Her situation aroused widespread sympathy. According to Marillac, 'all regret her more than they did the late Queen Catherine [of Aragon]'. More particularly, another royal lady took a sisterly interest in her plight. Francis I's sister, Marguerite – who was now Queen of the little Pyrenean kingdom of Navarre after marrying its King, Henri d'Albret, as her second husband – used Marillac to send Anne good advice and her portrait. Anne, the ambassador reported, had no real need of the advice, 'as she wants neither prudence nor patience' while her conduct had been above reproach. But he knew, he continued, that Anne would be delighted with Marguerite's portrait as she had often asked for it. He had already requested hers in return.
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Marguerite's kindness was not disinterested of course. The renewal of the Cleves marriage would serve French interests by tying England to an enemy of Charles V. It would also, she thought, encourage Henry along the path of moderate religious Reform, which she favoured. But such considerations were secondary. Above all, she wanted to express the solidarity of royal women in the face of the frequently monstrous conduct of royal men.
Anne's enthusiastic response raises questions of its own. At first sight it would be hard to think of two more different figures or more illassorted friends. Anne was ill-educated and abused; whereas Marguerite, thanks to her own intelligence and her brother's indulgence, was conspicuous for her independence of thought and action. These had secured her a European-wide reputation and made her a role-model for royal women everywhere.
As we have seen, Henry's second wife, Anne Boleyn, had sought Marguerite's acquaintance and endorsement. Now, it seemed, Anne of Cleves, despite her apparent submissiveness, was eager to copy Marguerite's example as well. Or did she see her only as a friendly shoulder to cry on?
* * *
Meanwhile, Henry's black mood continued for several weeks. 'The King', Marillac reported from London on 16 December, 'has left his Privy Council here, and is, with a small company, in the neighbourhood, seeking in pastimes to forget his grief, until it is time to come to Greenwich, where he spends Christmas.' Henry moved restlessly between the small royal residences of north Surrey – Beddington, Esher, Oatlands, Woking, Horsley and back to Beddington – and hunted their deer parks. He listened to the Council's reports on their mopping-up of the Catherine Howard affair and issued astringent instructions. Otherwise, Chapuys learned, '[he] will not hear of business'. And he delayed his return to Greenwich, for a Christmas which he did not wish to celebrate, until the evening of 23 December.
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Only with Catherine's formal condemnation did he begin – in the language of psychotherapy – to find 'closure'. Ever since the discovery of his wife's affair, Chapuys reported, 'the King had shown no alacrity or joy'. But on 29 January, as the Parliamentary process against Catherine entered its final stages, the clouds started to lift and Henry 'gave a grand supper'. 'There were no less than 26 at his table', Chapuys continued, 'and at another table close by 35'. Even his eye for the ladies seemed to have come back. 'The lady for whom he showed the greatest regard', Chapuys heard, was Wyatt's repudiated wife, Elizabeth
née
Brooke, the sister of Lord Cobham. 'She is a pretty young creature', the ambassador noted, 'with wit enough to do as badly as the others if she were to try.' 'The King is also said to have a fancy', he concluded, for two other ladies: a niece of Sir Anthony Browne and Anne Basset. Anne Basset, as we have seen, had first caught Henry's attention six years previously when she made her debut at Court as one of Jane Seymour's maids. And he had continued to show a rather avuncular interest in her ever since.
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Anne was fair, modest and charming. But somehow the spark failed to strike.
Henry's spirits rose even further with Catherine's execution: now that the headsman's axe had drawn the clearest of lines under his fifth marriage, the quest for his sixth wife could begin. But it would prove neither quick nor easy.
* * *
Catherine was executed on 12 February. Henry spent the days surrounding the execution privately at Hackney and Waltham. But on the 14th he returned to Whitehall for the feasts that marked the beginning of Lent. In contrast with his miserable Christmas, he decided to celebrate them in fine style. There were three successive days of feasting, with a different group of guests on each day. He entertained the Lords and Privy Councillors on Sunday, 19 February, the Lawyers on the Monday and the Ladies on Shrove Tuesday itself, 21 February. Ever the good host, Henry supervised the arrangements for his female guests in person. 'The King', Chapuys reported, 'did nothing else on the [Tuesday] morning . . . than go from one chamber to another to inspect the lodgings prepared for the ladies.'
