Agnes Howard, Duchess of Norfolk Agnes Howard, Duchess of Norfolk Agnes Howard (née Tilney) (c. 1477 – May 1545) was the second wife of Thomas Howard, 2nd Duke of Norfolk. Two of King Henry VIII's Queens were her step-granddaughters, Anne Boleyn, and Catherine Howard. After her mother's death, Catherine Howard was in the Dowager Duchess's care during her youth, and as a result of the Duchess's lax guardianship, committed sexual indiscretions while in the Duchess's household which led to her execution as Queen. Agnes' brother, Sir Philip Tilney of Shelley (d.1533), was the paternal grandfather of Edmund Tilney (1535/6–1610), Master of the Revels to Queen
Catherine Howard nobility or gentry; Catherine of Aragon and Anne of Cleves were from continental Europe. Catherine was probably born in Lambeth in about 1523, but the exact date of her birth is unknown. Soon after the death of her mother (in about 1528), when Catherine was aged about five, she was sent with some of her siblings to live in the care of her father's stepmother, the Dowager Duchess of Norfolk. The Dowager Duchess presided over large households at Chesworth House in Horsham in Sussex, and at Norfolk House in Lambeth where dozens of attendants, along with her many wards—usually the