Tudor Times is the online repository for all things Tudor and Stewart (1485–1625)

On Monday 11th November 1517, Sir Thomas Parr, a member of the King’s household died, aged about thirty-nine. Parr was from a Yorkist family in Westmoreland, with relatives in almost every noble or gentry family in the north, as well as connections in Warwickshire and Lincolnshire. He was the great-nephew of Warwick the Kingmaker, and so second cousin once removed to Elizabeth of York. Too young to fight at Bosworth, Parr had been brought up largely by his mother’s second husband, Nicholas Vaux, who later became his brother-in-law. Parr served both Henry VII and Henry VIII, and was in such high favour that he was selected with three others to bear the canopy over the infant Princess Mary at her christening in 1516. His elder daughter, Katherine, aged about five at the time of his death, later became the king's sixth wife.

On 10th November 1565, Lettice Knollys, wife of Walter Devereux, Earl of Essex, gave birth to her first son. He was named Robert. In total, the Earl and Countess of Essex would have four children who lived to adulthood – two sons, Robert and Walter, and two daughters, Penelope and Dorothy. When Robert was 11, his father died and he became Earl himself. As was customary, he was brought up by a guardian, rather than his mother. He was lucky, in that his guardian was Sir William Cecil, Queen Elizabeth’s most favoured minister. He was also fortunate in that his mother’s second husband was Robert Dudley, Earl of Leicester, the Queen’s closest companion. Young Robert was brought up with all of the privileges owing to a man of ancient family and honour. He was charming, courageous, and incurably rash. In the 1580s, after the death of Leicester, Essex became the Queen’s most favoured courtier, but he did not know when he was well off, and his career ended in rebellion and death.

On 9th November 1518 Katharine of Aragon, Queen of England, lost yet another child as her final pregnancy ended in either a stillborn daughter, or one who lived no more than a few hours. Since her marriage to Henry VIII in June 1509 Katharine had had at least five pregnancies – the first ended in a stillbirth in early 1510, the second, in the birth of a son, Henry, Duke of Cornwall, who lived only a few weeks, a third came to nothing in 1514. There are hints in the records that there may have been other conceptions. The one pregnancy to bring forth a healthy baby had occurred in 1515, with a daughter, Mary, being born in February 1516. It does not appear that Katharine’s pregnancies were difficult – she was well enough to hunt during the early autumn of 1518, but, alas, the baby did not survive. Even in a time when infant mortality was high, Katharine and Henry were particularly unfortunate, and he did not have a better record with his second wife, Anne Boleyn, who lost at least two babies before term.