Catherine Brandon, Duchess of Suffolk in 1539 to marry the King, and in 1541 they helped arrange a royal progress for the King and his next wife, Catherine Howard. This progress later became notorious for the Queen's adulterous trysts with her kinsman, Thomas Culpeper, though the Duke and Duchess's home at Grimsthorpe Castle was "one of the very few places on the route ... where Catherine Howard had not misbehaved herself". Noted for her wit, sharp tongue, and devotion to learning, by the last years of Henry VIII's reign the Duchess of Suffolk was also an outspoken advocate of the English Reformation. She became a
Catherine Howard miniatures only exist for queens at this period. There are no other plausible likenesses of her to compare to. Both versions have long been documented as of Catherine Howard, since 1736 for the Buccleuch version and 1739 (or at least the 1840s) for the Windsor version. A Holbein sketch (above) is also traditionally identified as being of Catherine Howard, but this is widely disputed. The contemporary Hans Holbein the Younger portrait of a woman in black (Toledo Museum of Art), was identified by Sir Lionel Cust in 1909 as Catherine Two copies of Holbein's original are extant: one at Hever