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daughter.’
Maud Parr’s will, May 1529
G AINSBOROUGH WAS a port on the river Trent, already steeped in history when Katherine Parr arrived there as a young bride. ‘Then runneth the Trent down to Gainsborough, a town ennobled by reason of the Danes ships that lay there at rode,’ wrote the celebrated sixteenth-century antiquary William Camden. It was also, he added, notorious for the death of the colourfully named Danish tyrant Sweyn Tings-Kege, ‘who after he had robbed and spoiled the country . . . being here stabbed to death by an unknown man, suffered due punishment . . . Many a year after this it became the possession of Sir William de Valence, Earl of Pembroke, who obtained for it of King Edward I the liberty to keep a fair. From which earl by the Scottish earls of Athol and the Percies, descended from the Barons of Borough who here dwelt . . .’ 1
Katherine’s new home was in one of the most isolated of all English shires. Both topographically and culturally, Lincolnshire was a distinctive place, its agricultural flatlands, marshes and coastline contrasted with the range of hills known as the Wolds. It was the most distant county to be ruled directly from London; the rest of the north of England came under the administration of the Council of the North. To Katherine, it must have seemed a very different place from the more prosperous, populated south, a world away from the stimulation of court gossip and intrigues which she had known, indirectly through her parents, all her life. Most southerners viewed this part of the world with a prejudice based on ignorance. Inhabitants of the fenlands, for example, were thought to be slightly less than human and Henry VIII famously described the common people of his second largest county as ‘one of the most brute and beastly of the whole kingdom’. 2 This attitude clearly communicated itself to his successors. There was no royal visit to Lincolnshire between 1541 and 1617. Unloved and remote, it was almost frontier territory. There was only one major overland access from the south, via the Great North Road at Stamford. Otherwise, it had to be reached by coastal voyage to ports such as Grimsby or Skegness. Two of its largest towns, Lincoln itself and Boston, were in decline during the Tudor period.
Though rich agriculturally, Lincolnshire had few major landowners at the time that Katherine Parr married into the Borough family. The Boroughs, like many of their neighbours, were knighted gentry. This absence of an obvious rallying point for royal authority added a further dimension to the area’s perceived awkwardness and isolation. Not until the mid-1530s, when Charles Brandon, duke of Suffolk, married his ward, the local heiress Katherine Willoughby, was there a great lord in Lincolnshire. Brandon’s second duchess (his first had been the king’s sister, Princess Mary Tudor), was to become, by a strange coincidence, a close friend of Katherine Parr in the next decade.
The rural landscape of Lincolnshire was not marked by major castles but it had a deep-rooted monastic heritage. Fifty-one monasteries, covering all the great orders except the Cluniacs, bore witness to the enduring importance of religion in the east midlands. The Gilbertines, the only religious order originating in England, had been founded by St Gilbert of Sempringham (avillage in the Lincolnshire fens) in 1131. Not all the houses were wealthy but most, despite the inevitable lapses into apathy and occasional sexual irregularity uncovered in visitations, were respected by local people.
Life in this part of England continued to be dominated by the cycles of the agricultural year, the need for self-sufficiency and a straightforward faith in God. These all contributed to a strong sense of local identity. The area was noted for the independence of mind of its inhabitants and their capacity for rebellion. Lincolnshire folk by no means did what they were told and they could carry much ofthe rest of the
Maud Parr’s will, May 1529
G AINSBOROUGH WAS a port on the river Trent, already steeped in history when Katherine Parr arrived there as a young bride. ‘Then runneth the Trent down to Gainsborough, a town ennobled by reason of the Danes ships that lay there at rode,’ wrote the celebrated sixteenth-century antiquary William Camden. It was also, he added, notorious for the death of the colourfully named Danish tyrant Sweyn Tings-Kege, ‘who after he had robbed and spoiled the country . . . being here stabbed to death by an unknown man, suffered due punishment . . . Many a year after this it became the possession of Sir William de Valence, Earl of Pembroke, who obtained for it of King Edward I the liberty to keep a fair. From which earl by the Scottish earls of Athol and the Percies, descended from the Barons of Borough who here dwelt . . .’ 1
Katherine’s new home was in one of the most isolated of all English shires. Both topographically and culturally, Lincolnshire was a distinctive place, its agricultural flatlands, marshes and coastline contrasted with the range of hills known as the Wolds. It was the most distant county to be ruled directly from London; the rest of the north of England came under the administration of the Council of the North. To Katherine, it must have seemed a very different place from the more prosperous, populated south, a world away from the stimulation of court gossip and intrigues which she had known, indirectly through her parents, all her life. Most southerners viewed this part of the world with a prejudice based on ignorance. Inhabitants of the fenlands, for example, were thought to be slightly less than human and Henry VIII famously described the common people of his second largest county as ‘one of the most brute and beastly of the whole kingdom’. 2 This attitude clearly communicated itself to his successors. There was no royal visit to Lincolnshire between 1541 and 1617. Unloved and remote, it was almost frontier territory. There was only one major overland access from the south, via the Great North Road at Stamford. Otherwise, it had to be reached by coastal voyage to ports such as Grimsby or Skegness. Two of its largest towns, Lincoln itself and Boston, were in decline during the Tudor period.
Though rich agriculturally, Lincolnshire had few major landowners at the time that Katherine Parr married into the Borough family. The Boroughs, like many of their neighbours, were knighted gentry. This absence of an obvious rallying point for royal authority added a further dimension to the area’s perceived awkwardness and isolation. Not until the mid-1530s, when Charles Brandon, duke of Suffolk, married his ward, the local heiress Katherine Willoughby, was there a great lord in Lincolnshire. Brandon’s second duchess (his first had been the king’s sister, Princess Mary Tudor), was to become, by a strange coincidence, a close friend of Katherine Parr in the next decade.
The rural landscape of Lincolnshire was not marked by major castles but it had a deep-rooted monastic heritage. Fifty-one monasteries, covering all the great orders except the Cluniacs, bore witness to the enduring importance of religion in the east midlands. The Gilbertines, the only religious order originating in England, had been founded by St Gilbert of Sempringham (avillage in the Lincolnshire fens) in 1131. Not all the houses were wealthy but most, despite the inevitable lapses into apathy and occasional sexual irregularity uncovered in visitations, were respected by local people.
Life in this part of England continued to be dominated by the cycles of the agricultural year, the need for self-sufficiency and a straightforward faith in God. These all contributed to a strong sense of local identity. The area was noted for the independence of mind of its inhabitants and their capacity for rebellion. Lincolnshire folk by no means did what they were told and they could carry much ofthe rest of the
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