Katherine the Queen: The Remarkable Life of Katherine Parr

by Linda Porter

  THE LATIMERS moved first to Wyke in Worcestershire, one of the manors that Katherine’s husband had been visiting before the troubles of 1536. In late 1537 Wyke was more than a temporary refuge from civil unrest and the fear of death; it was the first stage of a journey that led Katherine to court. Soon, when Lord Latimer acquired Stowe Manor in Northamptonshire in the charming village of Stowe Nine Churches, she was able to live even closer to her Green and Parr relatives. Here, at the heart of England, Katherine could exchange visits with her uncle William Parr, who lived at Horton Manor, near Northampton, and with her Vaux and Lane cousins. For someone who had grown up in a close family atmosphere, and who no doubt wished the same for her two stepchildren, this change to her life must have been a relief and a delight, providing her with companionship while her husband was absent.

  For Lord Latimer was often away. He had lost his place on the Council of the North, despite Norfolk recommending that he be retained, but he was often required to do service in northern England. As justice of the peace, on various commissions over the next six years, and also on horseback in further campaigns along the borders, Latimer did the king’s bidding. He also needed to manage his affairs at Snape and to keep a residence near York so that he could have somewhere to stay while on official business in the north. In 1538 he had purchased lands that once belonged to the church at Nun Monkton and Kirk Hamerton, just outside the city. These estates were also intended to provide Margaret Neville with an income of her own after her father’s death, an indication that Latimer did not believe that young John Neville would provide adequately for his sister. Katherine joined her husband occasionally over the next four years, perhaps not without apprehension. The north was still unpredictable and there were further revolts in 1541, which partly inspired Henry VIII’s visit to York in the company of his new queen, Katherine Howard.25

  Latimer was also often in London, diligent in his attendance at the House of Lords. He attended parliament regularly in 1539, though he could not face being present for the session when Lord Darcy’s attainder was made final. It was a small act of defiance, but a poignant one. The following year saw the fall of Cromwell, bundled out to the Tower of London from a meeting of the Privy Council, his badge of St George plucked off by Norfolk, at last able to demonstrate that the pleasure he really wanted to do Cromwell was to have him executed.

  It has been said that Katherine Parr played an influential role behind the scenes in Cromwell’s downfall, but this is pure invention.26 She would not have regretted his demise, but the idea of her whispering damaging revelations into the ear of Henry VIII (especially at a time when he was besotted with Katherine Howard) is simply not supported by any evidence. We do not even know whether she was at court in the summer of 1540. The most likely source of this misapprehension is the lengthy doggerel poem, the ‘Ballad of Sir Nicholas Throckmorton’, contained in the Throckmorton Manuscript. Nicholas Throckmorton was a cousin of Katherine Parr (his mother was a half-sister of Katherine’s father) and his very colourful account of his life and times was almost certainly put into verse by his own nephew, based on the reminiscences of Sir Nicholas himself. It is entertaining, if laboured, and though certainly not great poetry, it cannot be dismissed as an historical source. But there is a need to approach its evidence with extreme caution.

  The point at issue concerns Sir George Throckmorton, Katherine’s uncle by marriage. Sir George had been in and out of the Tower throughout the 1530s. He was a conservative Catholic gentleman, very like Lord Latimer, but he had overtly opposed the divorce and the religious changes, which Latimer did not. As he had also opposed Cardinal Wolsey much earlier in Henry’s the reign, he was clearly unafraid of taking on the very powerful, and equally lucky to have got away with nothing worse than several bouts of incarceration. Cromwell, with an eye to Throckmorton’s estate at Coughton in Warwickshire, had hounded him but not actually threatened his life. He must have come to regret his pursuit, for on the very day of his arrest, Cromwell wrote in anguish to Henry VIII denying the accusation that he had been guilty of treasonable conversations with Throckmorton: ‘Your Grace’, he reminded Henry, ‘knows what manner of man Throckmorton has ever been towards you and your proceedings.’27 The suggestion that he might have been in cahoots with Throckmorton was damaging to Cromwell, but he would have gone to the block if it had never been made. Its source was probably the back-stabbing, venal and unprincipled chancellor, Richard Rich. There is much about the machinations leading to Cromwell’s fall that is still not clear, but we should beware of seeing the comely Lady Latimer gliding through Westminster Palace on a mission to erase him.

