Anne de Courcy

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

Katherine Willoughby, Duchess of Suffolk, lived at the courts of Henry VIII, Edward VI and Elizabeth I. The daughter of María de Salinas, lady in waiting to Katherine of Aragon, she was the close friend and confidante of Kathryn Parr. [Bridgeman Images] 
issue 11 May 2024

  • The Waiting Game: The Untold Story of the Women Who Served the Tudor Queens

    Nicola Clark

    Weidenfeld & Nicolson, pp. 336, £22

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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