Katherine the Queen: The Remarkable Life of Katherine Parr (23 page)

Circumstances certainly played a large part in the development of a strong bond between the king and his sixth wife. The plague, that scourge of summer in the cities, had just hit London when Katherine and Henry were married. ‘This summer’, recorded the chronicle, ‘was great death in the city of London and suburbs of the same, wherefore the king made proclamation . . . that no Londoner should come within 7 miles where the king lay.’
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This was a particularly virulent outbreak of the plague. It lingered well into the autumn and the court stayed away from the capital. This meant that the newly-weds were almost continuously together for the first six months of their marriage, as Henry avoided contagion and his wife got to know the manors and hunting-lodges that he possessed in Surrey, Bedfordshire, Oxfordshire and Buckinghamshire.
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Ampthill in Bedfordshire was a particular favourite. Henry rarely hunted on horseback any more, so he had new standings built in the park from which he could shoot game. His wife, a keen huntswoman and archer of some prowess could enjoy the pastime at his side. They spent most of October and November 1543 at Ampthill, while the plague continued to be so
devastating in London that the sessions of the Law Courts were moved out to St Albans in Hertfordshire.

Henry returned briefly to Whitehall just before Christmas. Life was not all pleasure for the king, and the business of government never stood still. Meetings of the Privy Council took place regularly wherever he was. Despite the conclusion of a treaty with the Scots for the marriage of their infant queen to Prince Edward, affairs north of the border remained high on the English government’s agenda. And the Emperor Charles V was pleased to note that the king of England seemed more inclined to join with him against the French than had been the case for some years. At home, Henry continued to pursue his middle way in religion; three evangelicals were burnt at Windsor two weeks after the royal wedding. Yet the king resisted attempts to bring down Archbishop Cranmer. Perhaps he was ‘the greatest heretic in Kent’, but he was still Henry’s heretic and the monarch had no intention of replacing him, though with his typical capacity for keeping people guessing, he did not publicly commit himself to Cranmer for several weeks. Instead, Henry went back to Hampton Court to join his wife and children for the festive season. It was the first family Christmas he had known for a good many years.

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ATHERINE WAS NOW
well established as consort, bedmate and stepmother, greatly helped by the unbroken time she had spent in the king’s company. Her confidence had come gradually, but she was so naturally gracious and intelligent that it was not a difficult transition from being a minor noblewoman to being a queen. The court was in her blood. The only one of Henry’s wives who had been prepared in any way for queenship was Katherine of Aragon, and even she had been the youngest child of a royal family. Anne Boleyn and Jane Seymour had both been ladies-in-waiting with an eye to the main chance, Anne of Cleves was the sister of a German princeling and Katherine Howard had
grown up unloved, ill-educated and undisciplined, sexually precocious but completely unfit to occupy a throne. Katherine Parr brought no such baggage with her and was the stronger for not having sought the role of queen or been craftily dangled in front of Henry VIII. It gave her an independence that the other wives had lacked.

Two crucial facets of the way she approached her role can be discerned from the start. The very day after her wedding, she requested ‘fine perfumes’ for her bedchamber at Hampton Court. A month later she ordered a large quantity of sweet-smelling herbs in pouches, specifically for her bed. Katherine was evidently concerned to make her boudoir enticing for the king and, given his sensitivity to Anne of Cleves (about which Katherine might well have heard from her sister and other women of the court) this was a clever move. The queen’s apartments at that time were located over the kitchens, and though this kept them warm in winter it must have been very unpleasant in the heat of the summer. Cooking odours are hardly conducive to lovemaking, and Katherine knew, literally from her wedding-night, that she must do something about this if she was to ensure frequent visits from her husband. This is not to suggest that she was overwhelmed by his attractions. Henry lumbering into view in his nightshirt and the servants all hastily taking their leave must have been a daunting prospect, but Katherine was equal to it. More alarming by far was the possibility that he would lose interest or stay away. Katherine Parr was a sensual woman herself and she understood Henry very well in this respect. In order to make sure her skin stayed soft and touchable, she took milk baths. Physical contact would be vital to the success of their marriage.

And on that success hinged the fortunes of her family, the second of her priorities in the summer of 1543. On 20 July she sent her brother, William, a letter, informing him that it had ‘pleased God to incline the king to take me as his wife, which is the greatest joy and comfort that could happen to me’. She went on to tell her brother that he was ‘the person who has the most
cause to rejoice thereat’, and requested him to ‘let me sometimes hear of your health as friendly as if I had not been called to this honour’.
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This touching letter underlines her strong affection for her brother and exhibits almost a slight hesitancy about her new status. It has been suggested that her comments show bitterness towards William, but they are surely a straightforward statement of family affection, and more than a little celebratory.

