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,
Thomas Wriothesley, 1st Earl of Southampton expansion of the Pensioners from 50 to 350 members was an expansion that signalled the resurgence of the conservative noble faction at court during the 1540s. Queen Catherine Howard's conviction and execution for adultery signalled that the political pendulum was swinging away from Norfolk once more. On 13 November 1542, Secretary Wriothesley was sent to announce the bad news to members of the Queen's Household at Hampton Court; all her chamber were dismissed and sent home. In 1542 it was said that Wriothesley governed almost everything in England. He sought to bring about an alliance between England and Spain in