A Perfect Flower of Modesty

The Death of a (Tudor?) Queen and her Dispiriting Treatment in Death

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Today, on much less happy grounds, I bring you some information about the death of the first Tudor queen. Or, perhaps more correctly, the first queen who was married to a Tudor. She forms a significant part of my work, ‘The Son of Prophecy: The Rise of Henry Tudor’, a BBC History 2024 Book of the Year, and is certainly someone worthy of greater study - Katherine of Valois.

On 3 January 1437, Katherine, a woman who was described by Enguerrand de Monstrelet as ‘very beautiful, of high birth and or decorous comportment’, died in Bermondsey Abbey. She was aged just thirty-five years old. Katherine had been born a princess of France, through marriage had briefly become queen of England, and at her death was the mother of the boy king Henry VI and wife of a Welsh squire of ancient stock, Owen Tudor (or Owain ap Maredudd ap Tudur to give his proper name). I have previously written about how Owen and Katherine may have met, which you can READ HERE

Now, much of this Tudor-Valois marriage was conducted away from prying eyes, and probably continued without the knowledge of many people save for a trusted few whose loyalties could be counted upon. We know, for example, that two of the children born to Owen and Katherine were born in Hatfield and Much Hadham, church properties situated north of London where she (and presumably her secret spouse) spent much of her time. Many years passed, at least three children were born, and their English, French and Welsh names reflected their diverse background – Edmund, Jasper, and Owen. Live went on as normal, or as normal-ish as it could considering the king’s mother had married the son and grandson of Welsh rebels.

But by the end of 1436, a period when a ‘great, hard, biting frost’ hit the country, clearly something was amiss. Whilst pregnant with what would prove her fifth child, and fourth overall with her Welsh husband, Katherine entered Bermondsey abbey, located to the south-east of London. The likely reason is that she had begun to display symptoms of serious illness. In addition to offering spiritual aid, the Benedictine nuns were also best placed to provide the pained Katherine with a degree of physical well-being although medical knowledge of the time would not have particularly aided her.

On 1 January, Katherine gave birth to a daughter in Bermondsey, believed to have been named Margaret. By this point Katherine was aware she was dying, ostensibly from some form of terminal illness which would explain her seeking sanctuary in the Abbey where she could be cared for in her final days. She finalised her will, making sure her creditors’ debts were settled, loyal servants rewarded, and prayers said for her soul. Her husband Owen and her Tudor children were not mentioned by name, but there is a vague instruction levelled at her ‘full entirely beloved son’, King Henry VI, hoping he would oversee ‘the tender and favourable fulfilling of mine intent’ – what that intent was can only be speculated but may have been to protect her young family, the king’s own half-siblings.

With medical knowledge of the time comparatively ill-informed in comparison to the modern day, it is difficult (and probably not wise) to diagnose Katherine but it is commonly thought she was suffering from symptoms common with cancer or a tumour which would not have been a pleasant experience in the mid-15th century. She made reference to her ailment in her will, where she indicated she had spent her remaining months “in a grievous malady, in the which I have been long, and yet am, troubled and vexed”. Two days after the birth, both Katherine and the newborn child were dead.

Regardless of her status at time of death and the possibility that she had scandalised the crown by marrying a Welsh commoner, the indisputable detail remained that Katherine was the incumbent King’s natural mother and therefore was granted the royal prerogative of right of burial in the revered Westminster Abbey. She was, after all, not only the mother of a king but also had been the sister, daughter and wife of kings. She was interred and laid to rest next to her first husband Henry V in the Chantry Chapel, a sacred corner of the historic Abbey which had attained an esteemed reputation as the resting place of England’s illustrious warrior King.

Her son, Henry VI, ordered an alabaster tomb erected to honour his mother’s memory, on which was engraved a Latin epitaph celebrating Katherine as ‘a perfect flower of modesty’ who had been the ‘joy of this land’. Like her will, the inscription made no reference to her family with Owen Tudor, regarding her as simply a ‘maid and widow’ of Henry V. It would be surprising if one of her young sons, named Owen for his father and who was being raised by the monks within Westminster Abbey, did not pay regular private visits to the tomb of his mother in subsequent years.

Regrettably Katherine would not be left to rest in peace as a few generations later her coffin was removed from its original resting place in order to be re-interred into an alternative tomb. The order for this had come from her grandson Henry VII, who was focused on completely rebuilding the Lady Chapel to create a new Tudor royal mausoleum. The intention was for Katherine, who the first Tudor king regarded as ‘our grand dame of right noble memory’, to be placed in a prominent spot in his new chapel. Henry, however, passed away long before the chapel and the reinterment could be completed, and for reasons unknown, his grandmother’s crumbling coffin was left neglected in its temporary holding place.

As the coffin was not firmly secured, her embalmed body was thus on show for scores of visitors and remained so for over two centuries, the noted 17th Century diarist (and creep) Samuel Pepys even once gruesomely recording he had shared a kiss with the mortal remains of a Queen. In his journal entry for 23rd February 1669, his birthday in fact, Pepys gleefully documented that he had seen “the body of Queen Katherine of Valois; and I had the upper part of her body in my hands, and I did kiss her mouth, reflecting upon it that I did kiss a Queen”.

Her corpse remained in this circumstance until the middle of the 18th Century, possibly viewed up close by society figures who could pay a fee for a glimpse of the queen’s remains. This provoked the outraged James Ralph to write in 1734 ‘I think nothing can be a greater violation of decency, or more injurious to the memory of such illustrious personages, than to expose their relics in so licentious a manner, and make a shew of what once commanded respect and adoration’.

It was not until 1787, after Katherine’s partially exposed remains had been above ground for 276 years and had become a well-known curiosity for eighteenth-century antiquarians, that the former queen of England was belatedly reinterred into the Percy family vault beneath the Chapel of St Nicholas. Regrettably, in recent years her corpse had been subject to ghoulish vandalism by indecent scholars of the abbey school, who ‘amused themselves with tearing it to pieces’. What is there to say, really?

Finally, in 1878 after maintenance work was completed in the abbey, the queen’s bones were mercifully moved to their present burial place, underneath the altar in the Chantry Chapel in which Henry V’s coffin is located. A Latin inscription which reads:

“Under this slab for long cast down and broken up by fire, rest at last, after various vicissitudes, finally deposited here by command of Queen Victoria, the bones of Catherine de Valois, daughter of Charles VI, King of France, wife of Henry V, mother of Henry VI, grandmother of Henry VII, born 1400, crowned 1421, died 1438”.

Once more, her Welsh family were omitted from the record. From Katherine, however, it could never be erased that one of the greatest dynasties that would rule these islands was born. She, nor anyone she knew in life, could ever have foreseen that this it would be from the line she shared with her second husband, Owen Tudor, and not her first, Henry V.

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Son of Prophecy

'Son of Prophecy: The Rise of Henry Tudor' is a 300-year history of one Welsh family, and how they emerged from the wilds of Gwynedd, navigated the murky and violent waters of Welsh-Anglo politics, and eventually found their way, almost improbably, onto the English throne. This story involves war, treason, escapes and love.

Fourteen years in the making, from defiant Welsh rebels to unlikely English kings, this is the story of the Tudors, but not how you know it. A BBC History Magazine 2024 Book of the Year, it is available to buy worldwide now HERE