Posted: 2/7/2019
Motto: The influence of women on history has been enormously greater than we are made to believe by feminists or by many historians!
Just watched Lucy Worsley’s video documentary of Elizabeth I’s Battle for God’s Music (Source 1). Catherine Parr was quite an impressive and influential lady.
The last wife, Catherine Parr, had four husbands herself. “[S]he is the most-married English queen”, but her husbands apparently died of natural causes (Source 2). Not bad! There might be more to her four husbands: Did Catherine shrewdly select her husbands? Her first husband was sickly and did not live long. Her second husband was twice widowed and twice her age (about 48). “Although Latimer [her second husband] was in financial difficulties after he and his brothers had pursued legal action to claim the title of Earl of Warwick, Catherine now had a home of her own, a title and a husband with a position and influence in the north.” (Source 2; emphasis added). Apparently, her second husband got into a religious controversy that threatened his and his families life. Nevertheless, Henry VIII decided to marry this lady and to become her third husband.
“Catherine enjoyed a close relationship with Henry's three children and was personally involved in the education of Elizabeth I and Edward VI. … Her book Prayers or Meditations became the first book published by an English queen under her own name. She assumed the role of Elizabeth's guardian following the King's death, and published a second book, The Lamentation of a Sinner.” (Source 2; emphasis added). It is quite possible that she was, what we call now, the role model for Elizabeth I.
“On account of Catherine's Protestant sympathies, she provoked the enmity of anti-Protestant officials, who sought to turn the King against her; a warrant for her arrest was drawn up in 1545. However, she and the King soon reconciled.” (Source 2; emphasis added)
“Henry went on his last, unsuccessful, campaign to France from July to September 1544, leaving Catherine as his regent. Because her regency council was composed of sympathetic members, including her uncle, 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 Elizabeth I of England).” (Source 2; emphasis added)
“By the mid-1540s, she came under suspicion that she was actually a Protestant. This view is supported by the strong reformed ideas that she revealed after Henry's death, when her second book, Lamentacion of a synner (Lamentation 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. ” (Source 2; emphasis added). You may call Catherine Parr a female Martin Luther.
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