royal party enthusiastically en route to Yorkshire. The King and Queen were in good spirits when they returned to Hampton Court on All Saints' Eve, October 31, 1541. The King had never before seemed more happy and content. He continually called his wife my Thornless Rose. The next morning, at All Saints' Mass, Henry offered a prayer of thanks to God in honor of his wife Katherine, saying: "I thank you, O Lord, that after so many accidents that have happened in my past marriages, you It pleased me to give me a wife as entirely conformable to my inclinations as I have now. He intended to decree that all churches in the land offer prayers of thanks to God for his most gracious queen, the embodiment of marital virtue. Archbishop Thomas Cranmer saw the king enter Hampton Court Chapel and heard the king's prayer of mercy for the perfect wife for his old age. Cranmer, with caution and fear, handed the king a manuscript summarizing the evidence presented to him and the Privy Council that the virtue of Queen Katherine was far from desirable for a person in her position in the life. The journal indicated that the Queen may have been immodest with several men, including Thomas Culpepper, who was currently in the King's employ, as well as with Henry Manox and Francis Dereham in the Queen's current household. King Henry was stunned by the report. He didn't believe the accusations. He was sure they were malicious inventions. He ordered Cranmer to look into the matter: "You must not give up until you have gotten to the bottom of the plot." » He was sure of Katherine's innocence, but ordered that she remain in her palace apartment with only Lady Rochford present until the court of...... middle of paper ...... . It was necessary for Parliament to pass a special dispensation to allow the execution of an insane person. She was forcibly and incoherently transported to the scaffold where, kicking and screaming, after numerous blows, she was finally stabbed to death. Katherine Howard, Henry VIII's fifth wife, was the least qualified of his six wives to be Queen of England. . Her reign of a year and a half ended before she had the slightest influence on the course of events that followed. She was best equipped to be a courtesan, not a queen: in this role she might better have been England's Madame de Maintenon, Madame de Pompadour, or Madame du Berry. Unfortunately, Katherine Howard's country was England and not France. After the fall of Katherine Howard, King Henry VIII was a broken man. Yet his last five years of his life were blessed by marriage to his sixth and best queen Katherine Parr..