by Linda Porter
9 Sir Thomas Malory, La Morte d’Arthur (London, 1889), preface, quoted in Derek Wilson, In the Lion’s Court (London, 2002).
10 Quoted in J. J. Scarisbrick, Henry VIII (London, 1997).
11 Susan E. James, Kateryn Parr, the Making of a Queen (Aldershot, 1999).
Two – A Formidable Mother
1 List of Maud, Lady Parr’s jewels, in her will, NA, PCC 12 Thower (1530), quoted in James, Kateryn Parr.
2 All that remains of Rye House today is the partially restored fifteenthcentury gatehouse. In the seventeenth century it was the centre of a plot to assassinate Charles II and replace him with his Catholic brother, James.
3 Elizabeth Cheyney was the daughter of Thomas and William Parr’s only sister, Anne. She was orphaned at an early age and William Parr seems to have assumed responsibility for her.
4 Sir Thomas Parr’s Horae ad Usum Sarum, Cambridge University Library, quoted in James, Kateryn Parr.
5 Quoted in Charles Sturge, Cuthbert Tunstal (London, 1938).
6 Sturge, Cuthbert Tunstal.
7 Cuthbert Tunstall, In Praise of Matrimony (1518), quoted in Sturge, Cuthbert Tunstal.
8 This assertion is made in Anthony Martienssen, Queen Katherine Parr (London, 1975).
9 Sturge, Cuthbert Tunstal.
10 Dakota Lee Hamilton, ‘The Household of Queen Katherine Parr’ (Oxford University, D.Phil thesis, 1992).
11 E. E. Reynolds, Thomas More and Erasmus (London, 1965).
12 BL Additional MS 24.965, ff. 23 and 24.
13 Quoted in Martienssen, Queen Katherine Parr.
14 Martienssen, Queen Katherine Parr.
15 Quoted in Beverley A. Murphy, Bastard Prince (Gloucester, 2003).
16 See James, Kateryn Parr.
17 Quoted in ODNB entry for John Palsgrave.
18 Quoted in Murphy, Bastard Prince.
Three – The Marriage Game
1 William Camden, Britannia (English transl., London, 1637).
2 Quoted in Gerald A. J. Hodgett, Tudor Lincolnshire, History of Lincolnshire VI (Lincoln, 1975).
3 S. J. Gunn, ‘The Rise of the Burgh Family, c.1431–1550’, in Phillip Lindley, ed., Gainsborough Old Hall (Society of Lincolnshire History and Archaeology, 1991).
4 Graham Platts, Land and People in Medieval Lincolnshire, History of Lincolnshire IV (Lincoln, 1985).
5 Gunn, ‘The Rise of the Burgh Family’
6 James, Kateryn Parr.
7 Maud Parr was correct when she referred to Borough as Sir Thomas in her will, but he was made a baron and entered the House of Lords shortly after his son married Katherine Parr.
8 Lady Elizabeth Burgh to Thomas Cromwell, 13 November 1537, L&P, 12, ii, 1074.
9 NA, PROB 11 Thower (1530), quoted in James, Kateryn Parr.
Four – Lady Latimer
1 L&P, 7, 438.
2 Katherine Parr, Lamentation of A Sinner, March 1548, f.Fib-iiib, quoted in James, Kateryn Parr.
3 The exterior of Snape Castle can be seen from the road and the path that takes visitors to the chapel. The chapel is open daily but the castle is closed to the public.
4 L&P, 11, 772, quoted in G. W. Bernard, The King’s Reformation (London, 2005). For detail on the wider opposition to Henry VIII, see ch. 2 of Bernard.
5 Revaluations of monastic wealth were not new, but most of the great orders in the north of England had been exempt inspection. See Bernard, The King’s Reformation.
Five – The Pilgrimage of Grace
1 Thomas Meynell’s book, f. 1, from the Meynell MSS in Ampleforth Abbey Library, now on microfilm in the North Yorkshire Record Office, Northallerton, ZIQ/MIC 2050, quoted in Sarah L. Bastow, ‘Aspects of the History of the Catholic Gentry of Yorkshire from the Pilgrimage of Grace to the First Civil War’ (University of Huddersfield D.Phil. thesis, 2002).
2 L&P, 11, 503.
3 L&P, 11, i., 970, quoted in Bernard, The King’s Reformation.
4 L&P, 11, 533.
5 L&P, 11, 569.
6 For a detailed explanation of the oath written by Robert Aske and its proper interpretation, see Bernard, The King’s Reformation. This gives the oath in both the original and the modern spelling; I have used only the latter. Professor Bernard notes, in particular, that the beginning of the oath has been widely misinterpreted to read that the Pilgrimage was not for the common wealth (my italics), when, in fact, the clause should be read as a whole. It is, indeed, a ‘Pilgrimage of Grace for the common wealth’ and there should not be a comma before the first ‘but’, as appears in Geoffrey Moorhouse’s The Pilgrimage of Grace (London, 2002). The editor of L&P 12 did not give the full text of the oath, which is in NA, SP1/108, f. 48.
