Katherine Parr, RIP

Henry VIII's sixth wife and surviving widow, Catherine Parr, died on September 5, 1548. One of her biographers, Linda Porter, discusses the relationship between the monarch and his last wife for History Today:

It was noted that “the king espoused the queen privately and without ceremony”. The bridegroom was, however, enthusiastic as he took his vows “with a joyful countenance”. Henry was 52 years old and ailing. His new wife, Katherine Parr, was not quite 31, twice-widowed and an experienced stepmother. Surely this was a marriage born of common sense, where passion would play little part? The Victorians depicted it as the union of an irascible tyrant with a worthy matron. The truth, however, was very different.

Henry was looking for a wife, not a nurse or homemaker. He wanted a companion for his bed who might provide further heirs and could carry the role of queen consort impressively. Katherine, who had given up another man to marry the king, was well aware that her duties would definitely run to more than polite conversation and soothing the royal brow. Her determination to be a success led to a deep bond of affection between the royal couple which may, in 1546, have saved her life.

It is not surprising that Henry was drawn to the comely widow. She was a slim, attractive redhead whose unimpeachable reputation hid a sensual nature. Her other suitor, Sir Thomas Seymour (the king’s brother-in-law), had already realised this and probably Henry did, too.

Until now, the curtains around the marriage bed of Henry VIII and his last wife have remained firmly closed. Yet theirs was undoubtedly a sexual relationship. Katherine took seriously her vows to be “bonaire and buxom in bed and in board”. She took milk baths to keep her skin soft and the day after her wedding, she ordered “fine perfumes” for her bedchamber at Hampton Court. She was clearly determined to make her body and her bedchamber as enticing as possible.

Henry lumbering into view in his nightshirt must have been a daunting sight. A year before his final marriage it had been noted that he was “already very stout and daily growing heavier… three of the biggest men to be found could get inside his doublet”. Pain and the disease in his legs had left their mark on him. Between 1543 and 1545 he got through 300 pairs of hose a year. This was the man that Katherine had taken as her third husband. Very soon he doted on her – but could she possibly have loved him?

At the outset, almost certainly not. She married him for the advancement of her family and because he could not be refused. She was dutiful and keen to convince herself that her fate was God’s will. Yet Katherine was also a loving and optimistic woman, as well as intelligent. She knew the opportunity that had come her way and thought hard about how to turn it to her advantage.

Developing a good relationship with all three of the royal children was certainly important but at the heart of Katherine’s strategy was the king himself. Henry was not simply an overweight monster but a lonely and unhappy man after the disaster of his marriage to the foolish Katherine Howard. Katherine Parr recognised his need for love and attention. Circumstances permitted her to establish herself swiftly as a major influence in his life, as the plague kept them continuously outside the capital and in each other’s company for six months. It was an ideal foundation for their relationship. So the king showered her with jewels and beautiful clothes, entrusted the country to her regency while he fought the French one last time in 1544, and greatly hoped for children with her.

Porter might be ascribing a thought and decision-making process that we can't verify, but it does comport with Katherine's actions in reaching out to Mary and Elizabeth and mothering Edward.

Henry and Katherine shared many interests, from hunting and archery to music, masques and books. She was a graceful dancer and they both loved the Venetian Bassano brothers, musicians patronised by Katherine. Henry, a cultured man, was delighted to have a queen who commanded respect from ambassadors and with whom he could discourse. Both husband and wife were committed to the 16th-century belief in lifelong learning. Katherine brushed up her Latin and also began to edit and write religious books, as her commitment to advancing the cause of further reform grew. In 1545 she became the first queen of England to be published when copies of her Prayers or Meditations were produced by the king’s printers. Her influence over Henry seemed unshakeable.

Porter then goes on to describe the crisis in this marriage and its source: religious controversy in England between Catholics and Evangelicals. Read the rest there.

It seems that William P. Haugaard's 1969 article in the Renaissance Quarterly published by the University of Chicago Press, "Katherine Parr: The Religious Convictions of a Renaissance Queen" is one of the main resources for our understanding of Parr's religious beliefs and influences. I do find it fascinating that Katherine Parr's first published translation in 1544--while Henry was in France and she was Regent--was of Bishop John Fisher's Psalmi seu Precationes when Henry VIII had beheaded the holy bishop just nine years earlier. While Haugaard does not mention Fisher as the original author of the Psalms or Prayers in Latin, he does note that the private, devotional nature of the work meant it would not offend a Catholic, Lutheran, or Calvinist, and that it was popular, being reprinted during the reigns of Edward VI, Mary I, and Elizabeth I! The University of Chicago Press published Katherine Parr: Complete Works and Correspondence, edited by Janel Mueller in 2011, which includes the Psalms or Prayers and The Lamentation of a Sinner, Parr's more obviously Protestant work.

