Today I am pleased to welcome back Laura Adkins, a previous guest, and friend of the blog. Laura is the creator of The Local History Blogger. I have been able to do a few guests posts for that blog myself. She has worked at many historical sites and mainly posts about sites found in Essex, her home county. Do check her blog out if you can, I promise you it’s a very enjoyable read. This year, she also published her debut history book on Katherine Parr, the last of Henry VIII’s wives. More information on where to find that is at the end of this post.
Kateryn Parr, sixth wife of Henry VIII, the one who survived her marriage to the King, died on 5th September 1548, less than two days after giving birth to a daughter, Mary Seymour, with her forth husband, the dashing, but power obsessed Thomas Seymour. She died after complications of giving birth at their home of Sudeley Castle. Her funeral took place on 7th September, where her chief mourner was Lady Jane Grey, ward to Thomas. The ceremony was the first Protestant one to have been performed for a Queen of England. She was buried not far from where she died at the chapel of St Marys, in the grounds of Sudeley. That was where she lay for many centuries, although as Sudeley was left to ruin after the English Civil War, her actual burial location was lost until 1782.
A group of ladies had asked permission to try and locate the Dowager Queen’s grave. They knew she had been buried on the north side of the chapel in the castle ground, and enlisted some local men to dig where a large alabaster block was situated. A coffin was located two feet below the surface and upon opening, like she had been frozen in time, lay Parr, her eyes open, staring up at them before the open air began to rapidly decay her face.
the whole body wrapped in 6 or 7 seer cloths of linen and uncorrupted although it had lain there upwards of 230 years…one of the arms of the corpse the flesh of which at that time was white and moist…
Not long after the initial discovery, her body was looked at once more, out of sheer curiosity. This time a foul stench was noted and areas of her body had rapidly decayed. She was left to the open air long enough for someone to make a copy of the coffin’s inscription before a stone slab was placed over, in the hopes she would be disturbed no more.
Alas, there was to be no rest for Kateryn, as only a year later the steward to the owner of Sudeley Castle, a Mr Rivers, wanted to look at the Queen’s corpse. It was from this account where we get a description of the clothes Kateryn had been wrapped in. A rich dress along with shoes on small feet, her proportions extremely delicate; and she particularly noticed that traces of beauty were still perceptible in the countenance, of which the features were at that time perfect…’ Her long hair was golden. The cerecloth consisted of many folds of linen, dipped in wax, tar and gums, and the lead [coffin] fitted exactly to the shape of the body. The body was only five feet four inches in length.
In 1792 she was opened once more, where her skeleton was allegedly removed from the coffin and danced with before being reburied. This time a grave was dug deeper to prevent further disturbance but while doing so, the men, who were intoxicated from alcohol, managed to pull the hair away from the skill, cutt her head off with a spade, knocked the teeth and pulled off her arms, with the final insult being to bury the coffin upside down.
Today when visiting Kateryn at Sudeley you will find her tomb in the church. It is of mediaeval style, designed by Sir George Gilbert Scott (of Westminster Abbey fame), and placed there in 1861. Attached to it are the four coats of arms of her four husbands, Sir Edward Burgh, John ‘Lord Latimer’ Neville, King Henry VIII, and Thomas Seymour of Suedeley. Scott took Kateryn’s likeness from a woodcut of her original moment which had been lost. The sculpted Kateryn lying within the canopied tomb was designed by John Birnie Philip. Kateryn herself is down in the church’s crypt, now in the words of the interpretation board alongside her tomb ‘a pile of dust’.
Kateryn’s afterlife was just as extraordinary as her life was. I explore this, her life and the various roles she held in my debut book from Pen and Sword Books – Kateryn Parr – Henry VIIIs sixth Queen. It can be available using this link https://www.pen-and-sword.co.uk/Laura-Adkins/a/5550
Sources:
Dent, E (1877) Annals of Winchcombe and Sudeley. J. Murray.
Further sources can be found in the bibliography of my book.
Voyager of History 