Lord Thomas Howard

1511–1537

Lord Thomas Howard was a younger son of Thomas Howard, 2nd Duke of Norfolk, and became secretly engaged or married to Margaret Douglas, a niece of Henry VIII with a strong place in the succession. The king regarded the match as a threat because it had occurred without permission and imprisoned both in the Tower. Parliament made such unauthorised marriages involving the royal family treasonable. Howard died in confinement in 1537, while Margaret eventually recovered favour.

Thomas appears in historical fiction about Margaret Douglas and Henry VIII’s succession anxieties, though no single major novel is devoted to him. His story offers a concentrated Tudor tragedy in which private affection became a matter of state security. Novelists can plausibly treat the relationship as romantic, but the surviving documents reveal more about royal fear than about the couple’s inner lives.

In Alison Weir’s The Princess of Scotland, the Princess of Scotland is an e-short and companion piece to Katheryn Howard: The Tainted Queen, the compelling fifth novel in the Six Tudor Queens series by bestselling author and historian Alison Weir.