Katherine Parr was an almost frightening amalgam of all of Henry's previous wives. Like Catherine of Aragon and Jane Seymour, she was the dutiful and pious wife. Like Catherine of Aragon again, she had a deep devotion to humanistic learning and a seriously scholarly bent. Surprisingly like Anne Boleyn, she leaned toward Protestantism and would bring to court with great courage well-known reformers who were more forward-thinking than the king felt comfortable with. She was firmly domestic, like Anne of Cleves, interested in bringing Henry's dysfunctional family into some semblance of domestic peace; and she was adept at compromise. And although she had shown little aptitude in this sphere as yet, her later life after Henry's death would prove that she had a deep vein of sensuality like that of Katherine Howard, a proclivity which Tom Seymour would bring out where her three previous husbands had failed. It is doubtful that Henry sensed this hidden capacity for passion - but he was acute enough to be aware of her growing attraction to Tom Seymour, and bundled him off on an embassy to the Netherlands, thus effectively ending that inconvenient courtship.
Katherine gave in to the inevitable. She even managed to resign herself by the thought that God had put her in this position to keep Henry from sliding over the edge on which he always teetered and back into full-fledged Catholicism. Katherine saw this as her mission in life, now that she would be in a position of influence with the man who had first wrested the helpless English from the clutches of Papery. They were married in a quiet but elegant ceremony on 12 July, 1543 at Hampton Court. The new queen surrounded herself with fellow humanists, choosing as her chaplains such men of the New Learning as Miles Coverdale and John Parkhurst and filling the posts of ladies-in-waiting with women who shared her earnest love of biblical and theological study - Catherine Willoughby, Joan Denny and Anne Stanhope. These women formed a sort of club for study and discussion, but also to delicately spread the new learning among women of their own and the lower classes. This and Katherine's authorship of her own published works made her decisively different from any of Henry's other wives.
Katherine also worked a small miracle with the king's pitiful children. She brought them back to court as rapidly as she could and reconciled them with their father, and for the first time the poor offspring of the king by three different mothers were in the bosom of a single family, with a father and mother to pay attention to them and encourage them. Even young Edward had been neglected in the manner of a prince of his time, shuttled from castle to castle with a huge household of retainers, nurses and tutors, but no exposure to his own family, and his own affection coming from his governesses. Katherine established a close, loving relationship with each of her royal stepchildren, and with the Princess Mary she reanimated the close friendship which had probably begun when they were girls together at court. This was the most stable and tight-knit household the royal children had ever known, and it must have been a welcome oasis in their sterile lives.
