Deaths of a duchess and a queen

On September 5th, 1201, Constance, Duchess of Brittany died at Nantes. Constance was, of course, Geoffrey’s wife, Arthur’s mother. After Geoffrey’s untimely death in a French tournament, her father-in-law, Henry II, compelled her to wed the Earl of Chester. It proved to be a very unhappy union for both parties, and even included a period in which Constance was held prisoner by her husband. They annulled the marriage in 1199 and she then wed Guy de Thourars, younger brother of the Viscount of Thouars. She seems to have found happiness in this third marriage; I certainly like to think so. But this marriage also led to her own death at age 40. It is sometimes said that she died of leprosy, but that is not believed by most Breton scholars. She had a daughter, Alix, in 1200, and twin daughters, Margaret and Catherine, in 1201, so it is far more likely that she died as a result of this last childbirth, which was all too common in the MA, especially when a woman had reached Constance’s age. I always thought it was a blessing that Constance died when she did, for she was thus spared knowing the tragic fates of her children by Geoffrey; Eleanor would be held as a prisoner by John and then his son, Henry IIII, for more than forty years, and Arthur was widely believed by his contemporaries and by subsequent historians to have been murdered while in his uncle John’s custody.

On September 5th, 1538, Henry VIII’s last wife, Katherine Parr, died. While Anne Boleyn naturally attracts the lion’s share of attention, Katherine was a very interesting woman in her own right, intelligent, attractive, cultured, and kind-hearted. Born in 1512, she made her first marriage in 1529 at age 17. He died in 1533 and she then wed John Neville, Baron Latimer, who died in March of 1543. The young widow was smitten with the dashing, dangerous Thomas Seymour and wanted to marry him, but she had the bad luck to catch the attention of Henry VIIII. In a letter she later wrote to Seymour, she confessed that he was the one she’d hoped to wed, but her family had convinced her it was God’s Will that she wed the king. Refusal was probably not an option under the circumstances.

She wed Henry in July of 1543 and at once did her best to befriend his children, with considerable success; she also used her influence with Henry to keep both Mary and Elizabeth in the line of succession. But she made enemies at court and the Bishop of Winchester, Stephen Gardiner, sought to turn Henry against her, accusing her of heresy. Henry was persuaded to issue a warrant for her arrest—I suppose by then it had become a habit to send his wives to the Tower. Fortunately for Katherine, she was warned about the warrant by one of Henry’s doctors and took to her bed, giving out that she was gravely ill. When Henry came to see her, she told him that she’d sickened from fear that she had displeased him. When he reprimanded her for having dared to dispute his views, she assured him that she’d argued with him about religion only to distract him from his own ailments. Henry bought it and withdrew the warrant. Being married to this man must have been such fun.

Henry died in January of 1457 and Katherine was finally free to follow her heart, but with tragic results. She and Thomas Seymour became lovers and were secretly married in May of 1547; this marriage unfortunately alienated her stepson, the young king, Edward. Katherine had invited Elizabeth and Jane Grey to join her household, and after she unexpectedly became pregnant—after three marriages without children—Thomas Seymour turned his eye and his practiced charm upon the thirteen year old Elizabeth. The resulting scandal—rumors circulating that he’d seduced Elizabeth—caused Katherine to send the girl away. She seems to have genuinely cared for Elizabeth—as she did for her husband—so her pregnancy could not have been a happy time for her. She gave birth to a daughter, named after Mary Tudor, on August 30th, 1548, but she contracted what they called childbed fever (Puerperal Fever) and died on September 5th, 1548; this was the same illness that had claimed Henry VIII’s third wife, Jane Seymour. Katherine was only 36, and I find her story to be such a sad one.