Katherine the Queen: The Remarkable Life of Katherine Parr (24 page)

The earliest portrait of Katherine as queen tells us a great deal about the image she sought to present. It is an impressive fulllength portrait (the first of an English queen) painted probably in 1544 by the Flemish court painter known as Master John. Katherine’s exalted rank and grandeur are emphasized by the sumptuousness of her French fashions and her jewels. She wears ‘a gown of cloth of silver tissue woven with a very large repeat pomegranate design. The tight-fitting bodice has a square neckline and a low-pointed waistline, while the conical shape of the skirt is created by her farthingale.’
¹³
The sleeves also have a rich fur lining, indicating that the portrait was painted in winter. The queen is adorned with a pendant and necklace and an unusual girdle made of cameos. The girdle seems to have been a favourite, though it and the other pieces of jewellery had once belonged to Katherine Howard. The crown-headed brooch, however, seems to have been her own, possibly a gift from Henry. The pomegranates are an interesting decoration for the gown, since they were
the badge of Katherine of Aragon, who was also credited with introducing the farthingale to England.
¹⁴
Whether this was conscious homage to the woman who was, in all likelihood, Katherine’s own godmother as well as Henry’s first wife we shall never know. No doubt Henry would have said something if he found the reminder irritating.

A year or so later, Queen Katherine was painted by William Scrots in more informal dress but still exhibiting the demeanour and style of a king’s wife. She appears, if anything, rather more serious and her brown eyes are looking slightly to the right. Her jaunty black velvet cap sports a white ostrich feather and gold tassels and is bordered with white satin and pearls, neatly offsetting its otherwise rather mannish character, and her auburn hair. The rest of Katherine’s attire that is visible is richly embellished, with four bands of metal thread embroidery (which the queen loved) down the front of the beautifully shaped bodice and double bands of the same work on the full sleeves. The embroidery is of Tudor roses and lovers pinks. But it is the collar, V-necked and in the very latest Italian whitework, that shows how closely Katherine followed continental fashion. The pendant worn in the slightly earlier, full-length portrait, has been attached in this painting to a ruby, pearl and diamond necklace also worn by Katherine Howard. The contrast between the more plainly dressed young minor aristocrat of the early 1530s portrait in Lambeth Palace and the jewelled, burnished queen of the mid-1540s could not be more marked.

Katherine chose her clothes and jewels for these portraits to underline her rank and to present herself to the world as queen of England. Yet she was also presenting herself to Henry in a way she thought he would want and establishing herself strongly as a regal figure in her own right. He does not appear to have commissioned the portraits of Katherine himself; they were undertaken on her initiative, and were very much about image-building. There were more portraits of Henry VIII’s sixth wife than any other sixteenth-century queen of England, except for
Elizabeth. And they formed part of Katherine’s wider development of her role as queen, since they also demonstrate her patronage of the arts.

As queen, Katherine was able to pursue her existing cultural interests and to develop new ones. She was a patron of as many as half a dozen artists and miniaturists working at the court, less well known to history than Hans Holbein but popular with the English aristocracy at the time. They included Scrots, Giles Gering, John Bettes and possibly Levina Teerlinc, the female miniaturist who worked at the courts of all three of Henry VIII’s children. Teerlinc was given an annuity of
£
40 per annum in 1546, the start of a long and prestigious career that saw her rise to be one of the women of Queen Elizabeth’s Privy Chamber. They would have met when Elizabeth was a girl at her stepmother’s court. Holbein himself died at the end of 1543, but not before Katherine had commissioned from him two covered cups and a brooch.

If painting was Katherine’s first love among the arts, she was also a keen supporter of the Bassanos, the court musicians, and a great lover of dancing. As was common at the time, some of her household staff were more than competent musicians. John Cooch, the steward of the queen’s wine-cellar, was later described by Bishop Parkhurst, her chaplain at the time, as ‘well-skilled in music’. The combination of good music, and, presumably, a good choice of wines by Cooch, again paints a picture of a woman who was highly convivial and at home in her environment.

