by Alison Weir
During the campaign, one of the friends of Henry’s youth, William Fitzwilliam, Earl of Southampton, was killed fighting the Scots. His heir was his half-brother, Sir Anthony Browne, who inherited Southampton’s house at Cowdray, Sussex. Sir Anthony, an ageing widower, celebrated his good fortune by marrying the fifteen-year-old Lady Elizabeth FitzGerald— “Fair Geraldine”—much to Surrey’s distress,5 and began converting Cowdray into a great palace.6
Lord Russell had succeeded Southampton as Lord High Admiral in 1540, but was himself replaced in 1542 by John Dudley, Viscount Lisle, the son of Henry VII’s unpopular minister Edmund Dudley, whom Henry VIII had executed as a sop to popular opinion in 1510. Dudley, now forty, had been restored in blood during youth and brought up by Sir Edward Guildford, whose daughter Jane he married, and in 1542 inherited the Lisle title from his mother. An excellent soldier, whose daring and horsemanship had made him renowned, he had hitherto served the King mainly in a military capacity. Now a Warden of the Scottish Marches alongside Suffolk, he was a pragmatic man of cold, calculating ambition. His able, sometimes devious, mind had impressed the King, who would in 1543 admit him to the Privy Council and Privy Chamber.
On 24 November 1542, the English won a great victory over the Scots at Solway Moss. Norfolk was quick to point out to his master that this was due to his own expert leadership, although Hertford, who had also been given a leading command, deserved some of the credit. The King was jubilant, and the court gayer than at any time since before Katherine Howard’s fall.7 News of the death of James V on 14 December gave even further cause for rejoicing, because his heir was a week-old girl, the infant Mary, Queen of Scots. Scotland would be subject to yet another weakening regency—it had endured six during the past 150 years—and should give no further trouble. Henry now conceived the idea of marrying Queen Mary to Prince Edward and uniting the two kingdoms under Tudor rule, a plan the Scots were to resist violently.
The court was merry again that Christmas. Scottish nobles, taken hostage during the campaign, were honourably entertained at court, but not set free until they had sworn on oath to further the proposed marriage alliance. 8
Early in the new year of 1543, Surrey disgraced himself again. In February, after arriving back south, he stayed in London with two companions, Wyatt’s son Thomas and William Pickering, who would later become a distinguished Elizabethan courtier. One night, while celebrating the recent victory, they went on a drunken spree, outraging the citizens by rampaging through the streets, smashing the windows of churches and aldermen’s houses, and throwing stones at passersby. The next night, they took a boat out on the Thames and shot pellets at the whores on Bankside.
They were also seen eating meat during Lent, which was strictly forbidden to Catholics. Surrey’s friend George Blagge, a religious radical, warned him what people might infer from this, but the Earl complacently replied, “We shall have a madding time in our youth, and therefore I am very sorry for it.”
The Lord Mayor, however, complained to the Council, and the three miscreants were hauled before it at St. James’s Palace. Surrey admitted breaching the King’s peace by his misdemeanours, but pleaded in mitigation that he had only broken the windows of papists. He was nevertheless sent once more to the Fleet to learn to control his “heady will.” The King was exasperated, referring to Surrey as “the most foolish proud boy that is in England,” but his fondness for the young man was unabated. 9 By the middle of May, Surrey was a free man, and doing his best to regain his master’s favour. However, he never forgave Gardiner, Wriothesley, Browne, and Russell for their part in his interrogation, nor Sir Thomas Seymour, who had sanctimoniously pressed for a stiffer sentence.10
By February 1543, the King had begun to betray an interest in Katherine Parr, the wife of John Neville, Lord Latimer. She was no giddy young girl, but a mature, well-educated woman of about thirty, whose intellectual gifts may have attracted Henry as much as her comely person. He had probably known her all her life: her father, Sir Thomas Parr, had served Katherine of Aragon until his death in 1517; her brother William was a prominent courtier; her sister Anne had waited on Katherine Howard; and Lady Latimer herself had visited court with her husband. Henry’s first recorded gift to her—a package of “pleats and sleeves”— was paid on 16 February, while her ailing husband was still alive. It was followed by presents of fashionable gowns, cut in the Italian, French, and Dutch styles, and French hoods.11 Lord Latimer, who had been ill for some time, died on 2 March.
