Six Wives (111 page)
Authors: David Starkey
It is difficult to know which to admire more – the eleven-year-old Elizabeth's linguistic talents and courtly skills, or the speed and completeness with which Catherine had won her trust and affection.
How Elizabeth was to repay it was another matter, however.
* * *
Elizabeth had written to Catherine that she 'hope[d] to enjoy [her presence] very soon'. Indeed, a letter from Secretary Paget, dated 29 July and written at the King's camp, took for granted that they were
already
together, since it informed Lord Russell 'the Queen, my lord Prince and the rest of the King's children now at Hampton Court' were in prosperous health. But Paget's remark is impossible to reconcile with Elizabeth's own Italian letter. Probably he anticipates a decision which had been taken but not yet implemented back in England. Nevertheless, Elizabeth did not have long to wait and, shortly after the date of the Italian letter, she had her wish and rejoined Catherine and her halfsiblings at Hampton Court.
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But it was Catherine's influence that mattered. Her younger stepdaughter remained with her for most of the summer and autumn and the effect was profound. Elizabeth imbibed the religious life of Catherine's Household. She witnessed Catherine's masterful conduct of business and the effortless ease with which she, a mere woman, imposed her authority in and on a masculine world. She established relationships among the Queen's servants, men and women, and, in the fullness of time, would recruit many of them into her own Household.
In short, if Catherine had a legacy, it was Elizabeth herself.
* * *
Catherine seems first to have had formal word from Henry in a letter dated 23 July, almost a fortnight after his departure from London. There were probably earlier word-of-mouth messages, but evidence of them does not survive. And even the letter of 23 July was from the King's Council, not from Henry himself. But Catherine was undeterred. Two days later, on 25 July, she wrote a brief acknowledgement to the Council with the King. It is signed at the head in royal style – 'CATHERINE THE QUEEN, KP' – and it is couched in the lofty, first-person-plural language of sovereignty: 'Right trusty and right well beloved cousins and trusty and right well beloved', it begins, 'we greet you well.' It thanks them for their letter and their good news, and then refers them for further details to Catherine's letter to Henry of the same date, 'not doubting but that his Highness will communicate the same unto you accordingly'.
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For it was to her husband, not to his Council, that Catherine wrote her substantive reply.
* * *
And this letter was very different. The combined signature-cipher, 'CATHERINE THE QUEEN, KP', is the same. But it is at the foot of the letter, not at the head and the writer has undergone a corresponding role-reversal. Writing to her husband's Council she was every inch the imperious Queen Regent; to her husband himself she was, as she signed herself, 'Your Grace's most obedient, loving wife and servant'. This is the same language she had employed in the intensely personal Greenwich letter. There is also the same religiosity, shaping itself this time into Catherine's certainty of Henry's divine calling.
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The Council's letter had begun by informing her of 'the prosperous beginning in your Highness's affairs and proceedings against your enemies'. It would have mentioned Suffolk's laying siege to Boulogne on the 19th; the fall of the lower town on the 21st and the commencement, the following day, of the bombardment of the fortifications of the upper town, whither the French had retreated.
Catherine was ecstatic. It was 'so joyful news unto me', she wrote to Henry, 'that giving unto Almighty God upon my knees most humble thanks, I assuredly trust that it shall please Him, by whose only goodness this good commencement and beginning hath taken good effect, to grant such an end and perfection in all your Majesty's most noble enterprises, as shall redound to His glory, to the common benefit of Christendom, and especially of your Majesty's realms'.
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* * *
At first sight, Catherine's words seem much the same as the proud boasts of her predecessor, Catherine of Aragon, in the wake of the English victory at Flodden. In fact, there is a notable difference of tone.
First, Catherine Parr is much less blood-thirsty. Catherine of Aragon had crowed openly over James IV's corpse and his spoils. In contrast, Catherine Parr, in the prayer she wrote specially for the wars, prayed God 'so to turn the hearts of our enemies to the desire of peace, that no Christian blood be spilt'. Or, if that were impossible, her petition continued, she begged that Henry's victories should be bought 'with small effusion of blood and little damage of innocents'. She also had much more of a sense of England's manifest destiny, casting her country as the plucky underdog – David against Goliath – which, nevertheless, was destined to triumph because its cause was just and its King was chosen of God.
