Katherine the Queen: The Remarkable Life of Katherine Parr

by Linda Porter

  It was a major part of Katherine’s role to ensure that England was quiet, calm and information was carefully controlled by the government. Her attention to morale on the home front can be seen in her response to the almost inevitable rumours of a French invasion in early August 1544. She wrote to reassure her husband that she had dealt promptly and effectively with this potential threat to stability. As soon as she had established, through local justices of the peace, that the invasion scare was without foundation, ‘we thought good to advertise you of the same, lest any other vain report passing over might have caused the king’s majesty to have conceived other opinion of the state of things here than, thanks be unto God [they are] … all things here are in very good quiet and order’. A similar rumour in the southwest of the country was also investigated and found to be without foundation. As Katherine remarked in a despatch to the council with the king in France, ‘a landing of Frenchmen about Gloucester was unlikely’. She was told by the justices of the peace that ‘all was well and the rumour supposed to arise by the despatch of the navy from Bristol for the conveyance of [the earl of] Lennox’.16 But scaremongering was not the only source of possible social disorder. A considerable number of ‘aged and impotent’ French citizens had been resident in London for years and were alarmed about their situation now that France and England were at war. Fearing deportation and threatened with violence if they set foot outside their homes, they petitioned for tolerance, which the queen was inclined to grant. Henry agreed with her decision and a proclamation was issued on the last day of September allowing them to stay.17

  As well as her frequent reassurance that all was well in England and her equally constant references to the health of Henry’s children, Katherine was keen, also, to place her personal relationship with the king squarely in his thoughts. She wanted him to know how much she missed him. She wrote, while still at Greenwich:

  The want of your presence, so much beloved and desired by me, makes me that I cannot quietly enjoy anything until I hear from your majesty … The time, therefore, seemeth to me very long with a great desire to know how your highness hath done since departing hence … whereas I know your majesty’s absence is never without great respect of things most convenient and necessary, yet love and affection compelleth me to desire your presence … Love makes me in all things to set apart my own commodity and pleasure and to embrace most joyfully his will and pleasure whom I love.

  God, the knower of secrets, can judge these words not to be only written with ink, but most truly impressed in the heart … And even such confidence I have in your majesty’s gentleness, knowing myself never to have done my duty as were requisite and meet to such a noble prince, at whose hands I have received so much love and goodness that with words I cannot express it.

  Lest I should be too tedious unto your majesty, I finish this, my scribbled letter, committing you into the governance of the Lord, with long life and prosperous felicity here, and after this to enjoy the kingdom of His elect.

  By your majesty’s most humble, obedient loving wife and servant, Kateryn the Queen, K. P.18

  No doubt the king was pleased to receive this charmingly worded avowal of Katherine’s devotion, but he was no great correspondent himself. Travel, the press of things that needed to be done and perhaps, also, the desire to write only when he had something positive to say meant that Henry VIII did not reply directly to the queen for more than a month. His response, however, is interesting, because of the detail he gives her about the state of the siege of Boulogne and the political situation with Charles V and Francis I. The main part of his letter does not contain pleasantries; it suggests, rather, that the king had a high regard for his wife’s intelligence and grasp of what was going on, and that they had discussed the conduct of the war and its associated diplomacy at length before he left England.

