As Bishop Fisher, thin, frail, indomitable, lowered his neck to receive the headsman’s blow, and Thomas More prayed in his cell in the Tower for the strength to face his own coming ordeal, Katherine sat helplessly in exile at Kimbolton. One of the king’s provincial residences, the castle was about twenty miles from Cambridge, of the university of which, in happier times, Fisher had been chancellor.
Although Kimbolton was reasonably well appointed, Katherine’s day-to-day existence was far from comfortable. Like Juana, incarcerated at Tordesillas, Katherine still had some of her precious possessions around her. There is a list in the archives of precisely what plate and other items she was allowed to retain, the rest being boxed up for storage in the king’s jewel house. Among the plate designated for her private chapel and for her table, we read of a small gilt crucifix and a crucifix “of Spanish work standing on a foot,” both of which are marked as “of her own,” perhaps brought with her from Spain when she had arrived as a young princess.
Like her property, her expenditure was also regulated. Her intimate household was small: she had her physician, her apothecary, her confessor, and a couple of maids, the rest of her staff being organized by the men Henry had appointed as her jailers, with whom she had as little contact as possible. The honorable Mountjoy, perhaps having divided loyalties, had asked to be excused from her service. Even with such a tiny establishment she was considered a drain on Henry’s purse. Cromwell often inserted a note to himself in his “remembrances” that he must not forget to take the accounts of the “Princess Dowager” to the king for royal approval. Maybe as a result, she was not always allowed the wine she preferred. And, in a bizarre repeat of what had so often happened to her as a young widow, she found herself frequently in arrears for tradesmen’s everyday bills. Unlike former times, though, she did not send begging letter after begging letter. Her life had moved on: while often complaining in general terms about poor treatment, she had more important things to worry about than money.
Crucial to everything was how best to win her husband back. Her early hopes that Henry would return had been dashed. When, in 1534, Clement had pronounced that her marriage was legal, Henry had simply taken no notice. He had continued to take no notice ever since.
And the general situation was getting worse. All around her, Katherine saw her beloved Church attacked, honorable men suffering hideous deaths, monasteries closed, heresy gaining ground. Perhaps war was the answer, but this Katherine refused to contemplate, even if Charles, beset with problems in his own dominions, could have found time to pursue it. Just as Juana had backed away from supporting the Communero rebels against her son, so Katherine confessed to Chapuys that she “would consider herself irretrievably doomed to everlasting perdition” if she encouraged Charles to make war on her husband.
To assume that she always remained of this opinion, though, is wrong. As the years passed, there are hints that her attitude began to harden. In a telling dispatch to Charles written shortly after the papal sentence was issued, Chapuys expressed her view very clearly:
She [Katherine] hitherto imagined that the Papal sentence once delivered and intimated to the parties, this King would return to the right path; but she now perceives that it is absolutely necessary to apply stronger remedies to this evil. What these are to be, she durst not point out.…
When nothing happened after Fisher’s death, her tones became more strident. Swift action should be taken. If there was “the least hesitation or delay,” it would “be tantamount to letting the Devil … entirely loose and at liberty to do mischief.”
Perhaps fortunately for Katherine’s conscience, Fisher’s death, and the advent of Paul III, a new and more belligerent pope than the recently deceased Clement, took things out of her hands. Furious with Henry’s intransigence and his wanton execution of a cardinal, Paul began making overtures among European princes to remove Henry from the throne.
While the princes pondered, Katherine feared for her own life and for Mary’s. Refusal to take the oath to the succession and denying Henry’s supremacy carried the death penalty. Katherine’s talk of martyrdom was not entirely far-fetched. Whether Henry really would have executed them is unlikely, but Charles was sufficiently worried that he advised Chapuys to tell the two women that taking the oath would be preferable to losing their lives. Fortunately, despite bluster and threats, the choice never became that stark. Yet the danger was ever present. Neither woman could enjoy untroubled sleep.
