Katherine the Queen: The Remarkable Life of Katherine Parr

by Linda Porter

  The Latin preface to this trilingual translation begins with a fulsome tribute to her fathers importance and benevolence and describes how she came to choose the subject of her gift: ‘so I gladly asked (which it was my duty to do) by what means I might offer to your greatness the most excellent tribute that my capacity and diligence could discover. In the which I only fear lest slight and unfinished studies and childish ripeness of mind diminish the praise of this undertaking … for nothing ought to be more acceptable to a king, whom philosophers regard as a god on earth, than this labour of the soul.’

  Continuing in this vein, she waxed lyrical about the merits of her stepmother’s achievements, describing the ‘pious exertion and great diligence of a most illustrious queen’, who had composed the work in English, ‘and on that account may be more desirable to all and held in greater value by your majesty’.12

  It may well have been his daughter’s gift, so earnestly addressed, that first brought home to Henry VIII the extent of Katherine’s involvement in religious writing.13 It is hard to believe that he knew nothing at all about it, since the queen does not appear to have deliberately concealed her interests from her husband. Despite the fact that they had separate households, there was much commonality of outlook between the two establishments, and many of the queen’s ladies were married to men who were close to the king, either as members of the Privy Council or in his Privy Chamber. A considerable number of people were aware of Katherine’s projects, and gossip was the lifeblood of the court. Henry was always occupied by the business of government yet he still saw his wife frequently. It is true that his increasing immobility meant that she more often came to him by this time. At the beginning of their marriage it had been his custom to visit the queen in her apartments, but by early 1546 the situation was largely reversed. Perhaps this did give her a degree of autonomy she had not previously experienced – and this may not have ultimately worked in her favour.

  It does, though, seem highly plausible, that the king had paid scant attention to Katherine’s developing literary career. With all the difficulties he faced at home and abroad (he had still not made peace with France), his priorities lay elsewhere. In so far as he gave Katherine’s religious interests any thought at all, he probably dismissed her activities as a worthy hobby, rather like the study of Latin. But the realization of Katherine’s success as an author, and the influence she undoubtedly exercised over his children, must have been forcibly brought home to him when Elizabeth’s gift was perused. Henry had amply displayed his affection for his wife. She was no mere adornment but a helpmate, intelligent and committed. But the king had a monstrous ego and he did not appreciate being upstaged. Determined as he was to tread the path of moderation in his reformation of the Church, he was also concerned about the spread of books and study in the vernacular, fearing that too much discussion spread dissension, especially among the unlearned and the ill-intentioned. Elizabeth, pouring over her copy of the Prayers or Meditations at Hertford Castle, may not have been aware of this, but Katherine must surely have been familiar with the great speech that Henry VIII made to parliament at its prorogation on Christmas Eve 1545.

  This was to be his last appearance before the lords and representatives of the realm of England. He had dominated them throughout his reign and they helped him, in the previous decade, impose a new religious order on the country. But now, despite age, despite declining health, he was so out of patience with the splits disfiguring the Church he had created, that he decided to appear in person to answer the Speaker’s loyal address. Normally this was done, on the monarch’s behalf, by the lord chancellor, but Thomas Wriothesley had been the subject of a hate campaign by those who opposed his efforts to search out forbidden books and the king probably realized that Wriothesley’s unpopularity would undermine the message that needed to be put across. Besides, he wanted to deliver it himself. Heartfelt, direct and eloquent, there is no reason to suppose that anyone else wrote it for him. Like his children, Henry was a splendid orator when he chose to be. His 1545 speech is one of the greatest of the Tudor era.

