Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 09.djvu/308

 Catherine Kimbolton on the Wednesday morning after learning that she had slept well. After midnight, in the early hours of Friday, 7 Jan., she became restless, and asked frequently what o'clock it was, merely, as she explained, that she might hear mass. George Athequa, the Bishop of Llandaff, offered to say it for her at four o'clock, but she objected, giving him reasons and authorities in Latin why it should not be at that hour. At daybreak she received the sacrament. She then desired her servants to pray for her, and also to pray that God might forgive her husband. She caused her physician to write her will, which she dictated to him in the form of a supplication to her husband, because she knew that by the law of England a married woman had no right to make a will of her own. She desired to be buried in a convent of Observant friars, not knowing, in all probability, that the whole order of the Observants had been suppressed and driven but of the kingdom more than a year before. She also desired five hundred masses to be said for her soul, and ordained a few small legacies. At ten o'clock she received extreme unction, repeating devoutly all the responses. At two o'clock in the afternoon she passed away.

These particulars are derived from a despatch of Chapuys written a fortnight later. The will which she dictated is still extant in two forms, French and English. From Polydore Vergil, likewise a contemporary, we learn that she also dictated to one of her maids a last letter to the king, forgiving him all he had done to her, and beseeching him to be a good father to their daughter Mary. 'Lastly,' she concludes, 'I vow that mine eyes desire you above all things.' This brief epistle, of which the text is given in a Latin form by Polydore Vergil, is said by him to have brought tears into Henry's eyes. Unhappily, this does not harmonise with Chapuys's report of the way in which Henry received the news of her death. 'God be praised!' he exclaimed, 'we are now delivered from all fear of war.' The possibility that the emperor might at last lead an expedition against England to avenge the wrongs of his aunt was now at an end. The only cause that could disturb their friendship or interfere with Henry's perfect freedom of action was removed. And the king was at no pains to conceal his satisfaction, appearing next day at a ball attired in yellow from head to foot, with a white feather in his cap.

Perhaps this indecent joy of Henry's affords in itself a reasonable presumption that a certain not unnatural suspicion of Chapuys's was really without foundation. More than two mouths before the king had declared to some of his privy councillors that he really could remain no longer a prey to such anxiety as he had endured on account of Catherine and her daughter, and they must devise some means of relieving him at the coming parliament. The death of Catherine, therefore, furnished precisely the relief which he required; and there was much in the circumstances besides to suggest the idea of poison. Even before her death her physician, in answer to Chapuys's inquiries, owned that he suspected it. She had never been well, he said, since she had drunk a certain Welsh beer. Yet the symptoms were unlike ordinary poison, and he could only suppose that it was something very special. Such an opinion, of course, is of very little weight when we consider the low state of medical science at the time. But after her death steps were at once taken to embalm the body and close it up in lead with a secresy that does seem rather to suggest foul play. Eight hours after she died the chandler of the house with two assistants came to do the work, everybody else being turned out of the room, including even the physician and the Bishop of Llandaff, the deceased lady's confessor. The chandler afterwards informed the bishop, but as a great secret, which would cost him his life if it were revealed, that he had found all the internal organs sound except the heart, which was black and frightful to look at; that he had washed it three times, but it remained of the same colour, then cut it open and found the inside black also; and further, that he had found a certain round black object adhering to the outside of the heart.

The bishop took the physician into his confidence, and the latter was distinctly of opinion that the symptoms indicated poison. But it must be said that (as has been shown by Dr. Norman Moore) the medical science of the present day is quite opposed to this conclusion, and that the symptoms now are known to be those of a disease called by the profession melanotic sarcoma, or more popularly, cancer of the heart (Athenæum, 31 Jan., 1885, p. 152; 14 Feb. p. 215; 28 Feb. p. 281). We may therefore put aside the suspicions of murder. Abroad in the world Henry had not the temerity to express his joy. He gave orders for a stately funeral becoming the person of one whom he recognised as a sister-in-law, besides being daughter of the late King Ferdinand of Arragon (Archæol. xvi. 23). The abbey church of Peterborough was appointed to receive her remains, and thither on 27 and 28 Jan., three weeks after her death, they were conveyed