And each desperately missed the other. To Mary, Katherine was not just her beloved mother but her “chief refuge in her troubles.” For Katherine, being kept apart from Mary was heartbreaking. It was still worse when Mary was ill. Once, after hearing that her daughter was sick again, Katherine sent a plaintive letter to Chapuys, her “especial friend.” Desperate to nurse her daughter but not daring to write personally to Henry, she begged Chapuys to ask him to send Mary to Kimbolton. There she would care for her lovingly, letting her sleep in her own bed and watching over her “when needful.” Henry refused, fearing that if the two were together, he would never be able to make them conform to his will.
Toward Christmas 1535, Katherine herself became ill. Chapuys heard of it only obliquely when Cromwell let slip that he was about to inform Henry that Katherine was “very poorly.” Anxiously, Chapuys begged for permission to visit her but, before it was granted, the ambassador heard better news from Katherine’s physician: she was apparently much improved, but he would let Chapuys know should her condition worsen.
Worsen it did, and quite suddenly on Christmas morning. Unhappy, missing her daughter, and troubled in her conscience about whether by acting differently she could have prevented the turmoil she saw shattering the world she had once known, Katherine’s strength began to ebb away. Racked with stomach pains, unable either to eat or drink, she tossed and turned as she tried to sleep. Even that brief release eluded her. She slept for no more than one and a half hours over a two-day period. She was too weak to stand, or even to sit up in bed.
By Wednesday, December 29, Chapuys had received letters from her physician and her apothecary warning him that she had relapsed. Though the apothecary’s note advised him to come at once, Chapuys was not unduly disturbed, as the physician’s missive was more optimistic. Nonetheless, Katherine’s “especial friend” rushed to get the necessary permit to visit her. Even though Suffolk told him she was “in extremis,” Chapuys did not believe “the danger” to be “too great” as he relied on the physician’s hopeful message. Still, with the permissions agreed, he “took horse at once” and rode the ninety or so miles to Kimbolton.
He was not the only one to do so. Knowing that Henry would not visit her and Mary could not, Katherine most wanted to see Chapuys—and perhaps one other. The moment that Maria de Salinas, now the Dowager Lady Willoughby, was told that her mistress was “very sore sick again,” she implored Cromwell “to labour with the King” to get her “licence to go to her [Katherine] before God send for her.” When nothing came, the resourceful Maria decided to go anyway.
She got to Kimbolton in pouring rain at about six in the evening of January 1, 1536, the night before Chapuys arrived. Forbidden entry by Katherine’s keepers, Maria brazened it out, telling them that they had to admit her since she had just fallen from her horse and that in any case, her permit would arrive on the following day. Before anyone realized what had happened, she had slipped into the house and into Katherine’s apartments. She managed to disappear; no one could find her. But Katherine would have seen her. The two women, who had shared so much, were reunited at the last.
Chapuys turned up the next day, accompanied by Cromwell’s man, Thomas Vaughan, clearly sent to “spy and note all that was said and done” (as the ambassador shrewdly put it). Chapuys has left us his own account of the four days he spent with the dying woman. The queen suggested that “the principal persons of the house” as well as Vaughan should be present at her first meeting with the ambassador; even imminent death did not rob Katherine of her well-honed political judgment.
Relieved and delighted to see him, Katherine greeted Chapuys as the loyal friend he undoubtedly was. Thanking him for taking the trouble to make the journey, not easy in midwinter, and for his “numerous services” over the years, she expressed her joy at having him with her so that “if it pleased God to take her,” he would be there. She might even die in his arms. With an eye toward Vaughan and those of her household installed by Henry, Chapuys craftily dissembled about his talks with Henry about Katherine’s illness. The king, he told Katherine, and everyone else in the room, was “very sorry for her illness” and intended to provide better treatment and accommodation for her. In fact the king had expressed no sorrow whatsoever, but by insinuating that it was Henry’s belief that only Katherine alive could preserve the “union and peace of Christendom,” Chapuys hoped to persuade his listeners to “have the greater care of her life”; the ambassador always thought that one day someone would poison the queen (that someone being his bête noire, Anne). Since Chapuys mentions that he had already agreed with Katherine, via an intermediary, that he should talk about Henry’s desire to keep her alive, we have yet another indication that she remained politically astute even in such dire circumstances.