At the party itself he was universally charming: 'he received [them all] with much gaiety', Chapuys continued, 'without, however, showing particular affection for any of them'.
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This behaviour led Chapuys to wonder whether Henry would ever take another wife. More importantly, he speculated, would any woman wish – or dare – to take him?
For, as Chapuys pointed out, the new treasons created by Catherine's Act of Attainder raised formidable obstacles for any wouldbe successor. Who was so chaste that no breath of scandal could ever touch her? Or who was so bold, and so confident of Henry's love, that she would risk confessing her indiscretions beforehand?
The list, it would seem, was not long.
* * *
A year later, however, in the early summer of 1543, Henry had chosen. And the woman, after much soul-searching, had accepted. Her name was Catherine Parr.
Catherine Parr
75. A courtier's daughter
C
atherine Parr is usually seen as the Queen who came from nowhere. Actually, she was the daughter of a substantial northern knightly family that – like the Boleyns – had gone up in the world as a result of royal favour and successful marriages. She was not sent to France to acquire a courtly polish, like Anne Boleyn. But she was probably better educated overall. And her family certainly had the better lineage and was more securely based at Court.
* * *
The foundations of the family fortunes had been laid by Catherine's grandfather, Sir William Parr, in the later fifteenth century. Parr gave his support to Edward IV at the crucial moment in 1471 when Edward returned to reclaim his kingdom from the 'Kingmaker' Earl of Warwick. Parr never looked back. Edward made him Controller of the Household and Knight of the Garter and, no doubt, assisted his second marriage to the wealthy heiress, Elizabeth Fitzhugh.
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The career of Parr's eldest son and Catherine's father, Thomas, promised to be even more spectacular. Soon after his father's death in 1484, his widowed mother, Elizabeth, married again, this time Sir Nicholas Vaux of Harrowden in Northamptonshire. The Vauxs were as committed Lancastrians as the Parrs were Yorkists and they benefited accordingly from the accession of Henry VII. Young Thomas Parr shared in their success and became very close to his step-father, Sir Nicholas Vaux. This led, after Elizabeth's death in 1507, to a double marriage between Vaux and Parr and the sisters Anne and Maud Green, who were the daughters and co-heiresses of another leading Northamptonshire landowner, Sir Thomas Green. The resulting pattern of relationships was tangled even by sixteenth-century standards since, for example, Lady Vaux (Anne Green) was Parr's step-mother as well as his sister-in-law.
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Parr's marriage to Maud Green also changed the Parrs' territorial interests. The family's ancestral lands centred on Kendal in Westmorland. But these were dwarfed by the Northamptonshire properties Parr acquired in the right of his wife as her share of the Green inheritance, and that county now became his main residence – though his Westmorland connexions were far from forgotten.
But a more important sphere of activity for Parr than either Westmorland or Northamptonshire was the Court.
* * *
Parr had the Court in his blood: as we have seen, his father, Sir William, had been a great figure in the Yorkist Court, while Catherine Vaux (the mother of his step-father, Sir Nicholas Vaux) had been equally prominent in the Lancastrian Court as the devoted lady-in-waiting to Queen Margaret of Anjou. These ancestral ties mattered (which is why service at Court tended to run in certain families) and they explain why Parr became an Esquire of the Body to Henry VII. He was in post at the latest by 1500 when he attended on the King to his meeting at Calais with the Archduke Philip, father of the Emperor Charles V.
The position of Esquire of the Body was an ambiguous one: it could mean very little, or it could mean a lot. On the one hand, the title was given as a reward to trusted local gentlemen. They received no fee and attended Court only on special occasions. But they enjoyed the increased status that belonged to all royal servants, whatever their rank. There were dozens of these supernumerary Esquires and their importance was purely local. On the other hand, there was a much smaller group of Esquires with the Fee who were in regular attendance at Court. They were paid a fee of 50 marks (£33 6s 8d) and they held a position of real importance. Parr belonged to this latter, select group.
Under Edward IV, the Esquires with the Fee had been the King's principal body servants, whose 'business is many secrets'. They dressed and undressed the King, waited on him at table and attended to his other private wants and instructions. Under the Tudors, the Esquires lost this privileged place with the transfer of the King's private service to the new, inner department of the Privy Chamber. So it is the Gentlemen of the Privy Chamber, not the Esquires, who figure so prominently in our story as the favourites of Henry VIII and the alleged lovers of his Queens.
