Katherine Willoughby was aged around twenty-five at the time of Henry’s sixth marriage. She was the daughter of William, Lord Willoughby d’Eresby and Maria de Salinas, the woman ‘whom she [Katherine of Aragon] loves more than any other mortal’.1 Katherine Willoughby was brought up at Grimsthorpe, Lincolnshire, until William died in 1526. Her mother was a close friend of both Katherine of Aragon and Henry’s sister, Mary the French Queen. Henry had liked Maria enough to name a ship after her and Katherine had been the second mourner at Katherine of Aragon’s funeral due to the close connections between the families and Willoughby’s high rank.
Her father had been very wealthy and most of his estate was left to his only child. Katherine thus became the 12th Baroness Willoughby d’Eresby and owner of much of Lincolnshire when she was only seven years old. Her wardship automatically belonged to the king and he sold this to Charles Brandon, 1st duke of Suffolk, who initially betrothed her to his son and heir, Henry Brandon, earl of Lincoln, the nephew of Henry VIII. This would have placed her children in the line of succession.
Yet in 1533, within three months of his beloved wife’s death, Suffolk had married his young ward himself. The earl of Lincoln died soon after, according to Anne Boleyn, of a broken heart. Despite the thirty-five-year age difference, it was a successful marriage and they had two sons, Henry and Charles. Suffolk was the king’s closest friend, which is why he rose to a dukedom within five years of Henry’s accession, despite not coming from an aristocratic family. The knight’s son had gone on to marry Henry’s sister, Princess Mary. Katherine Willoughby, duchess of Suffolk, had not only been married to Henry’s brother-in-law, but was Katherine of Aragon’s goddaughter. In an age where sister-in-law meant literally that the law regarded that woman as your sister, connections between in-laws and between godparents and their godchildren were grey areas and considered semi-incestuous.
It is ironic that as Henry aged, many of the women he became attracted to were named after his first wife. It was customary for courtiers to name a daughter after the reigning queen, and therefore many women a generation younger than Henry were named Katherine. Like Katheryn Parr, Katherine Willoughby’s mother had been a close friend of Katherine of Aragon. Maria de Salinas, who had come from Spain to serve Katherine of Aragon before she married Henry, had married the English Lord Willoughby and so never returned to her homeland.
Katherine Willoughby seems to have been an independent woman; after Suffolk’s death in 1545, we have no talk of the very eligible duchess trying to arrange a new marriage for herself. Around the time of the rumours that Henry intended to marry her, she was beginning a relationship with her master of the horse, who she went on to marry.
Known for her sharp tongue, intelligence and strong religious views, Katherine Willoughby was a force to be reckoned with. If she had chosen to pursue Henry, Katherine would almost certainly have taken Katheryn Parr’s place, with her friend perhaps ending up on the executioner’s block. If her husband had died two years earlier, before Henry married his sixth wife, Katherine might have become Queen of England then. There is much in the imperious determination, wit, fearlessness and fierce intelligence of Katherine that is similar to the character of Anne Boleyn.
Katherine named her dog Gardiner after the bishop of Winchester and was not afraid to publicly show her hatred of such a powerful man. The influential councillor would happily have had her sent to the block. It may have been Gardiner’s attempt to disconcert the queen and her friend that led to the rumours that Henry was planning to rid himself of Katheryn Parr in favour of Katherine Willoughby. As the leader of the conservative faction he may have supplied information to the Imperial ambassador, including reports about Henry’s attraction to the duchess.
At this time, Katherine Willoughby was the most powerful unmarried woman in the country. She was not only described as ‘a lady of sharp wit and sure hand to thrust it home and make it pierce when she pleased’, she also received the ultimate Tudor accolade from John Parkhurst – as equal to ‘men of the highest distinction’.2 She was an ardent Protestant who allegedly converted her husband before he died in 1545. Bishop Gardiner, the man most desperate to arrange the downfall of Queen Katheryn Parr, was trying hard to bring down all the influential Protestant ladies at court. He hated Katheryn Parr, but he hated Katherine Willoughby even more. In 1555, during the reign of Queen Mary, Katherine and her new husband had to go into exile to avoid Gardiner’s wrath.
