‘Virtue to use;
Vice to refuse
I shall use me …’
Just over a year after Catherine’s execution, to many people’s surprise, Henry married for a sixth time. On 12 July 1543 the king wed Katheryn Parr* with only seventeen people present. The only fitting end to the matrimonial career of England’s most-married king was for him to make Katheryn the nation’s most-married queen. She had been married twice before and would go on to marry for a fourth time after his death. Katheryn had all the skills needed to be queen to the ailing English king – but she would be in danger every day of their marriage.
At the end of 1542, Katheryn and her elderly husband, Lord Latimer, had based themselves in London, where he appeared to be slowly dying. Katheryn nursed him until the end, and visited court often, but did not have an official position there. Her uncle, brother and sister – all of whom she was close to – served the king and queen, and during this time she would have had the opportunity to see Henry. After her husband’s death, Katheryn became the lady-in-waiting of Henry’s daughter, Mary; they knew each other from childhood as their mothers had been close friends. Soon there were reports that the king had begun to visit Mary more often.
Unlike ladies in the past, Henry’s final wife did not have to help overthrow her predecessor to get the position of queen; Henry made it very clear from the beginning that she had been selected not merely for the role of mistress, but for advancement to the throne. We have records of Henry sending gifts to Katheryn from 16 February 1543 – a fortnight before her husband died. He had not married one of the seductive maids of honour who had attracted him the year before, and no doubt there were others during 1542 and 1543. It was now a year, almost to the day, since Catherine Howard had been executed, and Henry was ready for a new wife – but he did not want to repeat the mistakes of the past.
It was, for Katheryn, a case of being in the wrong place at the wrong time. Henry had now recovered from his last wife’s betrayal and the idea of another Queen Katheryn did not disconcert him; it was after all an age where nearly every lady at court was named Anne, Elizabeth, Katherine or Mary. Henry had also, again, chosen the antithesis of his last love. Mistress Parr was sensible and serious where Mistress Howard had been flirty and fickle; Katheryn was someone with whom Henry could enjoy entertainments and dancing, or discuss academic and religious issues. She was not a woman who would recklessly take a lover while married to the king. She seemed the perfect choice.
But not so in Katheryn’s eyes. Having done more than her duty in marrying twice for her family, and having just finished nursing a very ill old man, she felt that she deserved some happiness. Katheryn seems to have fallen for the very charming Sir Thomas Seymour. Her feelings were clearly reciprocated; although Lady Latimer was a widow of some means, the uncle of the future king was a man who could aim for a better match. Seymour had to stop courting her the minute Henry made his intentions clear, but Katheryn’s feelings for Seymour do not seem to have completely disappeared.
Henry had been six foot two inches tall with a thirty-five-inch waist around the time of his affair with Bessie Blount.1 By now, he had a fifty-seven-inch chest and fifty-four-inch waist. Katheryn is said to have remarked ‘Better to be his mistress than his wife’.2 This was very different to Anne Boleyn’s attitude that ‘your wife I cannot be, your mistress I shall not be’, but then Katheryn had learnt lessons from the examples of Anne and her three successors and this showed clearly in her marriage. Katheryn was also no longer in her prime. At thirty-one she was considered to be at the end of her childbearing years. She had also been married twice without having a child; it was therefore widely assumed that she was infertile – but Henry had not got a woman pregnant since 1537, six years earlier.
Katheryn may have been horrified at the thought of marrying Henry, but there was one woman who allegedly did desire it. He
heard in a good quarter that the said lady [Anne of Cleves] would like to be in her shirt (so to speak) with her mother, having especially taken great grief and despair at the King’s espousal of this last wife, who is not nearly so beautiful as she, besides that there is no hope of issue, seeing that she had none with her two former husbands.3
Anne may not have seen the attraction, but Katheryn’s appearance was obviously far more to Henry’s taste than hers had been. She was around five foot two inches or so tall, with curly red hair.4 She even took regular baths, unlike Anne of Cleves. It was Katheryn’s personality that drew the compliments; we do not have one compliment on record for her looks.
