Catherine Parr (c.1512[1] /11 November 1512 – 5 September 1548) was the last of the six wives of Henry VIII of England. During her third marriage, she was queen consort of England and the first queen consort of Ireland. She was the most-married English queen, as she had four husbands.
Catherine married Henry VIII on 12 July 1543 at Hampton Court Palace. She was the first Queen of England also to be Queen of Ireland following Henry's adoption of the title King of Ireland. As Queen, Catherine was partially responsible for reconciling Henry with his daughters from his first two marriages, who would later become Queen Mary I and Queen Elizabeth I. She also developed a good relationship with Henry's son Edward, Prince of Wales, later King Edward VI. When she became Queen, her uncle Lord Parr of Horton became her Lord Chamberlain.
For three months, from July to September 1544, Catherine was appointed regent by Henry as he went on his last, unsuccessful, campaign in France. Thanks to her uncle having been appointed as member of her regency council, and to the sympathies of fellow appointed councillors Thomas Cranmer (the Archbishop of Canterbury) and Lord Hertford, Catherine obtained effective control and was able to rule as she saw fit. She handled provision, finances and musters for Henry's French campaign, signed five Royal proclamations, and maintained constant contact with her lieutenant in the northern Marches, Lord Shrewsbury, over the complex and unstable situation with Scotland. It is thought that her actions as regent, together with her strength of character and noted dignity, and later religious convictions, greatly influenced her stepdaughter Lady Elizabeth (the future Queen Elizabeth I).
Her religious views were complex, and the issue is clouded by the lack of evidence. Although she must have been brought up as a Catholic, given her birth before the Protestant Reformation, she later became sympathetic to and interested in the "New Faith." It has been hypothesised that she was actually a Protestant by the mid-1540s, as we would now understand the term. We can be sure that she held some strong reformed ideas after Henry's death, when her second book, Lamentacions of a synner (Lamentations of a Sinner), was published in late 1547. The book promoted the Protestant concept of justification by faith alone, something which the Catholic Church deemed to be heresy. It is extremely unlikely that she developed these views in the short time between Henry's death and the publication of the book. Her sympathy with Anne Askew, the Protestant martyr who fiercely opposed the Catholic belief of transubstantiation, also suggests that she was more than merely sympathetic to the new religion.
Regardless of whether she formally converted, which is unlikely, the Queen was reformed enough to be viewed with suspicion by Catholic and anti-Protestant officials such as Stephen Gardiner (the Bishop of Winchester) and Lord Wriothesley (the Lord Chancellor), who tried to turn the king against her in 1546. An arrest warrant was drawn up for her and rumours abounded across Europe that the King was attracted to her close friend, the Duchess of Suffolk. However, she managed to reconcile with the King after vowing that she had only argued about religion with him to take his mind off the suffering caused by his ulcerous leg.
Following Henry's death on 28 January 1547, he had secured her with an allowance of ₤7,000 per year benefitting her station. He further ordered, after his death, though a queen dowager, she be given the respect of a Queen of England, as if he were still alive. Catherine was able to marry her old love, Lord Seymour of Sudeley (as Sir Thomas Seymour had become). As they married within six months of the old king's death, they had to obtain the king's permission for the match. When their union became public knowledge, it caused a small scandal. Catherine became pregnant for the first time, by Seymour, at age thirty-five. This pregnancy was a surprise as Catherine had not conceived a child during her first three marriages. During this time, a rivalry developed between Catherine and the Duchess of Somerset, the wife of her husband's brother, the Duke of Somerset (as Lord Hertford had become), which became particularly acute over the matter of Catherine's jewels. The duchess argued that the jewels belonged to the Queen of England, and that as queen dowager, Catherine was no longer entitled to them. Instead she, as the wife of the protector, should be the one to wear them. She invoked the Act of Succession which clearly stated that Catherine had precedence over all ladies in the realm; in point of fact, as regards precedence, the Duchess of Somerset came after the Ladies Mary and Elizabeth, and Anne of Cleves, styled the King's Sister. Eventually, the duchess won the argument, which left her relationship with Catherine permanently damaged; the relationship between the two Seymour brothers also worsened as a result, since Lord Seymour saw the whole dispute as a personal attack by his brother on his social standing. Catherine's marriage also came under strain. Sex during pregnancy was frowned upon during the sixteenth century and Seymour began to take a possibly unhealthy interest in the Lady Elizabeth (Catherine's teenage step-daughter, and future Queen Elizabeth I), who was living in their household. He had reputedly plotted to marry her before marrying Catherine, and it was reported later that Catherine discovered the two in an embrace. On a few occasions before the situation risked getting completely out of hand, Catherine appears not only to have acquiesced in episodes of sexually charged horseplay, but actually to have assisted her husband. Whatever actually happened, Elizabeth was sent away in May 1548 to stay with Sir Anthony Denny's household at Cheshunt and never saw her beloved stepmother again, although the two corresponded.
Catherine gave birth to her only child — a daughter, Mary Seymour, named after her stepdaughter— on 30 August 1548, and died only six days later, on 5 September 1548, at Sudeley Castle in Gloucestershire, from what is thought to be puerperal fever or puerperal sepsis, also called childbed fever. Coincidentally, this was also the illness that killed Henry's third wife, Jane Seymour. It was not uncommon, due to the lack of hygiene around childbirth. It has been suspected that Catherine's husband, Sir Thomas Seymour, may have poisoned her in order to carry out his plan to marry Lady Elizabeth (the future Queen Elizabeth I).
Lord Seymour of Sudeley was beheaded for treason less than a year later, and Mary was taken to live with the Dowager Duchess of Suffolk, a close friend of Catherine. After a year and a half, Mary's property was restored to her by an Act of Parliament, easing the burden of the infant's household on the duchess. The last mention of Mary Seymour on record is on her second birthday, and although stories circulated that she eventually married and had children, most historians believe she died as a child.
