Born: 27 October 1401, France
Died: 3 January 1437
Country most active: France
Also known as: Catherine of France
From Woman: Her Position, Influence and Achievement Throughout the Civilized World. Designed and Arranged by William C. King. Published in 1900 by The King-Richardson Co. Copyright 1903 The King-Richardson Co.:
CATHARINE OF VALOIS.
A. D. 1401-1437.
QUEEN OF HENRY V OF FRANCE
CATHARINE of Valois, surnamed the Fair, was the youngest child of Charles VI and Isabelle of Bavaria. She was born October 27, 1401, at the Hotel de St. Paul, Paris, during her father’s interval of insanity. She was entirely neglected by her mother, who joined with the king’s brother, the Duke of Orleans, in pilfering the revenues of the household. On the recovery of Charles. Isabelle fled with the Duke of Orleans to Milan, followed by her children, who were pursued and brought back by the Duke of Burgundy.
Catharine was educated in the convent at Poissy, where her sister Marie was consecrated, and was married to Henty V of England, June 3, 1420.
Henry V had previously conquered nearly the whole or France, and received with his bride the promise of the regency of France, as the king was again insane, and, on the death of Charles VI, the sovereignty of that country, to the exclusion of Catharine’s brother and three older sisters. Catharine was crowned in 1421, and her son, afterwards Henry VI, was born at Windsor in the same year, during the absence of Henry V in France. The queen joined her husband in Paris in 1422, leaving her infant son in England, and was with him when he died at the castle of Vincennes, in August 1422.
Some years afterward Catharine married Owen Tudor, an officer of Welsh extraction, who was clerk of the queen’s wardrobe. This marriage was kept concealed several years, and Catharine, who was a devoted mother, seems to have lived very happily with her husband. Her children were torn from her, which act of cruelty probably hastened her death. She died in 1437.
The nuns who piously attended her, declared that she was a sincere penitent. She had disregarded the injunction of her royal husband, Henry V, in choosing Windsor as the birthplace of the heir of England; and she had never believed the prediction, that “Henry of Windsor shall lose all that Henry of Monmouth had gained.” But during her illness she became fearful of the result, and sorely repented her disobedience to her husband.