Anne of Cleves seems not to have given up hope of re-marrying Henry and being reinstated as Queen of England. Even after Henry’s death, Anne petitioned Queen Mary for acknowledgement of her position as dowager queen. Katheryn Parr, who had held this title, was then dead, but to be given this name – and the pensions and position that would come with it – would be declaring Anne’s marriage to Henry had been valid after all. The Council fobbed her off, claiming that they were too busy to discuss it. Anne died on 16 July 1557, probably of cancer and was buried at Westminster Abbey.
Henry does not seem to have noticed, or cared, that Katheryn was less than swooning at the idea of marrying this grumpy old man. Perhaps he mistakenly thought he was more attractive than he was – perhaps he simply did not see her feelings as relevant. It is unlikely that he was passionately in love with her although he did find her attractive. She was nothing like Catherine Howard, who had oozed sexuality, but she was charming, intelligent and trustworthy – and as time went on, he would have appreciated her good company and nursing skills. The reports from their early marriage show a couple who complemented one another well, but whose relationship was founded on respect and friendship, not passion.
Within a month of Lord Latimer’s death, Katheryn’s family were reaping the benefits of Henry’s interest. Her brother, William Parr, and soon afterwards her brother-in-law, William Herbert, were showered with favours. The Boleyns and the Howards had benefited in the short term from Henry marrying into their family, and the Seymours were firmly established as the relatives of the Prince of Wales; the Parrs would have coveted this. The family pressure on Katheryn to encourage Henry’s advances would have been very strong.
Although Henry VIII inherited a solvent estate, his father had damaged the fortunes of many noble families to make this possible. One of the victims of Henry VII’s economic policies had been the Parr family. They owed nearly £9,000 to the king by the time he died because they had been asked to pay for the privileges they had enjoyed free of charge for generations. Their family estates, including Kendal Castle in Westmoreland, could not pay off the crippling debt, as it only earned them around £150 per year.5 Katheryn’s family were unable to arrange glittering marriages for all three of the children. Maud Parr had had to call in every favour she could to secure the highly eligible Lady Anne Bourchier for her son, and it seemed at the time that her two daughters, Katheryn, future queen, and Anne, future countess, could expect to struggle to marry at all. In the end, because Katheryn appealed to the king, no dowry was necessary.
Katheryn did her duty and married the now old and very irritable King Henry. They wed at Hampton Court four months after her second husband’s death, with a select few people present. These included two of the king’s previous brothers-in-law, Edward Seymour, brother of the late Queen Jane, and Edward Baynton, brother-in-law of Catherine Howard; as well as Thomas Cranmer, a close family friend of the Boleyns, and Sir Anthony Browne, whose sister and niece were rumoured to have been mistresses of Henry’s. It also included at least one woman who would attract his attention later in the reign.
The new queen showed herself to be a deeply religious woman who loved learning, but she was also energetic and enjoyed dancing and fashion. She had a temper – she once wrote of her brother-in-law: ‘It was fortunate we were so much distant for I suppose else I should have bitten him.’6 She was affectionate towards the rest of her family and fiercely loyal. But while she was married to Henry, she had to be very, very careful that the more forceful parts of her personality were kept under wraps. She may not have been constantly at court during his other marriages, but she was well aware of the danger she was now in.
Katheryn was thirty-one, unostentatiously attractive and a popular choice with ambassadors, commoners and courtiers alike. She was well-liked by her three stepchildren, who seem to have felt secure with her. Under the reign of Anne Boleyn, Princess Mary had been treated badly. Jane Seymour had been kind to Mary, but her marriage had stripped Elizabeth of her status. Anne of Cleves had only reigned for a few short months and Catherine Howard had been at loggerheads with Mary, while seeing little of Elizabeth. Katheryn Parr finally united all of Henry’s children, and helped make the Tudors a family for the very first time, living up to her motto, to be ‘useful in all I do’.
