DEATH OF KATHERINE HOWARD AND JANE BOLEYN | Six wives documentary | Tudor history | History Calling

hi everyone and welcome or welcome back to history calling where i bring you new videos every friday looking at the events of the past today we're traveling back to february 1542 to look at the death of catherine howard and jane berlin vicontes rochford catherine was of course the fifth wife of henry viii while gian of whom there is no surviving image i'm afraid had been her lady in waiting liddy rochford was also the widow of catherine's cousin george berlin and therefore the sister-in-law of ambulin a number of myths have grown up around what happened on the day of this double execution at the tar of london and especially regarding catherine and jean's last words but in this video we'll go back to the original sources to put the record straight and tell you how these women met their tragic ends before we get started a quick reminder to please like and comment on this video and subscribe to the channel with notifications switched on you can also find me over on instagram where my username is history calling and i'll leave a link for that in the description box if you like the tutors this video is part of a wider series on the six wives of henry viii which i'm continuing to add to i also have another playlist on the tudor monarchs again they're both linked below [Music] [Music] catherine howard had initially come to court as a lydian wedding to henry's fourth wife anne of cleves who married the king on the 6th of january 1540. she soon caught the monarch's eye and in july of that year he unceremoniously dumped anne and annulled their marriage claiming amongst other things that he found her too physically repulsive to sleep with i'll leave a video on anne's life which covers this event in more detail linked on screen and in the description box he then married catherine who may have been as little as 15 years old at the time and who wasn't more than 22. all was well until the autumn of 1541 when the young queen was accused of unchaste premarital behavior with two men named henry mannix and francis darum and of adultery against the king with her distant relative thomas culpepper gian berlin was accused of helping to facilitate meetings between catherine and culpepper henry abandoned his wife on the 6th of november and after she and her co-accused were interrogated and details of her relationships with these men were uncovered she was removed to sion abbey on the 14th and degraded from the position of queen on the 22nd jane berlin was sent to the tar catherine never admitted to adultery or to being pre-contracted to anyone else before she married the king nor did her meal co-accused nevertheless culpepper and darum were executed on the 10th of december and though catherine and jane had no trial they were condemned for high treason by bill of atanda on the 11th of february 1542 the day before her official condemnation catherine had been removed from sayonabi and brought to the tower of london the imperial ambassador used to shop we described the event saying the queen after some difficulty and resistance was conducted to the tower by the river the lord privy seal with a number of privy councillors and a large retinue of servants went first in a large ward barge then came a small covered boat with the queen and four lilies of her suite besides four sailors to man the boat then followed the duke of suffolk in a big and well-manned barge with plenty of armed men inside on their arrival at the taurus stairs the lord privy seal and the duke of suffolk landed first then the queen herself dressed in black velvet with the same honors and ceremonies as if she were still raining catherine likely passed beneath culpepper and durham's rotting and impealed heads as she sealed beneath london bridge and once she was ensconced in the tower she was in a desperate state according to the french ambassador charles de marillac he said on the 11th of february that as she weeps cries and torments herself miserably without ceasing it meaning the execution is deferred for three or four days to give her leisure to recover david starkey doubts this assessment of catherine's state of mind however and in fact the delay was shorter for catherine was told on the 12th that she would die the next morning her reaction was unusual and suggests that by now at least she may well have been calmer and more resigned to her feet than de marlock had thought according to chapwi in the same evening she asked to see the block pretending that she wanted to know how she was to place her head on it this was granted and the block being brought in she herself tried and placed her head on it by way of experiment both de marillac and chronicler edward hall confirmed that catherine and jean did indeed go on to be beheaded with an axe and it and the block will likely have been very much like the 18th century examples you see here this was different from anne boleyn's famous execution by a french swordsman but as de marillac noted it was the manner of the country meaning it was the more usual if less merciful way that beheadings were carried out in england as for jane berlin under the strain of repeated interrogations she had apparently suffered a complete nervous breakdown soon after she had been placed in the tar in november and had therefore been removed to the home of sir john russell soon afterwards she was brought back to the tower on the 9th of february however and a new law passed two days later which allowed for the execution of the insane whether this illness was real or fiend we don't know though changing the law so that she could be killed indicates that she certainly convinced onlookers that she really was mentally unstable chapwi recorded that she had shown symptoms of madness until the very moment when they announced to her that she must die suggesting that she did quieten at that point and regained some of her composure in