Francis Dereham hanged, drawn and quartered. Culpeper also died at Tyburn, but as he had been favoured by the King before his affair with Catherine, his sentence was commuted to beheading. Catherine and Lady Rochford were beheaded at the Tower of London on 13 February 1542. The Dowager Duchess was eventually released. Francis Dereham Francis Dereham (c. 1513 – executed ) was a Tudor courtier whose involvement with Henry VIII's fifth Queen, Catherine Howard, in her youth, was a principal cause of the Queen's execution. Francis Dereham was the son of John (Thomas) Derham, of Crimplesham in Norfolk, and Isabell, the daughter
Catherine Howard with Henry's favourite male courtier, Thomas Culpeper, a young man who "had succeeded [him] in the Queen's affections", according to Dereham's later testimony. Culpeper called Catherine "my little, sweet fool" in a love letter; she considered marrying him during her time as a maid-of-honour to Anne of Cleves. The couple's meetings were arranged by one of Catherine's older ladies-in-waiting, Jane Boleyn, Viscountess Rochford (Lady Rochford), the widow of Catherine's executed cousin, George Boleyn, Anne Boleyn's brother. During the autumn Northern Progress, a crisis began to loom over Catherine's conduct. People who had witnessed her earlier indiscretions while still a ward