Weir A. Henry VIII: The King and His Court

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attention of his superiors. However, it would not be long before he was in more serious trouble than he

could ever have imagined.

“Little, Sweet Fool”

While the King was away, Prince Edward had fallen ill with a fever, possibly malaria, but was now, to

his father’s immense relief, completely recovered.

To minimise the risk of further infection, Henry

sent the boy to Ashridge, having imposed strict limits on the number of servants that his attendants

were permitted.

During the progress, the King’s delight in his young wife had been reawakened, and at his instance, on

All Saints’ Day, 1 November, special services were held up and down the land to give thanks for “the

good life he led and trusted to lead” with this “jewel of womanhood.”

On that day, however, as Henry

arrived in the royal pew in the chapel royal to render thanks, he found a sealed letter awaiting him.

Among the women of the Duchess of Norfolk’s household was a chamberer, Mary Lassels, who had

been overlooked when her companions had been found places in the Queen’s household. Festering

resentment drove Mary Lassels to complain to her brother John, an ardent reformist who would one

day be burned for his Protestant beliefs, and reveal to him what she knew of Katherine Howard’s

promiscuous past. Seeing an opportunity of bringing down the Catholic Queen and her party, Lassels

went straight to the Council and divulged what he had been told.

Archbishop Cranmer, who also wished to see the conservative faction toppled from power, immediately

laid the sordid facts before the King in the letter discreetly left in his pew. When Henry read it, his first

reaction was one of disbelief. But when, during a Council meeting at Winchester Palace in Southwark,

incontrovertible evidence was laid before him, he called for a sword so that he could slay the Queen,

then broke down in tears, complaining of his misfortune in meeting with “such ill-conditioned wives”

and blaming the Council, who had “solicited” him to marry her, for what had happened.

The Queen and Lady Rochford were both placed under house arrest at Hampton Court, Katherine being

told it was “no more the time to dance.”

There is a poignant tale that she broke free of her guards and

ran to intercept the King when he attended mass in the chapel royal, but was intercepted and dragged

screaming back to her apartments. This incident is said to have happened in the so-called Haunted

Gallery, but recent research has shown that Katherine would not have taken this route from her

apartments to the chapel,

so the tale is certainly a romantic fabrication. However, there is plenty of

evidence that she was in an hysterical state during the days after her arrest and the interrogations

conducted by Cranmer.

The King left Hampton Court, without seeing Katherine, on 5 November, to solace himself with

hunting, and returned before 8 November, when Marillac observed him putting on a brave front,

“socialising with the ladies, as gay as I ever saw him.”

So far, however, the evidence pointed only to misconduct before marriage, which was not a crime and

had occurred before Henry began paying court to Katherine. But Cranmer, backed by Hertford, the

Howards’ bitter enemy, would not let the matter rest there. Dereham, taken to the Tower, would admit

only that he and Katherine had been precontracted. Since a precontract was as binding as a marriage,

and could be annulled only by an ecclesiastical court, this would render Katherine’s marriage to the

King invalid.

Katherine might have escaped the fate awaiting her had she admitted to the precontract, but, in a futile

effort to save herself, she denied that one had ever existed, although she confessed that she had had

intercourse on many occasions with Dereham during their affair, and that she had practised some form

of birth control. When Dereham was questioned again, he was asked if he had had sexual relations with

the Queen since her marriage, but denied it, asserting that Thomas Culpeper “had succeeded him in the

Queen’s affections.”

When, on 10 November, the King was informed that his beloved Culpeper was

under suspicion, he left Hampton Court “suddenly after dinner” and rode to Whitehall, a broken man.

The court followed soon afterwards, leaving the Queen behind in the deserted palace.

Katherine, now in much greater peril, was asked about her relationship with Culpeper, but would admit

only that she had flirted with him, met him by the back stairs, given him gifts, and called him her

“little, sweet fool.”

Although she had signed a letter she sent him with the words “Yours as long as

life endures,”

she firmly denied having committed adultery with him, and accused Lady Rochford of

having encouraged her to do so, then of having spread the vile rumour that they had been lovers.

When questioned, Lady Rochford denied this and, throwing Katherine to the wolves, stated her belief

that adultery had indeed taken place. The couple had met in her rooms with her standing guard, and

also in the Queen’s apartments. Once, when the King came to claim his marital rights and found the

door locked, Lady Rochford kept him waiting until Culpeper had escaped down the back stairs.