The Parrs were an ancient Westmorland family, distantly related to the Plantagenets and Tudors. Katherine had been born at Kendal Castle in 1511/12, but had been brought up in London. She had now buried two husbands, the first having been the elderly Edward de Burgh, Lord Borough, whom she married in 1526. He died in 1528 and she married Lord Latimer around 1530. There were no children from either marriage.
Katherine was “of small stature”12 and, although not beautiful, had a “lively, pleasing appearance.”13 She was dignified, “graceful and of cheerful countenance, and . . . praised for her virtue.”14 The half-length portrait of her now in the National Portrait Gallery, shows a pleasant-faced matron with auburn hair15 and hazel eyes, wearing a rich red gown with stand-up collar and jaunty feathered cap. She was kind, warmhearted, generous, and intuitive, although given to occasional rash impulses. In his Will, the King praised her for her devotion, obedience, chastity, and wisdom, but beneath the virtuous and godly exterior there beat a passionate heart.
There has been much recent scholarly debate as to the extent of Katherine’s intellectual capabilities. There is no doubt that she was intelligent and well read, but she was pious rather than intellectual. She was well-educated for a woman of her time, imbued with the New Learning, and is known to have written at least two rather erudite devotional books. A good conversationalist, Katherine was fluent in French and Italian, could read and write Latin, and understood some Greek; although she had been taught French by her mother, she learned the other languages later in life rather than during childhood. Her handwriting was in the new Italianate style. Katherine had the utmost respect for scholarship, was well aware of her own shortcomings, and constantly sought to improve herself.
The King’s interest in Lady Latimer may well have accounted for the preferment of her brother William, Lord Parr, to the Privy Council in March and his election as a Knight of the Garter the following month. The King also appointed him Warden of the Scottish Marches. Around this time, however, Parr’s wife, Elizabeth Bourchier, deserted him, and he discovered that her children had been fathered by other men. Incensed, he urged the King to have her executed, which was the prescribed penalty for the adulterous wives of peers. Thanks to Katherine Parr’s intercession with the King, Lady Parr escaped death, but Parliament granted her husband a divorce on 17 April and declared her children bastards and unfit to inherit the Essex estates, which were instead entailed upon Lord Parr.
Although Latimer had been a conservative, his widow held radical, if not Protestant, religious views, and had to be careful. The reformers Miles Coverdale and Hugh Latimer were guests at her house near the former London Charterhouse, but so also was the staunchly Catholic Lady Mary, who may have known Katherine Parr from childhood, and was a good friend.
It was a dangerous time to hold Lutheran opinions. Led by the energetic Gardiner, ably supported by Wriothesley, the conservative faction, in order to regain its ascendancy and discredit its rivals, was ruthlessly seeking out heretics and traitors within the royal household. In March 1543, they “uncovered a nest of heretics”16 among the musicians of St. George’s Chapel at Windsor. The gifted organist, composer, and Master of the Choristers, John Marbeck, a secret Calvinist, was sentenced to be burned at the stake after heretical writings were found in his house, but the King valued his playing so highly that he pardoned him.17 Three other members of the Chapel Royal were not so lucky.18
In April, Gardiner struck at Archbishop Cranmer, whose primacy he coveted, and had him accused o
f heresy. But the King again intervened. He arrived at Lambeth Palace in his barge and sent a message inviting Cranmer to accompany him on a trip along the Thames. When the Archbishop appeared, Henry said jovially, “Ah, my chaplain, I have news for you. I now know who is the greatest heretic in Kent.” He also hinted that he knew Cranmer had a wife. The Archbishop was thoroughly frightened, but the King, who was very fond of his primate, even though he must have suspected his Protestant sympathies, made it clear that he meant to protect him from his enemies, and authorised him to preside over the inquiry into his own alleged heresy. When the conservatives approached the King for permission to arrest Cranmer, he granted it, but then privily summoned the Archbishop and gave him a ring, which he was to produce when the Council came for him. The next day, Cranmer was able to confound his enemies, and was supported by Henry, who delivered a stern homily on the evils of faction politics and commanded the rival parties to make their peace.19
The King also taught a lesson to Sir Thomas Seymour, who had accused the Archbishop of not maintaining a household, or entertaining in a style, appropriate to his dignity, and urged that his vast revenues be diverted to the Crown and replaced with a salary. After the heresy scandal had died down, Henry, probably having warned Cranmer what he was about, ordered Seymour to present himself at Lambeth Palace one afternoon. Seymour was astonished to find a lavish meal awaiting him. When he arrived back at Whitehall, the King asked him, “Had my lord dined before ye came? What cheer made he you?” A shamefaced Seymour had to admit that he had “abused Your Highness with an untruth.” Henry, who had personal reasons for wishing to discountenance Seymour, lectured him, then warned, “There shall be no alteration made while I live.” 20
Later that year, the King sanctioned the return of Mistress Cranmer, who had been living in Germany, and in 1544 and 1545 he would again intervene to save Cranmer from those who wished to destroy him.
