Katherine the Queen: The Remarkable Life of Katherine Parr

by Linda Porter

  That he should have appealed to Katherine Parr, after nearly fifteen years of dutiful wedlock, is not surprising. Nor is it unreasonable to believe that he was genuinely attracted to her, a slim, elegant and accomplished woman with hair the colour of burnished gold, a warm personality and exemplary private life masking hidden depths of sensuality that a man with his experience of the world might have detected even while she was still married. Katherine had a reasonable income but was not a rich widow. He was aware of this – Seymour was the sort of man who would have found out, however romantic he might appear – so the inference must be that their affection was mutual. His subsequent behaviour strongly suggests that it was. They were close in age, he being about three years older, and she clearly wanted to be his wife. One can conjecture that he might have been content with a less formal relationship, at least to begin with, but whatever his intentions, he clearly pursued them with some alacrity once it was proper to do so. Thomas Seymour liked his roistering persona, but there is absolutely no evidence that he sought to make Katherine his mistress while Lord Latimer was alive. We do not know when they first met but the likelihood is that Katherine’s brother was the link. Katherine had probably known Thomas Seymour for some years before she was widowed for the second time.

  Seymour’s reputation has suffered much over the centuries. Vilified after his death, his image as a shallow, posturing blackguard and womanizer has been meat and drink to historical novelists. Yet there is no evidence that contemporaries thought him unusually dissolute. He may well have enjoyed casual amours with the ladies of the courts he frequented, both in London and overseas, but the names of his mistresses are not known and there is no suggestion that he had illegitimate children.6 And there were those who admired him during his lifetime, who sought and enjoyed his company, and remained true to him after his death. Nicholas Throckmorton, Katherine’s cousin, composing his memoirs years later, wrote: ‘He was, at all essays, my perfect friend, and patron too, until his dying end’, a generous tribute to someone who is often criticized for reckless selfishness. It is time to look at him again, to try to separate the legend (some of which he might well have enjoyed) from the reality.

  Katherine’s suitor already had a long career in and around the court, as well as plenty of diplomatic and military experience. This aspect of his life went back well before his sister’s time as queen, to when Henry was still married to Katherine of Aragon. In the year 1530 he was in France with one of Henry’s favourites, Sir Francis Bryan. Bryan, highly experienced as a diplomat in Rome and France, was known for being outspoken and a man who had pursued his pleasures with brio when he was younger. It may well be that the young Thomas Seymour modelled himself on this clever and energetic man, who had already told the king that the cause of the divorce was completely lost in Rome. But Bryan also knew how to mask his true feelings to good effect in a volatile political climate, a lesson that his protégé forgot in later life.

  The life of a diplomat and occasional soldier might have been expected to remain the lot of this junior member of an unremarkable family. He was not cut out for the Church and though his brother Edward showed an early interest in the new learning and religious reform, Thomas seems to have embraced them with less conviction. Though evidently well educated, he liked action, as younger brothers often do. One of his earliest surviving letters finds him at sea with the king’s fleet between the Isle of Wight and Portsmouth, on the look-out for French men-of-war infiltrating English waters.7 He especially loved being at sea and relished a naval scrap. Even his enemies acknowledged his personal bravery. But he was not destined to remain on the fringes, sending dispatches back to London from distant courts. Jane Seymour’s bid for the title of queen consort in 1536, as Henry’s marriage to Anne Boleyn disintegrated, was very carefully planned: Edward Seymour used his promotion to the position of gentleman of the king’s Privy Chamber in early March of that year to get his sister quite literally within reach of the king via a private passage to the Seymours’ apartments in Greenwich Palace.

  Thomas had to wait a little longer for the same appointment, until early October 1537, less than two weeks before his sister gave birth to her son. It was swiftly followed by a knighthood, and by Jane’s death on 24 October. The brief but spectacular rise of the Seymour family now seemed over, yet the Privy Chamber posts meant that the brothers remained close to the king. Their presence reminded Henry that they were his son’s uncles and they continued to receive favours from the king. To his knighthood, Thomas Seymour now had added important offices in the Welsh borders, as well as lands in the same area. He also benefited from grants of land taken from dissolved monasteries in Essex, Hampshire and Berkshire at the beginning of 1538.

