Ye olde gossipe: Was Anne Boleyn's uncle in love with Queen Catherine of Aragon?

Factual Questions
1

One of my presents for Christmas was an Indigo gift card (yay thank you, Mum and Dad!) so I bought myself, among other books, The Boleyn Inheritance by Philippa Gregory.

Gregory is one of my favourite authors–Wildacre was godawfully terrible and Virgin Earth created a black hole with its utter suckiness, but I loved and still love The Constant Princess and The Other Boleyn Girl. However, she has a …dubious track record with historical accuracy, so I try to enjoy the fiction without caring too much about the facts.

But one thing, in reading The Boleyn Inheritance, caught my eye on page 36:

“He [Thomas Howard, 3rd Duke of Norfolk, Anne Boleyn’s uncle] is a gruff man of few words. They say he only really loved one woman and that was Katherine of Aragon, and he watched her thrust down to poverty, neglecy and death, in order to put his own niece in her place.”

Seriously? For real?

I haven’t been able to find anything about this on the Internet–the Duke had a violently unhappy marriage with Elizabeth Stafford, mostly on account of his having an affair with her maid, but there’s no mention he felt anything for Queen Catherine of Aragon. I’ll be heading to the library tomorrow, so I can look through the sources Gregory puts at the back of her book, but…

*Seriously? *

2

I’ve read some of Philippa Gregory’s Tudor fiction. As you say, she’s happy to “massage” the facts if it makes for a better story.

I’ve never seen any other author suggest that the Duke of Norfolk was in love with Catherine of Aragon. Religiously in accordance yes, and no doubt sympathetic overall to the humilation that she was facing. But love?