Under interrogation, the Queen’s maids gave detailed depositions of what had been going on both

before her marriage and during the progress, but none had actually witnessed any act of adultery.

However, when one revealed that Katherine and Culpeper had resorted to meeting in her stool chamber,

the Council naturally believed the worst. Culpeper, when arrested and questioned under the threat of

torture, agreed that he and the Queen had met in secret on many occasions, but insisted that they had

never “passed beyond words,”

although “he intended and meant to do [so] with the Queen, likewise

the Queen so would to do with him.”

Hertford observed that his evil intent constituted in itself high

treason. Culpeper insisted that Katherine had been the prime mover in the affair, while Lady Rochford

had encouraged it and acted as a procuress. According to Margaret Morton, Lady Rochford was “the

principal occasion of the Queen’s folly.”

Historians have speculated endlessly as to her motives, yet

the only plausible inference is that she obtained a vicarious thrill through her involvement in this illicit

liaison.

On 13 November, Wriothesley went to Hampton Court and summoned all the members of the Queen’s

household into the great chamber, where, having declared to them their mistress’s offences and

announced that she had forfeited her title of Queen, he discharged most of them.

Only Anne Bassett

was allowed to remain at court; as her stepfather Lord Lisle was in prison, the King had undertakem to

arrange a suitable marriage for her.

The Queen’s coffers and chests were sealed and placed under

guard while an inventory was taken; Sir Thomas Seymour later came to collect the Queen’s jewels and

return them to the King. In 1542, Katherine’s emblems would be removed from all the royal palaces.

On the morning of 14 November, the former Queen, henceforth to be known as the Lady Katherine

Howard, was taken to Syon Abbey, accompanied by Sir Edward and Lady Baynton, three

gentlewomen, two chamberers and a confessor, who would “wait on her until the King’s further

pleasure.”

Lady Margaret Douglas, who had been languishing in disgrace at Syon, had been sent with

the Duchess of Richmond to Kenninghall. That same day, Lady Rochford and Culpeper also left

Hampton Court, bound for the Tower,

where Lady Rochford found the strain of repeated

interrogations so great that she suffered what seems to have been a complete nervous collapse, although

her contemporaries concluded that she had gone mad. Thanks to this “fit of frenzy,” she could not

legally stand trial. But the King was determined to have his revenge, and sent his physicians to her

every day to treat her and report on her progress.

After Katherine had gone to Syon, Henry returned to Hampton Court. When Anne of Cleves heard the

news of the Queen’s fall, she moved immediately to Richmond to be near at hand in case Henry should

wish to take her back, but the only messenger who came was a privy councillor who had been ordered

to retrieve the ring that Katherine had given her.

On 1 December, Dereham and Culpeper were arraigned at the Guildhall for high treason and

condemned to death. The King commuted the sentence of hanging, drawing, and quartering to

decapitation, and they were both beheaded on 10 December. Their heads were set on spikes on London

Bridge, where they remained until at least 1546.

Few members of the Howard family escaped the King’s displeasure. Charles Howard was dismissed

from the Privy Chamber. The Dowager Duchess of Norfolk; Lord William Howard and his wife

Margaret; Katherine, Countess of Bridgewater; and Anne, wife of Henry Howard, the former Queen’s

brother, were all tried and imprisoned for misprision of treason, having been found guilty of concealing

the Queen’s misbehaviour; they were also sentenced to forfeiture of their possessions. Within a year,

however, the King had pardoned and released all of them. Norfolk and Gardiner, who had done more

than anyone else to promote the King’s marriage to Katherine Howard, escaped censure, although

Norfolk would never again stand so high in the King’s favour. Prudently, he retired from court for a

time to attend to affairs at Kenninghall, from whence he wrote grovellingly to the King, deploring the

misconduct of his niece and other relatives, and begging for “some assurance of favour.”

His son,

Surrey, remained untouched by the scandal, and continued to bask in Henry’s love and esteem.

The eclipse of the conservatives left the Privy Chamber firmly under the control of the radical reformist

party led by Hertford and Anthony Denny, who would remain the dominant faction for most of the rest

of the reign.

During these terrible weeks, Henry could tolerate “no company but musicians and ministers of pastime,

and spent most of his time hunting, seeking to forget his grief.”

