How did Catherine Howard die, and what really happened to Thomas Culpepper and Francis Dereham? The Tudors Season 4 Episode 5 dramatizes the investigation, torture, and executions surrounding Henry VIII’s fifth wife, but the real Tudor history behind Catherine Howard’s downfall is even more complex and unsettling.

In This Post:

• How Was Catherine Howard Investigated?
• What Happened During Catherine Howard’s Interrogation?
• Did Thomas Culpeper Confess to Adultery?
• What Happened to Jane Boleyn, Lady Rochford?
• It’s Never Henry VIII’s Fault
• What Happened to Thomas Culpeper and Francis Dereham?
• Why Was Thomas Culpeper Spared a Worse Death?
• Did Catherine Howard Refuse Confession?
• How Did Catherine Howard Die?
• Minor Historical Inaccuracies

Episode 5: The Bottom of the Pot

How Was Catherine Howard Investigated?

The episode opens with Henry demanding that the letter denouncing his wife’s sexual escapades be investigated. Catherine Howard and Jane Boleyn / Lady Rochford are confined to her chambers without her ladies, and Francis Dereham is arrested. It’s a big deal, but historically, it was “discreet.” Henry insisted the letter contained lies, but wanted to know the truth in early November 1541. Francis was taken into custody under the false claim that he had been involved in piracy while serving in Ireland.

While her ladies are rounded up and interrogated on the show, in “actual history,” John and Mary Lascelles (mentioned in the last episode’s recap) and Henry Manox were the first people questioned. Henry VIII wanted to know if their claims were true and if they insisted on them, even after earning his disfavor. John Lascelles said it was true, and his sister, who shared a room with Catherine Howard as a young woman, was very aware of her dalliances. The king’s men then visited her at her home in Sussex and privately held an audience, in which she confirmed everything she had told her brother. Then they tracked down Henry Manox and asked him about it.

Manox confessed to having pressured Catherine to sleep with him and her allowing him to “do things to her” if he would stop asking for sex. Because he never actually slept with her, I guess Henry didn’t care enough to arrest him with the others. Or maybe it was because he was nowhere near court and couldn’t be accused of having an affair with her. Manox did not want to get caught up in anything, so he told them everything they wanted to know; every person who knew about Catherine and him, about the love tokens they shared, about Francis Dereham, etc. He built their case against Catherine Howard, while insisting he did nothing wrong and got away with it. (Not that he deserved to die, but… he was a grown man, a music teacher pressuring his barely teenage student into intimate situations. So, ew.)

They speed up the timeline a little. Francis is confronted quickly, when it took a few weeks to get the corroborating evidence together and arrest him. The series also mixes up her gift to Culpeper (a gold chain and a hat) with what she gave Dereham (silk flowers, a viola, and clothes). The King’s Council knew about her earlier affair when Henry did, but they kept things quiet to protect his reputation. There is no mention of the Dowager Duchess, under whose roof all this happened. She turned over everything she knew about Catherine and Dereham, assuming her marriage would be annulled, not that Catherine would “die” for not being a virgin when she married the king.

Catherine never broke free from the guards and ran screaming after Henry. Makes for good drama, though, so I approve.

What Happened During Catherine Howard’s Interrogation?

Historically, Archbishop Cranmer interrogated Catherine Howard, but since he hasn’t been seen for two seasons, despite remaining at court until his execution during the reign of Mary I, the Reformist-hating Bishop Gardiner takes his place.

They condense all of her questioning into one scene, when these interrogations happened over the course of a couple of weeks. Catherine at first denied everything to Cranmer, Norfolk, Suffolk, and Bishop Gardiner. The archbishop thought perhaps having to speak in front of her companions made her feel humiliated, so he visited her privately several times after that. Instead of answering him, Catherine fell apart and told him nothing until he assured her that the king would offer her mercy if she told the truth. Then she admitted to everything with Manox and Dereham, and Cranmer helped her to write a confession.

No one suspected her emotional affair with Thomas Culpeper, so mostly what Cranmer was hoping to do was find evidence of a pre-contract between Dereham and Catherine, which would be grounds for Henry to annul the marriage. In those days, a pre-contract, or an agreement that these two would marry, was legally binding. Some couples treated it as a license to sleep with each other, which ratified it in the Church’s eyes and would hasten on the marriage. If Catherine and Dereham made promises to each other and slept together, Henry could get rid of his new wife by being “gracious” and saying he never intended to take another man’s common-law wife. He could banish her and Dereham off to the country and start afresh, this time with a wife of ‘purity’ who might get pregnant with no whiff of scandal about her.