Books were another pleasure, harking back to the education she had received as a child. Katherine clearly loved them for their beauty as well as their contents and, like the king, she built up a collection. Perhaps the most magnificent of all Katherine’s books was one described as ‘a book of gold, enamelled black, garnished with twenty-eight small table rubies and one rock ruby upon the clasp and on each side of the book a table diamond’. The contents of this gorgeously bound volume are not given. At the time of her death, among the books she possessed were a Book of Psalms
covered with crimson velvet and garnished with gold, a little book covered with green velvet with stories and letters finely cut, two books of the New Testament, both covered with purple velvet and garnished with silver and gilt, one in English and one in French, and a dozen or so other books, covered in blue, black and crimson velvet, or with leather. The queen’s copy of the 1542 English translation of
A Sermon of St Chrysostome
by the Oxford scholar John Lupset can still be seen at Sudeley Castle, bearing her signature, ‘Kateryn the Quene, KP’ on the title page. And to lighten the otherwise serious and reflective tone of the queen’s library, there was also an Italian printed copy of Petrarch’s
Canzoniere e Trionfi
.

During her time as queen of England, Katherine would not merely collect and read books, but also write them herself.
¹⁵
As an author, she was keen to order and distribute copies for her ladies and friends and her accounts show how she patronized the royal printer, Thomas Berthelet, in this respect: ‘Delivered to my lord of Chichester [George Day, the bishop of Chichester and the queen’s almoner by 1545], for the queen’s grace, the first day of May, 6 books of the psalms prayers, gorgeously bound and gilt on the leather, at 16 shillings the piece.’
¹⁶
This is about
£
250 a copy in today’s money. Copies of Katherine’s books of prayers can still be seen at Stonor House at Oxfordshire and in the Mayor’s Parlour at Kendal in Cumbria.

The possession of books was only one aspect of the queen’s intellectual interests. In order to read and understand, as well as to keep her mind sharp and ensure that she was properly fitted for her place at Henry’s side, Katherine decided to improve her own skills, particularly in the area of Latin. French appears to have been a language she could handle with ease, no doubt as a result of her own mother’s proficiency in the language, but her Latin was rusty. There could not have been much call for it in Yorkshire and her sister Anne, by her own admission, needed to brush up her Latin when she became a patron of the scholar Roger Ascham. Writing from Cambridge in 1545, Ascham told
the queen’s sister: ‘At last, I send you your Cicero, most noble lady; since you are delighted so much by his books, you do wisely to study them. You will study most diligently and not need any exhortation.’
¹⁷
The same approach to her studies of Latin and its great writers was no doubt followed by the queen herself, though there is debate about how much of the language Katherine actually knew before she married Henry. However, if, by 1545, Anne (then countess of Pembroke) was an admirer of Cicero she must have started from at least a base of familiarity and there is no reason to believe that Katherine’s knowledge would have been inferior. Katherine was evidently a good linguist and a quick learner in all she did. The opportunity for improving her Latin was one she eagerly embraced. She had, of course, secretaries at her disposal who could help her in Latin composition, and the evidence points to the fact that her main interest was in translation of well-known texts from the original Latin into English vernacular. Significantly, she chose the Eton schoolmaster and playwright Nicholas Udall to work with her on one of the major literary endeavours of her time as queen, the translation of the
Paraphrases of Erasmus
. Udall had a louche reputation (he had been accused of sadistic corporal punishment and buggery while at Eton, though evidently this was no impediment to employment at court) but he had also produced, in the 1530s, a textbook called
Flowers for Latin Speaking
. It may be that Katherine’s Latin bloomed again with his help and the opportunity for mutual study with her stepdaughter, Mary, who had continued her own Latin tuition into adulthood.

