Lady Catherine Howard was the most pitiful of all, as Anne Boleyn was the most tragic. Once again there was the inevitable see-saw of politics; Henry had got rid of Thomas Cromwell the Protestant by the simple method of cutting off his head in circumstances of unusual brutality even for the sixteenth century; and once more the Roman Catholics came on top. The result was the sacrifice of pretty Catherine Howard. That she was by far the best looking of all Henry’s wives can hardly be denied. Nobody looking at her gentle and thoughtful little face in the portrait that hangs in the National Portrait Gallery would ever dream that she was so immoral as people tried to prove. Her eyes were hazel, her hair was auburn; and she looks as virginal as though she had never been near the Court. Yet she was said to have had entanglements with at least three men. She had had a very unhappy childhood, and received due thrashings from her aunt the Duchess of Norfolk when that lady took a fancy to bestow them; but little education. She had no maternal supervision to keep her on the straight and narrow path in that sinful Court. Her music master, Mannock, boasted that she had promised to be his mistress; a kinsman named Dereham said that she was his wife; and she was reported to be engaged to her cousin, Culpepper. And now she was bestowed upon this new and dreadful suitor, His Gracious Majesty[5] himself. No wonder that Martin Hume became almost dithyrambic about it. Indeed, Catherine Howard had a hard fate.