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Interesting thought!  It's true Henry was virtually under lock & key, not even allowed to go out in public until his father died.  If he did have any experience of women at all before he married Catherine, it was probably very limited.

I have always understood that Henry's only achnowledged  bastard was Henry Fitzroy.  Alison Weir's book 'Britain's Royal Families' mentions a daughter (Ethelreda or Audrey) by someone called Joan Dobson or Dingley (the daughter died in 1555, but had issue).  Two other possible offsprings are mentioned with question marks (meaning it's unlikely they were Henry's) Sir Joh Perrot and Thomas Stukeley.  Weir says "It is highly unlikely that Henry VIII was the father of Thomas or Sir John Perrot."

 

Louise

Henry VIII is often portrayed as a randy old goat simply because he had six wives. But there are many Kings who had far more mistresses and illegitimate children. Although the randy old goat tag has some truth when you consider that he was 49 when he married Katherine Howard who was probably no more than 15 at the time.

Henry seems to have been a romantic in his way.  He actually expected to be in love with his wives, which few kings can have expected at that time.  Look at the fuss he made because he didn't find Anne of Cleeves desirable.  Most kings would just have shut their eyes and thought of England.

 

As for the youthfulness of Katherine Howard, I must say people seem to be very hard to please on the subject of the age of his wives.  I mean, poor Anne Boleyn is considered too old for him if she was 30 when they married, but Katherine Howard is too young at 15.  What would have been the right age for his wife to be?

 

Louise

If you think King Henry at 49 with a 15 year old bride was bad enough spare a thought for Katherine Parr who was about 14 when she married her first husband, the 63 year old Edward de Burgh, 2nd Baron Borough.

Well, many rich old men marry young girls when they get the chance, and the young girls don't exactly seem to be reluctant. Of course, young women had less freedom of choice in those days, but even so Catherine Howard probably liked the idea of being Queen, otherwise why try and keep her alliance with Francis Dereham a secret?  If she hadn't wanted to marry Henry, she need only have made that public, and I suppose ti would have scuppered her chances.

 

Louise

Oh, Louise, but think of the pressure she must have been under from her family. It's hard to believe that any 15-year-old girl would willingly marry an overweight, petulant, 49-year-old bully who had already murdered her cousin, king or no king. Her family must have been putting tremendous pressure on her to agree, and she must have known that revealing her prior alliance would bring on the wrath of her father, her mother, and probably all the adult members of the Howard clan. And at that time, of course, there were no laws against child abuse, and no court in the land would have sided with a 15-year-old girl. Did they even ask her if she wanted the marriage with Henry?

 

If we look at it in that context, the poor thing probably felt like a rat in a trap. She never stood a chance.

 

What do others here think?

 

Linda