her final hours the day of the executions now dawned if you saw my video last week on anne boleyn's death and how it's been portrayed on screen you'll know that we have many contemporary accounts of how she died in the case of catherine and jean however it's interesting that there are nowhere near as many and so we have far fewer details of what happened i can't tell you why this is but perhaps it was simply that the execution of a queen was no longer the unique spectacle that it had been in 1536 there were also some fictitious accounts which have wormed their way into the popular consciousness and which we'll come to in due course the women were killed between seven and nine o'clock in the morning different sources give different times and chapway wrote that the witnesses included all the privy counselors save the duke of suffolk who was indisposed and he of norfolk also present were various lords and gentlemen such as the earl of surrey son of the duke of norfolk and cousin of the queen catherine and jane scaffold was erected on the same spot anse had been on the green in between the white tar and the entrance to the modern day jewel house as indicated here the only surviving eyewitness account as to what happened next was written by a man named ottwell johnson in a letter to his brother john two days later it reads for news from hence know ye that even according to my writing on sunday last i see the queen and the lily rochford suffer within the tar the day following whose souls i doubt not be with god for they made the most godly and christians end that ever was her tell of i think since the world's creation uttering their lively faith in the blood of christ only and with goodly words and steadfast countenances they desired all christian people to take regard unto their worthy and just punishment with death for their offences and against god heinously from their youth upward in breaking all his commandments and also against the king's royal majesty very dangerously wherefore they being justly condemned as they said by the laws of the realm and parliament to die require the people i say to take example at them for amendment of their ungodly lies and gladly to obey the king in all things for his preservation they did heartily pray and willed all people so to do commanding their souls to god and earnestly calling for mercy upon him whom i beseech to give us grace and such faith hope and charity at our departing out of this miserable world to come to the fruition of his godhead enjoy everlasting amen this letter tells us that both women were calm and composed enough to make standard execution speeches in which they confirmed their faith said that they deserved to die and prayed for henry's health otwell johnson has blended their words together though so that we can't tell who said what other sources suggest that his account is accurate however while also allowing us to surmise that most of the words he noted may be attributed to jin and providing us with a little more insight into the women's demeanor than he offered edward hall's chronicle says only that they confessed their offences and died repentant eustace champuy wrote that neither the queen nor madame de rochefort spoke much on the scaffold all they did was to confess their guilt and pray for the king's welfare and prosperity ambassador to marillac claimed that the queen was so weak that she could hardly speak but confessed in a few words that she had merited a hundred deaths for so offending the king who had so graciously treated her the lady of rochford said as much in a long discourse of several faults which she had committed in her life it's interesting that unlike shepwie de marillac considered jian's speech long but perhaps this was just in comparison to catherine's and in any case what seems long to one person may seem brief to another and neither ambassador was an eyewitness to the women's deaths according to catherine's biographer josephine wilkinson antigens julia fox having made her speech the former queen who was executed first paid the executioner then had her hood gloves and mantle removed by the ladies who accompanied her to the scaffold her hair was covered by a cap a blindfold was tied around her eyes and she placed her head on the block it was removed with a single blow by an unnamed executioner this all sounds reasonable enough but i have to say that other than the detail that catherine was executed first which ship we confirms i'm unaware what the primary source is for the rest of this information if anyone listening knows the answer to this please drop me a line in the comment section euste chapwee writes that after her body had been covered with a black cloak the ladies of her suite took it up and put it on one side we don't know the names of these women but they may have been the same four who accompanied catherine to the tar three days earlier the scaffold was apparently now washed down and scattered with fresh straw again i'd love to know what the primary source is for that information and lady rochford was brought out to meet the same fate now let's consider the more fanciful accounts of the executions and in particular of the speeches for catherine we have an anonymous account written in spanish and often known simply as the spanish chronicle this was translated and published by martin hume in 1889 and its full title is actually the chronicle of king henry viii of england it claims that after mounting the scaffold catherine said brothers by the journey upon which i am bind i have not wronged the king but it is true that long before the king took me i loved culpepper and i wish to god i had done as he wished me for at the time the king wanted to take me he urged me to say that i was pledged to him if i had done as he advised me i should not die this death nor would he i would rather have him for a husband than be mistress of the world but sin blinded me and greed of grandeur and since mine is the