Henry VIII’s wives are still busy roaming around their various homes. In this joint episode produced with Brittany from History, Bitches! we explore some prominent ghosts that are still wandering around in England.
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Episode transcript:
Hey, it’s Heather. I want to remind you about our very special tours to the UK in 2017. We’ll be doing tours focusing on the Evensong experience. The Evensong service comes from Cranmer’s Book of Common Prayer from the mid-16th century. It’s been dubbed the atheists’ favorite service because it requires so little and it gives so much. It’s simply divine choral music sung in some of the most historic chapels, abbeys, and cathedrals in England. We’ll be spending 10 days visiting places like Cambridge, Oxford, Bath, the Cotswolds, Winchester, and Windsor with walking tours, free time to explore, and then gathering back each afternoon for the Evensong service. If you choose to attend, it will be 10 days of beautiful countryside, historic cities, and villages, and so, so much music! I invite you to go to Englandcast.com/tours for the full itinerary and pricing information. Again, Englandcast.com/tours. Thanks so much!
And now to the show. So this is a very special edition because it’s me and Brittany from History, Bitches! which is a great podcast that really focuses on women’s history. And it is amazing. I love it! So I contacted Brittany to see if she wanted to do some episodes together. And since it was fall and Halloween, we decided to pair up and do some episodes on ghosts and witchcraft. So what follows is a conversation that we had about some research that we did on ghosts, and we’ll be posting witchcraft in another episode. So enjoy!
I’m here with Brittany from a History, Bitches! and she’s here with me.
Brittany:
Yeah, hi, my name is Brittany and I am the host of History, Bitches! Not too long ago, Heather contacted me to ask if I would be interested in doing a joint episode with her. And how could I say no? So we spoke a little bit about some potential ideas. And since it was Halloween, or it’s October and it’s almost Halloween, and I started doing some episodes, I did an episode on Theodosia Burr, that was a history of mystery sort of episode. Since we were in the sort of spooky mindset, we thought that maybe ghosts would be a good idea for the first podcast that we recorded together.
Heather:
Yeah, I’m so excited. I’m so glad you said yes, because I’m a big fan of your podcast. And I’ve been trying to do more reaching out. By the way, I’m Heather from the Renaissance English History podcast. And so I’ve been trying to reach out to podcasters as well and you were the first one I reached out to, so this is the first joint podcast that I’m doing. I’m really excited because it’s been a lot of fun ideas.
Brittany:
And also History, bitches! Listeners, if you aren’t subscribed to the Renaissance English History Podcast, I would highly, highly, highly recommend that you go check it out a bit. Maybe like a few weeks or so ago, I posted something on Facebook about some women-centric episodes of Heather’s that you might be interested in. So I’ll repost that on the Facebook page, so that you’ve got a nice jumping off point when you go check out Heather’s podcast. It’s fantastic. And again, I’m so glad that you reached out to me.
So we’re going to be doing our first episode on Tudor and Renaissance ghost, so what we’re going to do is we’re just going to have sort of generally a conversation about some of the women that we’ve found that are mainly haunting castles in England and we’ve actually found that a lot of Henry VIII’s six wives are doing some spooking around in the English countryside and their old homes. So Heather, do you want to start us out with one of the key sounds?
Hever Castle – Anne Boleyn
Heather:
Yeah, sure. Well, you know, the most obvious one would be Anne Boleyn, given the history of Anne Boleyn. So she was the second wife to Henry VIII and she was the mother of Queen Elizabeth I. And she, of course, is the one that had this tumultuous courtship with Henry. He wanted her to be his mistress. And the story goes that she said no, she would only be his wife. And at the same time, Henry’s wife, Catherine of Aragon, couldn’t seem to give him a living son and heir which he needed. So he spent over a decade figuring out how to divorce Catherine and marry Anne.
And then after only three years of marriage, he decided that he was tired of her as well because she also didn’t bear a living son. so he figured out a way to get rid of her which was to accuse her of adultery with no less than six men, one of whom was her brother, and she was executed in the Tower of London. So she’s a very, very busy ghost and she’s in a lot of places.
But one of the places where she apparently comes every Christmas is her childhood home of Hever Castle. Hever actually dates from the 13th century, but it came into her family’s possession towards the end of the 15th century when her family started rising with her grandfather and her great grandfather. And so, her family, their fortunes rose spectacularly under Henry, and then of course, they fell equally spectacularly after she was killed. Interestingly, Hever actually was passed to Anne of Cleves as well, Henry’s fourth wife. And I’ll talk about her hauntings then towards the end.