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The difference is partly a product of the contrasting personalities of the two women; it is also a result of their different times – the one writing as a crusading Catholic, the other as an evangelical, even, though the word hardly yet dared speak its name in England, as a Protestant.
But, of course, neither Henry's first wife nor his sixth let religious enthusiasm in the least get in the way of common sense and a sound practical grasp of realities. Instead, after the effusions of her first paragraphs, Catherine's letter to her husband reports briskly on the despatch of business. The £40,000 in cash Henry had ordered to be sent would be shipped 'on Monday next'. And Henry, his wife recommended, should take appropriate security precautions on his side of the Channel as she had done on hers. Similarly, musters were already in hand to raise the required standing reserve of 4,000 troops, ready to be sent off 'upon one hour's warning'. And so on. Finally, she added a paragraph in her own hand which assured Henry 'of the good diligence of your councillors here, who taketh much pain in the setting forth of your Highness's affairs'.
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The praise must have been deserved, for Catherine's own standards of efficiency were high.
* * *
Next to attract Catherine's attention were the affairs of Scotland. 'This afternoon [31 July]', as Catherine informed Henry, 'were brought unto me letters from your Majesty's Lieutenant of the North [the Earl of Shrewsbury].' The letters reported the chance capture of a Scottish ship. This had turned out to be carrying French and Scottish envoys with highly confidential despatches, which Shrewsbury had sent to Court along with his letter. Catherine quickly assessed their contents and decided that they merited immediate action.
'Because I thought this taking of them', she wrote later the same day to Henry, 'with the interception of the said letters, to be of much importance for the advancement of your Majesty's affairs . . . I have presently sent such of the said letters as, upon view of the same, appeared of most importance to your Majesty.' Meanwhile, she also advised him, the principal envoys had been summoned by her Council for further 'examination'.
That was the practical Catherine. But the chance event, with its potential to make such a powerful contribution to Henry's northern policy, also fitted with Catherine's providential view of the world. It was 'ordained, I doubt not, of God', she wrote to Henry, 'to the intent your Highness might thereby certainly understand the crafty dealings and juggling of that nation [the Scots]'.
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Once again, she was sure, her God had intervened actively to assist her husband.
* * *
On 4 August, the Council replied to Catherine's letters on Henry's behalf, thanking her for her diligence and reporting the success of the bombardment of the fortifications of upper Boulogne. 'Yesterday', they wrote, 'the battery began, and goeth lustily forward, and the wall beginneth to tumble apace, and the loops [loopholes] of the defences of the town so well laid to by our artillery, as a man dare not once look out for his life'. The result, they reported, optimistically as it turned out, was that the town must surrender 'shortly'.
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Ordinarily, the triumphant militarism of the language might have grated with Catherine. But, in a good cause, she swallowed it and, in her reply written on the 6th, she thanked them for their news of 'the good health and prosperous success of my Lord the King's Majesty'. 'Which', she continued, 'we doubt not in the goodness of God, Whose Almighty hand directeth and governeth his Highness, shall long continue and increase more and more'.
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* * *
Catherine's providentialism proved infectious. Indeed, it became the language of the moment and was picked up, for instance, by Lennox in the letter which he wrote to Catherine's Council on 8 August from Chester en route to Scotland. He acknowledged their report of the capture of the Scottish ship and the incriminating Scots correspondence, and went on to attribute it (in broad Scots) to 'the provision of God, who ever works with the King's Majesty our master'. Nor was Catherine, for her own part, in doubt about the reasons for the initial success of Lennox's own mission. For when, on 9 August, she forwarded some of the Earl's earlier letters to Henry, she added a postscript. 'She imputes', she wrote, 'the good speed which Lennox has had to his serving a Master whom God aids.' 'He might have served the French King, his old master', she added, 'many years without attaining such a victory.'
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* * *
To this stream of letters from Catherine Henry had, as yet, made no direct reply. But he used other means to keep in touch. On 2 September, for instance, he ordered Hertford, who had left for the French front as soon as it became clear that the Scots were incapable of launching any serious attack on England during the King's absence, to 'bring the Queen's Highness good news of this town'. Accordingly, Hertford wrote a note to the English Council 'from the King's Majesty's camp before Boulogne'. He informed them of the capture of the strategically important 'bray' or outwork of the castle, as well as giving them assurances about the King's own state of health. 'Thanks be to God', he wrote, 'his Highness is merry and in as good health as I have seen his Grace at any time this seven years.' '[All of] which', he ended, 'I pray you show her Grace.'
