[In the following essay, King examines the influence of Parr on the development of women's learning and religious life in sixteenth-century England.]

At the very end of the reign of Henry VIII (1509-47), a circle of aristocratic women emerged who sponsored humanistic scholarship and patronized the translation and publication of religious works into the vernacular. Under the auspices of Catherine Parr, the king's last wife, this group of powerful women broke with traditional modes of patronage and devotion which had flourished at the Tudor court at the time of Lady Margaret Beaufort and Catherine of Aragon, respectively the grandmother and first wife of Henry VIII. In place of a long-standing commitment to the publication of medieval literature, works of monastic piety, and scholastic learning for an elite aristocratic readership, the younger women embarked on an ambitious program that fused Bible reading with private theological study. Their profound innovation was the popularization of Protestant humanism through patronage of devotional manuals and theological translations for the edification of a mixed audience of elite and ordinary readers. Many of these texts specifically addressed the requirements of a female readership, and all of these activities attest to the zealous Protestant faith of the women associated with Catherine Parr. Flourishing in particular during the radical Reformation under Edward VI (1547-53), these women transmitted their unique blend of patronage and piety to succeeding generations of aristocratic women who came of age during the reign of Queen Elizabeth.

Prior to the 1540s no tradition of educating women in a manner equal to men existed in England—not even the household of Thomas More furnished a precedent for the complete assimilation of humanistic learning and ethics with faith in the training of the daughters of Protestant aristocrats, notably those close to the line of succession to the throne of Henry VIII. Under the influence of Catherine Parr, however, Protestant humanists such as Roger Ascham, John Aylmer, John Foxe, and Thomas Wilson received appointments as tutors to the sons and daughters of royalty and nobility. Patronesses such as the Duchess of Suffolk (Catherine Brandon), the Duchess of Richmond (Mary Fitzroy), and the Duchess of Somerset (Anne Seymour) entrusted advanced Reformers with the training of Lady Jane Grey and Princess Elizabeth, both of whom succeeded to the throne, and the heirs of the dukedoms of Norfolk, Suffolk, Somerset, and other noble houses. Their patronage furnished an initial impetus for such writings as Ascham's The Scholemaster, Wilson's Arte of Rhetorique and Rule of Reason, and Foxe's Acts and Monuments (the Book of Martyrs). Members of Catherine Parr's circle also sponsored Protestant preachers and professional authors who turned out a stream of Reformist sermons, tracts, translations including the two massive volumes of Erasmus' Paraphrases of the New Testament, and even a play like Nicholas Udall's Ralph Roister Doister.¹

During the years preceding Henry VIII's marriage to Catherine Parr in 1543, Anne Boleyn supplied the only English precedent for patronage by Protestant aristocratic women. John Foxe reports that the Lutheranism of “that godly queen” was well known both at court and throughout the land, and that she extended patronage to Protestant scholars and “professors of Christ's gospel.” A tradition grew up that attributed the success or failure of religious reform to the influence at court of Henry VIII's Protestant wives—Anne Boleyn, Jane Seymour, Anne of Cleves, and Catherine Parr—all of whom Foxe eulogizes as agents of divine providence.² Although praise of Anne Boleyn as the divine instrument for Henry VIII's break with Rome became a conventional Reformist compliment to her daughter, Queen Elizabeth,³ hindsight argument leads Foxe to exaggerate his account of Boleyn's influence. Only one printed book carries a dedication to her, and publication in translation of that evangelical tract seems to have been timed to coincide with Thomas Cromwell's campaign to dissolve the monasteries and eradicate Roman Catholicism in England.⁴ Jane Seymour died too early to wield influence consonant with the many eulogies whose praise centers on the role she played in the Tudor dynastic succession by bearing Henry VIII's long-anticipated male heir, Prince Edward. The king's German consort, Anne of Cleves, had negligible intellectual impact. Of the four Protestant wives, only Catherine Parr left a substantial record of documented sympathy for religious reform and encouragement of devotional publication.

Catherine Parr and her female associates developed a reputation for patronizing more extensive religious reform than that officially permitted by the Crown. When it became obvious that the king's death was imminent, the group of religious conservatives on the Privy Council led by Stephen Gardiner, Bishop of Winchester, and Thomas Howard, third Duke of Norfolk, attempted to block the ascendancy of the Protestant faction owing allegiance to Catherine Parr and Edward Seymour, uncle to Prince Edward. The conservative attack centered upon an attempt to implicate the queen and women of her privy chamber, as well as Catherine Brandon and Seymour's wife, Anne, in heresy accusations lodged against the Protestant gentlewoman, Anne Askew. Although she denied any connection to court circles, Askew's questioning in the Tower of London returned time after time to alleged contacts with high-ranking women. Askew's own testimony suggests the possibility that the charges lodged against her were simply part of a larger plot to destroy women at court by proving that they aided her during imprisonment:

I answered, that there was a man in a blewe coate, which delyvered me v. shyllynges, and sayd that my ladye of Hertforde sent it me. And an other in a vyolet coate ded geve me viii. shyllynges, and sayd that my ladye Dennye sent it me. Whether it were true or no, I can not tell. For I am not sure who sent it me, but as the men ded saye.⁵

