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Not Just the Tudors
Six Wives: Katherine Howard & Kateryn Parr
01:29:18
The rich and fascinating stories of two women who left an indelible mark on English history
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- [00:00]
Professor Susannah Lipscomb
Hello, I'm Professor Susannah Lipscomb. If you'd like Not Just the Tudors ad free to get early access and bonus episodes, sign up to historyhit. With a historyhit subscription, you can also watch hundreds of hours of original documentaries, including my own on Catherine of Aragon and Anne Boleyn, Brilliant Rivals, and enjoy a new release every week. Sign up now by visiting historyhit.com subscribe.
- [00:29]
Gareth Russell
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- [00:59]
Professor Susannah Lipscomb
Hello, I'm Professor Susannah Lipscomb and welcome to Not Just the Tudors From History Hit the podcast in which we explore everything from Anne Boleyn to the Aztecs, from Holbein to the Huguenots, from Shakespeare to samurais relieved by regular doses of murder, espionage and witchcraft. Not, in other words, just the Tudors, but most definitely also the Tudors. Happy New Year from all of us here at Not Just the Tudors. If you're putting your feet up after a busy holiday period or still traveling back from visiting family and friends, we have a perfect bumper episode for you. Across the holiday period, we've revisited our series on the lives of the six wives of Henry viii, creating double episodes where you can immerse yourself in the rich and fascinating true stories. These incredible women we've already spent time with the enlightened Catherine of Aragon, the brilliant but unfortunate Anne Boleyn, the tragic Jane Seymour and the misunderstood Anne of Cleves. For the last in this series, we turn finally to Henry's fifth and sixth wives, Catherine Howard and Catherine Parr. Six wives, six lives that we think we know everything about. But beyond their mostly doomed marriages to Henry VIII and in most cases, tragic ends, here were six women who shaped history in their own unique ways. The National Portrait Gallery in London is hosting a new exhibition called Six Lives, displaying the images that have shaped our perception of Henry VIII's queens. It was just the excuse I needed to bring together the most illuminating interviews about them from the Not Just the Tudors archives across six episodes. I'll also be exploring some of the latest research and speaking to the curator of the National Portrait Gallery's exhibition, Dr. Charlotte Bolland, to paint an even fuller portrait of each of Henry VIII's wives. Our episodes have already considered Catherine of Aragon, Anne Boleyn, Jane Seymour and Anne of Cleves. Today we turn to Henry VIII's fifth and youngest wife, Catherine Howard, whom he married in July 1540 and who died with her head on the block less than two years later. In this episode, I'll be speaking to Gareth Russell, Dr. Nicola Clark and the National Portrait Gallery's Dr. Charlotte Bolland. Susanna, I'm Professor Susannah Lipscomb. And this is not just the Tudors. Of all Henry VIII's queens, Catherine Howard has been the one most subject to the judgments of posterity. But those judgments have been strangely dichotomous. On the one hand, you have this sort of thing. Alison Plowden called Catherine a natural tart. Alison Weir said Catherine was certainly promiscuous and incredibly stupid. And David Starkey, who wrote that she knew how to attract men with a skill beyond her teenage years. Sex with her was easy because she made it easy. She was a good time girl. On the other hand, there are those who see it in an entirely different way. Rita Warnake describes Catherine as a victim of sexual predators. Joanna Denny called her a vulnerable and abused child. So I thought I'd start by asking Dr. Nicola Clark why Catherine seems to be characterized as either a vixen or a victim.
- [04:46]
Dr. Nicola Clark
Victorian morality actually has quite a lot to answer for that. She tended to be written about by quite early female historians in a oh, don't do that, girls, will you? Kind of way. And so she became this temptress and this vixen. Male historians tended also to follow that. And then more recently, we've done a 180 and think of her as a victim rather than purely a vixen. But I'm not sure that is always necessarily better. Historical debate is often like a Newton's cradle toy, isn't it? It has to veer all the way in the other direction before we can come to something reasonable.
- [05:25]
Professor Susannah Lipscomb
In the middle of all Henry's wives, Catherine is also the one whose portraiture is most unsure.
- [05:33]
Dr. Charlotte Bolland
It's such a challenging question. Dr. Charlotte Bolland, because unlike Anne Boleyn, there was no one to preserve Catherine's memory. There was no proactive family campaign wishing to commemorate her as Henry's queen. And so there's always that thing with portraits, with any items. Material culture is how does that object survive the first century? Why does someone keep something and then why do they identify it and remember it? And then it transitions into something that stories can accumulate around it and it becomes a sort of special object in its own right. That process wasn't there for Catherine Howard. Of the images that may be her, the closest, I think, and this is very much the work of scholars over many years, is the miniature that's in the Duke of Buccleuche collection. There's also one in the Royal collection. So this idea of a very high status sitter, because there are two large scale portrait miniatures by Holbein, so very much the kind of elite court, patronage and work that was done comparing an inventory of Catherine's jewels to the jewels that are worn by the sitter in this portrait. And it's so interesting, this jewel inventory, because it tracks the gifts that Henry gave to Catherine, the gifts that she gave to Mary and Elizabeth trying to build relationships with her stepchildren, and then the things that Henry took back himself in November 1541. Just such a rich sort of document to unpick. But among the quite specific looking jewels, the piece and the square of jewels around her dress really does seem to match very closely. She's also wearing a cloth of gold in one, possibly cloth of silver in the other. So it is a level of being a queen. One of the questions about this painting is that one of the versions was in the Howard family in the mid 17th century and was engraved by Wences Holler. That's one of the earliest kind of records we have as a painting and it's not identified as Catherine Howard. By contrast, they also own the Anne of Cleves and she is called Anne of Cleves and identified as Henry's wife. So this portrait is unknown within the Howard collection. But it is plausible that the Howards wouldn't necessarily still have wanted to be celebrating her even at that date. The other question is people wondering whether there was enough of a window for her to have her portrait painted, whether she would have been the type of person who would have wanted to commission portraits and worked with Holbein. And there was definitely interest in her portraits that Marguerite de Navarre was continually pestering the English ambassador to France to try and get hold of Catherine's portraits. She wanted to see her in that way and was interestingly told that he was going to approach it going through the Duke of Norfolk. If the Duke of Norfolk might be able to facilitate brokering the creation of a portrait, who himself had his portrait painted by Holbein. But one little kind of crumb of extra evidence of the plausibility of Catherine's sitting to Holbein is that I think the jewellery inventory might also show that she commissioned jewels from Holbein personally herself, because there's this amazing jewel design in the British Museum of these cipher designs. Unpicking ciphers is an incredible job and scholar in America did an incredible job of working out what this cipher was, of saying Henricus Catherine Rex, obviously with the question of which Catherine always arises with things from this period. But I do wonder if it might actually be Catherine Howard, because described in the inventory of her jewels is a cipher with 10 diamonds and it's described as being one the Queen commissioned and intriguing. It's one of the things that Henry selects to take back into his possession. And I think there's an idea of if she did commission that jewel design of a little bit more kind of self presence on Catherine's account than she's usually given credit for, because the jewels that Henry gave her that are listed are lots of H's, so lots of just please wear my initial. And the idea that she might have commissioned something to include her name in it to add to a necklace, I think is really interesting. So she would have had a connection to Holbein and could have very plausibly sat for her portrait to him.
- [09:35]
Professor Susannah Lipscomb
Let's return to the beginning with Catherine's family history. Who were her people and what was her social status growing up?
- [09:44]
Gareth Russell
Her father, Edmund, was the younger son of the Duke of Norfolk and really the aristocracy in England, in contrast to how it was done in some of the German aristocracies who were Italian. It was very strictly on a patrilineal basis. The eldest son got everything, Gareth Russell explains. And poor Edmund got the Howard temper, but none of the money. So she had a lot of connections and certainly by the time she went to live with her step grandmother, who looked after her later in life, the Dowager Duchess of Norfolk, she was living a relatively comfortable life, certainly in comparison to the vast majority of Tudor subjects. This was not a deprived childhood in terms of material comforts. But her father actually was in chronic debt and even though he did get a job as justice of the peace in Lambeth, he was so in debt he had to go into hiding to avoid the enforcement of law in the area. He was charged with enforcing the law in. There were so many debt creditors after him that he I told Cardinal Woolsey, I can't go out into the streets because I will be arrested. So there was a lot of potential privilege and certainly a great network. But in terms of her very early childhood, there was a silver spoon in her mouth, but there wasn't a lot of food to go on the spoon.
- [10:57]
Professor Susannah Lipscomb
The question of when Catherine was born to her mother Joyce nee Culpepper has foxed historians for years. What evidence do we have of her birth date?
