Rising from her couch and seizing her pen, she drew it through the words “princess-dowager,” and exclaimed to those who had brought to her this insulting document: “So I return the minutes; and I desire ye to say to his Grace, my husband, Catharine, his faithful consort, is his lawful queen; and for no earthly consideration will she consent to be called out of her name.”
Catharine afterwards removed to the Bishop of Lincoln’s palace of Bungen. By the king’s orders, she was deprived of most of her servants, because she would be waited on by no one who did not address her as queen. She was next removed to Kimbolton Castle, though Henry’s first orders had been to take her to Fotheringay Castle, a place notorious for its bad air. But Catharine had declared that she would not go there “unless drawn with ropes,” and so she had been sent to Kimbolton.
King Henry also withheld her income, due from her jointure as Arthur’s widow; and notwithstanding the noble portion which she had brought as her dower, she was allowed to suffer for the very necessaries of life, and even a new gown was obtained on trust, as her will shows. When one of her servants, in a rage at her inhuman treatment, execrated the perfidious Anne, Catharine gently chided her, saying: “Hold, hold! curse her not, for in a short time you will have good reason to pity her!”
As death rapidly approached the heart-broken Catharine, she welcomed the summons as a joyful release from her earthly unutterable woe. A few days before she expired, she dictated the following touching words to the base husband who had so atrociously wronged her.
“My Lord and Dear Husband: I commend me unto you. The hour of my death draweth fast on, and my case being such, the tender love I owe you forceth me with a few words, to put you in remembrance of the health and safeguard of your soul, which you ought to prefer before all worldly matters, and before the care and tendering of your own body, for which you have cast me into many miseries and yourself into many cares. For my part I do pardon you all, yea, I do wish and devoutly pray God that He will also pardon you. For the rest I commend unto you Mary, our daughter, beseeching you to be a good father unto her, as I heretofore desired. I entreat you also on behalf of my maids, to give them marriage portions which is not much, they being but three. For all my other servants I solicit a year’s pay more than their due, lest they should be unprovided for. Lastly do I vow that mine eyes desire you above all things.”
Catharine of Aragon breathed her last Jan. 7, 1536. Although it was said that King Henry shed tears over her last pathetic letter, which he received a short time before her death, yet it is also stated that he sent his lawyer to endeavor to seize upon her little property and try to escape paying her trifling legacies and debts.
On the day of her burial, King Henry wore mourning, but Anne Boleyn clothed herself and all her ladies in yellow, exclaiming, “Now am I queen! I am grieved, not that she is dead, but for the vaunting of the good end she made.”
Neither King Henry’s arrogant power nor Anne Boleyn’s pernicious influence could prevent the widespread and lasting effect of the Christian death-bed of Catharine. At length some dared to suggest to King Henry, “that it would become his greatness to rear a stately monument to her memory,” whereupon the beautiful abbey-church of Peterborough, where her remains were placed, was spared from destruction at the period of the suppression of the monasteries, and was endowed and established as the see of Peterborough.
The life of the woman who had supplanted her was short and full of sorrow. Three years only elapsed after Henry had married Anne Boleyn, and only four months after Catharine had sent him her dying forgiveness, when her exulting rival met her awful doom.
Already had King Henry cast his eyes upon Jane Seymour, and on the 15th of May, 1536, the sentence upon the queen was pronounced. Wolsey, who had suggested and aided the divorce of Catharine, had fallen under the disfavor of Anne, and through her influence he was overthrown and died in disgrace. And now Anne herself was to suffer the penalty of her wicked ambition. On the 19th of May, 1536, Anne Boleyn was led out upon Tower Green, and a blow from the executioner ended her eventful, but brief life.