Katherine the Queen: The Remarkable Life of Katherine Parr (11 page)

W
HEN
K
ATHERINE
and Lord Latimer were married it was already apparent that major change was sweeping England. At the heart of the transformation was Henry VIII himself. The king’s worries about the future of his dynasty had been fuelled, in the late 1520s, by his obsession with Anne Boleyn. He wanted a new wife, one who could provide him with male heirs, and Anne was determined that she would be that woman. Henry was equally determined that the process of freeing himself from Katherine of Aragon, and making Anne his queen, should follow the proper legal course. It is ironic that a monarch who began
isolated or surrounded by inhospitable terrain, Snape sits in a verdant valley, in gently undulating countryside, surrounded by fields which then, perhaps even more so than now, were full of sheep. A stream flows through the village, dividing it in two, and it is only a short distance to the market towns of Masham (whose charter was awarded in 1250), Leyburn and Bedale. Ripon, with its ancient cathedral dating back to the seventh century, is only ten miles away, and the Cistercian abbey at Jervaulx, one of the great monastic houses of the region, about the same distance.

It is certainly dramatic to imagine Katherine stuck in the wilderness of the more remote dales, but it is also completely inaccurate. Defensive castles might be found in outlying locations, but Lord Latimer, like others of his class, preferred to live in more comfortable, accessible surroundings. There would certainly have been good hunting, a pastime Katherine always enjoyed, nearby, and Snape (which means boggy pasture) was not an uncivilized place. It was within a day’s ride of York, then the second city in England and very much its northern capital. The social life of north Yorkshire could not, of course, match that of the court in London, but as the wife of a prominent local nobleman, Katherine had a certain position to occupy, and a role that was all together grander, and offered far more opportunities for meeting people of her own class, than that of her first marriage.

The grey stone castle in which Katherine lived as Lady Latimer probably dated from the 1420s, though there had been a manor house on the same site as far back as the mid-thirteenth century. It is not in any way a forbidding edifice, of the sort that inspires stories of prisoners languishing in dungeons. It was intended as a home, rather than a military outpost against the marauding Scots, and though there was a long association with the Neville family, the ill-fated Richard III was briefly its overlord. No details of its interior survive from this period, but we can assume that it was comfortably appointed, if perhaps somewhat lacking a feminine touch in the years that Lord Latimer had been a widower. Katherine’s later interest in making alterations to her accommodation as queen suggests that she could have made changes at Snape, if money permitted.

Today, Snape Castle is privately owned but its chapel continues to serve the village. This little-known, rare example of a pre-Reformation chapel was first mentioned in the early sixteenth century and is marvellously evocative of the past. It occupies an upper floor on the south side of the castle, reached nowadays by a flight of steps from an outer door. In the 1530s, however, direct access from within the castle would probably have existed. Prayer and the offices of the Church shaped the lives of everyone in those days, in ways which our secular society can no longer appreciate. Their lovely chapel would have been an integral part of family life for the Latimers. One can easily picture Katherine and her husband worshipping in its peace and stillness, perhaps finding solace there from the cares of the world.
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For cares there were aplenty. Katherine’s life at Snape was peaceful, even gentle, for a brief period, despite John Neville’s tantrums. But in the wider context of English politics and society there were great changes with each passing year. The Latimers may have lived far from London, but they were not immune to the effect of what was happening at the centre of power.

W
HEN
K
ATHERINE
and Lord Latimer were married it was already apparent that major change was sweeping England. At the heart of the transformation was Henry VIII himself. The king’s worries about the future of his dynasty had been fuelled, in the late 1520s, by his obsession with Anne Boleyn. He wanted a new wife, one who could provide him with male heirs, and Anne was determined that she would be that woman. Henry was equally determined that the process of freeing himself from Katherine of Aragon, and making Anne his queen, should follow the proper legal course. It is ironic that a monarch who began
the painful process of the divorce with a wholly unjustified confidence that the pope in Rome would grant him a speedy end to his first marriage, finished six years of convoluted disputation with the religious authorities by declaring the Church in England independent of Rome and nominating himself as its Supreme Head. There had been rulers who clashed with the papacy before, and not just in England. It was quite possible to consider oneself a good Catholic and to defy the pope. The Emperor Charles V did so constantly, and, for good measure, his troops had sacked Rome in 1526. But he was not excommunicated, and he was never accused of fomenting heresy. Henry’s search for a male heir was both convulsive and divisive, opening doors to new religious ideas that the anti-Lutheran monarch himself had never anticipated. Events unfolded at a frightening speed, and, as the power of the monarchy increased, so new men appeared to uphold Henry VIII, hoping for advancement. In such an unpredictable climate, political and Church careers were put in jeopardy, consciences examined and lives sacrificed for what some men saw as a higher ideal and Henry viewed as treachery. By this time his own religious beliefs were probably developing along reforming lines; he disliked superstition, idolatry and anything that came between him and those he governed. For a while, until he realized its implications, he supported the translation of the Bible into English and a more straightforward form of religious service. Thus were the doors opened for the word of God to be brought to all men – and, indeed, to all women who were literate, including educated ladies like Katherine. For some, it was an exhilarating time of much-needed change, promising an end to the primacy of the priesthood and the beginning of a direct relationship with God. The slavish subjection to the papacy was at an end. But many others, perhaps the majority of the population, felt a profound sense of dislocation. Their doubts could not be assuaged by legislation, no matter how far-reaching it might be.