The traditional Christian belief in the intellectual inferiority of women buttressed conservative allegations, for the most damaging of Gardiner's charges was the accusation that Protestant women were violating the biblical admonition that men alone were ordained by God to serve as priests (1 Corinthians 14:33-35). Thus Anne Askew's disputes with clergymen over biblical interpretation were particularly controversial. Catherine Parr's aspirations to learning are praised by John Foxe, who reports that devotion to Bible study led her to retain as religious instructors and preachers learned Reformers whose sermons “ofttimes touched such abuses as in the church then were rife” (V, 553-54). Her daily schedule was known to include regular household worship and prayer; one confidant reports that she studied the Psalms and contemplative meditations day and night.⁶ The king echoed Gardiner's strictures, according to Foxe, in voicing disapproval of his wife's willingness to enter into theological debate and support religious reform: “‘You are become a doctr, Kate, to instruct us … and not to be instructed or directed by us’” (V, 559). The success or failure of the plot against the queen's circle hinged upon Henry's response to his wife's theological learning. Unexpectedly shaping his sensational account of the hunt for heretical women in a comic mode, Foxe dramatizes the way in which the cleverness of his witty heroine enables her at the last minute to outwit her enemies through obedient submission to the king's authority as lord and husband (V, 553-61). One may only speculate upon the exact degree to which the macabre humor of this account reflects the lethal perils facing the wives of Henry VIII. James K. McConica, for example, hypothesizes that the conservatives' attack on women of the court was organized by the king in displeasure against the queen's advanced religious views. He argues further that her Protestant faith involved little more than the general patronage of such moderate reformers as Miles Coverdale (pp. 226-27).

Rumors linking aristocratic women to the authors of banned, heretical writings circulated freely. Gardiner's charges against the queen and her retinue included, for example, the accusation that “she had in her closet” copies of prohibited books (Foxe, V, 557). Promulgation of a proclamation banning Reformist books by favorite authors of the Protestant noblewomen coincided with the heresy hunt.⁷ Coverdale's works were included even though he then served as almoner in the queen's privy chamber. Significantly his translation of the New Testament and the earlier banned version by William Tyndale were the focus of study and meditation by pious women. Anne Askew, for example, reports that she suffered for the sake of the free circulation of the gospels. John Bale's publication of the Examinations of Anne Askew served to vindicate posthumously the Protestant martyr and those aristocratic women thought to be her supporters. Soon after Henry VIII's death, Bale and another author of prohibited books, Thomas Becon, received appointments respectively in the households of Mary Fitzroy and Anne Seymour. The husband of the latter similarly extended patronage to another banned author, William Turner.

If a Protestant salon predated the rise to power of the Reformist faction during Edward VI's reign, its activities were inward-looking and private.⁸ Almost the only published evidence of its leanings was the modest set of Prayers Stirryng the Mynd unto Heavenlye Medytacions (1545), which Catherine Parr “collected oute of holy workes.” This text was fashionable at court where manuscript and, in all likelihood, printed versions circulated. It is quite important as the first evidence of a commitment by Protestant women to publication and popularization of courtly devotional works. The noncontroversial piety of this frequently republished text suggests that the devotional practices of women were in a state of transition. The heterogeneous meditations were abstracted from Book III (chapters 15-50) of Thomas à Kempis's Imitation of Christ, a work that had once appeared in print under Margaret Beaufort's sponsorship. Catherine Parr's haphazard selection destroys the methodical character and evocation of inward dialogue which characterize the original, offering instead loosely strung-out prayers such as the following:

O Jesu, King of everlasting glorie, the joie and comfort of all Christian people, that are wandering as Pilgrims in the wildernes of this world: my hart crieth to thee by still desires, and my silence speaketh unto thee, and saith: How long tarieth my Lord God to come to mee?

Come O Lord, and visit mee: for without thee I have no true joie, without thee my soule is heavie and sad.

I am in prison, and bounden with fetters of sorowe, till thou O Lord, with thy gratious presence vouchsafe to visit me, and to bring me againe to libertie and joie of spirit, and shew thy favourable countenance unto me.⁹

More importantly, publication of Prayers or Medytacions in inexpensive octavo format enabled a wide, popular readership to afford its purchase, in contrast to the larger and more expensive volumes favored by earlier patronesses.

Catherine's Prayers or Medytacions functioned as a supplement to Bible study. The queen's chamberlain, Sir Anthony Cope, gives some insight into the way aristocratic women might have used the text, for his Godly Meditacion upon.XX. Psalmes (1547) reduces Bible readings “to the kynde or fashion of prayers and contemplatife meditations.” Based upon Psalms because it furnishes a “myrroure” of the image of Christ in one's soul, his selections should bring to mind events of Christ's life “as lyvely as they were set in colours forth before our eyes” (sig. *3r). Handwritten marginalia in one surviving copy (BL 697, g. 11) show how the volume was used in at least one household, for the glosses serve as a guide to daily prayer by assigning individual readings to specific days of the week. Cope's own emphasis on the Penitential Psalms and the handwritten annotations on grace, faith, penitence, and worldly vanity suggest that these pervasive concerns of Catherine Parr's writings were major themes of courtly piety. William Thomas's dedication of The Vanitee of this World (1549) to Catherine's sister, Lady Anne Herbert, embodies similar interests.