Katheryn ensured that Elizabeth was treated well and was influential in securing the young girl, by now ten years old, a first-class education, which helped prepare her for running the country. Katheryn is thought to have appointed the renowned scholar John Cheke as principal tutor to Prince Edward. Cheke was a Protestant and is widely thought to have influenced Edward to adopt the ‘new ways’. It is clear that all three stepchildren greatly loved and respected Queen Katheryn. For the first time, Henry had chosen a woman with experience of marriage, running a household and stepchildren.
Anne and Mary Boleyn, Mary Shelton and Katheryn Parr, all benefited from a far greater education than women of the generation before them. In the cases of Anne and Katheryn, the king was probably attracted to them because they were cultured and clever. Katheryn Parr spoke English, Latin, French and Italian, and had books in all these languages; she also began to learn Spanish in 1546. Her group of friends, including women Henry was linked to such as Katherine Willoughby and Mary Howard, spent much of their time in theological discussions and study, not just in doing the intricate embroidery that had been the main pastime during the reigns of previous queens. This gave the women, with their understanding of religion and politics, more scope to influence the king, if they knew how to persuade him that it had been his idea all along.
Katheryn’s sister, Anne Parr, had worked in the household of all Henry’s queens and so would have been a valuable chief lady-in-waiting. She had seen the terrible effect Henry’s cruel treatment had had on Katherine of Aragon; his flaunting of Anne Boleyn before the court and then his brutal disposal of her; his search for a fourth wife before Jane Seymour was cold in the ground. She had also witnessed his distasteful treatment of Anne of Cleves and had served Catherine Howard in the palaces and in the Tower while she was awaiting execution. Anne may have advised Katheryn on the mistakes of Henry’s first five wives – certainly Katheryn, of all his queens, demonstrated an excellent understanding of how to handle her husband.
Both Katheryn’s parents, the charming Thomas Parr and his wife, the independent and extremely capable Maud Parr, had been at court during the celebratory beginning to Bluff King Hal’s reign. Maud could easily be called a ‘modern woman’. Unusually for the sixteenth century, she appears to have been close to her children. As her mother spent much of her time at court, Katheryn may have been there as a child and so met Henry. She is thought to have shared some of her early education with Princess Mary, although much of Katheryn’s learning was developed as an adult and it is unlikely she had a first-rate education.
Maud has impressed historians, not just for the way she gave her daughters as fine an education as she gave her son, but for her independence. She managed her estates efficiently and chose to remain a widow although she was still an attractive young woman when her husband died. Maud was chosen to be a lady-in-waiting to Katherine of Aragon and became close to her. Although she was seven years younger than the queen, she nevertheless would have been a woman deserving of her friendship and respect. Outgoing, strong-willed and committed scholars, they would have had much in common. It is also likely that, as queen, Katherine of Aragon would have been the godmother to her lady-in-waiting’s first surviving child, who was born in 1512. It was usual to name children after one of the godparents. It is likely that the first of Henry’s Queen Katherines was the godmother to his last Queen Katherine.7
Her first marriage was to Edward Borough when she was only fifteen. They lived in Lincolnshire, which Henry referred to as ‘one of the most brute and beastly [shires] of the whole realm’.8 Their marriage lasted four years, until his death in 1533. She secured a significant inheritance after the death of her husband and so had been in a position to negotiate a good second marriage. When Katheryn decided to marry again, she had no parents alive to help her and seems not to have needed the assistance of her substitute father, her uncle Sir William Parr of Horton. A few months after Borough’s death, Katheryn married Lord Latimer of Snape, Yorkshire, a kinsman of hers. This was a step up – she was now Lady Latimer and only one of her female relatives and ancestors had managed to get herself a title; Katheryn had now already married slightly above her station.