  Perhaps it was this growing portfolio of estates, as well as the continuing goodwill of the king towards his baby son’s male relatives, that prompted the first serious discussion of his marriage – or certainly the first that is known. The proposal was, at first sight, a grand one and it was not even instigated by Seymour himself. Instead, the suggestion was made to Henry VIII by the duke of Norfolk that his widowed daughter, Mary Howard, duchess of Richmond, should wed Sir Thomas. Norfolk was casting around for ways to rehabilitate his family following the Boleyn affair; he took the view that this would be an advantageous union for the Howards, noting that Seymour was his choice for Mary because he ‘is so honestly advanced by the king’s majesty, as also for his towardness and his other commendable merits’. But a further comment ascribed to Norfolk is far more revealing of his outlook: ‘there ensueth’, he ventured, ‘no great good by conjunction of great bloods together [and] he sought not … nor desired to marry his daughter in any high blood or degree’. In this superb example of Howard cunning and snobbery it sounds as though Norfolk was musing on the disaster of his own marriage to Elizabeth Stafford, as well as delivering a dismissal of the upstart family with whom he proposed to unite his daughter. The king apparently found the idea most amusing and ‘answered merrily that if he [Norfolk] were so minded to bestow his daughter … he would be sure to couple her with one of such lust and youth, as should be able to please her well at all points’.8

  Mary had been the wife of the king’s illegitimate son, the duke of Richmond, who died in 1536. She was not yet twenty and, from what can be seen of the Holbein uncompleted sketch of her, not displeasing, if perhaps no great beauty. The resemblance to her father is apparent. But, looks aside, Mary Howard was a high-born lady. She was also an impecunious one, still fighting her not so devoted father-in-law, the king, for her jointure as duchess of Richmond. She was not keen to lose it all together, as she feared would undoubtedly happen if she married again at this point. In fact, she was far from eager to marry at all, even someone as attractive as Thomas Seymour.

  Seymour’s own reaction to the idea was somewhat muted; he never came to seek the lady in person. In fact, his reaction was to let someone else handle further discussion, despite the king’s approval. That person was Thomas Cromwell, who, as well as being the chief minister was the father of Sir Thomas’s brother-in-law, Gregory.9 On 14 July 1538 Sir Ralph Sadler, one of Cromwell’s most trusted servants, wrote to the minister: ‘The king has spoken to Sir Thomas about it [the Howard marriage] and he, considering that your son has married his sister, prefers you to have the maining of the matter.’10 Sadler himself thought well of Seymour, describing his ‘honesty, sadness [which meant seriousness in Tudor England] and other good qualities’. His opinion of Seymour may not have been shared by history, but it is worth noting, for Ralph Sadler was not the sort of man to give praise where it was not due. In the end, nothing came of Norfolk’s idea. It does, however, throw a fascinating light on the family politics of Henry VIII’s court in the late 1530s. And, as the years went by and both parties remained unmarried, it was not all together forgotten. Eventually it was proposed again, at a crucial point of Katherine Parr’s reign as queen consort.11

  Resuming his diplomatic career, Seymour’s lifestyle meant that he was ofte
n on the move over the next five years. He had no ties, and no great expectations, so it was the perfect existence for his restless nature. Soon he was back at the French court, going from there to Cambrai, where Mary of Hungary, the imperial regent, was in residence. At this point of his career, it was his monarch’s marriage, rather than his own, that he was pursuing. Christina of Denmark, the handsome lady in whom Henry VIII was interested at the time, did not reciprocate, but by the end of the following year Henry’s fourth wife, Anne of Cleves, was at Calais on her way to England. Seymour was among the knights who dined with her on 13 December, before her storm-tossed journey across the Channel. His opinion of the German princess’s looks is unknown, but the following May Day, when her time as Henry’s queen was running out fast (though she did not know it), Thomas Seymour was back in London, enjoying his participation in a major jousting and sporting event at Whitehall. Dressed in white velvet, he must have dazzled Anne and her ladies. But two months later he was on the road again, this time for Vienna and the court of the emperor’s brother, Ferdinand of Austria. Henry sent him there to gauge the situation in Hungary and Germany. It was an interesting post, and Seymour learned much. His despatches show that he was a shrewd observer of the military strengths and strategies of Hungary in its battle with the Ottoman Empire. When the siege of Pest failed all together in October 1542, Seymour made his way back through Germany, looking to recruit mercenaries who could be signed to Henry VIII’s army. He spent Christmas in Nuremberg and when the king decided not to meet the financial terms demanded by the German soldiers of fortune, Seymour was recalled on 14 January 1543. He would have been back in London at about the time that Lady Latimer knew that her husband was not long for this world. Once he was buried in early March, Seymour could quite properly pay court to her. In age, background and interests, they were well matched, two good-looking people of considerable charm, well connected but not themselves powerful, who liked the court and the life it offered. There was every reason that they should have chosen each other, and Thomas, with his accustomed confidence, set about wooing Katherine in earnest. He seems not to have realized at first that there was a rival suitor. Katherine may not have acknowledged this herself but when she did, it must have made Seymour all the more attractive – and all the more unattainable. For the other man taking a keen interest in Lady Latimer was the king himself.

