Catherine Parr

 

Catherine Parr, sometimes alternatively spelled Katherine, Katheryn, Kateryn or Katharine (1512 – 5 September 1548), was Queen of England and Ireland (1543–47) as the last of the six wives of King Henry VIII, and the final queen consort of the House of Tudor. She married him on 12 July 1543, and outlived him by a year and eight months.

Catherine enjoyed a close relationship with Henry's three children and was personally involved in the education of her stepchildren Elizabeth I and Edward VI. She was influential in Henry's passing of the Third Succession Act in 1543 that restored both his daughters, Mary and Elizabeth, to the line of succession to the throne.

Henry died on 28 January 1547. After the king's death, Catherine was allowed to keep the queen's jewels and dresses as queen dowager. About six months after Henry's death, she married her fourth and final husband, Thomas Seymour, 1st Baron Seymour of Sudeley. The marriage was short-lived, as she died on Wednesday, 5 September 1548 due to complications of childbirth. Parr's funeral was held on 7 September 1548. Parr's funeral was the first Protestant funeral in England, Scotland or Ireland to be held in English.

 

On his deathbed in 1547, King Henry VIII of England  looks back over his eventful private life, which included six very different wives. From the early disappointments of his marriage to the loyal and devout Katherine of Aragon , Henry moved to his controversial union with the seductive and clever Lady Anne Boleyn, but turned against her in the most brutal fashion. After her death, he married the meek and mild Jane Seymour, but their marriage did not last long and it was followed by a disastrous arranged match with an unattractive German princess Henry then re-married the beautiful and sweet-natured Lady Catherine Howard - a girl young enough to be his granddaughter. Eventually, he becomes convinced of her adultery and has her executed, only to find comfort in his old age in marriage to a respectable widow.

In common parlance, the wives of Henry VIII were the six queens consort wedded to Henry between 1509 and his death in 1547. In legal terms, King Henry VIII of England had only three wives, because three of his marriages were annulled by the Church of England. However, he was never granted an annulment by the Pope, as he desired, for Catherine of Aragon, his first wife. Annulments declare that a true marriage never took place, unlike a divorce, in which a married couple end their union. Along with his six wives, Henry took several mistresses. He executed two of his wives, Anne Boleyn and Catherine Howard.