“The Queen died two hours after midday, and eight hours afterwards, she was opened, by command of those who had charge of it, on the part of the King, and no one was allowed to be present, not even her confessor or physician, but only the candlemaker of the house, and one servant and a ‘compagnon,’ who opened her; and although it was not their business, yet they have often done such a duty, at least the principal, who on coming out, told the Bishop of Llandaff, her confessor, but in great secrecy, as a thing which would cost his life, that he had found the body and all the internal organs as sound as possible, except the heart, which was quite black and hideous, and even after he had washed it three times, it did not change colour. He divided it through the middle, and found the interior of the same colour, which also would not change on being washed, and also some black, round thing which clung closely to the outside of the heart. On my man asking the physician if she had died of poison, he replied that the thing was too evident, by what has been said to the bishop, her confessor, and if that had not been disclosed, the thing was sufficiently clear from the report and circumstance of the illness.
“You could not conceive the joy that the king and those who favour the concubinage have shown at the death of the good Queen, especially the Earl of Wiltshire and his son, who said it was a pity the Princess did not keep company with her. The King, on the Saturday he heard the news, exclaimed: ‘God be praised that we are free from all suspicion of war,’ and that the time had come that he would manage the French better than he had done hitherto, because they would do now whatever he wanted, from a fear lest he should ally himself again with your Majesty, seeing that the cause which disturbed your friendship was gone. On the following Sunday, the King was clad all over in yellow, from top to toe, except the white feather he had in his bonnet; and the little Bastard was conducted to Mass with trumpets and other great triumphs. After dinner, the King entered the room in which the ladies danced, and there did several things, like one transported with joy. At last he sent for the little Bastard, and carrying her in his arms, he showed her first to one and then to another. He has done the like on other days since, and has run some courses at Greenwich.[147]
“This,” added Chapuys, “has been the most cruel news that could come to me, especially as I fear the good Princess will die of grief, or that the Concubine will hasten what she has long threatened to do, viz., to kill her, and it is to be feared that there is little help for it. I will do my best to comfort her, in which a letter from your Majesty would help greatly.”
Luther, writing about this time to Caspar Müller, says: “The Queen of England is said to be dead, and her daughter mortally ill; but she has lost her cause all over the world except with us poor beggars of divines at Wittenberg, who would gladly have maintained her in her queenly dignity; in which case she ought to have lived”.[148]
Katharine was buried with no more ceremony than befitted a Princess Dowager, some said with much less, in Peterborough Cathedral, where her remains still lie.
It was intended to have kept her mother’s death a secret from Mary for some time, but by a mistake the news was brought to her four days after the event. To Chapuys’ letter of condolence she answered, that following his advice, “she would show such courage and constancy as he advised her, but that in any case she would prepare herself to die”.
“She has written to me,” said the ambassador, “since she heard the death of the Queen more frequently than she did before, and this I think to testify the good heart and constancy to which I continually exhort her, in which certainly she shows great sense and incomparable virtue and patience, to bear so becomingly the death of such a mother, to whom she bore as much love as any daughter did to her mother, who was her chief refuge in her troubles.”
These events took place at the beginning of 1536, and Shakespeare, who with his collaborators wrote his play of “King Henry VIII.” at the end of the same century, had not only Holinshed’s Chronicle, and other records to guide him, but a mass of still floating tradition. He had grown to middle age, surrounded by persons who were in their prime when Mary’s and her mother’s troubles were in the mouths of all. He knew of, and described Chapuys’ visit to the dying Queen, and recorded in the following words, part of the contents of a letter sent by her to her husband:—
... I have commended to his goodness
The model of our chaste loves, his young daughter,—