LITMIR.BIZ

      For among all that is loved in a wench chastity and cleanness is loved most.

      – Bartholomew of England, De proprietatibus rerum (c.1240)

      Catherine never could make a clean break of things. Time and time again, she went back to pick at a wound, drawn irresistibly to the drama of the supposed farewell or the intimacy of an emotional conversation. Her tête-à-tête with Manox in the orchard only a few days after she broke off their relationship was the first recorded instance of a trait that left too many of her actions open to misinterpretation. As Manox nursed hopes of reconciliation, Catherine entered a more adult world. The dowager’s household began to spend more time at Norfolk House in her home parish of Lambeth, the Howards’ recently completed mansion on the opposite side of the river to Whitehall, the king’s largest and still-expanding palace. There, Catherine began to see more of the relatives who lived in the capital or at court – her elder half sister, Lady Isabella Baynton, visited the dowager, and their brother Henry had married and brought his new wife to live with him.

      Catherine conformed to general contemporary ideals of beauty, which praised women who had ‘moistness of complexion; and [are] tender, small, pliant and fair of disposition of body’.1 Contrary to the still-repeated tradition that she was ‘small, plump and vivacious’, the few surviving specifics about Catherine’s appearance describe her as short and slender.2 A former courtier subsequently described her as ‘flourishing in youth, with beauty fresh and pure’.3 She was comfortable with admiration and attention. Manox was not the only servant who was smitten; a young man called Roger Cotes was also enamoured.4 As she got older, Catherine was given servants of her own, including her roommate Joan Acworth, who became her secretary. How much correspondence Catherine actually had at this stage in her life is unknown, but it clearly was not enough to create a crushing workload for Joan.

      It was through her secretary-cum-companion that Catherine found Manox’s successor. Francis Dereham was good-looking, confident to the point of arrogance, and a rule breaker who possessed a blazing temper which Catherine initially chose to regard as thrilling proof of his affection for her. He was also a ‘ladies’ man’, who had already notched his bedpost with several fellow servants, including Joan Acworth.5 Their fling had since ended, and Joan cheerfully moved on, even singing his praises to Catherine, who began to show an interest in him in the spring of 1538 – at the very most within a few weeks of ending things with Manox.6

      By then, Francis had been in the dowager’s service for nearly two years.7 Distantly related to her, he was the son of a wealthy family in the Lincolnshire gentry where he learned the upper-class syntax and mannerisms necessary to pass as one of the club.8 The dowager was fond of Francis, and he eventually carried out secretarial work for her. When he first arrived at Chesworth House, he and his roommate Robert Damport were given tasks like buying livestock for the household, perhaps a boring pursuit but an important one considering that many aristocratic households spent nearly one-quarter of their expenditure on food.9 Dereham and Damport were sent to get animals ready for the annual cull on Martinmas, a religious festival that fell every year on 11 November. Not all the livestock were killed then, and it is not true that most meat served in winter was heavily salted or covered in spices to hide its decay; households generally fed the animals intended for table with hay throughout the colder months to keep the food as fresh as possible.10

      One of Francis’s closest friends in the household was his wingman Edward Waldegrave, who gamely chased the friends of Francis’s lovers and helped organise nighttime visits to the maidens’ chamber, arriving with wine, apples, strawberries, and other treats pinched from the kitchens. Talking, drinking, and flirting continued into the small hours, often to two or three o’clock in the morning, and if anyone from downstairs unexpectedly came to inspect, there was a small curtained gallery at the end of the maidens’ chamber where the men could hide until danger had passed. The idea to hide them in there was Catherine’s.11 She was not the only girl with a sweetheart – for instance, Francis’s friend Edward was courting one Mistress Baskerville. To make the numerous rendezvous easier, Catherine took the initiative and sneaked into her grandmother’s room one evening, stole the relevant key, had a copy made, and then ensured the door to the staircase that led to the maidens’ chamber was unlocked after the dowager went to bed.12

      Within a couple of months of seeing Dereham, the reluctance Catherine had expressed to Manox about losing her virginity had evaporated. She and Francis began lying on her bed during the clandestine parties; this progressed to kissing, foreplay, and then sex. There was not much privacy in the maidens’ chamber, but Catherine was ‘so far in love’ that it did not seem to deter her.13 One of the dowager’s maids, Margery, who later married another servant in the household called John Benet, spied on them and saw Francis removing Catherine’s clothes. Later, Francis told Margery that he knew enough about sex to make sure Catherine did not end up pregnant.

      In much the same way as life in university halls can erode a sense of propriety, years in the maidens’ chamber left the girls feeling extremely comfortable in one another’s presence. When the bed hangings were pulled shut, the noises the couple made left no doubt about what they were doing. Their lovemaking was so energetic that their friends took to teasing Francis about being ‘broken winded’ once it was over.14 The pair were drunk on one another, kissing

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