1536: The Year That Changed Henry VIII - Plot & Excerpts
At 2 p.m. on 7 January 1536, Katherine of Aragon died. Hers had been a relatively short illness, which modern commentators have deduced to be stomach cancer. She had been in very great pain over the course of five weeks, having first been reported sick in early December 1535. It was thought serious enough to call the Spanish ambassador, Eustace Chapuys, to her side in mid-December. By late December, her apothecary, Philip Grenacre, wrote that she couldn’t eat or drink anything without being sick, couldn’t sleep for more than an hour and a half because of the pain in her stomach, and had lost all her strength. Chapuys was shocked to discover at the turn of the year that Katherine ‘was so wasted that she could not support herself either on her feet or sitting in bed’, but she obviously had a remission before she died, because after four days at her bedside, Chapuys was convinced enough that she was out of danger to leave her in the evening of Tuesday 4 January 1536, in ‘good hope of her health’, and was desolate at news of her death three days later.1For Katherine, life had been thoroughly unpleasant for many years – Diarmaid MacCulloch calls them ‘years of dignified misery’.
What do You think about 1536: The Year That Changed Henry VIII?