Devotion to Erasmian humanism and biblical studies led Catherine Parr to patronize the translation of the first volume of Erasmus' Paraphrases of the New Testament, an impetus acknowledged by the editor, Nicholas Udall, in his dedications. Princess Mary never completed the translation of the paraphrase of the Gospel of St. John requested by Catherine for this work (see McConica, pp. 231, 241), possibly out of disagreement with her stepmother's Reformist sympathies. Although Catherine conceived of the project as a work of courtly piety years before Henry VIII's death, its publication in 1548 under his more radically Protestant son converted the translation into a powerful public vehicle for the religious education of clergymen and commoners. The Royal Injunctions of Edward VI required every parish church to purchase the initial volume along with the Great Bible, and clergymen were ordered “diligentely [to] study the same, conferryng the one with the other” (sig. b4r). The translation project is an excellent example of the commitment of Protestant women to broadening the audience for devotional texts to include both aristocrats and commoners. Udall's preface to John includes the queen in the company of noble women who are able to write theological treatises and translate devotional works “for the use and commoditie of suche as are rude and ignoraunte of the sayd tounges,” goals stemming from Erasmus' call in Paraclesis (1516) for the publication of vernacular translations of the Bible and popular religious literature. Udall argues that women's devotion to the Scriptures and pietistic writings supplanted secular literature and pastimes in noble households and at the royal court:

It is now no newes in Englande to see young damysels in nobles houses and in the Courtes of princes, in stede of cardes and other instruments of idle trifleing, to have continually in theyr handes eyther Psalmes, Omelies [homilies], and other devoute meditacions, or els Paules epistles, or some booke of holy Scripture matiers, and as familiarlye both to reade or reason therof in Greke, Latine, Frenche, or Italian, as in Englishe.

(sigs. AAa1r-v)

Hyperbole clouds his argument, however, for there is no evidence that aristocratic daughters shunned secular entertainments.

Even before Catherine Parr's death in 1548, three of her female associates emerged as distinguished patronesses: Anne Seymour, Catherine Brandon, and Mary Fitzroy. Anne Seymour's replacement of Parr as sponsor of the second volume of Erasmus' Paraphrases is a manifestation of this development. John Olde credits Lady Seymour as its inspiration in his preface to 1 and 2 Peter, even though the general editor, Miles Coverdale, dedicates the volume as a whole to Edward VI.¹⁰ Olde refers to the printer, Edward Whitchurch, as her “graces humble servaunt” (sig. * 1r). Although the original courtly concern with humanistic piety survives, the open involvement of radical Reformers confers a more stridently Protestant edge upon the text. Coverdale's additions to the original text—Tyndale's prologue to Romans and Leo Jud's commentary on Revelation—violently attack the Church of Rome. The divided sponsorship of the separate volumes of Erasmus' Paraphrases typifies the explosion in Protestant patronage and propaganda after Henry VIII's death, when Edward Seymour, as Lord Protector, presided over the removal of very nearly all restraints on Reformist publication. The English could now openly read all of the previously banned books involved in the recent heresy hunt, and their authors could write without restriction or could return from Continental exile.

Anne Seymour rivalled Catherine Parr as the leading lady in the land after Henry VIII's death because of her husband's rise to a position of authority at the court of a minor king. Accordingly Mildred Cecil's dedication of her manuscript translation of a sermon by St. Basil acknowledges Lady Seymour's preeminent position at court (BL MS Royal 17 B. XVIII). She and the two other Protestant duchesses, Mary Fitzroy and, especially, Catherine Brandon, were wholly committed to the new Protestant ascendency. Although they followed Catherine Parr's lead in appointing distinguished humanists as tutors in their households, they went beyond her noncontroversial piety to encourage the radical activities of a tightly knit school of professional authors and translators, as well as the printers and publishers in the city of London who issued their works. In contrast to the complete silence concerning whatever patronage they may have extended under Henry VIII, they received during his son's reign an outpouring of dedications and acknowledgments (King, pp. 104-07).

The existence of this circle of aristocratic women is confirmed by publication of a second work by Catherine Parr, The Lamentacion of a Sinner (1547), for this text was “set furth and put in print at the instaunt desire of the righte gracious ladie Caterin Duchesse of Suffolke.” Mildred Cecil's husband, William, edited the text on behalf of the duchess, in response to a request passed on by the author's brother, William Parr; the duchess is the likely source of the copy text. At least one manuscript of this work circulated in the courtly coterie, in addition to an anonymous translation into French verse based upon the printed text (BL MS Royal 16 E. XXVIII). McConica rightly concludes that Catherine Parr designed the work for use by noble women and that its affirmation of the doctrine of justification by faith alone lends a moderately Protestant tenor to the text (pp. 229-30). Nevertheless the marginal glosses to the Scriptures give the work the appearance of the evangelical works that poured out in defense of the new regime, and the text echoes polemical uses of biblical typology in attacking the Roman church. Catherine's praise of Henry VIII as a New Moses leading an Exodus out of the “captivitie and bondage” of papal Egypt implies that he initiated an on-going process of religious reform:

But our Moyses, a moste godly, wise governer and kyng hath delivered us oute of the captivitie and bondage of Pharao. I mene by this Moyses Kyng Henry the eight, my most soverayne favourable lorde and husband. One (If Moyses had figured any mo[re] then Christ) through the excellent grace of god, mete to be an other expressed veritie of Moses conqueste over Pharao. And I mene by this Pharao the bishop of Rome, who hath bene and is a greater persecutor of all true christians, then ever was Pharao, of the children of Israel.

(sigs. E1r-v)

Such praise incorporates Protestant iconography descending from the title page for the 1539 Great Bible, which portrays Henry's reception of the Law from God as a latter-day Moses. When Coverdale transferred this conceit to Edward VI in his dedication to the second volume of Paraphrases, he combined it with a new biblical comparison to Josiah, the boy king who implemented religious reforms after a period of backsliding (2 Kings 22-23).

Catherine Parr's intellectual influence had its greatest impact on Princess Elizabeth, whose humanistic education paralleled the classical scholarship encouraged by her stepmother in the royal academy that she organized for the heir apparent, Prince Edward. The young princess acknowledged this influence by translating Marguerite de Navarre's Le miroir de l'âme pécheresse as a New Year's gift for her stepmother, entitled in English “The glasse of the synneful soule”; the manuscript provides a major link between the Erasmian pietism in fashion at the courts of England and Navarre.¹¹ Although no evidence supports John Bale's claim that the princess sent the translation to him for publication under the revised title, A Godly medytacyon of the christen sowle (Wesel, Cleves, 1548), no inherent improbability argues against Bale's claim that she sent him a copy written in her “owne hande” with appended translations of scriptural texts on virtuous women (Ecclesiasticus 7:19, 25:15 and 16, 26:3). Despite the pre-Reformist origins of the text, Bale uses it as a vehicle for exaggerated praise of Elizabeth's Protestant zeal with its biblicism and affirmation of justification by faith.

