Katherine Howard. Catherine Howard was Queen of England from 1540 until 1541 as the fifth wife of Henry VIII.
   She was the daughter of Lord Edmund Howard and Joyce Culpeper, cousin to Anne Boleyn, and niece to Thomas Howard, 3rd Duke of Norfolk. Thomas Howard was a prominent politician at Henry's court, and he secured her a place in the household of Henry's fourth wife, Anne of Cleves, where she caught the king's interest.
   She married him on 28 July 1540 at Oatlands Palace in Surrey, almost immediately after the annulment of his marriage to Anne. He was 49 and she was 16 or 17. Catherine was stripped of her title as queen in November 1541.
   She was beheaded three months later on the grounds of treason for committing adultery with her distant cousin Thomas Culpeper. Catherine was one of the daughters of Lord Edmund Howard and Joyce Culpeper.
   Her father's sister, Elizabeth Howard, was the mother of Anne Boleyn. Therefore, Catherine Howard was the first cousin of Anne Boleyn, and the first cousin once removed of Lady Elizabeth, Anne's daughter by Henry VIII. As a granddaughter of Thomas Howard, 2nd Duke of Norfolk, Catherine had an aristocratic pedigree. Her father was not wealthy, being the third son among 21 children and disfavoured in the custom of primogeniture, by which the eldest son inherits all his father's estate. When Catherine's parents married, her mother already had five children from he
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