In June 1546 a man named Robert Parker made a prophecy that there would soon be a new queen – these prophecies were common, but probably reflected local rumours. In this year, there were even rumours that Anne of Cleves had given birth to two children by the king. But towards the end of his reign, Henry arranged for his sixth wife to be arrested. Perhaps he genuinely believed she had committed treason, perhaps it was simply force of habit. Either way, Katheryn managed to beg the king for forgiveness and seduce him out of his dangerously bad mood. Although it was now clear that the dangers of attracting the king were even greater, so were the rewards.
In February 1546 Van der Delft, the Imperial ambassador, wrote:
I hesitate to report there are rumours of a new queen. Some attribute it to the sterility of the present Queen, while others say that there will be no change during the present war. Madame Suffolk is much talked about and is in great favour; but the King shows no alteration in his behaviour to the Queen, although she is said to be annoyed by the rumour.3
Katheryn Parr may have been relieved that it was her principled friend who had allegedly attracted the king, rather than an unscrupulous woman of the court. His wife and her possible replacement were such close friends that when Queen Katheryn’s daughter was orphaned in 1549, it was the duchess of Suffolk who took in the child and paid all expenses; she had even been one of the few to attend Henry’s sixth wedding. Even so, there was still danger – whether Katherine encouraged the king or not, he made the decisions and if he had become determined to have her, he would have done so.
There was almost as much evidence to arrest and execute Katheryn Parr as there had been for Catherine Howard, and far more than against Anne Boleyn. Rumours of witchcraft had abounded about Anne, but Katheryn Parr knew many traditional treatments using herbs and natural ingredients – knowledge of healing could easily attract accusations that a woman was a witch. She also owned forbidden Protestant books which her husband had made illegal – the man she had sworn to obey, both as his subject and as his spouse. Although Katheryn was intelligent and diplomatic, Henry expected, like most men of the time, complete obedience from his wife. Henry allegedly complained about Katheryn: ‘A good hearing it is when women become such clerks, and a thing much to my comfort, to come in mine old days to be taught by my wife.’4
Men in sixteenth-century England believed that ‘Woman in her greatest perfection was made to serve and obey man’.5 There was a certain way for a woman to be; this was a land of black and white, God and the Devil, and nothing in between. It was completely ingrained in Tudor society that women were the weaker sex in every way. They were liable to do whatever others influenced them to do; they had no moral courage and were naturally more inclined to follow the Devil’s path. This was not just the opinion of men; women agreed. Even Elizabeth I, one of the greatest monarchs in English history, did not consider other women capable of her achievements.
On 4 July 1546 the Privy Council asked Katheryn’s auditors to bring in her accounts, showing all that she owned; they were clearly anticipating her belongings being confiscated.6 The king later told Dr Wendy of the plans. Whether at the king’s instigation or on Wendy’s own initiative, documents detailing the planned arrest were left just outside the queen’s apartments. Katheryn seems to have thought quickly. She proclaimed that she was ill and called Henry to her in a bid to win back his affection. Where many might have been too petrified to think their way out of it, Katheryn acted decisively.
Henry began a theological discussion with his wife and she allegedly replied: ‘Being made after the image of God, as the women were after their image, men ought to instruct their wives, who would do all their learning from them’, and so would not debate with him. But Henry was not quite ready to let his wife off.
‘Not by St Mary. You are become a doctor [of theology] able to instruct us and not to be instructed by us.’ Here Katheryn Parr showed why she was, apart from her religious opinions, the perfect queen consort. Her inspired answer was that she had never believed the radical opinions she had set forth in their discussions. Se had only hoped to distract the king from his pain by debating with him and to benefit from his learned replies. She insisted she had been honoured ‘to be taught by his Majesty, who was a prince of such excellent learning and wisdom’.
‘And is it even so?’ replied Henry. ‘Then Kate, we are friends again.’
Wriothesley and forty guards came to arrest her at the appointed time. When they arrived at the queen’s apartments, they were surprised to see that Henry was present.7 Katheryn had chosen a good strategy – appealing to Henry’s vast ego. The councillors were berated by the king and sent away with their tails between their legs.