He would not stay in one house for

long, but moved about restlessly. Christmas at Greenwich was a dismal affair, with only a small

company in attendance. The King, observed Marillac, was “sad, and disinclined to feasting and ladies,”

while his councillors were “pensive and melancholy.”

In January 1542, Henry was looking “old and grey, after the mishap of the last Queen.” Chapuys

reported that he had never seen him “so sad, pensive and sighing.”

Clues to his state of mind may be

found in the passages he marked in his devotional books, all of which refer to the folly of becoming

involved with loose women; one, in the Book of Proverbs, reads, “My son, why wilt thou have pleasure

in a harlot?”

The King, who had rapidly gained weight after the tragedy of Jane Seymour’s death, was solacing his

grief over Katherine Howard’s perfidy by indulging in what Marillac called “marvellous excess” in

eating and drinking. Already “very stout,” he was “daily growing heavier,” and beginning to look more

and more like his maternal grandfather, Edward IV, who had been similarly given to overindulgence.

Soon, it would be said that “the King was so fat that three of the biggest men that could be found could

get inside his doublet,”

while during 1542 his great bed of walnut wood at Whitehall was enlarged to

measure seven feet six inches long and seven feet wide, to accommodate his increasing bulk.

The physician Andrew Boorde—known as “Merry Andrew” because he believed that laughter was the

best medicine—saw Henry in 1542 and reported that his hair was still plentiful and red, although

thinning on top, that his pulse was strong and regular, and that his digestive system was functioning

well. Yet Boorde was concerned about the King’s excessive overeating and obesity, while some of the

royal doctors were of the opinion that he was “not of constitution to live long.”

When Parliament met in January 1542, it passed an act declaring it treason for an unchaste woman to

marry the King without first revealing her past.

“Few, if any, ladies at court would henceforth aspire

to such an honour,” commented Chapuys acidly.

Yet the King was soon in better spirits and once more

“feasting ladies.” On 29 January, the day Parliament introduced the Act of Attainder that would

condemn Katherine Howard to death, he entertained twenty-six ladies to supper, with another thirtyfive

at another table, making them “great and hearty cheer”

and paying marked attention to Wyatt’s

estranged wife, Jane Haute, and Anne Bassett, “a pretty young creature with wit enough to do as badly

as the others, if she were to try.”

Meanwhile, Katherine Howard had been keeping up her spirits at Syon, although she had no illusions

as to what her fate would be. Yet after the Act of Attainder against her was passed in February, and the

lords of the Council came to escort her to the Tower, she panicked and had to be manhandled into the

waiting barge. Once there, however, she regained her composure and asked that the execution block be

brought to her room so that she could practise making a good death. On the morning of 13 February, so

weak with fear that she could hardly stand, she was decapitated with an axe on Tower Green, where her

cousin Anne Boleyn had died less than six years before. Among the crowd of onlookers was another

cousin, the Earl of Surrey.

Lady Rochford followed Katherine to the block. Seeing no improvement in her hysterical state, the

King had demanded that Parliament pass an act making it lawful for him to execute an insane person

who had committed treason. However, by the time Lady Rochford reached the scaffold, she was calm

and resigned, and confessed her faults.

Katherine, who was probably no more than seventeen at the time of her execution, was buried near

Anne Boleyn beneath the altar pavement in the chapel royal of St. Peter ad Vincula within the Tower;

the Victorian historian Lord Macaulay would later call this “the saddest spot on earth.”

“A Nest of Heretics”

By March 1542, the court was returning to normal. Within a week of Katherine Howard’s execution,

the King was hosting pre-Lenten banquets for his privy councillors, nobles, and men of law. One such

banquet was given for a number of ladies, whose company Henry appeared to relish “as a man nurtured

among them.” On the morning beforehand, he personally inspected the lodgings that had been prepared

at court for the ladies, going from chamber to chamber checking the hangings and bedcoverings to

ensure they were the best that could be provided. When his guests arrived, he received them “with

much gaiety” and “made them great and hearty cheer, without showing special affection to any

particular one.”

In July, the court was diverted by news that the volatile Earl of Surrey had challenged Sir John Leigh,

one of the King’s servants, to a duel, provoking an angry Henry to consign him to the Fleet Prison in

London. A fortnight later, after writing an abject letter to the Council admitting that “the fury of restless

youth” had got the better of him, and pointing out that he was “not the first young man to have

enterprised matters that he afterwards regretted,” Surrey was released on a surety of the huge sum of

£6,666 (nearly £2 million).

