he shocking
admissions which they had extracted from the persons examined. Up to that
time Henry had been gay, and had thought little of the affair, but now,
when he heard the statements presented to him, he was overcome with grief:
"his heart was pierced with pensiveness," we are told, "so that it was
long before he could utter his sorrow, and finally with copious tears,
which was strange in his courage, opened the same." The next day, Sunday,
he met Norfolk and the Lord Chancellor secretly in the fields, and then
with the closest privacy took boat to London without bidding farewell to
Katharine, leaving in the hands of his Council the unravelling of the
disgraceful business.

The story, pieced together from the many different depositions,[216] and
divested of its repetitions and grossness of phraseology, may be
summarised as follows. Katharine, whose mother had died early, had grown
up uncared for in the house of her grandmother at Horsham in Norfolk, and
later at Lambeth; apparently living her life in common with the
women-servants. Whilst she was yet quite a child, certainly not more than
thirteen, probably younger, Henry Mannock, one of the Duchess's musicians,
had taught her to play the virginals; and, as he himself professed, had
fallen in love with her. The age was a licentious one; and the maids,
probably to disguise their own amours, appear to have taken a sport in
promoting immoral liberties between the orphan girl and the musician,
carrying backwards and forwards between the ill-matched pair tokens and
messages, and facilitating secret meetings at untimely hours: and Mannock
deposed unblushingly to have corrupted the girl systematically and
shamefully, though not criminally. On one occasion the old Duchess found
this scamp hugging her granddaughter, and in great anger she beat the
girl, upbraided the musician, and forbade such meetings for the future.
Mary Hall, who first gave the information, represents herself as having
remonstrated indignantly with Mannock for his presumption in pledging his
troth, as one of the other women told her he had, with Katharine. He
replied impudently that all he wanted of the girl was to seduce her, and
he had no doubt he should succeed in doing so, seeing the liberties she
had already permitted him to take with her. Mary Hall said that she had
warned him that the Howards would kill or ruin him if he did not take
care. Katharine, according to Mary Hall's tale, when told of Manno