Bill of attainder Earl of Gloucester. They were both attainted for supporting King Edward II during his struggle with the queen and barons. In England, those executed subject to attainders include George Plantagenet, Duke of Clarence (1478); Thomas Cromwell (1540); Margaret Pole, Countess of Salisbury (1540); Catherine Howard (1542); Baron Thomas Seymour (1549); Duke Thomas Howard of Norfolk (1572); Earl Thomas Wentworth of Strafford (1641); Archbishop William Laud of Canterbury (1645); and the Duke James Scott of Monmouth. In the case of Catherine Howard, in 1541 King Henry VIII was the first monarch to delegate Royal Assent, to avoid having to assent personally
Catherine Howard "jewel of womanhood". He received there a warrant of the queen's arrest that described her crimes. On 7 November 1541, Archbishop Cranmer led a delegation of councillors to Winchester Palace, Southwark, to question her. Even the staunch Cranmer found Catherine's frantic, incoherent state pitiable, saying, "I found her in such lamentation and heaviness as I never saw no creature, so that it would have pitied any man's heart to have looked upon her." He ordered the guards to remove any objects that she might use to commit suicide. Establishing the existence of a precontract between Catherine and Dereham would have