But Catherine was adamant that there had been no pre-contract. Maybe she did not want to give up being queen and thought if she doubled down, Henry would blame Dereham and not herself. Maybe she was dumb. Maybe she thought if she claimed Dereham had forced himself on her, Henry would be lenient. In The Tudors, she changes her mind about this and starts crying rape right after outlining everything they did together; but historically, she made up that story a few days later. Did she come up with it herself, or did someone coach her? We will never know.

Did Thomas Culpeper Confess to Adultery?

Good old Tudor times believed in torturing people into confessing, and Dereham said under torture that he had not slept with the queen after her marriage, because Thomas Culpeper was having an affair with her instead. All of her ladies were interrogated. Catherine’s uncle, the Duke of Norfolk, turned on her as fast as he had his other niece, Anne Boleyn, and started calling her a wanton slut with many lovers. Nice guy.

Our favorite dude we love to hate, Richie Rich, the same guy who threw Sir Thomas More under the proverbial carriage wheels, turns up to interrogate poor Catherine, who in history faced a whole panel of men. If you believe, as I do, that Catherine never had sex with Culpepper after being married to Henry, her confession that they met a few times in secret and exchanged gifts was probably all that ever happened between them. The problem was, her insisting that Lady Rochford put them up to the secret meetings and encouraged them to talk to each other did not line up with everyone’s observances of her behavior over the last six months (being eager to see him, sneaking around, and sending him notes).

Culpeper damned them both by admitting that they wanted to sleep together, and would have done it eventually… which is bad enough, but not an executing offense. But at this time in history, wanting to do something was the same as doing it in the law’s eyes. An offense against the king. Adultery! Off with her head!

What Happened to Jane Boleyn, Lady Rochford?

Catherine Howard and Thomas Culpeper denied ever having had sex. Jane Boleyn, Lady Rochford, said she never saw them having sex, but she believed it may have happened based on “all I saw and heard.”

The Tudors has always made Jane out to be… complicated. She marries George, a bisexual who rapes her on their wedding night, and then hates him enough to be gleeful about his downfall and to implicate him in incest. Never happened. She then plots and involves Catherine with Culpeper out of a weird power trip, with the series’ ultimate message being that she deserves her execution. This has been a “thing” several times on the show, by painting people who eventually get offed by the king as someone who deserved it for being a lying, scheming, manipulative jerk.

There is no proof Jane brought down the Boleyns, except Thomas Wyatt accused her of it in a letter (he called her a wicked wife, an “accuser of her own husband”). If that were true, why did Jane write to George in prison and try to help him? I think Jane has been unfairly treated by history. She was young when Catherine of Aragon was overthrown, became friends with Anne Boleyn until a quarrel separated them, saw her husband and many others at court be executed, and got embroiled in Catherine Howard’s dalliance with Culpeper, only to wind up insane and… dead.

How insane, one wonders? Well. She’d seen many people die. She knew her actions had been treason, and Henry knew about it. Jane had to know there was zero chance of not having her head cut off, and it’s not surprising she would become hysterical. The king had her nursed back to health because he wanted her “sane enough” to spill her blood all over a chopping block.

It’s Never Henry VIII’s Fault

In the show, Henry hears about the affair from his counsel and is shocked and infuriated that one of his closest personal servants would do such a thing. Then he blames everyone present for throwing Catherine Howard at him (you picked her, good sir), screams that she’s going to suffer at the hands of his torturers and storms out. Which… is kind of how it went. The real Henry shouted that he wanted a sword with which to kill her and to bring his horses. He said she should have “torture in her death,” although it’s unclear whether he meant she would be tortured (doubtful) or that she would suffer after death / in Purgatory for mistreating him (more likely). Then he cried and said he had nothing but bad luck in meeting so many “ill-conditioned wives.”

You know, Henry. If everyone you meet is the problem, the problem may be you. Just saying.

What Happened to Thomas Culpeper and Francis Dereham?

Dereham and Culpeper went on trial in December, and both insisted they were innocent. The court found them guilty, so they changed their plea. In the middle ages, the law was infallible. An innocent man could not die, because that would be unjust and implied the law was unfair; so if you were condemned, you had to be guilty. But all both men confessed to were their physical relationships with the queen prior to marriage (Dereham) and their intent to commit adultery with the queen (Culpeper).

