On the 28th February 1547 inside of the Palace of Whitehall, Henry VIII the infamous Tudor
Monarch died.
Henry VIII’s health and decline had been very severe and in his final weeks and months
he was in a lot of pain.
He was waited on by the Archbishop of Canterbury, but the 6 wived King left Catherine Parr his
final wife behind.
She is considered by some to have been the lucky wife who very easily could have been
executed after she was considered a very radical Protestant at the time, and many people were
suspicious at the effect she was having on the King and his religious beliefs.
She was a skilled and brilliant scholar and talented woman, and she did a lot for women
across England.
But following the King’s death, Catherine would marry quickly.
She would marry a man who himself would be executed on Tower Hill, and who is often linked
to the abuse of Elizabeth I, the future Tudor Queen.
But following her death, her tomb and remains would be disturbed a number of times.
But what is the story of breaking into the tomb of Henry VIII’s sixth wife?
Catherine Parr married Henry VIII at Hampton Court on the 12th July 1543 and she was the
first Queen of England also to become the Queen of Ireland.
She remained as the Queen until her husband’s death, and during his reign would act as Regent
whilst Henry was away in France.
She had a great influence on her stepdaughter the future Elizabeth I, and she continued
to public books and manuscripts.
Shortly before Henry VIII died, he made an arrangement that would give Catherine an allowance
of £7000 a year to support herself, and he stated that she should be known as a Queen
dowager and treated as a Queen of England following his death.
But shortly after Henry VIII’s death, Catherine’s old love and flame Thomas Seymour the 1st
Baron Seymour of Sudeley would return to court and the pair reignited their love very quickly.
Seymour asked Catherine to marry him, and she accepted his proposal.
Only four months had passed, and Seymour knew that he would not get the permission of the
new King Edward VI’s regency council to marry the Queen dowager so soon.
The pair married in secret, and the King and council were not told for a while and when
it became known there was a scandal.
The King was not impressed, neither was his half sister the future Mary I, but at the
time Catherine began to become involved in altercations with her brother in law Edward
Seymour the Lord Protector.
He was the de facto ruler whilst the King was so young, but Seymour and Catherine would
argue especially as her husband Thomas wanted more power than his brother, and he got incredibly
jealous.
But in her final years, she continued to write new books and volumes.
But at the age of 35 Catheirne became pregnant with Thomas Seymour’s son, and this was
a surprise as throughout her first three marriages she had not conceived a child at all.
This age was dangerous for a woman to give birth at, especially during the Tudor period
as it was common for many mothers to die following childbirth from complications, blood loss
or illnesses such as childbed fever.
At the time, Catherine was living at Sudeley Castle, where her husband owned and this was
a beautiful castle found in Gloucestershire.
It was here where Catherine provided an education for Lady Jane Grey, the soon to be 9 day queen
following Edward VI’s death.
But whilst inside of the rooms of Sudeley Castle, Catherine spent her last few months
within the walls of the castle.
She spent the last summer of her life there, and whilst at Sudeley she gave birth to her
only child, a daughter named Mary Seymour.
The baby was born on the 30th August 1548.
But on the 5th September, days after giving birth Catherine succumbed to childbed fever
inside of her bed.
Following Catheirne’s death, Thomas Seymour left the castle quickly.
But after her death her funeral was arranged and it was the first Protestant funeral held
in England and her chief mourner was Lady Jane Grey.
Her remains were not taken anywhere, and she was then buried inside of St Mary’s Chapel
inside the grounds of the castle where she died.
In the following months her husband was executed for treason on Tower Hill, and her daughter
seemingly disappeared from the history books over the next few years.
A beautiful tomb for her was raised to her memory on the north side of the chapel, and
it had an eggy of the Queen and on the base was a Latin inscription.
However within 100 years of her death, the chapel fell into ruin and decay and in 1642
the Castle and chapel was damaged by the fighting of the English Civil War.
Roundhead soldiers arrived there and desecrated the chapel, and they even dug up the remains
of the people buried there, and they smashed monuments and tombs including Catherine parr’s.
