Katherine the Queen: The Remarkable Life of Katherine Parr (39 page)

His account was, of course, written after the events it describes, and for a particular purpose, which was to glorify the Protestant changes that were so speedily introduced under Edward VI and to reinforce the Elizabethan religious settlement of 1559, still far from secure when the first edition of Foxe’s work came out in 1562. The tale that Foxe tells so well reveals a world of cunning, duplicity and danger in which Katherine is the heroine and Gardiner and Wriothesley, his henchman, the villains. Foxe is quite clear on this point: ‘The conspirers and practisers of her death were Gardiner, bishop of Winchester, Wriothesley, then Lord Chancellor, and others. These men, for the furtherance of their ungodly purpose, sought to revive, stir up and kindle evil and pernicious humours in their prince and sovereign lord, to the intent to deprive her of the great favour which she then stood in with the king.’

According to this account, it is Katherine herself who supplied the ammunition for her enemies. She had become bold enough ‘to debate with the king touching religion’. Henry, who always had a very high opinion of his own views on such matters, bore Katherine’s disputations quietly, despite the pain from his legs: ‘in cases of religion as occasion served, she would not confine herself to reverent terms and humble talk, entering with him into discourse, with sound reasons of scripture’. This had evidently gone on for some while, without Katherine realizing that she might be over-stepping the mark. For ill-health, as well as his own imperious character, was shortening Henry’s tolerance for these frequent sessions of religious study: ‘The sharpness of the disease had increased the king’s accustomed impatience, so that he began to show some tokens of dislike; and contrary to his
manner, one day breaking off the conversation, he took occasion to enter into other talk, which somewhat amazed the queen.’ But not sufficiently, it would seem, for her to pick up the warning signals and, besides, Henry continued outwardly all the signs of affection to which she was accustomed. It was only once the queen had left, that, behind her back, the irritated Henry gave vent to his true feelings, saying: ‘A good hearing it is when women become such clerks, and a thing much to my comfort, to come in mine old days to be taught by my wife.’

As Foxe tells it, Gardiner’s presence at this encounter between Katherine and Henry was fortuitous, but the wily politician and diplomat was not going to miss the opportunity presented to him by the king’s displeasure with his too-clever wife. Stoking Henry’s pride and ego, he went on to draw a sinister parallel between the ideas Katherine had espoused and sedition: ‘the religion so stiffly maintained by the queen did not only disallow and dissolve the policy and government of princes, but also taught the people that all things ought to be in common . . . he durst be bold to affirm that the greatest subject in this land, speaking those words that she did speak, and defending likewise those arguments that she did defend, had with justice by law deserved death.’

But he could not say more, without Henry’s permission, about the queen and those around her, as she and ‘her faction’ would be ‘the utter destruction of him’, unless the king agreed to protect him. ‘Which if he would do,’ the bishop is said to have added, ‘he with other faithful counsellors, would disclose such treason, cloaked with this cloak of heresy, that his majesty should perceive how perilous a matter it is to cherish a serpent in his own bosom.’

The imagery was strong and effective. While keeping up a pretence of love and interest, Henry let the unsuspecting Katherine talk herself further and further into difficulty, while Gardiner and his creatures moved to find evidence against the queen by examining her reading material and preparing to strike at her through the ladies who served her. This considered approach,
would, it was thought, bring better results than a sudden onslaught. So they sought ‘to ascertain what books forbidden by law she had in her closet . . . they thought it best at first to begin with some of those ladies, whom they knew to be intimate with her, and of her blood’. The three specifically mentioned at this stage were Lady Herbert, Katherine’s sister, Lady Lane, her cousin and Lady Tyrwhit. Foxe goes on to say that ‘it was devised that these three should first of all have been accused and brought to answer to the six articles [the act passed in 1539] and upon their apprehension in the court, their closets and coffers should have been searched, that somewhat might have been found by which the queen might be charged; which being found, the queen herself presently should have been taken, and likewise carried by night by barge to the Tower’. This scheme, says Foxe, was close to being implemented when fate intervened. The king revealed what was intended to one of his physicians, Dr Wendy, and the bill of articles against Katherine, signed by Henry himself, was dropped by an unnamed councillor, found by ‘some godly person and brought immediately to the queen’.

