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.

Dereham appears in Alison Weir’s Katheryn Howard, The Tainted Queen and Philippa Gregory’s The Boleyn Inheritance. Historical novels differ over whether he was Catherine’s accepted lover, an abusive pursuer or a reckless young man convinced that earlier intimacy gave him continuing claims. The uncertainty matters because Tudor investigators shaped testimony to establish a case threatening both the queen and the wider Howard family.

Alison Weir’s The Wicked Wife is set in the Wicked Wife is an e-short and companion piece to Katheryn Howard: The Tainted Queen. The captivating fifth novel in the Six Tudor Queens series by bestselling historian Alison Weir.1525.

In non-fiction, Francis Dereham is discussed in Gareth Russell’s Young and Damned and Fair. In Gareth Russell’s Young and Damned and Fair, Russell examines the social world of noble dependants, servants and young women in which Catherine’s relationships with Henry Manox and Francis Dereham developed before she became maid of honour to Anne of Cleves.