Six Wives (104 page)
Authors: David Starkey
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But in 1517 disaster struck. The 'great plague', as the royal Secretary Pace called it, continued its ravages far into the year and in November Parr fell victim. At the time of his death, Catherine was five and her widowed mother twenty-two. Parr left £800 between Catherine and her sister for their marriages and he gave his wife a life-interest in his whole paternal inheritance to provide an income during her widowhood.
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With her youth and wealth, Maud Parr was, once more, a highly desirable bride. But she never remarried. Instead, she continued as one of the Queen's ladies and devoted herself to the upbringing of her children.
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Indeed, it seems clear that her Household soon established something of a reputation as a finishing school for the young – male as well as female. In 1523, for instance, Lord Dacre advised his son-in-law, Lord Scrope, that his son should live with Lady Parr for the remaining three years of his nonage. 'For I assure you', Dacre continued, 'he might learn with her, as well as in any place that I know, as well nurture, as French and other language, which me seems were a commodious thing for him.' We can see the results in Maud's own son, William. In about 1546, Bryan reminded him, 'I found you looking in a little book called in the French language
Méprise de la Cour
[An Invective against the Court]'. Parr had lent Bryan the book and eventually got him to translate it, to help it become more generally known.
Méprise de la Cour
[An Invective against the Court]'. Parr had lent Bryan the book and eventually got him to translate it, to help it become more generally known.
Catherine also seems to have been an able pupil. Like her brother, she certainly acquired a good knowledge of French. But her skills in the 'other language[s]' that might have been on offer in her mother's Household, in particular in Latin, have been much debated. On balance, however, the evidence would suggest that she got at least an elementary grasp of Latin as well.
Finally, she acquired the wide range of social skills comprised in Dacre's word 'nurture'. These included a knowledge of etiquette and good manners, an easy conversational style, the ability to sing and play music and, above all, the polish that made a gentleman or gentlewoman. Another word for these skills was 'courtesy' (that is, courtly behaviour) and, in the fullness of time, Catherine would prove herself an adept courtier.
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Maud's widowed status provided no obstacle to any of this. On the contrary. Only 'if [Lady Parr] keep her widowhood', Dacre recommended, should young Scrope remain with her. This proviso reflected the fact that any future husband was an unknown quantity. But it was also a positive endorsement of the lady herself. For Maud had a formidable character, and was a hands-on manager of her family and her fortune. She also had a right-hand man in the shape of her 'cousin' and 'steward of my house', Thomas Pickering. 'My . . . mother', William later informed Cromwell, 'trusted him implicitly, and admonished me implicitly to follow his advice.'
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* * *
This, then, was the world of Catherine's girlhood. Apart from the death of one parent (which, after all, was then the rule rather than the exception), it was as secure, prosperous and loving a childhood as anything the sixteenth century could offer. But, as again was the rule in Tudor England, her childhood was destined to be a short one. Already by 1523, when she was scarcely in her teens, the negotiations for her marriage had begun. And the prospective bridegroom was the son of Lord Scrope, whom, as we have already seen, Dacre wished to place with Lady Parr.
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There was, Dacre told Scrope, much in favour of Catherine as a bride for his son and heir. 'I cannot see', Dacre wrote, 'that ye can marry him to so good a stock as my Lady Parr, for divers considerations.' He then enumerated them: 'First, in remembering the wisdom of my said Lady, and the good wise stock of the Greens, whereof she is coming, and also of the wise stock of the Parrs of Kendal.' Second, there were the material advantages. For Catherine, Dacre noted, was a potential heiress, since she 'has but [the life of] one child [her brother, William] between her and 800 marks yearly to inherit thereof '.
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Despite Catherine's advantages of heredity and fortune, however, the marriage negotiations proved difficult. Scrope was relatively poor and his son's marriage was his only realisable cash-asset, for which he was determined to exact a premium price. But Maud Parr would have none of it. She knew the price, as well as the value, of everything and she would pay not a penny more than the going rate. By December 1523, Dacre was starting to despair of his role as honest broker: 'My Lord', he informed Scrope at last, 'the demands you have and my Lady's demands are so far asunder that it is impossible ye can ever agree'.
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But the warning was ignored and neither Scrope nor Maud would budge an inch. Finally, in March 1524, it was the latter who broke off negotiations in a letter addressed to Dacre 'From the Court at Greenwich'.