Katherine Parr’s devotion to family typifies the major social preoccupation of sixteenth-century England. As queen, she chose the Parr family badge, a maiden’s head, as her own. And, unique among all queen consorts of Henry, she incorporated her family name in her signature, signing herself ‘Kateryn the Quene KP’. She might have been Lady Latimer when she married Henry VIII, but in her own mind she was always a Parr. By the end of the year, she saw her commitment fully rewarded when, two days before Christmas, the king created her brother earl of Essex and her uncle Baron Parr of Horton, in the Presence Chamber at Hampton Court. William Parr had waited seventeen years for the title that his mother hoped would be his when she limited her two daughters’ prospects by purchasing his marriage to Anne Bourchier. It had taken another, all together greater match by his elder sister to grant him the elusive earldom that his wife’s behaviour denied him. Katherine loved him dearly, as she did her uncle, and she must have felt immense satisfaction in witnessing the ceremony that raised them both high. But she, of course, was higher still.

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ATHERINE WAS NOW
the greatest lady in the land and also one of the richest. When she married Henry VIII she received the dower lands that traditionally formed part of the queen consort’s income. These were widely scattered over the south and midlands of England, ranging from Dorset in the west to Suffolk in the east and also encompassing substantial estates in Herefordshire
and Worcestershire, on the Welsh borders. Baynard’s Castle was the official residence of all Henry’s queens in London, though Katherine did not spend much time there. It was used as storage for much of her wardrobe, especially winter items, like furs, and as the London residence of Anne and William Herbert. The manors, like most of her jewels, the chapel goods and even some books, had previously belonged to Katherine Howard. They went with the office and not the person. The 1542 inventory of Whitehall listed all the chapel stuff of the late queen; subsequently, it passed to Katherine Parr. The jewels that Anne Herbert looked after for her sister had previously adorned the shapely form of Henry’s fifth wife. Some had even belonged to Jane Seymour. Katherine seems to have enjoyed wearing them. Presumably she did not allow herself to dwell too much on their past. And the king bought her many new pieces as well as providing her with manors of her own, that would remain hers if he died. In mid-1544, she was granted Hanworth, Chelsea and Mortlake in south-west London. Of these, her favourite became Hanworth, where she was to establish her dowager household in 1547.
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The trappings of royalty were easily acquired, but what is especially interesting about Katherine Parr is how she set about developing her image and the implementation of her approach to being a queen. This is not to suggest some feminist subtext; Katherine appreciated the limits as well as the possibilities of the queen consort’s role, but she was astute at turning opportunity into advantage. The prolonged honeymoon with Henry VIII gave her unrivalled access to a man who few people knew really well and she learned quickly how to please him. And one effective way to do this was to be, in appearance and demeanour, precisely the kind of wife he wanted. She was to be an ornament, as well as a companion. What she definitely had no intention of being was a nurse. The Victorian view of Katherine Parr as a matronly lady who spent most of her time on her knees changing the bandages on Henry’s damaged legs is not someone that the queen
herself would have recognized. Nor, indeed, would the king have wanted such a wife.

Instead, he took pleasure in a woman who adapted with style and enthusiasm to the role of being queen. In every aspect of her new life, Katherine was determined to leave her mark. She loved clothes and soon possessed a wardrobe stuffed with beautiful and expensive items: gowns, sleeves, kirtles, petticoats, partlets and placards in an array of colours, though the most common were crimson, purple and black. Crimson was always the queen’s favourite colour. She dressed her footmen and pages in crimson doublets and hose and she chose to wear crimson at one of her earliest and most important public functions, the reception in February 1544 for the Spanish duke of Najera.

The textiles she chose throughout her reign were a luxurious mix of costly fabrics: cloth of gold and silver (she was particularly fond of the latter), damasks, taffetas, silks, satins and velvets. During the three and a half years she was Henry’s wife, she ordered 315 yards of black velvet and 95 yards of black satin, as well as 34 yards of orange damask. The black satin was often used to make night gowns, the informal wear of high-born ladies in the evenings and not to be confused with apparel for sleeping.
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Katherine also loved shoes and had a collection that could compete with any modern lady occupying such a high-profile position. In the first year she was queen 117 pairs of shoes were delivered, though the number fell to a more moderate 47 for the following seven months.
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Even in intensely personal matters, the crimson theme was repeated. The queen’s lavatory must have been one of the most opulent privies in the whole of Tudor England at the time. It had a crimson velvet canopy, cushions covered in cloth of gold and a seat of crimson velvet for the royal posterior. A removable commode was covered with red silk and ribbons, attached with gilt nails. Seldom can bodily functions have been performed in such splendour.
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A queen must be magnificent but also a trend-setter, and
Katherine balanced her support of contemporary jewellery designers like the Dutchman Peter Richardson with continued patronage of John Skut, the tailor to all Henry’s previous queens and to Princess Mary. Apart from the fact he began his royal service for Katherine of Aragon in 1519, nothing is known of his background. Clearly, he was good enough to be in demand over a very long period. The garments Skut made for Katherine reflected the latest fashions, the same type of French, Dutch, Italian and Venetian styles that she had ordered for her stepdaughter, Margaret Neville, before becoming queen.
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The queen was also a great admirer of embroidery, which suggests that she, like her stepdaughter Mary, was highly proficient with a needle. Katherine patronized the embroiderer Guillaume Brellant, who was already working for the Crown when she married Henry VIII. The young Elizabeth, with her already well-developed eye for what would please, gave her stepmother New Year’s gifts in the years 1544 and 1545 featuring beautiful covers that she had worked herself.
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