The young Earl was soon to replace Wyatt as the premier English poet. Wyatt, who was elected a

Knight of the Shire for Kent in 1542, had grown weary of the diplomatic service, and longed to retire to

the peace of his Kentish home, but in the autumn of 1542 the King sent him to Falmouth to welcome an

imperial emissary and escort him to court. Wyatt never reached Falmouth: in October, he died of

pneumonia at Sherborne, Dorset.

Few mourned him more sincerely than his fellow poet Surrey, who wrote in an epitaph:

A tongue that serv’d in foreign realms his King,

Whose courteous talk to virtue did influence

Each noble heart; a worthy guide to bring

Our English youth by travail unto fame.

Surrey’s works were already much admired at court. His broad knowledge of classical and Renaissance

literature lent his work an elegance and form not yet seen in England. Surrey popularised the

Petrarchan sonnet, adapting it to his own purpose as Wyatt had done; wrote a rhyming version of the

Book of Ecclesiasticus as well as graceful love poems; and made a brilliant translation of Virgil’s

Aeneid, in which he introduced blank verse into the English language. His genius was to inspire the

works of later generations of poets, among them Sir Philip Sidney, William Shakespeare, and John

Milton.

In November, the Lady Mary presided over court feasts “in default of a queen.”

The King, however,

was preoccupied with deteriorating relations with Scotland, and in November sent north a military

force under Norfolk to prevent James V and his army from crossing the border. This was the Duke’s

chance to regain his sovereign’s confidence, and he and his son Surrey, who was seeing military service

for the first time, acquitted themselves well.

During the campaign, one of the friends of Henry’s youth, William Fitzwilliam, Earl of Southampton,

was killed fighting the Scots. His heir was his half-brother, Sir Anthony Browne, who inherited

Southampton’s house at Cowdray, Sussex. Sir Anthony, an ageing widower, celebrated his good fortune

by marrying the fifteen-year-old Lady Elizabeth FitzGerald— “Fair Geraldine”—much to Surrey’s

distress,

and began converting Cowdray into a great palace.

Lord Russell had succeeded Southampton as Lord High Admiral in 1540, but was himself replaced in

1542 by John Dudley, Viscount Lisle, the son of Henry VII’s unpopular minister Edmund Dudley,

whom Henry VIII had executed as a sop to popular opinion in 1510. Dudley, now forty, had been

restored in blood during youth and brought up by Sir Edward Guildford, whose daughter Jane he

married, and in 1542 inherited the Lisle title from his mother. An excellent soldier, whose daring and

horsemanship had made him renowned, he had hitherto served the King mainly in a military capacity.

Now a Warden of the Scottish Marches alongside Suffolk, he was a pragmatic man of cold, calculating

ambition. His able, sometimes devious, mind had impressed the King, who would in 1543 admit him to

the Privy Council and Privy Chamber.

On 24 November 1542, the English won a great victory over the Scots at Solway Moss. Norfolk was

quick to point out to his master that this was due to his own expert leadership, although Hertford, who

had also been given a leading command, deserved some of the credit. The King was jubilant, and the

court gayer than at any time since before Katherine Howard’s fall.

News of the death of James V on 14

December gave even further cause for rejoicing, because his heir was a week-old girl, the infant Mary,

Queen of Scots. Scotland would be subject to yet another weakening regency—it had endured six

during the past 150 years—and should give no further trouble. Henry now conceived the idea of

marrying Queen Mary to Prince Edward and uniting the two kingdoms under Tudor rule, a plan the

Scots were to resist violently.

The court was merry again that Christmas. Scottish nobles, taken hostage during the campaign, were

honourably entertained at court, but not set free until they had sworn on oath to further the proposed

marriage alliance.

Early in the new year of 1543, Surrey disgraced himself again. In February, after arriving back south,

he stayed in London with two companions, Wyatt’s son Thomas and William Pickering, who would

later become a distinguished Elizabethan courtier. One night, while celebrating the recent victory, they

went on a drunken spree, outraging the citizens by rampaging through the streets, smashing the

windows of churches and aldermen’s houses, and throwing stones at passersby. The next night, they

took a boat out on the Thames and shot pellets at the whores on Bankside.