7 L&P, 11, 760.
8 From J. T. Fowler (ed.), Rites of Durham, being a description or brief declaration of all the ancient monuments, rites and customs belonging or being within the monastical church of Durham before the suppression, 1539, Surtees Society 107 (1903).
9 Many other castles in the region were similarly at risk. Some, such as Skipton, were also in disrepair.
10 L&P, 11, 729.
11 Quoted in Bernard, The King’s Reformation.
12 L&P, 11, 909.
13 L&P, 11, 955.
14 L&P, 11, 1064.
15 L&P, 11, 1175.
16 L&P, 12, i, 1022.
17 L&P, 11, 1246.
18 L&P, 12, i, 103.
19 L&P, 12, i, 173.
20 L&P, 12, i, 81.
21 L&P, 12, i, 632.
22 L&P, 12, i, 131.
23 L&P, 12, ii, 101.
24 L&P, 12, ii, 31.
25 This visit, its background and the hostility felt by northerners is brilliantly captured in the third of C. J. Sansom’s Tudor detective novels, Sovereign (London, 2006).
26 See Martienssen, Queen Katherine Parr.
27 L&P, 15, 776.
28 Will of John Neville, Baron Latimer, NA, PROB 11/29: Register Spert.
Six – Two Suitors
1 Charles Wriothesley, A Chronicle of England, ed. W. D. Hamilton, Camden Society, New Series, 11 (London, 1875–7).
2 This confusion over the tailor’s account may seem a minor cavil, but it has led to basic misunderstandings of the timing of Katherine Parr’s relationship with both Henry VIII and Princess Mary. See D. Starkey, The Six Wives of Henry VIII (London, 2004). There is no evidence that Katherine held any position in Mary’s household. For the difficulties caused to some of her servants by late payment in Katherine’s household as queen, see below, Chapter 7.
3 Undated, spring 1547, Dent-Brocklehurst MS, Sudeley Castle.
4 The Seymours were not all eager for advancement. Henry Seymour, the brother born between Edward and Thomas, lived quietly in Hampshire, dying in 1578.
5 The statement that affection would lead him to court but he would take care that interest kept him there is often attributed to Thomas Seymour (BL Sloane MS 1523, f. 36). Yet the line appears under the general heading ‘The Seymors’ and is not specifically referenced to Thomas. Sloane MS 1523 is a very curious collection of anecdotes and moralizing observations on Tudor courtiers (it also contains a treatise on growing fruit trees) written much later by an unknown person. Even more oddly, there is a brief paragraph on the Parrs that refers to none of the family directly but appears to accuse them of being self-interested upstarts.
6 John Strype refers to a story in his Ecclesiastical Memorials that Seymour had seduced a low-born woman, who subsequently became a prostitute and denounced his part in her downfall while on her way to the gallows for robbery. See Strype, Ecclesiastical Memorials (Oxford, 1822), vol. 2, part 1. This story was apparently seized upon by Hugh Latimer in his general character assassination of Thomas Seymour after the latter’s execution in 1549.
7 A letter jointly signed with John Dudley (later duke of Northumberland and close friend of his brother’s at this time). March 1537, L&P, 12, i, 602.
8 Quoted in John Maclean, The Life of Sir Thomas Seymour (London, 1869). This rare book is someth
ing of a curiosity. It was part of a series on the Lives of the Masters-General of the Ordnance (a post held by Sir Thomas Seymour) and only 100 copies were printed. The British Library does not have one, but the London Library does.
9 Gregory Cromwell was Elizabeth Seymour’s second husband. They were married some time in 1538 and had five children before Gregory’s death in 1551.
10 L&P, 13, i, 1375.
11 See below, Chapter 10.
12 John Foxe, Acts and Monuments of the Church containing the History and Suffering of the Martyrs, ed. Revd M. Hobart Seymour (London, 1838).
13 Quoted in Maria Hayward, Dress at the Court of King Henry VIII (London, 2007).
14 S. Haynes, ed., A Collection of State Papers Relating to Affairs with the Reigns of King Henry VIII, King Edward VI, Queen Mary and Queen Elizabeth … left by William Cecil, Lord Burghley (London, 1740).
15 Hayward, Dress at the Court of King Henry VIII.
16 James P. Carley, The Books of Henry VIII and his Wives (London, 2004). For further information on the libraries of Henry VIII, see Carley, The Libraries of Henry VIII (Corpus of British Medieval Library Catalogues, 7, 2002).
