Vulgar History - How To Lose A Queen In Nine Days, part 2： Katherine Willoughby, Duchess of Suffolk

00:00:00.000 hello and welcome to vulgar history season three my name is ann foster and this is a feminist

00:00:20.500 women's history comedy podcast where i most often of the time look at some lesser known women from

00:00:28.080 history almost always british history but we'll see you where where this goes today though i don't

00:00:34.800 know why i was just so vague about that we are looking at a woman from english history

00:00:38.460 and her her story intersects with the overall theme of the season which is how to lose a queen

00:00:45.080 in nine days aka the jane gray lady jane gray scenario and last time i compared these sort of

00:00:53.240 overlapping stories to like Jasmine Guillory's amazing romance novel series it starts with the

00:01:00.120 wedding date where like the one book is about one character and then the next book is takes a

00:01:05.140 secondary character from that book it makes up the main character I've been trying to think of

00:01:09.360 other examples in case you don't know those books which I do recommend especially in these pandemic

00:01:14.140 times they're just really cozy and good but I would say it's sort of like if you watch Skins

00:01:20.240 the british teen show from like 10 years ago where each episode took sort of a different

00:01:26.080 character and then you get a different sense of the situation how it went on there's also the

00:01:30.340 classic japanese film rashomon so it's an interesting and different sort of season to do

00:01:37.360 as i've been working on researching to get the scripts together for them i'm just like oh wow

00:01:41.600 this person overlaps with this and there's so much overlap but also just everybody has their

00:01:45.840 own interesting story. And I'm kind of going through them one at a time, ultimately leading

00:01:50.580 to what the fuck was the Lady Jane Grey scenario. So last time we looked at Mary Tudor, who is the 0.94

00:01:59.040 grandmother of Lady Jane Grey slash the baby sister of Henry VIII. And you may recall, if you

00:02:06.640 just listened to that recently, that so Mary Tudor was married to a man called Charles Brandon.

00:02:11.860 and then she died pretty young just in her 30s and today we're looking at the second wife

00:02:18.060 of Charles Brandon who is Catherine Willoughby whose technical name is Catherine Willoughby

00:02:24.860 d'Erisby she's a fancy person and so she became stepmother to Jane Grey's mom so she's Jane Grey's

00:02:35.060 step-grandmother, effectively. Before we get into the Catherine Willoughby of Adala, I just really

00:02:42.000 want to set everybody's expectations, just so we know what kind of person we're getting into,

00:02:46.860 because it starts off in that sort of way, like, a lot of stories tend to where it's like she was

00:02:51.160 young, and then she had to marry somebody, and it was kind of weird. But just rest assured,

00:02:56.140 this is a story, she lives a good long life, a good better length than a lot of people

00:03:01.960 did in Tudor era. She also did a lot of really cool stuff. So you might be like, oh, the story

00:03:08.460 is sort of depressing, but guess what? It doesn't stay depressing. And just so you know, part of

00:03:13.560 the reason why is because this woman was really, really cool. So this is a quote from a book by

00:03:19.140 Leanda Delisle, which is a great book that I've been relying on a lot for this season.

00:03:24.040 It's a book called The Sisters Who Would Be Queen, Mary Catherine and Lady Jane Grey,

00:03:29.960 colon a tutor tragedy but this is a book that talks about well the lady jane gray situation

00:03:36.680 but also who they're jane gray her sisters their mother like spoiler some people will be looking 0.63

00:03:41.920 at later in this series but in leanda de lyle's book she gets into she talks about katherine 0.95

00:03:46.960 willoughby and she says about her blonde blue-eyed and charming when she wished to be 1.00

00:03:53.880 katherine was one of the most remarkable women of her time her temper and caustic wit were 1.00

00:03:59.160 legendary one of her contemporaries called her rageous the lady suffolk heats in the 0.85

00:04:04.720 superficial world of the court her contemporaries found her unusual directness and honesty both

00:04:10.060 unnerving and attractive she said what she thought and what she thought was usually interesting 0.92

00:04:14.880 and sometimes shocking so guess what she's fucking awesome and we're gonna learn about her

00:04:20.120 katherine willoughby so the sources i used for this were again the leanda delisle book

00:04:25.640 the sisters who would be queen as well as a couple other things um there's a book by amy

00:04:32.540 license called the six wives and many mistresses of henry the eighth and then also a couple of

00:04:38.220 online things so i got some information from on the tutor trail.com from lincolnshire life.co.uk

00:04:45.060 and from tutor society.com so let's get into it katherine willoughby so she was born on march

00:04:54.200 22nd 1519 in i say a lot of place names if you're listening to this and you're familiar with british

00:05:02.980 place names i apologize for all my wild pronunciations but maybe this means something

00:05:08.780 to you she was born at parham old hall in suffolk and christened four days later her parents this

00:05:15.300 is interesting so her father was named william willoughby first of all great name um he was the

00:05:22.720 11th Baron Willoughby de Erisby and his second wife Maria de Salinas. Maria de Salinas, as you

00:05:31.520 might guess from her name, was from Spain. She had come to English court with Catherine of Aragon

00:05:36.960 when Catherine of Aragon first arrived to marry Arthur and then married Henry. So she was one of

00:05:42.180 the Queen's ladies-in-waiting slash closest friends. And so after 15 years in England,

00:05:49.740 Maria de Salinas married William well basically Henry was like guess what I like you here so you