They were also seen eating meat during Lent, which was strictly forbidden to Catholics. Surrey’s friend

George Blagge, a religious radical, warned him what people might infer from this, but the Earl

complacently replied, “We shall have a madding time in our youth, and therefore I am very sorry for

it.”

The Lord Mayor, however, complained to the Council, and the three miscreants were hauled before it at

St. James’s Palace. Surrey admitted breaching the King’s peace by his misdemeanours, but pleaded in

mitigation that he had only broken the windows of papists. He was nevertheless sent once more to the

Fleet to learn to control his “heady will.” The King was exasperated, referring to Surrey as “the most

foolish proud boy that is in England,” but his fondness for the young man was unabated.

By the

middle of May, Surrey was a free man, and doing his best to regain his master’s favour. However, he

never forgave Gardiner, Wriothesley, Browne, and Russell for their part in his interrogation, nor Sir

Thomas Seymour, who had sanctimoniously pressed for a stiffer sentence.

By February 1543, the King had begun to betray an interest in Katherine Parr, the wife of John Neville,

Lord Latimer. She was no giddy young girl, but a mature, well-educated woman of about thirty, whose

intellectual gifts may have attracted Henry as much as her comely person. He had probably known her

all her life: her father, Sir Thomas Parr, had served Katherine of Aragon until his death in 1517; her

brother William was a prominent courtier; her sister Anne had waited on Katherine Howard; and Lady

Latimer herself had visited court with her husband. Henry’s first recorded gift to her—a package of

“pleats and sleeves”— was paid on 16 February, while her ailing husband was still alive. It was

followed by presents of fashionable gowns, cut in the Italian, French, and Dutch styles, and French

hoods.

Lord Latimer, who had been ill for some time, died on 2 March.

The Parrs were an ancient Westmorland family, distantly related to the Plantagenets and Tudors.

Katherine had been born at Kendal Castle in 1511/12, but had been brought up in London. She had now

buried two husbands, the first having been the elderly Edward de Burgh, Lord Borough, whom she

married in 1526. He died in 1528 and she married Lord Latimer around 1530. There were no children

from either marriage.

Katherine was “of small stature”

and, although not beautiful, had a “lively, pleasing appearance.”

She was dignified, “graceful and of cheerful countenance, and . . . praised for her virtue.”

The half-

length portrait of her now in the National Portrait Gallery, shows a pleasant-faced matron with auburn

hair

and hazel eyes, wearing a rich red gown with stand-up collar and jaunty feathered cap. She was

kind, warmhearted, generous, and intuitive, although given to occasional rash impulses. In his Will, the

King praised her for her devotion, obedience, chastity, and wisdom, but beneath the virtuous and godly

exterior there beat a passionate heart.

There has been much recent scholarly debate as to the extent of Katherine’s intellectual capabilities.

There is no doubt that she was intelligent and well read, but she was pious rather than intellectual. She

was well-educated for a woman of her time, imbued with the New Learning, and is known to have

written at least two rather erudite devotional books. A good conversationalist, Katherine was fluent in

French and Italian, could read and write Latin, and understood some Greek; although she had been

taught French by her mother, she learned the other languages later in life rather than during childhood.

Her handwriting was in the new Italianate style. Katherine had the utmost respect for scholarship, was

well aware of her own shortcomings, and constantly sought to improve herself.

The King’s interest in Lady Latimer may well have accounted for the preferment of her brother

William, Lord Parr, to the Privy Council in March and his election as a Knight of the Garter the

following month. The King also appointed him Warden of the Scottish Marches. Around this time,

however, Parr’s wife, Elizabeth Bourchier, deserted him, and he discovered that her children had been

fathered by other men. Incensed, he urged the King to have her executed, which was the prescribed

penalty for the adulterous wives of peers. Thanks to Katherine Parr’s intercession with the King, Lady

Parr escaped death, but Parliament granted her husband a divorce on 17 April and declared her children

bastards and unfit to inherit the Essex estates, which were instead entailed upon Lord Parr.

Although Latimer had been a conservative, his widow held radical, if not Protestant, religious views,

and had to be careful. The reformers Miles Coverdale and Hugh Latimer were guests at her house near

the former London Charterhouse, but so also was the staunchly Catholic Lady Mary, who may have

known Katherine Parr from childhood, and was a good friend.

