Was Catherine of Aragon Murdered? How Did Catherine of Aragon Die?

From History Calling

Was Catherine of Aragon POISONED? She was the first wife of Henry VIII and is also known as the Spanish princess, but what killed Catherine of Aragon in January 1536 at the age of 50, while she was staying at Kimbolton Castle, where she had been sent by Henry as a form of exile? Rumours at the time insisted that she had been murdered on the orders of either Henry himself, or his second wife, Anne Boleyn, because she refused to accept the annulment of her marriage to the King and insisted that she was still Queen of England and not dowager Princess of Wales. When Catherine’s autopsy found a black mass on her heart, it seemed to confirm the worst to contemporaries, including the Imperial ambassador, Eustace Chapuys, who was one of Catherine’s greatest supporters and who had visited her shortly before her death. The rumour was that the poison had been administered in a glass of Welsh ale, but did Henry VIII kill Catherine of Aragon, the woman he’d spent 24 years married to and who was the mother of his daughter, the future Mary I, or did she die of natural causes? In this six-wives documentary from History Calling, we ask: How did Catherine of Aragon die? Was it poison, or was it a form of heart cancer? Either way, romantics like to say that having been abandoned by Henry, she died of a broken heart. We’ll look at contemporary documents, including a summary of the post-mortem of Catherine of Aragon and at how Henry VIII and Anne Boleyn reacted when they heard the news of her death, for some sources speak of their delight, others of their grief. I’ll also consider what more modern doctors say about heart cancer and how it presents.