Thwarted of bigger fish, the conservatives next struck at the Privy Chamber, and draft indictments were drawn up by Gardiner’s protégé, Dr. John London, against eleven of its members, among them the Master of the Revels; the diplomat and scholar Philip Hoby; Master Penny, the King’s barber; and the royal cook. But Henry was not impressed or pleased: he ordered the arrest of London and pardoned those under suspicion. London was found guilty of perjury, made a public example of, then thrown in the Fleet, where he died the next year.21
But the defeated Gardiner and his party remained undaunted and determined to rid the court of reformists and closet heretics, intending that, when the King eventually died, the Catholics would be in control. For the present, however, the reformists were dominant at court, and among them were several rising “new men.” In April 1543, the shrewd and competent William Paget replaced Sir Ralph Sadler as Principal Secretary to the King. Paget, an ally of Hertford who wisely kept his religious views to himself, was a man who “will have one foot in every pageant.”22 He enjoyed immense influence with the King, and his fellow councillors often used him to convey messages and requests to Henry.23 Paget was therefore able to exercise extensive patronage, dabble in a little blackmail, and grow rich: he built himself a fine mansion at West Drayton, Middlesex. 24 Paget screened most of the documents and information intended for the King, and sent out by Henry, but there is little evidence that he ever tampered with them; either he was honest, or he covered his traces well.
William Petre was appointed Secretary of State and knighted in 1543. An erudite lawyer and Fellow of All Souls’ College, Oxford, he was to retain his post until 1566 and serve four Tudor monarchs. Petre built a splendid house at Ingatestone in Essex, which survives today. In 1543 also, William Paulet, Lord St. John, was appointed Chamberlain of the Household.
Anthony Denny’s influence with the King was growing steadily. At the centre of a humanist circle, he was “a favourer of good learning” 25 and furthered the careers of scholars such as Sir Thomas Elyot, John Cheke, and Roger Ascham, who in turn filled the “tuneful court” with “resonant hymns praising his universal popularity.” 26 Denny, who was knighted in 1544, not only managed the Privy Chamber administration, but also acted as confidential adviser to the King. He was a man of great personal charm, and his painstaking devotion to his duties endeared him to the ageing Henry, for whom he acted as a buffer against a clamorous world. He fielded petitioners for his master and even wrote out their suits for them, “which, considering his attendance upon the King and other business, is very much for him to do.”27 Yet there was a high degree of self-interest involved, because in so doing Denny created a vast web of patronage with himself at its centre. He was therefore a very busy man, and willingly delegated some of his less pleasant duties to his unscrupulous brother-in-law, Sir John Gates, who was also a member of the Privy Chamber. Denny’s genuine but radical religious convictions—he spoke out bravely against the persecution of Protestants—and his closeness to the King aroused the bitter resentment of the conservatives, but for all their efforts they were powerless to dislodge him.
Sir Francis Bryan, who had once supported the imperialists at court, now aligned himself with the reformist faction through his friendship with William Parr, to whom he dedicated his translation of Antonio de Guevara’s A Dispraise of the Life of the Courtier. Bryan was now around fifty, but had lost none of the restless energy of his youth, which is why the poet Surrey, a kindred spirit, sought his friendship, transcending the enmities of courtly factions.
Catholics and reformists might wrangle and jostle for power, but the King, who had become “very stern and opinionate,”28 was the ultimate authority in religious matters. Although largely orthodox in his views, he retained the humanist ideals of his youth and respect for the New Learning, and liked to surround himself in these later years with people who shared these interests, perhaps little realising that most held extremely radical, and possibly heretical, religious views.