Over the next few days, Katherine was well enough to spend some time talking with Chapuys. To do so gave her “great pleasure and consolation,” he tells us, for she prolonged their discussions for up to two hours at a time, often asking him to stay despite his anxiety that he was tiring her. Comforted though she felt in chatting to him, Katherine also knew that he was her channel to the outside world. So while they talked of Charles and Mary, Katherine also spoke of the heresies spreading within England and of the perils endured by “honest and worthy people.” Unless something was done quickly, she insisted, more and more damage would occur. Chapuys, dedicated to his master’s interests as well as to hers, reassured her that Charles, busy though he was, was an assiduous champion of her cause. And as it had turned out, he continued, delay had proved beneficial, because Pope Paul was now vehement in her defense. In any case, he concluded, Henry could hardly blame her for action that she had not herself incited. Chapuys must have presented his arguments well, for he felt that Katherine “seemed satisfied” with his “reasoning, and entirely approved of the delay.”
She also took comfort from his soothing response to her “scruple of conscience” that heresy in England “had arisen from her affair.” As one of her recent biographers has pointed out, her fear was substantially correct. Quite what changes would have been introduced even had she taken the veil and removed herself from the political arena remains speculative, but because she would not surrender, Henry had broken with the pope, met notorious heretics, and allowed new doctrines and concepts to creep into the country. At Kimbolton, though, as she felt her death approaching, Katherine needed her mind set at rest. Chapuys managed to do just that by confirming that heresy was not yet so entrenched that it could not be “uprooted.” “This speech of mine made the Queen happy and contented,” Chapuys afterward told Charles.
The few happy days she spent with the ambassador cheered Katherine up immeasurably. She began to sleep, she could eat and drink, and she began to feel so much stronger that she advised Chapuys to return to London. She did not want him to risk Henry’s displeasure by staying with her longer than was absolutely necessary. So, when her physician thought her “out of danger,” Chapuys set off for the capital, having elicited the doctor’s promise to send for him should she relapse again. Leaving on Wednesday, January 5, 1536, the kindly ambassador “rode as leisurely as possible” just in case there was a message before he was too far along the road. No message came.
For Katherine did indeed feel better. She sat up again, she even brushed and arranged her own hair. This proved a temporary reprieve. By midnight on Thursday evening, she had weakened considerably. And she knew it. In her last hours, she wanted the peace and solace that only her faith could give her. With death approaching, she was desperate to hear Mass and receive the Sacrament, but she was determined to wait until dawn. Despite her confessor’s offer to say Mass whenever she needed it, she could not bring herself to break the habits of a lifetime. To her, the holding of such a service before dawn was wrong—biblical authorities said so.
At last dawn came. The bishop recited the familiar words and she “heard mass and took the Holy Sacrament with the greatest fervour and devotion that could be imagined.” There were more prayers, she entreated God’s pardon and forgiveness for her husband, she dictated her last requests, summoning the strength to sign what amounted to her will. Under English law no woman was allowed to make a formal will while her husband was still alive, so the document Katherine signed was more like a list of requests. She wanted Mary to have her furs and a special necklace with a cross that she had brought from Spain; mindful of her duty, she made bequests for her servants; there was a plea for five hundred Masses to be said for her soul; she wanted an unnamed “personage” to undertake a pilgrimage to Walsingham on her behalf; she wanted her gowns cut up and used for church vestments; she asked to be buried in a convent of the Observant Friars, always a favored order for herself and for her mother.
Katherine died at 2:00 p.m. on Friday, January 7, 1536, her crusade ended. It would be up to Mary to fight on in her place. Whether Katherine died in the loving arms of Maria de Salinas, as has been suggested, is not documented. One hopes that she did.
