Six Wives (106 page)
Authors: David Starkey
One Messiah had been King of the Jews; the other was King of England, sent 'in these latter days to reign over us' – by God and for God's purposes.
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It was a conviction which stood Catherine in good stead in her first brush with royal power on the arrest of her husband. And it would be her rock in her relations with Henry thereafter.
* * *
Catherine's unimpeachable loyalty and her steadying influence were, no doubt, part of the reason that Latimer, contrary to his brother's expectations, survived his sojourn in the Tower. But other things came into play as well. Latimer used some of his wealth to bribe Cromwell: with an annual fee, with the lease of his London house, and with the sale, doubtless on advantageous terms, of one of his southern manors. He also re-invented himself as a model citizen: loyal and dependable, yet never pushing himself forward. But the most important reason for his survival, I would guess, was the increasing political weight of his wife's family.
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For this, the Parrs had, in the first instance at least, to thank the Pilgrimage. In the case of most of the northern élite, of course, the Pilgrimage was a disaster. For the Parrs, on the other hand, it was an opportunity. They were a leading northern family. But, having followed the high road to London, their absenteeism in the south preserved them from the local pressure which had turned even Reformers, including Bigod, into potential traitors. Instead, the Parrs could be loyal without risk and they took advantage of their good fortune by a display of conspicuous activism on the King's behalf. Catherine's uncle, Sir William, was the right-hand man of the Duke of Suffolk in suppressing the Lincolnshire revolt; while her brother, young William, gained his first practical experience as a member of the suite of the Duke of Norfolk on the mopping-up operation in the north in 1537.
William's assiduity caught the eye of the Duke of Norfolk, who recommended him to Cromwell for having 'wisely handled himself in this business'. Nothing seems to have come of the Duke's hint. Nor did Cromwell take up Sir William's suggestion in January 1539 that, 'considering the late change' (that is, the fall and execution of Exeter and Sir Nicholas Carew), the minister should 'procure a place in the King's Privy Chamber for his nephew'. But William did not have long to wait for even better things. Two months later, on Sunday, 9 March 1539, he was created Baron Parr in a splendid ceremony in the Presence Chamber at Whitehall. And four years later still in 1543, he was made Lord Warden of the West Marches and a Knight of the Garter.
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He was barely thirty and already most of his mother's ambitions for him were fulfilled.
* * *
Meanwhile, it fell to Catherine's young sister, Anne, to step into her mother's place as one of the Queen's ladies. By 1537, as 'Mrs Parr', Anne had become one of Jane Seymour's maidens. She was barely sixteen, sweet and, thanks to her mother's foresight, eminently marriageable. As we have seen, her father had left her a substantial marriage portion, to which her mother's will added 400 marks in plate and a third share of her jewels. The whole fortune, Lady Parr had directed, was to be securely chested up 'in coffers locked with divers locks, whereof every one of them my executors and my . . . daughter Anne to have every of them a key'. 'And there', Lady Parr's will continued, 'it to remain till it ought to be delivered unto her' on her marriage.
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And the marriage, everyone thought, would not be long delayed and there were repeated rumours of its imminence in the summer of 1537. 'I think Mrs Parr shall shortly fall [into marriage]', John Husey reported to Lady Lisle in June. 'Men thinketh Mrs Parr shall shortly marry', he wrote again in August. In the event, Anne was still unmarried at the time of Jane's funeral in October and she may have remained so for another year or more. But by January 1539 she had married the up-and-coming courtier William Herbert. She had also become the Chief Gentlewoman of the Privy Chamber to the new Queen, Anne of Cleves. And she was to retain the office when Anne of Cleves in turn gave way to Catherine Howard.
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* * *
As her siblings were launched on glittering careers of their own, Catherine almost disappears from view. Historians, indeed, imagine they glimpse her and write vivid accounts of her Protestant salon in her husband's house in the Charterhouse. It became, they claim, a centre of advanced doctrine and was frequented by such luminaries as John Parkhurst, Hugh Latimer and Miles Coverdale. But, alas, it is all a mirage. In the early 1540s, Parkhurst was at Oxford, Latimer was in disgrace and Coverdale was in exile, where he remained till 1547. If Catherine ever hosted such a salon, which I rather doubt, she could not have done so till the reign of Henry VIII's son, Edward VI.