The patronage extended to Bale by Mary Fitzroy upon his return from exile suggests that a member of the aristocratic coterie might have sent Princess Elizabeth's translation to the Continent through the same German merchants who once delivered Anne Askew's manuscript account of her interrogation and torture to Bale. Bale and Foxe were both closely associated as radical Reformers with Mary Fitzroy, Duchess of Richmond. After Bale's return from exile, she protected and lodged him along with Foxe in her London house. The Protestant translator Nicholas Lesse reports that the duchess was known to have commissioned the publication of books designed to come “into the handes of the people” and that Bale served as her agent in making such arrangements.¹² It was during Foxe's continued service as tutor to the duchess's charge Thomas Howard, heir to the Norfolk dukedom, that the Protestant scholar began work on the historical projects that eventually led to Acts and Monuments.

Unlike her half sister Mary, Princess Elizabeth clearly had a reputation as a favorite of the Reformers. Convention alone should not account for Bale's choice of linguistic facility and religious zeal as topics in praise of Elizabeth. Walter Lynne chooses the same subjects in dedicating his translation of an apocalyptic sermon by Martin Luther to the princess; similarly Joannes à Lasco (Jan Laski), in a compliment unique for this period, attributes the identical qualities to the princess in dedicating an edition of a Latin theological treatise by Johann Heinrich Bullinger, the Zurich theologian.¹³ Lady Jane Grey's contemporary correspondence with Bullinger in Latin, Greek, and Hebrew shows that the learning of noble English women was well known in Continental circles.¹⁴

Underlying Bale's hyperbolic praise of Elizabeth in A Godly medytacyon of the christen sowle one may discern the influence of her tutor, Roger Ascham. His career furnishes a paradigm for rising in court circles by gaining the patronage of Catherine Parr and Catherine Brandon respectively, first as a tutor in the royal court and then in the household of the heirs of the Suffolk dukedom (see McConica, p. 217). Elizabeth's translation of Godly medytacyon epitomizes the method of double translation later advocated by Ascham in The Scholemaster (1570), for, according to Bale, she undertook the project primarily “for her owne exercyse in the french tunge”; she added translations of scriptural texts into Latin, Greek, French, and Italian as a final proof of learning (sigs. E8r, F1r-v).

Biblical paradigms such as the Woman Clothed with the Sun (Revelation 12), which were applied in praise of such reformist heroines as Anne Askew and Princess Elizabeth, contributed to the emergence of the Reformation iconographical tradition of the “true Christian woman.” Formulaic praise of Anne Seymour as an example of the Protestant Woman of Faith is, for example, a recurrent theme in the many dedications addressed to her during the reign of Edward VI. The Archbishop of Canterbury's printer, Walter Lynne, in his Briefe Collection (1549) of scriptural readings for the consolation of the sick, praises her as “the most gracious patronesse & supportar both of good learnynge and also of godly men learned” (sigs. A4v-A5r). Her devotion to “daylye studye … in the holy Byble” makes her an appropriate patron for Lynne's 1550 translation of A Briefe Concordaunce (“The Zurich Concordance,” sig. A2r), just as his edition in the same year of William Roy's translation of The True Beliefe in Christ and his Sacramentes (from Wolfgang Capito's De pueris instituendis) is said by Lynne to reflect her commitment “to se Goddes trueth both preached & set forth in writtings” (sig. A2r). Although Lynne specialized as a translator in the writings of German reformers, he also published the translation of St. Augustine's defense of predestination that Nicholas Lesse addressed to the duchess. Lesse attempted to build his career as a translator on the patronage of noble women through dedicating a second predestinarian tract to Lady Seymour, in addition to another work by St. Augustine that he addressed to Mary Fitzroy. His links to eminent women may have led him to translate The Censure and Judgment of Erasmus: Whyther dyvorsemente stondeth with the lawe of God (c. 1550), which argues for the sexual equality of women, who should be free to marry whomever they please.

Anne Seymour granted positions in her household to three reformist authors: Thomas Becon, Nicolas Denisot, and William Samuel. Becon, who had once used the pseudonym Theodore Basille to conceal himself from heresy charges, wrote a Protestant nativity play and many other religious works under her protection. The strong appeal to aristocratic women of meditation on scriptural texts is documented by the collection of prayers that he prepared in gratitude for her generosity “sense [since] I came firste to youre servyce”;¹⁵ he reflects similar concerns in addressing another collection of biblical prayers, The Castell of Comforte (c. 1550), to Mary Fitzroy. The assumption that women are the intellectual equals of men underlies Becon's praise of Lord and Lady Seymour for providing both sons and daughters with identical instruction in the Bible and classics by humanistic tutors. In dedicating yet another collection of biblical prayers, The Governaunce of Vertue (1549) to one of these children, Jane, he argues that the goal of Protestant humanism is to produce “scholiers in the misteries of Christes scole” (sig. A2v).

