Though the twice-widowed Catherine’s heart was definitely with Thomas Seymour, Henry VIII had other plans for his future and final wife. He took to spending time at his daughter Princess Mary’s court, where Catherine was part of the household, and eventually dispatched Seymour on an important – and open duration – diplomatic mission on the Continent.
It took some wooing, but Catherine finally accepted the King’s marriage proposal, and the couple were wed in July 1543 at Hampton Court Palace. Catherine was an exceptional Queen for him. She was deeply engaged in loving relationships with Henry’s children, and her influence went a long way to stitching together some sort of family dynamic after the traumas of his exile of Mary’s mother and his murder of Elizabeth’s.
And she thrived in the role. Catherine is the first woman in England to publish a book in her own name, and stood for the first full-length portrait of an English queen, with a rare and fabulously expensive Turkish rug under her feet, as a king would be presented. She was a reformer at heart who only landed seriously on Henry’s bad side once, it seems, but was also enough of a diplomat to smooth things over and, let’s be honest, possibly save herself from a bad morning on the Tower Green.
We leave this episode with Henry’s death, but that’s not the end of Catherine Parr’s story.
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