catalina-de-aragon: Katherine of Aragon had been suffering with ill health for a number of months bu

catalina-de-aragon:Katherine of Aragon had been suffering with ill health for a number of months but her condition took a turn for the worse at Christmas 1535. She suffered awful stomach pains, sickness and was unable to eat, drink or sleep properly. On 26 December Katherine suffered a relapse, and was forced, in great pain, to take to her bed again, although she could not sleep. Her doctors, Dr de la Saa and Dr Balthasar Guersye, both knew her condition was grave, and de la Saa warned Bedingfield in writing that “if the sickness continueth in force, she cannot remain long”. As the days dragged by, the pain grew worse, but Katherine refused to let Dr de la Saa call in other doctors, saying she had “wholly committed herself to the pleasure of God”. This dismayed him, for he privately feared that his mistress was being poisoned, and did not wish to bear the responsibility of that diagnosis alone.By then, the Imperial ambassador Eustace Chapuys had heard that Katherine had “fallen into her last sickness”. His immediate impulse was to go to her; he had espoused her cause with a zeal beyond the requirements of his brief, and he felt it important that someone who cared for her should be there when the end came. On 30 December, he saw the King, and asked if Henry knew she was dying. “Yes, I do not believe she has long to live; when she is gone, the Emperor will have no further excuses for interfering in English affairs.” was the reply. Chapuys, stung, retorted: “The death of the Queen will be of no advantage! His imperial Majesty will never abandon her while she lives.” Henry shrugged. “It does not matter, she will not live long. Go to her when you like.” He was not as generous with Mary, instead turning down her request to visit her mother on her deathbed.Followed by Henry’s spies, Chapuys rode off to Kimbolton that same evening; two days later, he arrived, and was duly admitted to the bedchamber of Queen Katherine, whom he had not seen for five years. He was profoundly shocked to see her “so wasted that she could neither stand nor sit up in her bed”. Yet she was overjoyed to see him. “Now I can die in your arms, not abandoned like one of the beasts,” she said. The king, Chapuys told Katherine, and everyone else in the room, was “very sorry for her illness" and intended to provide better treatment and accommodation for her. It was a short interview. Katherine thanked him again and gave him leave to retire: “You will be weary from your journey. We will speak further another time. I myself shall be glad of sleep. I have not slept two hours these past six days; perhaps I shall sleep now.“ Later that day, another visitor arrived, but this one had no permit from the King. Lady Willoughby, formerly Maria de Salinas, forced her way into the castle before Bedingfield and his men could stop her, so determined was she to be with the mistress she had served and loved for thirty-five years. Her arrival meant that Chapuys’s presence was no longer necessary, and after three days he prepared to leave. “In our last conversation,” he recorded, “I saw the Queen smile two or three times, and after I left she was willing to be amused by one of my people whom I left to entertain her.” Chapuys visited Katherine every afternoon for two hours over four days and he reported that she was worried about her daughter, Mary, and her concern that the Pope and Emperor were not acting on her behalf. Katherine was also worried that she might be to blame for the “heresies” and “scandals” that England was now suffering from because of the battle over the divorce. She was haunted by the deaths that had resulted from Henry’s Great Matter and the fact that it had led to England breaking with Rome. Before his departure on 4 January, he saw Katherine’s physician and arranged with him that, if her health deteriorated further, he would make her swear before she died that she “had never been known of Prince Arthur”. Chapuys, knowing well that his contemporaries set much store by death-bed confessions, realised that this was the last, and the only thing he could do now for the woman whose cause he had so ably championed for more than six years. But Llandaff forgot. The visit of the ambassador comforted Katherine and for a while after she rallied a little. She managed to sleep; ’her stomach retained her food’ and,’without any help, combed and tied her hair, and dressed her head’; but then her health deteriorate once more.Two days later, Katherine made her will. She asked that her debts be cleared and her servants recompensed “for the good service they have done for me”. She wished to be buried in a convent of Observant Friars, little realising that their Order had recently been suppressed in England. She asked that 500 masses be said for her soul and that someone should go to the shrine of Our Lady of Walsingham - soon to be demolished - on her behalf and distribute 20 nobles on the way. To her daughter Mary she left “the collar of gold which I brought out of Spain” and her furs. Her other bequests were to members of her household, including her tailor, laundress and goldsmith. Lastly, she asked the King, “my good lord”, if he would “cause church garments to be made of my gowns”, a request he would refuse; nor did he honour Katherine’s bequests to their daughter. Desires the King to let her have the goods she holds of him in gold and silver and the money due to her in time past; that her body may be buried in a convent of Observant Friars; that 500 masses be said for her soul; that some personage go to our Lady of Walsingham on pilgrimage and distribute 20 nobles on the way. Bequests: to Mrs. Darel 200l. for her marriage. To my daughter, the collar of gold which I brought out of Spain. To Mrs. Blanche 100l. To Mrs. Margery and Mrs. [Whyller] 40l. each. To Mrs. Mary, my physicians [wife, and] Mrs. Isabel, daughter to Mr. Ma[rguerite], 40l. each. To my physician the year’s coming [wages]. To Francisco Philippo all that I owe him, and 40l. besides. To Master John, my apothecary, [a year’s wages] and all that is due to him besides. That Mr. Whiller be paid expenses about the making of my gown, and 20l. besides. To Philip, Anthony, and