  He did not start by berating his audience. Instead, he thanked them for their support in the war against France, describing the necessity of taking Boulogne and acknowledging the subsidy they had voted him. He also praised them for passing the recent Chantries Act, a piece of legislation that completed the suppression of religious houses begun a decade earlier, saying ‘firmly trusting that I will order them to the glory of God and the profit of our commonwealth … doubt not, I pray you, that your expectation shall be served’. On this matter, he and his parliament were at one. But there were other matters that troubled him mightily: ‘Yet,’ he continued, ‘although I with you, and you with me, be in this perfect love and concord, this friendly amity cannot continue, except you, my lords temporal, and you my lords spiritual, and you my loving subjects, study and take pains to amend one thing, which is surely amiss, and far out of order, to the which I most heartily require you; which is that charity and concord is not among you, but discord and dissension beareth rule, in every place.’ St Paul’s epistle to the Corinthians emphasized the importance of charity and love. So what was the reality in England, as Christmas time drew near? ‘Behold, what love and charity is amongst you, when the one calleth the other heretic and anabaptist, and he calleth him again, papist, hypocrite, and pharisee? Be these tokens of charity amongst you? Are these the signs of fraternal love between you?’ The blame he laid clearly at the door of ‘the fathers and preachers of the spirituality … Alas, how can the poor souls live in concord, when you, preachers, sow amongst them, in your sermons, debate and discord?’ Warming to his theme, the king did not mince words: ‘Amend these crimes, I exhort you, and set forth God’s word, both by true preaching and example-giving, or else I, whom God hath appointed his vicar, and high minister here, will see these divisions extinct and these enormities corrected.’ He went on to highlight one area that troubled him exceedingly – the misuse, as he saw it, of the scripture in English. This had opened up contention that he had never anticipated and his anger against it was magnificently expressed:

  And though you be permitted to read holy scripture, and to have the word of God in your mother tongue, you must understand, that it is licensed you so to do, only to inform your own conscience, and to instruct your children and family, and not to dispute, and make scripture a railing and a taunting stock against priests and preachers, as many light persons do. I am very sorry to know and hear how unreverently that most precious jewel, the word of God, is disputed, rhymed, sung and jangled in every alehouse and tavern …14

  It was an uncompromising message, delivered by a king on whom the ravages of time were all too evident. His audience must have known, though they would not have dared to give it voice, that he was unlikely to appear before them again. Many were moved to tears by his words. This was Henry VIII’s last public statement on the Reformation in England, a Reformation to which he, personally, was deeply committed. Did he regret the introduction of the Bible and the litany in English? These had been, after all, a major part of his evolving religious policy in the 1540s. But if he still believed, as seems probable, that the premise of what he had authorized was sound, he was deeply troubled and offended by the liberties that had been taken with it, by the cacophony of raised voices stirring up controversy and hatred. Henry wanted unity and obedience. The old autocrat, weak in body but still firm of purpose, could not tolerate dissension. It was impious and dangerous. The line between a heated discussion in a tavern and sedition against the state was a very thin one. Although not a man given to self-doubt, he must have wondered whether he had opened a veritable Pandora’s box. But of one thing he was certain. The spread of scripture in the vernacular had gone farther than he intended. Those who persisted in the sort of ostentatious displays he had so witheringly criticized would feel his wrath.

  Given this context, Elizabeth’s New Year’s gift to him may well have been mistimed. And there was also further cause for a
larm. We do not know whether the king and queen compared the presents they were given by his children, but Katherine had received from her stepdaughter a further literary effort that would probably have given the king pause for thought. One has to admire the child’s output, if not her originality. This time, it was a translation of the first chapter of John Calvin’s Institutes of the Christian Religion, first published in Geneva in 1541. Henry VIII had never admired Luther, but the more extreme Calvin must have been even more distasteful to him. Nor can we be certain that the king was entirely unaware, as has often been presumed, that his wife had commenced writing the Lamentation of a Sinner. The revelation that Katherine was now involved in an original composition of her own would certainly have aroused his interest, if not his benediction.