00:05:55.560 get to marry this guy because Henry decided who everybody married and as a wedding present the

00:06:01.700 couple was given Grimsthorpe Castle in Lincolnshire. Grimsthorpe Castle is an amazing name

00:06:10.920 as well so Henry wanted these two to get married because he himself was an English man married to

00:06:18.220 spanish woman and the more english spanish co-unions there were in the kingdom that just

00:06:24.540 kind of strengthened relations between the two countries he really really liked maria he named

00:06:31.160 one of his like henry the king named one of his warships the the mary willoughby in her honor

00:06:36.340 and then um william willoughby and maria de selenas had a daughter who the name catherine

00:06:44.740 almost definitely in honor of Catherine of Aragon, her BFF. She was their only child to

00:06:51.000 survive infancy. They had had two sons as well named Henry and Francis, but they both died as

00:06:57.480 infants. So William Willoughby, super rich person, and Catherine being his only child,

00:07:07.960 became very rich heiress as a child so she spent her early childhood in the same home where she

00:07:16.520 was born at parham parham and her mother was in almost constant attendance on catherine of aragon

00:07:23.460 like maria was just off with catherine all the time um catherine so catherine the queen catherine

00:07:29.580 of aragon i'll try and use her full name catherine willoughby so probably didn't see her mother

00:07:34.260 that often because her mother was off being with Catherine of Aragon. But then when Catherine

00:07:40.980 Willoughby was seven, Lord Willoughby died of illness. It was not, I don't know what illness

00:07:47.740 it was. Does it for this story doesn't super matter, but it was not the sweating sickness

00:07:53.240 because this was too early for sweating sickness. I was writing this up while I was also researching

00:07:58.600 sweating sickness. So I left myself that super important note that I'm sharing with you right

00:08:02.300 now so Catherine being now the only child that he would ever have because he was dead she inherited

00:08:09.360 the barony because he was the baron so she was one of the greatest aka wealthiest heiresses of

00:08:17.200 her generation and this is part of why I think she becomes as cool as she becomes because she was so 0.58

00:08:24.140 rich and powerful she could get away with stuff that other people didn't have to other people

00:08:29.700 wouldn't have been able to get away with and we will see she has this great privilege in life and 0.66

00:08:34.740 she used it in some cool ways so her inheritance it got complicated that uh she had no father 1.00

00:08:43.620 because there's a whole thing about like women couldn't have money you have to have a man to

00:08:48.560 have money but her father was dead so like who's okay i'll just read what it says which is there

00:08:54.240 was doubt as to which lands had been settled on the heirs male and which on the heirs general

00:08:58.760 so in 1527 a year after William Willoughby died her uncle presumably William's brother

00:09:08.660 Christopher Willoughby thought that he should have inherited some of this stuff instead of her

00:09:13.120 he accused Maria of withholding documents from him that would have given him various estates

00:09:18.620 and so it was just a whole big thing in the courts blah blah effectively at the end of it

00:09:24.620 so katherine's wardship and just to clarify again this is a podcast telling the stories

00:09:31.860 of women i did a lot of research but i didn't research every single detail

00:09:36.340 so for some reason presumably because she didn't have a father like she was a ward like someone 0.90

00:09:42.620 had to be legally named her guardian i guess because two years after her father died her

00:09:50.140 wardship fell to i guess immediately after the father died her wardship went to the king

00:09:54.700 so effectively she was a ward of the king and the king sold her wardship

00:10:00.280 in 1528 to his brother-in-law charles brandon who you might remember from last episode as the

00:10:07.560 husband of mary tudor so i'm just going to do a little quick math so catherine was nine years old

00:10:15.940 when this happened so it meant that she was now a ward of charles brandon um charles was at this

00:10:24.760 point married to henry's sister mary so oh also very importantly charles brandon had to borrow

00:10:32.400 money in order to buy the wardship charles brandon was kind of broke and so clearly he thought

00:10:38.320 taking on make taking catherine willoughby as his ward would maybe get him some money was his plan

00:10:44.080 so we had to borrow money to do it so just not great planning Charles Brandon so by this point

00:10:50.640 Charles Brandon and Mary Tudor had two little daughters whose names were Francis and Eleanor

00:10:55.400 and they were close in age to Catherine I believe Francis was two years younger so

00:11:03.020 Catherine is nine Francis is seven Eleanor is five so it's kind of like Catherine Willoughby was

00:11:10.320 her father died she was taken away from her home but she got to live with these new girls so she

00:11:14.680 became sort of like their adopted sister ish there's also a son on the scene charles brandon's

00:11:20.900 son with mary tudor was named henry brandon and he was one year older than her so it's basically

00:11:26.300 these four kids all similar ages to each other and everyone assumed the plan here was to eventually

00:11:32.460 marry katherine willoughby to henry brandon the little 12 year old son because then charles

00:11:40.000 Brandon would get the money because that would Catherine would be his daughter-in-law etc but

00:11:45.620 here's the thing Catherine was I don't know if this is even why you know what it's not even why

00:11:51.380 she was gorgeous she was spirited she was really spunky and sounds like a really cool person but

00:11:56.420 also she was mega rich and fertile I guess because by the time that she was like just a couple years

00:12:04.600 after she became the ward rumors started to spread that Charles Brandon himself might want to marry

00:12:08.920 her which was probably entirely for money reasons if he married her that would solve all of his