During the Pilgrimage of Grace in 1536, Lord Latimer had showed himself to have none of the strength of mind his wife possessed. Virtually kidnapped by the rebels who were gathering numbers in the north of England in protest at the dissolution of the monasteries, Latimer became a spokesman for the malcontents who were marching against the king’s ‘evil advisers’ who had caused him to break with Rome. His level of involvement is debated – whether he led the rebels as a frightened figurehead or out of a genuine commitment. He certainly agreed with the complaints of the common people who were showing no sign of disbanding quietly; but he did not want to risk everything he had by joining the protest. Katheryn’s ex-father-in-law, Lord Borough, had also been kidnapped by the marchers, but he had managed to escape – the king was very suspicious as to why Lord Latimer had not done the same. Latimer was known to be a conservative, and so was now at grave risk of execution for treason, and of having all his property confiscated.
The rebels sent Lord Latimer to Henry as their figurehead; he was to pass on their demands. When he arrived, he threw himself on the king’s mercy and condemned the rebels, declaring that he had been too in fear of his life to denounce them earlier. When the rebels heard of Latimer’s defection, they kidnapped Katheryn and her stepchildren. Their house was burgled, and they were held hostage – Latimer had to return to Yorkshire and sweet-talk the rebels into leaving his family home.
Latimer’s involvement in the Pilgrimage of Grace left Katheryn unsure of the roof over her head and in fear for her and her stepchildren’s lives. If he was judged a traitor, all his belongings would be forfeited to the crown; Katheryn would be reduced to relying on her family’s charity. Two of Latimer’s brothers were declared traitors and executed, as were several of his friends and kinsmen. Katheryn was lucky that her brother and uncle, as northern lords, were trusted by the king to march against the ‘pilgrims’ with the duke of Norfolk. It was Norfolk who was charged with providing evidence of treason against Katheryn’s husband. Despite Cromwell saying that the king expected, and so wanted, Lord Latimer to be found guilty,9 Norfolk insisted he saw no evidence – in fact the evidence was very similar to that against his condemned brothers.
Although the widow of a suspected rebel, Katheryn does not seem to have had her own reputation damaged. The king, as with each of his wives except Anne of Cleves, was eager to give Katheryn all she wanted and was clearly very fond of her. However, he was not a man to be depended upon. It was also a dangerous time for those who had been close to Katheryn previously. It is likely that if Thomas Seymour had not kept himself away from court, then rumours would have abounded that Katheryn had been as adulterous as the last Queen Catherine. By sixteenth-century standards, Katheryn, the author of bestselling books and a woman who acted as if she was equal to men, was clearly unable to control her own behaviour and was guilty of upsetting God’s ordained social order. Seymour had wisely spent much of Katheryn’s reign abroad. While she was queen, no hint of such scandal was made, but as soon as Henry died, this changed.
Henry is widely perceived to have been almost infertile, yet his wives and lovers conceived many times. He had at least two sons and two daughters who survived to adulthood, a perfectly respectable tally for a sixteenth-century man. Many people had large families but many also did not; Henry was not seen by his contemporaries as anything more than unlucky. The only reason people expected more of Henry was because he had had so many different partners – and three out of his six wives never conceived by him at all.
If Henry was fertile but unlucky up until then, he seems to have been infertile by the time he married his next lover, Catherine Howard. Her previous sexual experience, with at least one man, had not resulted in pregnancy, but during her relationship with Dereham she had boasted to her friends that she knew how to prevent a pregnancy. It is extremely doubtful, however, that she would have wished to prevent conceiving the future King of England. Henry, also, was forty-seven years old by the time of his fifth marriage and would be unlikely to be as fertile as in his youth.
It is likely then that by the 1540s Henry was infertile. There was never so much as a rumour that Queen Katheryn was with child and there were no high expectations of the new queen bearing a duke of York. Catherine Howard had married Henry when he was forty-seven and she was a teenager; she did not conceive, but then, as we know, she had not from her earlier relationship either. Katheryn Parr had not conceived by her first two husbands and was thirty-one when she married Henry, yet she did conceive after his death, aged thirty-six and soon into her fourth marriage.