But so, it’s kind of been through the family as it were – the wives. But Anne still haunts the castle and she has been seen by a lot of people. She comes on every Christmas. If you’re lucky enough to be there on Christmas, you have a good chance of seeing her wandering the gardens of the castle. She drifts over the bridge that crosses the river Eden and she also appears beneath a really big oak tree where Anne and Henry courted. Hever was where she spent her childhood and it’s also where she spent most of her time when Henry was courting her, so it has a lot of probably good memories for her ghost, I suppose.
I think also most recently, in August, there was a tourist at Hever Castle that said, he took a picture of Anne Boleyn’s ghostly hand pointing at something. And it was in all the newspapers. People can Google it if they’re interested in seeing the image, I can stick a link up as well in the show notes. I wasn’t exactly completely convinced that it was her hand.
Brittany:
And that’s what I was saying, how did he know it was her hand?
Heather:
I know, right. It looks like something, and it could be hand. Whether it was Anne Boleyn’s hand, I’m not exactly sure. But it’s just interesting that even now, almost 500 years after her death, tourists are still seeing her or thinking that they’re seeing her at Hever, at her childhood home. So that’s one place where you can go to see, and of course, she’s in lots of other places like the Tower as well. But if you want to see a happy place that she would be associated with, it would be Hever.
Blickling Hall – Boleyns
Brittany:
So like you said, Anne Boleyn is a very busy ghost because I also have a story about her haunting Blickling Hall. You mentioned that Hever castle is her childhood home, but there’s also a bit of controversy about whether or not she was born there. So Blickling Hall is a very stately home in Norfolk, England, and the Boleyn family owned the original Hall from 1499 until 1505. And there’s a bit of controversy about when Anne Boleyn was born. It’s unknown whether or not she was born at Blickling or Hever. But regardless of whether this was a place that she was born, it’s something that it’s a place that’s associated with the Boleyns.
Now, the actual manor that the family owned is no longer there during the reign of James I. It was destroyed and a new property was built on top of it. But despite the fact that the original home is no longer there, she still haunts it. So I guess, a few months before she goes and she haunts Hever Castle at Christmas, every May 19th at midnight and May 19 is the date of her execution, she comes to Blickling.
And the story is that she arrives at midnight in a phantom carriage that’s drawn by a headless coachman and four headless horses, and she’s supposed to be dressed in all white. If the image of herself that she’s projecting at Hever Castle is a happy one, the image that she’s projecting at Blickling is a bit more gory, because she’s said to be seen carrying around her severed, dripping head. And so on arrival, the horses and the carriage disappear and Anne roams around the corridors on the grounds of Blickling until sunrise.
Blickling, it’s a place that I guess the Boleyns have a hard time letting go of, because her brother George, you mentioned him previously, he’s the one with whom she was accused of committing incest, he also haunts Blickling on again, on the 19th, the same night as Anne. So Anne’s brother George with whom she was accused by Henry, as you mentioned before, committing incest with, also haunts Blickling on the 19th.
And this is really interesting because he was actually taken to the block two days before Anne, on the 17th of May. So it’s interesting that he likes to come around on the 19th as well, but like his sister, he is seen as headless and he doesn’t necessarily hunt the grounds but supposedly you can see him being dragged around the countryside by four headless horses, so I wonder if they’re Anne’s horses. Y
Yeah, isn’t that just terrible? And her father, Sir Thomas Boleyn also is said to haunt Blickling. His story gets connected with Anne’s in that he is sometimes said to be the coachman who delivers her and goes to Blickling Hall. And so after he drops her off at the front door of Blickling, he carries on. He carries on and he’s supposed to be chased by hordes of screaming demons because he’s responsible for betraying his family. He let his two children be executed without speaking up in their defense. And he is supposed to drive his coach over 12 bridges that lie between Wroxham and Blickling for 1000 years of penance for his betrayal.
Heather:
That’s really disturbing.
Brittany:
I know! So it’s funny that you found this happy story.
Heather:
I’m like “My Anne’s ghost is better than yours.”
Brittany:
I can understand why. My Anne’s ghost is a bit bleak.
Heather:
She is. Oh my gosh. Wow. Okay, so I’m not ever going to go to Blickling in May. I’m just gonna stay, and not like I really would, but if I ever have the opportunity, I don’t want to see anything like that.