- [11:07]
Dr. Nicola Clark
Not enough. Nicola Clark, and that's part of the problem. This is partly why this vixen victim dichotomy exists, because it really depends a lot on how old you think she was when a lot of these things were happening. Estimates range from anywhere between 1518 to 1527. That's a nine year difference, which produces a lot of different interpretations. And the reason for that is that churches did not formally record these things or were not required to record baptisms until 1540. And frankly, even if they were doing it then, many of them haven't survived. So we have no official record of Catherine's birth date. She's also a woman and just wasn't important enough for anyone really to bother recording that in a way that might last. My best estimate is the very early 1520s, which would put her at about 17 or 18 by the time she marries the King. My reasons for that are whether or not she's mentioned in various people's wills, which shows that she must have been born by this time, etcetera, but also the age and marriage date of her mother. Catherine, we know, was the fifth child of six. And if poor Joyce, her mother went through pregnancies really rapidly, then okay, 1518 is maybe just about possible, but not super realistic. The early 1520s is more realistic and it doesn't push her childbearing age too far beyond what's reasonable, whereas 1527 really does. And I think most people haven't thought about that in terms of the female line and the female body and things like that before.
- [12:42]
Professor Susannah Lipscomb
We may not know when she was born, but we're on firmer ground with the location of her christening and with the fact that she was orphaned young, probably before she was a teenager.
- [12:53]
Gareth Russell
She was christened at what's now the Garden Museum in Lambeth, which was St. Mary at Lambeth.
- [12:58]
Professor Susannah Lipscomb
Gareth Russell.
- [12:59]
Gareth Russell
The Howards were kind of turning into sort of like a necropolis almost for them. And you did, under canon law at the time, have to be baptized in a public church. They really didn't allow it in private chapels. So we can be fairly confident, given where her father was living, that she was born in Lambeth, baptized there. Her mother does seem to have died when she was very young, not in childbed, at least not with her, but she does seem to have died when Catherine was about be 5, 6 or 7. It's a little difficult to date Joyce's death. We do know that Edmund remarried very quickly and that she also died within about a year or two of the wedding. And he then married again to a lady called Margaret Jennings, with whom he set up a new home in Calais, which was then under English control, and Edmund's niece, Anne Boleyn. So Anne Boleyn and Catherine Howard were cousins, the first link in a deteriorating state of unhappy links between them. But Anne Boleyn was really in the ascendant at this point, and she evidently felt sorry for Uncle Edmund and she stepped in and she found him a job that got him out of London. It was a brilliant position in terms of helping Edmund because it got him across the Channel to the Pale of Calais, where he really was sort of beyond the jurisdiction of his creditors. But it meant that he left a lot of the children in the care of relatives, which was a fairly common part of aristocratic upbringing at the time. But that was when Catherine went to live with his stepmother, the Dodge, or Duchess of Norfolk.
- [14:28]
Professor Susannah Lipscomb
She had lost her mother young, and then two stepmothers in quick succession before her father's death in 1539. Catherine then went to live with her step grandmother, Agnes, Dowager Duchess of Norfolk, first at Chesworth House near Horsham in Sussex, and then at Norfolk House at Lambeth in London. She was to be raised as befitted a young aristocratic woman. It was not from her grandmother that she received the affection and affirmation that she had lacked, but from her music teacher. One question that has troubled recent historians is whether her relationship with Henry Manox should be considered to have constituted child sexual abuse. Girls were legally allowed to marry in the Tudor period at the age of 12, but consummation was not expected until 14 or 15 years old, and couples were generally kept separated till then.
- [15:23]
Dr. Nicola Clark
Mannax is older than Catherine, though, possibly not by all that much.
- [15:27]
Professor Susannah Lipscomb
Nicola Clarke.
- [15:28]
Dr. Nicola Clark
But the thing that makes it wholly inappropriate, really, is that he's in the position of her teacher. He's been hired to teach her to play the virginals, which is a keyboard instrument, and they embarked on an affair. They don't seem to have had full intercourse, but got to the point where, frankly, they might as well have done. But the other reason why it's thoroughly inappropriate is that he was already married. They knew they shouldn't be doing what they were doing. Both of them went to a lot of effort to keep it secret. So they meet at night in the dark, out of doors, wherever they can meet, with some degree of privacy. And, yeah, Mannix should not be doing this. There is a power imbalance for sure, he is in a position of authority, but Catherine is of much higher social status and the surviving evidence does suggest that she milkshake it. She orders him around and when Mannox asks her for sexual favours, she tells him really bluntly, that she could never be anything more to him because he wasn't able to marry her. And when someone else told her that Mannax had been boasting around the house of having done things with her, she dropped him and then refused to listen to him grovel. It's not a good relationship. It's definitely what we might call toxic nowadays. But whether that counts as sexual abuse, I think it's a very gray area and I don't think the evidence is clear enough to say that it did.
- [16:46]
Professor Susannah Lipscomb
Did the atmosphere at Lambeth permit a particular form of moral laxness?
- [16:51]
Gareth Russell
There's certainly an element of high spirits which is in no way criminal or libidinous, and you certainly wouldn't categorize it as that had it not been twisted in that way by Henry VIII's counselors later, Gareth Russell. We owe a lot to Victorian historians, particularly Agnes Strickland, who wrote one of the early bestsellers in the popular history field, in the Lives of the Queens of England. And for Strickland, and she's very open about it, she says that the Life of Catherine Howard should be used as a didactic lesson to well born Victorian girls about the dangers of the first steps in sin. And she categorizes the Duchess's careless neglect. And she characterizes all the girls sleeping in this dormitory as lower class. And the Duchess's greatest dereliction of her duty as a caregiver was to place a blue blooded girl like Catherine in a dormitory with, quote unquote, lower class females. And Strickland, like a lot of Victorians, believed that the word lower class didn't just pertain to economics, but also to moral standing. And they corrupted Catherine. That is very much the narrative that she created and that has in some ways stayed intact. Surely the granddaughter of a duke wouldn't behave this way with suitors outside her class if she hadn't been tainted and manipulated by the lower orders that she should never have been exposed to. So that version of the Duchess's care owes so much to Victorian attitudes to class. It's saturated with it. Certainly the dodge or duchess does seem to have been away at court quite often. She was quite a strict guardian, but inconsistently strict. So when she found out one of the wards that she'd taken into her care was doing something that she considered inappropriate. She was quite prepared to punch, slap, discipline, etc. But it was such a big household that a lot of the time she didn't know what was happening. Catherine does seem, at one point, when she was involved with Frances Dereham, to have snuck in to the Doge or Duchess's private rooms, stolen a key, had a copy made so that she could sort of unlock the dormitory and she and her friends could let the men they were involved with come in, and the men would go to the kitchen and steal strawberries and wine and apples and they would have nocturnal picnics. So there's a sense of something quite eternal in that idea of people young and wanting to stay up three at night and talk. She was at one point, though, with Frances Dereham, discussing marriage, and that then, of course, later becomes a much bigger issue.
- [19:36]
Professor Susannah Lipscomb
Catherine's relationship with Henry Mannox was superseded by a far more serious affair with a kinsman of hers. He was around 30 years old and he was called Francis Dereham, and he'd recently been appointed secretary to the Dowager Duchess. How much should we see her as having agency in these relationships?
- [19:56]
Dr. Nicola Clark
She seems to have had quite a lot of choice. She drops Mannox, Nicola Clarke. She picked up Dereham. Dereham is a gentleman in her grandmother's service. And this affair is much more serious and it's a little bit more public. They give each other gifts, they wander around calling each other wife and husband. And it must have come to a point where, how serious is this? He took it more seriously than she did, but it seems to have been a big open secret. They're kissing each other all over the house, dining room, in the toilets, everywhere they can. The only person who seems not to have known was the Duchess of Norfolk herself, Catherine's grandmother. And in that, they're not unusual either. She's just doing what other girls in the house are doing and if anything, she's a bit of a ringleader. So their grandmother locks the key of their bedchamber at night, doing her duty. Keep them safe, keep the boys out. No, Catherine has pre arranged to steal the key and let the boys in. And it Catherine who does that? Not anybody else. So it seems as though she is at least as culpable as he is. And if she wanted it to stop, all she has to do realistically, is shop him to her grandmother or to some other person in authority, and that probably would have done the trick. She is also the one who breaks it off. When she is chosen to go to court, she drops him breaks it off. He is so upset by this and so annoyed that he flees to Ireland.
- [21:19]
Professor Susannah Lipscomb
Like you do, or not, at first, at least for Dirham, wouldn't take no for an answer.
- [21:26]
Gareth Russell
Generally, there was an avalanche of affection.
- [21:28]
Professor Susannah Lipscomb
Gareth Russell.
