Kateryn Parr: The Making of A Queen.

Susan E. James, Kateryn Parr: The Making of A Queen

Aldershot and Brookfield, VT: Ashgate Press, 1999. xii + 43 pls. + 467 pp. $83.95. ISBN: 1-84014-683-4.

Kateryn Parr (ca. 1512-1548) followed a destiny that led from an ambitious family, through revolution and violence, to the crown of England. Perhaps most popularly known as the only wife who managed to survive the uxorial Henry VIII, Parr has most often been depicted as the pious widow who was chosen to nurse the king through his final years. Though Kateryn Parr's place in history was assured with her marriage to Henry VIII, comparatively few scholars have studied her life and her influence comprehensively, beyond her relationships to the king, her stepchildren, and her last husband, Thomas Seymour.

Susan E. James' impressively researched biography, Kateryn Parr: The Making of A Queen, corrects the missing balance in the historiography of Kateryn Parr. Though there are popular treatments of her life, as well as scholarly articles and studies on various aspects of her writings, James' work is the first critical and fully documented biography of Kateryn Parr, the first to examine her legacy from the perspective of her own background, work, and contributions extending to the reigns of Edward VI, Mary I, and Elizabeth I.

Susan E. James has researched Kateryn Parr for over twenty years. In 1977, she completed her doctoral work at Cambridge University with a disseration on Kat eryn's family, the Parrs of Kendal. This early research, along with a later series of articles (1981-1990) published in the Transactions of the Cumberland and Westmorland Antiquarian and Archaeological Society, are reflected in part 1 and part 3 of this new biography. Rather than approaching Kateryn Parr narrowly as an individual, James places her within the context of her family social system, the kinship group with which she identified and remained close throughout her life. That Kateryn became queen of England not only elevated her personal social status, it moved the entire Parr family into the highest strata of court society. "That they managed to remain there after her death owed as much to their own talent and shrewdness as to their relationship with a Tudor Queen of England" (1).

It is in part 2 of Kateryn Parr: The Making of A Queen where James contradicts characterizations of her subject as a mousy nurse. Though this biography does affirm Kateryn Parr's gifts as a healer and her sense of devotion, it also suggests that she was shrewd, vivacious, passionate, stylish, and despite the cultural restrictions placed on women, increasingly radical in her religious and political views. Throughout this biography, the author attempts to correct one-dimensional interpretations of Kateryn Parr, and portrays her as a multifaceted personality, arguing that "her life contained all the elements so beloved in romantic fiction -- personal peril, clandestine romance, war, political intrigue, jealous husbands, and royal matrimony" (2).

This book will not be without its detractors. James explicitly takes on scholars such as Maria Dowling, G.R. Elton, and Christopher Haigh, who ascribe Kateryn Parr with a much narrower role in religion and politics, and who, she believes, have diminished her importance by their focus "on the hotly debated questions of her birthplace, her capabilities in Latin and her influence on her stepchildren" (2). These differing opinions on the significance of Kateryn Parr are more than varying interpretations of facts; rather, they call into question the significance of her role and influence in court and beyond. This biography suggests the need for a revaluation of its subject as a historical figure. While earlier scholars such as Conyers Read, James McConica, and William Haugaard argued that Kateryn Parr played a decisive role in the furtherance of humanist learning and reform religion, James' work takes even these interpretations a step further. In this biography, Kateryn Parr is not limited as an indirect influenc e on religion and politics; but emerges as "a committed player of power politics, an active patron of a multitude of arts taking shape in the emerging English Renaissance, a vigorous contributor to and supporter of the English Reformation and arguably the first Protestant Queen of England" (2).

Though some scholars will argue with the author's expansive theses, this biography is an exceedingly thorough compilation of extant sources. James' readable and moving style captures the fabric of her subject's world -- Parr's primary relationships, religious beliefs, political convictions -- as well as the uncertainty of the age itself. Kateryn Parr: The Making of A Queen stands as an important contribution to Tudor historiography.