Catherine of Valois

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Catherine of Valois
Queen consort of England
Tenure2 June 1420 – 31 August 1422
Coronation23 February 1421
Born27 October 1401
Hôtel Saint-Pol, France
Died3 January 1437 (aged 35)
London, England
Burial, London
Spouse
  • (m. 1420; died 1422)
  • Owen Tudor (m. c. 1428)
Issue
more...
HouseValois
FatherCharles VI of France
MotherIsabeau of Bavaria

Catherine of Valois or Catherine of France (27 October 1401 – 3 January 1437) was Queen of England from 1420 until 1422. A daughter of King Charles VI of France, she married King Henry V of England[1] and was the mother of King Henry VI.[a] Catherine's marriage was part of a plan to eventually place Henry V on the throne of France, and perhaps end what is now known as the Hundred Years' War. But, although her son Henry VI was later crowned in Paris, the war continued.

After Henry V's death, Catherine's surprise marriage to Sir Owen Tudor helped lead to the rise of the House of Tudor's fortunes and to her Tudor grandson's eventual elevation to the throne as King Henry VII of England.[2]

Early life

Catherine of Valois was the youngest daughter of King Charles VI of France and his wife

right to the throne of France
.

While some authors have maintained that Catherine was neglected as a child by her mother, a more modern examination of the evidence suggests otherwise. According to the financial accounts of her mother, toys befitting a French princess were purchased, religious texts were provided, and Catherine was sent to the convent in Poissy to receive a religious education.[4]

Royal marriage

Marriage of King Henry V of England and Catherine of Valois. Illumination, Jean Chartier, Chronicle of Charles VII, av. 1494, British Library, Royal E.V., f. 9v.

Henry V went to war with France, and even after the victory at

Meulan, he became enamoured. In May 1420, a peace agreement was made between England and France, the Treaty of Troyes, and Charles acknowledged Henry of England as his heir. Catherine and Henry were married at the Parish Church of St John or at Troyes Cathedral on 2 June 1420. Catherine went to England with her new husband and was crowned queen in Westminster Abbey
on 23 February 1421. In June 1421, Henry returned to France to continue his military campaigns.

By this time, Catherine was several months pregnant and gave birth to a son named Henry on 6 December 1421 at Windsor. Her husband never saw their child. During the siege of Meaux, he became sick and died on 31 August 1422, just before his 36th birthday.[5] Catherine was not quite 21 and was left a queen dowager. Charles VI died a couple of months after Henry V, making the young Henry VI king of England and English-occupied northern France. Catherine doted on her son during his early childhood.

Relationship with Owen Tudor

Catherine was still young and marriageable, a source of concern to her brother-in-law Humphrey, Duke of Gloucester, the guardian of her son. Rumours abounded that Catherine planned to marry Edmund Beaufort, Count of Mortain, her late husband's cousin. The Duke of Gloucester was strongly against the match, however, and the Parliament of 1427–8 passed a bill which set forth the provision that if the queen dowager remarried without the king's consent, her husband would forfeit his lands and possessions, although any children of the marriage would not suffer punishment. The king's consent was contingent upon his having attained his majority. At that time, the king was only six years old.

Catherine lived in the king's household, presumably so she could care for her young son, but the arrangement also enabled the councillors to watch over the queen dowager herself. Nevertheless, Catherine entered into a sexual relationship with Welshman Owen Maredudd Tudor, who, in 1421, in France, had been in the service of Henry V's steward Sir Walter Hungerford. Tudor was probably appointed keeper of Catherine's household or wardrobe. The relationship began when Catherine lived at Windsor Castle, and she became pregnant with their first child there. At some point, she stopped living in the King's household, and in May 1432, Parliament granted Owen the rights of an Englishman. This was important because of Henry IV's laws limiting the rights of Welshmen.

Catherine of Valois's arms as queen consort. Her arms as princess of France impaled with the arms of the Plantagenet English kings, claimants for the French throne

There is no known date of Catherine's marriage to Owen,

Tudor dynasty of England, starting with King Henry VII
. Tudor historians asserted that Owen and Catherine had been married, for their lawful marriage would add respectability and stronger royal ties to the claims of the Tudor dynasty.

Owen and Catherine had at least six children. Edmund, Jasper, and Edward were all born away from court. They had one daughter, Margaret, who became a nun and died young.

Death and aftermath

Catherine died on 3 January 1437, shortly after childbirth, in London, and was "buried in the old Lady chapel" of Westminster Abbey.

as a result of childbirth, but entered Bermondsey Abbey, possibly seeking a cure for an illness that had troubled her for some time. She made her will just three days before her death. She now rests at Westminster Abbey in Henry V's Chantry Chapel. After her death, Catherine's enemies decided to proceed against Owen for violating the law of the remarriage of the queen dowager. Owen appeared before the Council, was subsequently arrested, and taken to Newgate Prison.[9] He tried to escape from there in early 1438 and eventually ended up at Windsor Castle in July of that year.[9]

Meanwhile, Owen and Catherine's two older sons, Edmund and Jasper, went to live with

Margaret Beaufort
, a descendant of John of Gaunt who had consequently a distant but disputed claim to the throne; following the elimination by war of most other candidates, their son became King Henry VII.

The wooden

funeral effigy which was carried at Catherine's funeral still survives at Westminster Abbey, and was previously on display in the Westminster Abbey Museum in the Undercroft. It is now displayed in the new Queen's Diamond Jubilee Gallery in the abbey triforium. Her tomb originally boasted an alabaster memorial, which was deliberately destroyed during extensions to the abbey in the reign of her grandson, Henry VII. It has been suggested that Henry ordered her memorial to be removed to distance himself from his illegitimate ancestry. At this time, her coffin lid was accidentally raised, revealing her corpse, which for generations became a tourist attraction. In 1669 the diarist Samuel Pepys
kissed the long-deceased queen on his birthday:

On Shrove Tuesday 1669, I to the Abbey went, and by favour did see the body of Queen Catherine of Valois, and had the upper part of the body in my hands, and I did kiss her mouth, reflecting upon it I did kiss a Queen: and this my birthday and I thirty-six years old and I did kiss a Queen.

— Samuel Pepys

Catherine's remains were not properly re-interred until the reign of Queen Victoria.

In historical fiction

Ancestry

Notes

  1. ^ Catherine's older sister Isabella had also been a Queen of England as the child bride of Richard II.

References

  1. ^ Haigh 1985, p. 345.
  2. ^ Williams & Fraser 2000, p. 19.
  3. ^ Fritze & Robison 1992, p. 94.
  4. ^ Gibbon 1996, pp. 51–63.
  5. ^ Allmand 1992, pp. 173–174.
  6. ^ Griffiths & Thomas 2005, p. 35.
  7. ^ Chrimes 1980, pp. 320–333.
  8. ^ Harvey 2003, p. 27.
  9. ^ a b Chrimes 1999, pp. 9–10.
  10. ^ a b c d Anselm 1726, pp. 109–110.
  11. ^ a b Anselm 1726, pp. 111–114.
  12. ^ a b Anselm 1726, pp. 105–106.
  13. ^ a b Riezler, Sigmund Ritter von (1893), "Stephan III.", Allgemeine Deutsche Biographie (in German), vol. 36, Leipzig: Duncker & Humblot, pp. 68–71
  14. ^ .

Sources

External links

Catherine of Valois
Cadet branch of the Capetian dynasty
Born: 27 October 1401 Died: 3 January 1437
English royalty
Vacant
Title last held by
Joanna of Navarre
Queen consort of England

2 June 1420 – 31 August 1422
Vacant
Title next held by
Margaret of Anjou