Charlie Fenton’s Reviews > Katherine the Queen: The Remarkable Life of Katherine Parr > Status Update

‘Lady Mary Seymour never claimed any remaining part of her father’s estate, and this is the last record we have of her. Her grant from the council was not renewed in September 1550, when it would have fallen due. The assumption must therefore be, in the absence of any further reference, that she was dead by the time of her second birthday.’

‘Still smarting at his relative political insignificance, this half-play, half-serious pursuit of Henry VIII’s younger daughter was an amusing diversion. Her reactions, and the occasional scolding of Katherine Ashley (who was more than a little sweet on him herself) doubtless encouraged him still more.’

‘Katherine herself had nothing directly to say about the events of the summer of 1546. Yet, even if we discount the veracity of Foxe’s verbatim account of how her downfall was planned and averted, Anne Askew’s fate definitely points to a concerted attempt to incriminate some of the ladies who were closest to Katherine.’

‘Nobody can say with absolute certainty what happened to the relationship between the king and the queen in the final twelve months of Henry’s reign. The highly coloured accounts of plots, hysterics and reconciliations described by the martyrologist John Foxe are not precisely contemporary, though they may have been partly based on recollections of people close to Queen Katherine at the time.'

‘It seems safe to say that when she married Henry there was nothing about Katherine that set alarm bells ringing with him or with conservatives like Stephen Gardiner. But she may, or course, have been good at concealing her hand, a trait that would present her as a conniving woman and not an entirely appealing one. She was certainly seen as pious but that was entirely proper in a woman of her class and background

‘It is impossible to say when she first became aware of this compelling attraction - perhaps she did not know herself - but, as soon as Lord Latimer was laid to rest, Katherine was more than willing to be wooed. As she told Seymour four years later: ‘as truly as God is God, my mind was fully bent the other time I was at liberty to marry you before any man I know’. Nothing could be plainer.’

‘Yet Latimer had many positive attributes. He was neither cruel nor vindictive - he was no wife-beater, like the duke of Norfolk - and he was not controlling or unfaithful. He strove to be a good provider, even if he was not always a valiant protector. And in fairness to Latimer, his life was very far from straightforward. He was the eldest of fifteen children’

‘The indirect evidence is contradictory but what can be said is that her subsequent husbands all seem to have believed that she could bear children. Whether this was based on optimism as opposed to her past history we cannot know, but it is, of course, indisputable that almost two decades after she and Edward Borough were married, she bore a healthy child.’

‘While her husband used his charm and courtier’s training, Maud became a lady-in-waiting to Queen Katherine and served her faithfully for the rest of her life... between 1512 and 1515, three healthy children came in close succession. The oldest of these was a girl. She was christened Katherine, after the queen, who may also have been her godmother.’