Maud Green and Two of Henry VIII's Wives

Today is the anniversary of Maud Green's birth on April 6, 1492. According to the Tudor Times, she was:

the daughter and co-heiress of Sir Thomas Green of Green's Norton in Northamptonshire. She was married at around the age of 16 to Sir Thomas Parr, whilst her sister, Anne, was married to Sir Thomas Parr's step-father, Sir Nicholas Vaux.

Maud was appointed as a Lady-in-Waiting to Queen Katharine of Aragon. It was unusual for a knight's wife to be a Lady-in-Waiting, as opposed to a Gentlewoman of the Bedchamber, but perhaps the two women got on well, or it may have been in recognition of the fact that Sir Thomas was third cousin to the King. In between her duties at Court, Maud gave birth to three children who survived and a further two who did not.

One of those three surviving children was Catherine Parr, whom Maud may have named after her mistress. She was widowed at age 25 and arranged the marriages of her son, William and daughters Catherine and Anne:

Maud remained in the service of Queen Katharine, but died, aged about forty on 1 st December 1531. In her Will, made in 1529 she gives donations to the orders of friars, and then requests the payments of the debts incurred for the marriages of her children. She then gives detailed instructions on bequests of jewelry to her daughters, including pictures of the King (Henry VIII) and Queen (Katharine of Aragon) to her daughter Katherine.

What a bequest!

More about the Vaux family connection here.

Image credit: This portrait originally and now identified as Catherine Parr was wrongly identified as Lady Jane Grey for decades.

Thomas Seymour, RIP

Thomas Seymour, one of Edward VI's uncles, died on the block on March 20, 1549 at the age of 41. He left a baby daughter, Mary, whose mother, Catherine Parr (Henry VIII's last wife) had died in childbirth. Seymour was the 1st Baron Seymour of Sudeley and had been Lord High Admiral of England, but he was accused of treason against Edward VI. Seymour's brother was Lord High Protector, Edward Seymour, 1st Duke of Somerset, who would also die at the block during Edward's reign.

The young Princess Elizabeth had lived with Parr and Seymour for a time after Henry VIII's death, but was removed from the household after Catherine Parr noticed the untoward behavior of Seymour toward Elizabeth. Lady Jane Grey was also in their care and she was in the household when Parr gave birth to her only child, Mary; this was her fourth marriage. Parr died after Mary's birth (surely named after the Princess Mary?). 

This orphaned baby was placed in the care of Katherine Willoughby, the widow of Charles Brandon, the Duke of Suffolk (who had married Henry VIII's younger sister Mary). Although Katherine Willoughby was of Spanish descent--her mother was one of Catherine of Aragon's ladies-in-waiting and best friends--she was not a Catholic, but favored the Protestant cause. And, although she was friend of Catherine Parr's, Katherine did not appreciate being the guardian of this little baby girl.

Linda Porter writes about Seymour's fall and the fate of his little girl in this History Today article:

Without the steadying influence of Katherine Parr and perhaps suffering more from the effects of bereavement than has often been supposed, Thomas Seymour’s judgement, which had been unpredictable in the past, now deserted him completely. His resentment against the power and authority of his brother rankled, his own role in politics being ill-defined, and he began to develop schemes for raising the country in revolt and perhaps even marrying Elizabeth. Neither of these ideas was as hare-brained as they look with hindsight, but both were fraught with danger and Thomas lacked any real power-base from which to impose himself on England. Eventually he was caught apparently trying to kidnap Edward VI, who had been very fond of his younger uncle until he shot his pet dog in the ensuing fracas. The background to this incident remains murky but the campaign of vilification that swung into action to discredit Seymour was swift and relentless. Attainted and therefore never brought to trial, Thomas was executed for treason on March 17th, 1549 (sic), leaving Lady Mary an orphan at the age of seven months.