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* * *
Her marriage plans for her daughter thwarted, Maud now turned her attentions to her only son, William. In 1526 she bought back her son's marriage, control of which belonged to the King during William's minority, for the enormous sum of £1,000. She also paid other 'great sums' to Henry Bourchier, Earl of Essex, for the marriage of his daughter and heiress, Anne. William and Anne were married in February 1527, in the Chapel of the Earl's country residence, Stansted Hall in Halstead, Essex. And they continued to reside there during the first six years of the marriage.
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Maud was clearly delighted – though the sums she had paid to Henry and Essex were beyond even her resources and she had put herself heavily, though not imprudently, in debt. But it seemed well worth it. Not only was her 'well beloved son, William' married to a great heiress; he was also in line for the Earldom of Essex itself. Noble titles could not of course, except in the most special circumstances, be directly inherited in the female line. Nevertheless, there was a custom, known as 'the courtesy of England', by which an extinct title might be revived for the husband in right of his heiress-wife. If this custom were to be followed, William, after his father-in-law's death, would become Earl of Essex.
It was a glittering prospect. But it was bought at a price that went far beyond his mother's cash. For William was 'my Lord Parr', the man whose marital unhappiness and whose goings-on with his mistress, Dorothy Bray, were, as we have seen, regarded as an object lesson by the not very choosy Catherine Howard and her would-be lover, Thomas Culpepper.
Would his sister Catherine's marital history turn out any better?
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At all events, Catherine was launched into matrimony by 1529, when she was seventeen. Fresh from her triumph with William, Maud – once more with borrowed money – had secured for Catherine the hand of Sir Edward Burgh. Burgh was not in the league of Anne Bourchier as a match. But he was a coup nonetheless. He was son and heir to Thomas, Lord Burgh of Gainsborough in Lincolnshire, and he numbered among his ancestors Beauchamps and Staffords. But, as a less fortunate aspect of his genealogy, there was a streak of hereditary insanity in the family. Edward's grandfather, also called Edward, had never been summoned to the Lords, being 'distracted of memory'. And Edward himself seems to have suffered from poor health and died in about 1533 after only four years of marriage.
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Catherine was now a childless widow at the age of twenty-one. She was also an orphan, since her formidable mother had died two years previously, in 1531. Catherine's share of her parents' fortune had already been used to buy her marriage. Nevertheless, she figured prominently in her mother's will. Maud left her 'my bed of purple satin, paned [panelled] with cloth of gold' and 'my beads [rosary] of lignum [a kind of hardwood] always dressed with gold, which the . . . Queen's Grace [Catherine of Aragon] gave me', as well as a third of her ample collection of jewels. These included, in addition to several hundred pearls, eighteen substantial pieces, ranging from 'a ring with a table diamond, set with black anneal [enamel], meet for my little finger', to a 'tablet with pictures of the King and the Queen'. This latter was, almost certainly, another royal gift either from Henry or from Catherine's namesake and likely godmother, Catherine of Aragon.
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It is a set of legacies that speaks of the wealth and luxury of Catherine's upbringing, and of her family's proximity to the Court.
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Within a few months, Catherine had married again. Her husband, John Neville, Lord Latimer, was twenty years older than she, twice widowed and with two children, a boy and a girl.
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The principal broker of the marriage was, most likely, Cuthbert Tunstall, Bishop of Durham, and the bastard son of Thomas Tunstall, who was a cousin of the Parrs. He was an executor of Maud's will as well as that of her late husband; he was also Latimer's senior colleague as President of the Council in the North, of which Latimer too was a member. Tunstall even had a remote cousinship with the Nevilles. All this fitted him perfectly for the role of intermediary.
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The other likely key figure in arranging the marriage was Catherine's uncle, Sir William Parr. Sir William, as we have seen, had stepped into his brother Thomas's Court office of Esquire of the Body. Subsequently, after Thomas's death, he had also stepped into his shoes as the acting head of the family during the minority of his nephew and namesake, Catherine's brother William. He acted as intermediary for young William with Cromwell and there is every reason to suppose that he played a similar role for Catherine. Certainly, when she was in a position to do so, she showed herself eager to reward him.
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As Lady Latimer, Catherine was the wife of a rich and substantial peer. She was the mistress of a large Household which divided its time between Latimer's magnificent country seat at Snape Castle, in the North Riding of Yorkshire, and the Charterhouse, by Smithfield in London, where Latimer had acquired a town-house. She was also the step-mother to her husband's two children by his first wife: John, aged thirteen, and Margaret, who was much younger. Catherine never seems to have become close to her step-son, who was a tearaway, like so many Nevilles. But with Margaret her relations were warm and affectionate.