It was a dangerous time to hold Lutheran opinions. Led by the energetic Gardiner, ably supported by

Wriothesley, the conservative faction, in order to regain its ascendancy and discredit its rivals, was

ruthlessly seeking out heretics and traitors within the royal household. In March 1543, they “uncovered

a nest of heretics”

among the musicians of St. George’s Chapel at Windsor. The gifted organist,

composer, and Master of the Choristers, John Marbeck, a secret Calvinist, was sentenced to be burned

at the stake after heretical writings were found in his house, but the King valued his playing so highly

that he pardoned him.

Three other members of the Chapel Royal were not so lucky.

In April, Gardiner struck at Archbishop Cranmer, whose primacy he coveted, and had him accused of

heresy. But the King again intervened. He arrived at Lambeth Palace in his barge and sent a message

inviting Cranmer to accompany him on a trip along the Thames. When the Archbishop appeared, Henry

said jovially, “Ah, my chaplain, I have news for you. I now know who is the greatest heretic in Kent.”

He also hinted that he knew Cranmer had a wife. The Archbishop was thoroughly frightened, but the

King, who was very fond of his primate, even though he must have suspected his Protestant

sympathies, made it clear that he meant to protect him from his enemies, and authorised him to preside

over the inquiry into his own alleged heresy. When the conservatives approached the King for

permission to arrest Cranmer, he granted it, but then privily summoned the Archbishop and gave him a

ring, which he was to produce when the Council came for him. The next day, Cranmer was able to

confound his enemies, and was supported by Henry, who delivered a stern homily on the evils of

faction politics and commanded the rival parties to make their peace.

The King also taught a lesson to Sir Thomas Seymour, who had accused the Archbishop of not

maintaining a household, or entertaining in a style, appropriate to his dignity, and urged that his vast

revenues be diverted to the Crown and replaced with a salary. After the heresy scandal had died down,

Henry, probably having warned Cranmer what he was about, ordered Seymour to present himself at

Lambeth Palace one afternoon. Seymour was astonished to find a lavish meal awaiting him. When he

arrived back at Whitehall, the King asked him, “Had my lord dined before ye came? What cheer made

he you?” A shamefaced Seymour had to admit that he had “abused Your Highness with an untruth.”

Henry, who had personal reasons for wishing to discountenance Seymour, lectured him, then warned,

“There shall be no alteration made while I live.”

Later that year, the King sanctioned the return of Mistress Cranmer, who had been living in Germany,

and in 1544 and 1545 he would again intervene to save Cranmer from those who wished to destroy

him.

Thwarted of bigger fish, the conservatives next struck at the Privy Chamber, and draft indictments were

drawn up by Gardiner’s protégé, Dr. John London, against eleven of its members, among them the

Master of the Revels; the diplomat and scholar Philip Hoby; Master Penny, the King’s barber; and the

royal cook. But Henry was not impressed or pleased: he ordered the arrest of London and pardoned

those under suspicion. London was found guilty of perjury, made a public example of, then thrown in

the Fleet, where he died the next year.

But the defeated Gardiner and his party remained undaunted and determined to rid the court of

reformists and closet heretics, intending that, when the King eventually died, the Catholics would be in

control. For the present, however, the reformists were dominant at court, and among them were several

rising “new men.” In April 1543, the shrewd and competent William Paget replaced Sir Ralph Sadler as

Principal Secretary to the King. Paget, an ally of Hertford who wisely kept his religious views to

himself, was a man who “will have one foot in every pageant.”

He enjoyed immense influence with

the King, and his fellow councillors often used him to convey messages and requests to Henry.

Paget

was therefore able to exercise extensive patronage, dabble in a little blackmail, and grow rich: he built

himself a fine mansion at West Drayton, Middlesex.

Paget screened most of the documents and

information intended for the King, and sent out by Henry, but there is little evidence that he ever

tampered with them; either he was honest, or he covered his traces well.

William Petre was appointed Secretary of State and knighted in 1543. An erudite lawyer and Fellow of

All Souls’ College, Oxford, he was to retain his post until 1566 and serve four Tudor monarchs. Petre

built a splendid house at Ingatestone in Essex, which survives today. In 1543 also, William Paulet, Lord

St. John, was appointed Chamberlain of the Household.