In 1543, the so-called King’s Book, written under Henry’s direction and partly in his own hand,29 was published. Its true title was The Necessary Doctrine and Erudition of Any Christian Man, and it was the most orthodox and reactionary statement yet of the creed of Henry’s church. But it was too late to turn back the clock. The availability of the Bible in English had encouraged the King’s subjects to think for themselves, and many had gone way beyond the unquestioning obedience expected of devout Catholics, who Henry liked to think formed the majority of his people. Some reformists even dismissed the King’s Book, with its paternalistic dogmatism and assumption of widespread traditional morality, as being not worth “a fart.”30
Paget had reassured Henry that eleven-twelfths of his subjects were of an orthodox persuasion, but for Gardiner this was not enough, and he urged the King to clamp down on wholesale reading of the Bible. Henry, too, thought it dangerous, and in 1543 Parliament passed the Act for the Advancement of True Religion, which condemned “crafty, false and untrue” translations, including Tyndale’s, and restricted the reading of the Scriptures to the upper and middle classes.31
The King was not the only man in pursuit of Katherine Parr. Sir Thomas Seymour was also paying court to the wealthy widow and, years later, she admitted to him, “As truly as God is God, my mind was fully bent, the time I was at liberty, to marry you before any man I know.” But she was to be “overruled by a higher power,” for in May, the King, who would brook no rival, sent Seymour on an embassy to Brussels, which was followed by a military command under Sir John Wallop in the Low Countries.
Katherine bowed to her fate. By the middle of June, she and her sister Anne, the wife of William Herbert, an Esquire of the Body, were frequent visitors to court, and there was little doubt in anyone’s mind that the King would soon make her his sixth wife.
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“The Good Expectations of the King’s Majesty”
Henry VIII and Katherine Parr were married by Bishop Gardiner on 12 July 1543 in the Queen’s holyday closet at Hampton Court, with “none opposing and all applauding.”1 Among the twenty guests were
the King’s two daughters, the Lords Hertford and Russell, and William— soon to be Sir William—and Anne Herbert. Lady Margaret Douglas, restored to favour, carried the bride’s train.2 The new Queen was not crowned, probably because the treasury could not bear the cost. The motto she adopted, “To be useful in all I do,” was an apt one.
As with all Henry’s queens, the composition of Katherine’s household reflected her family loyalties and ideological affiliations. Sir Anthony Cope, an erudite humanist scholar, served briefly as her Chamberlain, before being replaced in December 1543 by her uncle, Lord Parr of Horton. Sir Thomas Tyrwhit, her stepson by marriage, was Steward. The Queen’s sister, Anne Herbert, became her chief lady-in-waiting; her other ladies included Katherine Willoughby, Duchess of Suffolk; the Countesses of Hertford and Sussex; Honor Greville, Lady Lisle; Joan Champernowne, wife of Sir Anthony Denny; the Queen’s cousin, Maud, Lady Lane; and her stepdaughter, Elizabeth, Lady Tyrwhit. Another stepdaughter, Margaret Neville, was a maid of honour, as was Anne Bassett.3 In 1546, Lord Dorset’s daughter by Frances Brandon, Lady Jane Grey, the King’s learned little niece, came to serve the Queen as maid of honour. Elizabeth Billingham, an old friend of Katherine’s, was Mother of the Maids. The Queen appointed George Day, Bishop of Chichester, as her Almoner, while among her chaplains were noted radicals such as Miles Coverdale and John Parkhurst, later Bishop of Norwich. Another member of the Queen’s household was the young Nicholas Throckmorton, later to be one of the luminaries of Queen Elizabeth’s court; his brother Clement was Katherine’s cupbearer.
Katherine was “quieter than any of the young wives the King had, and as she knew more of the world, she always got on pleasantly with the King and had no caprices.”4 Many writers portray her as little more than a nurse to an increasingly incapacitated husband, but the evidence shows that, apart from the times when his bad leg laid him low, the King and Queen were an active couple and constantly on the move. Right up to the last few months of his life, Henry refused to give in to the illnesses that at times threatened to overwhelm him. There is no evidence that Katherine found him offensive or disagreeable; on the whole, they seem to have enjoyed a harmonious relationship: the Queen confided in a private letter to her brother that this third marriage was “the greatest joy and comfort that could happen to her.” Even Wriothesley had to admit that Katherine was “a woman, in my judgement, for certain wisdom and gentleness most meet for His Highness; and I am sure His Majesty never had a wife more agreeable to his heart than she is.”5