of Isabel Plantagenet, sister to the king's great grandfather, Richard, duke of York.

This alliance increased the previous family connexion of the Parrs with the sovereign's lineage on the female side. Some degree of friendly intercourse appears to have been kept up between the king and his cousin the young lady Parr; and we observe that, in the year 1530, she sent him a present of a coat of Kendal cloth.' Both the brother and the uncle of Katharine were now attached to the royal household, but many reasons lead us to suppose that Katharine became an inmate of Sizergh Castle about this period. She was a lovely, noble, and wealthy widow, in her sixteenth year, when deprived of the protection of her last surviving parent. Her only near female relations were an unmarried sister younger than herself, and her aunt, lady Throckmorton, who resided in a distant county. As heiress presumptive to her brother William, it was desirable to remain in the vicinity of Kendal Castle, and the family estates in that neighbourhood; therefore the most prudent and natural thing she could do was to take up her abode with her kinswoman and friend, lady Strickland. That lady, though she had, by her marriage with Katharine's step-son, Henry Borough, become her daughter-in-law, was quite old enough to afford matronly countenance to the youthful widow of lord Borough, whom, according to the quaint custom of the time, she called "her good mother."

Katharine Parr and lady Strickland were alike descended from the Nevilles, of Raby; and sir Walter Strickland, the deceased husband of the latter, was also a relative of the Parrs; and as lady Strickland held of the crown the wardship of her son, young Walter Strick land's person and estates, she remained mistress of

1 Privy Purse Expenses of Henry VIII.

Sizergh Castle, even after her marriage with Henry Borough.'

At no other period of her life than the interval between her mother's death and her own marriage with Neville, lord Latimer, could Katharine Parr have found leisure to embroider the magnificent counterpane and toiletcover, which are proudly exhibited at Sizergh Castle as trophies of her industry, having been worked by her own. hands during a visit to her kinsfolk there.

As the ornamental labours of the needle have become once more a source of domestic enjoyment to the ladies of England, and even the lords of the creation appear to derive some pleasure, as lookers-on, in tracing the progress of their fair friends at the embroidering-frame, a brief description of these beautiful and well preserved specimens of Katharine Parr's proficiency in that accomplishment may not be displeasing.

The material on which both counterpane and toiletcover are worked is the richest white satin, of a fabric with which the production of no modern loom can vie. The centre of the pattern is a medallion, surrounded with a wreath of natural flowers wrought in twisted silks and bullion. A spread eagle, in bold relief, gorged with the imperial crown, forms the middle. At each corner is a lively heraldic monster of the dragon class, glowing with purple, crimson, and gold. The field is gaily beset with large flowers in gorgeous colours, highly embossed and enriched with threads of gold.

The toilette is ensuite, but of a smaller pattern. The lapse of three centuries has scarcely diminished the brilliancy of the colours, or tarnished the bullion; nor is the purity of the satin sullied, though both these queenly relics have been used, on state occasions, by the family in

1 Strickland Papers at Sizergh Castle, folio 3.

whose possession they have remained as precious heirlooms and memorials of their ancestral connexion with queen Katharine Parr. The apartment which Katharine occupied in Sizergh Castle is still called "the Queen's Room." It is a fine state chamber in that ancient portion of the castle, the Deincourt tower. It opens through the drawing-room, and is pannelled with richly-carved black oak, which is covered with tapestry of great beauty. The designs represent hunting in all its gradations, from a fox-chase up to a lion-hunt, varied with delineations of trees and flowers, and surrounded with a very unique border, in which young tigers are fighting and brandishing their claws at each other in the manner of enraged kittens. The most splendid patterns for modern needlework might be taken from these spirited devices. Over the lofty carved chimney-piece are the arms of England and France, supported between the lion and the Tudor dragon, with the motto "Vivat Regina;" the date, 1569, proves they were put up some years after the death of Katharine Parr, though doubtless intended to commemorate the fact that this apartment was once honoured by her use. The bed, with its hangings of costly crimson damask, is shewn as the veritable one in which she reposed, but the fashion of the bedstead is too modern to favour the tradition, which we think more probably belongs to one of the elaborately-carved and canopied oaken bedsteads coeval with the days of the Plantagenets, which are to be seen in other chambers of this venerable mansion.

