On September 5, 1548, between two and three o’clock in the morning, Catherine Parr, the dowager queen and wife of Thomas Seymour, Baron Sudeley, died of puerperal fever (childbed fever). Her body was wrapped in cere cloth and waxed cloth, then encased in a lead envelope, for the burial which took place the same day at Sudeley Chapel. Seymour’s ward, Lady Jane Grey, acted as chief mourner and Miles Coverdale, the famous reformist Bible translator, preached the sermon. So sad - after three marriages to old and sickly men, this truly good woman was finally married to the man she always loved and was finally pregnant with the child she always longed for. Then her husband betrayed her by flirting with her step-daughter and she died in childbirth. Perhaps it was a mercy - could he have stood seeing her beloved executed for treason...could she have prevented it? Within two years her child and her husband followed her to the grave!
Posted on: Thu, 05 Sep 2013 15:17:05 +0000
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