Young and Damned and Fair: The Life of Catherine Howard, Fifth Wife of King Henry VIII

Without question, the most up-to-date and well-researched book on this most shadowy of Henry's wives. Great style, very easy and enjoyable read. Of particular interest is the analysis of alleged portraits - short story, we don't know if any survive, only a couple possible candidates, and the ones most commonly said to be her most likely aren't. Definitely a must for any interested in Tudor history. An aside - and I've never seen any author mention this possibility in fairness, so maybe I'm way off the mark here - but Henry's rants in his illness about his councilors making him kill his most faithful servant coming at the same time of early divorce rumors, and how seriously he took the eventual first accusations that could easily have been written off as slander, make me wonder if there was any chance Cromwell may have found out and filled in Henry in his panic to save himself - hard to believe a man with so many ears out there, so to speak, wouldn't have learned about it, given how many knew - and THAT may be what ultimately cost him his head, caused him to set the hounds on him, so to speak. And it would be easy to see why Henry wouldn't believe it, given Cromwell's track record with throwing wild accusations out there, and didn't want his intended besmirched. Anyways, speculating aside, definitely worth a buy!

I wish I could have known this poor girl. She marries a fat, ulcerous, probably insane monarch in total innocence for some baubles and loses her head. The book is VERY well written and the details are just enough. When the author is not sure of certain events and timetables ( records were not kept very well in the 16th century) he lets you know. But you get to know all the details of her life; from her real fathers notability but also poverty to how she was played like a pawn. She was not very bright. But at 16 or whatever ( they don't even know her real age) who can blame her? A great book.

A long time in coming to read a balanced, sympathetic yet candid portrait of a young girl with no pretensions who found herself suddenly thrust into the limelight of British Royalty as the 5th wife of Henry VIII. Unprepared for the machinations of the Tudor Court, and with a past that came back to fatally harm her, one can't help but feel sympathy for her, and disappointment at her foolish behavior. An excellent read.

Of all the royalty that have ever lived, it seems to me that the Tudor dynasty of England is among the most popular, particularly Henry VIII and his wives. Each year sees new works of biography and fiction about one of Henry's wives or children. One of the best current writers on the Tudors is Gareth Russell. A playwright and a novelist as well as an Oxford-educated historian, Gareth brings his gifts of description and of character analysis, in addition to a scrupulous historicity, into what I think is the best Tudor biography I have yet read. The author visited the main sites where Catherine's tragedy was played out, giving rich details in addition to discussing the extant sources and art works. Like all of Gareth's books and plays, Young and Damned and Fair is a most entertaining read for its color and wit but most of all for the way Catherine Howard and her world are brought to life.

Catherine tends to be overshadowed by Henry's other wives, except for Anne of Cleves, of course, whom she supplanted. Her marriage and queenship were short and relatively uneventful, until the disastrous ending. Gareth shows that many of the common beliefs about Catherine are untrue. Although she was the impoverished daughter of a ne'er-do-well younger son of the great Howard family, she was by no means an unsophisticated waif. Brought up by her step-grandmother, the Dowager Duchess of Norfolk, Catherine lived in one of the grandest households in England, where she learned outward decorum and polished manners. In fact, throughout her brief time as a royal consort, Catherine's conduct in her royal duties was admirable, characterized by charm, charity, and regal grace. The defect in her upbringing was that in the large household, and among the many young ladies with whom she was being brought up, Catherine was not guarded carefully enough. A petite striking beauty whose vivacity heightened her allure, she was preyed upon by at least two household retainers that we know of, one of whom, Francis Dereham, she promised to marry. But it is a myth that Catherine's uncle, the Duke of Norfolk, connived to obtain Catherine a place at court. Norfolk himself had relatively little to do with Catherine's rise or her fall, contrary to popular rumor.

