HERTFORD BECAME, for a while, something like a dictator. A new religious policy of Protestant radicalism began. The Mass was abolished, church interiors whitewashed, a new Prayer Book installed. Whether Henry VIII wished for any of this is very doubtful, but he had secured his main aim – the preservation of the Royal Supremacy for the young Edward VI. By the time Edward reached fifteen, in late 1552, his own personality as a radical and rather severe reformer was emerging. Had he lived as long as his father, which no one saw any reason to doubt, a Protestant revolution, as thoroughgoing as that which took place in 1560s Scotland, would probably have become firmly established. But by one of history’s ironies, Edward died from tuberculosis in 1553, a few months short of his sixteenth birthday.
The throne then passed to the King’s elder daughter Mary, who reversed course all the way back to papal allegiance, renounced the Royal Supremacy, re-established monasticism and married the Catholic Prince (later King) Philip of Spain. But in 1558, after only five years’ rule, Mary too died, probably of cancer, and the throne passed to Elizabeth, who re-established Protestantism, albeit of a distinctly moderate kind.
It has often been suggested that the ‘Protestant’ and ‘Catholic’ factions at Henry’s court were motivated more by desire for power than any religious conviction, and indeed many councillors – Paget, Rich, Cecil and others – managed to survive and hold office under both Edward and Mary, the younger councillors continuing to serve Elizabeth. But Edward’s senior councillors, who implemented radical Protestantism, were mainly former Henrician radicals, while Mary’s were mainly former Henrician conservatives. This reminds us that while many clerics and councillors were motivated by the desire for power and wealth, it is a mistake to think the Tudor ruling classes took religion lightly.
THE STORY OF the last two years of Catherine Parr’s life is tragic. To her disappointment, she did not become Regent. Then this most capable and usually astute woman decided to follow her heart rather than her head, and quickly married her old love, the Protector’s brother Thomas Seymour. The result was disastrous. She moved with him (and the teenage Elizabeth) to Seymour’s castle at Sudeley. There, at thirty-five, Catherine fell pregnant for the first time. Thomas Seymour, who had probably married Catherine because of her status as Queen Dowager, diverted himself during his wife’s pregnancy with sexual abuse of the fourteen-year-old Elizabeth. When Catherine found out, Elizabeth was sent away from the household of the stepmother she had been close to for four years.
In September 1548 Catherine gave birth to a daughter, but like so many Tudor women, she died shortly afterwards from an infection of the womb. In the delirium of her last days she accused her husband of mocking and betraying her.
Seymour, who seems by now to have been hardly sane, then launched a crack-brained plot, in February 1549, to seize his young nephew Edward VI, and perhaps make himself Protector in his brother’s place. He had no support whatever, was immediately arrested and executed for treason in March 1549. Elizabeth, hearing of his execution, is said to have remarked, ‘Today died a man of much wit and little judgement.’ As so often, she summed things up exactly.
Catherine’s baby, the now orphaned Mary Seymour, passed into the care of Catherine’s friend the Dowager Duchess of Suffolk, but disappears from the records after 1550, and must have died in infancy like so many Tudor children. It was the saddest of endings to the story of Catherine Parr.