After only three years of marriage, however, the couple were engulfed in the great northern rising of the Pilgrimage of Grace. Their reactions seem to have been very different.
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John Neville, Lord Latimer was one of the first peers to join the rebellion. And his defection, in view of the strategic location of his lands, was one of the most important. Snape Castle lies mid-way between Richmond to the north and Ripon to the south. To the west is the valley of the River Ure while that of the Swale is to the east. The Great North Road, known at this point as Dere Street, follows the line of the two river valleys and is commanded by Snape Castle. If Latimer remained loyal, communications between Durham and York would be difficult; if he joined the rebels, the whole strength of the north could be mustered against the King.
Archbishop Lee of York realised this. So, in early October, as news of the Lincolnshire revolt began to trigger sympathetic risings across the north, he wrote to Latimer, who was also steward of his estates in and around Ripon, to 'stay' (control) the Archbishop's tenants. Latimer obeyed but was quickly overwhelmed by the popular feeling in favour of the Pilgrimage. By 14 or 15 October he was captured; required to swear the Pilgrims' oath; and – like all captured gentry and noble leaders – compelled to assume the command of his local sector of the revolt.
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The idea of 'being compelled to lead' is a strange one. Were the gentle and noble Pilgrims really coerced? Or did they connive? The question has been much debated, by contemporaries and historians alike. After the event, Latimer protested that his role in the revolt was 'a very painful and dangerous time to me'. And his fellow rebels and the Duke of Norfolk, who suppressed the rebellion, both concurred. John Dakyn, the Vicar General of York, had also found himself at Richmond on 14 or 15 October. He was intimidated by the grim determination of the rebel rank and file and guessed that Latimer was too. 'No man', Norfolk agreed, 'was in more danger of his life.'
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On the other hand, once he had thrown in his lot with the Pilgrimage, Latimer showed every sign of committed and active leadership. On 20 October, riding under the banner of St Cuthbert of Durham, he entered York at the head of the rebels. Then he marched to Pontefract. There he joined Lord Darcy, who, after another charade of coercion, had assumed joint leadership of the revolt. Latimer joined in the subsequent council of war, and was assigned to the van of the rebel host. On 27 October he was one of the rebel leaders who met Norfolk on Doncaster Bridge, to present the Pilgrims' terms. He took part in the Great Council of the Pilgrims which met at York on 21 November and in the subsequent, more important, meeting at Pontefract on 2– 4 December. In the latter he was responsible for one of the most striking initiatives, when he asked Archbishop Lee and the other clergy to 'show their learning whether subjects might lawfully move war in any case against their prince'.
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This is the doctrine of resistance, which was anathema to the Tudors and to Henry above all. Indeed, the implications of Latimer's remark are
so
radical that it seems doubtful that he was the sole author of it. Instead, there must be a suggestion of discussion with a stronger, more questioning intelligence than Latimer ever showed himself to be.
so
radical that it seems doubtful that he was the sole author of it. Instead, there must be a suggestion of discussion with a stronger, more questioning intelligence than Latimer ever showed himself to be.
And, as we shall see, his likely interlocutor, and the key to much that is puzzling about Latimer's behaviour, is Sir Francis Bigod.
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So much, for the moment, for Lord Latimer. But what of Lady Latimer? For the Pilgrimage was a movement in which women showed themselves at least as active as their menfolk. Indeed, it was often the wife who took the lead, and the husband who vacillated prudentially – as with Mr and Mrs Christopher Stapleton. Stapleton, an elderly and valetudinarian gentleman, was in the habit of spending his summers in the Grey Friars at Beverley for a change of air. This meant that he was caught in the town when Beverley declared for the rebels on 8 October. Stapleton ordered his people to remain within the Friary. But his wife defied him and went outside to greet the crowds: 'God's blessing have ye', she cried, 'and speed you well in your good purpose.' Still worse, she betrayed the hiding place of her husband and his servants. 'They be in the Friars', she volunteered, 'go pull them out by the heads!' 'What do you mean', the wretched Stapleton exclaimed when the virago returned indoors, 'except ye would have me, my son and heir, and my brother cast away?' 'It was God's quarrel', she replied simply.
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