There were still banquets and dancing, but Katheryn created a social life for Henry that suited the ageing monarch – conversation and music with her trustworthy friends in her own apartments. History showed she must watch her ladies-in-waiting like a hawk, to see if one would become the figurehead of a faction to have her overthrown. Katheryn, for all her abilities, and with Henry now aged fifty-two and not so quick to run after the latest pretty girl at court, still needed to keep an eye out for predators. Katheryn’s ladies wore black, conservative outfits which were probably designed to present a virtuous exterior and not to attract attention. A letter from Henry to Katheryn in 1544 shows that she had asked his approval to appoint new ladies-in-waiting, to replace some women who were ill. Henry felt that the women Katheryn had chosen were too old and dowdy but accepted that it was her decision.
Her friends included her sister-in-law, the beautiful Elisabeth Brooke (not to be confused with her aunt, Elizabeth Brooke, the wife of Sir Thomas Wyatt who attracted Henry in 1542), and other attractive women such as Joan Champernowne. Joan, although married, was renowned for her beauty and brains, which Henry must have noticed. He was linked to two of Katheryn’s other friends during their marriage: Katherine Willoughby, duchess of Suffolk, and Mary Howard, duchess of Richmond and Somerset. These women had all the qualities to entrance Henry if they put their mind to it. They would also have had a powerful support network behind them. But they were loyal to Katheryn and it is them she surrounded the king with.
Katheryn played the role of consort well, but slowly Katheryn Parr began to make enemies at court. One reason for this was her increasingly obvious heretical views; many conservatives were concerned that a woman suspected of Lutheran leanings had such influence over the king, the Prince of Wales and both princesses; all four royals clearly loved her and respected her opinion. She was not the traditional idea of a Christian wife and mother; she wrote books, she studied, she rejected the traditional feminine pastime of embroidery. The increasing opinion among the conservatives was that the queen was a shrew – and if she was capable of going against what a woman should be to this extent, then what else was she capable of?
Katheryn was given many reminders that her position was vulnerable. In 1545 Henry commissioned portraits to depict the mighty Tudor dynasty. He had three healthy children, and a loyal wife. The dynasty looked more secure. One painting showed King Henry, the queen, and his parents, Henry VII and Elizabeth of York. Another showed Henry and the queen with Edward, painted as if the three of them were the Holy Family, with Mary and Elizabeth on the edges of the portrait; their mothers did not feature. But the queen by Henry VIII’s side in these pictures was not his dedicated wife of two years, Katheryn Parr; it was a woman who had died eight years earlier – Jane Seymour.
Henry later referred to Jane as his ‘true wife’, ‘entirely beloved’, and with the passing of the years she was put onto a higher and higher pedestal in Henry’s mind. Katheryn was not considered part of the Tudor dynasty, as she had not given him a son. Henry blamed his wives, as was the belief then, for his lack of offspring – therefore Jane’s memory was elevated higher and higher after her death as she was the only successful one – and as God decided who would have children, she was the only union which God had approved of – giving birth to girls did not count. And Katheryn Parr had not even given him that. Within a few months, rumours spread throughout Europe that Henry had fallen in love with one of Katheryn’s ladies-in-waiting.
1. McNalty, Henry VIII: A Difficult Patient, p.167
2. Cit. James, Kateryn Parr, p.114
3. L&P, XVIII, pt. I, no.954; L&P, XX, pt. I, no.65; Chapuys to Charles V, 27th July 1543
4. Reverend Treadway Nash, ‘Observations on the Time of Death and Place of Burial of Queen Katharine Parr’, Archaelogica, IX (1789); James, Kateryn Parr, p.444
5. James, Kateryn Parr, p.11
6. Katheryn to her husband, Thomas Seymour, about her brother-in-law, the duke of Somerset; cit. Martienssen, p.232
7. James, Kateryn Parr, p.71
8. Cit. James, Kateryn Parr, p.76
9. L&P, XII, pt. II, no.14
* I have chosen to use this spelling of her name because she always wrote it herself as ‘Kateryn’ or ‘Katheryn’. I also wish to limit any confusion with the many other Katherines to be mentioned here – Queen Katherine of Aragon, Queen Catherine Howard, Catherine Carey and Katherine Willoughby – I have varied these spellings only to differentiate between these women.