Brittany:
Well if you’ll feel any better, her ghost supposedly didn’t show up this year. So..
Heather:
Oh! Well, maybe she’s on vacation. Maybe she’s retired or something.
Brittany:
Yeah, maybe she’s decided that she just wants to hang out at Hever. Be happy. Good for her.
Windsor Castle – Elizabeth I
Heather:
Cool! Another place that you would expect to be quite haunted that I found was Windsor Castle. And Windsor is the oldest and largest occupied castle in the world. And it was originally built by William the Conqueror as kind of a buffer to the west of London. So it looks out over the Thames, and it’s kind of this protection on that side for London. And it’s been a royal residence for nearly 1000 years. And a lot of English institutions like the Knights of the Garter and The Chapel Royal, found their home originally in Windsor. So it’s really steeped in English tradition and English history, obviously. And I think it’s something like, 10 monarchs are buried beneath the chapel in Windsor.
So as such, there’s like a whole party of ghosts going on there at Windsor – a ghost party. So I think the hallways get quite crowded. But Elizabeth I is the most famous ghost here. And of course, she was the daughter of Henry VIII and Anne Boleyn. She ruled for nearly five decades, and she ushered in this period known today as the Elizabethan Golden Age. It was this period in which the arts flourished, and the Spanish Armada was defeated. And England also started exploring and starting colonies, and catching up with France and Spain with the exploration of the New World.
And really, it was kind of this golden period, where things finally stabilized after the Wars of the Roses in the 15th century, and then all the turmoil with Henry and the religious turmoil. So there’s, I guess, a pretty good period in which to be alive, and Elizabeth has a lot to be proud of.
So she is the most active in the library. And a lot of people have talked about how they have heard the sounds of her clicking heels as she moves around the wood floor, and she’s always seen wearing a black dress and a black shawl. And interestingly, it’s not just tourists or grounds people, or things like that, that have seen her. She’s even been seen by other monarchs.
So, King George III, he spent a lot of time at Windsor Castle. And he once claimed that he had a conversation with a ghostly woman dressed in black, who called herself Elizabeth and claimed to be “married to England”. And so he had this nice conversation with Elizabeth, you can imagine them having tea together in the library. I suppose King George talking about how he was losing the American colonies and everything like that, and I guess I don’t know, if Elizabeth gave him any advice or what but then over 100 years later, Edward VII apparently confided in his mistress, about this ghostly encounter that he had in Windsor, with a woman dressed in black, who resembled Elizabeth.
And Princess Margaret has also admitted to seeing Elizabeth. And more recently, a guard has followed her into the library. A guard saw her and followed her wondering what was going on and followed her into the library where she disappeared. And I guess one of the things that Elizabeth was most known for was beating the Spanish Armada and almost being this kind of military Queen, even though she was a woman, which was a big deal then, but the appearance of her ghosts is said to be almost linked to the advent of war.
So George VI, the present Queen Elizabeth II’s father, he said that he observed the ghost of Elizabeth I on eight consecutive nights during the opening days of World War II. And although nobody knows, he never said if he actually talked to her or not, but it’s just really interesting that she would come around at times when England was going to war. And maybe she felt like she wanted to give some advice or just be a support to her fellow monarchs? But that’s kind of where Elizabeth spends a lot of time there, at Windsor talking to today’s monarchy.
Brittany:
You know what, that really makes me like her, or at least her ghost, and her as well, I like her. She’s cool. There’s just something really noble about that, you know, even in death. Just sort of sticking with her fellow monarchs. I really like that. That seems like a good thing for her to do.
Heather:
And just a little side thing about her, it does fit with her personality because she was always really in support of the monarchy. So she resisted any kind of efforts that Parliament made to take control over the succession, for example when she wouldn’t say who her heir was. And also she was really, really in support of Mary, Queen of Scots, when the Scottish nobles rebelled, and Mary Queen of Scots had to come to England and fled. Then Mary, Queen of Scots came to England, in part because she was so sure that Elizabeth was going to support her. And Elizabeth really wanted to support her. It was her advisors like Cecil who said that Mary, Queen of Scots was dangerous.
But I just think it’s interesting that she was really Henry VIII’s daughter that way. She was the Supreme head and the monarchs’ Supreme Head. And I think it’s really cool that even in death, she feels like that.
