Katherine the Queen: The Remarkable Life of Katherine Parr (26 page)

K
ATHERINE
’
S
inner life and her personal beliefs when she married Henry VIII have been the topic of much debate. The precise nature of her beliefs in July 1543 is unclear. She has been characterized as ‘a woman with a mission’, her zeal for religious reform already in place, underpinning her acceptance of Henry and her entire approach to being queen of England.
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But is this really the case? In fact, we know nothing of Katherine’s beliefs at the time of her marriage. It is easy to look back and see a direction that fits in with subsequent events. In this interpretation, Katherine is a clever, committed reformer at the point when she becomes queen. Indeed, the opportunity to do God’s work, to be His agent, is the rationale for accepting Henry in the first place. She is already a believer in religious change but now sees, through a process of gradual revelation, the opportunity to achieve much more: to uphold the reformers against the conservatives and to take the process, which might otherwise have stalled, to a further level.

It is unlikely the truth is so straightforward. Katherine’s family (who were probably her prime consideration when she agreed to marry the king) were associated with reform but not ostentatiously so. We can certainly wonder what impact Lord Borough’s more vehement support for new ideas might have had on his daughter-in-law back in the early 1530s but it seems unlikely to have been entirely positive. Presumably Katherine did socialize with Sir Francis Bigod, another outspoken partisan of reform, while she was married to Lord Latimer, but we simply do not know how close their acquaintance was or what she thought of him. He was a prospective father-in-law to young Margaret Neville, rather than a mentor to Katherine. On the other hand, Lord Latimer is generally viewed as a religious conservative, yet it was his New Testament in English that Katherine still had in her possession when she died, which must surely mean that Latimer approved of reading the Bible in the vernacular.

It seems safe to say that when she married Henry there was nothing about Katherine that set alarm bells ringing with him or
with conservatives like Stephen Gardiner. But she may, of course, have been good at concealing her hand, a trait that would present her as a conniving woman and not an entirely appealing one. She was certainly seen as pious but that was entirely proper in a woman of her class and background. The more serious tone of her court, in contrast with the levity associated with Katherine Howard, brought forth favourable comments. One of her legal advisers, Francis Goldsmith, wrote to her on his appointment that she had ‘made every day like Sunday, a thing hitherto unheard of, especially in a royal palace . . . God has so formed her mind for pious studies, that she considers everything of small value compared to Christ . . . Her piety cherishes the religion long since introduced not without great labour to the palace.’
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This fulsome praise, originally written in Latin, probably tells us more about Goldsmith than it does about Katherine and, in addition, there is debate about its precise dating. In the first eighteen months of her marriage, Katherine was so busy balancing a number of priorities that it is hard to believe that making every day like Sunday was really one of them. Her ideas, like her grasp of queenship, were developing throughout this time but that does not mean she came to the marriage with religious reform as her main objective. She lived in complicated and fast-moving times and her initial aims were surely to secure the king’s love and confidence.

Religious study, was, in any case, fashionable among aristocratic women, and not just in England. Marguerite of Navarre, sister of the king of France, had written a widely admired work,
The Mirror of the Sinful Soul
, more than a decade earlier. Katherine was evidently a keen reader and it was natural for her Privy Chamber to become, over time, the centre for discussion of devotional works. But, without belittling the pursuits of Katherine and her ladies unduly, their activities began as something more akin to the meetings of a modern book group. In the climate of the 1540s, however, such interests inevitably attracted attention and the ladies may have encouraged each other down
more radical paths. Katherine’s own ideas seem to have developed quite rapidly after the first year of her marriage, but it is more likely that the process was one of evolution rather than fixed intent before she became queen.

Her spare time, such as she had, was not solely focused on self-improvement. There was a pleasure-loving side to Katherine – and she clearly loved her life as queen. Her household ate and drank heartily, danced and sang and enjoyed sports. The queen kept hounds and hawks for her hunting, parrots to amuse her and dogs as much-loved companions. Her spaniel, Rig, must have looked splendid in his ‘collar of crimson velvet embroidered with damask gold’ and its rings of silver gilt for attaching his lead.

These details paint a picture of an energetic, determined but also vivacious woman who very consciously set about establishing an image and a role for herself. The apparent contradiction between the lover of finery and the student of scripture is easily explained by the complexity of Katherine’s character and the preoccupations of the times in which she lived. The respect in which she was clearly held from the early days of her marriage is a testament to her good sense and the dignity which she brought to being Henry’s queen. Even more impressive was how she made a success of her relationship with the royal children, providing them, for the first time, with a family life. For Katherine realized, from the outset of her marriage, that she could influence not just the present but the future if she could give them the visibility that she also sought for herself.

‘I affectionately and thoughtfully consider with what great love you attend both me, your mother, and scholarship at the same time . . .’