00:12:14.540 problems more maybe easily more easily than if she was married to his son I don't know at this 0.95

00:12:21.080 point Mary Tudor last week's heroine who's also so cool was quite ill remember she got the sweating

00:12:27.300 sickness so he was maybe sort of she was still alive but rumor had it that he wanted to maybe

00:12:32.540 marry his ward everyone's just like this is tasteless like even for Tudor times this is

00:12:37.140 tasteless um but that is what he was doing so put a pin in that meanwhile maria her mother

00:12:47.540 was still a devoted friend to catherine of aragon um who by now chronologically was not doing great

00:12:55.480 catherine of aragon because henry was working so hard to get that marriage annulled so he could

00:12:58.900 marry anne boleyn maria was ordered to leave catherine's household and not to make any time

00:13:05.580 to communicate with her because henry was sort of punishing catherine for not agreeing catherine

00:13:10.300 of aragon for not agreeing to the annulment so he separated her from her bff maria we're now in the

00:13:17.160 year 1533 a couple major things happened firstly henry the eighth broke with rome and started up

00:13:23.840 the anglican religion uh number two mary tudor henry the eighth's sister died at her funeral

00:13:32.180 Catherine Willoughby was one of the chief mourners

00:13:34.340 because that had been sort of like her adopted mom-ish.

00:13:38.560 Catherine and Maria brought forward palls of gold cloth to the altar.

00:13:42.840 So they had a special role at the funeral,

00:13:44.600 which was this special royal funeral.

00:13:46.180 So it showed that she had a very high status, Catherine Willoughby.

00:13:50.380 Six weeks after Mary Tudor died,

00:13:53.020 the Spanish ambassador, Eustace Chapuis,

00:13:56.980 reported to Charles, the Spanish king,

00:14:00.760 that this is a quote um on sunday next the duke of suffolk aka charles brandon will be married to

00:14:08.380 the daughter of a spanish lady named lady willoughby she was promised to the duke's son

00:14:12.580 but he is only 10 years old and although it is not worth writing to your majesty the novelty

00:14:16.540 of the case made me mention it so just yeah so here's what's happening charles brandon is what

00:14:23.780 He's like 49 years old and he decides to marry his 14 year old ward, Catherine Willoughby, instead of marrying her to his son.

00:14:35.180 So the thing here is what's notable is like a yuck and be just the fact that this is so weird that the Spanish ambassador was like, dear, the king of Spain, you know, not much happening here in English court.

00:14:49.600 But, you know, hey, this is like interesting and weird that this young half Spanish woman is marrying her guardian and she's the ward like this is weird.

00:14:59.840 So although there was a lot of very young people getting married in oldie times, although please note that you had to be 20 years old. 0.68

00:15:12.360 A woman had to be 20 years old to get married unless you were rich, in which case, who cares?

00:15:15.940 but the whole scenario was weird even to people then that he had more or less sort of adopted her

00:15:24.020 and then married her like what was this like six weeks later decided to marry his ward who had been 0.96

00:15:33.720 who's the same age as his daughters he was 49 she's 14 it's fucked up but stick with me here 0.95

00:15:39.140 so why did charles brandon do this well because he was in debt and he was awful so all of his 0.84

00:15:45.480 debts were immediately paid off because he had married this very rich person his money problems

00:15:49.840 were solved and he was now the wealthiest landowner in Lincolnshire she was also his fourth wife hot

00:15:57.640 tip um he had been married before Mary Tudor and was a dirtbag and just so you know um on my Patreon 0.96

00:16:05.540 I do special mini episodes called so this asshole where I just like talk about some grossos from 0.92

00:16:11.820 history and Charles Brandon I have to say is making himself a stunning case for me to do a 0.97

00:16:17.980 special episode about how he sucks so they got married and then guess what happened so remember

00:16:24.440 she was going to marry his son Henry um his son Henry died perhaps of a broken heart some say 0.97

00:16:32.140 because he thought that he was going to get to marry Catherine Willoughby and instead his father 0.87

00:16:35.520 did and everyone's just like this is fucked up so Catherine Willoughby is now 14 years old and 0.93

00:16:42.160 married to a 49 year old man who was kind of her father is where we are now right now but um her 0.96

00:16:48.260 husband is also the king's best friend so she has good status in life and she's also still wildly

00:16:54.600 rich so a year after this gross wedding she gave birth to a son who they named Henry Brandon

00:17:02.660 henry the eighth was one of the godparents of this child so like she was in a good

00:17:07.180 situation politically in terms of the king was happy about her um this same month that

00:17:15.580 katherine willoughby gave birth to this son and became a teen mom uh katherine of aragon

00:17:20.720 was still kicking around um not doing great health wise psychologically wise

00:17:27.300 maria begged permission to go and visit her because that was her best friend and she's

00:17:32.240 doing badly but she was denied because king henry the eighth just wanted catherine of aragon to

00:17:36.720 suffer basically on january 5th 1536 maria amazingly best friend hall of fame here forced

00:17:47.220 her way into the castle where catherine is being kept to see her even after she was refused

00:17:51.560 permission to visit and then catherine died in maria's arms two days later sad this is where

00:17:58.140 do you know the play Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are dead it's sort of like it takes these two

00:18:04.820 side characters from Hamlet and retells the story of Hamlet from their point of view it is written

00:18:13.760 by Tom Stoppard and there's a film of it anyway what all the stories this season especially this