Katherine Parr, married four times and widowed three, died after bearing her first and only child, Mary. Linda Porter discussed the fate of that orphaned baby (after Parr's fourth husband, Thomas Seymour died) also in the virtual pages of History Today.

Katherine Parr's Only Baby, Another Tudor Mystery

Linda Porter wrote about Katherine Parr's baby girl, named Mary after Henry VIII's eldest daughter, for History Today in 2011. Mary's mother, died in childbed and then her father was beheaded " for treason on March 17th, 1549, leaving Lady Mary an orphan at the age of seven months." Sadly, Mary did not find a very loving guardian, even though the person selected shared her mother's religious views:

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.

Katherine Brandon (pictured above), the widow of Charles Brandon, did get some money from the seized (attainted) estate of Thomas Seymour, but what happened to the little girl is still unclear, although there is a clue:

The answer to this compelling Tudor mystery seems to lie in a Latin book of poems and epitaphs written by John Parkhurst, Katherine Parr’s chaplain, who had previously served the Duke and Duchess of Suffolk. The discovery was made by the American academic, Janel Mueller, but has been overlooked by historians. I am grateful to Jean Bray, the archivist at Sudeley Castle, for drawing it to my attention. In Parkhurst’s Ludicra sive Epigrammata juvenilia, published in 1573, appears the following poem, which translated reads:

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

Though no name is given, this must surely be the epitaph that Parkhurst, who would have known Lady Mary Seymour, wrote on her death. It suggests, as has long been conjectured, that she died young, probably around the age of two. She may well be buried in Lincolnshire, near Grimsthorpe, the estate owned by the Duchess of Suffolk, where she had lived as an unwelcome burden for most of her short, sad life.

Perhaps the Princess Mary, for whom the little baby was named, would have been a better choice as guardian, if her Catholicism could have been overlooked. Reports are that she loved children, and might not have found little Mary "an unwelcome burden".

"Tudors v. Stuarts" or "Crown of Thistles"

Deep as I am in Jessie Childs' God's Traitors, reading about the Babington Plot and the Vaux family connections to the eponymous plotter, and Mary Stuart's role in the plot to depose "the usurper" so she could be free and reign in England--reading about Linda Porter's new book about the Tudors and the Stuarts resonated immediately.

From the U.K. publisher, with the U.K. title:

Mary Queen of Scots fervently believed she had a right to the English throne - a belief that cost her her head. A vivid account of why she came to this belief from an acclaimed Tudor historian

The struggle between the fecund Stewarts and the barren Tudors is generally seen only in terms of the relationship between Elizabeth I and her cousin, Mary Queen of Scots. But very little has been said about the background to their intense rivalry. Here, Linda Porter examines the ancient and intractable power struggle between England and Scotland, a struggle intensified during the reigns of Elizabeth and Mary's grandfathers. Henry VII aimed to provide stability when he married his daughter, Margaret, to James IV of Scotland in 1503. But he must also have known that Margaret's descendants might seek to rule the entire island. Crown of Thistles is the story of a divided family, of flamboyant kings and queens, cultured courts and tribal hatreds, blood feuds, rape and sexual licence on a breath-taking scale, and violent deaths. It also brings alive a neglected aspect of British history - the blood-spattered steps of two small countries on the fringes of Europe towards an awkward unity that would ultimately forge a great nation. Beginning with the unlikely and dramatic victories of two usurping kings, one a rank outsider and the other a fourteen-year-old boy who rebelled against his own father, the book sheds new light on Henry VIII, his daughter, Elizabeth, and on his great-niece, Mary Queen of Scots, still seductive more than 400 years after her death.

 

From the U.S. publisher with the U.S. title:

 

The war between the fertile Stewarts and the barren Tudors was crucial to the history of the British Isles in the sixteenth century. The legendary struggle, most famously embodied by the relationship between Elizabeth I and her cousin, Mary Queen of Scots, was fuelled by three generations of powerful Tudor and Stewart monarchs. It was the marriage of Margaret Tudor, elder sister of Henry VIII, to James IV of Scotland in 1503 that gave the Tudors a claim to the English throne—a claim which became the acknowledged ambition of Mary Queen of Scots and a major factor in her downfall.

Here is the story of divided families, of flamboyant kings and queens, cultured courts and tribal hatreds, blood feuds, rape and sexual license, of battles and violent deaths. It brings alive a neglected aspect of British history—the blood-spattered steps of two small countries on the northern fringes of Europe towards the union of their crowns. Beginning with the dramatic victories of two usurpers, Henry VII in England and James IV in Scotland, in the late fifteenth century, Linda Porter's Tudors Versus Stewarts sheds new light on Henry VIII, his daughter Elizabeth I and on his great-niece, Mary Queen of Scots, still seductive more than 400 years after her death.