Katheryn’s intelligence had given her a vital advantage. At the beginning of the sixteenth century, a humanist education had become very popular among English aristocrats, and they arranged for their children to study languages, mathematics and philosophy. The influence of having a highly educated female heir to the throne was undoubtedly felt in the upper classes’ fashion for giving their daughters the same tutors as their sons. There was no suggestion that their daughters would go to university (which would have been illegal) or work for a living (a ridiculous idea) but they could entertain and interest their husbands and help in the education of their own children, so they too could fit into court society. Literacy and numeracy skills would help in running the family’s estates, but they did not want their daughters to become clerks.
The women of the court, like all Tudor women, could not vote for Parliament and were usually considered to be the property of their husbands or fathers. But with an amenable husband, life was good. Widows were often admired for the freedom they had, but there was one other way to be a free individual – by becoming the king’s main mistress. One’s income depended on the whim of the monarch, but a clever and attractive woman could acquire many expensive gifts during that time. These could then last her for many years. She could later negotiate a marriage on her own terms, if she wanted to, as she would be a woman of means. Yes, some of the most high-born families might shun the king’s cast-offs, but she could make an excellent marriage if the dowry was large enough; only Bessie Blount managed to gain many of these benefits.
Henry clearly loved to display his allegiance and devotion to those he married – while they pleased him. He had his initials entwined with Katherine’s, then Anne’s, then Jane’s, then another Anne’s and two more Katherines’ on the walls of each of his palaces. He publicly showed affection, love and respect for his wives. He tried to set up a culture of chivalry and courtly love to rival France and Burgundy and he was usually discreet in his infidelity. Yet Henry was a man of his time, who considered women inferior to men. When his daughter Mary finally agreed that she was illegitimate, the child of an incestuous union, and grovelled before the father who had done her so much wrong, Henry replied that it was ‘the imbecility of her sex’ that had led his daughter to disobey him.
As Katheryn found, the idea of a marriage where both parties took an equal share in the decision-making was alien to the sixteenth century. Men were the leaders, of every country and every household; exceptions were not seen to disprove the rule. Women were naturally inferior and could, like Eve, lead men to the Devil. Many quotes from the Bible were used to illustrate that this was the way God had ordained it. During Henry’s reign it was illegal in London for a man to beat his wife after nine o’clock in the evening – not because it was immoral, but because people had been finding it difficult to sleep.
At the beginning of Henry’s reign he had appreciated feisty females, but as he became more autocratic, his attitude to women hardened. Henry was a man more comfortable in the company of other men; although he clearly enjoyed women’s company, there are no reports of real friendships with women. Katheryn Parr, on the whole, knew how far to push her husband. Once she was established as his wife, she became less cautious. And when she did, it led others to believe that Henry might be looking for a mistress or another wife.
It seems amazing that the Howards would still, four years after the execution of Catherine Howard, and eight years after the execution of Queen Anne Boleyn, consider attracting the king to their women as a recipe for the success of the clan. Yet the earl of Surrey encouraged his sister Mary to make herself the king’s mistress, for the sake of the family. It is understandable that he felt she had a chance – her personality was similar to that of her cousin, Anne Boleyn, and Henry’s attraction to members of the Howard family has been well documented. But this was not the 1520s and Henry was not an attractive prospect. Nor, after the execution of two Howard women, was attracting his attention risk-free.
Lady Mary had been born in 1519, and was twenty-eight when her family felt she may become Henry’s next lover. The family had not fallen when Queen Catherine had been condemned and executed, but Henry was not one to forget such a humiliation. The king was well aware that he may not live to see his nine-year-old son reach adulthood, and any male with too much influence and too much royal blood was in danger at this point. Henry, earl of Surrey, was not only a Howard; he was also the grandson of Edward Stafford, duke of Buckingham, who had been executed for similar reasons in 1521.
On 2 December 1546 Surrey was arrested, and Norfolk was soon charged too; evidence was being gathered against them. Rumours were uncovered that the Howards were plotting to control young Edward when he became king; and there were reports that Surrey might be aiming for the throne himself. Surrey had used the arms of Edward the Confessor, from whom he was not descended – the Confessor had died childless – but his family had been granted permission to bear this, and they had done so for generations without controversy. This was now enough to be turned into a case of treason. And whether she meant it or not, the answers Mary Howard gave when she was questioned helped seal their fate.