Thomas did not appoint any of his own or Katherine’s relatives as guardian to his daughter. He could scarcely have handed her to the brother who signed his death warrant and no one else among the extended Parr or Seymour families seems to have taken much interest in the child. Like most of his former ‘friends’, they were all trying to put as much distance between themselves and Thomas Seymour as possible. Instead, Katherine Brandon, Duchess of Suffolk, a close friend of Katherine Parr and a lady of seemingly unimpeachable reforming religious ideas, was appointed as guardian. It was not a charge she accepted with enthusiasm.

Despite her strong religious views, the duchess’s bosom was not full of Christian charity. Lady Mary may have been a dispossessed orphan, but she was an expensive one. As a queen’s daughter, she came with a household of her own, consisting of a lady governess, rockers, laundresses and other servants. The government was supposed to provide for her upkeep and the payment of her staff but the duchess could not get Somerset to part with the money until she appealed to William Cecil, then a prominent member of the duke’s household, to intervene on her behalf. The letter she wrote makes it clear how much she resented ‘the queen’s child’, as she frostily referred to the little girl.

The article concludes with what might have been the child's epitaph:

I whom at the cost
Of her own life
My queenly mother
Bore with the pangs of labour
Sleep under this marble
An unfit traveller.
If Death had given me to live longer
That virtue, that modesty, That obedience of my excellent Mother
That Heavenly courageous nature
Would have lived again in me.
Now, whoever
You are, fare thee well
Because I cannot speak any more, this stone
Is a memorial to my brief life

Read the rest here.

Deborah Kerr and The English Reformation

Today is the anniversary of the birth of one of my favorite actresses, Deborah Kerr, in 1921. You might think that there is no connection between that anniversary and the subject of this blog, but you would be wrong!

First, Deborah Kerr played Catherine Parr, Henry VIII's last wife, in the 1953 movie, Young Bess, based on Margaret Irwin's novel of the same title. Parr's Protestant evangelical tendencies are depicted when Henry VIII (played by Charles Laughton, again) accuses her of authorizing an English translation of the Holy Bible without his permission.

Secondly, Kerr played an Irish girl who hates the memory of Oliver Cromwell so much that she won't spend her honeymoon in an inn named the "Cromwell Arms" in the movie titled either The Adventurous or I See a Dark Stranger.

Thirdly, Deborah Kerr played the role of Sister Clodagh in the movie based on Rumer Godden's Black Narcissus. Rumer Godden is one of the authors I mention in my litany of conversions in the last chapter of Supremacy and Survival: How Catholics Endured the English Reformation. Interesting, Kathleen Byron, who plays Sister Ruth, the mad, bad nun, also appeared in Young Bess, as Anne Seymour, Edward Seymour's wife.

Finally--and this is obscure indeed--Kerr played Gulielma Maria Springett, William Penn's first wife, in Penn of Pennsylvania, a rather unsuccessful biopic of King James II's ally in the attempt to bring religious freedom to England before the Glorious Revolution of 1688.

Convinced?

July 12: Martyrs, A Wedding, and Battles in Ireland

July 12 offers three themes for this blog:

Martyrs:

The Franciscans honor their martyrs during the English Reformation: St. John Jones and St. John Wall, and Blesseds Arthur Bell, John Woodcock, and Charles Meehan-Mahoney--their Franciscan memorial date determined by St. John Jones' date of execution in 1598. (And although his memorial is on May 22, I can't leave out Blessed John Forest from this honor roll). Just like the Benedictines yesterday, the Franciscans have martyrs from all three eras: Supremacy, Recusant, and Popish Plot.

A Wedding:

On July 12, 1543, Henry VIII married for the sixth and last time--and his bride was Catherine Parr. This was her third of four marriages, as she married Thomas Seymour after Henry's death in 1547. She had previously been married to Edward Borough and John Neville, Lord Latimer. While married to John Neville she was held hostage in Yorkshire during the Pilgrimage of Grace. His death left her a wealthy widow. Henry VIII noticed her in the household of his daughter Mary. Although she was interested in wedding Thomas Seymour, she thought it prudent to accept the king's proposal!

Battles in Ireland:

While the dates have been under contention, because of the rivalry between the Julian and the Gregorian calendars in the Protestant and Catholic countries of Europe, the Orange Army in on the march today with their annual parades, celebrating the Battle of the Boyne and the Battle at Aughrim and the defeat of James II by William (of William and Mary).

