afterwards. When at length the watchers asked her the reason for her
impatience for the dawn, she replied that it was because she wished to
hear Mass and receive the Holy Sacrament. The aged Dominican Bishop of
Llandaff (Jorge de Ateca) volunteered to celebrate at four o'clock in the
morning, but Katharine refused, and quoted the Latin authorities to prove
that it should not be done before dawn. With the first struggling of the
grey light of morning the offices of the Church for the dying were
solemnly performed, whilst Katharine prayed fervently for herself, for
England, and for the man who had so cruelly wronged her. When all was done
but the administration of extreme unction, she bade her physician write a
short memorandum of a few gifts she craved for her faithful servants; for
she knew, and said, that by the law of England a married woman could make
no valid will. The testament is in the form of a supplication to Henry,
and is remarkable as the dictation of a woman within a few hours of her
death. Each of her servants is remembered: a hundred pounds to her
principal Spanish lady, Blanche de Vargas, "twenty pounds to Mistress
Darrel for her marriage"; his wages and forty pounds were to be paid to
Francisco Felipe, the Groom of the Chambers, twenty pounds to each of the
three lackeys, including the Burgundian Bastian, and like bequests, one by
one, to each of the little household. Not even the sum she owed for a gown
was forgotten. For her daughter she craved her furs and the gold chain and
cross she had brought from Spain, all that was left of her treasures after
Anne's greed had been satisfied;[136] and for the Convent of Observant
Franciscans, where she begged for sepulture, "my gowns which he (the King)
holdeth." It is a sad little document, compliance with which was for the
most part meanly evaded by Henry; even Francisco Felipe "getting nothing
and returning poor to his own country."

Thus, dignified and saintly, at the second hour after midday on the 8th
January 1536, Katharine of Aragon died unconquered as she had lived; a
great lady to the last, sacrificed in death, as she had been in life, to
the opportunism of high politics. "_In manus tuas Domine commendo spiritum
meum_," she murmured with her last breath. From man she had received no
mercy, and she turned to a gentler Judge with confidence and hope. As
usual in such cases as hers, the people about her whispered of poison; and
when the body was hastily cer