Catherine Parr

Catherine Parr (c.1512 – 7 September, 1548), was the Queen Consort of Henry VIII of England 1543–1547; the last wife of his six. Dowager Queen of England, she has a special place in history as the most married queen of England, having had four husbands in all.

Family

Catherine was born about 1512, either in Parr, St Helens, Kendal castle or Blackfriars, London. She was the daughter of Sir Thomas Parr of Kendal Westmorland and his wife, Maud Green. Her father died when she was five. There is a belief in Kendal that Catherine was born in Kendal Castle itself.

She had two siblings. Her brother was William Parr, 1st Marquess of Northampton. Her sister was Anne Parr, wife of William Herbert, 1st Earl of Pembroke.

Their paternal grandparents were Sir William Parr of Kendal and Elizabeth Fitzhugh. Elizabeth was a daughter of Henry FitzHugh, 6th Lord FitzHugh and Alice Neville. Alice was in turn a daughter of Richard Neville, 5th Earl of Salisbury and Alice Montagu, Countess of Salisbury.

Early marriages

At the age of about 15, she married Edward, Lord Borough, who died in 1529.

Some time between 1530 and 1533, she married John Neville, Lord Latimer, who died in 1542. After his death, the rich widow began a relationship with Thomas Seymour, the brother of the late queen Jane Seymour, but the king took a liking to her, and she was obliged to accept his proposal instead. She had drawn the king's attention partly by interceding with him to stop her brother William from asking to have his adulterous wife executed.

Queen consort of England

She married Henry VIII on 1543 July 12 at Hampton Court Palace. As Queen, Catherine was partially responsible for reconciling Henry to his daughters from his first two marriages, who would later become Mary I of England and Elizabeth I of England. She also developed a good relationship with Prince Edward. When she became Queen, her uncle Baron Parr of Horton became her Chamberlain.

For three months, from July to September 1544, Catherine was appointed Queen Regent by Henry as he went on his last, unsuccessful, campaign in France. Thanks to her uncle having been appointed as member of her regency council, and to the sympathies of fellow appointed councillors Thomas Cranmer and the Earl of Hertford, Catherine obtained effective control and was able to rule as she saw fit. She handled provision, finances and musters for Henry's French campaign, signed five royal proclamations, and maintained constant contact with her lieutenant in the northern Marches, the Earl of Shrewsbury, over the complex and unstable situation with Scotland. It is thought that her actions as regent, together with her strength of character and noted dignity, and later religious convictions, greatly influenced her stepdaughter, Elizabeth I of England.

Her religious views were complex, and the issue is clouded by the lack of evidence. Although she must have been brought up as a Roman Catholic, given her birth before the Protestant Reformation, she later became sympathetic and interested in the "New Faith".

We can be sure that she held some strong reformed ideas after Henry's death, when the Lamentacions of a Sinner were published in late 1547. However, her work on commissioning the translation of Erasmus' Paraphrases shows her more as a MacConica-style Erasmian Pietist.

She was reformist enough to be viewed with suspicion by Catholic and anti-Protestant officials such as Bishop Stephen Gardiner and Chancellor Thomas Wriothesley, 1st Earl of Southampton who tried to turn the king against her in 1546. An arrest warrant was drawn up for her, but she managed to reconcile with the king after vowing that she had only argued about religion with him to take his mind off the suffering caused by his ulcerous leg.

Final marriage and death

Following Henry's death on 28 January, 1547, Catherine was able to marry her old love, Thomas Seymour (now Baron Seymour of Sudeley and Lord High Admiral), but her happiness was short-lived. She had a rivalry with Anne Stanhope, the wife of her husband's brother. Then, Thomas Seymour was alleged to have taken liberties with the teenaged Princess Elizabeth, who was living in their household, and he reputedly intrigued to marry his wife's stepdaughter.

Having had no children from her first three marriages, Catherine became pregnant for the first time, by Seymour, in her mid-thirties, and died from complications of childbirth on 7 September, 1548, at Sudeley Castle in Gloucestershire, where she was buried.

Her only child, a daughter, Mary Seymour, born August 30, appears not to have long survived her mother. Her father, Thomas Seymour, was executed before she was a year old, and she was taken to live with Catherine Willoughby, Duchess of Suffolk, a close friend of Catherine Parr. After this nothing is known about her, it is therefore assumed by most historians that she died in childhood.

Remains

In 1782, a gentleman by the name of John Lucas discovered the coffin of Queen Catherine at the ruins of the Sudeley Castle chapel. He opened the coffin and observed that the body, after 234 years, was in a surprisingly good condition. Reportedly the flesh on one of her arms was still white and moist. After taking a few locks of her hair, he closed the coffin and returned it to the grave.

The coffin was opened a few more times in the next ten years and in 1792 some drunken men buried it upside down and in a rough way. When the coffin was officially reopened in 1817, nothing but a skeleton remained. At that time it was moved to the tomb of Lord Chandos whose family owned the castle at that time. In later years the chapel was rebuilt by Sir John Scott and a proper altar-tomb was erected for Queen Catherine.

Some of Catherine Parr's writings are available from the Women Writers Project.

In film

Catherine first appeared in cinemas in 1933, in Alexander Korda's masterpiece The Private Life of Henry VIII. Charles Laughton played the king, with actress Evelyn Gregg appearing as Catherine Parr.

In 1952, a romanticised version of Thomas Seymour's obsession with Elizabeth I saw Stewart Granger as Seymour, Jean Simmons as the young Elizabeth and screen legend Deborah Kerr in the popular film Young Bess.

In 1970, in "Catherine Parr", a 90-minute BBC television drama (the last in a 6-part series, with one episode per wife) Catherine was played by Rosalie Crutchley opposite Keith Michell's Henry VIII. In this, Catherine's love of religion and intellectual capabilities were highlighted. Crutchley reprised her role as Catherine Parr in Part 1 of a 6-part series on the life of Elizabeth I in 1971, called Elizabeth R with Glenda Jackson as Elizabeth.

In 1973, Barbara Leigh-Hunt played a matronly Catherine in Henry VIII and his Six Wives, with Keith Michell once again playing Henry. In 2000, Jennifer Wigmore played Catherine Parr in the American television drama aimed at teenagers, "Elizabeth: Red Rose of the House of Tudor". A year later, Charlotte Lintott played Catherine in Dr. David Starkey's documentary series on Henry's queens.

In October 2003, in a two-part British television series on Henry VIII, starring Ray Winstone, Catherine was played by Clare Holman. The part was relatively small, given that the drama's second part focused more on the stories of Jane Seymour and Catherine Howard.

Historiography

The popular myth that Catherine acted more as her husband's nurse than his wife was born in the 19th century from the work of Victorian moralist and proto-feminist, Agnes Strickland. This assumption has been challenged by Dr. David Starkey in his book Six Wives in which he points out that such a situation would have been vaguely obscene to the Tudors, given that Henry had a huge staff of physicians waiting on him hand and foot, and Catherine was a woman expected to live up to the heavy expectations of queenly dignity.

Catherine's good sense, moral rectitude, passionate religious commitment and strong sense of loyalty and devotion have earned her many historical admirers. These include David Starkey, feminist activist Karen Lindsey, Lady Antonia Fraser, Alison Weir and Alison Plowden.

External links

A quick look at Catherine's life with some great pictures in the gallery
A more detailed story of Catherine Parr's life
Sudeley Castle - One time home, and burial place of Catherine Parr
Catherine Parr At Find A Grave

1510s births | 1548 deaths | Wives of Henry VIII

Gourt Home::Gourt :: Catherine Parr