Catherine Howard Lord Edmund Howard ( – 1539) and Joyce Culpeper ( – ). Her father's sister, Elizabeth Howard, was the mother of Anne Boleyn. Therefore, Catherine Howard was the first cousin of Anne Boleyn, and the first cousin once removed of Lady Elizabeth (later Queen Elizabeth I), Anne's daughter by Henry VIII. As a granddaughter of Thomas Howard, 2nd Duke of Norfolk (1443–1524), Catherine had an aristocratic pedigree. Her father was not wealthy, being a younger son among 21 children and disfavoured in the custom of primogeniture, by which the eldest son inherits all his father's estate. When Catherine's parents married,
Edmund Tylney the Scottish wars under the command of Thomas Howard, 2nd Duke of Norfolk. Norfolk's first wife was Sir Philip Tilney's cousin, Elizabeth Tilney, Countess of Surrey; after Elizabeth died in 1497, Norfolk married Sir Philip Tilney's sister, Agnes, later Dowager Duchess of Norfolk. Edmund Tilney's mother, Malyn Tilney, was implicated in the scandal leading to the downfall of the Duchess's step-granddaughter, Queen Catherine Howard, and was sentenced on 22 December 1541 to life imprisonment and loss of goods, but pardoned after the Queen's execution on 13 February 1542. Edmund Tilney's father was buried on 10 September 1541 in St. Leonard's