Thomas Culpeper

Thomas Culpeper was a gentleman of Henry VIII's privy chamber, met Catherine Howard privately during the royal progress of 1541, and was beheaded for it. He came from a Kentish gentry family with several men of the same name in it, which has made the record confusing; the man executed was a favourite of the king, close enough to help dress the ulcerated royal leg, and had been given grants of land and offices. He had also, according to a pardon granted in 1539 and reported by the imperial ambassador Chapuys, been involved in the rape of a park-keeper's wife and the killing of a villager who tried to intervene - an episode disputed by some historians as possibly belonging to a relative, but which if true makes the later sympathy for him hard to sustain. Catherine had known him before her marriage and there had been talk of a match. During the progress north in 1541 they met at night in several houses, with Jane Boleyn, Lady Rochford, keeping watch and arranging it; a letter in Catherine's hand survives calling him her little sweet fool and saying she was longing for him. Both denied that adultery had taken place, and both admitted intending it, which was sufficient. He was tried with Francis Dereham in December 1541, and both were condemned to be hanged, drawn and quartered; Culpeper's sentence was commuted to beheading, Dereham's was not. Their heads were set on London Bridge. He was buried at St Sepulchre without Newgate. His family had supplied several courtiers and the confusion between them is unresolved. Catherine was executed nine weeks after him.

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