Katherine, Countess of Suffolk and the Fall of the House of Howard

by Linda Fetterly Root

When researching my recent novels focusing on the Gunpowder Treason and its aftermath, I uncovered a list of seven English aristocrats who were on retainer to the King of Spain. Had their identities become public after the events of November 5, 1605, there would have been a public outcry demanding they be tried for treason. Some were persons in high places. The list was closely guarded, even from the king. The last thing James wanted to hear was news of a handful of embedded spies at court so early in his reign. Of the five men and two women on the list, some were no doubt closet Catholics, some sought political gain, and others were in it for the money. The best known of the seven was Robert Cecil, Earl of Salisbury, a notorious antipapist and no friend of the King of Spain. Motives behind his duplicity are still debated. But the most dangerous of the lot was one of the women. She was Katherine Knyvet Howard, Countess Suffolk, and of the motives mentioned, she possessed all three. Others were prosecuted for plots she promulgated, and some of them died. Her only punishment was banishment, forcing her to do her scheming on a smaller stage. The fall of her husband’s mighty house is often blamed on her conniving

Thomas Howard, Earl of Suffolk

Katherine, Countess of Suffolk

Two of Henry VIII's wives were Howards, and both Anne Boleyn and Catherine Howard ended their lives before the block. Yet, the House of Howard withstood the stigma. Great Harry's Dynastic claim was new and tenuous. He and his offspring needed the military prowess, wealth and prestige inherent in the Howard bloodline. Although Henry VIII did not trust them as he once had, by the time Elizabeth ascended in 1558, the Howards had reacquired much of their former precedence. Even when Elizabeth's cousin, the mighty Duke of Norfolk, Thomas Howard, was executed for secretly plotting to marry the captive Queen of Scots and ostensibly restore England to the Catholic Faith, the performance of Charles Howard, 1st Earl of Nottingham during the Armada threat had restored the family to high favor before Elizabeth died and the crown passed to James VI of Scotland, Marie Stuart’s son.  At the time, the leader of the Howard faction was Thomas Howard, then known as Baron Howard de Walden.  He had been a child when his father was executed at Tower Hill in 1572.

When James I ascended to the English throne in 1603, one of his first official acts was to make an earl of the man who might have been his step-brother had the Duke of Norfolk married the Queen of Scots. By then, the new Earl of Suffolk had married the widow of Baron Richard Rich, the clever and attractive Katherine Knyvet. The new Countess of Suffolk was a noted beauty, an heiress, and a woman possessed of an insatiable thirst for power. She and the Earl had several children including three daughters who figured prominently in the ambitions of their redoubtable mother, who traded them as commodities.  But the Countess was more than an overly ambitious parent.  Among other questionable activities, she was a paid agent of the King of Spain. Despite the dominance of males in the society of her day, she was the most richly compensated of Felipe III’s agents and one of few amongst the Seven who knew who most of the others were. She was Cecil’s courier and a Hapsburg spy using the codename Rodan.

However, five new names came to dominate the politics of 1605: Cates, Fawkes, Percy, Winter, and Wright, to which others were added as what we know as The Gunpowder Conspiracy expanded.  The plan to blow up Parliament on its opening day when the Royals were in attendance came surprisingly close to fruition when it was thwarted. Its principals were scions of aristocratic Catholic Midland families. The King, and his minister Robert Cecil, Earl of Salisbury, was certain the handful of primary suspects had not acted alone. The Jesuit Mission to England and anyone who harbored or supported it were also targeted. It was a bad time to have ties to the Midland Catholic families who had priest hides in their mansions. Among others, suspicion fell upon the well-known recusant relatives of the deceased Lord George Vaux, whose sisters Anne Vaux and Eleanore Brooksby were disciples of the Jesuit Superior, Father Henry Garnet. Also, their sister-in-law Eliza, the self-styled Dowager Lady Vaux, was believed to have kept the most flamboyant of the Jesuits, John Gerard, as a member of her household for as long as six years, sometimes in hiding and at other times, using aliases of Brooke, Standish, Lee, and Tomson while frequenting the drawing rooms of Midland aristocratic families and charming the ladies.

.

However, in early November 1605, Gerard’s link to the Vaux estate at Great Harrowden presented a problem for the Countess of Suffolk, who could not risk being identified as a possible traitor. She had just negotiated a beneficial marriage of her daughter Elizabeth to the youthful Lord Edward Vaux.  The young people were eager to wed, for unlike participants in most arranged marriages, they were very much in love. To avoid impropriety on the part of the lovers prior to the nuptials, Eliza sent her son to the Low Countries for a tour. But when the Gunpowder Treason surfaced, and the Dowager Lady Vaux was hauled off to London to be interrogated, the Countess lost no time before insulating her family from taint. Taking advantage of the absence of the Vauxs, she arranged a hasty marriage of her daughter to aging Sir William Knollys and sent her distraught daughter to his bed in virtual bondage. The details of the forced marriage might have gone unnoticed by historians were it not for litigation in modern times over claims of Elizabeth Howard’s descendants to Lord Knollys’ earldom of Banbury. Apparently, both of her sons bore striking resemblances to Lord Edward Vaux, who Elizabeth married before her octogenarian husband’s body cooled. The competing claims to the Banbury title on the one hand and the Vaux inheritance on the other spawned a case at Common Law establishing the rules governing uterine bastardy, some aspects of which survive in current British and American family law litigation (The Case of the Earl of Banbury, 1813).

