SOURCE: Bainton, Ronald H. “Catherine Parr.” In Women of the Reformation in France and England, pp. 161-80. Minneapolis: Augsburg Publishing House, 1973.

In the following essay, Bainton offers an account of Parr's religious attitudes and influence from the Protestant chronicler John Foxe, and goes on to assess her religious stance by looking at her writings, her friends, and her actions.

Catherine Parr was the only one of the six wives of Henry VIII to survive him. One reason was that her failure to bear a son was not crucial since Henry already had an heir in Edward; another that she was English and no shift in foreign alliances could require that she be set aside and finally her irreproachable deportment precluded execution for infidelity. But there was one subject that might have meant her undoing and that was religion. Henry was of no mind to renounce the royal supremacy...