Silver Stick Gallery, Hampton Court – Jane Seymour
Brittany:
Yeah, that is really neat. So I also have another castle, and this one is Hampton Court. And Hampton Court has been a royal residence for a very, very long time, but it’s most closely associated with Henry VIII. Consequently, one of his queens haunts the corridors of Hampton Court, and that is Jane Seymour.
Jane Seymour was Henry’s third wife, who followed Anne Boleyn, and she was also his favorite wife, because she is the one who gave him that long-wished-for son, and the palace where she haunts is Hampton Court Palace. And the Hampton Court has been a royal residence for a very long time. But Henry VIII, of course, is the monarch that’s most associated with Hampton.
And so, Jane initially came to court as a lady-in-waiting to Catherine of Aragon, and then she served as a lady-in-waiting to Queen Anne Boleyn before she became queen herself. And there’s something I was saying before that, it’s not necessarily sinister, but there’s something a little sad and strange about the fact that she was so closely associated with these other two queens, and then she herself became queen. I could see if I was Jane, there might be some, a little bit of guilt associated with that. And maybe that’s why her ghost likes to hang around at Hampton court.
But within 24 hours of the execution of Anne Boleyn, Henry and Jane were formally betrothed, so he didn’t really waste any time. And on the 30th of May 1536, Henry VIII married Jane, and then she was publicly declared queen on the 4th of June. And like I said, she gave Henry that son that he had longed for so much, and that is Prince Edward, who later became Edward VI, and he was born on the 12th of October in 1537.
But unfortunately for Jane, she had a really, really difficult labor. And 12 days later, she died at the Palace of childbed fever, which is, it’s been posited as being a number of different things, but generally, we can just say that it was an infection. And so she was buried at St. George’s Chapel in Windsor Castle, but she actually haunts Hampton Court.
So it’s said that on the anniversary of the birth of Edward, she is seen to ascend the stairs to the Silver Stick Gallery in a white robe and carrying a candle. And the sort of the reasoning behind that that I’ve read is that she’s looking for the son of who she never got to see grow up. That is just the saddest thing I could think of, and she’s also seen sort of wandering the grounds of the Clock Court. And another part of the legend says that the reason why her ghost is sort of bound to this place is like I said, she’s had a really heavy conscience for the way in which she supplanted Anne Boleyn as queen, and that her spirit is forced to roam the earth until she can get forgiveness from Anne. So I’ve got all the sad ghosts.
Heather:
Yeah, it’s funny thinking about Jane Seymour. You think after she saw what happened to Catherine and Anne she would like kind of want to run away as fast as possible. But I suppose by that point, you couldn’t really say no to Henry, and I guess her family also would have pushed her into becoming queen–
Brittany:
Yeah, that’s what I’m thinking. He’s not really somebody you say no to.
The Haunted Gallery, Hampton Court -Katherine Howard
Heather:
No, no. What a shame. Well, I have a sad ghost too which is another quite tragic story with Henry later once he became the tyrant that we think of today, which is Katherine Howard. So she’s also at Hampton Court with Jane, and she was Henry’s fifth wife. And, of course, I think like you said Jane was his favorite. And after that, he tried this marriage to Anne of Cleves, which didn’t work out at all. Then he was in this position where he just, I think he just really wanted to feel young again and to have like this young, gorgeous trophy wife, and he was a tyrant and he was turning quite mad and crazy. And poor Katherine Howard got caught up in that.
And she was related to some of the nobility, she was actually related to the Boleyn family very distantly, and she became Henry’s wife. She was only a teenager. And she got all kinds of caught up in these affairs of state that were just way beyond what she could understand and her maturity level. And she did have other affairs most likely, and you can’t really blame her. I mean, Henry wasn’t particularly that good-looking by that point, we can imagine. As a young girl being placed in this position, it would have been really hard for her, and I don’t think that she really understood what she was getting herself into. So she got involved with other courtiers and a lot of people say she let the queenship kind of go to her head and she wound up being executed for adultery.
So her story is also wrapped up in Hampton Court because Henry was sitting in The Chapel Royal in Hampton Court in 1541 when Archbishop Cranmer handed him this letter with news that his wife, they’ve been married for about 18 months by this point, that she had been unchaste. And apparently nobody actually even wanted to tell Henry because they were so afraid of his reaction. So they wrote it in a letter and of course, for queens at this time having an affair is actually treasonous. Because with the male line, if she got pregnant, it could potentially not be Henry’s, and that person could be king. So it wasn’t just the adultery itself, adultery at that time was treason. And so this is an accusation essentially of treason of the queen.