Thus forewarned in the nick of time, Katherine became hysterical. She ‘fell immediately into a great agony, bewailing and talking on in such sort, as was lamentable to hear and see, as certain of her ladies and gentlewomen being yet alive, who were then present about her, can testify’. Dr Wendy, summoned to attend her, advised her that the best course of action was to ‘shew her humble submission to the king’. If she did this, Wendy was convinced that she would find her husband ‘gracious and favourable to her’. Meanwhile Henry, hearing that Katherine was suddenly taken very ill, came himself to see her. Seizing her opportunity, she lamented that she had displeased the king and that he ‘had utterly forsaken her’. Moved by this spectacle of distress, Henry offered words of reassurance and after about an hour, in which her fears began to alleviate, the king returned to his own quarters in the palace of Whitehall.

The rest of the story has been told often enough. Katherine
realized that she had, at least, bought some time and that she must move urgently to regain the king’s good opinion. ‘And so first commanding her ladies to convey away their books which were against the law, the next night after supper she, waited upon only by the lady Herbert, her sister, and the lady Lane, who carried the candle before her, went to the king’s bedchamber, where she found him sitting and talking with several gentlemen of his chamber.’
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After a courteous greeting, Henry turned the talk to religion, appearing to desire the queen’s opinion. But Katherine was well prepared. The set-piece speech reported verbatim by Foxe is reminiscent of the volte-face of another Katherine, in Shakespeare’s
Taming of the Shrew
. Gone is the fervent, argumentative queen who had tried the king’s patience once too often. She told him:

Since therefore, God has appointed such a natural difference between man and woman, and your majesty being so excellent in gifts and ornaments of wisdom, and I a silly poor woman, so much inferior in all respects of nature to you, how then comes it now to pass that your majesty, in such causes of religion, will seem to require my judgement? Which when I have uttered and said what I can, yet must I, and will I, refer my judgement in this, and in all other cases, to your majesty’s wisdom, as my only anchor, supreme head and governor here in earth, next under God, to lean to.

In her place is a loving, submissive wife, who had never wanted anything more than to distract her husband from the suffering and discomfort that plagued him. In response to Henry’s challenge, ‘Not so, by St Mary, you are become a doctor, Kate, to instruct us, as we take it, and not to be instructed or directed by us’, the queen assured him he was much mistaken. It would be preposterous, she said, for a woman to try to teach her husband:

And where I have, with your majesty’s leave, heretofore been bold to hold talk with your majesty, wherein sometimes in
opinions there has seemed some difference, I have not done it so much to maintain opinion, as I did it rather to minister talk, not only to the end that your majesty might with less grief pass over this painful time of your infirmity, being attentive to our talk, and hoping that your majesty shall reap some ease by it; but also that I hearing your majesty’s learned discourse might receive to myself some profit.

Foxe records the old king’s relief and delight with these modest, dutiful and loving sentiments: ‘And is it even so, sweetheart? And tended your arguments to no worse end? Then perfect friends we are now again, as ever at any time heretofore.’ Sitting on his lap, Katherine received Henry’s embraces and was restored to favour. But the last act of this little drama was not quite played out. No one had told Lord Chancellor Wriothesley about the king’s change of heart. So when he turned up with an armed guard of forty men to arrest the queen, he found her in the gardens down by the river, taking the air and full of mirth, in her husband’s company. He was sent away with Henry’s reprimands ringing in his ears. ‘Knave, arrant knave,’ the king cried, ‘beast and fool.’ Thus, according to Foxe, was Katherine Parr saved from the fate that had befallen two of Henry VIII’s other wives, escaping ‘the dangerous snares of her bloody and cruel enemies for the gospel’s sake’.
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She emerges triumphant from a heinous plot that is entirely aimed at her religious beliefs, to become, though Foxe does not say so explicitly, England’s first Protestant queen. Foxe claims that he obtained his information from an unnamed person who ‘heard it from archbishop Cranmer’s own mouth’. But by the time Foxe was writing, Cranmer himself was dead, as were Katherine herself, her sister, Lady Herbert and her cousin, Lady Lane.
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So how much of this emotional story is really true?