It’s believed her body was disturbed at the time and her monument was destroyed.
A writer stated, ‘There is in the castle a goodly fair church, here they dug up the
graves, and disturb the ashes of the death, they break down the monuments.’
Over the following years, Sudeley was slighted by Parliament, and the Chapel roof was demolished
and for two centuries the chapel remained a ruin and Catherine’s burial place was
forgotten.
But in 1782, as many people flocked to see ruins of castles, a group of ladies travelled
to Sudeley and they searched for the tomb of Henry VIII’s sixth wife.
They found a large block of alabaster in the north wall of the chapel and they then asked
a group of local men to dig below it, and at a depth of two feet Catherine’s lead
coffin was found, and it was identified by it’s inscription.
The coffin was then opened.
The cerecloths covering the face of the Queen were cut away and the people who had broken
into Catherine Parr’s tomb could not believe what they saw.
They saw her perfectly preserved face and her open eyes, but then quickly her corpse
which had been exposed had turned colour and the eyes dimmed.
Quickly the women then asked to throw earth back over the coffin.
But the same year, a farmer who was curious also lifted the top off the coffin and he
saw the body wrapped in the cerecloth.
It was said, ‘"In the summer of the year 1782 the earth in which Qu.
K. Par lay interned was removed, and at the depth of about two feet (or very little more)
her leaden coffin or coffin was found quite whole…
Mr Lucas had the curiosity to rip up the top of the coffin, expecting to discover within
it only the bones of the deceased, but to his great surprise found the whole body wrapped
in 6 or 7 seer cloth linen, entire and uncorrupted… his unwarranted curiosity led him to make
an incision through the seer cloth which covered one of the arms of the corpse, the flesh of
which wat the time was white and moist”’ He made an incision and uncovered one of the
arms, and he said the flesh was white and moist, and he also cut off a few locks of
the Queen’s hair as well as some material from the cloth and her dress which she was
buried in.
In 1783 just a year later, the steward of the Castle then directed for the grave to
be opened again to see the Queen’s remains, and it was said that the body had begun to
decay quickly.
It was also noted that ‘shoes were on the feet which were very small, and that the Queen’s
proportions were extremely delicate, and that her hair was gold.’
In 1786, a Reverend opened the tomb again, and they found her head had totally decayed
and teeth had fallen from their sockets.
They opened one part of her arms and found her hand had turned brown, and they then made
a sketch of the remains.
It was said little respect had been paid to the Queen’s remains, and over the next few
years her tomb would be opened again.
6 years later, some rude people and vandals came to the castle and allegedly took the
body out of the grave and played with it, and even danced with it before leaving it
exposed in a heap of rubbish.
It was said they were drunk and that they knocked out the teeth and stabbed an iron
bar several times through Catheirne Parr’s torso, and then buried it back in the ground
upside down, but then when the priest found this he then petitioned to have her remains
interred properly.
The chapel was repaired in 1817, and Catherine’s coffin was found upside down and by now the
body was just a heap of bones and small parts of hair.
They were then placed inside a stone vault, but it was believed her remains were not given
the correct historical respect fitting for the Queen and the final wife of Henry VIII.
Her coffin was then placed into a beautiful and large marble tomb which today sits inside
of the chapel and can be viewed.
On top is a large marble alabaster monument showing her with her hands clasped, and finally
Catherine Parr the final wife of Henry VIII is buried with a significant degree of dignity,
despite the fact because of the antics of others opening the coffin, very little of
her actually remains there today.
But Catherine Parr is considered the 6th wife of Henry VIII who during her time was a brilliant
scholar and talented writer.
She could have been living dangerously during Henry VIII’s reign, but she managed to gain
the favour of her husband when it mattered.
Despite her being considered the lucky wife who managed to survive the wrath of her husband,
after her death her remains were treated certainly worse than most of Henry VIII’s other wives.
Today she’s remembered for being a woman who championed education at a time when this
was not expected of women, and she was the brilliant final wife of the infamous Henry
VIII.
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