Katherine the Queen: The Remarkable Life of Katherine Parr Read online

  His reluctance to establish himself as a provincial grandee had nothing to do with monetary difficulties. At the beginning of 1512 he inherited half of the estates of his Fitzhugh cousin, Lord Fitzhugh of Ravenworth, making him a major landowner in the north-east of England as well as the north-west. Combined with the cancellation of the rest of his debt to the Crown the following year, Sir Thomas could be much more confident about his situation than he had been a mere four years earlier. But still no hereditary title came his way. Sir Thomas Parr accepted that, if he was ever to achieve this goal, he must continue to look for office and stay close to the royal family. Opportunities would present themselves, and he had a good eye for them. In 1515 he journeyed to Newcastle, ready to accompany the king’s sister, Queen Margaret of Scotland, on her return to England. Margaret, who had a weakness for attractive men, seems to have been charmed by her gallant escort and stayed close to him throughout her month-long progress south to London. There was no hint of anything improper; Parr was merely demonstrating how perfectly he had mastered the courtier’s arts.

  He knew, however, that acting the gallant to royal ladies was only part of the secret of success for a gentleman in his position. The following year he was offered a more prosaic but potentially lucrative role by his cousin Sir Thomas Lovell, a former chancellor of the exchequer. It was a new office – associate master of the wards – and Parr took it gratefully. Family connections thus helped to tie him to the growing civil service as well as the court. He also moved in the humanist, educated circles of his day and had a direct link to Thomas More, the renowned scholar and later Lord Chancellor. Thomas More’s first wife was the daughter of Parr’s stepbrother. Popularity, erudition and loyalty were important in the court milieu; but what he wanted, above all else, was to be Lord Parr and to pass the title on to his son.

  Thomas died without fulfilling his dream, at the age of thirty-nine, in the autumn of 1517. The onset of his illness appears to have been sudden and its outcome unavoidable, as he made his will only four days before his death. In it, he left marriage portions of £400 (£160,000) each to his two daughters, five-year-old Katherine and her little sister, Anne. This was not an overly generous amount and it suggests that he expected them to marry respectably rather than impressively. Maud, who was pregnant again at the time of his demise, was instructed that if she produced another daughter, the girl was to be married at her mother’s expense. This seems a sour farewell to a woman who had been such a lively and committed helpmate, though it may reveal him as nothing more or less than a typical man of the early sixteenth century. His son, predictably, was left with much better provision, inheriting most of the estate. Still, he did nominate his wife as executor, along with Cuthbert Tunstall, the archdeacon of Chester (who was his kinsman), his brother, Sir William Parr of Horton, and Dr Melton, his household chaplain.

  He was buried close to his London home, at the church of St Anne’s, Blackfriars. The inscription on his tomb read: ‘Pray for the soul of Sir Thomas Parr, knight of the king’s body, Henry the Eighth, master of his wards … and … sheriff … who deceased the 11th day of November in the 9th year of the reign of our said sovereign lord at London, in the Black Friars …’11 His will, with its mention of a signet ring given to him by the king, illustrates how close he was to Henry VIII. But this was only bleak comfort to Maud Parr, pregnant, grieving and left, at the age of twenty-five, a widow with three small children to bring up in a difficult world.

  CHAPTER TWO

  A Formidable Mother

  ‘Remembering the wisdom of my said Lady Parr … I assure you he might learn with her as well as in any place that I know.’

  Lord Dacre’s advice on the education of his grandson

  IT MUST BE ASSUMED that Maud Parr lost the child she was carrying, whether through miscarriage, stillbirth or death in early infancy we do not know. Nothing more is heard of it. But whatever the cause, the outcome of Maud’s last pregnancy, even if it caused further distress at a difficult time, may also have been something of a relief. It enabled this clear-headed woman to concentrate her efforts on the family that Sir Thomas Parr had left behind and on her responsibilities as chief executor of his will. In devoting herself to her children, Maud amply fulfilled the promise that her husband had detected in her a decade earlier.