Mary is not thought to have been close to either her brother or her father. She could not deny the family’s plans to make her Henry’s mistress, because she had told other courtiers about it at the time. Sir Gawen Carew reported:
I have heard by the report of the Duchess of Richmond that the Earl of Surrey should give her advice, upon consultation had for the marriage of Sir Thomas Seymour and the said Duchess of Richmond, that, although her fantasy would not serve to marry with him [Seymour], yet, notwithstanding, she should dissemble the matter, and he would find the means, that the King’s Majesty should speak with her himself; but that she should in nowise utterly make refusal of him, but that she should leave the matter so diffusely that the King’s Majesty should take occasion to speak with her again; and thus by length of time it is possible that the King should take such a fantasy to you that ye shall be able to govern like unto Madame d’Étampes. Which should not only be a mean to help herself, but all her friends should receive a commodity by the same. Whereupon she defied her brother, and said that all they should perish and she would cut her own throat rather than she would consent to such a villainy.8
And it would have been villainy, for many reasons. Henry had conducted relationships with many of Mary’s relatives, and she was his son’s widow. The marriage may not have been consummated, but it would still make a relationship between her and the king complicated. She had been close to Anne Boleyn and had been of an age with Catherine Howard – both were her first cousins and people she spent most days with, and whose deaths must have touched her deeply. She was also a lady-in-waiting to the present queen, Katheryn Parr. Although Mary was not in Katheryn’s closest circle, the two women shared much in common, including their increasingly Protestant views.
Mary, perhaps having seen two of her cousins beheaded after marrying the monarch, perhaps out of morality or perhaps because he was unattractive to her, was horrified. She reported the conversation when questioned about her brother and this helped seal his fate – he had already been arrested for comments he had made against the king and was executed soon after. By this point, Henry was so obese and diseased he had to be carried around in a sedan chair. She would have seen the dangers if her family did not – Norfolk once described his daughter as ‘too wise for a woman’.9 If ever there had been a doubt that acting as a pimp for the king was dangerous, Surrey’s execution made this very clear. The likelihood is that she was scared for her own life. She would have been aware that Henry had his spies throughout the court and if she held back any information, this could be considered as treason.
It was the duchesse d’Étampes that Surrey had wanted his sister to emulate. The duchesse not only had a huge influence over the King of France, she was, like Mary Howard and the earl of Surrey, a Protestant. This was a much more dangerous theological position in Catholic France than it was in vacillating England. Yet Madame knew well how to manage her king and could protect those of a similar religious outlook. This may have been what Surrey was hoping for.
From 1529, the duchesse d’Étampes had been very influential on French foreign policy and had encouraged Francis to make peace with the German emperor. Anne Boleyn had encouraged Henry to try to make peace with France, but even Henry would have perceived that this was his best option when wishing to get the annulment to Katherine of Aragon sorted. The policy would most likely have been in place without the influence of Henry’s prospective bride. Francis eventually stated that his mistress had too much influence over him.10 Henry was never to make this mistake.
In the spring of 1546, a marriage had been proposed between Sir Thomas Seymour, the chancer who had caught Katheryn Parr’s heart, and the duchess of Richmond. Allying themselves with a gentry family of low pedigree was a big comedown for the rapacious Howards. The Seymours may have provided Henry with a wife, but the Howards were a ducal family, and they had provided him with two. According to the reports, Mary said the marriage negotiations were in order for her to get close to the king and then become his mistress, to ‘better rule here as others had done’.11 They could have aimed her for a crown. But they were not even suggesting she aimed as high as her cousins Anne and Katherine, but merely as high as their other cousin, Mary Boleyn.
The king was understandably furious to hear that the Howards were trying to manipulate him. He prided himself on his Machiavellian manipulation of other people, ensuring that all court factions, all courtiers, were kept on their toes. He felt himself beholden to no man (or woman) and these reports would have brought back unpleasant memories of the disappointments he had suffered in the past. They considered Henry an old man who could be led around by the nose by a pretty woman. After Henry’s besotted behaviour with two of Surrey’s cousins, this was bound to hit a sore spot if repeated to the king.