00:18:21.140 one feel like are kind of a Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are dead of the Tudor era because

00:18:27.380 just casually like you know katherine varagon dies um and then you know like life progresses

00:18:31.840 um so january 1536 katherine varagon dies that following may um anne boleyn was executed so all

00:18:41.000 this is happening but they're not the main characters we're looking at katherine willoughby

00:18:44.500 and what is she up to so at this point um both of henry's daughters were declared henry the

00:18:51.960 eighths his daughters were declared illegitimate because he claimed that both of his marriages to

00:18:57.560 Catherine of Aragon as well as to Anne Boleyn were illegitimate that makes the daughters

00:19:00.500 illegitimate so that meant that his heirs were now the descendants of his sister Mary Tudor so aka

00:19:08.200 Charles Brandon's previous now dead wife aka Catherine Willoughby's sort of adopted mother

00:19:13.920 aka the mother of Francis and Eleanor Brandon so Catherine Willoughby was now sort of tangentially

00:19:22.960 in the royal family as the stepmother of the royal heirs who were also her same age don't worry about

00:19:30.780 it so simultaneously to this it's just like an action-packed 1536 was like the 2020 of the 16th

00:19:39.200 century so the pilgrimage of grace broke out in the north of england this was where a bunch of

00:19:46.320 people up north were unhappy with henry the eighth for a variety of reasons um partially because

00:19:53.280 henry the eighth was closing down all the monasteries and taking all of their jewels

00:19:57.840 etc and the pilgrimage of grace people also they thought that mary the first should be the heir

00:20:02.760 and Charles Brandon, Catherine Willoughby's very old husband, was given one of the people who was

00:20:09.500 given the duty of suppressing this uprising. It took about a year and finally the whole thing

00:20:13.900 was suppressed. A whole bunch of people were executed for this and we're going to talk about

00:20:21.240 that more in some other stories this season but Catherine Willoughby was busy you know probably

00:20:25.600 worrying about her husband and would he be murdered but she was also busy giving birth to

00:20:31.420 her second son who was a boy named charles brandon at around this same time henry the eighth ordered

00:20:38.740 that charles brandon permanently position himself up north to make the king's presence known and to

00:20:43.260 try and make there be not so much rebellion all the time so catherine and her two sons moved to

00:20:51.700 grimsthorpe castle which again just feels very like crimson peak gothic-y to be with her husband

00:20:58.400 and this is where she lived for I guess much of the rest of her life so Catherine herself what

00:21:06.840 was she like like she was a teenager she had children she got married but like what was she

00:21:12.000 like besides beautiful and rich she was really smart really keen on education she's very curious

00:21:19.700 and she's really really really into the new faith so although her mother was Catholic and Catherine

00:21:27.200 of Aragon was Catholic, and so Catherine might have been earlier on. She was really open-minded

00:21:33.440 about this. So there's evidence that Catherine, as a young person, might have attended some sermons

00:21:39.400 at Hampton Court led by Hugh Latimer, who was a radical religious person. This is not like

00:21:46.700 theology podcast. So I'll just say effectively that Henry VIII broke off with Rome for a variety

00:21:55.280 of reasons one of which was because he wanted to divorce Catherine of Aragon and so his new

00:21:59.920 religion Anglicanism was really um in many ways similar to Catholicism except just no pope so

00:22:08.100 there's still like relics and there's still saints and things and there was people who wanted um even

00:22:16.440 more different um religion so the reformed faith so this is the term evangelical is used there and

00:22:24.920 it means a very different thing in 16th century England as it does in 2020 North America. But it

00:22:32.240 meant people who really wanted church to be more a personal thing for people where they would have

00:22:36.000 their own relationship with God instead of having to go through priests and things. And they wanted

00:22:40.780 there to be less frippery. Is that a word? Less, you know, decorations and like jewels and money

00:22:47.800 and just much, a much more personal sort of radical thing. And that is what Catherine Willoughby was 0.99

00:22:53.080 into so she has some surviving letters that show that she had a questioning and inquiring attitude

00:23:00.060 although she couldn't express her um belief in this new reformed religion until after her mother

00:23:07.360 had died because her spanish catholic catholic mother who was best friends with catherine

00:23:10.820 would probably not want her to do that so but after her mother so maria died in 1539 0.91

00:23:18.520 after her death catherine had the walls of the family chapel whitewashed so to make it be more

00:23:25.040 reformed religion looking like less fancy stuff everywhere she removed the gilded saints from

00:23:30.260 their little podiums and then she invited hugh latimer this famous radical and other protestants

00:23:37.040 to preach to her friends and neighbors so she just was like all in at this point so again the

00:23:43.780 Rosencrantz and Guildenstern of it all by this point Henry VIII was just like rocketing through

00:23:50.100 various wives so he had been married and then widowed by Jane Seymour who had given birth to

00:23:55.260 a son called Edward who is now his heir ahead of the ahead of Francis Catherine's stepdaughter

00:24:02.920 Henry VIII married Anne of Cleves this did not go well as we all know but Catherine and Charles

00:24:09.940 brandon were among the entourage that greeted anne of cleves when she arrived in england

00:24:14.120 and then two years later because charles brandon was still bffs with the king and catherine was

00:24:20.400 right there with him and so they were just you know this power socialite sort of couple

00:24:25.120 so two years later they helped arrange a royal progress like a little tour around the country

