A NOTICE OF THE LIFE OF

KATHARINE PARR,

SIXTH QUEEN OF HENRY THE EIGHTH.

BY THE COUNTESS OF BLESSINGTON.

KATHARINE PARR, although not of a noble, was of a very ancient descent, connected paternally and maternally with some of the noblest families in England, and even with royalty itself, though it would be tedious to trace the precise degree of this relationship. It was, however, much clearer than that of Henry the Eighth with some of his former queens for whom he claimed the distinction, although in this instance he did not deem a dispensation from the pope necessary, on the ground of consanguinity. Katharine Parr lost her father when not more than five years old; but this loss was little injurious to her future welfare, for her mother, a domestic and sensible woman, bestowed such pains on her education as to fully cultivate her abilities, which, even while yet in childhood, gave proof that they were of no ordinary stamp. It is pleasing to look back on the domestic picture of the fair and youthful widow Lady Parr, surrounded by her three children, two daughters and a son, to whom she devoted all her thoughts and time in the tranquil solitude of the country seat bequeathed to her by her husband, while yet young enough--being only in her twentysecond year when her husband died—to entertain projects of forming another marriage.

Under the care of this excellent lady, and with the tuition of those capable of instructing her, Katharine Parr acquired

a knowledge, not only of the usual rudiments of female education, but of ancient and modern languages. Far from considering her studies as a wearisome task, she applied to them with a diligence which proved her pleasure in them, and her maturity bore plentiful fruits of her industry and love of learning.

Katharine married at a very early age the Lord Borough, a descendant of the de Burghs, celebrated in the reign of Henry the Third by the prominent part taken by one of its members, Hubert de Burgh, Earl of Kent, in the transactions of those troubled times. Many years the senior of his youthful bride, and with children by a former marriage older than her, Lord Borough found no cause to regret having chosen a wife of such tender age. They are said to have lived harmoniously during their union, and he died when she was only in her sixteenth year, leaving her a large dowry, which, added to her personal charms and cultivation of mind, rendered her one of the most attractive women in England: no wonder, then, that she had many suitors. Lord Latimer, although past his youth, and twice a widower, was the preferred; nor can this preference be attributed to mercenary motives, for Katharine's own fortune precluded these, though the vast wealth and noble seats of Lord Latimer might have tempted a less richly-dowered bride. Lord Latimer was the father of a son and daughter by his second wife, and such was the judicious and gentle conduct of Katharine towards them, and her unvaried kindness to their father, that she secured the affection and formed the happiness of the family. So admirable were the qualities of Lady Latimer, and so prudent and decorous were her manners, that she was looked up to with an esteem and veneration seldom accorded to so youthful a woman. She passed the greater portion of her time in the peaceful seclusion of the country, discharging, with zeal and tenderness, the duties of a wife and stepmother, proving herself the soother of the cares and infirmities of an elderly hus

band and the friend and adviser of his son and daughter. Though of acquirements so superior to the generality of her sex, she was totally exempt from the pedantry and free from the pretension which so often detract from superior knowledge in the young and beautiful. That she had already learned to think for herself may be concluded, when-with a husband old enough to be her father, and a prejudiced, if not a bigoted Roman Catholicshe, without embittering the peace and happiness of her conjugal life by a single argument on religious subjects, had sincerely turned her strong mind to the reformed religion, the seeds of which were now planted to bring forth their fruits at a later period.

Of Lord Latimer's devotion to the Roman Catholic faith, a strong, and to himself a dangerous proof, was given by his joining, as one of the leaders, the band associated in the north of England, and headed by Robert Ashe, to demand a restoration of the church property and monasteries, which led to an open insurrection, when an appeal to the sovereign was found ineffectual. Henry, to gain time, consented to grant the insurgents an amnesty, and proposed that they should send three hundred deputies to Doncaster to state their demands.1

It must have been a severe trial to his firm-minded but gentle wife, to know that her husband was among the bigots, not only urging the suppression of the writings of the great reformers of that epoch, but absolutely praying that they might, like their works, be condemned to the flames. A general pardon granted to the religious insurgents saved Katharine from the alarm into which her lord's participation in their fanaticism

1

Entre lesquels étoient Jean Lord Scrope, le Lord Latimer, Jean Lord Lumley," &c.-Rapin, tom. vi. liv. xv. page 399.

"Un certain Aske, homme d'un assez bon jugement, s'étoit fait chef des mécontents de ces quartiers-là, ou l'éloignement de la cour et le voisinage de l'Ecosse rendoient les gens plus hardis qu'ailleurs."-Rapin, livre xv. page 395.

must have involved her and him, from the heavy punishment which later befell the noblemen who, unmindful of the pardon once accorded them, a few months after broke out into fresh disturbances, for which they paid the penalty with their lives.

Katharine again became a widow, and by this event a large dowry from her second husband was added to her income. At liberty to follow the bias of her own convictions, she now turned to the study of that creed which the opposition that might naturally be expected from her late lord had previously prevented her from openly avowing. Assisted in her researches after truth by some of the ablest advocates of the reformation, she soon embraced with pious fervour the tenets she could no longer doubt. To adopt such a measure required no ordinary firmness and courage, at a period when persecution and death, in its fiercest forms, often awaited those who became converts to the Protestant faith during the reign of a sovereign who, however he might refuse to acknowledge the supremacy of the pope, when it opposed the indulgence of his own passions, was by no means disposed to adopt the religion to the extension of which nobler minds ardently aspired, and with the tyranny which characterised him, sought to prohibit to others the indulgence of that pure faith which his grovelling intellect could not comprehend. A tyrannical monarch, who sought to be the master, and not the father or friend of his people, would be precisely the one most disposed to adhere to a religion, among the dogmas of which, an absolute submission to the supremacy of its head inculcated a hardly less absolute submission to monarchical power, or if it did not inculcate, prepared the minds of subjects for its adoption. Those who have long yielded an implicit and unquestioned obedience to a spiritual master, will not be slow to yield a similar one to a temporal director, a fact of which Henry was well aware, so that although he had abjured the supremacy of the pope in his own peculiar

case, or when it might interfere with his projects, he was very unwilling to abandon altogether a creed which formed so good a nursery for the bringing up of men from whom absolute submission to their ruler was to be expected. Hence he was disposed to punish with the utmost severity the advocates of the reformed religion, while erroneously supposed to protect it; and as he felt no more respect for the gentler sex than for his own, would have visited with no less cruelty the female apostates from the old creed than the male. The courage, therefore, evinced by Katharine Parr in thus confronting danger, was no less remarkable than the piety which led her, while yet a youthful and lovely woman, in the possession of great wealth, and uncontrolled mistress of her own actions, to turn from the fascinations of pleasure, and the admiration she was formed to command, to devote her time to higher, nobler aims, in the study of her adopted religion, and the practice of its duties. But the austerity of her life, so unusual in her sex and at her age, did not deter suitors from seeking her hand. Among the most brilliant of these was one who had captivated many a female heart by his personal attractions, gallant bearing, and the art with which these advantages were exhibited when he wished to please. But perhaps the fair object to whom he now directed his attention was less struck by his manly comeliness, great as it was reported to be, than by the knowledge that he leaned to the creed she had adopted; for although Sir Thomas Seymour could not be considered a religious man, the mere fact that he preferred the reformed, to the ancient faith, must have pleaded greatly in his favour with Katharine, whose heart, softened by his assiduities, yielded itself to his keeping, and won her to consent to bestow her hand on him at no very distant day. Fate had decreed that this marriage was not to be, or at least not then; for Katharine, who had already been the wife of two elderly widowers, was reserved to become the

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