Humanistic principles were put into practice in the education of the Seymour daughters. Their French tutor, Nicolas Denisot, complimented the linguistic abilities of Jane Seymour and her sisters, Anne and Margaret, by editing their Latin distichs on the death of Marguerite de Navarre.¹⁶ Denisot's Parisian circle included intellectuals who were in the process of imitating classical and Italianate models in order to transform French poetry. Thus his edition of Le Tombeau de Marguerite de Valois (Paris, 1551), a translation of his students' Latin distichs into Greek, Italian, and French, also contained additional odes, hymns, songs, and epitaphs by such members of the Pléiade as Pierre de Ronsard and Jean Antoine de Baïf. The volume praises the three sisters for continuing the learned tradition established by Marguerite.

Aristocratic English women furthered the Reformation fashion for popular biblical poetry, however, rather than the neoclassical mode favored by Denisot and his Parisian colleagues. Thus another protégé of Anne Seymour, William Samuel, turned to the folk tradition of ballad song as the model for his paraphrase of the Pentateuch, The Abridgemente of Goddes Statutes in Myter (1551). Samuel and “gospelling” poets associated with him heeded Erasmus' call in Paraclesis for universal literacy, translation of the Bible into the vernacular, and the generation of popular biblical poetry so that “even the lowliest women” could understand the Scriptures.¹⁷ Samuel echoes the Erasmian program in dedicating his Abridgemente to Anne Seymour as a text designed to “have my contray people able in smale some to syng the hole contents of the byble” (sigs. A2r-v). The gospelling movement as a whole came under the influence of the repetitive ballad versions of Psalms by Thomas Sternhold, who found favor with Henry VIII in a manner parallel to the contemporary vogue at the court of François I for the more sophisticated versifications of Psalms by Clément Marot. Sternhold, who served as a tutor to Prince Edward after Catherine Parr reorganized the royal nursery, pleased courtiers with verses like the following stanza from Psalm 6:

Lord, in thy wrath reprove me not,
          though I deserve thine ire:
Ne yet correct me in thy rage,
          O Lord, I thee desire.
For I am weak, therefore, O Lord,
          of mercy me forbear:
And heal me, Lord; for why? thou know'st
          my bones do quake for fear.

(vss. 1-2)

The standard of biblical poetry in fashion within the Seymour circle complements Catherine Parr's pietistic works in its eclectic appeal to a mixed audience of elite and ordinary readers. The wife of Seymour's close associate Sir Ralph Fane, for example, designed her versifications of 21 psalms of “godly meditation” and 102 aphorisms from the Book of Proverbs for use in the kinds of devotion practiced by Catherine Parr and her associates; this lost volume was entered as a collection of prayers in a contemporary book catalogue.¹⁸ The support that Lady Elizabeth Fane granted to her publisher, Robert Crowley, suggests that the series of biblical poems and apocalyptic satires that he wrote or sold conformed to the taste in literature of aristocratic Protestant women. Crowley acknowledged her assistance by dedicating a millenarian poem entitled Pleasure and Payne, Heaven and Hell (1551) to Lady Fane “as to a ryght worthy Patrones of al such as laboure in the Lords harveste” (sig. A2v). In addition Crowley not only published biblical poetry by Lady Seymour's retainer, William Samuel, but he also produced the complete Psalter in ballad measure at the same time that Sternhold began to versify Psalms.

The eclecticism of Catherine Brandon typifies the emergence of a distinctive vein of Protestant humanism in England by the middle of the sixteenth century, for she is credited with sponsoring works of advanced learning as well as evangelical sermons and homely translations of theological texts. Works appearing under her auspices appealed to a complex audience ranging from Continental readers ignorant of the English language to native Protestants barely literate in their own vernacular tongue. The total of fourteen dedications to printed books that she received throughout her long life (1520-80) places her in the company of the twelve greatest patronesses of the English Renaissance; Franklin B. Williams remarks, in fact, that her achievement during the mid-Tudor period is more significant than the higher figures achieved by other women during the Stuart period when publication rates multiplied.¹⁹

Catherine Brandon's importance as a supporter of higher learning rests upon the appointment of Thomas Wilson as tutor to her sons, Charles and Henry, heirs to the Suffolk dukedom; surely their education put into practice principles that their instructor articulated in The Rule of Reason (1551), an introduction to logic, and in his handbook of classical oratory, The Arte of Rhetorique (1553). Wilson praises Lady Brandon in the latter work for her devotion to humanistic ideals and for being “especially to the learned, an earnest good patronesse, and moste helpyng Lady above all other” (sigs. b4r-c1r). He insists upon the existence of a direct connection between learning and faith, arguing that mastery of rhetoric, for example, is one means of salvation: “Eloquence first geven by God, after loste by man, and laste repayred by God agayne” (sig. A3r). Wilson's eventual rise to the office of secretary of state under Queen Elizabeth made him more successful in the quest for patronage than his close associate, Roger Ascham, whose Scholemaster joined Wilson's own writings on logic and rhetoric as the fundamental Tudor handbooks concerned with the popularization of classical study as both the foundation of well-rounded education and the model for elegant simplicity in prose style.

Wilson's collection of a set of Latin panegyrics on the deaths of his pupils may be read both as an anthology by successful Protestant humanist careerists (most of whom went to the royal court from St. John's College, Cambridge), and as an elaborate compliment to the Duchess of Suffolk.²⁰ Contributors of epigrams and epitaphs included John Cheke, William Cecil, and Nicholas Udall, all of whom had risen at court under Catherine Parr's patronage; John Parkhurst, who served in succession as chaplain to Catherine Brandon and Catherine Parr; as well as Laurence Humphrey and Thomas Chaloner, whose many connections in Protestant circles included Edward Seymour, Cecil, Foxe, and Bale. The coeditor, Walter Haddon, also contributed commemorative poems in Latin to both The Rule of Reason and The Arte of Rhetorique, and Udall added a companion poem to the latter work.