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But on 2 March 1543, her husband, Lord Latimer, died, having made his will the previous 12 September. There is nothing in his will to suggest (as some historians have guessed) that there had been any open rupture or disagreement with Catherine. On the contrary, he left his wife two manors in her own right as well as money for four years, 'for the bringing up of my daughter (Margaret)'. This bequest must only have regularised the existing position, as a tailor's bill addressed to Catherine on 16 February (a fortnight before her husband's death) charges her for a 'kirtle' (a dress) provided 'for your daughter'.
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* * *
Catherine was now a widow for the second time: still pretty, still unblemished by child-bearing, and well-off. She was desirable, and, it is clear, she desired in return.
The individual on whom she had set her heart was Sir Thomas Seymour, the late Queen Jane's younger brother and uncle to Prince Edward. Seymour was dashing and rather dangerous. That Catherine found him so attractive suggests hidden emotional depths. Or rather, perhaps, very human shallows: after a lifetime of doing what she ought, as a daughter and a wife, a little of what she fancied might have seemed irresistibly appealing. 'My mind', she wrote to Seymour some years later, 'was fully bent . . . to marry you before any man I know.'
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We do not know when they met, or when their evidently mutual attraction began. Probably it was before Latimer's death. If so, she handled her feelings with her usual 'wisdom' and discretion.
The feelings were strong nevertheless. 'I was at liberty to marry you', she reminded Seymour. And it is evident that she revelled in her freedom.
But a force more powerful still intervened: the King himself.
76. Queen Catherine
S
ometime in the late spring of 1543, Henry VIII offered Catherine Parr his hand. As with her simultaneous courtship with Sir Thomas Seymour, the background to the relationship is obscure. Perhaps Catherine and Henry were introduced by Catherine's brother or sister, both of whom were now well placed and high in favour. Perhaps Catherine at some stage had petitioned the King in person on behalf of the disgraced Latimer and had caught the royal eye.
ometime in the late spring of 1543, Henry VIII offered Catherine Parr his hand. As with her simultaneous courtship with Sir Thomas Seymour, the background to the relationship is obscure. Perhaps Catherine and Henry were introduced by Catherine's brother or sister, both of whom were now well placed and high in favour. Perhaps Catherine at some stage had petitioned the King in person on behalf of the disgraced Latimer and had caught the royal eye.
However it occurred, it is clear that Henry's offer was unwelcome to Catherine. She was already in love with Seymour. And she was not, unlike Henry's previous English wives, in the least infatuated with the idea of being Queen. Instead, she seems to have been aware of the pitfalls and dangers of the position and properly doubtful of her capacity to fulfil it. But equally, for a subject, a royal request to marry was the equivalent of a command. It was almost unthinkable to say no.
In this dilemma, Catherine, like a true believer, turned to God for guidance. An answer came. But it was not the one she wanted. She prayed again. The answer remained the same. Still she resisted; still God was implacable. And so the struggle continued: 'God', she wrote to Seymour, 'withstood my will therein most vehemently for a time.'
But finally her resistance was overcome. 'Through His grace and goodness', she remembered, '[He] made that possible which seemed to me impossible: that was, made me renounce utterly mine own will and to follow His most willingly.'
And His will, she now accepted, was that she should marry Henry.
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* * *
Her submission, which was as ecstatic as her resistance had been fierce, had the effect of a revelation. Henceforward Catherine was a woman with a mission. She was marrying Henry at God's command and for His purpose. And that purpose was no less than to complete the conversion of England to Reform.
So the last and apparently the most unassuming of Henry's Queens was, in fact, the most dedicated and determined. She had known the passions of both earthly and heavenly love and she had emerged with her character formidably annealed in the flames.
How would the ever more irrascible and self-willed King cope? And would she survive?
* * *
It may be that God had another auxiliary in the struggle to persuade Catherine to choose to marry Henry.
The man she really loved, Sir Thomas Seymour, had spent most of 1542 on a mission to Charles V's brother Ferdinand, King of the Romans, during which he had witnessed Ferdinand's unsuccessful attempt to recapture Pest from the Turks. He returned home in the New Year, only to be redespatched almost immediately as ambassador to Mary of Hungary, Regent of the Netherlands. Chapuys had first caught wind of the intention to send Seymour to the Netherlands on 10 March 1543; a week later, on the 17th, Henry informed the ambassador that the decision had been taken.
