A big thank you to Naomi for her question regarding the executions of Catherine Howard, fifth wife of Henry VIII, and Jane Boleyn, Lady Rochford.
In Showtime’s “The Tudors” series, it shows Jane Boleyn being executed first, but was that really the case?
I look at what really happened on 13th February 1542 and also look at whether Catherine really saw the heads of Francis Dereham and Thomas Culpeper on her way into the Tower, whether she practised with the block the night before her execution, and what the two women said as they addressed the crowd from the scaffold.
Book recommendation: Young and Damned and Fair by Gareth Russell, an excellent book on Catherine Howard.