The popularization of classical and biblical wisdom is the common concern of every other book linked to Catherine Brandon. The gentleman-poet John Harington addressed his translation of Cicero's Booke of Freendeship (1550) out of French to her, for example, with the wish that “how so ever it shalbe liked of the learned, I hope it shalbe allowed of the unlatined” (sig. A3v). Having found consolation in the study and translation of French during a period of imprisonment in the Tower of London, he dedicates the text in homage to the duchess as a “trew example” of friendship (sig. A5r). The translator Nicholas Lesse looks to her as a patroness “at whose handes … the common people hath received already many confortable & spirituall consolations, instructions, & techinges.”²¹ John Day, who issued Lesse's translation, and his partner William Seres acknowledged that they served Brandon as publishers by printing her coat of arms prominently in six of their editions of biblical translations, commentaries, and sermons.

Catherine Brandon's chief protégé was Hugh Latimer, the most influential preacher during Edward VI's reign. Her insignia appeared in editions of Latimer's sermons published by John Day: the extremely popular “Sermon of the Plough” preached at Paul's cross and a collection of seven Lenten sermons preached at the royal court in 1549. Thomas Some dedicated his transcription of the court sermons to the duchess not only because of her reputation for piety and patronage of Christian learning, but “chiefly for the profyte which shall ensue through them unto the ignoraunte” (sig. A2v). Even before Latimer rose to become the most prominent pulpit spokesman for the Protestant lords who governed England during the minority of Edward VI, he had long served as a spiritual advisor to aristocratic Protestant women. After serving in Catherine Parr's household before her marriage to Henry VIII, his continuing access to the queen's privy chamber had implicated him in the heresy hunt. At that time Anne Askew had requested that he visit her in prison as a counselor: “Therfor I desyred to speake with Latymer [but] it wolde no be” (Examinations, II, sig. C7v). In praising Anne Seymour as a patron of learning, John Olde acknowledges Latimer for successfully recommending him to her preferment to the vicarage of Cobington in Warwickshire. After leaving the royal court, Latimer resided in Catherine Brandon's manor of Grimsthorpe in Lincolnshire, where he preached a series of private sermons before her in 1552.²²

The succession to the throne of Mary Tudor (1553-58) upon the death of Edward VI effectively muzzled the Protestant patronesses and their protégés. The new queen had negligible standing as a patroness, for the many dedications that she received reflect her control of Crown offices and annuities rather than genuine sponsorship.²³ Although Anne Seymour and Mary Fitzroy remained in England along with such Erastians as William Cecil and Roger Ascham, Catherine Brandon was the highest ranking peer to join Reformers like John Foxe, Robert Crowley, and Thomas Becon in exile on the Continent. Hugh Latimer was burnt at the stake in Oxford, and Lady Jane Grey died at the headsman's block, not for her learning but as a pretender to the throne who was manipulated by Protestant lords who wished to remain in power. Princess Elizabeth, as Mary's legitimate heir, commented on similar suspicions directed against her during one of the imprisonments that left her for long periods under threat of death: “Much suspected by me / Nothing proved can be, / Quoth Elizabeth prisoner.”²⁴ Like Catherine Parr, she turned toward meditation and prayer for consolation, expressing her uneasy disillusionment through translations of Boethius' Consolation of Philosophy and Petrarch's Triumph of Eternity.

Protestant patronesses were freed once again when Queen Elizabeth began her long reign (1558-1603), but they regained neither the power nor importance that they once enjoyed during the turbulent minority of Edward VI. Although their commitment to the popularization of Protestant theology and classical learning had changed little during the silence imposed by Queen Mary, their evangelical zeal often placed them at odds with Elizabeth's desire for compromise concerning controversial issues of ecclesiastical polity and ritual; instead they tended to support Puritan clergymen who agitated against episcopal authority. This was particularly true of the activities of three younger women whose father, Sir Anthony Cooke, came to court as a royal tutor under the patronage of Catherine Parr. The husbands of Mildred, Anne, and Elizabeth Cooke included two of the queen's chief ministers: William Cecil, Lord Burghley, and Sir Nicholas Bacon, the Keeper of the Seal. The advanced religious views of these sisters attest to the emergence of a cadre of powerful women who clearly considered themselves to be the equals of men in matters of faith and learning.

Catherine Brandon remained active as a sponsor of continuing ecclesiastical reform in contrast to Anne Seymour, who extended her retirement into Elizabeth's reign, perhaps as a consequence of the discrediting of the Seymour family through the attainder and execution of her husband and the efforts of their son, Edward, Earl of Hertford, to marry close to the line of royal succession. Catherine Brandon's flight from prosecution under Queen Mary gained her, on the other hand, an extravagant reputation as a Reformation heroine. In its praise for her exile and continuing devotion to the edification of the “ignoraunt & unlearned,” Augustine Bernher's sober dedication of Latimer's Seven Sermons complements the romanticization inherent in Foxe's sensational narrative of the perils that the duchess encountered in England and on the Continent for her religious beliefs (Foxe, VIII, 569-76). In exile she settled in Poland at the invitation of Baron Joannes à Lasco, who had once praised the learning of Princess Elizabeth during his own exile in London. During the seventeenth century the ramification of the Foxe account into a popular legend resulted in a broadside ballad and a play that was “divers and sundry times acted, with good applause.”²⁵

