Wolf Hall: why was King Henry VIII’s fifth wife Catherine Howard beheaded?

Wolf Corridor episode 5 noticed Thomas Cromwell make a significant misstep together with his marriage plans for Henry VIII and Anne of Cleves, with the union clearly being a complete catastrophe. Whereas Henry is wedded to Anne, his sights develop into set on another person, the Duke of Norfolk’s niece, Catherine Howard. 

Henry weds Catherine after Cromwell’s execution, and for the reason that present’s penultimate episode exhibits Thomas’ arrest, we doubt that we’ll be seeing the whole lot of the younger Queen’s rise and fall. So what was Henry’s relationship like with Catherine, and why did he have her killed? Discover out right here… 

Catherine, performed by Summer time Richards, was almost definitely a teen when the monarch wedded her. As 30 years her senior, Historic Royal Palace’s head of analysis Professor Anthony Musson opened up in regards to the relationship on A Proper Royal Podcast, revealing that Henry had a brand new lease of life after marrying her – and even took on a brand new well being regime. 

Very similar to within the present, it was believed that Catherine was launched to the King by her uncle across the time that Henry first met Anne, with one observer writing that he “crept too close to one other woman” whereas married to his fourth spouse. Following their annulment, he wed Catherine on the identical day that Cromwell was executed. 

Nonetheless, his pleasure with Catherine – who was his second spouse Anne Boleyn’s cousin – was very short-lived. The pair have been married for 2 years when Catherine’s previous got here into gentle, as she was found to have had relationships with each her music instructor, Henry Manox, when she was as younger as 12, and Francis Dereham when she was 14. 

Historical past additionally information that Catherine had an adulterous affair with Thomas Culpeper in 1541, with a letter studying: “It makes my coronary heart die to assume I can’t be all the time in your organization.” Nonetheless, trendy readings of Catherine’s relationship with Culpeper, who had beforehand been accused of rape and homicide however was pardoned by the King, could possibly be that she was making an attempt to maintain a predator in good humour whereas left alone with him at courtroom. 

Nonetheless, Catherine’s relationship with Culpeper was in the end found, with the Archbishop of Canterbury Thomas Cranmer informing Henry of the affair and her earlier relationships. The Queen in the end confessed to relationships with all three males, and was sentenced the demise in 1542 following a brand new invoice, which claims that any future queen did not disclose sexual relations inside 20 days of marriage can be responsible of treason.

She might have solely been round 19 when she was executed, main Henry to marry his sixth spouse, Katherine Parr. They have been married from 1543 till the King’s demise in 1547.