Henry had no legal case against Dereham, since premarital sex was not a crime. He had a feeble one against Culpeper, because in envisioning their future together, they imagined a world in which the king was dead (treason!). So, Henry had one of Francis’s friends tortured, who then claimed Francis had also thought about the king’s death and how that might allow him to get back with Catherine. Lies? This was enough to get them both executed for treason—by hanging, drawing, and quartering. (It’s as bad as it sounds. A man is hung enough to cause him pain but not kill him, then laid out on a table and has his innards removed and burned while he’s still alive, then after he’s dead, he is cut into pieces.)

Being Hung, Drawn, and Quartered was to deter people from conspiring against the king; they knew if they failed, their death would be the worst possible way to die, extremely painful and humiliating, with their hands, feet, and body parts nailed up over gate entrances all over the country to remind others not to commit treason.

Why Was Thomas Culpeper Spared a Worse Death?

Both men were to die this way, but Henry commuted Culpeper’s execution to beheading. Henry was a notorious hard-ass. He sent Thomas More and Thomas Cromwell, two of his closest friends and advisors, to their deaths. He tortured Catherine of Aragon by removing all her friends and shifting her to increasingly horrible places to live, hoping she would get ill and die. He threatened his daughters’ lives. Even though Jane Boneyn went nuts, he wanted her cured so he could chop off her head. He was an all-around psychotic asshole most of the time.

Why, if he thought Culpeper had been sleeping with his wife, would he NOT want him hanged, drawn, and quartered? I think he knew nothing physical happened between them, so he decided his ‘friend’ need not suffer as much as Dereham, who had slept with the queen (before Henry knew her; the arrogant arse!).

Both men are offed in front of a cheering crowd. Which… yeah. This sort of thing really happened, with public executions being part of public “entertainment” in the middle ages. People brought food, parked their kids in the front row, and vendors would sell things (relics, bread, scraps, pieces of the prisoners’ clothing). Which just goes to show you that things hadn’t really changed in 1500 years since Ancient Rome. Human beings love to see someone else suffer and die.

Did Catherine Howard Refuse Confession?

The show takes a few liberties in Catherine Howard refusing to give confession to a priest, because “I have so seldom spoken to God, I am afraid He would not know who I am.” In reality, the future Bishop of Winchester took her confession, and she denied having committed adultery. Since lying to your confessor was considered a mortal sin, I believe her. She would not have wanted to die and face additional time in Purgatory just to deny the truth.

Catherine did want to practice with the block the night before her execution, though I doubt she did it naked. Showtime had to get in one more nude scene.

How Did Catherine Howard Die?

Catherine Howard died on the same spot as Anne Boleyn, but they changed a few details for the show. In this episode, Jane dies first while Catherine watches from a few feet away, and she has a terrified reaction to it. Historical Catherine went first, while Jane Boleyn awaited her turn in the Tower. They did not see one another die, and the blood would have been mopped up in-between them with hay. Catherine Howard did not urinate herself from fear.

Both of them gave fairly conventional speeches (I am sorry for having offended the king, I commend my soul to God, etc.). But I do like Catherine’s last moments; she brought me to tears with her sweetness and her rapturous claim that “Life is… beautiful,” since she knows she is going to die.

And that brings me to her portrayal. It’s pretty par-the-course for the old, outdated and unfeminist view of Catherine Howard as a slut. Which more recent historians are challenging. Lucy Worsley did the world a service when in her six wives biography, she reminded audiences that Catherine was a “sexually abused child.” Catherine was groomed and preyed on by her music teacher, then taken advantage of by a household secretary. She went to court, where she was preyed upon by a disgusting king, and fell in love with a handsome young man as her way of escape. And then she paid for it with her life, so Henry could “get on with things.”

Yet, despite this Catherine being an adulterer, there’s something likable about her. She is desperate for love and affection and, despite her crimes, harbors no ill will toward anyone. It gives her a defiant final line that was rumored but probably not true (“I would rather die the wife of Culpeper”), but I really respect the dignity and sorrow given to her last moments, as she looks up at a crescent moon in the sky, smiles, says being alive is beautiful, and lays her head down on a bloody block. She will be missed.

Catherine Howard’s story remains one of the most tragic in Tudor history, caught between power, manipulation, and a system that punished even suspicion as treason.

Minor Historical Inaccuracies:

• Anne Stanhope-Seymour says the child she is carrying belongs to her husband’s brother, Thomas. He never had an affair with her.

Curious what personality types feature in The Tudors? Check out my analysis here!

This article is part of my Historical Accuracy in Historical TV Shows & Movies series, where I break down the real history behind popular historical dramas.

About the Author: Charity Bishop writes historical fiction, historical fantasy, and suspense novels that explores the darkness in human hearts, and the light that refuses to be extinguished. Discover her books.