17 Ibid.
18 Bernard, The King’s Reformation.
19 Charles Lloyd, ed., Formularies of Faith Put Forth by Authority during the Reign of Henry VIII (Oxford, 1825).
20 See Alec Ryrie, The Gospel and Henry VIII: Evangelicals in the Early English Reformation (Cambridge, 2003), ch. 1.
21 Lord Latimer does not appear to have been present at the battle of Solway Moss.
22 Dent-Brocklehurst MS, Sudeley Castle.
23 L&P, 18, i, 740.
24 L&P, 18, i, 873.
Seven – The Queen and Her Court
1 L&P, 18, i, 894.
2 Quoted in A. J. Slavin, Politics and Profit: A Study of Sir Ralph Sadler, 1507–1547 (Cambridge, 1966).
3 Cal SP Spanish, 6, ii, 188.
4 Wriothesley, Chronicle.
5 For details of the royal itinerary in the summer and autumn of 1543, see Starkey, Six Wives.
6 L&P, 18, i, 918.
7 None of these palaces survives. Hanworth was altered in the seventeenth century and destroyed by fire in 1797; Chelsea was demolished in the early eighteenth century and Mortlake also has long since disappeared.
8 The shift, or chemise (basically an undergarment) was generally used for sleeping.
9 For further details, see Hayward, Dress at the Court of King Henry VIII.
10 NA, E101/432/13. f. 6, quoted in James, Kateryn Parr.
11 Skut had a number of private clients as well. They included Lady Honor Lisle, the wife of the deputy governor of Calais.
12 Susan E. James, The Feminine Dynamic in English Art, 1485–1603 (Aldershot, 2009).
13 Hayward, Dress at the Court of King Henry VIII.
14 The first appearance of an order for a farthingale in the accounts of the Great Wardrobe is for one ordered for the eleven-year-old Princess Elizabeth in 1545. Mary also owned several and favoured the crimson satin chosen by her stepmother. See Hayward, Dress at the Court of King Henry VIII.
15 On this and Katherine’s religious and intellectual development, see below, Chapter 10.
16 NA, E315/161, f. 46.
17 Morris Addison Hatch, ‘The Ascham Letters’ (Cornell University D. Phil., 1948).
18 ‘Narrative of the Visit of the Duke de Najera’, in Archaeologica xxiii (1831).
19 Cal SP Spanish, 7, pt 1 (1544), 39.
20 NA, E101/426/3. f. 22, quoted in James, Kateryn Parr.
21 See James, Kateryn Parr.
22 See Hamilton, ‘The Household of Queen Katherine Parr’, Introduction.
23 L&P, 19, ii, 201.
24 ‘The Life and Death of Sir Nicholas Throckmorton, transcribed AD 1678’, in Cole’s MSS History of the Family of Throckmorton, Warwickshire County Record Office, CR 1998/LCB/18.
25 See the curious comments about the Parrs in BL Sloane MS 1523: ‘The common rule of favourites is to bring in all their relations about them, to adorn and support them; but a wall (if) it hath a firm bottom needs no buttress.’ This is, however, a retrospective judgement.
26 For Hoby see ODNB entry, 2004.
27 L&P, 19, i, 724.
28 Starkey, Six Wives.
29 BL Lansdowne MS 97, f. 43, quoted in James, Kateryn Parr.
Eight – The Royal Children
1 Agnes Strickland, Lives of the Queens of England (London, 1852), vol. 3.
2 L&P, 16, 380, quoted in Christopher Skidmore, Edward VI (London, 2007).
3 BL Cotton MS Vespasian, F xiii, f. 221.
4 BL Cotton MS Nero, C x f. 6, printed in James O. Halliwell, Letters of the Kings of England (London, 1848), vol. 2.
5 BL Cotton MS Nero, C.x. f. 8.
6 L&P, 7, 296.
7 For a more detailed account of Mary’s travail, see Linda Porter, Mary Tudor: The First Queen (London, 2007), chs. 3, 4 and 5.
8 Simon Thurley, The Royal Palaces of Tudor England (London, 1993).
9 BL Cotton MS, Vespasian, F iii, f. 29, in Anne Crawford, ed., Letters of the Queens of England (London, 1994). The date of 1544 ascribed to this letter cannot be correct. Katherine refers to not having seen Mary for some time and the fact that she was at her dower manor of Hanworth points to it being after Henry’s death, and her marriage to Thomas Seymour; 20 September 1547 seems more likely.
10 L&P, 18, ii, 41.
11 1544, 35 Henry VIII. C. 1.3 Statutes of the Realm 3.
12 L&P, 11, 203.
13 Elizabeth I, Collected Works, ed. Leah S. Marcus et al. (Chicago and London, 2002).
14 NA, E101/423/12.
15 David Starkey has suggested that there might have been illness in Elizabeth’s household and that she had been required to wait in a form of quarantine until any danger to others was passed. See David Starkey, Elizabeth (London, 2001). Katherine’s apartments at St James’s had been prepared for her during the time Elizabeth was actually there, though it is not clear whether the queen used them. See L&P, 19, ii, 688.
16 Elizabeth I, Collected Works.
17 Edward was at Hampton Court at the express instruction of his father the king, who apparently felt it was the safest place for him.
18 L&P, 19, ii. 58.
Nine – Regent of England
1 John Knox, The First Blast of the Trumpet against the Monstrous Regiment of Women, 1558. Elizabeth I, though not a Catholic, was highly displeased by Knox’s work and his attempts to apologize to her fell on stony ground.
2 See below, Chapter 10.
3 ODNB entry for Thomas Thirlby.
4 NA, SP 1/12.
5 Cal SP Spanish, 7, pt ii, 56.
6 In his final despatch from England, Eustace Chapuys gives a detailed account of his last meeting with Katherine which began with the queen saying that the king had discussed the ambassador’s departure with her the night before.
7 Cal SP Spanish, 7, pt i, 46.
8 Cal SP Spanish, 7, pt ii, 156.
9 Luke MacMahon, ‘The English Invasion of France in 1544’ (University of Warwick, M.Phil. thesis, 1992).
10 Cal SP Spanish., 7, pt ii, 124.
11 Ibid., 68.
12 Printed in Betty S. Travitsky and Patrick Cullen, eds., The Early Modern Englishwoman: A Facsimile Library of Essential Works: Part 1, Printed Writings, 1500–1640 (Aldershot, 1997), Vol. 3: Katherine Parr.
13 BL Cotton MS, Caligula E4, f. 55.
14 Cal SP Spanish, 7, 148. See James, Kateryn Parr.
15 L&P, 19, i, 943.
16 L&P, 19, ii, 39.
17 L&P, 19, ii, 231 and 332.
18 BL Lansdowne MS 1236, f. 9, quoted in James, Kateryn Parr.
19 L&P, 19, ii, 201.
20 L&P, 19, ii, 251.
21 The prayer is printed in its entirety in Travitsky and Cullen, Katherine Parr.
Ten – The Queen’s Gambit
1 Cal SP Spanish, 8, 51.
2 The will of Margaret Neville, NA, PROB 11 Alen, pri
nted in full in James, Kateryn Parr.
3 BL Lansdowne MS 76, art. 81, f. 182.
4 See Chapter 8.
5 Bernard, The King’s Reformation.
6 ODNB 2004.
7 The order that the new litany be used in every parish in the realm was made on 11 June 1544.
8 See James, Kateryn Parr.
9 From the preface to The First Tome or Volume of the Paraphrase of Erasmus upon the New Testament, imprinted in London at Fleet Street at the sign of the sun by Edward Whitchurch, the last day of January 1548.
10 Quotations are from the facsimile edition of Katherine Parr’s The Lamentation of a Sinner, in Travitsky and Cullen, Katherine Parr.
11 These comments sit uncomfortably beside the earnest attempts of feminist historians to capture Katherine as a sort of sixteenth-century feminist icon. Much ink was spilt in the 1990s by (mostly) American academics on Katherine’s writings.
12 Elizabeth I, Collected Works.
13 Starkey, Six Wives.
14 King Henry VIII’s speech in parliament, Edward Hall, Chronicle (London, 1809 edition).
15 The Correspondence of Matthew Parker, the Parker Society, vol. 49, from the Parker MSS in Corpus Christi College, University of Cambridge.
16 Cal SP Spanish, 8, 204.
17 J. G. Nichols, ed., Narratives of the Days of the Reformation, Camden Society, Old Series, 77 (1859). The writer quoted is the Jesuit priest Robert Persons, commenting many years later, and from a far from objective viewpoint.
18 The reference to Lady Lane is often mistaken for ‘Lady Jane’ and thought to be Lady Jane Grey. But Foxe’s text is quite clear. Jane Grey probably did attend court from time to time with her mother during the period that Katherine Parr was married to Henry but apart from the inherent unlikelihood of a ten-year-old girl being involved in this desperate mission (even supposing it to be true), she does not figure in John Foxe’s account.
19 The story in its entirety appears in Foxe, Acts and Monuments.
20 Lady Tyrwhit, however, was still alive. She did not die until 1578. Her subsequent reporting of Katherine’s own deathbed is not, however, entirely reliable and her strong Protestant faith would have given her motive to embroider these earlier events.
21 Crome was something of a serial recanter, but his behaviour was prompted by a belief that reform would prosper through the survival of its adherents, rather than their martyrdom. His behaviour here follows the same pattern as Thomas Cranmer’s ten years later, the main difference being that Cranmer was burnt and Crome, who survived the Marian persecutions, died of natural causes early in the reign of Elizabeth I.