  KATHERINE MUST, though, have become a regular visitor at court once she had moved from Yorkshire. Her brother and sister were both there and it was probably through them, as well as her husband’s status as a baron, that she took her place in London society. Anne Parr, in particular, would have been a good source of introduction to the ladies of the court. By about 1538 she was married herself, to William Herbert, a Welsh soldier of somewhat dubious background and reputation. The earl of Warwick had put Herbert’s paternal grandfather, the earl of Pembroke, to death during the Wars of the Roses and the family’s influence in Wales waned thereafter. The grandson owed his place at court to the influence of the earl of Worcester, a distant relative. ‘Black Will Herbert’, as he was known to his contemporaries, had killed a man in 1527 and may have spent some time in the service of Francis I of France as a result of this transgression. He was, intermittently, a member of the king’s household during the 1530s and this, no doubt, is how he met Anne Parr. Given her brother’s connections and his good standing with the king, Anne must have seemed a good prospect. She had been one of Jane Seymour’s ladies and retained the role when Henry eventually married for a fourth time, to Anne of Cleves. We do not know exactly how Anne’s marriage came about and whether it was a love match, but it is interesting to note that both Parr sisters seem to have been attracted to dashing men of action who were slightly disreputable. This predilection was not yet apparent in Katherine but would eventually have a dramatic effect on her life.

  The position of the Parrs seemed to be improving the longer Henry VIII was on the throne. Katherine’s brother was duly raised to the peerage in 1539, as Baron Parr, and Anne survived the failure of the Cleves marriage and the disgrace of Katherine Howard’s fall unscathed, still prominent among the ladies of the court. Lord Latimer, however, continued to be ordered periodically to the north. His position was eased by Cromwell’s overthrow but he was not allowed to rest. He may, though, have been relieved to stay outside the faction-fighting of the early 1540s in London, a perilous period at court as the religious conservatives wrestled with the reformers for influence. During 1542, as the king moped over Katherine Howard’s betrayal of his trust, Latimer was as much on the move as ever. He attended the first session of parliament that year but the summer found him on military service yet again on the Scottish border. Perhaps it was this renewed campaign, as well as the first signs that his health was beginning to fail, that prompted him to make his will in September 1542.

  Lord Latimer survived the dangers of warfare and came back down to the capital at some point during the latter part of the year. By then, the decline in his health was much more serious, for he did not attend the first session of the 1543 parliament. He remained at his Charterhouse residence and it was there that he died, probably towards the end of February. In his will, he had left direction that he was to be buried ‘on the south side of Well Church in the county of York, where my ancestors lie, if I should die in Yorkshire’. But as he died in London, far away from Snape, his mortal remains were laid to rest in St Paul’s Cathedral on 2 March. He made provision for his children, various relatives and, of course, Katherine herself. In addition to the manor at Stowe she was also given the estates near York and the responsibility of bringing up Margaret Neville, and providing support if the girl did not marry in five years. More poignantly, he also bequeathed her his ‘bes
t basin and ewer of silver and my two silver flagons’.28 To his son, John, he left Snape and all its contents and his title. He also set aside sufficient funds to endow a school and pay a schoolmaster to teach ‘the sons of the tenements and inhabitants of the lordship of Snape and Well’.

  It was a bequest typical of the man. Lord Latimer was a conservative noble who cared for the welfare of his tenants, who preferred to worship God in the traditions of his forefathers, and whose loyalty to the king would have gone unremarked, and probably no more than adequately rewarded, were it not for the Pilgrimage of Grace. He had been fortunate in his third wife, a caring mother to his two children and loyal spouse, and she in him, for his constancy and affection. And now Katherine, Lady Latimer, comfortable if not rich, could contemplate her future once again. At last, the prospect that she might be able to please herself in the choice of a husband seemed to beckon. On the day of her husband’s burial in early March 1543, when winter had not quite given way to spring, she had no idea that, four months later, she would be queen of England.

  Part Three

  ‘Kateryn the Quene’

  1543–1547

  CHAPTER SIX

  Two Suitors

  ‘God … through his grace and goodness … made me to renounce utterly mine own will.’