 

It's interesting to note, not only the change in title for the U.S. audience, but the subtle changes in wording for the U.S. blurb (fertile vs. fecund!)--not to mention the different spellings of the same word (licence/license). The original title is much more evocative--the "crown of thistles" Mary of Scotland inherited contains an allusion to the "crown of thorns"; but I presume the publishers judged that U.S. audiences wouldn't get the meaning, or know that the thistle is the symbol of Scotland as the shamrock is the symbol of Ireland.

 

I also find it so fascinating now that there is a school, almost, of Tudor-Stuart biographers and historians available to review each other's works: Linda Porter, Leanda de Lisle, John Guy, Alison Weir, Giles Tremlett, etc. Here's a link to Leanda de Lisle's review of Crown of Thistles, summarized thusly:

 

In giving us the history of family rivalry to Mary’s reign and fall, Linda Porter has found a fresh approach to her biography, and told it with grace and humanity. She brings alive a thrilling story of cultured courts and violent deaths, of ambitious kings and tragic queens: executed on Elizabeth’s orders in 1587, Mary’s family’s past had indeed proved a fatal inheritance. 

A Tudor Biographer Reviewing Another Tudor Biographer's Book

Linda Porter and Anna Whitelock wrote biographies of Mary I, Henry VIII and Katherine of Aragon's daughter and first Queen Regnant of England. Now, in the current issue of the Literary Review: Porter reviews Whitelock's new book about Elizabeth's Bedfellows: An Intimate History of the Queen's Court:

What Whitelock gives us is a new account of Elizabeth's reign, seen largely from the queen's personal perspective. It is a memorable portrait, though not one that unquestioning admirers of the Virgin Queen may find palatable. The Elizabeth who emerges from these pages is a thoroughly unpleasant woman when stripped of her undoubted statecraft. She was endlessly demanding, vacillating, self-absorbed, vain and occasionally capable of cruelty rivalling that of her father, Henry VIII. Her treatment of the women of her household does not make pleasant reading. To enter her service was, effectively, to give up your own life in order to dance attendance and cater to her every whim. Most of her women were married, but their own lives and families were always subordinated to the needs of the queen. If they became pregnant, they remained at court until shortly before their babies were due and were seldom allowed to stay away for more than a month after the birth. Ladies who married secretly or became pregnant out of wedlock felt, like poor Katherine Grey, the full force of the monarch's wrath. Their treatment grew worse with the passing years, as age withered the toothless and bald queen, despite the best efforts of her ladies to present her to the world as the red-headed vision of perfection she had been in her twenties. Even her memory began to play tricks with her after the Earl of Essex's execution. Sic transit Gloriana.

Of course, Elizabeth was not ultimately the brute her father had been. Acknowledgement of her devoted women's sufferings may often have been belated, but she could be tender and concerned for their recovery. The deaths of Kat Ashley and Blanche Parry, who had been with her since infancy, struck her hard. And Whitelock provides some nice details that allow us to see a more human side of Elizabeth. She was afraid of the dark and suffered from insomnia. Mornings were not her best time, but the whole process of dressing her and making her up provided her ladies with an intimacy simply not afforded to her male councillors. These women really did know everything about her bodily functions, dealing with such things as the lengths of linen used as sanitary towels and the special belt that held them in place. That such accessories existed at all appears to give the lie to the suspicion that Elizabeth never menstruated. It was not a topic her women would ever have talked of openly, and they, like Elizabeth, took such secrets with them to the grave.

It was this proximity to the queen and the unrivalled access it brought, rather than any financial reward, that made what to us seems like a life of self-sacrifice so attractive to high-born ladies. But did intimacy truly carry influence? Elizabeth actually reduced the size of the Privy Chamber when she became queen and made it very clear that her women were not to interfere in politics or have any political role. This did not stop everyone, from their husbands and suitors to foreign ambassadors, courting them, in the hope that they would be a means of gaining the queen's favour. The advancement of one's own family was everything in 16th-century England and the women of her bedchamber, who shared her life and slept beside her, forfeited much in pursuit of this wider goal. As Anna Whitelock notes, Mary Sidney left the court feeling aggrieved and neglected. She lost her looks and three small daughters when in Elizabeth's service, at the same trying to manage the family estates at Penshurst Place in Kent while her husband served the Crown in Wales and Ireland. It was a high price to pay for being one of Elizabeth's bedfellows.

Linda Porter's next book, Crown of Thistles: The Fatal Inheritance of Mary Queen of Scots will be in print in August--will Anna Whitelock review it?