Katherine the Queen: The Remarkable Life of Katherine Parr (4 page)

While her husband used his charm and courtier’s training, Maud became a lady-in-waiting to Queen Katherine and served her faithfully for the rest of her life, from the heady early days of the reign through the testing time of the 1520s, until Maud’s death in 1531. Theirs was a relationship that went much deeper than giddy pleasure. Both women knew what it was like to lose
children in stillbirths and in infancy. During the first year of her marriage, Katherine had a late miscarriage, which pride and gynaecological ignorance refused to acknowledge. It began a pattern of failed pregnancies and infant deaths for which only the Princess Mary, born in 1516, was an exception. And Maud, too, suffered as many mothers did in those days. She conceived shortly after she married Thomas Parr and bore him a son. But any happiness at the arrival of an heir was fleeting; the child died young and not even his name is known. Then, between 1512 and 1515, three healthy children came in close succession. The eldest of these was a girl. She was christened Katherine, after the queen, who may also have been her godmother.

T
HE PRECISE DATE
of Katherine Parr’s birth is not known but there is general agreement that it was probably some time in August 1512. The following year saw the arrival of her brother, William. Two years later a second daughter, Anne, was born. Despite their father’s northern background, the Parrs grew up in the south of England. Kendal Castle was already falling into disrepair and it is not likely that Maud Parr would have struggled to the north of England for the birth. Her husband, though mindful of his family’s origins in Westmoreland, never wanted to live there. It was too far from the centre of things. Nor does he seem to have desired to establish a pre-eminent residence among the properties he owned elsewhere. His base was very much London and the house he owned in Blackfriars, which was probably where Katherine was born.

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.

‘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

I
T 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.