  Queen Katherine, recalling her dilemma

  in the spring of 1543

  EASTER SUNDAY fell early in 1543, on 25 March, the official start of the New Year in the old Julian calendar. For Katherine, as for the entire population of the country, this herald of a new beginning could not have come soon enough. The winter had been hard and long. It set in so early that, in the troubled northern borders where Lord Latimer had spent his last autumn, the roads soon became impassable. The news of the birth of the child, who would very shortly become Mary Queen of Scots, took four days to travel from Linlithgow in Scotland to Alnwick in Northumberland, a distance of just over 100 miles. Following on the poor harvest of the very wet summer of 1542, this was a time of intense deprivation. Frost and snow sat on the ground for weeks and the cost of firewood and fish rocketed. The situation became so bad that a proclamation was issued on 9 February allowing the eating of white meat in Lent. Just before Easter itself, the mayor and aldermen of London were feeling the pinch, too, and decided that it would be good to demonstrate some solidarity with their fellow-citizens by announcing ‘that [they] … should have and be served but with one course at dinner and supper’.1

  Katherine had much to reflect on as winter began to release its grip. She was thirty years old, widowed for a second time but comfortable financially. Her responsibilities towards her wayward stepson were over, though she did not forget him, as we shall see, which suggests that their relationship remained cordial, if not close. Lord Latimer had particularly required her to look after the welfare of his daughter but her affection for Margaret Neville made this a pleasure rather than a duty. As Lady Latimer, residing at her late husband’s residence in the Charterhouse, Katherine was well connected, respected and independent. Once the period of mourning was over, she could consider her future. She was an attractive and intelligent woman with an enquiring mind. Her duty as a loyal spouse fulfilled, Katherine was able, for the first time, to ponder what she might want to do with her life. Two things were obvious to her at once. The first was that she wanted to stay at court; she had done with provincial life. The second was that she wanted to remarry. Both her wishes were granted, but not at all in the way that she had anticipated when she buried Lord Latimer in St Paul’s Cathedral. This, at least, was what she came to believe subsequently. But was it really true?

  Disentangling the emotions of Katherine Parr in the spring and early summer of 1543 is less straightforward than has been suggested, chiefly because the main source we have to rely on is, of course, the lady herself. But it is worth the effort of unravelling what happened because it illuminates her later attitudes and behaviour. There are, inevitably, gaps in our knowledge (not least of which is the actual date of Lord Latimer’s death, which clearly has an important bearing on Katherine’s behaviour), but there are strong hints that the decision she eventually made was one that her intellect, if not her heart, had accepted sooner than she subsequently acknowledged. The key to unlocking this mystery lies in the court.

  This was evidently a milieu that Katherine enjoyed but whose undercurrents and dangers she perhaps failed to appreciate at a time when she was at last able to put her personal happiness before other considerations. The pattern of her life in the years after her move south from Yorkshire suggests strongly that she liked being in London and close to the centre of events. There is no need to suppose that she had any official position of her own; her husband’s status and the contacts of her brother and sister would have given her a sufficient entrée. The belief that she sought a position in the household of Princess Mary early in the winter of 1542–3 is based on a misunderstanding of the documents among her household expenses as queen. We do not need to imagine her forsaking her ailing husband to frequent the princess’s splendid residence at Whitehall Palace, busily ordering dresses for the king’s elder daughter and gossiping with the other ladies. Apart from the inherent unlikelihood of Katherine making a very calculating and selfish move, abandoning Lord Latimer as he lay dying, Princess Mary was far too interested in fashion to allow someone else to choose her wardrobe. The dresses were in fact ordered by Katherine while still Lady Latimer, for herself and for her ‘daughter’, in this case, Margaret Neville. Katherine apparently did not pay bills promptly. This tendency may have been endemic among the Tudor aristocracy, but grew worse in Katherine’s case with time, an aspect of her character, and the running of her household as queen, that has gone largely unremarked.2

  Katherine was interested in medicine and herbs and it seems likely, though we cannot know for sure, that she supervised Lord Latimer’s treatment during his final illness herself. This does not mean that she spent all her time tending to him, though she is unlikely to have socialized much during the first months of 1543 because of the freezing weather. The same may not have been true in 1542, especially when Latimer was away in the north and she could see more of her family. The court during this year was a strange place, at first in a kind of limbo until after the execution of Katherine Howard in February. Gradually, it began to revive, as Henry VIII emerged from his depression and sense of grievance at his fifth wife’s behaviour. Despite the fact that the king was without a consort, the ladies of the queen’s household remained at court, including Anne Herbert, who had now to hand back to the Crown the jewels she had supervised for her giddy, doomed mistress. Anne, however, must have realized that she could not expect to rise further without powerful patronage, and though her husband’s career had not yet taken off, the Herberts knew enough about the court to survive and hope for better things. So, too, did Katherine’s brother, William, who was himself committed to staying in London. His northern lands did not interest him at all and he seldom went there to manage them.