So Henry said, “You have to investigate it,” and he was very disappointed, of course, but the story is that Katherine was in her own rooms in Hampton Court, and she heard what was going on. And she went running along the gallery to the chapel in order to beg Henry for his life. You can have this image of her, kind of imagining what’s going to happen and running and screaming in terror, and begging him, but the guards kind of intercepted her and she had to be sent back to her room. She never actually got to see Henry, and she was sent to an abbey while the charges were being investigated, and then she was sent to the Tower of London, where she was executed in early 1542.
And she has appeared very frequently to visitors since Queen Victoria opened up Hampton Court to visitors in 1838. And since then, lots of people have seen her. Visitors and staff alike have talked about hearing her screams and feeling uneasy. They actually call the gallery “The Haunted Gallery” because of her. And on one occasion, a female form dressed in white, which could have been like her shroud, was seen floating down The Haunted Gallery towards the door of the royal pew, and just as she reaches it, it’s been observed that she hurries back with disordered garments and a ghastly look of despair, uttering at the same time the most unearthly shrieks till she passes through the door at the end of the gallery. And so that that’s actually quite disturbing as well if you had to see that.
According to palace officials during two separate evening tours one night in 1999, two female visitors fainted on the same spot in The Haunted Gallery, only one hour apart. So that’s quite strange. And both women reported feeling very frightened and uncomfortable and one was so frightened that she refused to join the tour again. And then a lot of people also say that they’ve reported feeling just a presence in the gallery, feeling a sudden drop in temperature, having their hair pulled, and even one man said that he felt spectral hands grab him around the neck. So yeah, Katherine’s really kind of busy I think, and she’s very unsettled it seems. It’s quite disturbing
Brittany:
You know, the other thing that I was thinking is, so I’ve been to Hampton Court Palace, have you?
Heather:
Yeah, I have as well.
Brittany:
It’s dark.
Heather:
Yeah, it is really is!
Brittany:
It’s really sort of, even when you’re inside, I guess it’s all sort of the brick, and the wood paneling, and things just aren’t well lit. So I can imagine. You’re already a little creeped out, and then to have the spectral thing come at you, oh my god. Yeah, I think I would faint too.
Heather:
Yeah, that would be very disturbing. I can’t. I hate hands going around your neck, aaargh!
Brittany:
Yeah. I mean it’s interesting that it’s a frightened ghost but at least in one instance, it’s also sort of a violent ghost.
Heather:
Yeah, and you can’t really blame her I guess, after everything that happened with her. But yeah, she’s not very peaceful.
Hampton Court Palace – Sybil Penn “Grey Lady”
Brittany:
Yeah, yeah, exactly. After what happened to her, I imagine that you wouldn’t be. So I have another ghost who’s in Hampton Court Palace. And she’s not necessarily, she’s not a vengeful ghost, and she’s not a sad ghost. She’s just sort of a slightly disturbed ghost. So this is Sybil Penn, and she was Edward’s nurse, and Edward was the son of Jane Seymour and Henry.
Sybil died of smallpox in 1562, and she was buried at Hampton Church. And when the church was destroyed in 1829, her remains were disturbed. After that, it said that her spirit returned to the rooms in which she inhabited at the Hampton Court Palace, and her ghost is known as the “Grey Lady”. She’s been described as a tall hooded figure. And this is where I think it gets a little bit creepy – so the sound of a spinning wheel could be heard from behind a wall at the southeast wing of the palace shortly after her tomb was disturbed, and when they demolished the wall, they found a small forgotten room, and inside was an old spinning wheel that they believe either belonged to Sybil or was either used by her when she was living at the palace. Isn’t that scary?
Heather:
It really is.
Brittany:
And she is the most persistent ghost at Hampton Court Palace. Her ghost has been seen as recently as 1986. So I guess she’s sort of retired from hauntings since it’s been about 29 years since her ghost has been seen.
Tower Green, Tower of London – Lady Jane Grey
Heather:
Hmm. Interesting. Speaking of grey ladies, my next ghost was actually Grey, ha, just a Lady Jane Grey. I’m so clever.
Brittany:
I love it!
Heather:
Yeah, so maybe I’ll edit that part out.
Brittany:
No keep it!
