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,
Agnes Howard, Duchess of Norfolk of the view that there was as much reason to convict the Dowager Duchess of treason as there had been to convict Dereham. However the Council urged leniency, and she was eventually released from the Tower on 5 May 1542. Her stepson, the Duke of Norfolk, escaped punishment, but was never fully trusted again by the King. The Dowager Duchess died in May 1545, and was buried at Thetford Priory on the 31st of that month. On 31 October, as directed in her will, she was re-interred at Lambeth Church in Surrey. Agnes Howard, Duchess of Norfolk Agnes Howard (née