Catherine caught the king's eye when she was chosen to be a lady-in-waiting to his fourth queen, Anne of Cleves. She was chosen because she was a Howard and therefore had connections, not because the Howards saw her as a potential bride of Henry. In fact, when it became clear that the King had his eye upon her it brought panic, and Catherine's grandmother and her aunt tried their best to cover up all evidence of her dalliance with Francis Dereham. For Catherine herself, winning the love of Henry VIII brought clothes, jewels and material benefits which she has often been deprived of. She nevertheless lived in constant dread of disappointing a known tyrant, who had executed her cousin, the glamorous and clever Anne Boleyn. In her undisciplined youth, Catherine sought an outlet for her anxiety by doing what she knew how to do best, which was flirt with young men. Her flirtation with the courtier Thomas Culpepper would be her doom.

Catherine was not executed for adultery, however. There was no evidence that actual adultery had ever occurred. The queen was accused of merely contemplating adultery; hers was a thought crime rather than an actual deed. What really spelled her demise was Catherine's previous promise to marry Francis Dereham, which according to church law would invalidate her marriage to the king. Catherine insisted the promise was a joke and that she had never been formally betrothed to Dereham. But knowledge of her past dalliances combined with her current flirtation made Henry determined that she would die for humiliating him. That Catherine had appeared to be the perfect spouse in the eyes of the ailing and crazed monarch perhaps accentuated his rage towards her. When she was publicly beheaded on February 13, 1542, Catherine displayed courage and calm. She was probably not yet twenty years old. Most of the portraits thought to be of her are not; thus she left the world with hardly a trace of herself, for one raised so high. In spite of the sad finale, I hated for the book to end. I hope Gareth writes books about the other five queens of Henry VIII, too.

(The book was sent to me by the publisher in exchange for my honest opinion.)

This book was an absolutely brilliant history that dug deeply into the facts and fleshed them out with historical context and analysis. I think this book will be to Catherine Howard's biographies what Eric Ives was to Anne Boleyn's.

What distinguishes this biography, according to the author and the publisher, is the focus on Catherine Howard's "households" as the context for understanding her rise and fall in waning years of Henry's reign and Court.

The emphasis on her household includes first Catherine's life at home and then with her step-grandmother, Agnes Tilney Howard, the Dowager Duchess of Norfolk in Chesworth House and Norfolk House. Russell thus introduces us to the powerful Howard family and particularly to Catherine's father, Lord Edmund Howard, who escaped to Calais to avoid his creditors. Edmund's first wife and Catherine's mother, Joyce Culpepper had been married before and had children from that union too. The family tree for the Howard family could have been a little more detailed or there could have been an additional family tree for Lord Edmund's family to clarify all these relationships. Because all these relationships are very important to any story in Tudor England! The connections between families engendered by marriages and offspring create the webs that have to be unwoven and rewoven with every crisis. For Russell's discussion of possible portraits of Catherine Howard in chapter 12, I wish that the publisher had included figure numbers on the illustration inserts and that the text included those figure numbers when referencing the different portrait candidates.

Russell delves into Catherine's life in the Dowager Duchess's household carefully, because this is the source of Catherine's eventual downfall. The lines between what Catherine thought was harmless dalliance and what constituted premarital sex or a contract of marriage will become very important in just a few years. Russell describes her relationships with Henry Manox and Francis Dereham carefully, attentive to Catherine's views of how far was too far and what commitments she had made to them. He also notes that a couple of the other girls tried to warn Catherine of the danger she was in: remember the name of Mary Lascelles . . .

The next household Catherine moves into is that serving Henry VIII's fourth wife, Anne of Cleves (and that household will soon become Catherine's household). Russell clears up some of the myth regarding Anne of Cleves, the so-called "Flander's Mare" and begins to hone in on the real problem with that marriage: Henry VIII. As Russell's portrayal of Henry continues, it's clear that this monarch was supremely selfish. He seems to have wanted all the perquisites of being the king without the responsibilities, especially if those responsibilities discomfited him. Russell notes that while Henry VIII was looking for a fourth wife, the royal households of Europe were offended by his need to evaluate their eligible women. Thomas Cromwell would suffer for his insistence that the king needed to marry in furtherance of national interests (and Henry's own status in Europe). As Russell tells the story, Anne of Cleves wasn't the ugly, awkward woman of Tudor mythology at all. Henry VIII wanted to marry for love, not policy. Cromwell, as Russell notes, forgot this one time to let Henry have his way.

