The James Kettle Moment #15: The Secret Life Of Catherine Parr

James Kettle
Aug 23, 2017 · 3 min read
Picture by Idil Sukan

Henry VIII’s sixth and final wife, Catherine Parr, remains one of the most enigmatic figures of the Tudor era. While we know that she did not become a victim of the political intrigues that serially surrounded her husband’s marriages — ultimately outliving him by one year — and we have evidence of her sympathy towards the emerging teachings of Protestantism, little has ever been published regarding her personality or day-to-day concerns during her three and a half years as Queen of England. Today’s Moment therefore represents something of a watershed in the field of historical scholarship.

HAMPTON COURT 1543

Queen Catherine stood at the leaded window, gazing out at the gardens belonging to her kingly husband. Although her face was fair, her mind was full of complex emotions, of the kind to be depicted in the form of theatre by William Shakespeare less than forty years hence.

In the lavishly-apportioned state room behind her, her kindly maidservant Bess — who combined an ever-cheerful manner with a bosom just the right height for weeping into — attended to the tucking in of Catherine’s bedclothes.

Bess gazed fondly towards her mistress. “You’re such a lucky lady, your majesty,” she said. “Any woman that marries good King Henry is sure to live happily ever after!” The maid paused, a troublesome thought intruding upon her simple countenance. “Well, apart from his first wife. And the one after her. And the one after that. And the one after the one after that. And the other one. Apart from all of them, any woman that marries good King Henry is sure to live happily ever after.”

Catherine nodded, but her face was full of pensive thought. “Bess,” she said, in a voice of the purest crystal, “if I’m completely honest, I do feel slightly worried about my future.”

The maid’s face puckered in confusion. “Why, ma’am?” she asked. “Why would you have grounds for any form of fear or apprehension?”

“You know what happened to my husband’s previous wives?” replied Catherine. The queen paused. What she was about to say was difficult, but she knew she had to share it with someone. “Bess, you know that people have made up a rhyme.”

The maid beamed. “Indeed I do, Madam. ‘Divorced, Beheaded, Died, Divorced, Beheaded, Question Mark.’”

“That’s it,” replied Catherine, “that’s the problem. The rhyme’s not finished. I don’t know how it’s going to end.”

The maidservant tried to comfort the troubled queen. “It might be something nice,” Bess pointed out. “It might be ‘Divorced, Beheaded, Died, Divorced, Beheaded, Had A Lovely Long Life And Passed Away Peacefully In Her Sleep.’”

Catherine shook her head. “I don’t think so. It doesn’t rhyme with the first bit. It has to be something that rhymes with ‘died’.”

“Like what?” asked the puzzled Bess, whose education was rudimentary and did not extend to professional versification.

“I don’t know!” said the queen, flushing with irritation. “That’s why I have to be constantly on my guard, in case at any moment the king comes up with a horrible new way of getting rid of me that rhymes with ‘died’.”

Bess nodded. She was beginning to understand the problem. “Like ‘Divorced, Beheaded, Died, Divorced, Beheaded, Poisoned With Cyanide,’” she offered.

The queen nodded.

Bess was warming to her task. “Or ‘Tied Up In A Sack And Left On A Mountainside. Brackets, to be eaten by wolves.’”

The queen nodded again, more curtly this time. “Yes, thank you Bess,” she said.

“Here madam, what about this?” the humble serving girl said. “How about ‘Divorced, Beheaded, Died, Divorced, Beheaded, Cryogenically Revived.’”

The queen frowned. Bess’s words had caught her royal attention. “Cryogenically revived?” she asked. “What’s that?”

“Well,” replied Bess, “you know the cold meat locker where we keep the boiled hams and the birds inside birds inside birds inside birds? What we can do is stick you down there and wait until you freeze into a block of ice, then in a million years humans of the future will restore you using nanotechnology, bolt back on any bits of your body that are falling off and allow you to reign among them forever as Queen Catherine The Undead.”

There was a long silence in the bedchamber, broken only by the distant sound of King Henry playing Greensleeves on the harpsichord.

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