Page:The Queens of England.djvu/375

KATHARINE PARR. 335 they were the brightest ; and the fear of her fond remembrance being revealed, even by a glance, either to her jealous husband or her former lover, must have often haunted her. Henry had now grown as frightful in person as he was in mind. His obesity had increased to a degree that rendered him a moving mass of bloated infirmities, offering a remarkable contrast to the handsome and brilliant object of her first affection. If Katharine felt this, she so well concealed it that never could the prying eyes of those around her discover aught to draw even the slightest suspicion of her former preference to their minds. Although certainly the most esteemed, if not the most pas- sionately loved, of Henry's queens, Katharine Parr was never crowned. Motives of economy, and not any want of respect, were the cause of this omission in her case, an omission of eti- quette at which she was too prudent to experience any regret, being well acquainted with the difficulties under which the royal finances were then laboring, and which compelled Henry to have recourse to his parliament for relief. Had Katharine been vain of her erudition, she must have been gratified by the high opinion entertained of her acquire- ments by no less grave and learned a body than the university of Cambridge, as testified by a letter from that college ad- dressed to her in Latin, entreating her protection with the king, when they dreaded, and not without reason, that he meant to take advantage of the license granted by parliament, to possess himself of the incomes of colleges for his own use, and that, consequently, Cambridge would share the general fate which menaced all others. Katharine's pleadings in favor of this university were successful, and there is a charming mixture of naivete with well-acted modesty in the letter in which she an- nounced to the learned body that it had nothing to fear from the king, and the gravity with which, while renouncing all pre- tension to erudition, she delivers her advice on the studies to be professed and pursued by the students. This letter, like all others written by her after her elevation to the throne, con- tains such flattering and dexterous compliments to the king as indicate her tact and fear of exciting any jealousy in him by aught that could be deemed a pretension to the learning which he was ambitious to obtain credit for, and which had acquired for him the unmerited title of Defender of the Faith, a title to which Katharine had infinitely a better claim by her own writ- ings, and by the encouragement she afforded to the translation of the scriptures.