What Happened to Catherine of Valois' Corpse?

As a queen consort and dowager queen of England and Wales, Catherine of Valois was in a position to get a burial match for a queen. Initially, she was buried in the old lady chapel of Westminster Abbey. When her grandson Henry VII came into energy in 1485, that was destined to modify.

About 1503, Henry VII started renovating the Old Lady Chapel to generate the chapel that stands in Westminster Abbey nowadays. In order to do this, he required to get rid of his grandmother's corpse to a secure place. Catherine of Valois' corpse was placed by Henry V's in an open casket, for all to see.

When Henry VII passed in 1509, the building of the Lady Chapel was incomplete. It was this year that Henry VIII came into energy. Regrettably, his intentions did not fit his father's, which meant the chapel remained unfinished and his wonderful-grandmother's corpse continued to be exposed.

It was not till the mid-16th-century that the chapel's building was complete. Sadly, when this occurred, Catherine of Valois' physique nonetheless was not placed in its original burial location. Bizarrely, it remained exposed for all to see for hundreds of years. Amongst the 16th-century and the 19th-century, components of her wooden effigy have been stolen. As a outcome, the one that remains in Westminster Abbey now appears ill-cared for.

For the duration of the 17th-century, the late diarist Samuel Pepys visited her corpse on one of his birthday's. He took the chance to hold her in his arms and kiss her, just before recording the occasion in a diary entry. When you take into account that Pepys lived In the course of some of London's worst plague outbreaks, it is extremely strange that he chose to go lip-to-lip with a corpse that was hundreds of years old. Of course Catherine was embalmed, but it nonetheless looks to be a rather ghoulish action on Pepys' portion.

It wasn't till Queen Victoria's reign in the 19th-century that Catherine of Valois' corpse was laid to rest in Westminster Abbey. By this point, hundreds of onlookers had descened on her physique to spend homage, or just to touch it as Pepys did.

More than the years, persons have speculated as to why Henry VII chose to leave his grandmother's corpse above ground. Some have recommended that he wanted to disguise his shakey lineage, which descended from Catherine and Owen Tudor. Sadly, if he had wanted to do that, he would have placed her out of sight, not subsequent to Henry V.

Thankfully, her corpse is now in a far more fitting resting location. For the years it was left uncovered, it acted as a supply of fascination for quite a few persons.

Laura is the author of Tudor Queens, a weblog exploring Catherine of Valois and other Tudor Queens