  He was not, though, a man who liked confrontation on the domestic front, any more than he condoned it in his kingdom. When relationships had become difficult with his former wives, he tended to keep his irritation within himself, until it burst forth in deadly earnest. For two and a half years he had doted on Katherine Parr. Her confidence was high and the satisfaction she evidently derived from her religious projects only added to her sense of fulfilment. She had made herself into an exemplary consort for a great monarch, and this gave her the boldness to proceed with her writing and her commitment to learning. In important matters, she was still viewed as a channel to the king. When the authorities at Cambridge University wrote to her at the beginning of 1546 asking for her intercession on the university’s future, she responded with a further indication of her beliefs, arguing again the inestimable merits of Christian education in English as the truest road to academic attainment.

  The queen began by taking the chancellor to task for writing to her in Latin when

  you could have uttered your desires and opinions familiarly in the vulgar tongue, aptest for my intelligence: albeit you seem to have conceived rather partially than truly a favourable estimation both of my going forward and dedication to learning … showing how agreeable it is to me … not only for mine own part to be studious, but also a maintainer and cherisher of the learned state, by bearing me in hand that I am endued and perfected with those qualities and respects which ought to be in a person of my vocation.

  She politely thanked them for their flattery but went on to admonish them on their curriculum:

  And for as much (as I do hear) that all kind of learning doth flourish amongst you in this age, as it did amongst the Greeks at Athens long ago, I desire you all not so to hunger for the exquisite knowledge of profane learning, that it may be thought the Greeks’ university was but transposed, or now in England again renewed, forgetting our Christianity, since their excellency only did attain to moral or natural things: but rather I gently exhort you to study and apply these doctrines as means and apt degrees to the attaining and setting forth the better Christ’s reverent and most sacred doctrine: that it may not be laid against you in evidence, at the tribunal seat of God, how you were ashamed of Christ’s doctrine … and that Cambridge may be accounted rather as an university of divine philosophy than of natural or moral, as Athens was …

  What had happened to the Katherine Parr who had studied hard to improve her Latin when she first married Henry VIII, that she should now reprove the scholars of Cambridge for their use of classical languages and a classical curriculum? Her stepson was, after all, being instructed and prepared for kingship by John Cheke, one of the foremost classical scholars of his day, an appointment which, in all probability, she had influenced. Perhaps she thought this approach would sit well with her husband, despite his reservations about the spread of the vernacular in religion. Or maybe they are very much her own views, reflecting the enthusiasms for English that she describes in the Lamentation of a Sinner. Whatever the explanation, she was able to tell the university, terrified that it would lose financing and independence as a result of the Chantries Act of 1545, that she had succeeded in pleading their case to the king. ‘His highness,’ she wrote, ‘being such a patron to good learning, doth tender you so much, that he will rather advance learning and erect new occasion thereof, than to confound those your ancient and godly institutions.’ The letter finished with the words: ‘Scribbled with the hand of her that prayeth to the Lord and immortal God, to send you all prosperous success in godly learning and knowledge. From my Lord the King’s Majesty’s manor of Greenwich, the 26th of February.’15

  This may have been the last time that Katherine was directly involved in matters of national importance, or, for some months at least, that she had the king’s ear. The very next day the imperial ambassador, Van der Delft, a Fleming who had replaced Chapuys in Charles V’s service, wrote in his despatch to the emperor: ‘I hesitate to report that there are rumours of a new queen. Some attribute it to the sterility of the present queen while others say there will be no change during the present war. Madame Suffolk is much talked about and in great favour; but the king shows no alteration in his demeanour to the queen, although she is said to be annoyed at the rumour.’16