  Katherine’s letters to Henry had been delivered by one of her personal servants, and the man remained longer than anticipated in France because the king wanted to send him back with the good news that Boulogne had fallen. Unfortunately, the taking of the town was being delayed because of a lengthy wait for the necessary gunpowder to arrive from Flanders. He felt sure that it would be there in a matter of days now and went on to tell the queen: ‘But meanwhile, without loss of men, we have won the strongest part of the town … and can keep it with 400 men against 4,000 enemies.’ He also acknowledged the bravery of the castle’s defenders, saying that the Burgundians and the Flemings supplied to him by Charles V ‘are no good where any danger is’. Yet his confidence that Boulogne would soon be in English hands was not matched by any similar confidence about the diplomatic reality of his position. He already knew that Francis I was suing for peace and expressed his uneasiness over what Charles V might do, but he did not yet fully grasp that his ally would proceed without him. The emperor’s demands of the French seemed to him extreme. Well, if that were so, he would take a similar stance: ‘viz, arrears of pension, damages suffered by the war, the realm of France and the duchies of Normandy, Aquitaine and Guienne. Either the emperor mindeth no peace’, he went on to remark, ‘or would pluck the honour of compounding it, although the French king says that he never made means to the emperor for peace. Pray communicate this to the Council.’ Finally, he added a postscript in his own hand, updating her on the very latest military situation in Boulogne: ‘this day, 8 September, we begin three batteries and have three mines going, besides one which has shaken and torn one of the greatest bulwarks. I am too busy to write more but send blessings to all my children and recommendations to my cousin Margaret [his niece, the new countess of Lennox] and the rest of the ladies and gentlewomen and to my Council.’19

  Three days later, following the arrival of the powder, a final assault was made on Boulogne and the castle’s last defences crumbled. The town surrendered on 14 September. It had been energetically defended by the Sieur de Vervins, a young French nobleman, who was later arrested by the French and beheaded. But after two months that had seen the loss of hundreds of lives and the near exhaustion of the English artillery, the town belonged to Henry VIII. He entered it like a medieval monarch vanquishing the opposing host: ‘The king’s highness, having the sword borne before him by the Lord Marquess of Dorset, like a noble and valiant conqueror, rode into Boulogne, and the trumpeters standing on the walls of the town sounded their trumpets at the time of his entering, to the great comfort of all the king’s true subjects … And in the entering there met him the Duke of Suffolk, and delivered unto him the keys of the town …’ The chronicler omitted to add that Henry had sat, in full armour, astride his warhorse in the pelting rain watching the 2,000 civilians turned out of Boulogne trudge towards the French lines at Abbeville. Many died of disease, hypothermia (it was a very cold and wet autumn) and starvation, the forgotten victims of a nasty war.

  The glorious entry was, of course, a propaganda exercise. Katherine lost no time in capitalizing on it when the news of Henry’s success was brought to her by her brother-in-law, Sir William Herbert, on 19 September. It would be especially important to have the news of the king’s success made known throughout the country but nowhere more so than the north, where the Scottish borders remained uneasy. So the queen immediately sent to the earl of Shrewsbury and the Council of the North the order that: ‘The queen having this night advertisement by Sir William Herbert of the Privy Chamber, that Boulogne is in the king’s hands without effusion of blood, Shrewsbury shall cause thanks to be given to God, by devout and general processions in all the towns and villages of the North, and also signify to the Wardens of the Marches this great benefit which God has heaped on us.’20

  Katherine was at Woking in Surrey with the council when she issued orders for her husband’s success to be extensively communicated. She was keeping well clear of central London because of the plague and had just issued a proclamation forbidding anyone who had contact with the disease to come to court. The capture of Boulogne seems to have given her sufficient confidence to believe that she di
d not have to attend council meetings daily. For the remainder of the month she and the royal children hunted in the south-east, in what was perhaps a deliberate effort to encourage family spirit and let off some steam. It cannot have been entirely enjoyable, for the wet weather that was wreaking havoc on northern France was equally prevalent across the Channel. In fact, it was so cold that Katherine had to send for some of her furred winter garments from the store at Baynard’s Castle. But the rain was not the only dampener of celebrations in England. For, on the very day that Henry entered his new territory in France, Emperor Charles V made a separate peace with Francis I, leaving the English high but not at all dry outside Montreuil, and still at war with France.

