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
Lord Edmund Howard years of ineffectual service, where he achieved very little, and earned even less. Howard died on 19 March 1539, a year before his daughter, Catherine Howard, became queen of England. His widow, Margaret, was among the ladies appointed to serve her stepdaughter when her household was formed in August 1540. Margaret later married Henry Manock. Although Steinman conjectured that Margaret Mundy's third husband was the Henry Manox, who had been music master to Catherine Howard in her youth, and had been involved in sexual indiscretions with her which later contributed to her downfall, Bindoff established that Margaret Mundy's third husband,