Charlie Fenton’s Reviews > Gender, Family, and Politics: The Howard Women, 1485-1558 > Status Update

‘why she, of all people, would encourage another queen of England to actually do what her own sister-in-law had lost her life for allegedly doing. The common speculation that there was no love lost between Jane and the Howards has no factual basis, and in any case it made little sense for Jane to seek to bring them down in this way, since she could not have hoped to keep her own role hidden.’

‘Nevertheless one has to wonder whether the King’s annulment created an atmosphere in which ‘divorce’ of one kind or another was seen as more viable than previously. Surely Norfolk would not have asked Elizabeth to divorce had he not had the example of the King in front of him; surely Elizabeth might have been more amenable if she had not seen the Queen’s demise’

‘One could only obtain a separation from bed and board by pleading cruelty, adultery, or heresy. Pleas of heresy were rare, and in any case hardly worth attempting in the troubled atmosphere of the 1530s. Pleas of adultery were almost exclusively made by men against women, and pleas of cruelty by women against men. For both, proof was required’

‘she [Mary] never did remarry, despite him once again attempting the alliance with Thomas Seymour in 1546. Norfolk’s position of paterfamilias was ignored and even jeopardised by his own daughter, whom he could not control, and who exhibited a strong tendency to act independently, counter to what he perceived as the dynasty’s interests and counter to his own authority.‘

‘The immediate dispute, Chapuys tells us, was resolved by the Queen in favour of the dowager Duchess. The offence taken by Elizabeth, the junior Duchess, and her husband the Duke, had annoyed the Queen, as well it might, and Chapuys feared that she would not now be keen to see Norfolk’s son marry her daughter, Princess Mary. A seemingly minor fracas may therefore have cost the Howards a royal marriage.‘