Catherine Parr to Henry VIII on Women's Place

[GHansen]

These remarks took place after Queen Parr discovered a plot to have her executed for her 

heretical views. King Henry had asked for her opinion on a matter:

Your Majesty doth right
well know, neither I myself am ignorant, what great imperfection and
weakness by our first creation is allotted unto us women, to be ordained
and appointed as inferior and subject unto man as our head; from which
head all our direction ought to proceed. And that as God made man in his
own shape and likeness, whereby he being endued with more special gifts
of perfection, might rather be stirred to the contemplation of heavenly
things and to the earnest endeavor to obey his commandments, even so
also made he woman of man, of whom and by whom she is to be governed,
commanded and directed.….Your majesty being so excellent in gifts and
ornaments of wisdom, and I a silly poor woman, so much inferior in all
respects of nature unto you, how then cometh it now to pass that your
majesty in such diffuse causes of religion will seem to require my
judgment?

D'Aubigne, History of the Reformation in the Time of Calvin, 

volume 8. page 242.

[Theophilus]

She sure did. She had to protect herself. She was told by Dr Wendy, one of Henry's physicians, to throw herself on his mercy, which is what she did, and brilliantly so.

Catherine was originally in trouble for her protestant ideas, which were of some extent, different from Henry's. She was even thought to be aligned with Anne Askew, according to Bishop Gardiner which, if discovered would have been death to Catherine.

Even though Henry broke away from the church, and made his own, he was still, IMO, very much Catholic.

Glad to see another Tudorphile here.