Mary and Katharine had many tastes in common, and were excellent companions. Both were fond of study, though in an unequal degree, for to Mary it had been her only resource and consolation, in the midst of her fiercest trials. Friendships she had cultivated, as far as they were allowed to her, but books had been her constant refuge, and the taste for them once formed never forsook her. The New Learning had found in her an apt pupil, and she had eagerly welcomed the works of Erasmus, as they flowed from his facile and ever industrious pen. His _Paraphrase on the New Testament_ had been printed in the year of her birth. It formed a part of her education, and was the basis on which her piety was founded. In later years, she translated a portion of it—“The Paraphrase on the Gospel of St. John”—into English. Udal gave it to the world with a translation of the whole work, which he dedicated to Katharine Parr. In his preface he says:— “And in this behalf, like as to your highness, most noble Queen Catherine, for causing these paraphrases of the most famous clerk and most godly writer, Erasmus of Rotterdam, to be translated into our vulgar language, England can never be able to render thanks sufficient; so may it never be able, as her deserts require, enough to praise and magnify the most noble, the most virtuous, the most witty, and the most studious Lady Mary’s grace, daughter of the late most puissant and victorious King Henry the Eighth, etc., it may never be able I say, enough to praise and magnify her grace for taking such great study, pain and travail in translating this paraphrase of the said Erasmus upon the Gospel of St. John, at your highness’ special contemplation, as a number of right well-learned men both would have made courtesy at, and also would have brought to worse frame in the doing.” The book was published after Henry’s death, but a letter from Katharine to Mary, and belonging to the year 1544, is interesting as showing how much of it was really Mary’s own work, and the arguments employed by the Queen to persuade her to acknowledge the fact of her authorship publicly.