On 27 October 1401, Isabelle of Bavaria gave birth to her last daughter in the Hôtel St Pol in Paris. The baby’s father was Charles VI of France and the newborn princess was destined for great things, though she was to achieve them in rather unexpected ways. Catherine’s infamy lies in her determination that, once her duty had been performed, she would ensure her own happiness rather than blindly follow decorum.
On 2 June 1420, Catherine married Henry V of England at the church of St John in Troyes. Henry had been besotted by the French princess since their first meeting the year before. In fact he was so in love with her that he married her without a dowry and settled a fortune of dower lands on her.
The couple left for England at the end of the year and Catherine was crowned queen at Westminster Abbey on 23 February 1421. The couple spent the spring on progress so that the English could see their beautiful new queen. By the time Henry left for France once more, Catherine was pregnant. She gave birth to a son on 6 December. Though she was a devoted mother, in May 1422 she left her little son in England to join her husband in France. Within a few months, though, Henry had died of dysentery, leaving Catherine a 21 year old widow and never having seen his little son.
Her nine month old son was now Henry VI, king of England. Soon, the question of the queen mother’s marrying was raised. She was still a young woman, very attractive and potentially very powerful. There would be plenty of Englishmen keen to marry her. However, until 1425, Catherine showed no signs of looking for a new husband. Not until Edmund Beaufort appeared on the scene. Beaufort was nineteen years old and rather dashing.
Their exact relationship is unclear but parliament were sufficiently concerned about it that they changed the law to forbid a queen to marry without royal consent on pain of forfeiture of lands for life. Regardless, Catherine did marry without consent, but not to Edmund. At some point between 1428 and 1432, she married Owen Tudor, a Welsh groom. As the marriage was morganatic, their children had no claim on any royal titles Catherine may otherwise have passed on to them. It has even been suggested that Catherine married Owen Tudor while (or just after) giving birth Edmund’s son, in order to ensure that her true love, Edmund Beaufort, did not suffer the loss of his lands under the new statute. This idea is given further weight by the fact that her first son with Owen Tudor was named Edmund.
This may be mere speculation. She went on to have two more children who were certainly Owen Tudor’s: a son, Jasper, and a daughter named Margaret who died young. Catherine herself did not survive into old age, dying at Bermondsey Abbey on 3 January 1437, aged only 35.
She was buried in Westminster Abbey but somehow her embalmed corpse was put on display. On 23 February 1669 the diarist Samuel Pepys, bizarrely, lifted Catherine’s body and kissed her on her mouth, ‘reflecting upon it that I did kiss a Queen, and that this was my birthday.’
Catherine’s story has been the subject of many romantic legends but in fact, we know very little about what moved a queen to marry a squire in defiance of parliament. Perhaps it was an attempt to protect another man, or perhaps, having done her duty in marrying a king and providing an heir to his throne, she decided to marry a second time for love. Whatever her reasons, her actions would change England forever: the children of her second marriage would lay the way for a new dynasty.