly with dignity," she said. It worked. With one chop, she died quickly and quietly. Like her cousin Anne Boleyn, her body was wrapped in blankets and placed in an unmarked communal grave in the churchyard of the Tower Church, St. Peter ad Vincula. A marble plaque announcing her gravesite hangs in the church.
Katherine Howard was just short of 18 years old at her death. Historians call her marriage to King Henry VIII "tragic and pathetic."
Indeed.
The cache is located close to fraternity houses and dorms, places where Katherine Howard probably would have been quite comfortable "making merry." The original (and sometimes supplemented) swag symbolizes the type of gift that Henry bestowed upon his young queen by the multitude. PLEASE USE CAREFULLY ORCHESTRATED STEALTH IN SEARCHING FOR THIS GEOCACHE - it could be very easily muggled.
Afterward: Henry's youngest daughter Elizabeth -- later Queen Elizabeth I -- was eight (8) years old when Katherine was executed. When she asked what happened to Katherine Howard, she was told, and she was horrified. Elizabeth was extraordinarily intelligent, and she knew the same thing had happened to her mother. After hearing the explanation for Katherine Howard's death, Elizabeth was quoted as exclaiming, "I shall never marry!"
And she never did.
Congratulations to iatsemedic on a very fast FTF!