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Finally, on 8 September, Henry at last found a moment to write to Catherine himself. It had taken him almost eight weeks. But, he did his best to make clear, it was not for want of affection, but of time. 'Most dearly and entirely beloved wife', he began. Then he thanked her for her most recent letters and messages, as well as for the boat-load of venison she had sent him (for the royal parks, freed from Henry's usual depredations, teemed with deer that summer). In return, he explained, he had wished to 'have written unto you a letter with our own hand'. 'But', he continued, 'we be so occupied, and have so much to do in foreseeing and caring for everything ourself, as we have almost no manner rest or leisure to do any other thing.' Hence his resort to a secretary.
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There was some truth in Henry's excuses. But, equally, he had always hated writing, and grasped at any straw to free himself from the disagreeable task – as with his present claim to being overwhelmingly busy.
But Henry then made up for his failure with the vivid immediacy of his dictated prose. In quick, deft phrases, he described the current state of the siege, the first French feelers for a peace and the manoeuvrings between himself and his ill-yoked ally, the Emperor, to claim the credit. Throughout he is straightforward and matter-of-fact and, in sharp contrast to Catherine's own side of the correspondence, makes only a single mention of the Almighty and that a cursory one to 'the grace of God'. On the other hand, his boast that the winning of the 'bray' (which had been mentioned in Hertford's earlier letter) had been done 'without any loss of men',
may
show the influence of Catherine's humanitarianism. More likely, however, the King is slapping himself on the back at the success of his own generalship.
may
show the influence of Catherine's humanitarianism. More likely, however, the King is slapping himself on the back at the success of his own generalship.
Towards the end of his letter, Henry turns away from the great questions of war and peace and the fate of nations to the membership of Catherine's Household. In theory, this was in the gift of the Queen; in practice, Catherine, like her wiser predecessors, consulted Henry every step of the way. She had asked, Henry noted, 'to know our pleasure for the accepting into your chamber of certain ladies in places of others that cannot well give their attendance by reason of sickness'. Henry's reply made clear that he thought little of Catherine's nominees: they were, he wrote, almost as unfit as those they were supposed to replace and they were quite unsuited to the often physically demanding role of bodyservice. Nevertheless, he conceded, Catherine might have her way and 'take them into your Chamber' as companions rather than body-servants: 'to pass the time sometime with you at play or otherwise to accompany you for your recreation'.
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* * *
The incident, as it stands, is insignificant and it is not possible even to identify the names of the women in question. But it is a pointer to something of real importance, since Catherine's advent marked a turning-point in the history of the Queen's Household.
Hitherto, while Henry's Queens had come and gone, their servants had been a remarkably stable body. Not so with Catherine. No doubt the accident of mortality played a part. Thomas Manners, Earl of Rutland, who had served as Lord Chamberlain successively to Queens Jane Seymour, Anne of Cleves and Catherine Howard, died on 20 September 1543 and was followed to the grave just over a year later, on 27 November 1544, by his even longer-serving deputy Sir Edward Baynton, who had been Vice-chamberlain to all of the last five of Henry's Queens, including, briefly, Catherine herself.
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These two deaths allowed for a clean sweep at the senior levels of the Queen's male Household. Catherine's uncle, William, Lord Parr of Horton, became Chamberlain; Sir Edmund Walsingham, Vicechamberlain; Sir Thomas Arundell, Chancellor; Sir Robert Tyrwhit, Comptroller and later Master of the Horse; and Walter Bucler, Secretary. The result, once again, could have come from the pages of R. H. Tawney's
Religion and the Rise of Capitalism
, as these men introduced a distinct, though by no means exclusive, Evangelical flavour in religion and combined it with a marked tightening-up in the running of the Queen's lands and the administration of her Household.
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Religion and the Rise of Capitalism
, as these men introduced a distinct, though by no means exclusive, Evangelical flavour in religion and combined it with a marked tightening-up in the running of the Queen's lands and the administration of her Household.
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