Tudor Women by Alison Plowden

Author:Alison Plowden
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780752467160
Publisher: History Press (Perseus)
Published: 2013-10-24T16:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER SIX

When Women

Become Such Clerks

Under the beneficent rule of Queen Katherine Parr, scholarly pursuits once more became fashionable at Court. Following in the footsteps of pious and serious-minded ladies like Margaret Beaufort and Catherine of Aragon, Katherine Parr took an informed interest in intellectual matters and was a lively patron of the New Learning. She encouraged the Princess Mary to exercise her mind and make use of her Latin by embarking on a translation of Erasmus’s paraphrase of the Gospel of St John, and she is generally credited with helping to secure the appointment of John Cheke, lecturer in Greek and Fellow of Margaret Beaufort’s foundation of St John’s College Cambridge, as principal tutor to the six-year-old Prince of Wales. But more important – more important indeed than the Queen would ever know – was her determination to ensure that the Princess Elizabeth should receive the same high standard of education as her brother and sister.

Henry’s younger daughter was ten years old now, a pale, redheaded girl, becoming a little withdrawn and inclined to stand stiffly on her dignity. Since Anne Boleyn’s disgrace, the motherless Elizabeth had been living with her household staff in one or other of the numerous royal manors scattered around the Home Counties, usually sharing an establishment with either her brother or sister. She was not neglected in any obvious sense. Her father was quite fond of her when he remembered her existence, and she took her place as a member of the family on state occasions – she’d made her debut at Prince Edward’s christening and had been present at the official celebrations to welcome Anne of Cleves – but until the advent of Katherine Parr there had been no influential personage at Court with the will or the power to take a special interest in her welfare, and her upbringing had been left pretty well entirely in the hands of her governess.

Katherine Parr was fully aware of the dangers and difficulties attached to the position of Henry VIII’s sixth wife, but being a woman of spirit and strong principles she intended not only to survive but to make a success of the task to which she believed God had called her. It was part of her policy from the beginning to work to unite the royal family and to establish good relations with her stepchildren, thus creating a power base for herself which would be independent of any rival faction. This was intelligent thinking and an undertaking for which the Queen, with her warm outgoing personality, was especially suited. She and Mary already knew and respected each other, and now they became firm friends. The Queen saw to it that there was always a warm welcome for the Princess at Court, and when Mary went back to her Essex home, they corresponded regularly (often in Latin), exchanged presents and lent one another small services or servants with special skills.

Katherine experienced no difficulty either in gaining the trust of young Prince Edward. The boy was genuinely fond of her and began calling her ‘mother’ almost at once.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.