There most certainly was a concerted move against the more extreme reformers in the summer of 1546, but Anne Askew, the most famous sufferer of this period, is not mentioned at all in Foxe’s narrative of the threat to Queen Katherine. This may well
be because he did not want to complicate his story. Nor was Foxe writing narrative history as we would understand it nowadays. His work, as it relates to the Reformation in England, is more like the recording of an oral history, centred on people rather than unfolding events. Elsewhere in the
Acts and Monuments
he gives a full account of Anne’s examination, torture and martyrdom. Her fate is central to our understanding of the threat faced by Katherine and how it eventually receded.

The campaign against the reformers started in April 1546. It is probably no coincidence that this was so soon after Gardiner’s return from Europe. The bishop and his supporters did not have to wait long for a reason to take up the attack for in April Dr Edward Crome, a reformer who had long courted controversy, preached an outspoken sermon attacking the Mass and the idea of the real presence of Christ in the bread and the wine. Crome was arrested, accused of heresy, and recanted. But, when required to deliver his recantation in public, he repeated his heretical ideas with renewed force.
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The government, faced with the threat of public disorder caused by high taxes and rocketing food prices, could not allow this public defiance of the regime to go unchallenged. Heresy was a crime against the state and those who espoused Crome’s views needed to be unmasked. A number of evangelicals, including Hugh Latimer, a favourite of the duchess of Suffolk, and Rowland Taylor, who was close to Cranmer, were arrested. So, in June, was Anne Askew. And Anne’s detention made many of those in positions of influence very nervous indeed. Her beliefs were well known and it was clear from the outset that she was fully prepared to die rather than abjure them. But Anne was well connected and might, it was hoped, implicate others. However much they might personally have found Anne’s religious views distasteful, politically ambitious men like Gardiner and Wriothesley, jockeying for position with their reform-minded rivals, were interested first and foremost in using Anne to effect a political coup. This would have been ‘a conservative victory comparable with the toppling of Cromwell.
Perhaps it would have been greater, since those who were left standing would take charge of the minority government that was plainly approaching.’
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Anne appeared first before the Privy Council with her husband, Thomas Kyme. There were, of course, those among the councillors who were ill at ease in the presence of this feisty gentlewoman, attractive and articulate, who started as she meant to continue by denying that she was Kyme’s wife. Some of them must have wondered how close their own wives were to this formidable woman. It is unlikely, incidentally, that Anne intended to protect Kyme, but her disavowal of him at least meant that he was allowed to return home to Lincolnshire, while Anne was detained for examination by the Privy Council. Over two days she was questioned at length, irritating Gardiner with her pert answers, which show her to have been a witty and effective speaker, as well as possessing an impressive knowledge of scripture. When Wriothesley directly sought her views on the Eucharist, Anne replied: ‘I believe that as often as I in a christian congregation do receive the bread in remembrance of Christ’s death, and with thanksgiving, according to his holy institutions, I received therewith the fruits also of his glorious passion.’ This opaque response did not sit well with Gardiner, who, she said, ‘bade me make a direct answer. I said I would not sing a new song of the Lord in a strange land. Then the bishop said I spoke in parables. I answered, “it is best for you, for if I show you the open truth you will not accept it.” Then he said I was a parrot.’
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Yet while Gardiner may have detested Anne’s presumption, there were other councillors who had very different reasons to be fearful for her – and for themselves. The next day she was again brought before the Council at Greenwich and attempts were made to clarify her views of the sacrament. She told them ‘that I already had said what I could say. Then after many words they bade me go aside. Then came my lord Lisle, my lord of Essex [the queen’s brother, William Parr] and the bishop of
Winchester, requiring me earnestly that I should confess the sacrament to be flesh, blood and bone. Then I said to my lord Parr and my lord Lisle, that it was a great shame for them to give counsel contrary to their knowledge.’