Lady Brandon's survival as the senior member of a group of women who encouraged the dissent of Puritan clergymen and the publication of Calvinistic theology suggests that she was a major transmitter of pietistic methods once associated with the Catherine Parr circle. The translation of Calvin's Sermons upon the Songe that Ezechias made after he had bene sicke (1560) that her fellow exile, Anne Locke, dedicated to the duchess dowager provided a work suitable for use in private devotions. The translator was a member of the circle of Katherine Killigrew, one of the Cooke sisters; after the death of her husband, Henry Locke, Anne Locke married the prominent Puritan preacher Edward Dering. The meditative mode of the text is designed to provide a mechanism for protecting oneself against the vicissitudes of Fortune: “Yet having theyr myndes armed & fournished with prepared patience, and defence of inward understandyng, all these calamities can not so farre prevaile” (sig. A2r). Designed as a “meditation of a Penitent Sinner,” the appended versification of Psalm 51 makes it clear that the translation expresses “the passioned minde of the penitent sinner.” This psalm paraphrase came into Locke's hands in the form of a manuscript “delivered me by my frend” (sigs. 2A1r-2A2r), perhaps her spiritual counselor, John Knox. The Puritan John Field dedicated his 1583 edition of Knox's Notable Exposition upon the Fourth of Mathew to Locke after her third marriage to Richard Prowse.²⁶ Field suggests in yet another dedication that his 1580 translation of The Other Parte of Christian Questions and Answeares, a handbook on communion by Théodore de Bèze, may well serve Catherine Brandon during her dying days as a model for meditation intended to “set all thinges in order towardes that heavenly journey” (sig. *3v).

Roger Ascham's praise of Queen Elizabeth and Lady Jane Grey as paragons of classical learning in The Scholemaster captures a radical shift in the conduct of aristocratic women that took place during the middle of the sixteenth century, for until their time Thomas More's pioneering educational efforts had borne little fruit aside from the translation activity of his own daughter, Margaret Roper. The activities of Bible reading, religious zeal, and antipapal animus that Ascham advocates had received the approval of the circle of aristocratic women who actively patronized reformist authors, preachers, and translators, and who had control over the education of the descendents of many noble houses and almost every potential claimant to the throne of England. Under the influence of Catherine Parr women began to play an unprecedented role in the development of learning and institution of a Protestant religious settlement. Their synthesis of feminism and faith passed on a cultural legacy to such late Elizabethan successors as Mary Sidney, Countess of Pembroke, and the women to whom Edmund Spenser dedicated his poetic works, the Russell sisters. With its pervasive praise of Queen Elizabeth, Spenser's Faerie Queene is the most enduring compliment to the patronage and piety of the intellectual women of the English Reformation:

Notes

1. The seminal study concerning patronage by women during the mid-Tudor period is James K. McConica's English Humanists and Reformation Politics under Henry VIII and Edward VI (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1965), Chap. 7. Focusing on the role played by Catherine Parr during the final years of Henry VIII's reign (1543-47), he documents the preservation of the Erasmian fusion of evangelical piety and humanism. Especially valuable is the account of the queen's commitment to education in bringing humanist scholars such as John Cheke, Roger Ascham, and Anthony Cooke to court as princely tutors. McConica rightly defines the humanistic piety of Catherine Parr as a continuation of noncontroversial traditions established at court by Margaret Beaufort and Catherine of Aragon. The present study breaks new ground, however, by demonstrating Catherine Parr's influence on Protestant aristocratic women and the shift to a new policy of patronizing the translation and publication of devotional texts for a mixed audience of aristocratic and ordinary readers by Protestant women associated with Henry VIII's last queen.

   Betty Travitsky includes excerpts from the writings of Catherine Parr in her anthology, The Paradise of Women (Westport, Conn: Greenwood Press, 1981). These texts and introductions are a helpful starting point for the study of Tudor women authors. Roland H. Bainton's Women of the Reformation: In France and England (Minneapolis: Augsburg Publishing House, 1973), and Pearl Hogrefe's Women of Action in Tudor England (Ames: Iowa State Univ. Press, 1977) contain brief lives of prominent women mentioned in this essay. Hogrefe's Tudor Women (Ames: Iowa State Univ. Press, 1975) should be checked against the original sources.

   Useful background information is contained in the following studies: Suzanne W. Hull's valuable survey, Chaste, Silent & Obedient (San Marino, Calif.: Huntington Library, 1982); Myra Reynolds, The Learned Lady in England 1650-1760 (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1920); Ruth Kelso, Doctrine for the Lady of the Renaissance (Urbana: Univ. of Illinois Press, 1956); J. R. Brink, ed., Female Scholars (Montreal: Eden Press Women's Publications, 1980); Marlene Springer, ed., What Manner of Woman: Essays on English and American Life and Literature (New York: New York Univ. Press, 1977).

   Unless otherwise noted, London is the place of publication of works cited herein. The modern use of i/j, u/v, s, and w has been followed; contractions are expanded. The British Library is abbreviated as BL.

2. John Foxe, Acts and Monuments, ed. S. R. Cattley, 4th ed., rev. and enlarged by J. Pratt, 8 vols. (The Religious Tract Society, 1877), V, 52, 58, 60, 137, 402, 553-61. Compare his treatment of Catherine Howard as an instrument of reaction against Protestantism (V, 402). The printer John Day issued the Book of Martyrs in 1563.

3. See John Aylmer's Harborowe [Harbor] for Faithfull and Trewe Subjectes (J. Day, 1559): “Was not Quene Anne the mother of this blessed woman, the chief, first, and only cause of banyshing the beast of Rome, with all his beggerly baggage?” (sig. B4v).

4. François Lambert, Summe of Christianitie, trans. Tristram Revel (1536).

5. Anne Askew, Examinations, ed. John Bale, 2 vols. (Wesel, 1546-47), II, sigs. F3r-v, I, sig. I1v. Included in Bale's Select Works, ed. Henry Christmas, Parker Society, Vol. XXXVI (Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press, 1849). For discussion of the Anne Askew affair, see McConica, pp. 222-24, 226-27; John N. King, English Reformation Literature: The Tudor Origins of the Protestant Tradition (Princeton: Princeton Univ. Press, 1982), pp. 71-75, 79; and Elaine Beilin's essay in this collection.