Interestingly, she did not make a deathbed affirmation that she had never consummated her marriage with Arthur, as Chapuys had wanted. Since few people would risk their soul by lying when there was no time to retract and beg God’s forgiveness, Chapuys knew that had Katherine made such an affirmation, it would have carried considerable weight. Perhaps her physician (the man primed by Chapuys to secure the statement) simply forgot to ask her as he strove to make her last moments as pain-free as he could; more probably, Katherine was too weak to think of anything else but God. No one knows.
We cannot be completely sure about something else either: her last letter to Henry, allegedly dictated in her final moments. The letter, addressed to her “dear Lord, King and Husband,” has been quoted for centuries as a wonderful example of Katherine’s saintly nature. In some ways it is highly characteristic: she tells him of the “love” she bears him; she reminds him to take care of his soul, which he “ought to prefer before all considerations of the world or flesh whatsoever”; she forgives him for the “many calamities” he has inflicted upon her; she asks him to be a “good father” to their daughter; and, as in most wills of the period, she asks for his generous help to her servants to ensure that they are not “unprovided for.” The simple beauty of the epistle’s ending has almost become legendary: “Lastly, I make this vow that mine eyes have desired you above all things.”
It is truly wonderful. With its note of forgiveness, its concern for her daughter and her servants, but with the warning that Henry should have a care to his “soul’s health,” it is just the sort of letter we would expect Katherine to write.
But is it genuine?
The original has not survived. The text is printed in Polydore Vergil’s Anglica Historia, a contemporary history of England from pre-Conquest times until the reign of Henry VIII, written, naturally, in Latin, and dedicated to Henry VIII. Intriguingly, Vergil quotes Katherine’s letter two paragraphs before briefly mentioning the birth of Prince Edward, Henry’s son by his third wife, Jane Seymour. At that point the book abruptly stops. It is as if Vergil sees Katherine’s death and the future Edward VI’s birth as marking the end of an era, the end of Catholic England, even the end of England itself as he had known it.
Vergil, an Italian, had spent most of his life in England after arriving in 1502, when he accompanied one of the pope’s tax collectors. He did well for himself, accumulating various church benefices and becoming a well-known figure before falling afoul of Cardinal Wolsey. After that he spent much of his time writing. His sympathy for Katherine is overt. She is the “worthy queen,” her letter causing Henry “to weep” because, alleges Vergil, the king was moved by being “the object of such pure and earnest benevolence.”
A slightly abridged version of the letter is included by Lord Herbert of Cherbury in his own history, printed in 1649, and by Peter Heylin in 1660. Herbert gives his source as Vergil; Heylin gives no source, but his translation from the Latin follows Herbert’s word for word. Other chroniclers of the time, such as John Stow and Edward Hall, do not mention the letter at all. The plot thickens because one account of Katherine’s death refers to “a writing … made in her name addressed to the King,” and to a letter to Charles. Yet Chapuys alleges that “among the last words she said,” she sent apologies to Charles for not being able to write. And, according to the account of Katherine’s last hours given to Chapuys from the servant he sent to find out what had happened, while Katherine certainly dictated her final requests (which she wanted sent to Chapuys), her only other messages were oral. Also, Chapuys’s account of Henry’s reaction to Katherine’s death is markedly different from the affecting scene described by Vergil.
A man of the Renaissance, Vergil was aware of the classical tradition by which speeches of the sort expected of them were inserted into the mouths of heroes and heroines. He might have followed that exemplar in the case of Katherine’s letter. Yet, except when referring to Wolsey, whom he loathed, Vergil is largely reliable and he has not inserted other fictitious letters into the Tudor sections of his Anglica Historia. On balance, therefore, Katherine’s letter may be genuine: somehow it, or a copy of it, fell into Vergil’s hands through a contact at court, and then the missive subsequently disappeared or was destroyed. But until the handwritten original is suddenly discovered slumbering in an archive or some other reliable information comes to light, the letter must remain a tease.
Chapuys did not hear of Katherine’s death until Sunday. Learning that her heart, removed as part of the very swift embalming process, was said to be black, he was convinced that she had been poisoned, with Anne Boleyn as his chief suspect. However, even though Anne was becoming increasingly worried by Henry’s growing attraction to Jane Seymour, to take such a risk could have been suicidal. To rejoice at Katherine’s death was one thing, murdering her quite another.
