Queen Catherine Parr Part I

Catherine was the last wife of Henry VIII and queen of England from 1543-47.  She was an intelligent and learned woman and well known for her Protestant sympathies.  She was the first Queen of England to write a book under her own name…She was born to a Westmorland gentry family, in 1512. Her mother was a lady in waiting to Katherine of Aragon, and her father Sir Thomas Parr, was an associate of Henry’s.   At 17 - she married Sir Edward Burgh (sometimes spelled Borough).  She was portrayed in fiction as a woman who had been married off to much older husbands, but in fact her first husband was only a few years her senior.   He died within a few years and her next marriage was to John Neville, Lord Latimer, who was a good deal older than her... and had children from his first marriage.

Latimer was a Catholic and when there were various Catholic uprisings against Henry’s new Church of England, his reputation was somewhat tarnished. In 1540, the Latimers were at court and he became a Member of Parliament.  However he died in 1543, leaving Catherine as a rich widow.   She remained in London and renewed a friendship with the Lady Mary, later queen Mary I.  During this time, she mourned her husband but developed a romantic friendship with Thomas Seymour, the brother of Jane Seymour.

Then she caught the eye of Henry VIII, whose marriage to Catherine Howard had ended in disaster….  Catherine probably did not want to marry him, but she had little choice.  Seymour was posted abroad and she married the King in July 1543.  Henry wanted a stable and sensible wife, unlike the giddy young girl who had deceived him, so a widow like Catherine Parr was his preferred choice....