Katherine Howard

Katherine Howard was the fifth wife of Henry VIII.

When Henry disposed of Anne of Cleves, he was mature in age and he already had a legitimate male heir, as well as his two daughters, Mary and Elizabeth. So, although he did want to marry again and hopefully have another male heir, he was still in a position where his eye could be caught by a pretty girl.

The unfortunate pretty girl in question was Katherine.

Katherine was only a teenager when Henry married her; he was thirty years her senior, old enough to be her grandfather.

Henry quickly tired of her, perhaps because it is rarely a good idea for a teenager to marry a much older man. When evidence was produced that Katherine was not only unfaithful to him, but had not been a virgin when they married, he was horrified and sought to be rid of her.

The fact that Henry had never been faithful to any of his many wives and hadn't been a virgin when he and Katherine got married of course didn't enter his vicious little head.

Henry had a law passed which made it a crime for a queen not to fully disclose her sexual history to her husband. Katherine was executed by beheading. The poor girl was barely twenty at the time. Eyewitnesses reported that she died bravely. The men she had affairs with were executed too.

Folklore says that Katherine's ghost haunts Hampton Court Palace. I don't know if that is true, but certainly the glory of the Tudor era is tarnished by the cruel and self-serving murder of an unwise young girl by a man who by the time he knew her was more a murderer than a king.

Read more about Katherine, or read about the sixth wife, Katherine Parr.