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The perils of waiting on a Tudor queen

Henry VIII considered the queen’s household a fruitful hunting-ground – for a mistress, a future wife, or a pawn, whose testimony could provide useful damaging evidence

11 May 2024

9:00 AM

11 May 2024

9:00 AM

At 7 o’clock on a bleak February morning in 1542, King Henry VIII’s fifth wife Katherine Howard, so enfeebled by fear and misery that she could hardly stand, was half-led, half-carried from her cell in the Tower of London to the scaffold in a nearby courtyard. Watching as the axe fell on her mistress’s neck, and knowing it would be her turn next, was her lady in waiting Jane Rochford.

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