Katherine of England

Death of Katherine of England~3rd May 1257~aged 3

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Katherine was was the fifth child of King Henry III and his wife Eleanor of Provence.

She was born early in the morning of the 25th November 1253, at Westminster Palace, Westminster, London.

A few days after her christening, the king held a massive banquet, to which he invited all the nobility.

The provisions for this banquet included fourteen wild boars, twenty-four swans, one hundred and thirty-five rabbits, two hundred and fifty partridges, fifty hares, two hundred and fifty wild ducks, sixteen hundred and fifty fowls, thirty-six female geese and sixty-one thousand eggs!

Soon after the banquet, the queen had to leave England and join her husband the king in Gascony.

They left the infant Katherine at Windsor Castle with her appointed governess Emma le Despencer.

In the autumn of 1254, Katherine became gravely ill, and was sent to Emma le Despencer's house in Swallowfield.

The change seemed to benefit the sickly princess, and she was brought back to Windsor around or before February 1256.

In late 1256, little Katherine had a relapse.

A few months later on 3rd May 1257, Katherine passed away, she was just three years old.

Katherine was buried in the ambulatory in Westminster Abbey, in the space between the chapels of King Edward and St. Benet.

A splendid monument was raised to her memory by the king, rich with serpentine and mosaics, and surmounted by a silver image of his child.

After the death of Katherine, both Henry and Eleanor were heartbroken, and the queen became sick with grief.

They did not have any further children.

After her death, chronicles of the time, described Katherine as "the most beautiful girl, but mute and useless", which has raised the question of whether she had an intellectual disability throughout her life.

Modern historians have theorised that Katherine alternately may have had a degenerative disease, or just simply a childhood illness, that Katherine could not overcome.

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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Katherine_of_England

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https://ko-fi.com/thetudorintruders

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For many years it was thought that the Purbeck marble tomb now in the south ambulatory, between the chapels of St Edmund and St Benedict, was Katherine's.

It is now thought it could be a tomb for two young children of Edward I, John and Henry~Westminster Abbey