Catherine was stripped of her title as queen in November 1541 and beheaded three months later on the grounds of treason for committing adultery with her distant cousin, Thomas Culpeper.

In his desperate 1527 letter to Thomas Wolsey he states, "Humbly I beseech your grace to be my good lord, for without your gracious help I am utterly undone.

In 1531, help came to Catherine indirectly through the intervention of her cousin and soon-to-be queen, Anne Boleyn, whom Edmund approached regarding a position; he was assigned to be the Comptroller at Calais.

[15] While sending young children to be educated and trained in aristocratic households was common among European nobles at the time, supervision at both Chesworth House and Lambeth was apparently lax.

The most popular theory, first put forward in 2004 by Retha Warnicke, was that the relationship between them was abusive, with Mannox grooming and preying on Catherine between 1536 and 1538; this is expanded upon in detail by Conor Byrne.

When questioned, Catherine was quoted as saying, "At the flattering and fair persuasions of Mannox, being but a young girl, I suffered him at sundry times to handle and touch the secret parts of my body, which neither became me with honesty to permit nor him to require.

[26] As a young and attractive lady-in-waiting, Catherine quickly caught the eye of several men, including the King and Thomas Culpeper.

This deeply upset Catherine, who does appear to have had some level of feelings for him at this time, for on one occasion she broke down in tears in front of her fellow maids of honour.

During this time, word reached back to Francis Dereham of the rumoured soon-to-be marriage between the pair, and he arrived at court to dispute this with them both.

[28] The King had displayed little interest in Anne from the beginning, but some historians have argued that, with Thomas Cromwell failing to find a new match, Norfolk saw an opportunity.

According to Nicholas Sander, the religiously conservative Howard family may have seen Catherine as a figurehead for their fight by expressed determination to restore Roman Catholicism to England.

Holbein's portrait showed a young auburn-haired girl with a characteristically hooked Howard nose; Catherine was said to have a "gentle, earnest face",[33] while Elisabeth and Agnes Strickland, who co-authored the Victorian-era biography of Catherine Howard in "The Lives of the Queens of England: Volume IV", where she is described as petite in stature, but of a full frame.

King Henry and Catherine were married by Edmund Bonner Bishop of London at Oatlands Palace on 28 July 1540, the same day Cromwell was executed.

[38] Catherine may have been involved during her marriage to the King with Henry's favourite male courtier, Thomas Culpeper, a young man who "had succeeded [him] in the Queen's affections", according to Dereham's later testimony.

[37] People who claimed to have witnessed her earlier sexual behaviour while she lived at Lambeth reportedly contacted her for favours in return for their silence, and some of these blackmailers may have been appointed to her royal household.

[47] She was obliged by a Privy Councillor to return the ring previously owned by Anne of Cleves, which the King had given her; it was a symbol of removal of her regal and lawful rights.

Her uncle, the Duke of Norfolk, distanced himself from the scandal by retreating to Kenninghall to write a letter of apology, laying all the blame on his niece and stepmother.

[53] The Royal Assent by Commission Act 1541 made it treason, and punishable by death, for a queen consort to fail to disclose her sexual history to the King within 20 days of their marriage, or to incite someone to commit adultery with her.

This was typical of the speeches given by people executed during that period, most likely to protect their families, since the condemned person's last words would be relayed to the King.

[60] Upon hearing news of Catherine's execution, King Francis wrote a letter to Henry regretting the "lewd and naughty [evil] behaviour of the Queen" and advising him that "the lightness of women cannot bend the honour of men".

The general trend has been more fair to Catherine, particularly in the works of Antonia Fraser, Karen Lindsey, Joanna Denny, Conor Byrne, Josephine Wilkinson, and Gareth Russell.

The Royal Collection version at Windsor Castle, if confirmed to be her depiction, would be the only surviving painting from life and roughly dated to the time of her queenship.

To further bolster that these portraits are of a Tudor queen, and potentially Catherine Howard, it is also by the fact that, for female sitters, duplicate versions of miniatures do not generally exist, with the exception of royalty.

The art historian, Franny Moyle, in The King's Painter: The Life and Times of Hans Holbein (2021), argues that the Royal Collection miniature is not a likeness of Catherine Howard.

Instead, she argues that it is a depiction of Anne of Cleves, who also married the King in 1540 (making the dating by David Starkey still accurate and confirmed with a potential re-identification).

[78][79] A contemporary portrait of a lady in black, by Hans Holbein the Younger, was identified by art historian, Sir Lionel Cust, in 1909, as Catherine Howard.

[84] Inscribed ETATIS SVÆ 21, indicating that the lady was depicted at the age of twenty-one, the portrait has long been associated with Henry VIII's young queen, but she is now thought to be a member of the Cromwell family.

[85] Historians Antonia Fraser, Diarmaid MacCulloch and Derek Wilson believe that the portrait is likely to depict Elizabeth Seymour.

Derek Wilson observed that "In August 1537 Cromwell succeeded in marrying his son, Gregory, to Elizabeth Seymour", the queen's younger sister.

This portrait is in the right timeframe and depicts a fairly young woman of wealth and high status within the social hierarchy of the Tudor era.