Dowager Queen of England, against all the odds

She may have mourned, she may have breathed a huge sigh of relief. For on this day, in 1547, Katherine Parr became the Dowager Queen of England, Somehow, the sixth wife of Henry VIII had survived him with her head and her crown intact. She had been very lucky indeed but widowhood would prove to be as dangerous for Katherine as married life had been.

Katherine Parr, Queen of England

1543 - 1547

Katherine Parr had been Queen of England for three and a half years when the man who made her a king died. And those 40 odd months had proved eventful and then some for this consort. Henry had picked her as his queen while she was intrigued by courtier, Thomas Seymour, but she quickly adapted to her new life and was even named regent by her husband when he headed to France. She worked hard to reconcile Henry with his daughters, Mary and Elizabeth, but she made enemies along the way and narrowly escaped a plot to have her arrested and probably executed by careful treatment of Henry VIII. Her power was never the same after that but she was well respected and relatively secure in her position when the man who had terrified the world died on January 28th 1547 after a reign lasting 38 years.

Katherine Parr survived a plot to have her arrested during the later years of Henry VIII's reign

But life as a widow didn't work out how the woman who signed herself 'Kateryne the Quene' had expected. She was given no role in the upbringing of her stepson, the new King Edward VI, and found herself marginalised at the court she had once ruled. Within months she upset even more people by marrying Thomas Seymour, Edward's maternal uncle, and by the time the first anniversary of Henry's death came around she was pregnant for the first and only time in her life.

Wife number six, the great survivor

The eighteen months following Henry's death were even more complicated for Katherine as she brought her stepdaughter, Elizabeth, into her new household only to see her new husband start to behave very inappropriately towards her. Elizabeth was sent away and Katherine retired to Gloucestershire where she gave birth to a daughter in August 1548 at Sudeley Castle. She died of childbed fever days later and was buried at the castle she had come to call home.

Katherine Parr died of childbed fever just twenty months after Henry VIII's death

It was an unexpectedly tragic end for a woman who had done what five others had failed to do - survived marriage to Henry VIII. Katherine Parr is often portrayed as a mousy, dull woman who nursed a fat king in his last years. In fact, she was a leading politician, a great thinker, a proponent of religious reformation and an ambitious woman who grabbed every opportunity that passed her way. And she is also the woman who became a Dowager Queen of England, against all the odds.