Anthony Denny’s influence with the King was growing steadily. At the centre of a humanist circle, he

was “a favourer of good learning”

and furthered the careers of scholars such as Sir Thomas Elyot,

John Cheke, and Roger Ascham, who in turn filled the “tuneful court” with “resonant hymns praising

his universal popularity.”

Denny, who was knighted in 1544, not only managed the Privy Chamber

administration, but also acted as confidential adviser to the King. He was a man of great personal

charm, and his painstaking devotion to his duties endeared him to the ageing Henry, for whom he acted

as a buffer against a clamorous world. He fielded petitioners for his master and even wrote out their

suits for them, “which, considering his attendance upon the King and other business, is very much for

him to do.”

Yet there was a high degree of self-interest involved, because in so doing Denny created a

vast web of patronage with himself at its centre. He was therefore a very busy man, and willingly

delegated some of his less pleasant duties to his unscrupulous brother-in-law, Sir John Gates, who was

also a member of the Privy Chamber. Denny’s genuine but radical religious convictions—he spoke out

bravely against the persecution of Protestants—and his closeness to the King aroused the bitter

resentment of the conservatives, but for all their efforts they were powerless to dislodge him.

Sir Francis Bryan, who had once supported the imperialists at court, now aligned himself with the

reformist faction through his friendship with William Parr, to whom he dedicated his translation of

Antonio de Guevara’s A Dispraise of the Life of the Courtier. Bryan was now around fifty, but had lost

none of the restless energy of his youth, which is why the poet Surrey, a kindred spirit, sought his

friendship, transcending the enmities of courtly factions.

Catholics and reformists might wrangle and jostle for power, but the King, who had become “very stern

and opinionate,”

was the ultimate authority in religious matters. Although largely orthodox in his

views, he retained the humanist ideals of his youth and respect for the New Learning, and liked to

surround himself in these later years with people who shared these interests, perhaps little realising that

most held extremely radical, and possibly heretical, religious views.

In 1543, the so-called King’s Book, written under Henry’s direction and partly in his own hand,

was

published. Its true title was The Necessary Doctrine and Erudition of Any Christian Man, and it was

the most orthodox and reactionary statement yet of the creed of Henry’s church. But it was too late to

turn back the clock. The availability of the Bible in English had encouraged the King’s subjects to think

for themselves, and many had gone way beyond the unquestioning obedience expected of devout

Catholics, who Henry liked to think formed the majority of his people. Some reformists even dismissed

the King’s Book, with its paternalistic dogmatism and assumption of widespread traditional morality, as

being not worth “a fart.”

Paget had reassured Henry that eleven-twelfths of his subjects were of an orthodox persuasion, but for

Gardiner this was not enough, and he urged the King to clamp down on wholesale reading of the Bible.

Henry, too, thought it dangerous, and in 1543 Parliament passed the Act for the Advancement of True

Religion, which condemned “crafty, false and untrue” translations, including Tyndale’s, and restricted

the reading of the Scriptures to the upper and middle classes.

The King was not the only man in pursuit of Katherine Parr. Sir Thomas Seymour was also paying

court to the wealthy widow and, years later, she admitted to him, “As truly as God is God, my mind

was fully bent, the time I was at liberty, to marry you before any man I know.” But she was to be

“overruled by a higher power,” for in May, the King, who would brook no rival, sent Seymour on an

embassy to Brussels, which was followed by a military command under Sir John Wallop in the Low

Countries.

Katherine bowed to her fate. By the middle of June, she and her sister Anne, the wife of William

Herbert, an Esquire of the Body, were frequent visitors to court, and there was little doubt in anyone’s

mind that the King would soon make her his sixth wife.

“The Good Expectations of the King’s Majesty”

Henry VIII and Katherine Parr were married by Bishop Gardiner on 12 July 1543 in the Queen’s

holyday closet at Hampton Court, with “none opposing and all applauding.”

Among the twenty guests

were the King’s two daughters, the Lords Hertford and Russell, and William— soon to be Sir William

—and Anne Herbert. Lady Margaret Douglas, restored to favour, carried the bride’s train.

The new

Queen was not crowned, probably because the treasury could not bear the cost. The motto she adopted,

“To be useful in all I do,” was an apt one.

