Category: Catherine Howard

Execution of Thomas Culpepper

10/12/2018

In 1541, Catherine Howard began a physical relationship with Thomas Culpepper, her husband Henry VIII's favourite courtier. In a letter to Culpepper Catherine wrote

“praying you that you will come when my Lady Rochford is here.”

It would be their undoing.

Adultery with a queen was high treason, Thomas Culpepper was sentenced to be hanged, drawn and quartered but the sentence was commuted to beheading. He was executed on this day in 1541.

History tells us that Thomas Culpepper was born in 1514 the son of Alexander Colepeper. If this is the case then he had an older brother also called Thomas (to have a sibling of the same name is not unusual) who was born in 1501. This Thomas Colepeper was married to my 13th great-grandmother's sister and is mentioned in his father's will and other Colepeper wills. These predate the Catherine Howard affair, it seems strange that there is no reference to the Thomas who died on this day.

You can read about Thomas's and Catherine's downfall in my blog Dangerous Talk Cost Lives.

meanderingthroughtime.weebly.com/history-blog/dangerous-talk-costs-lives

Tamzin Merchant played Catherine Howard in the TV series The Tudors

Torrance Coombs played Thomas Culpepper in the TV series The Tudors

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Marriage of Catherine Howard to Henry VIII

28/7/2018

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On the 28th July in 1540 just nineteen days after the annulment of his marriage to Anne of Cleves, King Henry VIII took, as his fifth bride, the twenty-year-old Catherine Howard. Catherine was said to have been pretty - Henry's "rose without a thorn."
No doubt it never crossed Henry's mind what Catherine thought of him the fat 49-year-old - whose youthful physique had long gone.

Why did Catherine marry Henry then? The answer is quite simple, she married him because she had too.

Sadly, Catherine had let her new position as England's new queen go to her head and by the following year, she had begun a physical relationship with Henry's favourite courtier, Thomas Culpepper, which as we all know was her undoing.

While he was marrying Catherine, his friend and the fixer of his problems, Thomas Cromwell, was climbing the scaffold to his execution. I have every sympathy with all of Henry's wives, each of them had to suffer this menacing tyrant in their own different ways. Poor Catherine's problem was that she was young and naive and you could argue easily lead, notably by Henry's onetime sister in law Jane Boleyn - but that's another story.

This print of Catherine Howard is available for purchase by clicking on the link to my shop at the top of the page.

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Execution of Thomas Culpepper

Marriage of Catherine Howard to Henry VIII

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