fault mine also is the suffering and my great sorrow is that culpepper should have to die through me the spanish chronicle goes on to claim that then she turned to the headsman and said pray hasten with thy office and he knelt before her and asked her pardon and she said i die a queen but i would rather die the wife of culpepper god have mercy on my soul good people i beg you pray for me and then falling on her knees she said certain prayers and the headsman performed his office striking off her head when she was not expecting it gang this may make for good tv but i'm afraid in reality it's pretty much all tripe the spanish chronicle is notorious for its inaccuracies and this is no exception it has culprits still alive at this point and executed the day after katherine even though as we've seen he'd actually been dead since december and it also misrepresents catherine's relationship with him there was never any talk of marriage between the pair before her union with henry and it has her declared that she was still a queen when in fact she'd lost that title back in november and was at the time of her death officially known as lily catherine howard the chronicle also seems to be borrowing elements of its account of anne boleyn's execution here that account is likewise a very dubious reliability by the way again see last week's video for more information it insinuates that she died kneeling upright for instance as anne had done rather than prostrate on the block and that she was somehow distracted so that she didn't expect the blue i hope i've demonstrated to you with the contemporary accounts that this isn't what happened the speech is by far the worst deviation from historical accuracy however there's no way catherine said anything like this it would have caused a scandal had she made all these references to culpepper and would absolutely have appeared in other accounts of the execution nor does this defiance tally with the accounts of her speaking very briefly and weakly other sources as we have seen also say that she explicitly acknowledged that she had wronged henry rather than denying it as she does here all in all i think we can safely disregard this as a reputable source for the 1542 executions we can also disregard the more lurid account of how jae and berlin met her end if you google her scaffold speech you'll find all over the internet people asserting that once upon the scaffold she said god has permitted me to suffer this shameful doom as punishment for having contributed to my husband's death i falsely accused him of loving in an incestuous manner his sister queen anne berlin for this i deserve to die but i am guilty of no other crime again a great story worthy of a tv show or a movie but with little connection to the truth though we know that jane mentioned several faults which she had committed in her life had she declared that she'd lied about george and anne insinuating that the king had had them unjustly killed which he had of course but no one openly said that at the time this story would have been the talk of london and indeed europe in fact this fabricated speech comes from the much later work of an italian man named gregorio letty who wrote it in his book the history or true life of elizabeth queen of england which was published in amsterdam in 1693 as you can see by this cover page there's no suggestion that he had some source available to him that no one else had ever seen or written about and again i'm very comfortable jettisoning this so-called account of the execution speech now that we've dealt with these fictionalized accounts of catherine and jane's final movements let's return to more reliable sources to finish the story with both women dead their bodies were removed to the nearby chapel of saint peter advincula and buried beneath the floor near anne and george berlin when the chapel was excavated during the victorian period no bones thought to belong to catherine were found and it was assumed by the excavators that her youth combined with the use of lime in her burial had caused her remains to completely disintegrate by that point the remains of gian berlin were thought to have been found with those of margaret countess of salisbury another of henry's female relations who he had executed on trumped-up charges many of their bones were missing but those believed to be genes were described as being of rather delicate proportions catherine's story and to only a slightly lesser extent jeans were just the latest additions to the many tragedies the tudor era brought to the extended royal family and they wouldn't be the last people interred in the taurus chapel henry wasn't much given to looking back though and he went on to marry catherine parr the following year dying himself in 1547. as with her cousin anne boleyn he did an excellent job of obliterating catherine howard's image from history so that we have no confirmed paintings or drawings of her however if you'd like to watch my video entitled what katherine howard looked like it will take you through all the supposed portraits of her and reveal which one i think is most likely to be her and why before you go though let me know in the comment section if i've changed your view in any way of how katherine and jean's executions played out and until next time keep learning

Channel: History Calling

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Keywords: death of KATHERINE HOWARD and JANE BOLEYN, death of Catherine Howard and Jane Boleyn, Six wives documentary, Tudor history, History Calling, the execution of Katherine Howard, the execution of Catherine Howard, the execution of Jane Boleyn, Katherine Howard’s final words, Jane Boleyn’s final words, the death of Queen Katherine Howard, the death of Queen Catherine Howard, execution of a Queen, Katherine Howard, Catherine Howard, the death of Jane Boleyn, Jane Boleyn, Tudors

Id: LaiU2HHTuKQ

Length: 17min 25sec (1045 seconds)

Published: Fri Jul 09 2021