  His situation, however, looked far from promising. Cromwell had appropriated the title of earl of Essex on the death of William Parr’s father-in-law in 1540. Although he only enjoyed the title briefly before his fall, there was worse to follow for the disappointed Parr. His marriage with Anne Bourchier, on which Maud Parr had staked so much, was by now beyond repair. While many other couples who were incompatible managed somehow to get along, at least with a veneer of success, Anne Bourchier had no interest in observing proprieties. Quite why she hated her husband, who was good-looking and socially adept, is impossible to say. She had always resisted the idea of living with him and disliked court life, which he, of course, embraced wholeheartedly. In 1541, to add insult to injury, she ensured that he would never have her father’s title by eloping with a lover of whom little is known but whose child she bore the following year. The blow to Parr’s pride (and to the family’s as well) was tremendous, and William swiftly took steps to contain the damage. He obtained a legal separation in 15
42 and a bill in parliament the following year, in the first month of his sister’s widowhood, barring any child of Anne’s from inheriting Bourchier or Parr estates. Thus did his great marriage evaporate. Yet he probably already sensed that his future was far from hopeless. As a child, he was close to his sister Katherine. Yet even as he contemplated the collapse of everything he had anticipated since he was thirteen years old, he saw another prospect, more glorious still, beckoning. He could not yet be sure; it all depended on Katherine herself.

  LADY LATIMER, however, was contemplating her own happiness rather than William’s lost earldom. She already sensed the direction her life was likely to take but could not bring herself to acknowledge it because she had fallen in love. The man who had conquered her heart was the only man she ever truly loved for himself, the king’s brother-in-law, Sir Thomas Seymour. It is impossible to say when she first became aware of this compelling attraction – perhaps she did not know herself – but, as soon as Lord Latimer was laid to rest, Katherine was more than willing to be wooed. As she told Seymour four years later: ‘as truly as God is God, my mind was fully bent the other time I was at liberty to marry you before any man I know’.3 Nothing could be plainer. And why not? For Tom Seymour was the most desirable man at court.

  He was the fourth of six sons of a Wiltshire knight, Sir John Seymour, and he might have remained in obscurity, the younger son of a minor country gentleman, had his sister Jane not replaced Anne Boleyn in the affections of Henry VIII and become the king’s third wife.4 It was a brief marriage but Jane managed to produce the longed-for heir and in so doing justified all the pain that Henry believed he had suffered in his search to ensure the future of his dynasty. Jane’s death in October 1537, the result of complications following the birth of Prince Edward, left the king with fond memories and probably ensured the continuing favour of her family. Jane was the closest in age to Thomas but they seem to have been quite unalike in temperament, nor, apparently, did they much resemble each other. Where Jane was fair and calm, Thomas Seymour was tawny and tempestuous. He was a man who bore his good looks dramatically and he played to the hilt his reputation as the most dashing blade at court in the 1540s. William Parr, who had known the Seymour brothers since childhood (he knew Edward Seymour well from their time together in the duke of Richmond’s household), was a charming ladies’ man, but he could not compete for sheer charisma with the overwhelming presence of Sir Thomas. A versifier and well-travelled sophisticate, with a magnificent speaking and singing voice, Seymour was on good terms with the king. He was also ambitious (perhaps the one trait he shared with his late sister) and though broadly aligned with the religious reformers, not someone to be found deep in study of the Bible. After his death, he was accused of being a non-believer, a serious accusation in an age that found atheism deeply shocking, but this seems to have been part of a deliberate campaign to degrade his memory. Probably he was not especially devout, and in that he may have been more honest than many of his contemporaries. But whatever his personal beliefs, one thing was certain. Although in his mid-thirties, he was still unmarried.5