- [21:29]
Gareth Russell
And then it very quickly started to turn into possessiveness and trying to move the relationship far quicker than she wanted. And then when she left him and she said, I don't really want to be involved anymore, I'm going to court, he develops into this borderline stalker. He goes after her, tries to get a job. He really is obsessed with her and he constantly tries to follow her to court. When he hears there's a rumor she might be involved with someone else, he goes to court and argues with her and she says, I'm not, but if I was, it isn't any of your business. He then, in a very melodramatic move, goes to Ireland for a while and stays there. And when he comes back, by this point, Catherine has married the king and her grandmother and her aunt. Aunt, the Countess of Bridgewater and her uncle William try to manage Frances, because he does have the potential to cause a scandal for her. And it seems to be that he puts in a locked chest at the Dodge or Duchess's home. Ballads he wrote about Catherine, love letters, but he keeps the key. They bring him to court to introduce her. It all seems to be treading water, if I'm honest. There seems to be a sense of trying to give him enough to keep him quiet and on side. And then in August 1541, a year after her marriage, he has an epic falling out with the Duchess of Norfolk and rides north and demands to join her household. He's there when the downfall begins in November of that year, who, from the safety of Ireland comes back, tries to bribe the Howards and then puts himself right in the centre of Henry VIII's court, working for someone he claims he's in love with. I mean, it's insane.
- [23:12]
Professor Susannah Lipscomb
Much would come to hinge on the precise nature of Catherine and Dirham's relationship. The algebra of canon law said that a verbal promise of marriage, made per verba de futuro in the future tense plus consummation equaled marriage. So were they engaged? Did they have sex? Did that mean that they were married? Gareth Russell explains.
- [23:37]
Gareth Russell
When she lived at the Duchess of Norfolk, she shared a bed with someone called Catherine Tilney. And at one point, during one of those sort of nocturnal picnics, Frances and Catherine, whether they were having sex or sort of initiating it, we don't know. But Catherine Tilney was in the bed and got up and moved. And we do know that at another point, at least twice people in the dormitory heard them, they make jokes about it. So as far as we can be certain with that level of documentation, and that specifically, yes, they did have sex and more than once in terms of a ceremony, I tend to think Catherine was telling the truth when she said that the discussions of them becoming husband and wife were discussions that he had that she sort of politely responded to. I don't think there was a ceremony and I think it meant a lot more to him in terms of almost trying to pressure her into making that promise. And I don't think she really wanted to. And actually she held out very well. There was a lot more tenacity to Catherine than I think she's given credit for. She was very clear with Frances that she didn't want to be referred to publicly as his wife or his wife to be.
- [24:45]
Professor Susannah Lipscomb
And later, this point of honor, this refusal to admit that their actions might have constituted a pre contract of marriage, would be her undoing.
- [24:55]
Gareth Russell
She is clinging to the slenderest of technicalities. Gareth Russell again, and I do think actually a recurring question is why didn't she just admit that this had happened and that she was pre contracted to Frances Durham? Because then Henry would have let her go and dissolve the marriage and they wouldn't have continued investigating her, which I think is perhaps hoping for the best under Henry viii in the 1540s, which is a slightly forlorn hope, but for her it would have meant complete social ruin. But I also think she really clung to the fact that she had woven as best she could around the details of that. But in many ways, if Frances had asked that or had even laid that verbal trap or said, you know, would you one day want to marry me? And they had consummated it. Canon law under the time did back up his version of events, which is mind boggling. I think the two of them saw it very differently had he asked that question, which I assume he did, and they then consummated it, which they evidently did. It is hard to completely dismiss Francis's argument, even if his behavior remains pretty reprehensible.
- [26:07]
Professor Susannah Lipscomb
In January 1540, Henry VIII had married Anne of Cleves, among whose women Catherine now served. In April 1540, Catherine Howard, servant to the Queen Consort Anne, was unusually awarded a grant for the goods and chattels of two indicted highway murderers. By late June, rumour had escaped the court that Henry intended to divorce Anne and was, according to the Imperial Ambassador, Eusse Chapuy, much taken with a young lady of very diminutive stature whom he now has. It all happened very quickly. Can we imagine any degree of intentionality here?
- [26:47]
Dr. Nicola Clark
Catherine comes to court at some point in the winter of 1539, before Anne of Cleves arrived. Her household is assembled for her.
- [26:55]
Professor Susannah Lipscomb
Nicola Clarke.
- [26:57]
Dr. Nicola Clark
And then by April 1540, the king is romantically giving her the gifts of the goods that have belonged to two felons. Just what every girl wants, but in her own name, which is unusual and has been taken as probably a sign of something going on. And then in the summer, they're married. That is really fast. And it was said that the King did cast a fantasy to her the first time that he saw her. I don't imagine she had a whole lot of choice there, in the same way as Catherine Parr later didn't have a lot of choice. The King says, that one. And you say, sure. I think if she or indeed some of her family members had a choice, they would have made a different choice, because I think some of her family members knew that she was not a virgin. And when the King goes that one, they must have been going, oh, God. I don't buy the story that her family place her at court specifically to get her into the King's bed. I think that's reading history with hindsight. Nobody knew at that point that the marriage with Anne of Cleves wouldn't be successful. And I think the Duke of Norfolk had enough trouble with one niece, never mind getting another one into the same position. So I think that when it happens, the family are not thrilled, but they don't have any choice except to just ride that wave and hope it's okay.
- [28:09]
Professor Susannah Lipscomb
On July 28, 1540, on the very same day that Thomas Cromwell was executed, at least in part for failing to get Henry out of his marriage to Anne of Cleves more swiftly. Henry and Catherine were married at Oatland's Palace. What was she like? As Queen Nicola Clark considers, she doesn't.
- [28:29]
Dr. Nicola Clark
Seem to be what we might call all that politically engaged. She doesn't seem to belong to any particular political faction. And by this point, how powerful these factions are is definitely a matter for debate. But there are definitely people at court who are more religiously progressive or more religiously conservative. She doesn't seem to be that strongly aligned with any of these, and she didn't profess any particular preference. She does the things that she's supposed to do as a queen. She gets her family members in front of the King and he gives Them things she seeks patronage for people in her remit. She does intercede with the King for a few prisoners, again, which is pretty standard. She gives gifts. Her jewelry list has survived and it has notes of who she gave things to. And again, there's nothing out of the ordinary there. It's people you would expect. The thing that she didn't do as Queen was have a male heir.
- [29:28]
Professor Susannah Lipscomb
Gareth Russell sees slightly more sense in her.
- [29:31]
Gareth Russell
These very seasoned, quite cynical foreign diplomats are complimenting how dignified she is, how elegant. Her grasp of etiquette, which means so much in Tudor politics, is really astute when she isn't sure on an etiquette problem, particularly when she's asked to host Anne of cleves for Christmas 1540, which is obviously just an emotional and decorum minefield for her. She doesn't just send for Lord Sussex, who's the Lord Chamberlain, with the purview of etiquette. She also sends the Lord Chancellor and she asks, can you put together where decorum and the law can guide me on how to behave in this situation? So, as a public Queen Consort, she was very well suited to the roles she acquired with her marriage. This image of a sort of gaudy, extravagant, vulgar airhead, which is how she is still often presented, is completely negated by the eyewitness accounts. She's slightly less successful as a manager of the household, which I think we can give her a certain amount of leeway on, simply because of that lack of experience. She, again, is good at delegating, which is an excellent skill when you have an establishment that large. She has no experience with land management and the Queen's household is funded by rents and revenues generated by the land bestowed on it by the King, and she leaves that to her solicitors, she leaves that to her council and these men who've been running the many estates throughout the many queens of Henry VIII's time. So she does that well. She has a slightly unhelpful tendency to play favourites with her ladies in wedding and in particular in the Easter after her marriage, she becomes a lot closer to one of them, Lady Rochford. This puts a few noses out of joint in the rest of the household and she also, in what's probably her least likable trait, I think, but she does have this tendency, when she's slightly frazzled, to be quite horrible to her maids. She can threaten them with firing them if they don't obey her or if they misunderstand something. She can be quite short tempered and a little bit callous and she's not above. At one point threatening to fire two maids who her stepdaughter Mary loves because Mary has been rude to her. So it's a complex picture of a nuanced person. There are things she does really well, there are things that she knows she can't do and she's sensible enough to delegate them. And there are slightly less attractive traits in how she runs her household.
- [31:59]
Professor Susannah Lipscomb
There were also some less sagacious aspects to how she managed her queenship. This takes us back to late 1539, when Catherine had first come to court, and forward to the summer of 1541, when Henry VIII and Catherine went on a northern progress.
- [32:17]
Dr. Nicola Clark
Nicola Clark the depositions suggest they'd met in the winter of 1539. They liked each other, but he was off with other women. She was not cool with that, so it didn't go any further. She claims later that she was really quite upset by this, that she struggled not to cry in front of the other girls. And later on they had some quite serious chats about, why didn't you pursue me? What were you doing? And then once she becomes queen, that connection seems to resume. And the progress is a great time for secret assignations, if you want to make them, because all the normal rules of the court and access and how that operates go out the window a little bit. When the court is on progress, it stays in all sorts of places. Some of those places will have a king set of apartments and a queen set of apartments, like palaces do. But if Henry is staying in much older buildings, older castles, for example, or in old monastic buildings, probably priories and things like that, there's probably only one beautiful set of apartments and obviously they go to the king. So the queen's chambers are often just cobbled together from other rooms somewhere in the buildings. Sometimes they even put curtains up as walls and things like that. And that means she might be further away from the king. It might be easier or harder to get in and out of her rooms. It also means that if you want to accidentally on purpose bump into someone, you could be wandering around and just claim you were lost if you were challenged, because, again, nothing is where it would normally be. And that does make it much easier to meet someone secretly, if you're gonna choose to do that. The depositions do say that Catherine and one of her ladies in waiting, Jane Parker, Viscountess Rochford, would search out all the entrances and all the places where Culpepper might to meet her once the court had gone to bed.
