Catherine Howard

Catherine was a granddaughter of Thomas Howard, 2nd Duke of Norfolk, and his first wife, Elizabeth Tilney, but her father, Lord Edmund Howard, was the third son of the Duke, and under primogeniture, the eldest son inherited their father’s estate. On her paternal side, Catherine was the niece of Thomas Howard, 3rd Duke of Norfolk,[1][2] and first cousin of poet and soldier Lord Henry Howard, styled Earl of Surrey (his courtesy title as heir apparent to the Dukedom of Norfolk),[3][4] and Lady Mary Howard, wife of Henry VIII’s illegitimate son, Henry FitzRoy, Duke of Richmond and Somerset.[5] Through her father’s side, she was also a first cousin of Mary, George and Anne Boleyn (Catherine’s aunt, Elizabeth Howard, was the mother of the Boleyn siblings).[6] Catherine also was the second cousin of Jane Seymour, because her grandmother Elizabeth Tilney was the sister of Seymour’s grandmother, Anne Say.[7]

Catherine’s mother, Joyce Culpeper, already had five children from her first husband, Ralph Leigh (c. 1476 – 1509) when she married Lord Edmund Howard, and they had another six together, Catherine being about her mother’s tenth child. With little to sustain the family, her father often had to beg for the help of his more affluent relatives.

After Catherine’s mother died in 1528, her father married two more times. In 1531, he was appointed Controller of Calais.[8] He was dismissed from his post in 1539, and died in March 1539. Catherine was the third of Henry VIII’s wives to have been a member of the English nobility or gentry; Catherine of Aragon[9] and Anne of Cleves[10] were royalty from continental Europe.