Katherine the Queen: The Remarkable Life of Katherine Parr by Linda Porter

God. The slavish subjection to the papacy was at an end. But many others, perhaps the majority of the population, felt a profound sense of dislocation. Their doubts could not be assuaged by legislation, no matter how far-reaching it might be.
    It had been acknowledged for years that the king wanted toput aside Katherine of Aragon. At the time that Katherine married Lord Latimer, Henry VIII’s first wife, now known as the Princess Dowager (a title so patronizing that one cannot blame her for despising it), was banished from court and living at Kimbolton Castle on the edge of the fens in Huntingdonshire. She had not seen her daughter, Mary (also banished from court and living in the household of Anne Boleyn’s daughter, Elizabeth) for three years. Some of the nobility, particularly women, had been brave enough to support her openly, but despite her continued defiance, Anne Boleyn’s triumph over her would have seemed a reality in 1534. Mary, bastardized and disinherited when Elizabeth was born, had suffered severe stress and psychological harassment, as well as serious bouts of illness. But she was still refusing to acknowledge the change to her status or the invalidity of her parents’ marriage. Her position must have seemed all but hopeless to outside, but not necessarily disinterested, observers like the Latimers. Lord Latimer had conformed sufficiently to sign the letter of the nobility to Rome supporting the divorce and he had sat in parliament as the programme of reform was pushed through, but the substance of it was against his own personal inclinations. At this stage, like others, he kept his doubts to himself.
    The legislative process that led to the complete break with Rome had begun in 1532 but reached its height in the year that Katherine Parr married Lord Latimer. In 1534 were passed the Act of Supremacy, a new Act of Succession (which ignored Mary), supported by the leading nobility of England, the Ecclesiastical Licences Act, which upheld English as opposed to papal law, and an act that banned the payment of Church taxation to Rome; henceforward, the Crown would take one-tenth of clerical income. In a sweeping move to stifle dissent, further legislation made criticism of the Boleyn marriage treasonable, as were accusations of heresy or schism against the king. It was in this atmosphere of ruthless determination and suppression of opponents that the Latimers and their relatives lived their dailylives. There were quite evidently advantages to be had if opportunity and care were skilfully combined. But there was also danger and difficulty, particularly for anyone suspected of being less than completely loyal. Cuthbert Tunstall, Katherine’s distant cousin, knew this only too well.
    Katherine’s second marriage must have been a minor consideration to her kinsman, the bishop of Durham, in the year 1534. Or perhaps he found his involvement in it a welcome relief from the extreme pressure that he was put under to conform to the king’s will. For three years, he had been trying to balance his conscience with political expediency. He had defended Katherine of Aragon, but not with the vigour or absolute conviction of the bishop of Rochester, John Fisher. He had been bold enough to tell Henry that he could not be Head of the Church in spiritual matters and he may well have been one of the four bishops of the northern convocation who voted against the divorce (direct evidence is lacking), but he recognized that the queen’s cause was hopeless, and never attempted to lead any organized opposition to Henry. In fact, he attended Anne Boleyn’s coronation. But it did not end there. On a personal level, he felt he could not just keep quiet. There was too much at stake; he dreaded rejection by the whole of Christendom and exposure to the predations of foreign powers seeking to take advantage of England, as, he pointed out in a letter to the king, Henry himself had done when he invaded France more than twenty years before.