Queen Katherine’s encouragement to Prince Edward, 1545

I
T WAS
A
GNES
S
TRICKLAND
, the celebrated Victorian biographer of England’s queens, who first highlighted the importance of Katherine Parr’s relationship with the children of Henry VIII: ‘How well the sound sense and endearing manners of Katherine Parr fitted her to reconcile the rival interests, and to render herself a bond of union between the disjointed links of the royal family, is proved by the affection and respect of her stepchildren, and also by their letters after Henry’s death.’
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Miss Strickland was less convinced that Henry himself was owed any credit for recognizing that Katherine might play a positive role in the lives of his offspring, but in this she was, perhaps, uncharitable, though it is easy to see why she reached the conclusion that the king had ‘glaringly violated the duties of a father to his daughters’. Henry, as has been noted before, was primarily looking for a wife for himself when he married Katherine. At the same time his mind was already turning to the future, and particularly the succession, and in this respect he had realized that he needed to consider all three of his children. In fact, he dined with both Mary and
Elizabeth in September 1542, the first time, so far as is known, that such an event had taken place. Shortly afterwards, Mary returned to court permanently. Elizabeth was, of course, too young to reside there, but it is significant that both sisters were summoned to meet Katherine Parr in June 1543, before her marriage to the king was announced. We do not know whether this was at Katherine’s suggestion or Henry’s, but he obviously approved. And it is easy to believe that his bride-to-be, an experienced stepmother who had, after all, brought up Margaret Neville, would have wanted to establish a good rapport with the king’s daughters before the wedding took place. Henry was a selfish man but no longer a foolish one where marriage was concerned. A wife who pleased him and who also got on well with his family was the ideal choice.

The role that she would play with all three children was clearly something that had occupied Katherine’s thoughts as she considered her response to the king’s proposal of marriage. In this there was more than just a genuine desire to contribute to their happiness, and that of their father. Katherine realized that her position as Henry’s queen would be strengthened if she could fulfil the role of mother to the two younger children and become a friend and supporter of Mary. Perhaps she suspected that she was unlikely to have children with Henry herself, though she must have hoped to become pregnant. Meanwhile, maintaining an interest in the existing family was vital. Her priorities would perhaps have changed had she produced a child of her own, but being a parent to other women’s children was a responsibility that Katherine assumed with grace and dedication. There was, no doubt, an element of calculation, however subconscious, in her approach to becoming a royal stepmother, but she brought a genuine enjoyment to the part she had to play. Her personality was well suited to the demands of the task. She was, after all, a woman who liked people and whose natural inclination was to make them welcome in her life. Her own childhood had been happy, despite the loss of her father when she was very small.
She was determined that her third husband’s younger children should come to know that childhood did not have to be an affliction that meant isolation from the world. Instead, it could be a rewarding period of preparation for the challenges that lay ahead.

Henry himself had known this, in the distant past. As a second son, he grew up with his sisters in the household of his mother, Elizabeth of York, secure and loved yet with none of the pressures that weighed on an heir. But the death of his brother, Prince Arthur, so soon after his marriage to Katherine of Aragon, altered Henry’s existence profoundly. His childhood idyll was transformed into a life of study and serious application for what lay ahead. Perhaps he always resented this loss of freedom. The ten-year-old who danced with such abandon at his elder brother’s nuptial celebrations was, only five months later, a king-in-waiting. The sudden ending of his own childhood must have been an ordeal; yet this does not seem to have made him any more sensitive to what his own children might feel.

History may not have viewed Henry as an attentive parent but he cannot be judged by the standards of our time. The royal children were brought up in accordance with accepted practice, where a separate household for the Prince of Wales and smaller establishments for princesses, often living together, were the norm. Courts were no places for small children and Mary had always had a household of her own until her parents’ divorce, when she went (extremely unwillingly at first) to live with Elizabeth. Thereafter, Henry’s two daughters had mostly shared a household, at least until the early 1540s, though Mary sometimes stayed with Prince Edward and there were also occasions when the royal children were all together, especially at Christmas. So Henry’s family were, in reality, considerably closer to one another (if not to him) than the prevailing image of dysfunctionality suggests. On the other hand, the king was an infrequent visitor to his children’s establishments, though he claimed to love them all.

Katherine knew this and set about turning his affection, buried by the legacy of failed marriages and the sheer business of kingship and politics, to the children’s advantage. She was convinced that they should be included more in Henry’s life and thoughts, not just paraded as marriage fodder in the case of the girls or left in splendid isolation, as Edward had been. Important as her encouragement was, however, it must be acknowledged that her success was largely because her approach chimed well with considerations that Henry was already developing about the future of England, and his children’s roles. Perhaps she did not materially alter their prospects, but she helped provide a climate in which their lives were relieved of uncertainty, at least so long as Henry remained alive and she was his consort. The early months of her marriage, when she was almost continuously with the king, provided Katherine with an ideal opportunity to influence him and to establish a bond with his children. Where this could not be done directly (Katherine’s first duty was to the king and she could not often visit the younger children in person) the new queen used intermediaries, such as Margaret Neville, to visit Elizabeth, and she began a correspondence with her stepson that was to give great pleasure to both of them. Circumstances made it inevitable that she could not often be in sight, but Katherine was determined that she should not be out of mind. But what were her stepchildren like in 1543, and how did they react to her efforts on their behalf ?