  HENRY’S INITIAL reaction to this betrayal was surprisingly phlegmatic. It was an unwelcome development, but by no means unforeseen. He had indirectly alluded to the possibility in his letter of 8 September to his wife. Francis I always believed that he could drive a wedge between the two mistrustful allies and the loss of Boulogne, though distressing, was a price he was willing to pay if he could bring the wider threat to a halt and sow diplomatic discord at the same time. In fact, by the terms of the treaty of Crépy, he did very well for a king whose country had been invaded by two of his enemies at the same time. But Charles V’s campaign had really ended after his army’s abandonment of the siege of St Dizier in mid-August 1544. Unwilling to fight long into the autumn and fearing, perhaps not without justification, that Henry might make his own peace with the French, he simply decided to get in there first. Nor was he willing to accept Henry VIII’s offer to mediate on his behalf with Francis. His own pride and suspicion of his ally were too strong. Nevertheless, it looked as though he had paid a high price for his peace. Henry remarked subsequently that one would have thought Francis I the victor and Charles V the vanquished. The emperor agreed that a marriage would take place between Charles, duke of Orléans, the second son of the French king, and a Habsburg princess, either his own daughter, Maria, or his brother Ferdinand’s daughter. This new-found friendship, and the sense of French entitlement that Henry had noted, seemed to be reinforced by the entry into Brussels of Queen Eléonore of France (the emperor’s sister), accompanied by Orléans, her unappealing stepson, and the festivities that followed. The bride’s dower lands were, however, to remain Habsburg territories, thus containing the ability of the French to do further damage to Charles’s European domains. Above all, the arrangement bought the emperor time to deal with the continued rise of Protestantism in Germany. He wanted no further distractions in northern France for the time being and so he abandoned Henry VIII to pursue his own aims.

  The most significant consequence for the English was the decision, made barely a week after the treaty of Crépy, to pull its army back from the siege of Montreuil. The town had not been an unreasonable target for a force better supplied and commanded than that led by the duke of Norfolk and Lord Russell but circumstances made it completely unattainable in 1544. The attempt to take it was hampered by the very long supply lines and the inability of Mary of Hungary and her council to meet what they soon came to believe were the unreasonable demands of the English force. The town had never been completely encircled and this put the besiegers under a very great disadvantage. But far worse than this military weakness was the inescapable reality that Norfolk’s troops were starving. In total, the English force invading France consumed 15 million pounds of food and drink every month, but this was not sufficient to feed Norfolk’s troops. By mid-September, a loaf of bread cost six times its real value and, if made locally from unground grain from diseased crops, it could be poisonous. When meat did arrive eventually from England, it was almost always rancid. Even beer was in short supply. Dysentery ran wild through a camp made all the more vile by the incessant rain and deplorable hygiene. Eventually, there was no forage even for the horses. Many of Norfolk’s soldiers were German mercenaries who remained unpaid. It is hardly surprising that they became fractious. So when the order to fall back to Boulogne was given, the duke was mightily relieved.

  Yet he was partly the architect of what nearly became his undoing. Time had not changed the habits of Thomas Howard. An anti-imperialist all his life, he was never keen to leave Calais and sit around outside Montreuil, uncertain of his orders and perhaps realizing that the town was going to be extremely difficult, if not impossible, to take. An accomplished whiner, as well as an arch-manipulator, the duke had delayed his departure from Calais for a month, awaiting Russell’s arrival. He wanted to be sure that Russell could share any blame that might be laid if, as Norfolk suspected, things did not go well. Russell immediately obliged him by entering into the spirit of rivalry. He wrote to the king in mid-July complaining of Norfolk’s attitude, saying it was likely to damage Angloimperial relations. And he made the interesting suggestion that either Thomas Seymour or Richard Cromwell, nephew of the king’s executed chief minister, should be sent as an independent adviser to assess the situation. There was no response to this proposal and both Russell and Norfolk realized that they must attempt to capture Montreuil, even though neither probably thought it feasible. Their departure from the town was, by late September, itself a risky enterprise. The French armies were not far away and Norfolk’s troops were unlikely to survive an all-out battle, but they managed to get back to Boulogne unscathed. Henry was beside himself with fury when, shortly after his return to England, he learned that the dukes of Norfolk and Suffolk had decided to fall back still further, to Calais, leaving Boulogne dangerously exposed.

