Catherine Parr: A Book That Called Her a Sinner and Still a Queen

Catherine put her name to a book that called her a sinner. The title still called her a queen. Inside, she set out what she believed, and where she had been wrong.

The first edition of Catherine Parr’s The Lamentation of a Sinner carries the date 5 November 1547 in its closing printer’s statement. This is the date printed in the book. Edward Whitchurch printed it in Fleet Street, London. Henry VIII had been dead for nine months, and his widow had married Thomas Seymour. Catherine was about thirty-five, an experienced royal wife and an experienced author. This time, the account of a soul in need of salvation was unmistakably her own.

She had already published Prayers or Meditations under her name in 1545, while Henry was alive. That book had appeared with his approval. Much of it drew on an existing devotional work, which Catherine adapted into prayers spoken in the first person. She knew how to shape religious writing for readers. Her name on a title page was an established fact before she became the king’s widow.

But there was a considerable distance between approving a wife’s prayers and welcoming her opinions on the direction of the Church.

Henry had broken with Rome without embracing all the beliefs of the Protestant reformers. Catherine’s religious interests brought her closer to people who wanted further change. In the last years of his reign, those differences could put a woman’s friends and household under scrutiny. During Anne Askew’s prosecution for heresy in 1546, her interrogators sought information about women close to the queen. Askew was tortured and burned. The questions reached towards Catherine’s circle; religious discussion at court had consequences far beyond an uncomfortable evening with the king.

The Lamentation belonged to that world. Its references to Henry as a living king and husband point to composition before his death. It reached print in the reign of his son Edward VI, under a government pursuing Protestant reform. Catherine’s words had crossed from one reign into another. Their meaning was now being read in different circumstances.

Open the book, and the queen begins by examining herself. She describes a stubborn heart, spiritual blindness, and the ease with which she had mistaken ignorance for understanding. She offers her own experience as an example from which another Christian might learn. This is religious confession, an account of recognising sin and coming to faith.

For a woman whose public position required declarations of virtue, it was a striking way to begin. The title accorded her the honours of her rank. Her opening pages gave those honours very little work to do.

She could be a queen and still need forgiveness.

As her account unfolds, the emphasis moves from her failures to the mercy of God. She argues that salvation comes through faith in Christ, through grace rather than any power of her own to earn it. “Mine own power and strength could not help me,” she writes. A queen needs the same grace as everyone else.

Nor does the book stop at Catherine’s conscience. She turns towards the habits of other Christians, their readiness to notice a neighbour’s faults while overlooking their own, their reluctance to accept correction. She also prays for an end to religious contention and for unity among Christians. Having made an example of herself, she asks her readers to examine themselves too.

The woman confessing her ignorance is also teaching.

There were people prepared to help that voice reach print. One of them was another woman, and her support appeared where every reader could see it.

The full title credited Katherine Brandon, Duchess of Suffolk, with urging publication. Brandon was Catherine’s friend and a supporter of religious reform. Alongside her stood Catherine’s brother William Parr, Marquess of Northampton, whose request was also acknowledged. Their encouragement was recorded in the book itself. Readers encountered the names of the people who wanted Catherine’s words made public before they reached her account of her faith.

William Cecil supplied a preface. He urged readers to profit from Catherine’s example and defended the frankness with which she exposed her failings. A queen admitting herself a sinner might require some explanation. Cecil provided it: her confession was part of repentance, something to learn from rather than something to hold against her.

These were useful allies for a woman publishing a deeply personal account of belief. Her brother lent his name and rank. Her friend’s encouragement was acknowledged beside his. Cecil introduced the work to its readers. Beyond their names and titles lay Catherine’s sustained account of what she had come to believe, written in the first person and offered for others to consider.

She had published before, with a king’s approval. Now the king was dead, and a book composed during his lifetime was putting her reformist convictions before readers in a new reign. The voice remained hers.

The Lamentation was printed again in 1548, while Catherine was still alive. She died following childbirth that September, less than a year after the date in the first edition. The book she left behind still carried her name beside the word she had chosen to describe herself: a sinner.