PARR, CATHARINE, Queen of England, was the eldest daughter of Sir Thomas Parr of Kendal Castle in Westmoreland, and was born at some date shortly before 1513. Her experience of the trials and vicissitudes of life began early. She was scarcely out of her childhood when her hand was given to Edward, Lord Borough of Gainsborough. Before a few years had passed, her husband died; and she became a widow in her fifteenth year. In a short time afterwards she was again married to John Neville, Lord Latimer; and at the age of twenty she was again left in solitary widowhood. It was this experience which assisted Catharine Parr in playing the difficult part which fell to her lot, when on the 12th July 1543 she was wedded to the royal wife-slayer Henry VIII. How prudently and successfully she played that part is described under ENGLAND. In 1547, the same year in which her husband the king died, Queen Catharine gave her hand to her former lover, Sir Thomas Seymour, lord-admiral of England. She died in child-bed in 1548, at the age of thirty-five.