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I am delighted to welcome back Conor Byrne to On the Tudor Trail. Conor is a researcher in late medieval and early modern history, with a focus on gender and women’s history. This month will see the release of his book on Katherine Howard, watch this space for details!

Katherine Howard’s Birthday

By Conor Byrne

Above: this portrait of a woman thought to be Queen Katherine Howard might provide a clue to her age.

All are seemingly agreed that Katherine Howard was unusually young when she became Henry VIII’s fifth wife in the summer of 1540. But few were agreed about her actual age. Like Anne Boleyn, Katherine’s birth date and where she was born are unknown. Estimates for her date of birth range from 1518 to 1525, with most historians favouring a date of after 1521, but before 1525.

This article considers fragments of contemporary evidence that, together, offer a plausible date of birth for Katherine Howard. Considering these texts in conjunction with one another even allows for the possibility of discerning the actual month in which this queen may have been born in. This article suggests that Katherine might, very possibly, have been born in November 1523.

The first writer to offer a specific mention of Katherine’s age was the anonymous Spanish chronicler living in London who penned The Chronicle of Henry VIII, possibly in the 1550s. Eric Ives was dismissive of this source’s credibility, describing it as ‘garbled street gossip, strongly laced with the picaresque’.[1] The writer’s statements about Katherine’s youth, however, appear plausible when considered in light of other evidence. He described the queen as ‘a mere child’ when she married Henry, and stated that she was ‘no more than fifteen’ when she was acquainted with him.[2] It has been suggested that Henry himself appointed Katherine and other maidens in the autumn of 1539 to positions within Anne of Cleves’ household.[3] This is corroborated by the report received by Katherine’s step-grandmother, the dowager duchess of Norfolk, that the king had ‘taken a fantasy’ to Katherine the first time he saw her.[4] If then, as seems likely, Henry met Katherine in the autumn of 1539 and appointed her to his new queen’s household, and she was, as the Spanish chronicler believed, about fifteen, then it follows that she was born between the autumn of 1523 and the autumn of 1524.

John Legh was the father of Katherine’s mother, Jocasta (or Joyce), and in his will dated 16 June 1523 referred to none of his daughter’s Howard female offspring (although he did refer to Jocasta’s Leigh children, both male and female, by her first marriage). Later, in a will drawn up by John’s widow Isabel, dated 6 April 1527, she referred to all three Howard daughters by name, including her goddaughter Mary: Margaret, Katherine, Mary.[5] Margaret Howard was born by 1518, for she had married in November 1530 and must therefore have been at least twelve years of age.[6] Margaret may not have been mentioned in her grandfather’s will of 1523 because, at five years or so old, it was not felt she merited the division of property. Possibly, Katherine and Mary were not mentioned in the earlier will because they were not yet born.

The French ambassador Charles Marillac later discovered that Katherine had been violated by Francis Dereham from the ages of thirteen to eighteen, which he speculated encompassed the years 1536 to 1541. Since Katherine did not have a five-year relationship with Dereham, this comment appears somewhat absurd. However, it has been credibly suggested that the ages could have been correct: not knowing about Henry Manox (the music master who began abusing Katherine in 1536), Marillac could have heard the ages ‘thirteen’ and ‘eighteen’ and attached them to the facts that he knew.[7] If she was not yet born by June 1523 and was still fifteen when she was appointed by Henry in the autumn of 1539 (perhaps September or October), then collectively the evidence indicates she was probably born in the final months of the year.

The portrait introducing this piece is believed by some to be a portrait of Katherine, c. 1540-1. It bears the inscription ‘ANNO ETATIS SVÆ XVII’: the sitter was in her seventeenth year. In their 2000 article ‘Susanna Horenbout, Levina Teerlinc and the Mask of Royalty’, Susan E. James and Jamie S. Franco concluded that it is probably a portrait of Queen Katherine. If the sitter is the queen, then she must have been aged seventeen in 1540 or in 1541, giving her a birth date of 1523-4.

A final piece of evidence to consider is the significance of the saint St Catherine’s Day, which is customarily celebrated on 25 November of each year. Tudor children were often named after the saints whose feast days they were born on. Prince Edward Tudor, for example, was given his name because he was born on the eve of the feast day of St Edward the Confessor. Some have suggested that Anne Boleyn might have been born on 26 July, St Anne’s Day, which would fit with beliefs that she had not yet reached her next birthday when executed in May 1536, but was close to reaching it. Alison Weir, in her 2011 biography of Anne’s sister Mary, discussed the possibility that Mary might have been born on 25 March, the Feast of the Annunciation, popularly known as Lady Day.[8] This is pure speculation, but it is possible that, following this general custom in Tudor England, Katherine’s name was given to her because she was born on, or around, St Catherine’s Day, celebrated on 25 November of each year, which commemorates the martyrdom of St. Catherine. In modern times, Catherine Wheel fireworks are lit in Great Britain to celebrate the saint’s feast day, in a month which is, of course, associated with fireworks by virtue of Guy Fawkes.

It cannot be known if Katherine was given the name ‘Katherine’ because she was born on, or around, St. Catherine’s Day – equally, she may have been named after Katherine of Aragon, who was queen of England at the time of her namesake’s birth. However, it is a real possibility when the other evidence considered in this article is pieced tentatively together: the comments of the Spanish chronicler; Ambassador Marillac’s evidence of Katherine’s relationships between 1536 and 1541; her grandfather’s will in 1523 (and the amended will of her grandmother four years later, in 1527); and the existence of a portrait now thought by some to be of Katherine while queen.

The Spanish chronicler reported that Katherine was about fifteen when she was acquainted with Henry VIII, which Warnicke suggests was in the autumn of 1539. She was not yet born in June 1523, when her grandfather made his will shortly before his death. Yet she was thirteen sometime in 1536, when Manox commenced his seduction of her. If she was not yet sixteen by early autumn 1539, it is entirely possible that her birthday was sometime in November 1523, perhaps at the end of that month. That would support the identification of the portrait’s sitter as Katherine, who would have been seventeen in late 1540 and for most of 1541. Collectively, this supports contemporary reports that Henry VIII had married ‘a young girl’ in the summer of 1540, as indeed he had: his bride was not yet seventeen.