According to Marillac, the king was so shocked and grieved at Katharine's behaviour, that he proposed never to take another wife; but when it was suggested that in spite of her outrageous conduct the queen might possibly escape the punishment of death, on account of her beauty and her sweetness of disposition, the Duke of Norfolk said that she must of necessity die, because the king could not marry again while she lived.

Francis I. does not seem to have taken his envoy's account of Henry's grief very seriously (he had known the King of England longer than Marillac had), and replied with some apparent cheerfulness, that he was sorry for his cousin's misfortune, and would soon send a gentleman to condole with the king.

Chapuys, as usual, had with greater discernment, hit the more probable mean.

"This King has wonderfully felt the case of the Queen, his wife, and has certainly shown greater sorrow at her loss than at the fault, loss, or divorce of his preceding wives. It is like the case of the woman who cried more bitterly at the loss of her tenth husband than at the deaths of all the others together, though they had all been good men; but it was because she had never buried one of them before without being sure of the next, and as yet it does not seem that he has formed any new plan."

Katharine was beheaded on the 13th October 1542, on the same spot on the Tower Green where Anne Boleyn had been executed. Her end, and that of Lady Rochester who had encouraged her in her evil life, was penitent, and even edifying. After the execution it was remarked that the king was in better spirits, and during the last few days before Lent there was much feasting at Court.

Chapuys describes the state of affairs thus:—

"Sunday was given up to the Lords of his Council, and Court; Monday to the men of law; and Tuesday to the ladies, who all slept at the Court. He himself in the morning did nothing but go from room to room to order lodgings to be prepared for these ladies, and he made them great and hearty cheer, without showing particular affection to any one. Indeed, unless Parliament prays him to take another wife, he will not I think be in a hurry to marry; besides, few if any ladies now at Court would aspire to such an honour, for a law has just been passed, that should any King henceforth wish to marry a subject, the lady will be bound on, pain of death to declare if any charges of misconduct can be brought against her, and all who know or suspect anything of the kind against her, are bound to reveal it within twenty days, on pain of confiscation of goods and imprisonment for life."

Perhaps it was this general indictment of the women of Henry's court, most certainly the echo of public opinion, that had caused the people to persist in the belief that Anne of Cleves would regain Katharine's strangely coveted place. Where the reputation of a whole class was so bad as to make the above kind of declaration impossible, virtue, such as that attributed to the Lady Anne, was at a premium, and as it was useless to think of a suitable foreign alliance in the state of Henry's religious opinions, justice and necessity had alike seemed to point to the reinstatement of the discarded queen. But Henry was exceedingly annoyed at these repeated suggestions which, forsooth, had almost appeared TO DICTATE TO HIM, and he determined to put a stop to the free wagging of tongues on the subject of his matrimonial affairs.

After the fall of Katharine Howard, and before her execution, a State Paper records that Jane Rattsay was "examined of her words to Elizabeth Bassett, viz., 'What if God worketh this work to make the Lady Anne of Cleves queen again?' She answered that it was an idle saying suggested by Bassett's 'Praising the Lady Anne, and dispraising the Queen that now is.' She declared that she never spoke at any other time of the Lady Anne, and she thought the King's divorce from her good." Examined as to her exclamation "What a man is the King! How many wives will he have?" she answered that she said it "upon the sudden tidings declared to her by Bassett, when she was sorry for the change and knew not so much as she knows now."

But for all Anne's prudence, and the bold front the brave woman presented to her misfortunes, she had been secretly hoping that when the inevitable crash came, she would be restored to the rights which she had only renounced, because she had no alternative. Henry, however, made no sign, and in 1543 Katharine Parr appeared on the scene. The first mention of the king's sixth wife in the public records is a tailor's bill for numerous items of cotton, linen, buckram, etc., and the making of Italian gowns, pleats, and sleeves, kirtles, French, Dutch, and Venetian gowns, Venetian sleeves, French hoods, etc., of various materials, the total amount of the bill being 8 pounds, 9s. 5d. This bill was delivered "to my Lady Latymer," and was copied into the book of Skutt the tailor.