The game of queens was played for high stakes, and could carry a deadly penalty. The first half of 1536 saw the death of not one but two English queens. Before the corn was ripe in the fields, Katherine of Aragon’s painful battle was ended and her rival Anne Boleyn had knelt in the straw of the scaffold to await the executioner’s sword. Like Katherine, Anne Boleyn had failed to produce another child. She probably miscarried in the summer of 1534 and possibly again in 1535. But Henry VIII’s concern over what was perceived to be her lack of fertility would pick up shocking speed in 1536. Katherine of Aragon died on 7 January, probably of cancer of the heart. She had been transferred sixty miles north, to Kimbolton in Huntingdonshire, where she continued the dismal practices she had followed in her previous place of imprisonment: having her meals prepared by the few old servants she trusted, for fear of poison, and refusing to leave her room. She eschewed the new servants Henry had put in place, whom she regarded as ‘guards and spies’.