00:24:31.180 for the king and his next wife catherine howard this was fun fact the same progress that became

00:24:37.500 notorious because that's where Catherine Howard was perhaps having adulterous trysts with her

00:24:43.260 lover uh Charles Brandon died in 1545 good riddance because now Catherine Willoughby gets

00:24:52.120 to be her own true self even more so so the two of them have been married for 11 years from the

00:24:57.980 time she was 14 to 25 or 26 so she was now 26 super rich single woman two sons um at some point

00:25:08.460 around here the king of poland sigismund ii apparently sought catherine's hand in marriage

00:25:15.500 because he heard that she was great and also really rich but she said no because that was

00:25:20.760 not what she wanted to do and she was rich and was able to live her own life at this point

00:25:27.320 so she was considered by the foreign ambassadors to be some okay so we've got various foreign

00:25:34.800 ambassadors we've got various different countries and countries like spain for instance where which

00:25:40.200 was a catholic country they considered catherine willoughby to be one of the greatest heretics in

00:25:45.320 the kingdom i mean she was like sponsoring protestant sermons etc by this point uh henry

00:25:53.180 the eighth has married his sixth wife, Catherine Parr, who was also a big fan of the reformed

00:25:58.060 religion. And Catherine Parr and Catherine Willoughby became actually great friends.

00:26:03.460 And apparently Catherine Willoughby was a big influence on Catherine Parr for her own

00:26:07.120 religious beliefs. Catherine, one of her enemies was also a man named Bishop Stephen Gardner,

00:26:15.740 who was the intellectual leader of religious conservatism and the sort of guy who would give 0.88

00:26:20.020 sermons being like, women should not say so much. They should be quiet. Women named Catherine 1.00

00:26:25.640 Willoughby should mind their own business. Like he was subtweeting her via sermon constantly, 0.98

00:26:31.100 but Catherine Willoughby being an awesome person, she named her pet Spaniel, like her dog, Gardner, 0.99

00:26:37.560 which provoked much amusement when she called her dog Gardner in front of other people.

00:26:44.280 Several years later, Gardner wound up in prison for various reasons. And Catherine Willoughby

00:26:49.020 apparently is quoted as saying it was merry with the lambs when the wolf was shut up so she had

00:26:54.760 enemies people knew who she liked and who she didn't like but she was again like rich and

00:26:59.000 untouchable so she was noted for her wit her sharp tongue and her devotion to learning as well as for

00:27:05.920 being an outspoken advocate of the english reformation in 1546 catherine parr's the whole

00:27:13.600 reformed religion thing was just getting more and more controversial partially because there's all 0.99

00:27:19.920 these women who are practicing this religion and it was um threatening the power base of people who 0.54

00:27:25.500 didn't support this religion at one point henry the eighth ordered catherine parr to be arrested 0.99

00:27:31.420 possibly as a heretic but she catherine parr managed to convince him to not arrest her

00:27:35.820 and we'll talk about that another week on this podcast catherine willoughby meanwhile would not 1.00

00:27:42.500 stop she founded a grammar school on some of the land that she had acquired on the understanding 0.94

00:27:47.940 that the protestant schoolmaster would be chosen by herself and her heirs so she was like opening

00:27:51.960 schools hosting ministers just like really really passionate about wanting to spread this faith it

00:27:59.340 was a bit more a bit less I don't know caste based where it's like people could have their

00:28:04.900 own relationship with God and he didn't need to be super rich to do it and borderline heresy but

00:28:11.420 this was just like what she was doing and no one seemed to want to stop her so this this is what i

00:28:16.840 mean like this story goes into some interesting and unexpected places had she died earlier then

00:28:23.180 she wouldn't have done all this cool stuff but she lived long enough to do a bunch of stuff

00:28:27.140 just wait so uh there were rumors actually that henry the eighth perhaps wanted to annul his

00:28:34.960 marriage to catherine parr and mary catherine willoughby instead because she was so smart

00:28:38.700 and clever, and Henry VIII liked shiny new women who he wasn't already married to, but they did

00:28:44.960 not. I mean, he obviously didn't marry for some time. He's still married to Catherine Parr when

00:28:49.340 he died. After Henry VIII died, Catherine Willoughby helped fund the publication of

00:28:56.820 Catherine Parr's book. So Catherine Parr, the queen, I'm sorry, there's so many Catherines in 1.00

00:29:00.660 this story. Catherine Parr, the queen, wrote a book called The Lamentation of a Sinner,

00:29:05.640 which was the first book in the English language to be published by a woman using her own name.

00:29:11.440 And it was published with the help, financial help of Catherine Willoughby,

00:29:14.860 who is now just like patron of the arts, apparently.

00:29:17.900 She is the Dolly Parton of her time.

00:29:20.620 Catherine Willoughby also became a patron of John Day, England's leading religious publisher.

00:29:26.940 He published various books with Catherine Willoughby's coat of arms from 1548 onwards.