  HENRY VIII had been a widower for just over a year. It was not a state he enjoyed. Like most men of his times, he believed that having a wife was part of the natural order of things. He was not looking for a partner in the modern sense (the idea would have seemed ridiculous to him) but he was undoubtedly an uxorious man. Undeterred by the tally of five previous attempts at wedded bliss, all of which, he firmly believed, had foundered through God’s will or man’s infamy, he was ready to try again. Lessons had been learned from the disastrous embarrassment of Katherine Howard and he was no longer prey to the attractions of a teenage strumpet dangled in front of him by deeply self-interested factions. He wanted a more mature woman with whom he could hold a conversation, who knew something of the world and possessed the right mixture of intelligence and grace to play effectively the part of queen consort, which, after all, was performed on the international stage. Someone, in other words, in whom he could have trust. It probably also occurred to him that, now he had mended fences with his elder daughter, Mary, after years of tension, it would be a very good thing if he chose a bride who could be a proper companion to her. That would add another note of femininity but also gravity to the court. In fact, his mind was beginning to turn to all of his three children and how he might organize the question of the succession beyond Edward, his immediate heir. Not that he had given up the idea of producing further brothers for the prince. A lady who could produce a duke of York would be exceedingly welcome. Henry knew better than anyone that elder brothers might not always outlive their younger siblings. Above all, one gets the sense that Henry was lonely, that in his heart of hearts he could not quite abandon the notion that he could enjoy a happy, married life with a lady who shared his interests and would never threaten him in any way.

  But whatever the mix of his emotions at the time, he was looking, first and foremost, for a wife who would please him. She must meet his standards of attractiveness, or the relationship would founder. And she must have an unimpeachable reputation, to save him from the horrors of Anne Boleyn and Katherine Howard. He was not especially seeking a stepmother for his children – Henry was hardly a family man – but considerations about their future were beginning to take shape in his mind. Nor, however ill and uncomfortable he might be from time to time, was he looking for a nurse. He wanted a wife for his bed and a worthy queen for his kingdom. In June 1543 he would be fifty-two years old. He was undisputed master of the kingdom he had ruled for thirty-four years but he still yearned for one more chance at connubial bliss. Perhaps he sensed that a good marriage would revive more than just his flagging spirits and ailing body. It might improve England’s standing as a European power. He was not, though, looking to find a highprofile foreign bride. The negotiations would be endless and the outcome might just be another Anne of Cleves. Always a shrewd observer of what was going on around him and ever-charming to the ladies of the court, an idea began to form in his mind. Lady Latimer had all the qualities he desired. ‘For beside the virtues of her mind,’ wrote John Foxe, ‘she was endued with rare gifts of nature, as singular beauty, favour and a comely personage; things wherein the king was greatly delighted.’12 She was an ideal choice for his sixth wife. Once the decision had been taken, it seemed such an obvious course that he was quite prepared to be patient and wait for the lady’s formal acceptance of his marriage proposal. He could also watch his brother-in-law’s discomfiture with some amusement.

  What was Henry VIII actually like in 1543, both as man and king? We think we know him – he is surely the most instantly recognizable English monarch – yet he was not an easy man to know and it was an important part of his office to preserve that aura of being different from ordinary men. There are portraits of him from every decade of his life. Once he became king, they were all intended to capture his authority and magnificence. Yet they tell a sad story. Physically, he was by the 1540s a far cry from the golden youth (albeit with a rather girlish face) who captivated European observers when he came to the throne back in 1509. The clean-shaven young man with bobbed hair had been replaced by the more severe, bearded image of the mature king, his hair cropped close to his head beneath the jewelled caps he always wore in public. And the taut, athletic body of the sportsman and jouster was long gone. In 1515, the year before the birth of Princess Mary, when he was twenty-four years old, his waistline measured 35½ inches. By 1540 it had expanded to 49 inches and was still increasing. Two years later, even as he was contemplating marrying for the sixth time, it was noted that he was ‘already very stout and daily growing heavier, he seems very old and grey … three of the biggest men to be found could get inside his doublet’.13 Hardly, then, an enticing prospect as a husband. Of course, he dressed superbly, ever-conscious of his image as a monarch, yet the bulky layers of Tudor clothing only added to his girth. The impression must have been overwhelming.

  Given his massive size, it is hardly surprising that Henry’s health had suffered. In this respect his athletic past caught up with him and actually contributed to his difficulties. By the late 1530s he was suffering from problems with his legs, caused, it is now thought, by old injuries that had never healed properly and led to bone disease. When this flared up, the pain was intense. Over the years, the king became less and less active and the vicious circle of pain, immobility and weight-gain continued. In March 1543, the king’s secretary, Sir William Paget, wrote to Edward Seymour: ‘the king’s majesty is now well again, who hath two or three days been troubled with a humour descending to his leg’.14 This was nothing new, and it would only get worse. One revealing detail of this is the increase in the king’s orders for hose. This had averaged a little ove
r 100 pairs a year between 1535 and 1539; in the years 1543–5, 322 pairs were supplied for the increasingly diseased royal legs.15 Henry was already walking with the aid of a stick but he did not yet need the contraption of a chair on pulleys that moved him from one part of Whitehall Palace to another at the end of his reign.