From Fr Hunwike's Mutual Enrichment
On January 7, 1536, Queen Catherine of Aragon, Spouse of Henry Tudor but repudiated by him, died. She was buried in the mighty Abbey of Peterborough, which was to be erected by Reginald Cardinal Pole (24 December 1554), by his legatine powers, into a Cathedral Church.
A few months later, Anne Bullen, AKA Boleyn, by Parliamentary enactment Spouse of Henry Tudor but repudiated by him, died in her own very unique way.
Henry Tudor ("Tudor mi", as I tend to think of him) was a generous man to his repudiated 'wives'. It was his (unexecuted) intention to erect for Catherine "one of the goodliest monuments in Christendom". For the (executed) execution of Bullen, he secured the services of a world-class swordsman from Calais.
I have a personal theory that Bullen had quite a pretty neck, and that Tudor minor couldn't bear the thought of spoiling it too much. Those Renaissance Men were aesthetes, y'know.
G H COOK records that the day before Bullen died, "the tapers that stood about Queen Katherine's sepulchre kindled of themselve, and after matins were done the said tapers quenched of themselves".
Cynics may conjecture that covert human agency was responsible. I have no doubt whatsoever that this was a matter of enthusiastic divine intervention.
Despite all of Tudor's machinations, he was eventually succeeded by a woman and, to boot, a woman born of ... Catherine of Aragon!
Among so many historical possibilities, I like to fantasise about an England in which Tudor was followed by a happy string of Spanish or half-Spanish successors, binding this Sceptred Isle ever more closely into the glorious world-wide Spanish Empire ... perhaps an England in which we would all have Spanish as our first language ... and the Drakes and the Raleighs would have secured fame by their doughty naval deeds preventing dirty proddy pirates from attacking the Spanish treasure-galleys ...
Peterborough Abbey/Cathedral might not have survived. It might have been rebuilt in the finest Spanish baroque style.
Bloody Bess? I suspect she was a bit of a plotter. She might have needed to be beheaded. There are so many figures in History of whom this is true.
VIVAT HISPANIA!!
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