In the Tower, Surrey wrote some of his best poetry, including on his closest friend who had died eleven years earlier: Henry Fitzroy, duke of Richmond and Somerset, his sister’s late husband. Surrey wrote:
With dazed eyes oft we, by gleams of love,
Have missed the ball and got sight of our dame,
To bait her eyes, which kept the leads above.12
Emphasising his relationship with Henry’s beloved son did not help Surrey either.
Henry read through and underlined parts of the report of the interrogation of the duchess of Richmond. These included: ‘If a man were to advise his sister to become a harlot thinking thereby to bring it to pass and so would rule both father and son.’13 Henry was not a man to be ruled – and Surrey and Norfolk were sentenced to pay for their presumption, and with their heads. On 13 January 1547 both men were sentenced to death. Surrey was beheaded on 19 January 1547, but fate intervened for Norfolk, as the king died before he could suffer the same fate. He languished in the Tower until the reign of Queen Mary.
Just before Christmas 1546, Henry had sent his wife and children to Greenwich; he did not see them again. As when he had been gravely ill while married to Catherine Howard, he did not want his wife with him while he was in this state, despite Katheryn’s excellent nursing skills. We cannot be sure whether Henry desired to see Katheryn over this time and his closest servants denied him, or if, as with all his other wives, Henry did not feel the need to say goodbye. Katheryn must have been desperate to see him – out of duty, and perhaps love, as well as hoping to secure the role of regent during the nine-year-old Edward’s reign.
The king died on 28 January 1547. He was an obese fifty-five-year-old, who had been in intolerable pain for the last twenty years or so. We are unsure of the cause of death as he had been ill with several ailments for many years. It has been suggested that it was a pulmonary embolism, caused by the thrombosed vein in his leg which he had been suffering from for many years. He was buried, as he had requested, in St George’s Chapel, Windsor, next to ‘our true and loving Wife Queen Jane’.14
Elizabeth I described Sir Thomas Seymour as ‘a man of much wit and very little judgement’.15 When it came to Seymour, it seems Katheryn Parr had little judgement as well. Three months after Henry’s death, the dowager queen married the new king’s uncle, whose brother was now the Lord Protector, effectively running England until Edward VI was old enough to govern himself. Surprisingly, for such a sensible and religious woman, Katheryn seems to have become the lover of Thomas Seymour within weeks of her husband’s death.
When Henry VIII’s sister Mary was widowed in France, she was kept segregated in a palace until they could be sure that she was not pregnant with the king’s child. No such tradition existed for English queens, and at thirty-five and childless, most of the English court assumed that she was barren. If Katheryn had been pregnant by Henry, she may not have known this until a few months after his death. The fact that within a month of his death, Katheryn was exchanging love letters and arranging midnight liaisons with her past paramour, could have endangered the Tudor dynasty. Katheryn seems to have become pregnant in November 1547, ten months after the king’s death and around five months after her marriage to Thomas Seymour. She was by then thirty-six, unusually and dangerously late to be having her first child in the sixteenth century. She died of puerperal fever – as Jane Seymour and Elizabeth of York had – after giving birth to their daughter, Mary, deliriously blaming her husband.
1. Cit. Weir, The Six Wives of Henry VIII, p.98
2. Cit. Fraser, The Six Wives of Henry VIII, p.462
3. L&P, XXI, pt. I, no.1027; by Francis van der Delft, imperial ambassador
4. Foxe, Acts and Monuments of the Christian Church, V, p.555; Henry VIII to Stephen Gardiner, bishop of Winchester
5. John Knox, First Blast Against the Monstrous Regiment of Women, p.3
6. Martienssen, Katherine Parr, p.215
7. L&P, XXI, pt. I, p.696; this is Foxe’s version of events
8. L&P, XXI, pt. II, no.555
9. Heale, Women and the Courtly Love Lyric: The Devonshire MS, p.300
10. Richardson, Glenn, Renaissance Monarchy: The Reigns of Henry VIII, Francis I and Charles V, p.161
11. Cit. Fraser, The Six Wives of Henry VIII, pp.480–1
12. Cit. Weir, Henry VIII: King and Court, p.312
13. Cit. Fraser, The Six Wives of Henry VIII, p.481
14. L&P, XXI, pt. II, pp.320–1
15. Cit. James, Kateryn Parr, p.323