Katherine the Queen: The Remarkable Life of Katherine Parr (33 page)

the reason why many of those who are about the king’s person do not wish him to cross the Channel on this occasion is, among others, that they are afraid of his suddenly failing in health, and also that, if they have to take care of his person, all military operations will necessarily be delayed and the march of their army slackened through it; besides which the king’s chronic disease and great obesity require particular care lest his life should be endangered.
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Katherine, however, does not seem to have been one of those who tried to dissuade Henry from his purpose. She already knew her husband well enough to appreciate how important this was to him and, indeed, to her. He was ready to assign her the responsibilities of the regency and the safeguarding of his heir. Henry made a will in 1544 before he left England; although it has not survived, the assumption is that he nominated his wife to remain as regent in the event of his death. Probably he did not regard this as a serious possibility, despite the fears of his advisers described by Chapuys. In fact, the king’s health returned and actually improved as he busied himself for the departure. Margaret Douglas’s grand nuptials were a fitting statement of his power and confidence in the final days before he left. On 8 July he bade farewell to Katherine and travelled, via several of his Kentish manors, to Dover. Nearly a week later, he crossed the Channel, and, on Monday 14 July, as was reported by a steward who kept a diary of the campaign, ‘the king’s majesty
came to Calais about the hour of seven of the clock at night, where he was royally received with a great number of horsemen and archers’.

Katherine made her own unique contribution to the war effort by writing a prayer for men to say entering into battle. It is one of the earliest of her religious writings and remained one of the most popular. Brief but elegantly expressed, the prayer is notably lacking in bloodthirsty sentiments:

O Almighty God and lord of hosts, which by thy angels thereunto appointed, dost minister both war and peace, and which didst give unto David both courage and strength, being but a little one, unarmed and unexpert in feats of war, with his sling to set upon and overthrow the great huge Goliath. Our cause now being just, and being enforced to enter into war and battle, we most humbly beseech thee, O Lord God of hosts, so to turn the hearts of our enemies to the desire of peace, that no Christian blood be spilt, or else grant, O Lord, that with small effusion of blood, and to the little hurt and damage of innocents, we may to thy glory, obtain victory. And that the wars being soon ended, we may all with one heart and mind, knit together in concord and unity, laud and praise thee, which livest and reignest world without end. Amen.
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It is not known whether Henry VIII took a copy of his wife’s prayer with him. His attention, in any case, was firmly on what needed to be done to move things forward in France. Once across the water, he reviewed plans and was briefed by the duke of Suffolk, commander of the army that would attack Boulogne. The king does not seem to have been greatly impressed by what he found out and decided that he would have to become more personally involved. Henry discovered there was a great deal that required his attention: ‘we be so occupied,’ he wrote, ‘and have so much to do in foreseeing and caring for everything ourself, as we have almost no manner of rest or leisure to do any other thing’.
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But he was in no hurry to move and did not come himself to Boulogne until 26 July. The main assault on the town with big guns began on 3 August. It seemed that all was proceeding broadly to plan.

But on the same day that Henry left his palace at Greenwich, Mary of Hungary wrote a long missive to Chapuys, in which she was at great pains to deny responsibility for any delay or dereliction in the supply of provisions for Norfolk’s army outside Montreuil. ‘If the English campaign happens to be in want of provisions, it will certainly not be the fault of the queen,’ she asserted, ‘who has not failed to give all possible attention to the matter . . . In fact, the queen has hitherto acted in this affair in such a manner that the English ought to be perfectly satisfied.’ This despatch has mistakenly been assigned to Katherine herself (she and Mary were both known as ‘Queen Regent’) and cited as evidence of her ability to defend her handling of important military aspects of her regency; but it is nothing of the kind. Rather, it is further proof of the difficulties in the Angloimperial alliance that would only get worse with the passing weeks.
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K
ATHERINE AND
the regency council moved to Hampton Court in late July, to escape the threat of plague. All three of Henry’s children soon joined her. Their company was welcome and it was during this period that Elizabeth observed her stepmother as a ruler, absorbing the realization that a queen could handle the mass of papers, participate in discussions with advisers and take decisions as well as any man. It must have been obvious to her that the pressure of work was inescapable for the queen and that Katherine was coping with it admirably. There were many letters and despatches to be read and answered daily, for Henry had his own council of advisers with him in France and the Council of the North was also actively involved in monitoring the Scottish situation. Initially, Scotland took up more of Katherine’s time than the war in France. One of her earliest interventions was in connection with the large number of Scottish prisoners in northern England, many of whom could not afford to pay for their own food in jail. What was to be done with these people, the queen and her council were asked, and would the king meet the costs of feeding them? Katherine’s reply was level-headed and humane. She commanded that ‘taking order for the bestowing of such as be able to bear their own charges’, the poorer prisoners, who were ‘stout, busy or otherwise like to do any hurt being at liberty’ were to be committed to several different prisons and ‘if extreme necessity shall so require’ be given some small relief until the king’s pleasure was otherwise known. The rest were to be released upon bond.
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It was a major part of Katherine’s role to ensure that England was quiet, calm and information was carefully controlled by the government. Her attention to morale on the home front can be seen in her response to the almost inevitable rumours of a French invasion in early August 1544. She wrote to reassure her husband that she had dealt promptly and effectively with this potential threat to stability. As soon as she had established, through local justices of the peace, that the invasion scare was without foundation, ‘we thought good to advertise you of the same, lest any other vain report passing over might have caused the king’s majesty to have conceived other opinion of the state of things here than, thanks be unto God [they are] . . . all things here are in very good quiet and order’. A similar rumour in the southwest of the country was also investigated and found to be without foundation. As Katherine remarked in a despatch to the council with the king in France, ‘a landing of Frenchmen about Gloucester was unlikely’. She was told by the justices of the peace that ‘all was well and the rumour supposed to arise by the despatch of the navy from Bristol for the conveyance of [the earl of] Lennox’.
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But scaremongering was not the only source of possible social disorder. A considerable number of ‘aged and impotent’ French citizens had been resident in London for years and were
alarmed about their situation now that France and England were at war. Fearing deportation and threatened with violence if they set foot outside their homes, they petitioned for tolerance, which the queen was inclined to grant. Henry agreed with her decision and a proclamation was issued on the last day of September allowing them to stay.
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As well as her frequent reassurance that all was well in England and her equally constant references to the health of Henry’s children, Katherine was keen, also, to place her personal relationship with the king squarely in his thoughts. She wanted him to know how much she missed him. She wrote, while still at Greenwich:

The want of your presence, so much beloved and desired by me, makes me that I cannot quietly enjoy anything until I hear from your majesty . . . The time, therefore, seemeth to me very long with a great desire to know how your highness hath done since departing hence . . . whereas I know your majesty’s absence is never without great respect of things most convenient and necessary, yet love and affection compelleth me to desire your presence . . . Love makes me in all things to set apart my own commodity and pleasure and to embrace most joyfully his will and pleasure whom I love.

God, the knower of secrets, can judge these words not to be only written with ink, but most truly impressed in the heart . . . And even such confidence I have in your majesty’s gentleness, knowing myself never to have done my duty as were requisite and meet to such a noble prince, at whose hands I have received so much love and goodness that with words I cannot express it.

Lest I should be too tedious unto your majesty, I finish this, my scribbled letter, committing you into the governance of the Lord, with long life and prosperous felicity here, and after this to enjoy the kingdom of His elect.

By your majesty’s most humble, obedient loving wife and servant, Kateryn the Queen, K. P.
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No doubt the king was pleased to receive this charmingly worded avowal of Katherine’s devotion, but he was no great correspondent himself. Travel, the press of things that needed to be done and perhaps, also, the desire to write only when he had something positive to say meant that Henry VIII did not reply directly to the queen for more than a month. His response, however, is interesting, because of the detail he gives her about the state of the siege of Boulogne and the political situation with Charles V and Francis I. The main part of his letter does not contain pleasantries; it suggests, rather, that the king had a high regard for his wife’s intelligence and grasp of what was going on, and that they had discussed the conduct of the war and its associated diplomacy at length before he left England.

Katherine’s letters to Henry had been delivered by one of her personal servants, and the man remained longer than anticipated in France because the king wanted to send him back with the good news that Boulogne had fallen. Unfortunately, the taking of the town was being delayed because of a lengthy wait for the necessary gunpowder to arrive from Flanders. He felt sure that it would be there in a matter of days now and went on to tell the queen: ‘But meanwhile, without loss of men, we have won the strongest part of the town . . . and can keep it with 400 men against 4,000 enemies.’ He also acknowledged the bravery of the castle’s defenders, saying that the Burgundians and the Flemings supplied to him by Charles V ‘are no good where any danger is’. Yet his confidence that Boulogne would soon be in English hands was not matched by any similar confidence about the diplomatic reality of his position. He already knew that Francis I was suing for peace and expressed his uneasiness over what Charles V might do, but he did not yet fully grasp that his ally would proceed without him. The emperor’s demands of the French seemed to him extreme. Well, if that were so, he would take a similar stance: ‘viz, arrears of pension, damages suffered by the war, the realm of France and the duchies of Normandy, Aquitaine and Guienne. Either the emperor mindeth no peace’,
he went on to remark, ‘or would pluck the honour of compounding it, although the French king says that he never made means to the emperor for peace. Pray communicate this to the Council.’ Finally, he added a postscript in his own hand, updating her on the very latest military situation in Boulogne: ‘this day, 8 September, we begin three batteries and have three mines going, besides one which has shaken and torn one of the greatest bulwarks. I am too busy to write more but send blessings to all my children and recommendations to my cousin Margaret [his niece, the new countess of Lennox] and the rest of the ladies and gentlewomen and to my Council.’
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Three days later, following the arrival of the powder, a final assault was made on Boulogne and the castle’s last defences crumbled. The town surrendered on 14 September. It had been energetically defended by the Sieur de Vervins, a young French nobleman, who was later arrested by the French and beheaded. But after two months that had seen the loss of hundreds of lives and the near exhaustion of the English artillery, the town belonged to Henry VIII. He entered it like a medieval monarch vanquishing the opposing host: ‘The king’s highness, having the sword borne before him by the Lord Marquess of Dorset, like a noble and valiant conqueror, rode into Boulogne, and the trumpeters standing on the walls of the town sounded their trumpets at the time of his entering, to the great comfort of all the king’s true subjects . . . And in the entering there met him the Duke of Suffolk, and delivered unto him the keys of the town . . .’ The chronicler omitted to add that Henry had sat, in full armour, astride his warhorse in the pelting rain watching the 2,000 civilians turned out of Boulogne trudge towards the French lines at Abbeville. Many died of disease, hypothermia (it was a very cold and wet autumn) and starvation, the forgotten victims of a nasty war.