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ByParissa DJangi
Published September 26, 2023
• 7 min read
“Divorced, beheaded, died; divorced, beheaded, survived”: This rhyme has helped generations of students of British royal history keep King Henry VIII’s six wives straight.
History may remember Catherine Parr, Henry’s sixth wife, as someone who merely “survived” her marriage, but her life—now the subject of Firebrand, a biopic starring Alicia Vikander and Jude Law—neither began nor ended with the English king. Instead, Catherine was a gifted scholar and capable queen who played a significant role in shaping her kingdom’s future.
The reluctant queen
Born in 1512, Catherine Parr learned to embrace the power of her own mind from a young age. Her mother Maud—who served as a lady-in-waiting to Queen Catherine of Aragon, Henry’s first wife—understood the importance of learning, especially for girls. So she crafted a humanist education for her daughter, which likely included Latin, French, religious studies, and mathematics.
(Who are the real queens of Six, the musical about Henry VIII?)
The same fate that awaited most daughters of the upper classes awaited Catherine: marriage. By the time she was 31, she had been married and widowed twice. Her first husband, Sir Edward Burgh, died in 1533 after their four-year marriage. John Neville, Catherine’s second husband, was 19 years her senior and died in 1543.
Catherine followed in her mother’s footsteps in 1542 when she became a lady-in-waiting to King Henry VIII’s daughter Princess Mary. When Catherine arrived at court, a new man caught her eye: Thomas Seymour, brother of the king’s late third wife Jane Seymour, who had died in 1537. Her attraction to handsome, charismatic Seymour blossomed into love. As she would later confess to him, “my mind was fully bent […] to marry you before any man I know.”
But before Catherine could marry the love of her life, someone else at court pursued her: Henry VIII. Riddled with leg ulcers and gout, Henry in 1542 was a shadow of his former glory as England’s golden prince. He was also newly single. Earlier that year, he had executed his fifth wife, 18-year-old Catherine Howard. So, when the 52-year-old targeted 31-year-old Catherine Parr as his sixth bride, many assumed he was not looking for a wife but a nurse.
(How Anne Boleyn won and lost the heart of Henry VIII.)
Initially, Catherine neatly deflected Henry’s advances. But Henry would not relent. Eventually, she saw marriage to him as a God-given duty, one that “made me renounce utterly mine own will,” as she wrote years later. They married on July 12, 1543.
“In marrying the King rather than [Seymour],” wrote historian Jane Dunn, “Catherine Parr had sacrificed her heart for the sake of duty.”
Taking the reins
Catherine made the most of her sacrifice and embraced her royal role. Her tenure as queen consort exemplified what historian Sarah Gristwood called “a role beyond the usual consort’s function of a breeding machine.”
When Henry spent three months in France in 1544, he gave Catherine the keys to the kingdom. As regent, Catherine sifted through paperwork and worked with councillors to oversee state business. Her role also gave Henry’s two daughters “the opportunity to observe the kingdom in a queen’s charge,” argued scholar Janel Mueller—an opportunity that would prove quite useful.
Indeed, Catherine played another significant role: family mender. Henry had a complicated relationship with his children and even removed his daughters from the line of succession.
Mary was his eldest, and his marriage to her mother Catherine of Aragon had soured so dramatically that he severed England’s ties to the Catholic Church to divorce her. Henry’s second child was Elizabeth, whom he had labeled illegitimate in 1536 after he executed her mother, his second wife Anne Boleyn.
(This book vanished when Anne Boleyn was executed. Now it reveals her secrets.)
Finally, Henry’s third child and heir was Edward, whose mother Jane Seymour died shortly after childbirth in 1537.
Catherine developed loving relationships with all her stepchildren and worked to restore Henry’s broken family—and his daughters’ birthright. She advised Henry to reinstate their place in the line of succession behind Edward. In early 1544, Henry made it official by giving his assent to the Third Act of Succession, which would shape England for the rest of the century as each of his children would have a turn on the throne.
Crowning achievements
Following her mother’s legacy, Catherine Parr was a scholar in her own right. In 1545, she became a trailblazer as the first woman in England to publish an English-language work in her own name: Prayers or Meditations, a religious text.
She shared her love of learning with her stepchildren by shaping their education. Her bond with the precocious and spirited Elizabeth was especially strong, and Catherine encouraged the young princess’s sharp mind. She helped secure the scholar William Grindal as Elizabeth’s tutor, and his expertise in Greek likely encouraged Elizabeth’s gift for languages. Elizabeth even translated published works and gave them as gifts to her stepmother. When she presented her translation of Margaret of Angoulême’s French-language Mirror of the Sinful Soul, she bid Catherine to “rub out, polish and mend” the errors in her translation of the religious poem.
(Queen Elizabeth I’s reign set a golden legacy for Britain.)
However, Catherine’s devotion to Protestantism earned her critics at court. The English Reformation was still in full swing, and many nobles rejected what they considered to be zealous Protestantism. They complained Catherine claimed too much influence over the king. Some even called her a heretic.
But any stirrings of mutiny against her ended when Henry VIII died on January 28, 1547. Catherine was widowed yet again.
Shaping England’s future
Henry’s death ended Catherine’s tenure as queen, but it did not end her relationship with her stepchildren, especially Elizabeth. With Mary managing her own estates and Edward with a council of regents, the young princess—now second in line to the throne—became part of Catherine’s household at Old Manor in Chelsea.
Elizabeth was not the only newcomer there. Years of marriage to Henry had not quieted Catherine’s feelings for Thomas Seymour, her old flame. And so only four months into her widowhood, she married Seymour, an act that shocked the court.
But Seymour soon shifted his attention to 14-year-old Elizabeth. According to many accounts, he behaved inappropriately by tickling and hugging the young princess. To separate them—and likely to protect the girl—Catherine sent Elizabeth to live with friends.
Unbeknownst to either of them, it would be a final separation. On August 30, 1548, Catherine gave birth to a daughter she named after Princess Mary; she never recovered. When Catherine died on September 5, 1548, she was only 36.
Catherine may have outlived her royal husband, but she also created a legacy that outlived them both. When Catherine’s beloved stepdaughter inherited the throne in 1558 as Elizabeth I, she did so with the keen intellect and confidence that her stepmother had cultivated in her.
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