Catherine Howard her mother already had five children from her first husband, Ralph Leigh ( – 1509); she went on to have another six with Catherine's father, Catherine being about her mother's tenth child. With little to sustain the family, her father was often reduced to begging for handouts from his more affluent relatives. After Catherine's mother died in 1528, her father married twice more. In 1531 he was appointed Controller of Calais. He was dismissed from his post in 1539, and died in March 1539. Catherine was the third of Henry VIII's wives to have been a member of the English
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