and strengthened by the fact that the century proved to be one of social mobility, wider literacy, growing towns, and an expanding population. Elite views of social unrest were inevitably influenced by their own childhood curriculums that were generally heavy on the classics, in which rebellion was cited as a chief cause for the fall of Ancient Rome, encouraging a belief that popular protest led to mob rule, ‘which of all rules is most to be feared’.41 No one wanted the poor to be miserable, but nearly everyone wanted them to be obedient. In both town and countryside, outdoor and entertaining activities were encouraged in every season, because it was understood that people needed to enjoy themselves and, in doing so, dissipate their energy.
The belief that the plebeian urban classes were naturally credulous, easily distracted, and prone to overreaction placed the blame for any outburst of civil unrest squarely on the shoulders of their immediate superiors. Edmund and a colleague ‘were indicted of riots, and maintenance of bearings of diverse misdoers within the county of Surrey’.42 The recent disturbances in the county were a poor reflection on the king’s deputies, and Edmund’s fiery temper, or ill standing with the sovereign, did not help. Both defendants were shamed but pardoned, while another, Lord Ogle, was passed over to the common courts after riots blamed on his dereliction of duty resulted in the death of a bystander.43
The years following the Star Chamber hearing saw Edmund’s career stagnate and his debts increase. Joyce Howard’s properties were mortgaged and remortgaged, despite opposition from her mother and stepfather. Years earlier, after the death of Joyce’s father, Richard Culpepper, who had been a wealthy landowner in Kent, her mother Isabel had remarried to Sir John Leigh then swiftly arranged a wedding between Joyce and John’s younger brother, Ralph. This meant that John and Isabel had a doubly vested interest in monitoring Joyce’s inheritance, with Isabel mindful of the Culpepper estates and John equally concerned about the disposal of the Leigh bequests from Joyce’s first husband.44 The couple evidently came to distrust Edmund Howard, and both their wills attempted to limit his ability to interfere in their daughter or grandchildren’s inheritance.
This distrust was not entirely undeserved – Edmund’s debts had all but taken over his life by 1527. Despite being a public figure tasked with the maintenance of the law, on one occasion Catherine’s father had only dodged arrest as a debtor thanks to a tip-off from a friend.45 Aristocratic poverty, of course, was not quite the same as the agony of the actual condition, and the names of at least two of Lord Edmund’s servants crop up in subsequent correspondence.46 But by the end of the 1520s, he was undeniably struggling and badly so, to the extent that he began to borrow heavily from his friends, even persuading one, John Shookborough, to stand as surety for his debts.47 The idea of getting another job, a profession that would pay a consistent wage, was considered abhorrent, something that would bring ‘great reproach and shame to me and all my blood’, in Edmund’s words. At least on the surface, he claimed to resent the position he was born into, citing his aristocratic heritage as something that had condemned him to a life of genteel struggle.
Perhaps such woeful excuse-making was why his relatives’ aid seems to have dried up between 1524 and 1531, a time when Edmund became increasingly desperate. During one spell of hiding to avoid the possibility of being apprehended by his creditors, he sent his wife to petition Cardinal Wolsey, the king’s then chief minister, on his behalf. According to his accompanying letter to the cardinal, unless Edmund received financial help he would either have to seek sanctuary in a religious institution or flee abroad. The panic and unhappiness apparent in Edmund’s letter remains uncomfortable to read. Quotations from it are usually cited in the various biographies of Catherine, but it is by reading the majority of the text – including his astonishing offer to serve on a mission to the Americas – that one can fully appreciate the depth of Edmund Howard’s desperation. Addressed to ‘My Lord Cardinal’s Grace’, in haste, it reads:
My duty remembered, humbly I beseech your grace to [be] my good Lord, for with out your gracious help I am utterly undone. Sir so it is that I am so far in danger of the King’s laws by reason of the debt that I am in, that I dare not go a broad, nor come at mine own house, and am fain to absent me from my wife and my poor children, there is such writs of executions out against me; and also such as be my sureties are daily arrested, and put to great trouble, which is to my great shame and rebuke. Sir there is no help but through your Grace and your good mediation to the King’s Grace, in the which is my singular trust: and your gracious favour showed unto me … shall not only be meritorious but shall be the safeguard of my life and relief of my poor wife and our ten children, and set me out of debt. And humbly I beseech your Grace for such poor service as I have done the King’s Grace, and trust for to do, that I be not cast away; and if the King’s Grace or your Grace should command me to do any service I would trust to do acceptable service; and liver I had to be in his Grace’s service at the farthest end of Christendom than to live thus wretchedly, and die with thought, sorrow and care. I may repent that ever I was nobleman’s son born, leading the sorrowful life that I live, and if I were a poor man’s son I might dig and delve for my living and my children and my wife’s, for whom I take more thought than for my self: and so may I not do but to great reproach and shame to me and all my blood. Sir if there be any creature living that can lay to me other treason, murder, felony, rape, extortion, bribery, or in maintaining or supporting any of these, and to be approved on me, then let me have the extremity of the King’s laws; and I trust there shall none lay against me any thing to be approved to my reproach but only debt. Sir I am informed there shall be a voyage made in to a newfound land with divers ships and captains and sogears [soldiers or sea-goers?] in them; and I am informed the voyage shall be honourable and profitable to the King’s Grace and all his realm. Sir if your Grace think my poor carcass any thing meet to serve the King’s Grace in the said voyage, for the better passion of Christ be you my good lord there in, for now I do live a wretched a life as ever did gentleman being a true man, and nothing I have to live on, nor to find me my wife and my children meat or drink; and glad I would be to venture my life to do the King’s service, and if I be put there unto I doubt not but I shall do such service as shall be acceptable and redound to his Grace[’s] honour. And Sir I have nothing to lose but my life, and that I would gladly adventure in his service trusting thereby to win some honesty, and to get somewhat toward my living; and if it shall please the King’s Grace to have my body do him service in the said voyage, humbly I beseech your Grace that I may know your pleasure therein. Sir I ensure you there shall be nothing nor nother friend nor kin let me, but with a willing heart I will go, so it shall stand with the King’s pleasure and yours. The King’s Grace being so good lord to me through your good mediation … and assign my bill the which I now do sue for, or to set me out of debt some other ways. Sir I beseech your Grace to pardon me that I came not to your Grace myself according to my duty, but surely Sir I dare not go a broad, and therefore I have been thus bold to write to your Grace. All the premises considered I humbly beseech your Grace to be my good lord, for the passion of Christ and in the way of charity and piety. I beseech your Grace to pardon me for this my bold writing, but very poverty and need forceth me thus to do, as knoweth our Lord Jesus, who have you in his blessed tuysseone. Written with the hand of him that is assuredly yours, Edmund Howard, Knight.48
If help did come from Wolsey, it was piecemeal. Edmund was head of a large household, which added to his financial woes. The elder girls, Isabella and Margaret, along with Catherine’s full siblings Charles, Henry, George, another Margaret, and their younger sister Mary, were all still living at home. Interestingly, a later survey also mentions Jane Howard, a sister born after Mary, who, if she existed at all, must have been born after 1527 and died in infancy, perhaps sometime after 1530.49 Catherine’s two eldest half brothers, John and Ralph, had moved out when she was a child. On turning twenty-four, John inherited