K
ATHERINE HAD
showed from the outset of her reign that she was dynamic, full of ideas and able to handle the process of becoming queen with aplomb. One fascinating insight into this sophisticated transition is in the report of the visit of the duke of Najera in the mid-winter of 1544 – for it is easy to overlook that Katherine had to perform on an international stage as well as an
English one. And on this particular occasion she had a starring role.

The duke had been serving Charles V at the court in Brussels and decided, for reasons that are not clear, to return home via England at the beginning of 1544. His visit was therefore private rather than official, in the sense that he did not have a diplomatic mandate, but since it was undertaken at a time of improved relations between the emperor and Henry VIII, when there was talk of an alliance against France, it may well have had an ulterior motive. Certainly, Charles V had no objection to one of his aristocrats stopping off in England and being received by the king and queen. No doubt Henry did not attach to it the same importance as did the duke’s secretary, Pedro de Gante, but we should be grateful to de Gante, nevertheless, for the description he has left us of how his master was received by Queen Katherine.

Najera had first been granted an audience with Henry, it being customary for the king and his consort to receive such dignitaries separately. After a few apposite comments about the king, such as the observation that ‘for many centuries there has never been a Christian Prince nor infidel who has ordered so many executions, as well of his immediate relations, as of gentlemen, clergy and other persons, for having spoken against his proceedings’, the secretary passed on to more pleasant matters. Accompanied by Katherine’s brother, William, earl of Essex, and the earl of Surrey, Najera went ‘to the chamber of the Queen, who was accompanied by the Princess Mary . . . Many ladies attended the Queen, amongst them a daughter of the Queen of Scotland [this was Lady Margaret Douglas] . . .’ The duke had then kissed Katherine’s hand and she received him ‘in an animated manner. From thence they conducted the duke to another apartment, where stood another canopy of brocade, with a chair of the same. The Queen entered with the Princesses and having seated herself, she commanded the Duke to sit down, and musicians with violins were introduced. The Queen danced first with her brother, very gracefully; then the Princess Mary and the
Princess of Scotland danced with other gentlemen, and many other ladies did the same.’ But de Gante was especially impressed by a Venetian gentleman of the king’s household who danced so lightly that he appeared to have wings on his feet. He went on: ‘After the dancing was finished (which lasted several hours) the Queen entered again into her chamber, having previously called one of the noblemen who spoke Spanish, to offer in her name some presents to the Duke, who again kissed her hand; and on his requesting the same of the Princess Mary, she would by no means permit it, but offered him her lips . . .’ This does not mean that Mary was especially forward in her behaviour; it was noted in the fifteenth century that English women kissed on the lips. But it does provide a glimpse of the princess completely at odds with her historical reputation as a gloomy hysteric.

The secretary went on to give a full description of Katherine’s demeanour and clothes. She had, he said, ‘a lively and pleasing appearance and is praised as a virtuous woman. She was dressed in a robe of cloth of gold and a petticoat of brocade with sleeves lined with crimson satin and trimmed with three-piled crimson velvet: her train was more than two yards long. Suspended from her neck were two crosses, and a jewel of very rich diamonds and in her head-dress were many and beautiful ones. Her girdle was of gold with large pendants.’
¹⁸

It is a superb description of a woman who relished such occasions, knew instinctively how to put people at their ease and was not afraid to behave with the right mixture of elegance and restraint. In short, it was a triumphant performance, perhaps all the more remarkable for the fact that, as Ambassador Chapuys himself recorded, Katherine was ‘slightly indisposed’ at the time. Whatever her ailment, the queen had not allowed it to get in the way of the occasion. And she had ‘particularly inquired after Your Imperial Majesty’, Chapuys reported to Charles V.
¹⁹
No wonder that, at this point, the ambassador clearly considered Katherine to be an imperialist at heart. He may have been riddled with
gout, as was the emperor himself, but he and the rather formal duke of Najera were delighted with the queen.