Heather:
Okay, so back to the Tower of London. One of the most tragic women in Tudor history I think is poor Lady Jane Grey. Her official title wasn’t actually poor Lady Jane Grey. It was just Lady Jane Grey, but I always call her poor Lady Jane Grey because she’s just really tragic in my eyes. She got all caught up in the Protestant Reformation in ways that she never expected or wanted.
Her cousin, Edward, who was Henry’s son with Jane Seymour, he was dying as a teenager and he had been raised Protestant and put through during his five years as king, he put through a lot of Protestant reforms in England. And he really wanted to die knowing that his reforms were going to live on, and also his advisors were particularly antsy for their lives and for his reforms to live on, because his heir officially according to Henry VIII’s will was his half-sister, Mary, who was the daughter of Catherine of Aragon, Henry’s first wife. She was a devout Catholic, and she hated Protestantism. You can’t really blame her because Protestantism kind of broke up her parents’ marriage, because it was Henry leaving the Pope and founding the Church of England that was the result of her parents’ marriage falling apart. So she really, really hated Protestantism.
So Edward changed the succession. He called it the “Devise for the Succession” to favor his cousin Lady Jane, who was Henry’s great-niece through her mother. So her mother was Henry’s niece. So she was the great-niece. And she herself didn’t want to have any part in the whole mess. But her family forced her into it. They were Protestants, and they saw it as a way to have their daughter be queen.
The problem was, it really didn’t go according to plan, because Mary was the rightful heir. And the people all knew it, and she was able to fight back and take control of the throne that was rightfully hers, and she imprisoned everybody that was involved. She did show mercy at first to Jane. It didn’t go according to plan though, Jane becoming queen because Mary, of course, was the rightful heir. She was able to fight back and take control of the throne that was rightfully hers. Everybody knew that according to Henry’s will, she was the heir. And she imprisoned everybody that was involved. But she did show mercy at first to Jane, she thought she was innocent of treason.
Sadly though, for Jane, there were a number of plots still, that would happen within the next couple of months. And she was the unwilling figurehead for these plots. She was then executed, and she was only 17 years old at the time. So she was executed in this really brutal way. And she lost her head. She had to watch her husband be executed first, and his body carried back, really a mess.
So she haunts the Tower as well. She’s been seen a number of times usually in this kind of ghostly white specter right on the Tower Green, and she also becomes a white shape forming itself on the battlements. And she was last seen by two guards on February 12, 1957. It was the 403rd anniversary of her execution, and these two guards saw her and didn’t know what was going on. And they actually testified about what they’d seen then. It was just a white shape on the battlements.
Beauchamp Tower, Tower of London – Guilford Dudley
Heather:
And interestingly also, her husband, she was married to another nobleman, Guilford Dudley. He has been seen in Beauchamp Tower weeping. So his ghost is very upset as well. And it’s just really a shame these two kids who got caught up in their parents’ power trips, and now they were executed, and they seem quite unsettled about. Although with Jane, she hasn’t been seen since 1957, it’s like almost 60 years. She might be retired from haunting as well.
Brittany:
You know, I was just thinking about, there’s this picture of her, it’s a really famous painting. If you’ve seen Jane Grey, it’s probably because you’ve seen–
Heather:
The Paul Delaroche?
Brittany:
Yeah! The one in the National Gallery of Art in London. Oh, gosh! How awful is that? She’s got the white sort of cloth around her eyes, and she’s got her hand out so she can put it on the block. Oh my gosh, if you had to do that sort of thing right after you’d seen your husband executed, yeah, I mean, I think I’d be haunting something too.
Heather:
I know, I know. And it’s such a shame because she was such a quiet little girl. Like all the reports, all the chroniclers talking about how she was so into her books, and she just really wanted to study and learn, and she got all caught up in this. So I would be haunting too. Good for her if she’s retired, if she’s found some peace.
Sudeley Castle – Katherine Parr “lady in green”
Brittany:
Poor thing. So, instead of talking about a lady in grey, I’m going to talk about a lady in green. And that is Katherine Parr who haunts Sudeley Castle. She was the last of Henry VIII’s six wives. And I think she was, I think she had to be one of the luckier ones, of course, Anne of Cleves got to divorce him, and go off, and live her life, and have property, and never be bothered again. While Catherine Parr actually had to be married to him when he was old and cantankerous and had that big leg ulcer. But she’s interesting because she’s also the most married English queen. So he had two husbands before Henry, and she had one after, and she was also the first woman to be the queen of both England and Ireland.