00:29:32.440 catherine willoughby also helped establish churches for foreign protestants principally

00:29:37.900 dutch people who are fleeing religious persecution on continental europe so she's like helping

00:29:43.560 refugees now too like her faith is like very evident in what she is doing so meanwhile

00:29:52.320 her bestie catherine parr so now widowed from the king she married again to a man named thomas

00:30:00.640 seymour katherine power gave birth to a daughter and died several days later of childbirth related

00:30:07.700 reasons months later thomas seymour was arrested tried and executed for treason again this is a

00:30:13.420 story we'll get into later i know it's weird to be glossing over these like wild plot twists but

00:30:18.380 we're focusing on katherine willoughby and the point of all of this is to say that katherine

00:30:23.620 power and thomas seymour had a daughter named mary who is left an orphan at age seven months

00:30:29.760 and Catherine Willoughby was appointed guardian of this little baby. Catherine Willoughby not a

00:30:36.260 huge fan of this arrangement. She for some reason maybe she was spending all her money opening 1.00

00:30:40.600 schools and sponsoring books. She wasn't able to support the young infant so she there's some 0.98

00:30:46.340 letters that exist about her asking for funds and saying like I really can't take care of this baby

00:30:50.360 like can we not have me do this anymore? Eventually the queen's daughter baby Mary seems to disappear

00:30:56.900 from history so presumably she died in childhood although there's a bunch of not a bunch but at

00:31:02.460 least some historical fiction novels imagining what if she didn't die and anyway but for katherine

00:31:09.340 willoughby that whole thing is done one biographer linda porter suggests that baby mary might have

00:31:17.760 died and was buried near grimsthorpe where katherine willoughby lived so katherine willoughby

00:31:24.280 is just sort of like picking up children there's other instances where she ends up becoming the

00:31:30.820 custodian of some other abandoned girls but we'll get to that in a bit so tragically Catherine

00:31:38.240 Willoughby's sons so in 1551 her sons who were aged 14 and 16 were off at Cambridge being students

00:31:45.340 and they both died of the sweating sickness so with them the title Duke of Suffolk passed on to

00:31:53.940 Catherine's stepdaughter, Francis's husband, Henry Gray. So remember, she has the two stepdaughters,

00:32:03.360 Francis and Eleanor, who she sort of grew up with and are very close in age to her. So Francis is

00:32:07.720 now married to Henry Gray. Catherine and Francis seem to have kept on a good relationship with each

00:32:12.740 other after they got over the weirdness of being sisters. And then one of them becomes the other

00:32:18.580 one's stepmother Catherine spent Christmas at Francis's home in 1551 and so it was time for

00:32:25.540 her to regroup like her husband is dead her best friend is dead she had this little baby who she's

00:32:31.860 watching now the baby is dead her sons are dead it's just like what's what's she gonna do for the

00:32:36.660 next act of her life and this is where the story gets take some unexpected twists so she turned to

00:32:45.100 her faith. Um, this was a severe test to her faith, obviously all of this death and misfortune.

00:32:51.760 And as she built her new life, she employed Hugh Latimer as her chaplain of her church. So

00:32:58.240 which brings us up to 1553. So three, lots of things happened, but three major things happened

00:33:05.280 that affected her life. Firstly, her step granddaughter, lady Jane gray. So that's

00:33:11.360 Francis' daughter, became queen for nine days. Obviously, we'll talk about that later. The

00:33:19.940 second thing is that Queen Mary I, Henry VIII's daughter, became queen, brought back Catholicism,

00:33:26.100 started persecuting Protestants and people who believed in the Reformed religion.

00:33:29.980 And the third thing is that Catherine Willoughby got married again, but this time it was a love

00:33:34.540 marriage so her new husband was named richard bertie he was three years older than her so at

00:33:42.340 this point she's 34 and he's 37 and so she was this super rich heiress who you know the king

00:33:49.260 of poland had wanted to marry etc henry the eighth had wanted to marry but she chose to marry

00:33:53.100 richard bertie who had worked for her as her master of the horse and gentleman usher so he was

00:33:59.680 a gentleman, but not at all at her same social standing, which is how you know it was a love

00:34:05.700 match. So they shared religious beliefs. She didn't change her last name. She continued to

00:34:10.900 be known as Catherine Willoughby. She tried to get her husband's name changed to Lord Willoughby

00:34:15.480 to Erisbe, but nobody agreed to that. And then one year later, she gave birth to a daughter who

00:34:22.640 she named susan which just side note i am delighted that she named her daughter susan

00:34:30.140 because everybody in every story is named catherine jane or ann and susan is just a nice change of

00:34:36.760 pace susan bertie so but because she was giving birth to susan she was away from royal court

00:34:43.040 during the whole jane gray being executed situation which probably luckily for her so

00:34:50.480 she wouldn't get all caught up in that and then the whole mary being bloody mary etc um persecuting

00:34:57.300 protestants it just kind of got to be sort of a risky thing to be a protestant person in england

00:35:03.100 at this time so catherine and her new husband richard along with some other exiles decided to

00:35:09.100 just like peace out of england for a while so they went over to europe and what we know about

00:35:16.640 their time in europe comes from a person named john fox who is he's a martyrologist so i'm not

00:35:26.000 i don't know he's somebody who just like wrote very flattering things about protestants at this

00:35:31.140 time so some of what he says is probably true but some of it might be overblown but who knows

00:35:35.920 so john fox describes catherine and richard taking a long walk through the february snows to reach

00:35:42.500 the relative safety of in cleves um where anne of cleves is from then they went up the rhine to

00:35:49.780 wine vineheim where they were allowed to settle in windeck castle so throughout this whole journey

00:35:56.160 they were pursued by queen mary's agents so it was this daring escape but then help arrived

00:36:01.920 through a person named john alasco who had known catherine in england and had contacts with the