  Despite her undoubted eligibility, she did not marry again. There is no record of offers made and refused, but the most likely explanation is that Maud came to realize that widowhood was an opportunity and not merely a regret. In this she was typical of other well-born women of her time, who had sufficient confidence to manage their own affairs (though not, it should be made clear, without the assistance of male members of the family and friends) and to experience the independence that would be lost in subservience to a second husband. Educated, energetic and determined to do her best for her young family, it is unlikely that Maud would have turned down an offer of remarriage that could have notably enhanced their prospects. She possessed good judgement and ambition in equal measure. Evidently no suitable candidate for her hand presented himself. Yet the Parr children did not suffer from the absence of a prominent stepfather; instead they benefited from their mother’s attention, and seem to have loved her greatly.

  Maud had considerable strengths where the upbringing of her children was concerned. Her own position at court continued, as one of Katherine of Aragon’s household, and she was able to combine the role successfully with the demands of her family. The queen’s ladies worked on a rota basis (as they still do), so the requirement to be away from home could be balanced with a continuing personal presence in their children’s lives. Royal attendants were fed and clothed at the monarch’s expense but their undivided attention was expected while they served their turn. The court was no place for children. Princess Mary, who was born in 1516, had her own household, though she did frequently spend Christmas and other holidays under the same roof as her parents in the early years of her life.

  Katherine Parr’s early experience of the Tudor court would have been indirect, gleaned through the descriptions of her mother. If, as has been assumed, Queen Katherine was indeed her godmother, the christening was probably the only time that she came into direct contact with the royal family as a child. But her mother’s presence ensured that the Parr name was well known at court and that Maud’s children might hope to derive advantage from such service in the future. There is no doubt that Maud remained close to the queen, even as Katherine’s relationship with Henry VIII declined and her position became much more difficult. In her will, Maud Parr made mention of several items given by Katherine of Aragon, notably the ‘beads of lacquer allemagne dressed with gold which the said Queen’s grace gave me’.1 These tokens of intimacy and favour were extremely important to royal servants.

  Maud’s daily life at court, most often passed at Greenwich but sometimes also at other palaces, such as Eltham, revolved around providing companionship to Katherine of Aragon and performing a variety of tasks to ensure the queen’s comfort. The role of ladies-in-waiting was largely social. They were there to provide conversation, to entertain, to play cards to wile away the time, to sew and to pray with the queen. Official occasions, such as the great feast days of the Church calendar and diplomatic visits from Henry VIII’s fellow European princes, required the queen’s attendance, and she herself would be supported by some of her ladies. But the reality of life for women like Maud in Katherine’s service was often more mundane than these great occasions of state. They were not expected to undertake menial tasks (laundry, cleaning and cooking were, of course, left to a different class of servants) but they assisted with the queen’s toilette night and morning, helped choose her clothes and jewels, ensured that everything was where it should be, supervised packing and unpacking as the court moved from place to place, consulted with apothecaries and doctors when necessary and generally formed a barrier of protection around their queen when they felt it appropriate. They watched as Katherine’s husband became more distant,
saw his infatuation with Anne Boleyn, who was, after all, one of them, and inevitably began to take sides. Henry’s first wife never lost the loyalty and affection of women like Maud Parr, Gertrude Courtenay and Elizabeth Howard, who had been with her since the first years of the reign. Yet it would be wrong to confuse access, which these women undoubtedly had, with true intimacy. Katherine of Aragon was a proud woman, very conscious of the fact that she was the daughter and wife of monarchs, and there were lines not to be overstepped. In a fiercely hierarchical society, Maud Parr knew her place. It was at the queen’s side, certainly, but that does not mean that she was privy to Katherine’s innermost thoughts as Henry VIII sought to put her aside.