So after Henry’s death, about six months later, she married her last husband. And that was Thomas Seymour, 1st Baron Seymour of Sudeley. It seemed like a fairly happy marriage, and she moved to Sudeley to be with him. And at age 35, she became pregnant. This was a bit of a surprise, because as I mentioned before, she’d been married three times previously, and she’d never conceived.
So at 35 years old, she became pregnant with her first child, and it was a baby girl who she named Mary. That was on August 30, 1548. And bout 6 days after that birth, she died. She died from again, childbed fever, the sort of the same thing that Jane Seymour had died from. And she’s buried at the Chapel of St. Mary at Sudeley and her ghost is known as the “lady in green”. And that’s because some of the castle staff have claimed to see a very tall figure in a green Tudor-style dress, looking out of a window that faces the garden.
Also one of the really interesting things that I really like is, before people see her ghost, they sometimes smell an apple-scented perfume. So maybe that’s something that she liked to wear in her life. So she’s also been seen wandering around the queen’s garden, and people report that she looks like she’s searching for something. And again, the same with Jane Seymour, it’s been speculated that she’s searching for her daughter Mary, who she never got to see grow up. Jeez, these are sad stories. All these women died in childbirth. And her daughter Mary, she sort of disappears from the historical record around two years old. So they think that she may have died young.
And there’s one little fun fact that I wanted to share. And that is, her body was incorruptible. I don’t know if that’s a concept that you’re familiar with – the incorruptible body. But her body was exhumed in 1842 after the castle and the capital, had suffered some damage during the English Civil War.
And she had been buried in this lead casket, and when they opened it up, they found that her body was just beautifully intact. Her hair was just bright auburn, and she had this beautiful porcelain light skin, and it just looked like she was sleeping. And while the casket was open, some locks of her hair were taken. When I was taking a class at the Museum of London, I got to see some of that hair. Yeah, they have it, it’s not on display, but they do have it in storage, and it was very cool. But her body, because there they didn’t know a lot about sort of embalming practices and sort of preserving a body, her body did quickly degrade and it was reburied. So yeah, I thought it was cool.
Anne of Cleves House
Heather:
Interesting, that’s really awesome. So I have a little fun fact about Anne of Cleves because we hadn’t talked anything about her. Her ghost seems very content. She’s really not busy haunting any place. She did when she settled with Henry and got this divorce. She was given a couple of different houses. One of them is now known as Anne of Cleves House, and she never lived there. She rarely ever saw the house, but it’s a popular spot for paranormal investigation. And Anne of Cleves seems content to not help haunt anyone but herself. She’s just living her life. Maybe she went back to Germany, I don’t know.
But apparently, there’s a ghost that is in the upper bedroom loft at Anne of Cleves House. But the ghost is said to be as elusive as Anne herself. So maybe she’s hanging out in this house that she was never probably lived in. But it seems like Anne of Cleves has gone peacefully to the wayside and to the other side and is peaceful with that.
Kimbolton Castle – Catherine of Aragon
Brittany:
If any of Henry’s wives were going to go peacefully and sort of live out their ghostly lives, it would be Anne of Cleves. I have the last of Henry’s wives, which ironically is the first and unfortunately, her ghost is sort of hanging around because she was the first of Henry’s wives to sort of get shafted.
And that was Catherine of Aragon. She was Henry’s first wife. Before she married Henry, she had actually married his brother Prince Arthur, and he was the heir presumptive to the English throne. But unfortunately, shortly after their marriage, they both came down with a mysterious illness, it may have been the English sweating sickness, nobody’s certain what exactly it was. But while she got better, he passed away.
Afterward, she married Henry, and that was in 1509. And they really didn’t have a happy marriage at first, but things sort of started to go downhill when she wasn’t able to produce any surviving son. So we know that she was the mother of Mary I, who would go on to earn the dubious nickname of Bloody Mary. But there was really no precedent for having a woman on the throne, and so he really wanted that boy that Jane Seymour was later able to give him.
But things sort of deteriorated with Henry and Catherine, and he wanted to divorce but because the Pope wouldn’t grant him one, so that he could marry Anne Boleyn, he broke with the church, and he declared his marriage to Catherine of Aragon invalid. And Catherine was Catholic, and she didn’t really believe in what Henry was doing. And she considered herself his rightful wife and the rightful queen. What I really just considered to be a blow, she was only acknowledged as being the Dowager Princess of Wales, and so the only thing that they really acknowledged was that first marriage she had to Arthur.
