Catherine Parr - Queen of England and Ireland

Queen of England and Ireland

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 later became 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).

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". She came under suspicion that she was actually a Protestant by the mid-1540s, as we would now understand the term. This view is supported by the some strong reformed ideas that she revealed 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, which the Catholic Church deemed to be heresy. It is 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.

The Queen's religious views were 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 saw the warrant and 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. The following day an armed guard who was unaware of the reconciliation tried to arrest her while she walked with the King.