00:00In 1540, inside the magnificent Hampton Court Palace, England's most powerful man became
00:06obsessed with a teenage girl. I am falling in love with her. She is my queen, Queen of England.
00:13Queen of England. Henry VIII was 49. He was severely overweight, increasingly suspicious
00:20of everyone around him, and suffering from a painful leg wound that refused to heal.
00:25For marriages had already ended in divorce, execution, death, or annulment. And now there
00:32was Catherine Howard. She was only 17. Henry called her his rose without a thorn. But the king knew
00:40nothing about the life Catherine had lived before becoming queen. She had grown up in a crowded
00:45household under the care of her step-grandmother, with little supervision. Before she reached the
00:51royal court, Catherine had already experienced relationships that would later become dangerous
00:57secrets. A music teacher had behaved inappropriately toward her. She had been involved with a young
01:03man named Francis Durham, who privately claimed she was his wife. And then there was Thomas Culpepper.
01:10He was young, handsome, and one of Henry's trusted courtiers. By the spring of 1541, only months into
01:19Catherine's marriage to the king, she and Culpepper were secretly meeting. Late at night, behind locked
01:25doors, inside private royal chambers. And wherever the court traveled, they found opportunities to be
01:33alone. Catherine even wrote Culpepper a letter that survives today. In it, she expressed how deeply she
01:40missed being with him and signed it as his for life. She never kept a copy, but that letter would
01:46eventually fall into the wrong hands. On November 1st, 1541, while Henry was praying in the chapel royal
01:54at Hampton Court, an envelope was quietly placed beside him. The king opened it. He read, and according
02:01to contemporary accounts, he left the chapel without causing a scene. Then he ordered the palace sealed.
02:08Catherine was confined to her rooms. Within days, the men connected to her past were arrested.
02:14Francis Durham was taken into custody. Culpepper was arrested. Even Catherine's former music
02:22instructor was investigated. Interrogations followed, and confessions were obtained. But one story from
02:30those terrifying first hours has survived for nearly five centuries. According to the legend, Catherine
02:36heard that Henry was at prayer in the chapel and broke away from her guards. Barefoot and still wearing
02:42her nightclothes, she supposedly ran through the corridors of Hampton Court, desperately calling
02:48for the king. She wanted to reach Henry before he heard the accusations and decided her fate. She
02:55reportedly made it as far as the long gallery outside the chapel. There, guards caught her and dragged her
03:01back. The gallery still exists today, and visitors have long repeated the eerie legend that Catherine's
03:08cries can still be heard there. She would never see Henry again. Catherine was eventually taken from
03:15Hampton Court to the Tower of London. She was only 18. During the freezing winter of 1541 to 1542,
03:23she remained imprisoned while preparations for her execution continued. The night before she died,
03:30Catherine reportedly made one final request. She asked for the execution block to be brought into her cell.
03:37She wanted to practice placing her head upon it, so that when the moment came, she would not lose her
03:43composure. The block was brought to her. She practiced alone. The next morning, Catherine walked onto Tower
03:51Green and placed her head exactly as she had rehearsed. The axe fell once. She was dead. Her body was
03:58wrapped
03:59in black cloth and taken to a small chapel near the place of her execution. She was buried beneath its
04:05floor beside another woman from the same royal family. And that is where the story becomes haunting.
04:12Only six years earlier, another young wife of Henry VIII had been executed for accusations of adultery and
04:19treason. Her name was Anne Bullen, two queens, two wives of the same king, both executed while still very
04:27young. And centuries later, Catherine Howard and Anne Bullen still lie beneath the floor of the same chapel
04:33castle at the Tower of London.