How long Katharine continued the widow of lord Borough is uncertain, but she was probably under twenty

1 The arms of Deincourt, quartering Strickland, Roos, and Parr, are painted in the upper part of the antique window of the apartment in Sizergh Castle, called the inlaid chamber, which, from that circumstance, has been mistaken for the queen's room by Mr. Allom, in his Beauties of Westmoreland.

years of age when she became, for the second time, the wife of a mature widower, and again undertook the office of a step-mother. It is not unlikely that her residence. at Sizergh Castle might lead to her marriage with John Neville, lord Latimer, as lady Strickland was a Neville, of Thornton Briggs, and would naturally afford her kinsman every facility for his courtship to their fair cousin. Lord Latimer was related to Katharine in about the same degree as her first husband, lord Borough.' The date of her marriage with this nobleman is not known. He had been previously married twice; first, to Elizabeth, daughter of sir Richard Musgrave, who died without issue; secondly, to Dorothy, daughter of sir George de Vere, and sister and co-heiress to John de Vere, fourteenth earl of Oxford, by whom he had two children, John and Margaret.' The second lady Latimer died in 1526-7.

After Katharine became the wife of lord Latimer, she chiefly resided with him and his family at his stately mansion of Snape Hall, in Yorkshire, which is thus described by Leland:-" Snape, a goodly castel in a valley belonging to the lord Latimer, with two or three good parks well wooded about it. It is his chief house, and standeth about two miles from Great Tanfield." The

The maternal ancestors of Katharine's second husband were the Latimers, lords of Corby and Shenstone, afterwards of Braybrooke and Danby. The heiress of this family marrying John lord Neville, of Raby and Middleham, became the mother of Ralph Neville, earl of Westmoreland, whose fifth son by Joanna Beaufort, daughter of John of Gaunt, duke of Lancaster, took the title of lord Latimer, and married the third daughter and co-heiress of Richard Beauchamp, earl of Warwick. From this pair John Neville, lord Latimer, Katharine's husband, was the fourth in descent. He was the eldest son of a family of thirteen children.Hopkinson's MSS.

Lord Latimer was united to this lady July 20th, 1518, in the chapel of his manor of Snape, during his father's life, being then only a knight.Wolsey's Register, p. 94. Unpublished History of the Family of Neville, by Daniel Rowland, esq.

3 Rev. T. Nash, Archæologia, vol. ix., p. 6.

manors of Cumperton, Wadborough, and several other estates in Worcestershire, which he inherited from Elizabeth Beauchamp, were settled on Katharine Parr at her marriage with this wealthy noble."

The ancestors of Katharine Parr, the Marmions, had formerly held sway at Tanfield; and through the marriage of her grandfather, sir William Parr, with Elizabeth Fitzhugh, the grand-daughter of the heiress of sir Robert Marmion, the castle and manor of Tanfield descended to the father of Katharine, and was now the property of her brother, young William Parr. He was at that time childless; and as Katharine was his heiress presumptive, there was a contingency, by no means remote of this demesne, which was so desirably contiguous to her husband's estates, falling to her. It would be too much to say that lord Latimer had an eye to this contingency when he sought the hand of Katharine Parr, for she was young, lovely, accomplished, learned, and virtuous, and, to a man who had enjoyed the opportunity of becoming acquainted with the perfections of a mind like hers, the worldly advantages that might accrue from a matrimonial alliance with her, must have been considerations of a very secondary nature. Fortunate, indeed, must lord Latimer have felt himself in being able to obtain so charming a companion for his latter days, and at the same time so well qualified to direct the studies and form the minds of his children. The amiable temper and sound sense of Katharine taught her to perform the difficult duties that devolved upon her in the character of a step-mother with such conscientious and endearing gentleness, that she ensured the love and esteem of all the families with whom she was connected in that capacity. During the first years of her marriage with lord Latimer, she pursued the noiseless tenour of her way in the peaceful routine and privacy of domestic life, to which those talents and acquirements which afterwards