  WHILE THEIR MOTHER was away, the Parr children were well cared for by servants at Rye House in Hertfordshire, which came to be their permanent home not long before their father’s death. It was leased from one of Sir Thomas Parr’s many cousins and was their fixed establishment until Maud’s own death fourteen years later.2 Here Katherine and her brother and sister began their education, under the supervision of their mother but with considerable input from two people who were to play important roles in Katherine’s development. For, though fatherless, Katherine and her younger siblings were by no means deprived of male influence: Maud, very much a woman of her day, understood well the importance of male protection and involvement in her children’s lives. She was fortunate to be able to call upon her late husband’s brother, Sir William Parr of Horton, and Cuthbert Tunstall, a distant Parr kinsman who was to become one of the most prominent churchmen and diplomats of the first half of the sixteenth century. Together, they provided a powerful further resource, far beyond what Maud’s own role at court could bring, for the future of her family.

  Katherine’s uncle had, like her father, flourished under the care of Sir Nicholas Vaux. His ties to Northamptonshire remained close throughout his life and were strengthened by his marriage (several years before that of Thomas and Maud Parr) to Mary Salisbury, daughter of a local landowner. Mary brought as part of her dowry the manor of Horton, and William Parr styled himself accordingly. It was a happy marriage that produced four daughters, and so Katherine Parr grew up in the company of her cousins, especially the eldest girl, Maud, who shared her lessons and was to become a lifelong friend and confidante. Combining the education of the children was no doubt appealing for both family and financial reasons, and the younger generation of Parrs were joined by another cousin, Elizabeth Cheyney, in their studies.3

  William Parr of Horton was of more military bent than his brother and had fought with distinction in both France (where he was knighted by Henry VIII in Tournai Cathedral the year after Katherine’s birth) and in Scotland. But he was less adept as a courtier and politician. Though he came to recognize that valour was admired but seldom rewarded by financial gain, he does not ever seem to have been comfortable in court circles. His lack of finesse would not have been well received there. Insecure in developing relationships with others in an atmosphere where everyone was jockeying to be noticed, he nevertheless accompanied the king at the celebrated ‘Field of Cloth of Gold’ in northern France in 1520. His awkwardness was compounded by incompetence in handling his own financial affairs. This may have been exacerbated by the additional responsibilities he took on in assisting his sister-in-law, for while Maud managed her estates in the south of England, William Parr dealt with her lands in the north.

  As a family man, however, he seems to have been held in genuine affection. Katherine Parr wrote a dedication to him in her father’s Latin Book of Hours, used by the Parr children as a Latin primer, which shows that he was an important presence in her life as a child: ‘Uncle, when you do on this look, I pray you remember who wrote this in your book. Your loving niece, Katheryn Parr.’4 The rhyme may be rudimentary, but the sentiment is clear, and the bond between uncle and niece was to last for the rest of William Parr’s life.

  The precise nature of Cuthbert Tunstall’s influence is harder to determine, but Maud Parr herself acknowledged that she consulted him on matters relating to her children and that she valued his advice greatly. The extent of their contact can perhaps be gauged by the fact that she made him the chief executor of her will and left him a ring with a large ruby. Sir William Parr of Horton was the anchor of Maud’s fatherless family, but Cuthbert Tunstall, archdeacon of Chester when Katherine’s father died, was an international figure, a prominent humanist, churchman, educator and diplomat who was to become one of the great survivors of sixteenth-century England. Maud could not have imagined, when she made her will in 1530, that Tunstall would outlive her daughter by eleven years. He was, by then, already over fifty years old.