- [34:10]
Professor Susannah Lipscomb
Was the relationship between Catherine and Culpepper sexual.
- [34:14]
Gareth Russell
I don't think her and Thomas Culpepper, when they resumed their relationship, that they did sleep together. Gareth Russell I think that they would have had they not been caught when they were. So she. Around Easter, actually, of 1541, she starts giving him gifts. They start having private conversations again. And then during this royal tour of the north, the progress of 1541, they start meeting late at night. Her favorite lady in waiting, Lady Rochford, arranges some of the meetings. Sometimes they meet in the Queen's lavatory, in smaller rooms in the different houses they stay in during the tour. There's a lot of romantic banter, this sort of badinage back and forth between them. He teases her about the fact that they could have had this before she married the King. And she makes a joke about giving him bracelets so that he'll remember her when his arms are wrapped around, find another woman. But when they get back to Hampton Court, there is an investigation into her in which they discover a love letter that she's written him.
- [35:15]
Professor Susannah Lipscomb
The letter begins, I heartily recommend me unto you, praying you to send me word how that you do. It continues, I never long so much for a thing as I do to see you and to speak with you. It makes my heart to die to think what fortune I have that I cannot be always in your company. Company, it ends yours as long as life endures. Catherine. It was as good as a death warrant. Whether Catherine and Culpepper had been lovers became moot.
- [35:47]
Gareth Russell
Thomas Culpepper is interrogated by various counselors, and to me, the crucial quote is an interrogation headed by Edward Seymour, Earl of Hartford, Gareth Russell. Again, when Culpepper says, oh, we hadn't had sex, but we would have, or we wanted to, and Edward Seymour replies with, that's already too much. Because obviously with how Henry VIII had expanded the treason laws, thought intent to commit treason became as bad as committing it. So in terms of the quote, unquote, moral crime of adultery, or in terms simply of the biographical detail of whether or not she committed adultery, in the physical sense of the word, I would say no. But in terms of the legal standards of the time, just by how swollen the treason definition had become. Yes, even though she didn't. And they're very open about this at the time, if you really look in detail, they don't say she's condemned for adultery. They say she is condemned for the intent to commit it, which is bone chilling.
- [36:47]
Professor Susannah Lipscomb
Catherine herself was interrogated by Archbishop Bishop Thomas Cranmer and the Records we have of her confessions differ. What is clear is that in a parallel with Anne Boleyn and the Tower, Catherine's own words were used against her.
- [37:02]
Dr. Nicola Clark
She is questioned by Thomas Cranmer, Archbishop of Canterbury, Nicola Clark. He's not out to shout and scream at her, he doesn't do that. She is beside herself and he's sympathetic, but he's also not giving up. So the very first confession he took hasn't survived. He mentions it in his own letter, but we don't have a record of it. The second he took has survived in the form of a direct transcription, so far as we can tell, by the 17th century cleric and antiquarian Gilbert Burnett. That one has a lot of specifics, especially about her relationship with Dereham. There's then another confession again that has survived in a later calendar of documents, and that's the one where she starts to temper her story and claim that all the men had done things to her by force. And that is the one on which a lot of the theory of Catherine as a victim of sexual abuse hangs. I feel like it makes sense that when you've said too much once, you panic a bit and start retracting it and then go, no, I'll write something out and that will be better, that'll make it all better. And the second one is so much more polished, as though she'd taken time to think about it, that it's difficult to see it as anything other than the product of that premeditated thought. Whereas the first one, secrets are flying out of her mouth left and centre. It's she herself who gives away the affair with Thomas Culpepper. Because that is not initially the problem. That is not why she's held in her chambers. It's the premarital affair, affairs with Henry Manox and Francis Dereham that are discovered first. And that is enough for the King to go, oh, God. But it's probably not enough to kill her, because it happened before her marriage with the King. But then she let something out about Culpepper. So she was talking about a visit to the court that Francis Dereham had made, and she remembered that he had asked her if I should be married to Mr. Culpepper. For so he had said he had heard reported. And she told him, what should you trouble me there with? For you know I will not have you. And if you heard such report, you heard more than I do know. And Thomas Cranmer is not an idiot. He thinks, why would Dereham have asked her about Culpepper, if there's nothing there, why would she be bringing that up now if there's also not something there?
- [39:20]
Professor Susannah Lipscomb
Gareth Russell.
- [39:22]
Gareth Russell
There were comments in his account of the interrogations that send a shudder. He says, this is how I use her. Thus he. He did feel sorry for her. He said she had worked herself up into such a dangerous ecstasy of fear that he worried, was she gonna have a complete nervous breakdown. But he let her work herself up. He let her retract confessions and change them and edit them. And then he could use that as proof that she was lying about other things. And there is a very sinister sense of a wolf in sheep's clothing with this, because he really does give her enough rope to hang herself. And had he maybe tried to guide her a little bit more, it mightn't have gotten to the stage where certain people in the Privy Council believed, because of these manifest inconsistencies in her three confessions, that she was lying about everything. The interrogation initially started because a former family servant told her brother about Catherine and Francis Dereham. He went to Archbishop Cranmer, who told the King. So initially it's an investigation into was she pre contracted, as we've discussed, and ineligible to be queen. And as she's panicking about the Francis Dereham thing, she throws Thomas Culpepper's name into the conversation and says Francis was jealous of him, but there's no reason because obviously nothing was going on. At which point the Archbishop wonders why you would bring up Thomas Culpepper if he was irrelevant. And that's when they search his room and find the love letters. So in many ways, Cranmer, allowing her to reach that fever pitch of fear, and she does seem to have been really terrified, was almost allowing her to write her own death warrant. It's an unsavory impression created by the Archbishop in his own account of the interrogations.
- [41:06]
Professor Susannah Lipscomb
One reason why Cranmer had to allow Catherine to convict herself was that there was a legal problem here.
- [41:14]
Dr. Nicola Clark
Adultery on the part of a queen was not technically legally treason. Nicola Clark, unless you're going to count it under that clause of imagining the death of the King in terms of the King's lineage rather than the King himself. And the judges had let that happen for Anne Boleyn, but nobody was happy for that to happen again, apparently. And that is why it had to go through an act of Attainder in Parliament. And it's one of very few acts of attainder that can contained a clause to change that law. So that Adultery on the part of a queen would be treasonous.
- [41:44]
Professor Susannah Lipscomb
Going forward in this decision, we see, says Gareth Russell, how Henry really felt about Catherine in the light of these revelations.
- [41:54]
Gareth Russell
There is such a sense in Henry VIII's reaction of real vindictiveness, a thirst for vengeance. The House of Lords, when it comes to Catherine, gets cold feet and tries to say as best they can, we're not sure that the case against her death penalty worthy, to use sort of modern parlance, they don't think there's enough evidence and the Privy Council and the King have to push hard to get this death sentence through. It says more about where the Henritian state was by 1541-1542, that something that foolish was transmogrified into something that monstrous. I absolutely do not detract from the argument that she made a lot of mistakes, but it's a long leap to go from she was foolish, therefore she deserved it. I think you can separate those things. Yes, she was foolish. That does not mean she deserved the very cumbersome legal methods used to send her to the block.
- [42:53]
Professor Susannah Lipscomb
Culpepper and Dereham had been executed in December 1541. After the act of Attainder was passed. Catherine followed them. She was beheaded in the Tower of London on 13 February 1542. Still little more than a girl. So how should we remember her?
- [43:16]
Dr. Nicola Clark
I do think she's a victim, but of patriarchy as much as anything. She didn't have a whole lot of choices in her life. Sometimes she chose fun over other things. I don't think that makes her fun frivolous either. I think that's too easy to just say, oh, stupid girl. Maybe she did make some bad decisions, but would any of us have done better there on the ground at 16 years old? Probably not. I also think that she is being pushed around by the men in her life. Not necessarily the ones she's actually sleeping with, but the ones in charge of her fate, so her uncle, the king, things like that. And I think she's been judged unfairly, fairly, really, because of her status, because there was something in contemporary minds where Queen consort should be better than everybody else. And that's possibly something that we've really struggled to let go of as a society, that a queen has to be beyond reproach when actually she's human as much as anyone else.
