Following the King's death, she assumed the role of guardian to her stepdaughter, Elizabeth, and took Henry's great-niece Lady Jane Grey into her household.

On account of her Protestant sympathies, she provoked the enmity of anti-Protestant officials, who sought to turn the King against her; a warrant for her arrest was drawn up, probably in the spring of 1546.

Sir Thomas was a close companion to King Henry VIII, and was rewarded as such with responsibilities and/or incomes from his positions as Sheriff of Northamptonshire, Master of the Wards, and Comptroller of the Household, in addition to being the lord of Kendal.

Historians now consider it unlikely that Sir Thomas would have taken his pregnant wife on an arduous two-week journey north over bad roads to give birth in a crumbling castle in which neither of them seemed to spend much time.

[17] According to biographer Linda Porter, the story that as a child, Catherine could not tolerate sewing and often said to her mother that "my hands are ordained to touch crowns and sceptres, not spindles and needles" is very likely apocryphal.

[23] Latimer was a supporter of the Catholic Church and had opposed the King's first annulment, his subsequent marriage to Anne Boleyn, and the religious consequences.

The King himself wrote to Thomas Howard, 3rd Duke of Norfolk, pressing him to make sure Latimer would "condemn that villain [Robert] Aske and submit to our clemency".

By Henry's mother and Catherine's father they were third cousins once removed, sharing Ralph Neville, 1st Earl of Westmorland, and Lady Joan Beaufort (granddaughter of Edward III), and by their fathers they were double fourth cousins once removed,[28] sharing Thomas Holland, 2nd Earl of Kent (son of Joan of Kent) and Lady Alice FitzAlan (granddaughter of Henry, 3rd Earl of Lancaster) and John of Gaunt, 1st Duke of Lancaster (son of Edward III) and Katherine Swynford.

On becoming queen, Catherine installed her former stepdaughter, Margaret Neville, as her lady-in-waiting,[23] and gave her cousin Maud, Lady Lane and her stepson John's wife, Lucy Somerset, positions in her household.

The "Ninth Psalm" was set to pre-existing music by Thomas Tallis and was likely performed as part of special wartime ceremony at St. Paul's Cathedral on 22 May 1544.

She handled provision, finances, and musters for Henry's French campaign, signed five royal proclamations, and maintained constant contact with her lieutenant in the northern Marches, Lord Shrewsbury, over the complex and unstable situation with Scotland.

[39] In this case, Parr's compositional method was a complex one as she reworked the third book of Thomas à Kempis's Imitatio Christi to produce a monologue spoken by a generic Christian speaker.

Princess Elizabeth translated the work into Latin, Italian and French as a New Year's gift for Henry VIII in December 1545 and presented the manuscript in a beautiful hand-embroidered cover.

This view is supported by the strong reformed ideas that she revealed after Henry's death, when her third book, Lamentation of a Sinner, was published in late 1547.

Since only four months had passed since the death of King Henry, Seymour knew that the Regency council would not agree to a petition for the Queen Dowager to marry so soon.

In 1544 or 1545, Parr had started to organise an English translation of Erasmus's Paraphrases Upon the New Testament, and the massive volume was finally printed in January 1548.

Parr had enlisted Nicholas Udall, Thomas Keyes and Mary Tudor to translate different sections and she may have produced the paraphrase of Matthew.

In July 1547 the Edwardian state ordered every parish to obtain a copy and many generations of literate parishioners would have encountered lengthy dedications praising Parr's learning, her commitment to the vernacular Bible, and her role in the English reformation.

On a few occasions before the situation risked getting completely out of hand, according to the deposition of Kat Ashley, Catherine appears not only to have acquiesced in episodes of horseplay, but actually to have assisted her husband.

[53] After Catherine's death, Ashley strongly encouraged Elizabeth to write to Seymour offering her condolences; to "comfort him of his sorrow...for he would think great kindness therein.

The last mention of Mary Seymour on record is on her second birthday, and although stories circulated that she eventually married and had children, most historians believe she died as a child at Grimsthorpe Castle in Lincolnshire.

[58] During the English Civil War, Sudeley Castle was used as a base by King Charles I, leading to its siege and sack by Parliamentarians in January 1643, during which Catherine's grave was probably disturbed and her monument destroyed.

Contemporary writer Bruno Ryves reported that: "There is in the castle a goodly fair church, here they dug up the graves, and disturb the ashes of the dead, they break down the monuments of the Chandoses".

[59] The castle changed hands several times during the war, suffering a second siege, before being slighted in 1649, leading to it being largely abandoned, and the royal grave lost.

[60] Joseph Lucas, a member of the local gentry who dwelled in the outer court of the castle, renting it from Baron Rivers, was aware of Huggett's work and searched for the lost grave, discovering it among the ruins of the chapel in 1782.

[62] During these various openings of the coffin, fragments of Catherine's dress and locks of her hair were collected, one of which was gifted to Elizabeth Hamilton[clarification needed].

The coffin was last moved in 1861 to its final location in the fully restored chapel, under a canopied neo-Gothic tomb designed by Sir George Gilbert Scott, with a recumbent marble figure by John Birnie Philip.

Lady Jane Grey, although of royal blood, was a relatively obscure child of eight when this was painted (c. 1545); it was to be another eight years before the short-lived attempt at placing her on the throne.

[68] The popular myth that Catherine Parr acted more as her husband's nurse than his wife was born in the 19th century from the work of Victorian moralist and proto-feminist Agnes Strickland.

Biographers have described her as strong-willed and outspoken, physically desirable, susceptible (like Queen Elizabeth) to roguish charm, and even willing to resort to obscene language if the occasion suited.