After these decisive victories in Ireland, and the Jacobite surrender of the seige of Limerick, more punitive Penal Laws were passed against Irish Catholics, including, but limited to:

~Exclusion of Catholics from most public offices (since 1607)
~Ban on intermarriage with Protestants; repealed 1778
~Catholics barred from holding firearms or serving in the armed forces (rescinded by Militia Act of 1793)
~Exclusion from the legal professions and the judiciary; repealed (respectively) 1793 and 1829.
~Education Act 1695 – ban on foreign education; repealed 1782.
~Bar to Catholics entering Trinity College Dublin; repealed 1793.
~On a death by a Catholic, his legatee could benefit by conversion to the Church of Ireland;
~Popery Act – Catholic inheritances of land were to be equally subdivided between all an owner's sons with the exception that if the eldest son and heir converted to Protestantism that he would become the one and only tenant of estate and portions for other children not to exceed one third of the estate. This "Gavelkind" system had previously been abolished by 1600.
~Ban on converting from Protestantism to Roman Catholicism on pain of Praemunire: forfeiting all property estates and legacy to the monarch of the time and remaining in prison at the monarch's pleasure. In addition, forfeiting the monarch's protection. No injury however atrocious could have any action brought against it or any reparation for such.
~Ban on Catholics buying land under a lease of more than 31 years; repealed 1778.
~Ban on custody of orphans being granted to Catholics on pain of 500 pounds that was to be donated to the Blue Coat hospital in Dublin.
~Ban on Catholics inheriting Protestant land
~Prohibition on Catholics owning a horse valued at over £5 (in order to keep horses suitable for military activity out of the majority's hands)
~Roman Catholic lay priests had to register to preach under the Registration Act 1704, but seminary priests and Bishops were not able to do so until 1778
~When allowed, new Catholic churches were to be built from wood, not stone, and away from main roads. [Easier to burn down?]
~'No person of the popish religion shall publicly or in private houses teach school, or instruct youth in learning within this realm' upon pain of twenty pounds fine and three months in prison for every such offence. Repealed in 1782.
~Any and all rewards not paid by the crown for alerting authorities of offences to be levied upon the Catholic populace within parish and county.

Catherine Parr, Henry VIII's Sixth Wife

On July 12, 1543, Henry VIII married for the sixth and last time--and his bride was Catherine Parr. This was her third of four marriages, as she married Thomas Seymour after Henry's death in 1547. She had previously been married to Edward Borough and John Neville, Lord Latimer. While married to John Neville she was held hostage in Yorkshire during the Pilgrimage of Grace. His death left her a wealthy widow. Henry VIII noticed her in the household of his daughter Mary. Although she was interested in wedding Thomas Seymour, she thought it prudent to accept the king's proposal!

As Queen Consort of England and Ireland after her marriage to Henry, she served as Regent during his 1544 campaign in France. She certainly helped heal the relationships between Henry and his two daughters, and both of them admired her. To Elizabeth, she was a motherly figure, while to Mary, close to her in age, she was a friend. Henry relied on her for the education of his son and heir.

Catherine had definite evangelical religious leanings. Her book Lamentations of a Sinner reflects her belief in justification by faith alone--it was written after Henry VIII's death. Stephen Gardiner, the Bishop of Winchester attempted to highlight her heretical beliefs to Henry VIII in 1546, almost convincing the king to have her arrested. She convinced him that she discussed religious matters only to distract him from his pain and worries--which might indicate a certain reservation in her dedication to evangelicalism as she was not willing to claim those beliefs and suffer for them. But it was a close call: she might have gone the way of Anne Askew, whom Sir Thomas Wriothesley and Sir Richard Rich tortured in the Tower.

She did not long survive Henry; after his death she married Thomas Seymour, became pregnant, and then died in childbirth. Their marital union was marred by his infatuation with the Princess Elizabeth, whom she had so nurtured and loved.

Linda Porter has written a new biography, due out in paperback this December (which I'll wait for). St. Martin's Press provides an excerpt here.