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,
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,