Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 09.djvu/318

 things went on at Hanworth and at Seymour Place when the household removed thither; till Catherine apparently was really somewhat annoyed, and caused Elizabeth's household to be separated from her own.

Sudeley Castle belonged to Lord Seymour only by a grant under the authority of the council, and Catherine was aware that it might be resumed when the king came of age. Speaking once to Sir Robert Tyrwhitt of the probability of a general resumption, the latter observed, 'Then will Sudeley Castle be gone from my lord admiral.' 'Marry,' replied the queen, 'I do assure you he intends to offer to restore the lands and give them freely back when that time comes.' Seymour probably trusted, however, that by that time his influence with the king would enable him to get a fresh grant. At this time he was busily engaged in putting the castle in a thorough state of repair, and making it a suitable place for his wife's confinement. Here she had a household consisting of a hundred and twenty gentlemen, and some of the leading reformers were her chaplains. A picturesque window in the old building belongs to the room known to this day as 'Queen Catherine's nursery.'

The expected event took place on 30 Aug. 1548. The child born was a girl—somewhat to the father's disappointment, but 'a beautiful babe,' and he received the cordial congratulations of his brother the protector. But on the third day after Catherine's delivery puerperal fever set in. She raved and said she was ill treated by those about her. The words of the poor distracted woman may have been made a ground of the imputation afterwards preferred against her husband, that he hastened her death by poison; but the charge is utterly incredible. On 5 Sept. she dictated her will, which in a few brief lines gave all her property to him, and expressed a wish that it were a thousand times the value. Two days later she breathed her laet. A brief account of the last rites is preserved in a manuscript in the Heralds' College, printed by Miss Strickland.

Catherine died at the early age of thirty-six. 'She was endued,' according to a contemporary, 'with a pregnant wittiness, joined with right wonderful grace of eloquence; studiously diligent in acquiring knowledge, as well of human discipline as also of the holy scriptures; of incomparable chastity, which she kept not only from all spot, but from all suspicion, by avoiding all occasions of idleness, and contemning vain pastimes.'

In 1782 her remains were disturbed by Mr. John Lucas, who occupied the lands about Sudeley Castle, of which Lord Rivers was the owner. At that time her place of burial was unknown to antiquaries, but an inscription on the outside of the leaden coffin made the matter certain. Mr. Lucas, out of curiosity, opened the coffin, and discovered the body wrapped in six or seven cerecloths, through which he made an incision into one arm of the corpse. The flesh was still white and moist. The coffin was again opened several times in succeeding years, when the flesh, having been exposed to the air, had become putrid, and a description was given of one of these openings by Mr. Nash to the Society of Antiquaries. At last Mr. John Lates, rector of Sudeley in 1817, caused the coffin to be removed into the Chandos vault to protect the remains from further outrage. Nothing but the skeleton then remained, with a quantity of hair and a few pieces of cerecloth.

Catherine was undoubtedly a little woman, but whereas Mr. Nash reported the lead which enclosed her coffin to have been only five feet four inches long, a more careful measurement taken by Mr. Browne, the Winchcombe antiquary, declares the coffin to have been five feet ten inches in length, while its width in the broadest part was only one foot four, and its depth at the head and in the middle five and a half inches.

[Dugdale's Baronage, ii. 381; Whitaker's Richmond, i. 384 sq.; Archæologia, ix. 1; Testamenta Vetusta; The Parrs of Kendal Castle, a paper by Sir Geo. Duckett; Foxe's Martyrs (Townsend's edit. 1838), v. 553-61; Literary Remains of Edward VI; Haynes's State Papers, pp. 61, 62, 95 sq. 102-5; R. Aschami Epistolæ, 303 (cd. 1703); Miss Strickland's Queens, vol.iii.; Dent's Annals of Winchcombe and Sudeley; Sir John Maclean's Life of Sir Thomas Seymour in Under the Crown.]  CATHERINE (1638–1705), queen consort of Charles II, was born on 15-25 Nov. 1638, at the palace of Villa Viçosa, situated in the Portuguese province of Alemtejo. Her father John, duke of Braganza, who became king of Portugal in 1640, was at the time of her birth the most powerful of the nobility of Portugal. Her mother, Louisa de Gusman, daughter of the Duke of Medina Sidonia, the great Spanish noble, possessed a vigorous understanding that gave her great influence over the sluggish temper of her husband. Catherine was her parents' third child, and was born on St. Catherine's day. She was eighteen when, in 1656, her father died. One of his last acts was to grant her certain estates, including the island of Madeira, the city of Lamego, and the town of Moura, for the maintenance of her court (, Historia Genealogica da Casa Real