Summary[]
Henry is proud of Catherine, his beautiful, vivacious seventeen year old wife, who buys silence from an old friend by making her a member of the court.
Plot[]
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Whitehall Palace, London 1540. Thirty years into the reign of King Henry VIII and it’s been a long, hot, summer: London is experiencing intense heat and there has been no rain for two months. But while his subjects wilt like roses (due to central cooling being not invented yet), the King’s vigor remains undiminished. The underlying rivalry between Catholics and Lutherans continues, led by Bishop of Winchester Stephen Gardiner and Lord Edward Seymour of Hertford. Meanwhile, Henry has just married the beautiful Katherine Howard, his fifth queen, who is a mere seventeen years old. Katherine is different from earlier wives in more ways than age: though born into an aristocratic family, she had been left by her impoverished father in the care of her aunt (rather than her paternal step-grandmother, as in history), who raised her in a large household with little education or supervision. Katherine attempts to befriend Henry's children; she befriends his young son, Prince Edward, but gets nothing but contempt from Mary while Elizabeth—while very polite—prefers to spend time with Anne of Cleves. Joan Bulmer, the new Queen’s childhood friend, is hired as a lady in waiting; she knows too much scandalous detail about Katherine’s sexual past to be outside the court. The Queen’s ‘low’ background, combined with her youth and beauty, arouses a lusty familiarity in certain members of Henry’s court. Her most notable admirer is the King’s handsome and ambitious new groom Thomas Culpeper, who makes no secret of his desire for the new queen. During an extended hunting trip visit by the royal entourage, Culpeper unleashes his sexual frustrations by raping an unfortunate local peasant woman and then murdering her aggrieved husband. Meanwhile, Charles Brandon and his wife, Catherine Brandon, are separated after Charles's actions in defeating the Pilgrimage of Grace.
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