 Lady Suffolk’s role in her daughter’s heartbreaking marriage must have inspired her to do better in the future. She married another of her daughters to the son of Lord Robert Cecil, a match which increased her husbands’ power at court.  But soon she faced another marital misadventure in need of correction, one that provided England with a scandal even she could not control. It began with another ambitious betrothal of a daughter, Frances, when she was a lass of fourteen, and ended with the fall of the House of Howard.

2nd Earl of Essex

The Duke of Norfolk was not the only peer to lose his head during Elizabeth Tudor’s reign. Her young favorite, the handsome and opportunistic Robert Devereux, 2^nd Earl of Essex, resented his treatment by the Queen after his military failures in Ireland and launched an abortive rebellion.  He was executed on Tower Green in 1601.
When James Stuart came to England in 1603, he restored the lands and titles to Devereux’s young son, who became a close companion to Prince Henry Frederick.

3rd Earl of Essex as a child

The new Earl of Essex was thirteen when the Countess of Suffolk, probably with support from her brother in law Northampton and the Earl of Salisbury, arranged a marriage between Essex and 14-year-old daughter Frances. In those days, sex between couples of so young an age was considered dangerous, so the marriage went forward, but the bedding was delayed. Robert was shipped to Europe before the marriage could be consummated and his adolescent Countess remained at court in the care of her parents. A noted beauty, she soon became highly visible.

Earl of Essex 

Countess of Essex

Robert Carr, Somerset

 When, at age 17, Essex came back from his European tour with plans to deflower his bride, the long-delayed bedding ceremony did not go well. Frances snorted, and Robert snored, and there was no need to check the sheets to know the outcome.  It soon became apparent the couple detested one another. It was equally evident that Frances Howard, Countess of Essex, was smitten with the king's favorite, Robert Carr of Ferniehirst, a Scot. He was a posthumous son of Thomas Ker of Ferniehirst, one of Marie Stuart’s lifelong champions, and possessed mannerisms ideal to the court of James Stuart, who preferred the company of men. Initially, the king’s minister Salisbury, promoted him because his presence at court kept James occupied and out of Salisbury’s hair.

Thomas Overbury

Carr had an older friend named Tom Overbury, an Englishman he had met in Edinburgh earlier in his youth, who had the skills and education needed to help Carr navigate the politics of Court and Council.  Soon Carr was giving advice to the king on topics headier than where to buy the best Belgian lace. Rabie Carr had looks and charm, but Overbury had brains. Concurrently, it was becoming obvious to the Howards that Frances and her dashing husband were irreconcilably estranged. Katherine and her brother-in-law, the Earl of Northampton, hatched a plan to end the Essex marriage on grounds it had not been consummated.  Essex did not oppose if his wife confirmed her allegations of his impotence was limited to attempts with her. Books have been written about the litigation, which became a cause celebre at court. There was open wagering as to the outcome. Frances agreed to submit to a physical examination of her hymen by a group of midwives, on condition she could insulate herself from embarrassment by wearing a veil. Whoever appeared shrouded, probably Northhampton's daughter was declared a virgin and an annulment was granted.

Carr was not so easily snared. Frances was enthralling, but Tom Overbury urged restraint. He considered Frances a tart and cautioned that marriage to her would be a step-down, not up. To silence him, her uncle Northampton convinced James to offer Overbury an ambassadorship to Russia, but Overbury was having none of it. Overbury went to the tower for declining the offer. In September 1613, he died, ostensibly of natural causes. Carr was named Treasurer and granted the Somerset Earldom. On December 26, 1513, he married Frances in a service attended by the King.

The Howard triumph did not last. In September 1615, with Carr’s power at its pinnacle, a Tower warder shouted ’Poison!’ Rumors abounded, yet King James did nothing until Carr audaciously carped at him for showing favor to the charming sycophant George Villiers (Buckingham). The anti-Somerset faction included Chief Justice Edward Coke and Attorney General, Francis Bacon, who prosecuted the Somersets for the Overbury murder. Only Frances confessed. Both were convicted and sentenced to death, but always quick to pardon those he had held in affection, James spared them both. Their commoner co-defendants were not as lucky. Trial testimony implicated  Katherine in obstructing justice through bribery, but she was not charged.  

In 1619, in a final scandal, the Suffolks were convicted of embezzling from the Crown. The Countess spent only ten days in the Tower but was forever banished from the court she had used as a marketplace for influence peddling. The Somerset marriage deteriorated, and without a male heir, the line was doomed. To the Countess of Somerset's credit, Essex had similar problems with his second wife.
~~~~~~~~~~