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,
Siege of Perpignan (1542) Siege of Perpignan (1542) The Siege of Perpignan took place in 1542, at Perpignan ("Spanish: Perpiñán"), between a larger French army commanded by Henry, Dauphin of France and the Spanish garrison at Perpignan. The Spaniards resisted until the arrival of the Spanish army under Don Fernando Álvarez de Toledo, Duke of Alba, causing the withdrawal of the French army. The siege was one of the costliest defeats of Francis I in the French offensive of 1542. In June, 1541, Francis I of France, allied with the United Duchies of Jülich-Cleves-Berg, the Ottoman Empire, Denmark and Sweden, made a show of