- [44:13]
Professor Susannah Lipscomb
In a moment, I'm going to be rounding up this series with the queen who survived the monstrous Henry viii, Catherine Parr. So don't go away. Every listener feels like their favorite podcast is speaking just to them. If you're a marketer, your brand's message can do the same. With podcasts ranking number one against all other media. For good use of time, good for learning, and mentally engaging, podcast ads are proven to be one of the most effective marketing channels. Have your brand heard everywhere with Acast. Our podcasts are available on all apps and the only way to reach their listeners is through Acast. Visit go.acast.com ads to get started today. One of the ironies of history is that Henry VIII's last wife was named after his first Catherine, which saving only one example, when she was a child, she always spelt K A T E R y N was born in 1512 and named for the Spanish queen who was probably her godmother. Both of Catherine's parents were operating at the heart of the new Henritian Court. Catherine Parr's biographer, Dr. Susan James, tells.
- [45:45]
Susan James
Us more her father, Sir Thomas Parr, was the consummate courtier. He had been educated at Hollyweston in the home of Henry's grandmother Margaret Beaufort, but he died when Catherine was five. Her mother was from a gentry family in North Hamptonshire and she was lady in waiting to Catherine of Aragon and part of Catherine of Aragon's inner circle. She was very devoted to her. She was the complete role model. Maude, very unusually for the period, never remarried. She was left pregnant with three children under the age of six when her husband died and she lived 14 more years and usually she would have remarried, but she didn't. She devoted herself to running the Parr estates, to educating her children, to arranging their marriages. So she was quite unusual for the time and she laid down a pattern of a bigendered household with a single mother. Catherine flourished in that environment.
- [46:51]
Professor Susannah Lipscomb
Thomas Parr, Catherine's father, died when she was four years old. Her mother, moored example of capable female independence over the next 13 years would make a deep impression on Catherine. Maud saw to it that her three children were very well educated, which meant that Catherine's natural intelligence was sharpened with knowledge.
- [47:12]
Susan James
She had a very advanced education for the time. She and her siblings were educated on the plan that Sir Thomas More had laid out for his children. More's first wife, Jane, was a cousin of the Parrs and Cuthbert Tunstall, who was Bishop of Durham. He was also part of their educational plan. So she spoke French, Italian, she read Latin, she studied Spanish. As queen she was interested in mathematics, numismatics, medicine. She had a wide ranging mind. She was quite brilliant.
- [47:49]
Professor Susannah Lipscomb
Maud also arranged Catherine's marriage to Edward Burraugh, son of Thomas Baron Borough of Gainsborough in Lincolnshire.
- [47:57]
Susan James
She was 17 when she went north. The idea was that she would marry into a powerful northern family, which would help with the Parr influence in the North. Their holdings were in Kendall and in Westmoreland, and unfortunately, her father in law, Sir Thomas, was a belligerent bully who ran the household with an iron hand. His son was cowed by him, and this is just my opinion, but I think it's possible he may have been gay. And in that case, Catherine, whose sole duty was to produce an heir, would have had a hard time of it. But her mother came up to visit the year after they were married because Catherine obviously had written to her and she managed to break them out of Gainsborough, where they were living with the family, and set them up in an independent household in Curtin and Lindsay. But that only lasted two years and then Edward died. So then she was left kind of high and dry because after Edward's death, her mother was dead, her brother didn't have a household because his wife had taken off, her sister still hadn't married, so she had nowhere to go. So she ended up, it appears, at Sizer Castle with her cousin, Catherine Neville, who had married into the Strickland family, and probably through Catherine Neville, that she met her second husband, John Neville, Lord Latimer. He was much older. He was sort of a querulous hypochondriac, nice guy, but not terribly strong. And she inherited two stepchildren, John and Margaret. John was 13 and Margaret was about 8. And John was a problem as an adult. He ended up in prison for rape, murder, assault. But she tried to do her best by him. She arranged his marriage, she took his wife into her household. But with Margaret, Margaret became her daughter, really. She arranged Margaret's education and when she became queen, she took Margaret to court with her and Margaret became the go between when Princess Elizabeth was in exile between Catherine and Elizabeth, two years into.
- [50:17]
Professor Susannah Lipscomb
Her marriage to John Neville, Lord Latimer, Catherine was now in her early 20s and living at Snape Castle in Yorkshire. That October 1536, a huge uprising known as the Pilgrimage of Grace kicked off in Lincolnshire and Yorkshire in protest against, amongst other things, the dissolution of the monasteries and Henry's assumption of the supremacy of the Church of England. The rebels wanted members of the elite who were religiously conservative, to join their movement and assume leadership. And Lord Latimer was in their sights.
- [50:52]
Susan James
There were roaming bands of rebels all over the north and they came to Snape Castle and they kidnapped Lord Latimer and took him away and tried to get him to join them in the rebellion because he was very conservative also. Well, he wasn't too eager to join them, but he didn't want to die, so he was trying to negotiate with them in the name of the King. Well, he was with the rebels, so as far as Henry was concerned, he was a traitor. He managed to escape. He tried to go to London to explain why he wasn't a rebel, and the mob, figuring that he was now betraying their cause, Storm Snape again. They held Catherine and the children hostage. For weeks they ransacked the castle. Heaven knows what happened during those weeks, but the events were so traumatic that when the rebellion was finally put down, I'm sure it was Catherine who insisted that they go south, where her family was, and she never went to the north again. It must have been just horrific.
- [52:09]
Professor Susannah Lipscomb
The trauma of being held hostage led Catherine south to the court. In the winter of 1542, she secured a post as a lady in waiting to Princess Mary. After nine years of marriage, her husband died on 2 March 1543. Catherine's position at court meant that she had noticed and come to love Sir Thomas Seymour, brother to Queen Jane. But by 1543, Thomas Seymour was not the only eligible bachelor at court. Henry VIII was on the prowl, and Catherine's red hair, grey eyes and lively, intelligent nature attracted his gaze. He proposed marriage.
- [52:49]
Susan James
She was horrified. Susan James, she's quoted as saying she'd rather be his mistress than his wife. Her sister Anne had been with Catherine Howard up until the time she was executed. She knew the background of all this. She knew what had happened to those last five wives. So the idea of marrying him horrified her. However, it would advance her family, it would advance the reformed religion, because by now she was pretty well sold on the Reformation. So great pressure was brought to bear and there was really no place for her to go. She had to do it. So she did.
- [53:28]
Professor Susannah Lipscomb
She came to believe that not to marry Henry would be to act in defiance of God's calling. Later, she would write to Thomas Seymour, My mind was fully bent the other time. I was at liberty to marry you before any man I know howbeit God withstood my will therein most vehemently and made me to renounce utterly mine own will and to follow his most willingly. Marrying the King was her vocation. Henry and Catherine married on the 12th of July, 154043 at Hampton Court. One of the ways we can get an insight into her time as queen is from the expense accounts of her household. Susan James has studied them.
- [54:10]
Susan James
They tell us that she had a pet spaniel named Rig that she adored. And she kept his red velvet collar in her jewel case till she died. She had a parrot. She was very conscious of hygiene. She had a lead bathtub, she took milk baths. She had breath mints in a little box she carried with her. She had scented oils. She loved shoes, she ordered an enormous amount of shoes. They tell us so much personal little details like that. And they tell us about Henry because apparently Henry had a very sensitive sense of smell. And the morning after the wedding night there are orders to go out for sweet herbs, sweet smelling branches, all of this stuff to make the chamber pleasant to smell.
- [55:04]
Professor Susannah Lipscomb
There was one part of her job as queen for which she was already trained. She became stepmother to Henry's children, Mary, Elizabeth and Edward.
- [55:14]
Susan James
She worked really hard to have good relationships with the three of them. Mary became part of her chamber. They were so close. They were writing letters on the same piece of paper with Edward. She exchanged letters with him, she talked about his education to him, how he was doing with his lessons. He ended up calling her his most beloved mother. With Elizabeth, like Margaret Neville really became her daughter. She loved Elizabeth and Elizabeth loved her. And they had a very close relationship which between the ages of 8 and 15, basically she was Elizabeth's mother and she was a role model for how Elizabeth later behaved as queen. So that was important.
- [56:00]
Professor Susannah Lipscomb
Other evidence suggests that Catherine excelled in those ways that contemporaries thought a queen should behave.
- [56:06]
Susan James
She entertained lavishly, she loved to dance, she loved music. The imperial ambassadors talk about she was an interesting conversationalist. They watched her dance. They say how graceful she was. She was beautifully attired, loaded with diamonds. She had chamber musicians, the Bassano family and the younger of the five brothers, Baptista Bassano, taught Princess Elizabeth the lute and had a daughter, Amelia, who has been identified as Shakespeare's dark lady. So there was a direct connection to Catherine's chamber. Catherine also had players who put on plays for her. I mean, she loved entertainment, she wrote poetry. I believe her brother did, Thomas Seymour did. It was a thing you did. So her court, it's been made to sound like it was Sunday school every morning, but it was more than that.