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What has excited historians' attention, of course, is that Latimer had died only a few days earlier on 2 March. Was Henry moving quickly to get an inconvenient rival out of the way?
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It is possible. But, on closer examination, the King's manoeuvres turn out to have been less than decisive. In the same letter that Chapuys announced Seymour's official nomination as ambassador, he also noted that it was unlikely that Seymour would leave until after Easter (25 March). In the event, his departure was delayed a further six weeks until the beginning of May. If Henry really had feared Seymour's hold over Catherine, it is inconceivable that he would have left him kicking his heels at Court for two full months after Latimer's death. For these weeks, surely, were the time when the crucial struggle between Catherine's will and God's declared intention took place. Had Seymour had the power to alter the outcome, Henry's dilatoriness gave him every opportunity to try.
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Instead, it seems almost certain that Catherine's own subsequent account of her choice is correct. In it, she made no mention of Seymour's temporary exile as a factor in her decision. Rather she attributed it solely to God and to her own struggle with her inner voices.
* * *
By June the struggle was over. One of the first to be told the way the wind was blowing was Catherine's brother, William, Lord Parr, who had been appointed Lord Warden of the Western March in April 1543. Other news 'is none', John Dudley, who was now Lord Admiral and Viscount Lisle, wrote to him from Greenwich on 20 June, 'but that my Lady Latimer, your sister, and Mrs Herbert [Parr's other sister Anne] be both here at Court with my Lady Mary's Grace and my Lady Elizabeth'.
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The movements of the royal family would suggest that Dudley's letter marks the actual moment of Catherine's decision. For during June its members had been unusually scattered. Henry had spent most of the month journeying to and from Harwich, 'where he perused and saw two notable havens but liked Colne Water best'. Mary had taken advantage of her father's absence to pay a visit to her ex-step-mother, Anne of Cleves, at Richmond. While Catherine, presumably, had pondered her fate at the Charterhouse.
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When, therefore, Catherine rejoined the Court at Greenwich, where Henry arrived on the 19th, it can only have been to inform the King that she had accepted him. Plans for the wedding then moved forward swiftly. On 10 July, Cranmer issued his licence to permit the marriage to be solemnised 'in any church, chapel or oratory without the issue of banns'. And two days later, on the 12th, the ceremony itself took place in the Queen's Privy Closet at Hampton Court.
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* * *
This was the more private of the Queen's two oratories. Similarly, the wedding itself, as might be expected in the case of an already muchmarried, middle-aged couple, was a quiet, almost private affair. But it was by no means a hole-in-corner one. The celebrant was Stephen Gardiner, Bishop of Winchester. And the congregation, which numbered about twenty, was made up of the Gentlemen of the King's Privy Chamber, as well as close family members of the bride and groom. Both Henry's daughters, Mary and Elizabeth, were present, as was Lady Margaret Douglas, his niece by his elder sister Margaret's second but divorced husband, Archibald Douglas, Earl of Angus. Catherine's family was represented only by her sister and brother-in-law, Anne and William Herbert. But the three aristocratic ladies who were then closest to her – Catherine, Duchess of Suffolk (
née
Willoughby), Anne, Countess of Hertford (
née
Stanhope) and Joan, Viscountess Lisle (
née
Guildford) – were also present.
Inevitably, in the close-knit world of the Tudor Court, there were many reminders of the past. Only a few dozen yards away from where he then stood, Henry had found Cranmer's letter denouncing Catherine Howard. The celebrant, Gardiner, had already helped make or unmake four of the King's previous marriages. And many other members of the congregation had been almost as actively involved. Russell had been abused by Anne Boleyn; had rejoiced at her fall and had been confided in by Henry over Anne of Cleves. Browne, Heneage and Denny had likewise shared the King's confidences in the Cleves affair. But it was of course his daughters, Mary and Elizabeth, who bore the heaviest scars.
If Henry was aware of any of this he showed no sign. Instead, he made the marriage vows '
hilari vultu
' – 'with a joyful countenance'.
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hilari vultu
' – 'with a joyful countenance'.
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