And so he set in motion his divorce/annulment from Anne of Cleves, generously rewarding her for her cooperation, and then had Thomas Cromwell beheaded on the same day he married Catherine Howard, July 28, 1540. Russell then describes the household Catherine took over, how it served the queen, who was in her household and the different ranks and responsibilities, and how she behaved within that household. With the example of the Dowager Duchess's laxness in supervision, Catherine did not, Russell points out, fulfill her responsibilities to her ladies very well. Part of her duty was to help the unmarried ladies find good husbands and thus she needed to make sure their virtue was intact. The difficulty was that Catherine wasn't sure what that meant.

On the other hand, Russell makes it clear that Catherine excelled in all her public roles: she was attractive, graceful, careful to comport herself well. She visited Henry's three children: Edward, Mary, and Elizabeth. (Russell makes an uncharacteristic error on page 201 when he refers to Elizabeth as "the youngest, least loved, and most ignored of Henry's children." Obviously, Edward was the youngest child.) Catherine and Mary did not get along very well and Russell notes a characteristic of Catherine's: once she took umbrage, she would get her way.

Russell describes the Royal Progress to the North, when Henry VIII visited parts of his kingdom he had never seen before, as an effort to heal the divisions caused by the Pilgrimage of Grace. As Russell recounts Henry's negotiations with the Irish Parliament and with James V of Scotland in 1541, he notes again that Henry's counselors had a hard time getting the king to see statesmanship in distinction to his personal honor. At the same time as Henry was negotiating these matters, Queen Catherine and Jane Boleyn, Lady Rochford, were negotiating the hidden stairways and entrances of the palaces and castles the Court stayed in during the progress, so that Thomas Culpepper, one of Henry VIII's favorites, could be alone with Catherine.

Once John Lascelles, Mary Lascelles Hall's brother, tells the Archbishop of Canterbury about what Mary knows about the Queen, the pace of the narrative in this book picks up. The king has to be told that his wife might have had a precontract of marriage with another man, and then Henry wants to know everything. His officials begin interviewing Catherine, Dereham, Manox, Lady Rochford, other ladies at Court, the Dowager Duchess and other Howard family members. Thomas Howard, the Duke of Norfolk, separated himself--as Catherine had from him previously--from the matter immediately and he was not included in the round-up of Howards that would follow.

Catherine exhibited another great character flaw: she immediately started blaming others for what had happened. Initially, she admitted that she and Francis Dereham could have had an understanding or precontract. In that case, her marriage to Henry VIII would be annulled and she would have been sent off in disgrace and there would have been some repercussions to the family. Since there weren't any nunneries anymore, she probably would been held under house arrest fair away from Court. But then, she accused Francis Dereham of raping her before she came to Court and mentioned the name Thomas Culpepper. So then the interrogations of all the involved began again and those interrogations included the repeated torture of Dereham, Culpepper and another unfortunate man, Robert Damport. When confronted with reports of her adultery against the king with Thomas Culpepper, Catherine again blamed somebody else: Lady Rochford.

Russell tells this part of the story particularly well, noting again the web of relationship and opportunity as the government this time made information public about what had been discovered. The Privy Council was more open about these matters than it had been about the fall of Anne Boleyn or the last bloodletting of the Yorkists in the White Rose affair. This time, they made it known why the queen had to be executed and why the Howard family had to suffer for not disclosing her past.

In the last chapter, however, when Russell sums up Catherine's character, I cannot agree with him that "Her faults were obvious, but usually trivial." She was unfaithful and disloyal. Anachronistically speaking, she was too ready to "throw people under the bus". Those are not trivial faults and Russell does not finally acknowledge her selfishness as cogently as he identifies Henry VIII's (who never did anything for the good of his people!).

I have some quibbles with some of Russell's choices in earlier chapters. He tells about Thomas Wyatt's arrest and imprisonment in 1540, but never mentions that he was involved in the Anne Boleyn affair before in 1536. I also wondered why he never mentions the name of Anne Askew, the evangelical woman burned alive at the stake during Henry's reign when he brings her up twice. In Church tradition, St. Joachim is identified as the Blessed Virgin Mary's father, not St. Jerome (p. 189). Russell obviously is conversant with the standard Tudor bibliography and he steers a clear path through the sea of religious confusion during Henry VIII's reign. Very well-written with some really elegant turns of phrase ("Henry VIII was a man who had somehow gone rotten without ever being ripe." p. 134), this is a biographical study that will appeal to Tudor fans and would be of benefit to those wanting to know the story of Henry VIII's penultimate wife.

