Page:Cassell's Illustrated History of England vol 2.djvu/272

258 The early life of Catherine Howard had been exposed to the worst and most malevolent influences. She was the daughter of Lord Edmund Howard, the brother of the present Duke of Norfolk, and son of the Conqueror of Flodden. At that battle, though but a young man, Lord Edmund won great distinction, but afterwards fell into pecuniary difficulties and neglect till Anne Boleyn, his niece, became queen, when he was appointed comptroller of Calais and the surrounding marches. Meantime, his wife, the mother of Catherine, was dead, and he had married again. Catherine at a very early age, therefore, was received into the house of her grandmother, Agnes, Dowager Duchess of Norfolk, widow of the hero of Flodden.

In the house of this old lady she was not only compelled to associate with the waiting-women, but to occupy the same common sleeping apartment. In this improper company she was subjected to the most corrupting influences, and had been led, when she had scarcely entered her teens, into degrading engagements with a musician belonging to the household, of the name of Henry Manx; and afterwards with a relative, of the name of Francis Derham. Of these amours there were plenty of witnesses among the women of the household, especially Mary Lassells, and three women of the names of Wilks, Baskerville, and Bulmer; and as soon as Catherine was raised to the throne, these creatures, knowing their power, did not fail to beset her with applications for favours and appointments, Catherine was compelled to concede their demands, and place them about her own person. Joan Bulmer and Catherine Tylney, who were familiar with these secrets, were received as bed-chamber women; the profligate Manx was made one of the royal musicians; and in the journey to York, Derham, who had disappeared some time, and was believed to be leading the life of a pirate, presented himself, and was admitted to the dangerous post of her private secretary. Her cousin, Thomas Culpepper, with whom she had spent a good deal of her girlhood, was already a gentleman of the privy-chamber of Henry VIII.

Surrounded by these acquaintances of a time which she would not fain forget, the queen must have suffered many fears and anxieties, even in her most proud days of elevation and of her husband's favour. Any moment the keen