- [57:06]
Professor Susannah Lipscomb
Some of this was about self presentation, knowing how to dance, how to dress and how to entertain. But an important part of this was patronage, finding and employing the best musicians, players, jewellers, dressmakers and artists. Dr. Charlotte Bolland explains why of all Henry's queens, we have the most varied portraits of Catherine Parr.
- [57:28]
Dr. Charlotte Bolland
It's amazing for Catherine because where with the other queens we sometimes have a replication and repetition of the same kinds of image. We can tell from the records and from what survives that Catherine deliberately sat to a number of different artists throughout her reign. So very proactively interested in portraiture and on a range of scales, so from full length to half length and miniatures. And there's also this wonderful sense of how she used portraits, particularly miniatures, because there are moments when Thomas Seymour requests one of her little pictures. It's clearly something that she disseminates and spreads around and is known for. And people can expect to be able to ask for something like that. And I think it's really interesting in her self presentation because the extraordinary position that she found herself in and then how to navigate that there must have been some sort of weight to occupying this palaces. In the fact that you're the third queen called Catherine, I think you would have felt this in some way. And the fact that she signs so many of her documents kind of KP she's always asserting her par identity rather than being just Catherine the Queen because in that she is oddly interchangeable with the women of the past. And so there's that assertion of her individuality and her presence that I think is really interesting in the way that she uses portraiture and also the magnificence that she projects through it. Because I think she was very interested in clothing and jewels and the way in which they asserted your status. And you can see that in particular from the gifts that she gave to Elizabeth as Elizabeth was being restored into the line of succession. So it was the kinds of purple velvet and cloth of gold. Yes, you are of this level in the royal family. So when looking at the clothes that she's wearing in her portraits, you know that she is presenting herself as queen very self consciously and deliberately.
- [59:12]
Professor Susannah Lipscomb
Among the National Portrait Gallery's collection is a full length portrait of Catherine from around 1545. Standing on a Persian carpet. She is opulent in a dress of cloth of silver that narrows to a small waist over a crimson underskirt embroidered with gold with matching puff undersleeves emerging from lynx fur over sleeves. She wears a distinctive three crown headed brooch and a girdle decorated with cameos. Her dark almond shaped eyes look out of a pale face while her reddish hair is parted at the center under a crimson and jewelled French hood. For some time in history, the identity of the woman in the portrait became confused. It was her jewels that proved key to Susan James recognizing Her it was.
- [60:02]
Susan James
A portrait that was historically identified as Catherine Parr, that was owned by her cousin Maud's family. Maud had been her lady in waiting, so it was a gift to her. The things that make it Catherine Parr are the crown brooch that she's wearing, which was probably a wedding gift from Henry, and the cameo girdle that she's wearing, which are on her jewel list. The brooch is only on her jewel list and none of the other queens. And it's interesting because it is the first full length panel portrait of an English woman that had been commissioned. Catherine Parr was a lot of firsts and this was one of them. It's a cracking portrait.
- [60:47]
Professor Susannah Lipscomb
Charlotte Borland.
- [60:49]
Dr. Charlotte Bolland
There's this thing that she couldn't possibly have imagined and the idea that how much agency anyone has over their kind of reputation, the way they're remembered. So she created all these portraits, but because there was no one to preserve and perpetuate her memory in the immediate aftermath of her death. And so her iconography became incredibly confused and rather poignantly got subsumed into that of her ward, Lady Jane Grey. That in the late 16th century, when artists were looking to begin to celebrate Lady Jane Grey as a kind of Protestant martyr and having an interesting sort of historical approach of wanting to find appropriate images, latched onto images of Catherine Parr and she then became Lady Jane Grey. All this sort of proliferation of prints and things in the 17th and 18th century. Often Catherine Parr is staring out from images that are labelled Lady Jane Grey. And this was indeed the case at the portrait Gallery with our amazing full length portrait. And it was research that identified the jewellery that she's wearing, particularly the kind of crown brooch. That was the piece of information to say, oh no, this is Catherine Parr. And which makes complete sense in relation to her interest in portraiture and whether Lady Jane Grey ever had time to commission her own magnificent portrait and the style and dating and all those kinds of things. But often with 16th century portraits you're dealing with such a small handful of completely nailed on facts that finding a fourth piece of information can flip a picture entirely on its head. With the case, with that full length portrait. It was the identification of that jewel that then helped everything else to coalesce.
- [62:16]
Professor Susannah Lipscomb
Around the identification as Henry's queen. She brought her intellectual power as well as her elegance to the job.
- [62:25]
Susan James
At the beginning it must have been like walking on a tightrope for Catherine because she knew what the past was. Susan James Henry had a habit of indulging his favorites, to the point where they got overconfident. I mean, you can look at Woolsey and Cromwell and Anne Boleyn. Everybody got overconfident because they thought they had the King wrapped around their little finger. Well, he gave Catherine free rein. She worked on the vernacular literature of the Reformation. She had all of this patronage for the Renaissance, the music, the art, all of this. She was writing books, she was doing all of these things. And so I think gradually she relaxed, and in 1546, she came up against a wall. But she felt it was a religious mission to push the Reformation. She'd been sold that as the reason for the marriage. God has chosen you to be queen. Get in there and establish the Reformation. So I think gradually she came to enjoy the exercises of power, which you would do at the beginning.
- [63:36]
Professor Susannah Lipscomb
In fact, we can even understand her reign as a kind of evangelical mission.
- [63:42]
Susan James
She was probably the leading evangelical at court while she was queen, and she and Cranmer were involved in creating this body of vernacular literature to support the Reformation. She was not only writing, she was a patron of a project to translate Erasmus paraphrases on the New Testament into English. And this was a massive project. She talked Mary into translating one of the books of the New Testament. She translated one. She not only funded it, she chose the translators, she oversaw it. And after it was done, which was the reign of Edward vi, the next reign, Mary, it was ordered to be put in all the churches in England. So that was a big deal.
- [64:29]
Professor Susannah Lipscomb
Dr. Micheline White explains how this changed the way her contemporaries viewed her over the course of her reign.
- [64:37]
Dr. Micheline White
Historians who are looking at the last year of Henry's reign need to look more closely at Parr and to recognize that she was part of the machinery of the Crown and that she was doing important things to advance the Crown's agenda. And it's so interesting when you look at how her contemporaries viewed her. If you look at how people talk about Parr over the course of her life, you can see a real shift. When she first marries, there are lots of letters from different ambassadors, and they describe her very traditionally as serene. Somebody says she's beautiful, she's wise, she's pious. But then over time, you see people need to grapple with this fact that she's an author and that Henry is promoting her and enabling her and wanting her to be working for him. And so you see them coming up with new terminology. So people will praise her for her pious studies, right? So praising her for being a scholar or for her studious diligence someone else refers to her as a most learned queen. And then some of the most striking examples come from Nicholas Udal, who writes a series of dedications to her that preface the translation of Erasmus, paraphrases, and he refers three times at least to the fact that she writes pious meditations. And in another place, he even says that she is like a captain who inspires men by setting forth the pen. So he then is even praising her and suggesting that one of her roles as a queen is to be an author who inspires men also to be authors, which is sort of amazing.
- [66:20]
Professor Susannah Lipscomb
Catherine's writing career began in 1544.
- [66:23]
Susan James
Susan James, her chaplain George Day, who was Bishop of Chichester, encouraged her to translate the Psalms or prayers from Latin into English, which she did, but it was published anonymously. Then the next year, she wrote Prayers or Meditations, which was an English transcription of Thomas a Kempis, the Imitation of Christ, and she added five prayers to the end of it, which came from different sources, but she had tweaked them. And she was so proud of the Psalms or prayers first book that she had a portrait painted holding the book, which is an interesting piece of work. And then her third book, Lamentation of a Sinner, which is the first book by an English woman published under her own name, was published after Henry died because it moved on from Lutheranism and was flirting with Calvinism. It was getting increasingly radical. So it was not published during Henry's lifetime. But, yeah, she was very into this vernacular literature in support of the Church of England.
- [67:48]
Professor Susannah Lipscomb
Every listener feels like their favorite podcast is speaking just to them. If you're a marketer, your brand's message can do the same. With podcasts ranking number one against all other media. For good use of time, good for learning, and mentally engaging, podcast ads are proven to be one of the most effective marketing channels. Have your brand heard everywhere with acast. Our podcasts are available on all apps, and the only way to reach their listeners is through Acast. Visit go.acast.com/ads to get started today. When Henry VIII went to war with France in 1544, Catherine was appointed his Regent General.
- [68:39]
Susan James
She flourished. She was dealing with supplying troops and munitions, mutinous gypsies, pacifying Frenchmen living in England who were all upset. She was here, there and everywhere. And she also was made guardian of Henry's three children during that time. And importantly, she was the one that pressured him into putting Mary and Elizabeth back into the line of succession. So that had major consequences.
