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,
Jane Howard, Countess of Westmorland Baron Berkeley, and Margaret Howard, who married Henry Scrope, 9th Baron Scrope of Bolton. Jane Howard's youngest sister, Margaret, was born after their father's execution. Jane Howard's father, the Earl of Surrey, was tried and convicted of treason at the Guildhall on 13 January 1547, and beheaded on Tower Hill on 19 January 1547. In 1548 his children were placed in the care of their aunt, Mary FitzRoy, who appointed the martyrologist, John Foxe, as their tutor. About 1563/4 Jane Howard married Charles Neville, 6th Earl of Westmorland, who had succeeded to the earldom after his father's death on 10