  Tunstall was illegitimate at birth, although his parents later married and the irregular circumstances of his background were never held against him. The connection with the Parrs was that he and Katherine’s father shared a grandmother (Alice Tunstall), as well as a northern background. Like his cousin, Tunstall was an engaging man who learned to thread his way through unpredictable times, but he rose to far greater prominence. An outstanding scholar and mathematician, he had been educated in England, spending time at both Oxford and Cambridge, before a six-year spell at the University of Padua in Italy, from which he received two degrees. His Church career began in 1505, the year after he returned to England. He was not ordained until four years later, by which time he had come to the attention of the Archbishop of Canterbury, William Warham, who sponsored his early advancement and brought him to court. He was also close to Wolsey, Henry VIII’s chief minister, who recognized in this urbane, polished man the potential to serve his country well in diplomacy. Such confidence was not misplaced, and at the time of Sir Thomas Parr’s death Tunstall had only recently returned from a mission to Burgundy, where he had met the future Holy Roman Emperor, Charles V. The knowledge that this well-connected kinsman could assist his wife and children must have been a comfort to Sir Thomas as he lay dying in the autumn of 1517.

  In both the ecclesiastical and international spheres, Cuthbert Tunstall was already an influential person when Katherine Parr lost her father. But it was his distinction as a humanist, his reputation for virtue and intellect, and the circle of friends he had known for many years that were even more important to her upbringing. He was close to all the great names of English humanism in the early sixteenth century: to Thomas More, John Colet, William Grocyn and Thomas Linacre and, on the wider European stage, to Erasmus. The Dutch thinker, so greatly revered by his contemporaries, admired Tunstall’s modesty, scholarship and charm – the latter quality apparently one that the Parrs and their relatives possessed to a notable degree. Tunstall helped Erasmus in the preparation of the second edition of his Greek Testament, with its Latin translation and notes. When it appeared in March 1519, he wrote to Erasmus: ‘You have opened the sources of Greek learning to our age, and the splendour of your achievement has for ever thrown into the shade the work of earlier scholars as the rising sun blots out the stars.’5

  And there was no shortage of approbation for Tunstall himself, particularly from Thomas More, who wrote of him in the introduction to Utopia: ‘his virtue and learning be greater and of more excellency than I am able to praise them’. Almost twenty years after the publication of what is perhaps the best known of all humanist writings, More composed the inscription for his own tomb. By then, he anticipated the likely outcome of the stand he was taking against Henry VIII and he also knew that his old friend had made the decision to side with the king. Yet he wrote of his association movingly, describing Tunstall as ‘then bishop of London, but soon after of Durham … than whom the world contains today scarcely anyone more learned, sagacious or good’.6

  Tunstall also seems to have had a genuine fondness for children and an interest in their progress. ‘How great is the joy of a father,’ he wrote, ‘when his little ones recognize him and come to him with smiles, when in their first attempts to speak they utter ridiculous sounds in their effort to mimic our words …’ Perhaps it was hi
s interest in children, as well as his position in the Church, which caused him to be chosen to deliver the Latin oration, In Praise of Matrimony, at the betrothal of the two-and-a-half-year-old Princess Mary to the Dauphin of France in 1518. The splendidly attired little Mary, whose marriageability was to become a staple of Henry VIII’s diplomacy throughout his reign (though he never did find a husband for her) apparently sat through the ceremony with remarkable patience for one so young. Tunstall had, however, anticipated a degree of fidgeting, even in a princess, for he had shrewdly built into his speech the observation: ‘See how catching sight of her father she springs forward from her nurse’s lap.’7 This allowed gave Mary’s grateful nurse to breathe a sigh of relief whilst also flattering the king’s ego.

  There is, however, no evidence that Katherine Parr was educated with Mary Tudor, as has been suggested in the past.8 She was four years older than the princess, her requirements were much more modest in terms of her expectations and future role, and, tellingly, neither she nor anyone else in her family ever made mention of such a connection. But the two girls may well have benefited individually from Cuthbert Tunstall’s enthusiasm for mathematics. In 1522, shortly before he was consecrated as bishop of London, Tunstall published a treatise on arithmetic, De arte supputandi, which enhanced his reputation among the leading thinkers of Europe.