As for Henry, if he shed regretful tears for the remarkable woman he had once loved, he did so privately. Chapuys, admittedly not a neutral observer, instead reports the king declaring, “God be praised that we are free from all suspicion of war,” sporting bright yellow, and showing off Elizabeth, his “Little Bastard” as the ambassador called her, to all and sundry. Far from rushing into deep mourning, Henry continued his tilting and appeared like “one transported with joy.” He did manage to tear himself away from his usual round of pleasure long enough to order Katherine’s funeral ceremonies, however.
And on the question of Katherine’s funeral, Henry was adamant. Much to Chapuys’s chagrin, she was buried as Dowager Princess of Wales, not as a queen. There was to be no elaborate tomb. Thus, she was afforded a solid, respectful interment in the abbey church at Peterborough. There were candles, there were banners with the various royal arms of England and Spain and her pomegranate emblem. There were Masses and official mourners. The chief mourner was the eldest daughter of the Duke of Suffolk by his dead wife Mary “the French Queen”; among the rest were Maria de Salinas and her daughter, by then the new Duchess of Suffolk. Chapuys chose not to attend.
Visitors to Peterborough Cathedral today are drawn to the site of Katherine’s grave by two flags, flying horizontally, fastened to the stone Norman arches. One is of the royal arms of England, and the other features the symbols of her homeland, including her own pomegranate emblem. There is no elaborate mausoleum to see. Instead, she lies to the left of the altar, in the North Presbytery Aisle, beneath an unmarked stone slab on the floor. On the railings behind her tomb, the words katharine queen of england are picked out in large gold letters; both the railings and the letters were positioned there in simple tribute in the nineteenth century. Although Chapuys was not present at the original obsequies in 1536, the current Spanish ambassador to the United Kingdom is one of those who travel to Peterborough for the special service that is now held every January in her memory.
Katherine’s death was devastating for Mary, who nevertheless retained her fierce pride and courage. She spurned Anne’s offer to become like a second mother, resisted attempts to make her take the dreaded oath, and relied very much on Katherine’s “especial friend” to help her through the coming years. He did not let her down.
The news took a while to reach Charles, who was in Italy. He had heard rumours by January 23, but he was inclined to caution because he had not yet received Chapuys’s reports. It was not “certain,” he thought. By February 1, though, he was writing to his wife, Isabella, who was acting as his regent in Spain, saying that he had heard of Katherine’s death “five or six days” previously. He told her that he and his court had donned mourning and that suitable obsequies had been performed. “May God receive her [Katherine] in Paradise which she certainly deserved on account of her extreme goodness and virtue, and the excellent life she led,” he wrote. When Charles told his mother, Juana, of Katherine’s death is unknown, as is her reaction. Perhaps the two sisters had been apart for too long for it to have much impact.
It certainly had an impact on Charles’s younger brother, Ferdinand, who took the news badly. Wearing “deep mourning,” he told the Venetian ambassador that his aunt had been “a sage, virtuous and sainted” wife, cast aside for “a harlot.” She had borne her adversity “with patience and wisdom” and had “died like a saint.” He could not “refrain from shedding tears” for the woman he had never even met but whose cause had reverberated around Europe.
Katherine could not have been a better wife to Henry. Chaste, virtuous, regal, dignified, she was a gracious and dedicated queen; if at heart she remained Spanish, she knew when to champion the interests of England. But she had failed in the most fundamental of all duties: she had not given Henry the son he needed to assure his succession. And because of that, she had watched in horror as her religion was attacked, her daughter disinherited, the friendship she had been sent to foster between England and Spain replaced by suspicion and distrust, and the heretic Anne and her circle crowing and triumphant.
Katherine died safely cocooned within the Church that meant everything to her, but she died knowing that her efforts to ensure the survival of her world had been fruitless. Only if a miracle occurred and Mary somehow succeeded would all come right again. Then Mary would restore true religion, rekindle the alliance with Spain, and bring peace and harmony back to a fractured nation. Perhaps.