00:36:07.700 king of poland remember the king of poland so sigismund ii who'd wanted to marry her before

00:36:13.660 um still a big fan apparently so they went and met up with sigismund who appointed them as

00:36:21.640 administrators in lithuania i do not know what that means but this is all really exciting so

00:36:29.440 during this whole era of exile Catherine Willoughby had another son whose name was if you

00:36:37.820 think Susan was exciting Peregrine so her new son is called Peregrine Bertie and he was apparently

00:36:45.520 named Peregrine after their peregrinations which is a word I had to look up but it basically means

00:36:51.500 a challenging journey so Peregrine so she's two she's this whole new life new husband new kids

00:36:59.420 peregrine was born in cleves in 1555 the same year that catherine's old chaplain hugh latimer

00:37:08.960 was burned at the stake for being protestant so good move leaving england bertie family

00:37:15.720 so the family's adventures on the continent were told in popular elizabethan ballads

00:37:22.940 so there was a ballad called the rare and most excellent history of catherine willoughby's

00:37:28.780 calamity and then there's a play by thomas drew called the life of catherine willoughby published

00:37:33.200 in 1624 um there's also a play called the english fugitives by william houghton which might have

00:37:39.920 been about them as well and then as if that wasn't enough catherine's so the fact that she married

00:37:46.340 one of her servants and then was persecuted may have inspired some of the plot twists in john

00:37:51.820 webster's play uh the duchess of malphi so i mean this is just like an adventure this is like where's

00:38:00.460 the movie of this after so queen mary died in 1558 and the new queen became elizabeth the first who

00:38:07.940 is cool with protestants so they came back to england so catherine willoughby did not serve 0.72

00:38:15.160 queen elizabeth directly but she used her position back up north at grimsleur castle to promote

00:38:20.720 religious reform and keep like she was um consistent in her beliefs and her actions

00:38:28.460 richard bertie returned so he went back to to royal court and he was actually appointed as

00:38:36.240 member of parliament for their area for the northern area of lincolnshire lincolnshire

00:38:42.420 but turns out they went back to england but it was not like protestant utopia which is what they

00:38:49.960 had been kind of hoping because elizabeth i was very political and she knew like probably not the

00:38:56.160 time to choose like a really strict religion she wanted a more inclusive religion you know like

00:39:02.420 protestant but still with like some fancy jewels and things and then um peregrine grows up and he

00:39:12.140 wants to marry somebody named, he wants to marry the Earl of Oxford's sister, Mary. Um, and this

00:39:20.980 led to some further drama. So the Bertie family, Catherine and her husband did not like the Earl

00:39:27.920 of Oxford. Okay. So Peregrine wanted to marry a person named Mary. Mary's family did not like

00:39:33.780 the Bertie family. So Mary, the Earl of Oxford's sister showed Queen Elizabeth some letters that

00:39:41.340 catherine had written which seemed to criticize the royals in general and this sort of let so

00:39:48.640 this is just like i have to say i approve of mary's wild um scheming here of just being like 0.99

00:39:56.220 you're not going to let me marry your your son well then i'm going to just like disgrace you 1.00

00:39:59.040 and maybe have you killed like it's a bold move on the part of mary the sister of the earl of 0.99

00:40:03.440 oxford so it seemed like catherine was going to maybe be arrested and perhaps executed but 0.83

00:40:10.540 she stood the catherine willoughby fan club is still around people still liked her so robert

00:40:15.240 dudley the queen's boyfriend and william cecil the queen's spymaster liked her or could see her

00:40:23.720 potential use and they smoothed everything over and eventually peregrine did marry mary and he

00:40:29.940 became a soldier who was well renowned catherine just kept living at grimsthorpe castle um and she

00:40:37.240 intensified her efforts to promote the protestant religion in that county and up in the north um

00:40:43.880 there's a historian slash clergyman named john stripe who noted that the reformed faith was

00:40:50.900 greatly advanced by the helping forwardness of that devout woman of god katherine willoughby

00:40:55.720 um she died age 61 on september 19th 1580 at grimsthorpe castle her husband her second

00:41:08.240 husband richard bertie died two years later and he's buried beside her in her tomb at saint

00:41:13.420 james's church at spillsby so i mean okay 61 is quite young to die but compared to the other

00:41:21.500 people we're looking at this season is actually really great so it's time now to score katherine

00:41:29.820 willoughby on our scandalous scale so there's four categories as i'm sure you all know where

00:41:38.320 we sort of compare the women like i'm not saying who's better than who i'm just saying like

00:41:42.340 given these four categories who scores higher than who so the first the well just so you know

00:41:49.660 kind of where we're looking at. At present, the highest score on the scale is Joanna of Naples

00:41:55.640 from season two with a 33. Last week, Mary Tudor got a 27.5. And so we'll just see where

00:42:03.620 Catherine Willoughby lands. So the first, the first category is scandalousness, which is just

00:42:09.240 like how juicy are the scandals in which she was involved. So the first major scandal of her life

00:42:14.220 would be the weirdness of being married to her guardian when she was 14 but that's not like

00:42:21.220 the thing with scandalousness it's also like you need to i'm squirking them based on like things

00:42:26.600 they did not things that like they couldn't control so i wouldn't really necessarily give

00:42:30.540 her points for that as a scandal and we're going to be getting into a lot of religious stuff this