  As well she might have been, for although Van der Delft was probably wrong about the likelihood of Katherine Brandon as a replacement (her religious leanings would surely have upset Henry VIII more than Katherine’s) there were tensions in the royal marriage. The queen was slowly becoming aware of them, and their implications. First and foremost, the king’s health was deteriorating, and the constant pain in his legs, coupled with an immobility that meant he had to be moved around his palaces on a kind of mechanical chair, affected his entire outlook. And the imperial ambassador might have hit upon a sensitive point when he referred to Katherine’s childlessness. For as Henry became more ill, so the consciousness of his wife’s failure to provide him with brothers for Prince Edward must have been more acute. Then there was the king’s noticeable capacity for boredom with his wives after the first few years of marriage. So Katherine entered the most difficult and perilous time of her marriage to Henry VIII, in a country where the king’s speech of the previous Christmas Eve had produced no effect. Religious dissension was stronger than ever, as the forces of religious reform and conservatism mingled with the naked ambition of the king’s advisers to produce a poisonous brew. The spring and summer of 1546 were deeply anxious and unpleasant months, when Katherine was to discover just how much she had lost her hold on her husband. Into this already unpredictable situation, there intruded the presence of another woman – not the duchess of Suffolk, nor even one who looked to supplant Katherine in the king’s affections. This woman’s motives were entirely different, but her outspoken beliefs and publicity-seeking threatened the queen’s security and perhaps her survival.

  Her name was Anne Askew.

  ANNE WAS the daughter of a Lincolnshire landowner and Member of Parliament, well-born and well educated. Her father was a prominent member of his local community and there has been speculation that she knew Katherine Parr during the queen’s first marriage. But that was nearly twenty years previously, when Anne would have been about ten years old, so any kind of closeness between them, even supposing that they had met at this time, seems far-fetched. As a young bride, Katherine Borough, as she then was, would have paid no more than polite attention to the children of neighbouring worthies. Much, though, had happened to Anne Askew since her apparently uneventful childhood. The process of her ‘conversion’ to evangelical religious ideas is scantily documented, even in what she herself said about her past. The trigger may well have been an unhappy marriage to Thomas Kyme, into which she was propelled by her father when her elder sister, Kyme’s intended wife, died suddenly. She had two children with her husband, but family life evidently became increasingly unrewarding. So she turned to study of the Bible, becoming ever more convinced that the ‘old superstitions of papistry’ must be overturned. In the Bible, Anne seems to have found a satisfaction lacking in her marriage, and she did not hold back in airing her views. This brought her into conflict with the local Church authorities and she became notorious in Lincolnshire
for her extremism. The complete breakdown of her marriage soon followed, though there are varying accounts of where the blame lay. Anne’s apologists later claimed that she was thrown out of the house by her exasperated husband and left to fend for herself, but Catholic commentators claimed that she initiated the split so that she could ‘gad up and down the country a gospelling and gossiping where she might and ought not. And this for divers years before her imprisonment; but especially she delighted to be in London near the court.’17

  This censorious description of a selfish and obsessive young woman overlooks the fact that Anne may well have come to London desperate to seek a legal separation from her husband and that she was, through family connections, very close to the court already. One of her brothers was the king’s cupbearer and a half-brother, recently deceased, a gentleman of the king’s Privy Chamber. Her sister was married to a lawyer in the duchess of Suffolk’s household. One of Anne’s chief religious advisers was John Lascelles, whose testimony against Katherine Howard had helped bring down Henry VIII’s fifth wife. So Anne was no crazed outsider or opportunist, but a woman close to the levers of power and influence. It was that very proximity that perhaps propelled her but which also made her dangerous. For Anne was increasingly ostentatious in her religious beliefs and behaviour, and although she was released after her first examination by Bishop Bonner of London in the summer of 1545, when she may or may not have recanted what were perceived as heretical views on the sacrament, she did not choose then to retire quietly. One year later, in the festering climate of religious dispute and political enmity that characterized a debt-ridden, impoverished England, where spying and betrayal were commonplace, Anne Askew again took centre stage. This time, it was her connections, as much as her beliefs, that prompted the actions taken against her. Like it or not, she had become a pawn in a deadly game. The stakes could not have been higher or simpler, for the intention of Anne’s enemies was to strike, through her, at the very centre of power and to compromise Queen Katherine, perhaps fatally.