Banishment and death
Upon returning to Dover from a meeting with King Francis I of France in Calais, Henry VIII married Anne Boleyn in a secret ceremony in 1532. Some sources speculate that Anne was already pregnant at the time and that Henry did not want to risk a son being born illegitimate. Others testify that Anne, who had seen her sister Mary Boleyn previously taken up as the King's mistress and summarily cast aside, refused to sleep with Henry until they were married. Henry defended the lawfulness of their union by pointing out that Catherine had previously been married. If she and Arthur had consummated their marriage, Henry by canon law had the right to remarry. On 23 May 1533, Thomas Cranmer, sitting in judgement at a special court convened at Dunstable Priory to rule on the validity of Henry's marriage to Catherine, declared the marriage unlawful, even though Catherine had testified that she and Arthur had never had physical relations. Five days later, on 28 May 1533, Cranmer ruled that Henry and Anne's marriage was valid.
Until the end of her life, Catherine would refer to herself as Henry's only lawful wedded wife and England's only rightful queen, and her servants continued to address her as such. Henry refused her the right to any title but "Dowager Princess of Wales" in recognition of her position as his brother's widow.
Catherine went to live at The More Castle, Hertfordshire, late in 1531. After that, she was successively moved to the Royal Palace of Hatfield, Hertfordshire (May to September 1532), Elsyng Palace, Enfield (September 1532 to February 1533), Ampthill Castle, Bedfordshire (February to July 1533) and Buckden Towers, Cambridgeshire (July 1533 to May 1534). She was then finally transferred to Kimbolton Castle, Cambridgeshire, where she confined herself to one room, which she left only to attend Mass, dressed only in the hair shirt of the Franciscans, and fasted continuously. While she was permitted to receive occasional visitors, she was forbidden to see her daughter Mary. They were also forbidden to communicate in writing, but sympathisers discreetly conveyed letters between the two. Henry offered both mother and daughter better quarters and permission to see each other if they would acknowledge Anne Boleyn as the new queen; both refused.
In late December 1535, sensing her death was near, Catherine made her will, and wrote to her nephew, the Emperor Charles V, asking him to protect her daughter. It has been claimed that she then penned one final letter to Henry:
My most dear lord, king and husband,
The hour of my death now drawing on, the tender love I owe you forceth me, my case being such, to commend myself to you, and to put you in remembrance with a few words of the health and safeguard of your soul which you ought to prefer before all worldly matters, and before the care and pampering of your body, for the which you have cast me into many calamities and yourself into many troubles. For my part, I pardon you everything, and I wish to devoutly pray God that He will pardon you also. For the rest, I commend unto you our daughter Mary, beseeching you to be a good father unto her, as I have heretofore desired. I entreat you also, on behalf of my maids, to give them marriage portions, which is not much, they being but three. For all my other servants I solicit the wages due them, and a year more, lest they be unprovided for. Lastly, I make this vow, that mine eyes desire you above all things.
Katharine the Quene.
The authenticity of the letter itself has been questioned, but not Catherine's attitude in its wording, which has been reported with variations in different sources.
Catherine died at Kimbolton Castle on 7 January 1536. The following day, news of her death reached the King. At the time there were rumours that she was poisoned, possibly by Gregory di Casale. According to the chronicler Edward Hall, Anne Boleyn wore yellow for the mourning, which has been interpreted in various ways; Polydore Vergil interpreted this to mean that Anne did not mourn. Chapuys reported that it was King Henry who decked himself in yellow, celebrating the news and making a great show of his and Anne's daughter, Elizabeth, to his courtiers. This was seen as distasteful and vulgar by many. Another theory is that the dressing in yellow was out of respect for Catherine as yellow was said to be the Spanish colour of mourning. It is reported that Henry and Anne both individually and privately wept for her death later in the day.
On the day of Catherine's funeral, Anne miscarried a male child. Rumours then circulated that Catherine had been poisoned by Anne or Henry, or both. The rumours were born after the apparent discovery during her embalming that there was a black growth on her heart that might have been caused by poisoning. Modern medical experts are in agreement that her heart's discolouration was due not to poisoning, but to cancer, something which was not understood at the time. Catherine was buried in Peterborough Cathedral with the ceremony due to her position as a Dowager Princess of Wales, and not a queen. Henry did not attend the funeral and forbade Mary to attend.