00:42:36.040 season so i feel like i need to make a combination where if someone's scandal is heresy like if you

00:42:42.160 get killed for that like that was scandalous in that time so the fact that she was this um

00:42:49.920 super involved person with a reformed religion to the point that she like fled um while her

00:42:56.720 compatriots are being killed like that's i'm gonna give her i'm gonna give her a six for

00:43:03.080 scandalousness i think because in that time and place that was pretty scandalous

00:43:07.180 um for scheminess i love her for scheminess because we don't know exactly what was going 1.00

00:43:15.420 through her head but the fact that she was like we need to get the fuck out of england right now

00:43:19.480 we need to like run along in the winter and then like oh you know who might help us the king of

00:43:24.660 poland he used to have a crush on me good again like not a lot i don't know like that's sort of 1.00

00:43:31.080 one scheme but her other schemes were like to whitewash the church and make it be protestant 0.94

00:43:36.620 and like to open a school like she did stuff so in terms of just like a person who did stuff 1.00

00:43:42.320 she did a lot of stuff um i'm gonna give her a seven for scheminess i think significance

00:43:50.300 is a tricky one because it's easy to see significance if somebody is like the queen

00:43:56.440 or like their child becomes a queen or whatever her significance here is sort of

00:44:01.780 her religious views affected a lot of people um she might have been one of the people who

00:44:10.260 helped Catherine Parr become as sort of into the reformed faith as she was her influence probably 0.72

00:44:17.380 also paved the way for Lady Jane Grey who's also super into the reformed faith like I think she

00:44:24.720 her significance is like a hundred little tiny significances that all add up to

00:44:30.780 being quite significant but in this not concrete way so that's tricky i'm gonna give her seven for

00:44:38.640 significance i think as well the final category is the sexism bonus which is where we add some

00:44:45.640 more points based on how much bullshit they had to put up with vis-a-vis the patriarchy and 0.77

00:44:50.620 honestly like she was married at age 14 to a man who was her guardian had a child at age 15 0.98

00:44:56.700 which sucks and is pretty awful but in the pantheon of like this podcast and what we're

00:45:04.920 looking at sort of like that's like your basic level five sexism just being a young woman and 0.98

00:45:10.780 you can't decide who you marry it's like everyone on this list kind of had that and then she went

00:45:15.960 on because she was rich um had good connections and was beautiful she's able to do a lot of stuff 0.97

00:45:21.340 so she didn't face as much sexist bullshit as some other poorer people with less privilege so 0.93

00:45:28.040 i'm gonna stick her not sticker i'm gonna give her the five just no one's gonna get less than 0.98

00:45:34.060 five in sexism because that is the world in which they and we lived but not much more than that so

00:45:39.460 that's so this gets her 25 so I mean again like a fair score it has to be because I'm the one who

00:45:51.920 just gave it to her so that does enter towards the bottom of this list but the thing is like

00:45:57.180 she kind of she lived to be 61 which frankly I feel is quite a bit older than most of the other

00:46:03.220 people we've looked at thus far um and she had a lot of influence but it was all in all these sort

00:46:09.140 of like little subtle ways which is harder like on this scale to measure where is she in my heart

00:46:14.780 number one in my heart right now but where is she on the scale fourth from the bottom

00:46:20.520 that's Catherine Willoughby the Duchess of Suffolk who is a person that I did not know

00:46:27.800 much about at all except I was researching other people and then I her story came up and I was

00:46:34.660 like wait how much older was she than her stepdaughters like wait how wait and then

00:46:38.820 peregrine birdie i was just like oh i need to read about her and then i did and i'm glad i did

00:46:42.660 and i'm glad i got to tell you all about her so this is season three of vulgar history podcast

00:46:52.420 how to lose a queen in nine days it's going to be a podcast season with nine episodes by the end of

00:46:57.520 it all these overlapping stories hopefully we will all understand the lady jane gray scenario

00:47:03.020 out a little bit better just a couple links to tell you about so i mentioned at the top so what

00:47:09.680 my sources were those are going to also be in the show notes too but you can also find the books

00:47:13.620 that i've been looking at for research for all the seasons at bookshop.org slash lists slash

00:47:19.440 vulgar history recommends that link will be in the show notes we have a merch store where i'm

00:47:24.980 going to be putting merch in themed to this season including um fabric face masks if you

00:47:33.260 want a face mask with like a cute elizabethan pattern on it if you want sort of like

00:47:38.340 artemisia gentileski uh painting on a face mask anyway you can find that all at um teespring.com

00:47:47.440 slash stores slash vulgar history um i have a patreon which is at patreon.com slash ann foster

00:47:52.940 a writer and if you join the patreon that's how you get access to the so this asshole mini episodes 0.70

00:47:58.300 where i just talk about men who are awful and other other treats on the patreon and my dream

00:48:06.800 is one day to get enough money through the patreon that i can get some i can hire an editor for this

00:48:11.980 podcast that's my dream um you can follow us on instagram and twitter on instagram at vulgar

00:48:17.780 History Pod, Twitter Vulgar History. My name is Anne Foster. It's so great. It's so good to be

00:48:24.160 back here talking to all of you again, and I will talk to you again soon for the next episode

00:48:29.360 of this season. Masks on, tits out. See you next time. 0.90

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Vulgar History - September 09, 2020

How To Lose A Queen In Nine Days, part 2： Katherine Willoughby, Duchess of Suffolk

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