6. Hugh Latimer, Selected Sermons, ed. A. G. Chester (Charlottesville, Va.: Univ. Press of Virginia for Folger Shakespeare Library, 1968), pp. 127-28; preface to Luke in Desiderius Erasmus, Paraphrases of the New Testament, trans. Nicholas Udall et al., 2 vols. (1548-49), sigs. A1v-2r. See also Udall's preface to John, which praises her “for composyng and setting foorth many goodly psalmes and diverse other contemplative meditacions” (sig. AAa2r).

7. Tudor Royal Proclamations, ed. Paul L. Hughes and James F. Larkin, 3 vols. (New Haven: Yale Univ. Press, 1964-69), No. 272. See Foxe, V, 557.

8. William P. Haugaard ignores the testimony of Foxe and Anne Askew in questioning whether such a group existed before the reign of Edward VI in “Katherine Parr: The Religious Convictions of a Renaissance Queen,” Renaissance Quarterly, 22 (1969), 350.

9. Quoted from the text in The Monument of Matrones, ed. Thomas Bentley (H. Denham, 1582), sig. L5r. See C. Fenno Hoffman, Jr., “Catherine Parr as a Woman of Letters,” Huntington Library Quarterly, 23 (1959-60), 355. On the relationship to à Kempis, see F. P. Tudor, “Changing Private Belief and Practice in English Devotional Literature, c. 1475-1550,” Ph.D. thesis, Oxford University, 1985. She argues convincingly that many copies of Catherine's prayer book were purchased for devotional use at court.

10. On the significance of the Paraphrases, see John N. Wall, Jr., “Godly and Fruitful Lessons,” in The Godly Kingdom of Tudor England: Great Books of the English Reformation, ed. John Booty (Wilton, Conn.: Morehouse-Barlow Co., Inc., 1981), pp. 73-85. See also Wall's facsimile reproduction of The First Tome or Volume of the Paraphrase of Erasmus upon the New Testamente, with an introduction (Delmar, N.Y.: Scholars' Facsimiles and Reprints, 1975).

11. Bodleian Library, MS Cherry 36, dated Dec. 30, 1544. Edited and discussed in Renja Salminen's critical text of Le Miroir in Dissertationes Humanarum Litterarum, No. 22 of Annales Academiae Scientiarum Fennicae (Helsinki, 1979). See Anne Prescott's essay in this collection.

12. St. Augustine, The Twelfe Steppes of Abuses (1550), sig. A3r. See also Askew, Examinations, II, sig. B3r; Foxe, III, 705; and King, pp. 72-73.

13. Lynne's translation of Luther's A Frutefull and Godly Exposition of the Kyngdom of Christ (1548), sig. A3r; Bullinger, Absoluta de Christi Domini et catholicae eius Ecclesiae Sacramentis (1551), sig. *4r.

14. Letters 4-6 in Epistolae Tigurinae, ed. Hastings Robinson, Parker Society, Vol. LIV (Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press, 1848); ed. and trans. Robinson in Original Letters Relative to the English Reformation, 2 vols. in 1, Parker Society, Vol. LIII (Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press, 1846-47).

15. Thomas Becon, The Floure [Flower] of Godlye Prayers (1551), as quoted from the complete Worckes, 3 vols. (1560-64), II, sig. 3E4v.

16. Nicolas Denisot, Annae, Margaritae, Janae, sororum virginum heroidum Anglarum in mortem divae Margaritae Valesiae, Navarrorum reginae, Hecatodistichon (Paris, 1550).

17. Erasmus, Christian Humanism and the Reformation: Selected Writings, ed. John C. Olin (New York: Harper and Row, 1965), p. 97.

18. Andrew Maunsell includes the following item in his Catalogue of English Printed Bookes (1595), Part i, sig. H1r: “Lady Eliz. Fane her certaine psalmes of godly meditation in number 21. with a 102. proverbs. printed by Rob. Crowley: 1550. in 8.”

19. Franklin B. Williams, “The Literary Patronesses of Renaissance England,” Notes and Queries, 207 (1962), 366.

20. Thomas Wilson, Vita et obitus duorum fratrum Suffolciensium (1551).

21. Trans. Joannes Epinus, A Very Fruitful Exposition upon the.XV. Psalme [i.e., Psalm 15], trans. Lesse (c. 1548), sigs. A5v-6r.

22. Olde, preface to 1 and 2 Peter, in Erasmus, Paraphrases, II, *1v; Hugh Latimer Seven Sermons (1572), sigs. A4v, ¶2r, published as part two of Frutefull Sermons, ed. A. Bernher (1571).

23. See Jennifer Loach, “Pamphlets and Politics, 1553-8,” Bulletin of the Institute of Historical Research, 48 (1975), 31-44; and J. W. Martin, “The Marian Regime's Failure to Understand the Importance of Printing,” Huntington Library Quarterly, 44 (1980-81), 231-47.

24. Queen Elizabeth, Poems, ed. Leicester Bradner (Providence: Brown Univ. Press, 1964), p. 3.

25. Thomas Deloney, The Great Troubles of the Dutches of Suffolke in his Strange Histories (1602); Thomas Drue, The Life of the Dutches of Suffolke (1631).

26. On the Knox relationship, see Patrick Collinson, “The Role of Women in the English Reformation illustrated by the Life and Friendships of Anne Locke,” Studies in Church History, 2 (1965), 261, 266-67.