But the Esquires with the Fee nevertheless retained a dignified (and much safer) role. They were the leading regular servants of the outer group of royal apartments known collectively as 'the Chamber'. These apartments were the scene of most public ceremonial, in which the Esquires played a leading part. They also deputised for the frequently absentee noblemen who acted as the head officers of the Chamber. The Esquires, therefore, were well placed to catch the King's eye and to move on, if they also caught his fancy, to higher things.
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* * *
Parr, with his wealth and his family connexions, was better placed than most to succeed. He was given the Esquire's fee of 50 marks by Henry VIII soon after his accession. But he surrendered it within a year to his younger brother William. For already Thomas Parr was on the way up. He was knighted, and in 1513 raised and captained a hundred troops for the war with France. Like other leading courtiers, his detachment at first formed part of the Middleward under the immediate command of the King himself. But, at some point, he was assigned to the Vanguard, which was led by Charles Brandon. The following year he was nominated for the Garter. He received the support of many knights but was not elected. He was also considered for a peerage, though there were objections to giving him the title of 'Lord Fitzhugh' since his mother had been the younger and not the elder daughter of the fifth Baron. At an unknown date he was made joint Master of the Wards with Sir Thomas Lovell. This – since it was responsible for controlling the lands and persons of minors who had inherited their estates while under age – was an immensely lucrative and influential post. Finally, probably in 1516, he became Vice-chamberlain of Queen Catherine of Aragon's Household.
4
He now enjoyed the rank of knight banneret, which occupied a debatable ground between baron and knight. He was given a 'great chain of gold, which is worth £140 . . . [by] the King's Grace', and he figured prominently in royal ceremonial. In 1515 he took part in the ceremonies for the reception of Wolsey's Cardinal's Hat, and the following year he was one of the four bannerets who carried the canopy over the infant Princess Mary at her christening. On both occasions, his step-father/ brother-in-law, Sir Nicholas Vaux, figured as one of his colleagues, as did Sir Thomas Boleyn.
5
Boleyn, it is now clear, was a man of similar background and aspirations to Parr. Boleyn's daughter would become Queen first. But, at this stage, Parr was ahead of the game.
This was made clear when, in April 1516, Parr was sent to meet Henry's elder sister Margaret at Newcastle and conduct her to London. It was her first visit to England since she had left to become Queen of Scots in 1503. Now she was returning as a widow after Henry's forces had killed her husband, James IV, at Flodden. Henry met her at Tottenham on 3 May. 'The same day', the Earl of Shrewsbury's Court agent informed him, 'her Grace did ride behind Sir Thomas Parr through Cheapside, about 6 o'clock, and so to Baynard's Castle, and there remains yet.' Parr was paid £100 'for the expenses of the Queen of Scots'.
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* * *
Parr's family life was equally successful. His marriage to Maud Green seems to have been happy and it was certainly fruitful. Their first child, born in 1512, was a girl. She was christened Catherine, almost certainly because Catherine of Aragon stood as her godmother. A son, William, was born the next year, followed by another daughter, Anne.
Quite where this growing brood was based is not clear. Parr, like many courtiers, seems to have had a London house in or near the precinct of Blackfriars monastery. This was convenient for the King's new London residence at Bridewell, which lay next door to Blackfriars to the west. It was also in easy reach by water of Greenwich, which was much the most frequently used palace at this time. Probably the Parr Household stayed at Blackfriars in the winter, with extended sojourns in the summer on the Northamptonshire estates Parr had acquired in right of his wife.
Catherine was, in short, the daughter of a coming man. Her father was well born, rich and well connected. He was blessed with children. And, above all, he enjoyed the royal favour. In the sixteenth century such men were magnets who attracted the service of others. And Parr was sufficiently powerful to number the young Francis Bryan among his clients. Bryan was a cousin of the Howards and the Boleyns. His maternal grandfather was a baron and his own father a knight and Parr's predecessor as the Queen's Vice-chamberlain. Nevertheless it was Parr, Bryan wrote, 'whom I took as a special patron'. Years later he registered his gratitude to Parr's son William, who was by then a great man himself. Bryan fondly recollected 'the great goodness showed unto me by your most wise father', and offered his services to William in turn.
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