She was banished to Kimbolton Castle in 1535. And she died there on the 7th of January 1536. So she only lived there for about a year, and she likely died of cancer. And again, and just sort of one of those parting shots, when she was buried at Peterborough Cathedral, she was given a ceremony that was befitting of a princess dowager instead of a queen of England.
Heather:
Hmmm…
Brittany:
I know! If I was her ghost, I would be so ticked!
Heather:
And she never gets to see her daughter again. They kept Mary away from her too, I would be so upset.
Brittany:
So you’re not being recognized by your husband, you’re being kept away from your daughter, and she died really sort of in this dank castle alone. And so she haunts this place that was the scene of her confinement and then later her death. When she was living there, she really limited herself to sort of one area of the castle and that’s where her ghost has been seen. And this is sort of an interesting thing, so her ghost when they see her, what it looks like is, if you’re on one of the floors, you see her torso all the way up through her head. And then on the floor below, you see her legs jutting out.
Heather:
Oh my gosh.
Brittany:
Yeah, and so the reason why that is because, in old houses, the floors shift. And so she’s said to be walking on the floors that existed when she was alive. And in modern times those floors have either shifted up or down, which is why you only see half of her.
Heather:
That’s so macabre.
Brittany:
If you look up you see somebody’s legs, and if you look down you see somebody’s torso.
Heather:
Poor Catherine. I feel so bad for her. Like her ghost can even haunt with a certain amount of dignity. Just a shame.
Brittany:
I know it really is. Poor thing. So I think I’ll end it on that little tragic note. I think that’s the last ghost that I have to talk about. Did you have any more?
Heather:
No, I don’t have any more either. So this was fun, though. I really enjoyed doing all this research and finding out about all these ghosts who are busy.
Brittany:
I mean, I wasn’t shocked by what I found because of course, England is super, super haunted, but just sort of the tragedy that’s wrapped up in so many of these stories. I hope this wasn’t too much of a downer for people. This was supposed to be fun.
Heather:
Yeah, yeah. I hope people have fun, too. So cool. I’m also going to make sure on my page, there’s a link to all of your great episodes. So definitely check History, Bitches! Podcast if you’re a Renaissance English History Podcast listener. And thank you so much for doing this with me. And we’re going to do another episode that we’re going to record as well on witchcraft, right? Because we’re just really getting into the spirit. Which I think is actually a little bit more depressing than the ghosts because the ghosts, we kind of can talk about lightly. But the witchcraft was really real, well, I don’t know if the witchcraft was real, but these women who were accused, and it’s quite depressing. But we’ll try and keep it light.
Brittany:
As light as possible.
Heather:
Yeah, but it’s Halloween, it’s the time of year when we have to think about things like that. So, excellent. Oh, and I just want to put in that the Renaissance English History Podcast is sponsored by Big World Tours. And Big World is actually a tour company that I’ve started, doing niche history tours in England. So our first tour that we’re starting with is the English Choral Tradition. And we’re doing tours to Evensong services, where we’ll listen to choral music in places like Salisbury, and Ely, and King’s College, Cambridge, all the really cool places that are important in the English choral history world. And if people are interested in that, they can go to bigworld.com. So I just want to put that in as well.
Brittany:
That’s awesome. I’m really sad that I’m not in England anymore so that I can go on that too. But yeah, if you’re interested in that, absolutely take a look because it sounds really interesting and wonderful.
Heather:
Yay. Okay, so I’m, I guess we’ll stop for this one. And then we’ll be back again, for our listeners. We’ll be back again with witchcraft soon.
Brittany:
Yeah, so look for that coming down the pike. And Heather, thank you so much. This was absolutely wonderful. I just had an amazing time. So thank you for being such a great co-host. And thank you for contacting me because this was really–
Heather:
Thanks for answering. Thanks for going along with it. This was a blast. So, excellent! I’m excited to do our next one.
Thanks again to Brittany from History, Bitches! And to learn more about the ghosts that you’ve heard about, you can go to the show notes at Englandcast.com. You can also go to the Facebook page, which is Facebook.com/Englandcast. I also have a listener voicemail line that you can send me messages on as well. So if you want to send me notes, if you want to say anything, the listener feedback line is 801-683-9756. And again, that’s 801-683-9756, which actually spells 8016TEYSKO. Google Voice lets you pick names like that or pick numbers like that. So feel free to contact me any which way you like through Facebook, through the website, through the voicemail, and I will talk to you again very soon. Thanks for listening!
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