Bastian, 20l. each. To the little maidens 10l. each. That my goldsmith be paid his wages for the year coming and all that is due to him besides. That my lavander be paid what is due to her and her wages for the year coming. To Isabel of Vergas 20l. To my ghostly father his wages for the year coming. That ornaments be made of my gowns for the convent where I shall be [buried] and the furs of the same I give to my daughter.She wrote to her nephew, the Emperor Charles V, asking him to protect her daughter. On the last evening of her life, Katherine felt herself growing weaker, yet before the end came, she would make one last effort to heal the rift between herself and the man she firmly believed to be her husband. Almost at the point of death now, her thoughts turned to Henry, whom she still loved, and who had once loved her long ago. Remembering their life together, she dictated a last letter to him, even though he had expressly forbidden her to communicate with him. The words came from her heart, in that quiet bedchamber, as darkness settled upon the castle:My most dear lord, king and husband,The hour of my dear now drawing on, the tender love I owe you forceth me, my case being such, to commend myself to you, and to put you in remembrance with a few words of the health and safeguard of your soul which you ought to prefer before all worldly matters, and before the care and pampering of your body, for the which you have cast me into many calamities and yourself into many troubles. For my part I pardon you everything and I wish to devoutly pray to God that He will pardon you also. For the rest, I commend unto you our daughter Mary, beseeching you to be a good father unto her, as I have 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 the wages due to them, and a year or more, lest they be unprovided for. Lastly, I make this vow, that mine eyes desire you above all things.Supported by her maids, the dying woman painfully traced the signature that symbolised all she had stood for and fought for during the last bitter years of her life. It was her final defiance: “Katherine the Queen”. Shortly afterwards, she fell asleep, with Lady Willoughby sitting beside her, who later would relate to Chapuys the details of Katherine’s last hours.On the next day, 7 January 1536, she awoke at 1.0 a.m., anxious to hear mass, but not before dawn, even though her confessor was ready to allow it; he had to wait until daylight came. Katherine received her last communion “with a fervour and devotion that it was impossible to exceed”, praying God that He would pardon the King the wrong he had done her, and that divine wisdom would give him good counsel and lead him to the true road. She was sinking fast. At ten that morning, she received extreme unction, then drifted off again into sleep, while her household gathered about her. Early in the afternoon she woke, and there were more prayers, but the end was obviously at hand. Shortly before 2.0 p.m., Queen Katherine of Aragon said clearly: “Domine, in manus tuas, commendo spiritum meum“, and rendered her spirit to God.After Katherine’s death, Sir Edmund Bedingfield informed Cromwell of her passing and arranged for the wax chandler to carry out an autopsy and then embalm the body and ‘cere’ it in a waxed shroud. A plumber was also engaged to seal the corpse in a leaden coffin, “for that may not tarry”. The autopsy was carried out that evening by the chandler and his assistant; Bedingfield would not allow either of Katherine’s doctors or her confessor, the Bishop of Llandaff, to be present. The autopsy showed that most of the internal organs were normal, save for the heart, “which had a black growth, all hideous to behold, which clung closely to the outside” and which did not change colour when washed in water; cut open, the heart was black inside. Modern medical opinion accepts this as conclusive evidence that Katherine died of a malignant tumour of the heart, yet to her contemporaries it appeared consistent with the symptoms of poisoning, and for this reason the autopsy report was suppressed. Later, Chapuys was suspicious when Dr de la Saa told him that Katherine’s condition had worsened after she had drunk “a certain Welsh beer”: both men believed it had been tampered with, and Chapuys thought that if the body were properly examined “the traces will be seen”. The bishop managed to obtain sight of the secret autopsy report, and told the ambassador about the growth on the heart. Chapuys concluded that Katherine had certainly been poisoned. The deaths of prominent persons whose removal was thought to be rather too convenient for their enemies were generally accompanied by such suspicions. Katherine of Aragon was sincerely mourned by many, and it was with great sadness that Chapuys informed the Emperor of the death of his aunt, ‘her, who for 27 years has been true Queen of England, whose holy soul is in eternal rest. There is little need to pray for her.’  Obviously, her daughter Mary was the person most affected by her loss, who was inconsolable. The death of Katherine was really sad for the Spanish Royal family. Charles V was in Naples. He silently mourned the loss of his aunt during three days. He stayed in his bedchamber, suspending his audiences. He didn’t want to see anyone. The servants served his food in a dinning room that picked up himself. The Emperor dressed for mourning, as his wife Isabella and their children. The royal funerals for Katherine of Aragon went celebrated around Spain and in all the Empire’s cities. The Empress Isabella attended to the magnificent funeral rites in Valladolid with her 8 years old son, Philip. At hearing the news of his first wife’s death, Henry VIII cried, ‘God be praised that we are free from all suspicion of war!’. The Imperial ambassador reported that Henry dressed in bright yellow from head to foot, with the single exception of a white feather in his cap, celebrating the news and making a great show of his and Anne’s daughter, Elizabeth, to his courtiers. Sources:The Six Wives of Henry VIII, Alison Weirhttp://www.theanneboleynfiles.com/the-death-of-catherine-of-aragon/María Tudor. La gran reina desconocida by María Jesús Pérez Martín -- source link

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