It had been acknowledged for years that the king wanted to
put aside Katherine of Aragon. At the time that Katherine married Lord Latimer, Henry VIII’s first wife, now known as the Princess Dowager (a title so patronizing that one cannot blame her for despising it), was banished from court and living at Kimbolton Castle on the edge of the fens in Huntingdonshire. She had not seen her daughter, Mary (also banished from court and living in the household of Anne Boleyn’s daughter, Elizabeth) for three years. Some of the nobility, particularly women, had been brave enough to support her openly, but despite her continued defiance, Anne Boleyn’s triumph over her would have seemed a reality in 1534. Mary, bastardized and disinherited when Elizabeth was born, had suffered severe stress and psychological harassment, as well as serious bouts of illness. But she was still refusing to acknowledge the change to her status or the invalidity of her parents’ marriage. Her position must have seemed all but hopeless to outside, but not necessarily disinterested, observers like the Latimers. Lord Latimer had conformed sufficiently to sign the letter of the nobility to Rome supporting the divorce and he had sat in parliament as the programme of reform was pushed through, but the substance of it was against his own personal inclinations. At this stage, like others, he kept his doubts to himself.

The legislative process that led to the complete break with Rome had begun in 1532 but reached its height in the year that Katherine Parr married Lord Latimer. In 1534 were passed the Act of Supremacy, a new Act of Succession (which ignored Mary), supported by the leading nobility of England, the Ecclesiastical Licences Act, which upheld English as opposed to papal law, and an act that banned the payment of Church taxation to Rome; henceforward, the Crown would take one-tenth of clerical income. In a sweeping move to stifle dissent, further legislation made criticism of the Boleyn marriage treasonable, as were accusations of heresy or schism against the king. It was in this atmosphere of ruthless determination and suppression of opponents that the Latimers and their relatives lived their daily
lives. There were quite evidently advantages to be had if opportunity and care were skilfully combined. But there was also danger and difficulty, particularly for anyone suspected of being less than completely loyal. Cuthbert Tunstall, Katherine’s distant cousin, knew this only too well.

Katherine’s second marriage must have been a minor consideration to her kinsman, the bishop of Durham, in the year 1534. Or perhaps he found his involvement in it a welcome relief from the extreme pressure that he was put under to conform to the king’s will. For three years, he had been trying to balance his conscience with political expediency. He had defended Katherine of Aragon, but not with the vigour or absolute conviction of the bishop of Rochester, John Fisher. He had been bold enough to tell Henry that he could not be Head of the Church in spiritual matters and he may well have been one of the four bishops of the northern convocation who voted against the divorce (direct evidence is lacking), but he recognized that the queen’s cause was hopeless, and never attempted to lead any organized opposition to Henry. In fact, he attended Anne Boleyn’s coronation. But it did not end there. On a personal level, he felt he could not just keep quiet. There was too much at stake; he dreaded rejection by the whole of Christendom and exposure to the predations of foreign powers seeking to take advantage of England, as, he pointed out in a letter to the king, Henry himself had done when he invaded France more than twenty years before. Henry refuted Tunstall’s points line by line. Yet this was much more than an academic difference of opinion that could be confined to written exchanges. It made the king realize that he must bring Tunstall to heel.

The bishop had expected to attend parliament in early 1534 but he was directed to stay in the north; Henry did not want dissidents present while vital legislation was being passed. But once that legislation was on the statute books, Cuthbert Tunstall was summoned south to take the oath to the Act of Succession. In his absence, his home at Bishop Auckland in County Durham
was searched, by order of the king, but no incriminating documents or books were found, mainly because Tunstall had been forewarned to remove anything that might endanger himself. Once he took the oath (however unwillingly) he found that there was no going back. Both he and Archbishop Lee of York were required to explain to the imperial ambassador, Eustace Chapuys, and subsequently to the very angry Katherine of Aragon herself, the justification for the annulment of her marriage. They did not succeed in getting her to agree or to acknowledge that she would cease to use the title of queen.

Tunstall’s experience at the time of Katherine Parr’s second marriage must have been a harrowing one. Fisher and Thomas More, with whom he essentially agreed on all points concerning the divorce and the break from Rome, were in the Tower. His own loyalty was highly suspect, as the secret raids on his property showed. There is some indication that More advised him not to endanger himself any further, because it would achieve nothing. Perhaps he thought that, by staying alive, he could at least keep the worst excesses of Lutheranism out of England. He knew he was no martyr yet he bridled at the accusation of infirmity aimed at him by the diplomat and theologian Reginald Pole in 1536: ‘where ye do find fault with me, that I fainted in my heart, and would not die for the Bishop of Rome[’s] authority; when this matter was first purposed unto me, surely it was no fainting that made me agreeable thereunto’.
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He had struggled, one cannot know how much, with his conscience and he emerged from a perilous time alive, but compromised. The politician in Tunstall had survived; he retained his post as bishop of Durham and president of the Council of the North. Above all, like many of the upper ranks of the clergy and the aristocracy, he put loyalty to the king first. But Henry never really trusted him again. For the king, it was a simple matter. Those who were not fully committed to his break with Rome, the new Royal Supremacy and all the raft of legislation that underpinned his Reformation, were against him. They could submit, or die. A few, like Thomas
More, saw it as a clear choice. A man like Tunstall, a seasoned diplomat but also long-standing churchman, found the predicament agonizing.