trust in the emperor by playing on anxieties about Milan and liaising with courtiers who might be privately hostile to the pact with Austria.36
In this he had no better ally than the French king’s elder sister Marguerite, Queen of Navarre. Navarre, a small kingdom straddling what is now southwestern France and northwestern Spain, had been absorbed by the Hapsburg Empire, a development that unsurprisingly left Marguerite less than enthusiastic about her brother’s diplomatic volte-face. She met with Norfolk and bombarded him with advice – the King of England should grease the palms of those who could help him, including François’s two sons, who had already received expensive gifts from the emperor.37 They should counteract Queen Eleanor’s influence by winning the support of the king’s mistress, the Duchess of Etampes. Norfolk was sceptical about that last recommendation because he ‘thought it strange to seek anything at such a woman’s hand’, but Marguerite assured him that she spoke from personal experience, ‘as she was compelled to do it herself’.38 Norfolk, who thought Marguerite was ‘the most frank and wise woman he ever spake with’, began gift hunting for the princes and courting the favour of Madame d’Etampes, who was certainly open in her requests for payment – Henry VIII had to buy her two stallions – and Norfolk returned to England at the start of March impressed, and perhaps surprised, at the influence a royal mistress could wield.39
Nineteen weeks passed between Norfolk’s return and Catherine Howard’s wedding. It was assumed, then and later, that Norfolk was the ‘author of this marriage’ in conjunction with his ally Stephen Gardiner, the conservative Bishop of Winchester, who used Catherine to facilitate the downfall of Thomas Cromwell.40 Catherine’s rise coincided with and influenced Cromwell’s demise, but the extent to which she was deliberately and completely used to further her uncle’s goals is difficult to gauge.
Ten years earlier, Norfolk had liked and even supported Thomas Cromwell.41 He had shared bawdy jokes with him about a serving girl’s ‘tetins’ and described himself as ‘your poor assured friend’.42 Since then, jealousy and political differences had divided them. Norfolk could not forgive Cromwell’s attempts to get the Marchioness of Exeter to incriminate him when she was interrogated during the White Rose Affair.43 Above all, Norfolk was too good a servant to the king to remain loyal to any man who lost his favour, which was Cromwell’s fate in the spring and early summer of 1540. Stephen Gardiner, the son of a cloth merchant from Bury St Edmunds, was as clever as Cromwell, only moderately less ruthless, and substantially less charming. He had excelled in his legal studies at Cambridge and come to the court’s attention in the early 1520s. He subsequently represented Henry in missions to France, Rome, and Venice, debated the merits of ecclesiastical versus classical pronunciation of ancient Greek, and served for a time as the king’s principal secretary. Although he had written books defending the break with Rome, by 1539 continental Protestants detested him – even Martin Luther knew of, and worried about, his prominence in the English government.44 At home, Gardiner was dogged by accusations that he remained a papist at heart, and during Lent 1540 a radical preacher called Robert Barnes publicly accused him of it.45 Barnes had previously enjoyed Cromwell’s protection, but when Gardiner went to the king to protest this slander, Henry allowed him to bring Barnes in for questioning.46
By 3 April, Barnes and two of his colleagues, William Jerome and Thomas Gerrard, were in the Tower. Barnes had not just insulted Gardiner but slandered the Virgin Mary, allegedly proclaiming that she had only been worth something when she was pregnant with Christ, otherwise ‘our Lady was but a saffron bag’.47 He denied that specific allegation, but he was not quite so definite when it came to refuting the charge that he had argued that a government had no right to ‘make laws that rule men’s consciences’.48 William Jerome’s sermons had sailed dangerously close to supporting the doctrine of predestination, a belief that the majority of English people still regarded as heresy. Cromwell’s association with these men tainted him at a time when he was already vulnerable, and Gardiner, whose skills as an interrogator were considerable, was determined to make the most of the opportunity.
Before Gardiner struck against them, English reformers and radicals had their hopes raised by the king’s marriage to ‘a pious woman, by whom, it is hoped, the Gospel will be diffused’.49 Unfortunately for them, they overestimated the queen’s influence and her allegiance to Protestantism. The Queen of France was closer to the mark when she identified Anne of Cleves as a Catholic whose family, like Henry, had quarrelled with the pope.50 Raised hopes perhaps inevitably led to raised voices, and the three men had preached sermons that stepped far beyond what Henry’s government was prepared to tolerate. By Easter, many English evangelicals seem to have realised their mistake. On 12 April another Protestant clergyman in Gardiner’s custody committed suicide by hanging himself in his cell.51 After Cromwell was gone, some of the fierier sort of Protestants chose lives or careers abroad.52
In this ugly battle, Henry’s physical attraction to Catherine was obviously very useful to Gardiner and the duke. Subsequent accounts of her rise to the throne often cast Norfolk and Gardiner as an unsavoury cross between Catherine’s chaperones and her pimps, hosting banquets at which they pushed a singing, smiling Catherine into the king’s sights. Gardiner’s modern biographer, Glyn Redworth, has cast doubt on this version of events, and there is room for scepticism, not least because this narrative of Catherine’s rise is too neat.53 The dowager duchess’s previously mentioned recollection of Henry’s instant attraction to Catherine provides evidence that the initial stage of their relationship was spontaneous and apparently inconsequential. The likelihood is that the king flirted with Catherine, probably quite obviously, but the impending arrival of Anne of Cleves made it little more than a social diversion. Once the king decided that he ‘abhorred’ his new wife, his interest in Catherine revived.54
That Norfolk was responding to circumstances as they unfolded is supported by the fact that he clearly knew very little about his niece. There is, for instance, absolutely nothing to suggest that he was aware of her previous romances with Henry Manox or Francis Dereham. The dowager did not rush to enlighten him. If the Howards had wanted to entice Henry VIII, they would not have chosen Catherine. She was damaged goods. Had they been as Machiavellian as the usual presentation of them suggests, at some point in the vetting process either the dowager duchess or the Countess of Bridgewater could have pointed out that elevating Catherine would put them all at risk in the long run. Rather, the king’s infatuation seems to have caught them all off-guard, and while her family seem to have played the hand dealt to them – they would have been foolish not to – that is not the same thing as stacking the deck.
Confronted with the king’s frequent demands for her company, Catherine sought the wisdom of her relatives. They gave her advice on the proper way to behave when she was with him, ‘in what sort to entertain the King’s Highness and how often’, as it was put later.55 On one of her trips back to Lambeth to visit her grandmother, Catherine discovered that Francis Dereham had absconded without telling anyone where he was going. The dowager asked her if she knew where he had gone, but she answered, probably quite truthfully, that she had no idea.