- [69:07]
Professor Susannah Lipscomb
But part of her war effort can be seen in her carefully chosen words of the translation she made of the prayer for the King.
- [69:15]
Dr. Micheline White
In one place, the Latin refers to Christ as the monarch of monarchs.
- [69:20]
Professor Susannah Lipscomb
Michelin White.
- [69:21]
Dr. Micheline White
And then we notice in her translation, she doesn't go for that at all. She goes for the only ruler of princes. So Christ is the only ruler of princes. And I think we can argue that's a subtle nod towards the Royal supremacy.
- [69:35]
Susan James
Right.
- [69:35]
Dr. Micheline White
Henry was very keen. You know, his title included the fact that he was the second under Christ and he rejects papal authority over the prince. In another place, which comes from Psalm 2, there's a verse that's taken out of Psalm 2, which is an unusual. It was often assumed to refer to kings, where they're asking the Holy Spirit to move Henry in the right direction. But in the Latin, Henry is sort of passive and he's being moved, whereas Par makes it more active and says, you know, send the Holy Spirit so that Henry will incline to thy will and walk in thy way. And that's not in the original at all. So it's emphasizing Henry's then desire to walk in God's way. And then at the very end of the poem, the speaker is asking God to help Henry sort of in the war, to be manly and scary and dreadful and to vanquish his enemies. And part just adds a lot of doublets. So where the last Latin has one word, Par will double it. There's also a place where in the Latin it asks God to give Henry blessings of thy sweetness. And Parr completely takes that out. And I think it's because during a.
- [70:44]
Susan James
War, you don't want a king who's.
- [70:45]
Dr. Micheline White
Sweet, you want a king who's ferocious. Right. So she just completely gets rid of that and asks for health and wealth and for him to be more dreadful. So Parr is creating an image of the king, just like there were visual images of Henry in the title page of the great Bible or paintings or tapestries, and these were very tightly controlled because certain values want to be communicated. Another value that Parr puts in actually is in one place, the original asks for Henry to obey God, and then in Parr's translation, she also adds fear and obey. And that might not seem like such a big deal until we look at Thomas Cranmer at the same time was writing some new petitions about Henry for the litany. And it echoes exactly what Cranmer is saying. Cranmer emphasizes fear in three places. So it's just so fascinating to see Parr and Cranmer deliberately using the very same words. So Henry is obedient to God's will, but he fears God. He's active, he's manly, and he's going to triumph over his enemies.
- [71:51]
Professor Susannah Lipscomb
Michelin White sees these assertions as being developed very much in concert with Henry.
- [71:57]
Dr. Micheline White
When we're looking at the Psalms or prayers and every change that Parr makes along the way, I think it's important to emphasize that those would have been done in consultation with and in collaboration with Henry. I don't think it's possible for Parr to say on her own, I'm going to translate a prayer about Henry and I'm going to make changes. It's interesting because it enables us to see her discussing these things with Henry. She knows what Cranmer's doing. She knows what Henry thinks about those passages. Either they've discussed them or she's seen his annotations. And it seems to me that she's working really closely with them, which is interesting because so much of the early scholarship on Parr sort of acknowledged that she was a queen. And these scholars did fascinating things, but looked at her more in terms of genre, as though she was writing far, far away from Henry. But once we start noticing these details that connect her text with Henry's text, with Granmar's text, we have a way of imagining the space that she was writing was not an isolated space sort of away from the court. It was at the center of the court.
- [73:02]
Professor Susannah Lipscomb
Her inscriptions in the margins of her book give us a fascinating insight into what really mattered to her.
- [73:12]
Dr. Micheline White
She's quite intent on depicting herself as someone who is godly. So one of these is delight, not in the multitude of ungodly men. There's something about not caring about riches because they're not going to help you at the last day. So even though she lives in an opulent quarter, we know that she loves loves jewelry and she loves fancy clothes. And Susan James has itemized all the beautiful things she owned and bought. Here she's making it clear that, sure, she has that stuff, but she knows that really what matters is piety and that at the end of the day, riches are not going to help her. There's one that's about don't walk in every path and watch out for having a double tongue. And then there's another one that's about use no slander. This seems relevant to life at court.
- [73:57]
Gareth Russell
Right?
- [73:57]
Dr. Micheline White
So there's a lot of backstabbing or factionalism at court. And here she's suggesting that she's going to rise above factionalism. She's not going to slander anyone. There's also one about being merciful to people and also being generous and giving to the poor and also listening to the word of God carefully and being very thoughtful and not being a rash to answer. She's creating a little portrait of herself here. 1 what are the kinds of values that she has? And her passages suggest that maybe she is going to try to reform the court or she doesn't see the worldly realm as completely hopeless and that these are the values that she's going to try to carry forth.
- [74:38]
Professor Susannah Lipscomb
These values infuse her portraiture too, as we can see in a portrait that has excitingly recently re emerged into public. When it was sold at Sotheby's, Charlotte Bolland tells us the story.
- [74:51]
Dr. Charlotte Bolland
This was a portrait that was long thought to have been lost in a fire in the 20th century, and so it was known from photographs. And in the Portrait Gallery, we have an amazing kind of photographic archive recording portraits that's been building over many decades. And so we had this kind of black and white photograph and it was assumed that the painting had been lost in this fire. And then that was how it was recorded in scholarship in the catalogues of the Portrait Gallery's painting. Thinking about Catherine's iconography. And so it was this sort of frustrating lost thing of, oh, that looks like such a fascinating thing. But among the many works of art that are now lost to us for study. And then it emerged that actually it had been quietly sitting on the other Jersey's walls all along, had not been damaged in the fire, and then has recently been sold and is now in a private collection. But it's so incredible to be able to now have the opportunity to take a closer look at this painting. And it dates from the end of Catherine's period as queen. That idea of how you present magnificence, it's incredible when you see the number of pearls and diamonds that are studded everywhere is amazing. And so where on first glance you might think, oh, this is a rather more demure image because of the kind of black velvet, but black was an incredibly costly colour to dye to get right. And then you have her cloth of gold sleeves. She is very much projecting her queenly status in this image. And it's also so fantastic, fascinating for its compositional sort of relationship to portraits in the royal collection of Princess Elizabeth and Prince Edward, that it's often been wondered as to whether Catherine might have been involved in the commissioning of those paintings, that there are clear stylistic similarities in the way that Certain details are painted, such as the pearls, but this is a sort of rediscovery to scholarship. So the conversations only just started about this painting. But I think it does say really interesting details about Catherine's self presentation.
- [76:40]
Professor Susannah Lipscomb
The Sotheby's team had noticed inscriptions in the enamel around the jaws on Catherine's bracelets. Inscriptions so subtle that they were missed by later copyists. The inscriptions say Laos Deus. Noting the incorrect grammar. Praise be to God in Latin would be Laus Deo. And knowing that as a great Latinist, Catherine wouldn't have got it wrong, I tracked down the expression to the Latin vulgate, where it appears only once in Psalm 64. It is part of a phrase in which Deus is in the vocative Tibi silens laus Deus remaining silent. Praise be to you, O God. The painted Catherine remains silent before us in the portrait, even while she is shown in majestic splendour. She both reminds herself that she is a queen under God, the King of kings, and simultaneously alerts keen eyed spectators to her erudition and piety.
- [77:44]
Dr. Charlotte Bolland
Yeah, it's incredible. It's such a fascinating detail.
- [77:47]
Professor Susannah Lipscomb
Charlotte Bolland.
- [77:48]
Dr. Charlotte Bolland
And again that idea of patron agency and choice of how that kind of detail would be captured because there's the moment of thinking how does the sitting work? And that the artist wouldn't necessarily have that much time with the individual, but they would have time with their clothes and jewels that would have been very carefully set out so that they could be very specific.
- [78:08]
Professor Susannah Lipscomb
But it wasn't just the painted version of the Queen that was having to stay quiet in these years. The actual Catherine was also remaining silent about the true nature of her faith at a time when her religious views were considered perilously close to heresy. In 1546, her enemies were plotting against her.
- [78:29]
Susan James
Susan James explains, given Henry's quixotic nature, it was always a possibility. But her influence with Henry and as importantly her influence with Edward, who was the heir, made her an enemy of the conservatives of court. They were worried that would Henry die, she would become regent and she was a committed evangelical. This was not what they wanted because they felt that if they could control the young Edward, who was a child, they could bring the country back to the true religion. So they mounted a plot against her. And this was Stephen Gardner, Thomas Rothley, the Duke of Norfolk and William Paget. First they were going to accuse her of using witchcraft to make herself barren because she had had no children. Then they decided heresy was a better fit. So they tried to convince Henry that she was a heretic and she had been arguing religion with Henry and he lost his temper. He was not in a good mood, his leg hurt and he's made some remark to Gardner that it was a good mood day when, you know, a man had to listen to his wife contradict him. So pushing on that sore spot, they got him to sign a warrant for her arrest.
