fying him with Edward, lord Borough of Gainsborough, an old man said to have been ‘distracted of memorie,’ whose second son had married a woman fourteen years Catherine's senior. Catherine herself could have been little more than a girl at the time, for she was certainly not seventeen at the utmost when Lord Borough died, which was in 1529, if not earlier. But we know too well that such revolting unions were not uncommon in those days, and were approved of even by mothers generally studious of their children's welfare. Lady Maud died in 1529 also.
Catherine next became the wife of John Neville, lord Latimer, a nobleman of extensive possessions, who had been twice married already, and had two children by his second wife. Snape Hall in Yorkshire was his principal seat, but he also possessed considerable estates in Worcestershire, which he settled on Catherine. The most notable event in his life was the part he took in 1536 in the rising called the Pilgrimage of Grace. Lord Latimer was appointed by the insurgents one of their delegates to represent their grievances, and the result of the negotiations was a general pardon. A new rebellion broke out early in the following year, but from this movement Latimer kept himself clear. He seems to have been in favour with the king, as it appears that his wife interceded successfully, about 1540, for the release from prison of Sir George Throgmorton, her uncle by marriage, who had been involved in a charge of treason by the fact of his brother being in the service of Cardinal Pole.
Lord Latimer died towards the close of 1542, or perhaps in the beginning of 1543. His will, which was dated 12 Sept. 1542, bequeathed to his widow the manors of Nunmonkton and Hamerton. She was immediately sought in marriage by Sir Thomas Seymour, brother of the deceased queen Jane, who became lord admiral under Edward VI, and it seems that she fully intended to become his wife, but that her will, as she wrote to him in later days, was ‘overruled by a higher power.’ The higher power, whatever she may have meant by the expression, was in fact King Henry. It is stated, but not on very good authority, that when she first received his addresses she was terrified, and replied with considerable truth ‘that it was better to be his mistress than his wife.’ But this only made him press his suit the more, and on 12 July 1543, not many months after the decease of her last husband, she was married to the king at Hampton Court by Gardiner, bishop of Winchester, in the presence of Henry's two daughters, Mary and Elizabeth. That she exercised a really wholesome influence over the king there can be no doubt. At the time of her marriage the dreadful severities of the Act of the Six Articles were being daily enforced. Catherine interceded for the victims of this persecution, and its violence abated to some extent while she was queen. She also procured the restoration of both Henry's daughters Mary and Elizabeth, who had been for some years treated as bastards, to their position as princesses, and she interceded particularly for Elizabeth, who a year after her marriage incurred her father's displeasure, and obtained her pardon, for which Elizabeth wrote her a very grateful epistle.
In 1544 an act was passed enabling the king to settle the succession by will on any children that he might have by Catherine. This enactment was made in view of the fact that Henry was about to cross the Channel to invade France in person; and by an ordinance of the privy council Catherine was, on 7 July 1544, appointed regent in her husband's absence. Her signature as regent, of which many specimens exist, is not a little peculiar from the fact that she appended her initials (K. P., for Katherine Parr) to the name itself, which is always written ‘Kateryn the Quene Regente, K. P.’ In this capacity she ordered, on 19 Sept., a public thanksgiving for the taking of Boulogne. But Henry returned to England on 1 Oct., and her regency was at an end.
The interest taken by Catherine in the studies and education of her step-children appears in many ways. Some have thought that even the handwriting of young Edward VI bears a resemblance to hers, which must have been due to her personal superintendence of his schooling, and it is a fact that Edward himself, writing to her in French, praises her belle écriture as something which apparently made him ashamed to write himself. But a more striking evidence was given on the last day of this same year, 1544, by the Princess Elizabeth, then little more than eleven years old, presenting her with an autograph translation, ‘out of French rhyme into English prose,’ of a work entitled ‘The Glasse of the Synneful Soule,’ beautifully written on vellum in small 4to, which she submitted to her for correction and improvement. Further, we have a letter from Catherine herself to the Princess Mary encouraging her to publish a translation of Erasmus's ‘Paraphrase of the Gospels’ with her own name appended. Piety and love of letters were indeed marked features of Catherine's character. Ascham addressed her in