Since that frigid day in 1542 when Queen Katherine Howard ascended the scaffold to her death, the life of this tragic figure has been poked and prodded, twisted and stretched to fit into whatever narrative is in vogue. Was she naïve or just stupid? A tart or a victim? Desperate or arrogant? We may not ever know the truth of what happened between the queen and her husband's gentleman or her motivations for the relationship, but Gareth Russell's finely drawn portrait of this oft misunderstood woman seeks to tease out the answers and offers readers a tantalizing glimpse of the true Katherine; a complex human buried beneath a mountain of archetypes.

As someone who collects nearly every book on the subject of the Tudors in the name of research, I often find myself reading the same details in every tome and it becomes easy to wonder what can be rediscovered after so many historians have regurgitated the same facts over and over again. If you feel that way as well, then I must insist that you get your grubby paws on this book, post haste! Russell breathes new life into the Tudor world as we know it and I found myself eagerly devouring every delectable morsel, only becoming aware at the end of the page that I had just learned at least five new things without even realizing it.

Russell's take on Henry VIII's fifth queen is nothing short of brilliant. His observations of the machinations that led to her downfall are thoroughly considered and vetted through the most accurate resources and they are never colored through his own life experience as a man in the 21st century. His voice is omniscient and unprejudiced, as all historians' should be, yet it's clear that he intimately understands the way that Katherine's mind, as a woman of the 16th century, operates. Most impressively, Russell walks that fine line of academic and popular history with expert precision.

Young, Damned, and Fair is stunning and it will make the reader sit up and take notice of this exceptional historian. Gareth Russell is a fount of historical knowledge and I can't wait to see he gifts us with next.

Catherine Howard is one of history’s most tragic queens. She became Henry VIII’s fifth wife. She had an affair with the handsome Thomas Culpepper and died as a teenager on the scaffold. In this biography, Gareth Russell retells the story of the ill-fated queen. According to Mr. Russell, Catherine was doomed from the very beginning when she stayed in the Dowager Duchess of Norfolk’s household. Catherine was a young girl who was never meant to be a queen. She was unprepared for the role and had a dark past that haunted her. In the end, it was her childhood past that sent her to the executioner’s block.

There was not very much in the way of new information about Catherine Howard in this book. Most of it was well-known, especially her affairs with Henry Mannox, Francis Dereham, and Thomas Culpepper. However, I did like how Mr. Russell examined Catherine’s queenship. He claims that as a queen, Catherine was mostly practical. She took her duties as queen seriously and strove to be perfect. However, Catherine had a past that she tried to keep secret. No matter how much she tried to cover it up, it spiraled out of control and her past was revealed. She realized that the court was dangerous, for there were courtiers that wanted to destroy her.

Overall, this biography gave us a sympathetic and complex look at Catherine Howard. The story is mostly well-known. Most of the book was focused on Henry VIII and his courtiers rather than on Catherine. However, Young & Damned & Fair is compulsively readable. It reads like a soap opera or a Shakespearean tragedy. It has danger, scandal, and courtly intrigue. This biography is a must read for Tudor fans. Young & Damned & Fair sheds light on a young and naive queen that, because of her past, was never a suitable wife for a king and lost her life tragically early.
(Note: I read an ARC copy of this book in courtesy of Edelweiss.)

Absolutely loved this book. I've read dozens and dozens of books on the Tudor period and this one really brought the era to life. The writing was easy to understand, that is, not so 'scholarly' that it drowns you in minutiae. It's clear and brings you into the royal household. I highly recommend it to anyone who is interested in Henry VIII and his wives.

Anyone interested in Tudor history should definitely read this book. I highly recommend it. I have read a great many books regarding Henry VIII, his court, his six wives and many mistress, his siblings, his children, his nieces, his courtiers, everything and anyone associated with Henry and his court. Yet I learned from this book. It is very well written and annotated. This book is extremely interesting and thought provoking. I loved it.