Jocasta Culpeper

Joyce Culpeper
Oxon Hoath, enlarged from the original manor house built by the Culpeper family
Died	c. 1528
Spouse(s)	Ralph Leigh Lord Edmund Howard
Issue Sir John Leigh Ralph Leigh Isabel Leigh Joyce Leigh Margaret Leigh Henry Howard Sir Charles Howard Sir George Howard Margaret Howard Catherine, Queen of England Mary Howard
Father	Sir Richard Culpeper
Mother	Isabel Worsley

Jocasta "Joyce" Culpeper, of Oxon Hoath (c 1480 – c 1528) was the mother of Catherine Howard, the fifth wife and Queen Consort of King Henry VIII.

Joyce Culpeper, born about 1480, was the daughter of Sir Richard Culpeper (d. 4 October 1484) and his second wife, Isabel Worsley (born c. 1460 – 18 April 1527), the daughter of Otewell Worsley of Southwark, Surrey, by Rose Trevor.

Joyce Culpeper had a brother, Thomas Culpeper (1484 – 7 October 1492), and a younger sister, Margaret. Joyce and Margaret were co-heirs to their brother, Thomas Culpeper, in 1492. It has been erroneously stated that Joyce Culpeper had another sister, Elizabeth, who married Joyce's eldest son, Sir John Leigh (1520–1564). However, only Joyce and Margaret are named as co-heirs to their brother, Thomas, in the inquisition post mortem taken after his death, and it seems clear that Margaret was Joyce Culpeper's only sister by her mother's marriage to Sir Richard Culpeper. Margaret married firstly, Richard Welbeck, esquire, by whom she had a son, John Welbeck. After Richard Welbeck's death, Margaret Culpeper married William Cotton, esquire.

After the death of Sir Richard Culpeper, Joyce's mother, Isabel, married Sir John Leigh (d. 17 August 1523) of Stockwell (in Lambeth) and Levehurst, Surrey, the elder son of Ralph Leigh, esquire, and Elizabeth Langley, the daughter of Henry Langley, by whom she is said to have had a son, John Leigh, and a daughter, Joyce Leigh.

Before 1492 Joyce Culpeper married Ralph Leigh (d. 6 November 1509), esquire, the younger brother of her stepfather, Sir John Leigh (d. 17 August 1523). Ralph Leigh was Treasurer of the Inner Temple in 1505-6, at which time he shared a chamber with his elder brother, Sir John Leigh. By Ralph Leigh, Joyce Culpeper had two sons and three daughters:

Ralph Leigh died 6 November 1509, and Joyce Culpeper married Lord Edmund Howard, and by him had three sons and three daughters:

Joyce Culpeper was living in 1527. She is thought to have died about 1528.

After Joyce Culpeper's death, Lord Edmund Howard married secondly, Dorothy Troyes, daughter of Thomas Troyes of Hampshire, and widow of Sir William Uvedale (d.1529), and thirdly, before 12 July 1537, Margaret Munday, daughter of Sir John Munday, Lord Mayor of London, and widow of Nicholas Jennings, but had no issue by either marriage.