The Mysterious Death of Katherine Parr

What Really Happened to Henry VIII's Last Queen?

June Woolerton

• Publisher: Pen and Sword History
• Year: 2024
• ISBN:
  9781399054461
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: Historical Biographies
• Index: History

Raises fresh questions about how Katherine Parr actually died and why she was buried so quickly, painting a vivid picture of the last days of a powerful queen. What killed Katherine Parr? She was the ultimate Tudor survivor, the queen who managed to outwit and outlive Henry VIII. Yet just over eighteen months after his passing, Katherine Parr was dead. She had been one of the most powerful people in the country, even ruling England for her royal husband, yet she had died hundreds of miles from court and been quickly buried in a tiny chapel with few royal trappings. Her grave was lost for centuries only for her corpse to be mutilated after it was rediscovered during a tea party. The death of Katherine Parr is one of the strangest of any royals – and one of the most mysterious. The final days of Henry VIII's last queen included a faithless husband and rumours of a royal affair while the weeks after her funeral swirled with whispers of poison and murder. T he Mysterious Death of Katherine Parr dives into the calamitous and tumultuous events leading up to the last hours of a once powerful queen and the bizarre happenings that followed her passing. From the elaborate embalming of her body, that left it in a state of perfect preservation for almost three centuries despite a burial just yards from her place of death, to the still unexplained disappearance, without trace, of her baby, the many questions surrounding the death of Queen Katherine are examined in a new light. This brand new book from royal author and historian June Woolerton brings together, for the first time, all the known accounts of the strange rediscovery of Katherine's tomb and the even odder decision to leave it open to the elements and graverobbers for decades to ask – how did Katherine Parr really die?

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• Chapter One The Macabre Discovery of A Queen
• Chapter Two Katherine Parr, Queenmaker
• Chapter Three The Mysterious Death of Katherine Parr
• Chapter Four The Historic Funeral of Henry VIII’s Last Queen
• Chapter Five ‘Not Without Suspicion of Poison.…’ Was Katherine Parr murdered?
• Chapter Six A Very Convenient Corpse
• Chapter Seven A Queen Stripped of Power
• Chapter Eight The Queen Who Talked Her Way Out of the Tower
• Chapter Nine The Queen and the Cad
• Chapter Ten An Eternal Love Triangle?
• Chapter Eleven The Bizarre Final Months of England’s Most Important Woman
• Chapter Twelve The Final Resting Place of Katherine Parr
• Bibliography
• Endnotes
• Plates