CHAPTER III
THE LADY LATIMER
No task is more congenial to the earnest student of history than that of tracing the origin of some important event, and following its gradual development from a trivial incident to its culmination in a great matter destined to alter the fortunes, and even change the faith, of an entire nation. If we would reach a thorough comprehension of the chain of events which led up to the proclamation of Jane Grey as Queen of England, we must now leave her to pursue her Greek and Latin studies and broider her samplers at Bradgate, while we trace the earlier fortunes of those who so ruled her destiny as to compel a simple-hearted and naturally retiring girl to accept a station which, by the time she was constrained to relinquish it, brought her to the lowest depths of misfortune and transformed the regal diadem which she herself had never coveted into a crown of martyrdom.
The Lady Latimer, better known in history as Queen Katherine Parr, influenced the fortunes of Lady Jane Grey more than is usually imagined, for it was to her care that the ten-year-old child was committed (after it had been proposed by the Seymour faction that she should become Queen-Consort of Edward VI and head of the Protestant party in England), in order that her education might be directed and her mind bent towards “the new learning” of which Katherine was secretly a supporter.
Born in 1513 at that lordly Kendal Castle whose ruins still command one of the loveliest prospects in Westmoreland, Katherine Parr, though a simple gentlewoman, could boast royal blood—that of our Anglo-Saxon kings, inherited from her paternal ancestor Ivo de Talbois, who married Lucy, the sister of the renowned Earls Morcar and Edwin. She was also of Plantagenet descent through her great-great-grandmother Alice Nevill, sister to Cicely Nevill, Duchess of York, a lineage that made her cousin four times removed to King Henry VIII himself. We will not enter in detail into the many alliances of the Parr family with the Nevills, Stricklands, Throckmortons, and Boroughs, but we are safe in describing it as a wealthy and honourable county stock, much looked up to in those days.
Katherine’s father, Sir Thomas Parr, married, when his bride was but little over thirteen, Maud Green, daughter of the rich Sir Thomas Green of Boughton and Greens-Norton in Northamptonshire. Lady Parr had a sister, Mary, who, when a mere child, married Lord Vaux of Harrowden, and, dying without issue, left her splendid fortune to her sister Maud. Lady Parr’s eldest son, born before his mother was fifteen, was the celebrated Sir William Parr, ultimately Earl of Essex and Marquess of Northampton. Her next child mated with Mr. William Herbert, who was raised to the peerage in 1551 by Edward VI as Earl of Pembroke six weeks before the death of his wife. Katherine, the third and youngest child of Sir Thomas and Lady Parr, was destined to occupy the perilous position of sixth Queen-Consort to King Henry VIII. When she was a mere child, the proverbial gipsy-woman predicted that “she should one day wear a crown, and not a cap; and wield a sceptre, not a distaff.”[24] Sir Thomas Parr died in London in 1517, leaving very scant provision for his two daughters, the bulk of his fortune having been settled upon his wife and son; but both young ladies married wealthy men, and thus were not seriously affected by their lack of means. Anne married at fifteen; and Katherine, long before she was fourteen, was led to the hymeneal altar by Lord Borough of Cantley Hall, Gainsborough, Yorkshire. The bridegroom had already been twice married, and so great was the disparity of age between the couple that Lady Borough was wont to call her eldest stepdaughter “little mother.” Two years after her marriage Katherine became a widow with a very handsome dower. Much of her time of mourning was spent at Sizergh Castle in Westmoreland, the seat of her kinsfolk the Stricklands, where she left several fine specimens of her skill as a needlewoman—notably a gorgeous white satin quilt embroidered with gold—which are still preserved in an apartment known as Queen Katherine’s Room.
We are fortunate in possessing a good many portraits of this lady, and at least one wonderful miniature, formerly in the Strawberry Hill Collection, and which now belongs to Mr. Brocklehurst-Dent of Sudeley Castle. This contains a likeness of Henry VIII painted in a space not bigger than a pin’s head, on a tiny medallion suspended round the Queen’s neck. A strong magnifying glass is required to do justice to the beauty of this microscopic miniature within a miniature, probably the smallest ever executed. Judged by all these portraits and by contemporary descriptions, Katherine Parr must have been a pretty little woman with delicate features, an intellectual brow—too amply developed for beauty—fox-coloured eyes, and a rather cunning expression about the thin yet flexible mouth. When her body was disinterred in 1786[25] it was found not to be decomposed, and measured exactly five feet and three inches. The hair, very long and curling naturally, was of a fine golden auburn.
QUEEN KATHERINE PARR