As with all Henry’s queens, the composition of Katherine’s household reflected her family loyalties and

ideological affiliations. Sir Anthony Cope, an erudite humanist scholar, served briefly as her

Chamberlain, before being replaced in December 1543 by her uncle, Lord Parr of Horton. Sir Thomas

Tyrwhit, her stepson by marriage, was Steward. The Queen’s sister, Anne Herbert, became her chief

lady-in-waiting; her other ladies included Katherine Willoughby, Duchess of Suffolk; the Countesses of

Hertford and Sussex; Honor Greville, Lady Lisle; Joan Champernowne, wife of Sir Anthony Denny;

the Queen’s cousin, Maud, Lady Lane; and her stepdaughter, Elizabeth, Lady Tyrwhit. Another

stepdaughter, Margaret Neville, was a maid of honour, as was Anne Bassett.

In 1546, Lord Dorset’s

daughter by Frances Brandon, Lady Jane Grey, the King’s learned little niece, came to serve the Queen

as maid of honour. Elizabeth Billingham, an old friend of Katherine’s, was Mother of the Maids. The

Queen appointed George Day, Bishop of Chichester, as her Almoner, while among her chaplains were

noted radicals such as Miles Coverdale and John Parkhurst, later Bishop of Norwich. Another member

of the Queen’s household was the young Nicholas Throckmorton, later to be one of the luminaries of

Queen Elizabeth’s court; his brother Clement was Katherine’s cupbearer.

Katherine was “quieter than any of the young wives the King had, and as she knew more of the world,

she always got on pleasantly with the King and had no caprices.”

Many writers portray her as little

more than a nurse to an increasingly incapacitated husband, but the evidence shows that, apart from the

times when his bad leg laid him low, the King and Queen were an active couple and constantly on the

move. Right up to the last few months of his life, Henry refused to give in to the illnesses that at times

threatened to overwhelm him. There is no evidence that Katherine found him offensive or disagreeable;

on the whole, they seem to have enjoyed a harmonious relationship: the Queen confided in a private

letter to her brother that this third marriage was “the greatest joy and comfort that could happen to her.”

Even Wriothesley had to admit that Katherine was “a woman, in my judgement, for certain wisdom and

gentleness most meet for His Highness; and I am sure His Majesty never had a wife more agreeable to

his heart than she is.”

From the first, Katherine exerted a benevolent influence over the court. Not since the days of Katherine

of Aragon and Anne Boleyn had a queen patronised humanist scholarship so enthusiastically. Katherine

welcomed men of learning to her court and drew extensively on her privy purse to fund the studies of

poor students. One of the Queen’s chaplains, Francis Goldsmith, who owed his promotion to her

generosity, declared that “her rare goodness has made every day a Sunday, a thing hitherto unheard of,

especially in a royal palace.”

In her religious observances, Katherine was outwardly orthodox, and her writings display a personal

piety that had more in common with the teachings of Erasmus than those of Luther. Her prayerbook,

dated 1534, is at Sudeley Castle. She owned a beautiful manuscript of the Epistles in Latin and English,

as well as a French version of the New Testament; both were illuminated by William Harper, Clerk of

the Closet.

Yet the Queen’s private views seem to have been as radical as Cranmer’s, and the members of her

circle were mostly of like mind. As well as her ladies in waiting, they included Lady Elizabeth Hoby;

Jane, Lady Lisle; and Lady Margaret Butts, all of whom held dangerously Lutheran opninions. The

Duchess of Suffolk, who had enthusiastically embraced the new faith, dared openly to criticise the

Catholic bishops, and mischievously named her pet spaniel Gardiner, taking pleasure in calling him

sharply to heel.

Katherine’s chamber became a haven for those with radical opinions. There were sermons by reformist

preachers such as Nicholas Ridley, Hugh Latimer, and Nicholas Shaxton, and readings from the

Scriptures, which were often followed by impassioned debate. Much time was devoted to self-

improvement and pious devotion, and Nicholas Udall, visiting the court, was impressed to see the

Queen and her ladies absorbed in “virtuous exercises, reading and writing, and with most earnest study,

applying themselves to extending knowledge. It is now no news in England to see young damsels in

noble houses and in the courts of princes, instead of cards and other instruments of vain trifling, to have

continually in their hands either psalms, homilies or other devout meditations.”

This all gave a

tremendous boost to the cause of reform, but it was fraught with risks, not least because it aroused the

resentment and suspicions of the conservative faction.