Katherine Parr’s Posthumous Horror is one of the most unsettling and overlooked tales in Tudor history. Though she survived Henry VIII—becoming the only one of his six wives to do so—her tragic fate didn’t end with her death. After dying from childbirth complications in 1548, Parr was hastily buried at Sudeley Castle.
But centuries later, her peace was shattered when her coffin was rediscovered—and repeatedly disturbed—by curious onlookers, souvenir hunters, and even grave robbers. From macabre exhumations to shocking abuse of her remains, the story of what happened to Katherine Parr’s body after death is as haunting as it is fascinating.
Transcript of The Disturbing Fate of Katherine Parr’s Body
Today we are going to talk a little bit about the shocking afterlife of Katherine Parr. Katherine Parr did not rest in peace. And we’re going to talk a little bit about what happened with her remains, which is a fascinating story, if a bit macabre.
Katherine Parr famously survived marriage to a King, notorious for discarding spouses by execution or divorce, but Katherine’s survival did not spare her tragedy. Just over a year after Henry’s death, she herself died from childbirth complications at Sudeley Castle with her daughter Mary Seymour that she had with Thomas Seymour.
Hurriedly buried, Katherine might have expected a peaceful rest, but history as it so often does, had some other ideas. Instead, her remains became part of a chilling centuries-long saga of macabre discoveries, disturbing exhumations and Victorian-era souvenir hunters. Katherine Parr’s afterlife is one of Tudor England’s most bizarre and unsettling tales.
So on August 30, 1548, Katherine Parr gave birth to a daughter, Mary Seymour at Sudeley Castle. Joy turned swiftly to tragedy when Katherine contracted purple fever, a deadly infection common in childbirth. Within days, the vibrant former queen was delirious, accusing her ambitious husband, Thomas Seymour of neglect and cruelty.
Katherine died early in the morning on September 5, 1548. Her burial held the very same day, lacked any kind of royal ceremony or grandeur. There was no solemn procession, funeral effigy, nor lying in state, surrounded by mourners and candles.
Instead, Katherine was hastily wrapped in waxed linen, sealed in a lead coffin, and quietly interred at Sudeley Castle’s Chapel. With startling speed, the memories of Henry VIII’s last queen faded into obscurity. After the English Civil War, the chapel crumbled, leaving Katherine’s resting place forgotten beneath ivy and rubble until curiosity got the better of history.
In the summer of 1782, local resident John Lucas stumbled upon Katherine Parr’s lost Tomb at Sudeley, finding her coffin buried just two feet beneath the chapel floor. He couldn’t resist peeking inside. When Lucas pried opened the coffin, he made a stunning discovery.
Katherine’s body appeared almost perfectly preserved with skin, still white and moist as if she had died just days ago rather than two centuries before. Unable to leave this eerie miracle undisturbed, Lucas took macabre souvenirs, snipping locks of Katherine’s hair plucking fabric from her gown, even pulling a tooth from the late Queen’s mouth. It’s upsetting.
Tragically, his curiosity came at a high cost. By opening the coffin, he inadvertently let air into the sealed tomb, rapidly accelerating decay. His discovery soon drew even more attention to Katherine’s resting place, beginning decades of grizzly invasions into the Queen’s afterlife. Unfortunately, the curiosity sparked by Lucas’s discovery attracted an unsettling parade of visitors eager to glimpse the former queen.
In 1783, just a year later, castle steward of Lord Rivers reopened her coffin meticulously, noting her fine clothing, delicate proportions, and traces of her once celebrated beauty. Each intrusion sped up the decay and soon her remains became less a historical wonder and more a morbid spectacle.
Most shocking violation came in the 1790s when drunken grave diggers hired to rebury Katherine securely, grotesquely abused her corpse. Reportedly, they removed her body from its coffin, danced with her skeleton remains, tore out some hair and teeth as gruesome souvenirs, and then buried her upside down.
Katherine, once England’s dignified queen became a macabre Victorian novelty victim to a strange cultural obsession with Tudor relics. Her sacred resting place turned into a grim tourist attraction, visited more out of horrified fascination than any kind of genuine respect.
Finally, in 1817, a local rector determined to put an end to Katherine’s posthumous ordeal, so this is 20 some odd years, 20, 30 years after the initial discovery, they had to search again.
People had forgotten where she’d been buried, so they finally found her reduced largely to bones at this point, her remains and she was buried upside down in a makeshift grave. Remarkably, an ivy wreath had naturally grown around her skull, forming an eerie green crown.
In 1861, Katherine was at last, laid to rest properly, reinterred in a beautiful neogothic tomb within the restored St. Mary’s Chapel at Sudeley. Here, beneath an elegantly carved marble effigy, Katherine’s tumultuous afterlife came to a peaceful close.
Her once magnificent form had become mere dust. Yet she finally received the dignity denied to her for centuries. Today, visitors at Sudeley can pay respects at her tomb, marvel at her writings and think about a Queen whose extraordinary life and even more extraordinary posthumous afterlife embodies the enduring fascination and occasional cruelty of history itself.
So there we go. Poor Katherine Parr. She couldn’t even rest in peace. This is why we can’t have nice things. It’s unfortunate for Katherine, but interesting nonetheless.
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 30 years ago, and subsequently moved to London after college to spend her time immersed in Tudor history (how exciting when she got to interview Alison for the first time!). In addition to history, she is passionate about travel, and has lived in 3 countries and 4 states (not counting her perpetual state of confusion), and her family (who help her host her YouTube channel occasionally).
