Catherine Carey Francis and Lady Knollys produced a number of offspring who survived to maturity. Of the children listed, only the last, Dudley, is known to have died in infancy: The possibility that Catherine, and perhaps her brother Henry, were illegitimate children of Henry VIII, appears in many works of fiction, including Philippa Gregory's "The Other Boleyn Girl". Catherine Carey is also a character in Gregory's "The Boleyn Inheritance", where she is sent to the royal court during the time of Queens Anne of Cleves and Catherine Howard, and in "The Virgin's Lover", where, as the mother of the seventeen-year-old Lettice Knollys,
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