Page:The Queens of England.djvu/361

KATHARINE HOWARD. Queen Katharine Howard, Henry the Eighth's fifth consort, was sprung from the imperial house of Charlemagne, being the descendant of the lovely and amiable Adelais of Louvaine. Singularly enough, she was also cousin-german of Anne Boleyn. Lord Edmund Howard, father of the queen, had distin- guished himself at the battle of Flodden Field, and received, as a recompense, the forfeited Dukedom of Norfolk, with the honor of knighthood. By his wife Jocosa, daughter of Sir Richard. Culpepper, of Hollingbourn, in Kent, he had a numerous family. Katharine was his fifth child, and supposed to be born about 1522. After the death of Jocosa, Lord Howard married Lady Dorothy Troyes. The loss of a mother in her tender infancy, was Katharine's first misfortune; the second, was her removal, on the death of her grandfather, Lord Thomas, Duke of Norfolk, to the care of his widow, Agnes Tylney. This lady greviously neglected the important trust reposed in her, and suffered Katharine to associate freely with her waiting-women, whose apartment she shared. These persons unhappily were of a most abandoned character; and thus early thrown into immediate association with vice, it was no wonder that the events transpired which threw after- ward a dark cloud over the brightness of the illustrious house to which she owed her origin. Encouraged by the female attendants of her grandmother, Katharine, at the early age of thirteen, was induced to give encouragement to the presuming addresses of Henry Manox, a performer on the virginals, who had been attracted by her youthful beauty while employed as her instructor, during her stay at Horsham, in Norfolk. With this man, who was of a very profligate character, Katharine had several stolen interviews; but her attachment, if such it could be called, was interrupted by her guardian's removal to Lambeth, on