Funeral of Queen Catherine

The Funeral of Queen Catherine, the burial of Katherine of Aragon at Peterborough Abbey in January 1536, turns a deliberately modest royal funeral into a public measure of loyalty. Margaret Pole arrives expecting resentment toward a court-connected household, but encounters blessings for the late queen, her daughter, and the white rose. Inside the abbey, the subdued ceremony cannot erase Katherine’s royal standing in the eyes of those who mourn her.

The Journey and Public Reception

On the afternoon of the third day of her journey, Margaret sees Peterborough Abbey’s spire ahead under a grey winter sky. Snow and cold slow her horse as she approaches the city with a dozen men-at-arms. The curfew bell is sounding; townspeople watch the armed party warily until they recognize Margaret’s banner. Their response overturns her fear that they will regard her as one of the court’s newly favored lords.

A woman calls down from an overhanging window with a blessing for the white rose, then invokes Katherine and the princess as well. Children and beggars turn to cheer, while people emerge from shops, workhouses, churches, and alehouses. Some remove their hats; others kneel in the frozen mud as Margaret passes. The welcome is directed not only at the dead queen and her daughter but at Margaret and her house, linking public sympathy for Katherine to the old royal family.

The crowd also revives the Yorkist cry “À Warwick!” For Margaret, the shout recalls a different model of kingship: a king content with his role, and a court in which the distinctions between queen, mistress, and heir had not, in her view, been overturned. Her recollection makes the procession more than a local greeting. It becomes an expression of political memory, in which the white rose stands for an alternative to the Tudor settlement.

The Funeral at Peterborough Abbey

The abbey guesthouse is crowded with the households of noblewomen who have travelled from London. Maria de Salinas, Katherine’s devoted friend, comes downstairs to meet Margaret, and they embrace as Maria weeps. Her first reassurance is that Katherine was at peace at the end; Margaret agrees. Their exchange establishes the funeral’s intimate dimension before the public ceremony begins: this is also the burial of a friend whose life had been bound to Margaret’s for years.

The company discusses the order of precedence for the following morning. The Marchioness of Dorset says she will enter first, followed by Margaret, Maria, and Maria’s daughter. Margaret accepts the arrangement but insists that rank is secondary to saying goodbye. Her attention to the queen’s possessions follows the same concern for what is due to Katherine: she has wanted no keepsake, she explains, but the queen’s belongings were hers by right. The jewels and treasures had already been taken from Katherine and worn by Anne Boleyn, a detail that sharpens the contrast between the royal dignity the funeral is meant to honor and the treatment Katherine received in life.

The funeral is held in clear, bitterly cold weather. Hundreds of candles burn inside the abbey church. The ceremony is simple, not grand enough, in Margaret’s judgment, for a queen, the victor of Flodden, or an Infanta of Spain who had arrived in England with high hopes. The coffin is covered in black velvet edged with cloth of gold. Four bishops receive it; two heralds walk before and two behind, carrying banners bearing Katherine’s own crest, the royal arms of Spain and England, and the two kingdoms’ arms together. Her motto, “Humble and Loyal,” is displayed in gold beside the coffin stand.

After the requiem Mass, the coffin is lowered into the vault before the high altar. Margaret stifles a sob, recognizing the finality of the burial. She had known Katherine since the queen was a girl, twelve years her junior, who came to her household when Margaret was lady of Ludlow. That long personal history gives the quiet ceremony its emotional weight: Margaret had not expected to see her friend buried so far from the city that had been proud to call her its queen.

A Burial Against the Queen’s Wishes

The ceremony does not follow the funeral Katherine requested in her will. She had wished to be buried in a church of the Observant Friars, where their congregation could say memorial Masses for her. The king had closed the friars’ houses, and Margaret recognizes that their prayers may no longer be offered in the setting Katherine intended. She nevertheless believes that Katherine has a place in heaven without them, and that those who loved her will continue to remember her as Queen of England.

The choice of Peterborough also stands against the possibility of a more public royal burial. Margaret understands the king’s refusal to have Katherine buried at Westminster Abbey as fear that London would rise to mourn her; she imagines that the city might even have rioted. This is her interpretation, not an announced explanation from Henry VIII, but the scene gives it force: in Peterborough, the crowd has already made its loyalty visible, and half the county walks behind the coffin with heads bared to the cold.

Political Meaning and Aftermath

Margaret reads the popular reception as evidence that the king has lost support. The people had welcomed Henry VIII when he took the throne, hoping he would set matters right; now, she believes, they resent his seizure of the Church and monasteries, the loss of respected men, and his rejection of Katherine. They continue to bless the dead queen, speak of her as a martyr and a saint, and cheer Margaret as a member of the old royal family. In this account, grief is inseparable from political judgment: the funeral gives public form to dissatisfaction that royal ceremony cannot contain.

At the abbey, women from opposing court alignments share the same gathering. The Countess of Surrey is a Tudor supporter, while the Countess of Worcester is among Anne Boleyn’s attendants. Margaret suspects that their presence will carry news back to Anne of the blessings the crowd gave Katherine’s funeral procession. The juxtaposition makes the ceremony a watched event as well as a mourning one, with the public’s response potentially reported into the factional court.

The funeral’s significance recurs later in the book during a Christmas court progress through London. The crowd gives Princess Mary an especially loud welcome despite her reduced title, and Margaret sees its response as proof that the people have not relinquished the hope of her restoration. The later scene does not undo Katherine’s burial; it extends its political meaning. The affection shown for the mother continues as allegiance to the daughter, while the white rose and the pomegranate on Mary’s standards make that loyalty visible in the procession.