  The king’s overall mood, however, was one of personal satisfaction. The capture of Boulogne had always been his priority and the prize was now his. Never mind that a fortune would have to be spent to rebuild its fortifications and defend the town or that the war would drag on for another eighteen months, leading to deep-seated resentment in France and a determination not merely to regain Boulogne but to take Calais, too. Henry showed no concern that his own country was bankrupt as a result of the excessive demands put upon its exchequer and Wriothesley’s inadequate financial skills. The chancellor had reckoned in March 1544 that the campaign would cost £250,000, of which sum the king already had £134,000. The deficit was to be made up by speeding the sale of monastic lands and a further debasement of the coinage. But the final cost of the war was eight times higher than Wriothesley’s initial calculation. In Antwerp Stephen Vaughan raised as much as he could through loans, and the Privy Council attempted to help by sending lead stripped from monastery roofs; but all this did was flood the market, reducing its value. To the king, none of this mattered. In his own mind, Henry VIII had got what he wanted. He would return to England a successful war leader. Boulogne was his Agincourt and he had made sure that the Tudor dynasty could take its place in the history of valour alongside its Plantagenet forebears. On the last day of September he took ship from Calais, bound for England and a joyful reunion with his queen.

  Katherine, who had been concerned that French ships might try to intercept her husband as he returned home, was at Eltham Palace when she heard the news that Henry had landed in Kent. It is possible that her sharp mind had already grasped some of the difficulties that lay ahead, but she knew that she would no longer play a direct part in decision-making. Her influence, though, was riding high and she would make the most of that. Katherine had written a prayer for the king, too, in which she asked Jesus to ‘indue him plentifully with heavenly gifts. Grant him in health and wealth long to live. Heap glory and honour upon him. Glad him with the joy of thy countenance. So strength him that he may vanquish and overcome all his and our foes, and be dread and feared of all the enemies of his realm.’21

  But, for the moment, to reinforce her position as a dutiful and desirable wife, Katherine took her leave of the royal children and went without them to Otford Palace in Kent, where she and Henry VIII met again in early October. They spent some time together at Leeds Castle near Maidstone and eventually made their way back to London. It was something of a second honeymoon. The king had
every reason to be satisfied with the way Katherine had handled affairs in his absence and she, in her turn, seems to have derived great satisfaction from what she had achieved. Their joint perception of success, Henry’s in France and Katherine’s in England, strengthened their relationship. Her life as queen of England had become much more fulfilling than she could ever have dared to hope when she married Henry fifteen months before. There was every reason to believe it would continue. And now she had the time and opportunity to develop her own ideas, to give them shape and utterance, and to bring them to a wider audience. She could be so much more than just another wife of Henry VIII.

  CHAPTER TEN

  The Queen’s Gambit

  ‘I never knew mine own wickedness, neither lamented for my sins truly, until the time God inspired me with his grace, that I looked in this book; then I began to see perfectly, that mine own power and strength could not help me, and that I was in the Lord’s hand, even as the clay is in the potter’s hand.’

  Katherine Parr, The Lamentation of a Sinner,

  November 1547

  KATHERINE CONTINUED in good spirits and high in the king’s favour as the New Year dawned in 1545. Her interest in foreign affairs was undiminished and her graciousness much appreciated in diplomatic circles. Nowhere was this more apparent than in her leave-taking of the veteran imperial ambassador Eustace Chapuys, who reported in detail his final interview with the queen in May 1545. Chapuys had been in England, with occasional breaks, for sixteen years. He had lived through the interminable agony of the divorce from Katherine of Aragon, and was a staunch supporter of Princess Mary when she was virtually friendless. During his time in a country he did not admire, whose ruling class he regarded as self-seeking and untrustworthy, he had faithfully performed his duty to Charles V. He knew Henry VIII well – or, at least, the public face that Henry presented to ambassadors – and the two men developed a grudging regard for each other. They were of an age and time that had not been kind to either of them. Half paralysed by gout, Chapuys was finally being allowed to depart, but he first needed to bid the king an official farewell. On his way to the royal apartments, the ambassador was flattered to discover that the queen meant to waylay him: