Katherine the Queen: The Remarkable Life of Katherine Parr (17 page)

Latimer did return to Snape and the mob dispersed without further destruction to his home and goods. He was unable to stay for long as he was still extremely concerned about clearing his name. The outbreak of new unrest in the East Riding of Yorkshire, led by the maverick knight Sir Francis Bigod (expected, one day, to be Margaret Neville’s father-in-law), added further confusion to the tense atmosphere. Bigod was actually an enthusiastic supporter of the new religious ideas and had opposed the Pilgrimage of Grace when it broke out, but he did not approve of Henry VIII’s role as Head of the Church and he also feared that the king would use the uprising to come down heavily on the entire north of England, turning it into little more than an occupied territory. Unlike Latimer, Constable and Darcy, Bigod did not believe that Henry would keep his promises. His assessment of the king’s good will proved to be accurate, but in
taking up arms with John Hallam, one of his tenants, to try to enforce the letter of the Pontefract articles, Bigod sealed the fate of the leading pilgrims. Norfolk was sent once more to the north. There he found widespread unrest throughout the region, but nothing organized on the scale of the preceding October. This allowed him to declare martial law in Cumbria and to proceed with summary executions, which cowed the population. Aske had travelled with him in March 1537, and neither he nor the other pilgrim leaders supported the renewed outbreak of rebellion. Yet this was insufficient to save them. Aske set out one last time for London on 24 March, carrying a letter of commendation from Norfolk. It was not worth the parchment on which it was written. There can scarcely have been a more cynical exercise to lure a marked man to his eventual death. Aske, Darcy and Constable (also summoned to London) were arrested on 7 April for treason and were executed two months later, in June.

The final failure of the Pilgrimage of Grace was a terrible blow for the monasteries. They were seen as centres of opposition and hothouses of dissent, as well, of course, as sources of wealth. Over the next few years they were all dissolved. Plundered and deserted, they could still not quite be destroyed. The ruins of the finest remain in some of the most sublime settings in the English countryside, a monument to a way of life ruthlessly suppressed. It would probably have greatly irritated Cromwell and the king if they had known that, more than 450 years later, these reminders of monasticism are still visited and enjoyed. For it does not take much imagination to close one’s eyes amidst the peaceful serenity of Fountains Abbey and see the monks still moving there among the stones, or to catch the chant of plainsong drifting on the wind.

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was perhaps fortunate to avoid the fate of the eloquent Robert Aske and the elderly lords who had never quite been Henry’s men. His brother Marmaduke spent some time in
the Tower of London, writing desperate letters to Cromwell, in which he could not refrain from mentioning the involvement of ‘my lord, my brother’. Then Latimer’s steward, Walter Rawlinson, was accused as a rebel leader in Westmoreland.
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His own conduct, and that of those close to him, was easily characterized as traitorous. But, in the end, perhaps Latimer was not important enough for his life to be forfeit. He also had influential friends and relatives. Besides Fitzwilliam, he appealed to the brother of his second wife, Elizabeth, writing to Sir Christopher Musgrave on 18 January: ‘Recommend me to my Lord Privy Seal [Cromwell], showing him that I was sorry the people spake otherwise than became them of him . . . I think his Lordship would not be a hinderer of such of their desires as to be reasonable.’ And he went on to reveal, in a few words, the agony he had been through. ‘Though I durst not much contrary them, I did my best to reduce them to conformity to the King’s pleasure. My being among them was a very painful and dangerous time to me. I pray God I never see such again.’
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Heartfelt words, if not the bravest, and, as it happened, Musgrave was out of favour himself.

The Parr connection, however, was much better placed to help. William Parr had been at Norfolk’s side during the autumn and winter, stout in his defence of the king. But Katherine’s brother generally spent little time in the north, preferring to stay close to the court in London. He left the management of the Parr estates to one of his Strickland cousins. His tenants may well have resented his absenteeism and there are indications that he had been enclosing more of his lands. The prospect of rebellious tenants may well have added to his zeal in opposing the Pilgrimage of Grace. Possibly it was her younger brother’s rising profile at court and the time he spent in military service with Norfolk that influenced the duke (always a man to watch carefully for who was rising and who was falling) to defend Latimer against accusations of treason. He could find nothing of substance against him, Norfolk told Cromwell in June 1537, and
had sent him to London to plead his own cause: ‘I cannot discover any evidence other than that he was enforced and no man in more danger of his life . . .’
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Katherine’s uncle, Sir William Parr of Horton, had also shown unimpeachable loyalty to the Crown during the rebellion. He had been with the duke of Suffolk in Lincolnshire and supervised the executions at Louth and Horncastle in mid-March. Like his nephew, he realized the value of staying in with those at the top. This meant he tried to ingratiate himself with both Norfolk and Cromwell during the summer of 1537 – not the easiest of courses to follow, though the enmity between the two men was less evident at that point. Parr of Horton’s presence at the execution in Hull of Sir Robert Constable prompted him to share with Cromwell the following confidence:

At the execution of Constable, my lord of Norfolk showed me he was as much bound to your lordship as ever noblemen could be to another. I answered that I had heard and partly knew how willing you were to further him and his. He replied: ‘Sir William, no man can report more than I know already, for I have found such assured goodness in him to me, that I never proved the like in any friend before; and in myself and all mine shall be, as long as I live, as ready to do his pleasure as any kinsman he hath.’
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This gushing manifesto of friendship from a nobleman who could not stand the upstart Cromwell, and was to spend the next three years looking for ways to destroy him, is a telling example of the duplicity that prevailed in Henry VIII’s England.

Latimer escaped death, but his life was no longer fully his to direct after the Pilgrimage of Grace. Maybe it never really had been, so unpredictable were the times. Having survived, Katherine Parr’s second husband knew he would need to dance to the tune of the king and his ministers for the rest of his days. Keeping on the right side of Thomas Cromwell cost him money and property. He paid small sums in cash every year (he was not
especially singled out for this discreet form of blackmail; others paid it, too), and was forced to sell two of his southern manors and the lease of his residence in London. This was more humiliating than financially damaging, especially as even this did not buy peace of mind. But for Katherine, at least, the ordeal of the Pilgrimage of Grace brought one very major benefit. She persuaded her husband that they should move from Snape and distance themselves from the troubles that had such a profound effect on their lives. She had been away from her family for more than seven years, and she no longer wanted to reside permanently in the north of England.

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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.
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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.
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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.’
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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.