Katherine Parr is remembered as being the wife who survived Henry VIII. She made it through the machinations of Stephen Gardiner, sympathizing with the Reformers and coming within a hair’s width of falling prey to the plots of court, becoming the wife to become a widow to Henry VIII.
She would go on to marry her love Thomas Seymour (whether or not he reciprocated the level of passion she felt is up for debate), and sadly, though she would survive Henry, childbirth would be fatal to her, just as it was to so many women in an age where dying in childbirth was all too common.
Her attending doctor, Dr Huicke, was the physician to Henry VIII and Katherine Parr, and he is most likely responsible for the infection that took Katherine. This was an age before hand washing was common, and hygiene wasn’t understood. Childbed fever was a common enough condition – it killed Jane Seymour, Henry’s third wife, and Henry’s mother Elizabeth of York, who died in 1503. Modern medicine has given us antibiotics to combat these infections. But Katherine didn’t have that luxury.
Before dying, she made her final will, just a week after giving birth to her daughter Mary. Having waited 36 years for marriage to someone she truly loved, she was finally ready to start a family, and build a life of her own. But it didn’t work out as planned, and here she was, on her deathbed, making her final wishes known.
The witnesses of the queen’s will were Robert Huick, Doctor of Physic, and John Parkhurst. In her will, the queen gave her husband “with all her heart and desire, frankly and freely give, will, and bequeath to the said Lord Seymour, Lord High Admiral of England, her married espouse and husband, all the goods, chattels, and debts that she then had, or right ought to have in all the world, wishing them to be a thousand times more in value than they were or been; but also most liberally gave him full power, authority, and order, to dispose and prosecute the same goods, chattels, and debts at his own free will and pleasure, to his most commodity.”
About six months later, in February 1549, Katherine’s good friend and former lady-in-waiting, Elizabeth Tyrwhitt, gave an account of the state of Katherine’s mind in her final days. She was called for this deposition because of the accusations against Thomas Seymour, Katherine’s husband, of treason.
Lady Elizabeth records:
“Two days afore the death of the Queen, at my coming to her in the morning, she asked me where I had been so long, and said unto me, she did fear such things in herself, that she was sure she could not live: Whereunto I answered, as I thought, that I saw no likelihood of death in her. She then having my Lord Admiral by the hand, and divers others standing by, spake these words, partly, as I took it, idly [deliriously], ‘My Lady Tyrwhitt, I am not well handled, for those that be about me careth not for me, but standeth laughing at my grief, and the more good I will to them, the less good they will to me:’ Whereunto my Lord Admiral answered ‘why sweetheart, I would you no hurt.’ And she said to him again aloud, ‘No, my Lord, I think so’: and immediately she said to him in his ear, ‘but my Lord you have given me many shrewd taunts.’ Those words I percieved she spoke with good memory, and very sharply and earnestly, for her mind was far unquieted. My Lord Admiral perceiving that I heard it, called me aside, and asked me what she said; and I declared it plainly to him.”
A lock of hair believed to belong to Katherine ParrLady Tyrwhitt was no fan of Seymour, but still she believed that the statements and accusations by her mistress were spoken in delirium. She then goes on to document Seymour’s gentleness toward his wife:
“Then he [Seymour] consulted with me, that he would lie down on the bed by her, to look if he could pacify her unquietness with gentle communication; whereunto I agreed. And by that time he had spoken three or four words to her, she answered him very roundly and shortly, saying ‘My Lord, I would have given a thousand marks to have had my full talk with Huicke, the first day I was delivered, but I durst not, for displeasing of you’: And I hearing that, perceived her trouble to be so great, that my heart would serve me to her no more. She like communication she had with him the space of an hour; which they did hear that sat by her bedside.”
After she passed, her body was wrapped in cloth and encased in form-fitting lead. When unwrapped she still had her hair, teeth and nails, and her flesh was “soft and moist and the weight of her hand and arm as those of a living body”. Within a year she had putrefied, but locks of her hair and a mounted, blackened tooth are still on display at her home, Sudeley Castle.
Her funeral was in keeping with her religious beliefs, a Protestant service conducted in English. The chief mourner was Lady Jane Grey, another Protestant who herself would be executed in a few years. Her body was buried in Sudeley, and rediscovered in the late 18th century.
Englandcast Episodes:
https://www.englandcast.com/2017/11/episode-093-tudor-times-katherine-parr/
https://www.englandcast.com/2017/04/englandcast-024-pregnancy-and-childbirth-in-renaissance-england/
From the Shop:
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Katherine Parr Quote Mug
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Heather Teysko is the creator, writer, and producer of The Renaissance English History Podcast, the original Tudor history podcast, started in 2009. She's been writing about history online for over 25 years, since her first site on Colonial American history became number one in history on Yahoo in 1998. In 2019 she created Tudorcon, which is now a yearly event, in addition to writing books, and running TudorFair.com - a whimsical Tudor Merch shop. She has been passionate about Tudor England since she first read Alison Weir's The Six Wives of Henry VIII 20 years ago, and subsequently moved to London after college to spend her time immersed in Tudor history.