Catherine Parr died at Sudeley Castle in Gloucestershire on 5 September 1548, six days after giving birth to her only child. She was about 36.

Parr was Henry VIII’s sixth and final wife. She survived the king, who died in January 1547, and later that year married Thomas Seymour, brother of Henry’s third wife, Jane Seymour.

Catherine became pregnant in December 1547. On 30 August 1548 she gave birth to a daughter, Mary Seymour. It was her first child after four marriages.

Within days Catherine became seriously ill with childbed fever, an infection associated with childbirth. She died in the early hours of 5 September.

She was buried two days later in the chapel at Sudeley Castle. Lady Jane Grey, who lived in the Seymour household and would briefly become queen in 1553, served as chief mourner.

Catherine had survived Henry VIII by little more than nineteen months. Her death came just as she had become a mother for the first time.