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Home / People / Francis Dereham

Historical person

Francis Dereham

c. 1500s–1541

Francis Dereham was a member of the Howard household who had a sexual relationship with Catherine Howard before she married Henry VIII. The couple may have exchanged words of commitment that could have constituted a precontract under church law.

After Catherine became queen, she appointed Dereham as her secretary. When her past was investigated in 1541, he was arrested, tortured and executed for treason, despite the relationship having occurred before the royal marriage. Francis Dereham died in City of Westminster.

Gareth Russell’s Young and Damned and Fair reconstructs Francis Dereham’s relationship with Catherine Howard in the Dowager Duchess of Norfolk’s household and explains why that earlier intimacy became fatal evidence once Catherine was queen. Alison Weir’s Katheryn Howard dramatises the loosely supervised household in which Dereham and Catherine become involved before her sudden elevation at Henry VIII’s court. In Weir’s The Wicked Wife, Dereham’s past with Catherine forms part of the investigation that closes around the queen while Jane Boleyn is drawn into the separate secret meetings with Thomas Culpeper.

Series

Historical novels and book series featuring Francis Dereham (1 series)

Six Tudor Queens in Order

by Alison Weir 21 books 4.2(79,643)

The Six Tudor Queens sequence retells the lives of Henry VIII’s wives through six full-length novels. Twelve companion stories shift attention to relatives, servants, artists and courtiers affected by the same events, while Six Tudor Queens: Writing a New Story explains the project’s historical method. In the Shadow…

All books in this series

Non Fiction

Non Fiction featuring Francis Dereham (1 book)

Biographies, histories and other non-fiction are listed separately from the historical novels above.