- [79:54]
Professor Susannah Lipscomb
This was the same year that Anne Askew was burnt at the stake as a heretic for believing the very same things that Catherine believed, the central tenets of Protestantism, such as justification by grace through faith, and that the Eucharist did not actually become Christ's body and blood, but was a remembrance of his sacrifice. Catherine's ladies were questioned, her rooms were searched. It looked as if her life was on the line.
- [80:19]
Susan James
And fortunately, Catherine now had friends at court. And the scuttlebutt was it was her doctor that told her this warrant had been signed. So she knew that if she could keep Henry near her, that would save her. She took to her bed. She said her life was in danger, which it was. She was terribly ill, she was dying. She carried on. Henry rushed to her bedside and she apologized if she had upset him. She was afraid she had made him lose his temper and she'd only argued with him to take his mind off his pain. And so. Oh, okay, well, that's fine, honey, you know, we'll go on from here. And then the next day they were in the garden together and wrestle, thinking that he had her now, came in with the guards to arrest her and Henry cursed him out. And she saved her life. Basically.
- [81:15]
Professor Susannah Lipscomb
Henry rewarded his wife for her faithfulness that summer with jewels and other gifts. But there's reason to think that the affair of 1546 had an impact when Henry wrote his last will and testament six months later. For he didn't make Catherine regent over Edward if he should die.
- [81:34]
Susan James
Henry always intended to come back from France, so leaving Catherine as regent for three, four, five months, that was acceptable. Henry didn't trust women to rule, which is why he was not happy with Mary being the heir and the idea of leaving a woman. Also, what happened in 1546, that may have shaken his faith in her abilities to rule, but leaving a woman in control for as long as she would need to be in control with Edward as a child, he wasn't going to do that. He was going to leave it to the men.
- [82:11]
Professor Susannah Lipscomb
Henry died on 28 January, 1547. Within a few months, Catherine had rashly married again. She did not wait out the customary period of mourning. She did not even wait long enough to ensure that she was not pregnant by Henry, though presumably she knew this was unlikely. She did not even seek the permission of the new king. Why such haste?
- [82:33]
Susan James
She married her first husband to please her mother and to protect par interests in the North. She married her second husband, basically to have a home. And she married Henry because she had no choice. So here is a man she's loved for five years banging on her chamber door. Henry, thank God, is gone. Was it wise? No. Was it human? Yes. You know, the relief of having Henry gone must have been overwhelming. And I think she was reckless. Yes. But I think it's understandable.
- [83:10]
Professor Susannah Lipscomb
But was Thomas Seymour a sensible choice? In the months after their marriage, in which Catherine was looking after her teenage step, Elizabeth, Seymour started to visit the girl early in the mornings in her bedroom to tickle her or, to quote, strike her on the back or the buttocks familiarly. Were his attentions proximate to grooming? On one occasion, Seymour wrestled with Elizabeth in the gardens at Hanworth on an autumnal day with Catherine nearby. He cut Elizabeth's gown into a hundred pieces while Catherine held her. The nature of Catherine's holding is not clear. Held her down, held her to protect her. Laughingly participated in mere horseplay. Dr. Elizabeth Norton suggests that this behavior revealed that Thomas was controlling and abusive. What can we make of Catherine's role?
- [84:02]
G
She joins Thomas for these tickling sessions in the bed and she holds Elizabeth while he slashes her dress. And so she's kind of giving permission, if you like. I have a soft spot for Catherine, too. I think it's difficult to square the Catherine of Henry viii, the first English woman to publish under her own name, in English, this upstanding, this religious woman, with the woman who is involved and at least certainly seems to know about her husband's relationship with her stepdaughter? I think there's quite a lot unspoken in the marriage. So, for example, Thomas was apparently, according again to these depositions, he was known as an appointment oppressor in the household. There is apparently one incident that I think Kate relates where a male groom was in a room alone with Catherine for a brief period when the door was closed and Thomas flew into a rage. The implication is, of course, that he suspected adultery. So I wonder if Catherine was frightened of Thomas, because, of course, a Tudor wife, even a queen, is subject to their husband. We can see from her accounts that he is taking her money into his. His own hands. So very large sums of Catherine's Money, because of course she's quite a wealthy individual as a queen, is being passed direct to Thomas, So he's clearly taking control some level in the household. So I suspect that there is some level of emotional abuse in the relationship and that she's already sort of realized that she hasn't chosen particularly wisely, to some extent, participating in Thomas's romps, if you like. That's what it's always traditionally been portrayed as. But she participates and treats them as romps. Then A, it sort of protects Elizabeth because of course Thomas is no longer alone with her, and B, it downplays at least the seriousness, so it diverts attention from what is going on in the household. So I think we can see Catherine as less powerful in the household than I think perhaps we would tend to view her based on her time as a queen because she is now Thomas's wife. And I think there's a limit to what she can do to stop Thomas's visits without causing a scandal.
- [86:02]
Professor Susannah Lipscomb
By contrast, Susan James thinks that too much has been made of it.
- [86:07]
Susan James
Catherine loved Elizabeth. She would not have done anything that would have endangered her. Knowing what had happened to her mother, knowing all of the ins and outs by now of what was going on in court, all of the instances that are recorded about them tickling Elizabeth to wake her up and cutting up her mourning clothes and all of this, I think a lot of this came from just the giddy relief of Henry being gone. This was the most freedom Elizabeth had ever had. Catherine was finally now shut of this guy who could cut off her head at will. And I think Catherine was trying to make it into a normal family life. Thomas Seymour obviously wanted all of the heirs to the throne to love him and adore him, but he loved Catherine. And all of the instances that talk about his relationship and the fact that Catherine considered marrying him when Latimer was dying, I don't know whether he, at that point, moment was considering, well, gee, if Catherine dies, maybe I'll marry Elizabeth. But again, it was reckless. It was overboard. And Anne Stanhope and a lot of people at court were trying to dig up as much dirt as they could because of this civil war going on. But Seymour was arrogant. I don't really think he was trying to groom Elizabeth. That's my opinion from reading the testimony.
- [87:36]
Professor Susannah Lipscomb
When Catherine got pregnant, her first known pregnancy in her mid-30s and her fourth marriage, she sent Elizabeth away, possibly to protect her during her period of confinement. In the run up to the birth, Elizabeth went to live with Sir Anthony and Joan Denny at Cheshant in Hertfordshire. At the end of August 1548, at Sudeley Castle, Catherine gave birth to a daughter. But all was not well.
- [88:04]
Susan James
She got blood poisoning, corporal fever from her doctor's dirty hands. She gave birth to a daughter who was eventually named Mary for Princess Mary. And five days later, she died. It was tragic. After all, she managed to get through. And Elizabeth had been left back at Cheshunt with the Dennys, Sir Anthony Denny and Cat Ashley, sister. And Lady Jane Grey had gone down to Sudeley with Catherine. So she kind of was her in loco parentis for Jane Grey at that moment. Jane was 11, and so she was the chief mourner at Catherine's funeral. And Thomas Seymour just went off the rails after that. There's a letter about how he was a heavy man for the Queen. He was in deep mourning for her, which is one reason why I don't think he was grooming Elizabeth in Chelsea. But he started acting like a madman and ended up losing his head for it.
- [89:10]
Professor Susannah Lipscomb
So in the end, how should we think of Catherine? I'll give the final word to Dr. Susan James.
- [89:16]
Susan James
This was a woman who went in one year from being an obscure Yorkshire housewife to the Regent of England. And that's no mean feat, especially since she was not raised at court. She was an extraordinary woman who was seminal in the line of succession for Mary and Elizabeth. She was arguably the first activist queen of the Reformation. She was certainly one of the most important people in the English Renaissance. Renaissance. She patronized Thomas Tallis, the composer, masses of artists. She had three women miniaturists in her household. She wrote literature. She patronized writers. She was just a remarkable woman who has been terribly undervalued by history.
- [90:24]
Professor Susannah Lipscomb
Next time on Not Just the Tudors, I'll be kicking off the new year with a cracking episode all about the manipulative Florentine Niccolo Machiavelli. Don't miss it. And there's plenty more to look forward to, including special series on those infamous Borgias. We're always eager to hear from you. We love receiving your brilliant ideas for subjects we could cover. So do drop us a line@notjusthetorshistoryhit.com or on X@notjusttudors. You can listen to all of these podcasts on YouTube. You can watch hundreds of documentaries when you subscribe@historyhit.com subscribe I've got a new series coming up on historyhit.com all about the dissolution of the monasteries, and I'd love it if you could see it. So I may be biased, but I think subscribing is well worth it. And if you'd be so good as to follow Not Just the Tudors on Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts, you'll get each new episode as soon as it's released. For now, from the Not Just the Tudors team and everyone at historyhit, I wish you a safe and very happy New Year.
- [91:28]
Dr. Micheline White
Foreign.
- [91:41]
Gareth Russell
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