Why was Catherine Howard (Henry VIIIs fifth wife) executed?
Because she committed adultery with one of the King’s courtiers, Thomas Culpepper. As said, adultery in a Queen was treasonous, as she might have a baby that was not the King’s which would be disastrous for a legitimate succession. Catherine was very young (we don’t have her exact birthdate), but was probably in her teens when she married Henry, who was nearly fifty, fat and ailing. Henry seems to have fallen in love with her when she was one of Anne of Cleves’ maids of honour. Catherine was also related to the powerful Duke of Norfolk, as Anne Boleyn had been, and it’s likely Norfolk nudged her into the King’s attention with the hard-hearted purpose of furthering his own and his family’s ambitions which had been somewhat in decline since the tragedy of Anne Boleyn. Catherine had spent her early years with other young women in her grandmother’s house where the lifestyle was rather lax. She had an affair with her music teacher, Henry Manox, and then seems to have entered into a pre-cont
