Katherine the Queen: The Remarkable Life of Katherine Parr by Linda Porter

in the face that commands attention. Katherine looks confident and resolute without seeming imperious. This is no giddy girl, rather a woman of grace and a maturity that belies her years. The portrait is carefully composed and Katherine evidently gave a great deal of thought to how she wished to look and what she would wear. The final result must have met with the approval both of Katherine and her husband. She is very much the aristocratic lady, expensively dressed and already demonstrating a love of jewels and fashion that was to develop over the years. Her clothing is red and gold, with the hood perfectly matching the gown. Interestingly, although the gown has fashionable slashed undersleeves and a gauzy partlet, covering the throat and chest, the coifed gable hood that Katherine is wearing was a more conservative choice. Anne Boleyn had made popular the French hood, which showed more of the hair, but in some circles it was still considered rather unseemly. Jane Seymour favoured the gable hood, though this may have been less a personal preference than a conscious decision to differentiate herself from her more flighty, disgraced predecessor. In Katherine Parr’s case, she had married a man whose overall outlook was conservative and it is possible that her head-wear reflected his taste. Her jewels, three ropes of pearls and a large, round gold, pearl and ruby brooch, are also asign of wealth without ostentation. In this portrait, Katherine is very much the elegant nobleman’s wife.
    Yet she is clearly also a woman of depth of character, and it was this, as much as her undoubted style, that Latimer had perceived. Perhaps he detected in her what others were to remark upon later, a serenity that was not without passion when aroused, a good mind and a steadiness of purpose that would serve their relationship well. He knew that the Borough marriage and life at Gainsborough Hall could not have been full of merriment, but Katherine’s essential vivacity had survived a stern test. She would undoubtedly face other trials in her new life at Snape Castle, Latimer’s principal residence.
    He had certainly not rushed into finding a new wife. Elizabeth Musgrave, his second spouse, had died in 1530 after barely two years of marriage. The gap between her death and Latimer’s wedding to Katherine suggests that he was more concerned to find the right woman than merely to fill the empty place in his bed. It must have been a difficult time, as political duties called him away frequently, sometimes to attend meetings of the Council of the North and sometimes further afield, to London, where attendance at parliamentary sessions was required. His children were left at home in Yorkshire, presumably under the care of tutors and household staff. We know little of his family arrangements during the early 1530s, but as one of two members for Yorkshire in the House of Commons during the Reformation Parliament in 1529 and then as a member of the House of Lords two years later, after he had succeeded to the Latimer barony he was not always present in person to supervise his home and family. A new wife could be a proper helpmate to him and Katherine Parr’s reappearance on the marriage market provided him with the opportunity to fill that role.
    What sort of a man had Katherine taken as her second husband? Certainly John Neville, who became Baron Latimer at the end of 1530 following the death of his father, RichardNeville, was a complete contrast to Edward Borough. He was over forty years old, an experienced man of the world, a soldier, legislator and administrator. His was one of the oldest and most powerful families in northern England, with a long tradition of military service and a reputation for seeking power at the cost of loyalty to the Crown, best exemplified by Warwick the Kingmaker. The Parrs’ relationship with the Nevilles had always been that of a client family rather than one of equals, and Katherine’s grandfather, William Parr, had,