LITMIR.BIZ

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omnibus operibus eius?’ (‘And all his works?’) Likewise for the final question, ‘Et omnibus pompis eius?’ (‘And all his pomp?’) With oil on his fingers, the priest made the sign of the cross on Catherine’s chest and back, before asking the godparents, ‘Quid petis?’ They answered that they sought ‘Baptismum’. To clarify that they wished to see her admitted to the eternal Church, the priest pressed, in ecclesiastical Latin, ‘Vis baptizari?’ (‘Do you wish to be baptised?’) And they answered, simply, ‘Volo.’ (‘I do.’) The priest then shifted Catherine in his arms so that her head faced the east, and he intoned the words, ‘Et ego baptizo te in nomine patris’ just before he fully submerged her in the holy water. (‘And I baptise you in the name of the Father.’) Then he plucked the infant from the font, turned to face the south, immersed her again in the name of the Son and then, this time upside down, in the name of the Holy Spirit. Finally, the priest passed what was quite probably a crying baby into the arms of her most senior godparent, who held Catherine as she was bundled into a chrisom, a hooded robe that covered her forehead and body to preserve the signs of her baptism.

      Her godparents held a candle in Catherine’s little hands as the priest prayed, ‘Receive a burning and inextinguishable light. Guard your baptism. Observe the charge, so that when the Lord comes to the wedding, you may be able to meet him with the saints in the hall of heaven.’21 That duty was stressed to the godparents, who were also enjoined to make sure she knew her Our Father, Hail Mary, and Apostles’ Creed. Catherine was taken home in the borrowed chrisom; her mother would return the garment when she was ready to rejoin society.

      Within a year or so of her birth, Catherine’s father joined most of the other Howards at Framlingham Castle in Suffolk for his father’s funeral. In May 1524, there was little outward sign that they all stood on the precipice of an unfamiliar world. The Reformation, the real undertaker of the Middle Ages, was not quite seven years old, and its influence had yet to be significantly felt by the majority of Tudor subjects. There was no deviation from the centuries-old Catholic liturgy as the Howards gathered to bury their patriarch, and saviour, Thomas Howard, 2nd Duke of Norfolk, dead at the age of eighty in the county of his birth.22

Unlike a christening, most aristocratic farewells in the sixteenth century were neither an intimate affair nor a single ceremony. The late duke had nine surviving children by the time he died in May 1524, several of whom had children of their own, giving Catherine kinship to most of the great landed families.23 Catherine’s aunt Elizabeth was married to Sir Thomas Boleyn, head of one of the wealthiest families in Kent and currently in pursuit of his right to succeed his Irish grandfather as Earl of Ormond.24 Anne Howard was already a countess through her marriage to the head of the de Vere family. In the months preceding the duke’s death, Edmund’s unmarried sisters were affianced, and the fractious negotiations concerning their dowries and widows’ rights were tidied up. The second youngest, also confusingly christened Elizabeth,* was betrothed to the heir of Lord Fitzwalter, another prominent East Anglian landowner.25 Katherine, the youngest and fieriest of the late duke’s daughters, was accompanied to the funeral by her handsome if equally temperamental fiancé Rhys, scion of a successful political family in south Wales – Rhys had an ailing grandfather who was not expected to live much longer.26 In Wales, the young man was known as Rhys ap Gruffydd, but the English often preferred to anglicise the couple’s surname to ‘Griffiths’.27 The only Howard sister left unattached at the time of their father’s funeral was Lady Dorothy, but her father had ‘left for her Right, good substance to marry her with’, and the family eventually arranged a wedding with the Earl of Derby.28

      That will left Edmund’s stepmother Agnes as one of the wealthiest independent women in England. As dowager duchess, she would no longer have access to Framlingham Castle as her home, but she had periodic use of Norfolk House in Lambeth and full-time access to a sizeable country estate near the village of Horsham in Sussex. With the exception the eldest son, none of the old duke’s surviving children, including Edmund, expected much of a windfall from their father’s final testament. While provisions were usually made to fund younger sons’ education or early careers, to prevent the destruction of the family’s patrimony by generations of division by bequests, the nobility endeavoured to pass the inheritance more or less intact to the next in line.29 The other siblings’ absence from the will was not therefore a matter for shock or confusion; younger sons could and often did parlay their family name and connections into successful careers of their own. One of the most remarkable aspects of the system was the extent to which even those left out of the posthumous treasure trove seemed to support it as necessary for the common good.

      However, two of the Howard siblings had reason to rue the custom that dictated an undiluted inheritance for the new patriarch: Edmund and Anne, both of whom had come to rely on their father’s help.30 Anne was trapped in a miserable marriage to the twenty-five-year-old Earl of Oxford, who, two years earlier, had been sent to live in his father-in-law’s household like an errant child when the royal court decided that his immoderate drinking, dereliction of duty, and reckless spending were besmirching one of the oldest names in the country.31 With the duke dead, the chances of the adult earl being allowed to return to his hedonism were much improved, and Anne, like most wives, remained dependent on her husband’s generosity.32 For Edmund, his father’s death robbed him of his principal benefactor and patron, adding to the financial worries afflicting him at the time of Catherine’s birth.

      In addition to a very large family, their surnames reading like a who’s who of Henry VIII’s England, the Duke of Norfolk’s funeral was also attended by thousands of others, including ‘many great Lords, and the Noble men of both Shires of Norfolk and Suffolk’, who arrived at Framlingham to pay their respects to the old duke and solidify ties to the new.33 The kaleidoscope of different servants’ liveries danced through the other guests, the priests, monks, guards, squires, and common people who gathered in the shade of the castle’s walls or lined the route to the Benedictine priory at Thetford, where the duke’s tomb had been prepared.

      When Framlingham’s gates, crowned by the Howard coat of arms, swung open, the long cavalcade of choreographed grief snaked its way under the arch and down the hill, passing two artificial lakes, with a dovecote on the manmade island in the middle of the largest body of water. Combined, Framlingham’s two lakes, which were constructed after the damming of a nearby stream, covered nearly twenty-three acres, a perfect reflecting pool for the castle’s thirteen towers, slightly lowered on the Howards’ order to further emphasise the impressive size of the walls. Fashionable red brick extensions, remodelled gardens, new chambers, and the latest in Renaissance design had also been added at the family’s instructions.

      As was customary for the aristocratic elite, a wax effigy topped the duke’s bier, rendered as lifelike as possible by the artisans entrusted with the task. One hundred smaller wax effigies had been placed beneath it, representing those who mourned, while space for 700 candles had been set aside, so that even when it travelled at twilight or rested at night, the Duke of Norfolk, and through him the House of Howard, could be illuminated for those hoping to catch a glimpse. Four hundred men, hooded as a sign of mourning and penitence, were assigned to carry torches. Ten thousand people received charitable bequests under the terms of the duke’s will, with the money paid out at the time of the funeral in the hope of encouraging prayers for his posthumous redemption, as well as to display the largesse that the aristocracy prided themselves on. In total, the funeral cost nearly £1,300, at a time when the average weekly income of a skilled worker was about twenty-six

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