On this day, 16 July 1557, Anne of Cleves, former queen of England, died.
“Anna of Cleves was allowed the use of Chelsea Manor, that small but delightful ‘palace’ where Thomas Seymour had courted Queen Catherine Parr ‘under the planets’. It was here that she fell ill in the spring of 1557 and here that she spent the months of her decline. She died on 16 July 1557. Anna, the daughter of Cleves, was in her forty-second year. She did not live to see the accession of King Henry’s last child, Elizabeth, the girl whom she had once petted, on 17 November 1558.
Given the lingering course of the Lady Anna’s illness, cancer seems a likely cause of her death. But no particular explanation was felt to be needed for the decease of a woman of her age. She had indeed exceeded the life expectancy of her sex, so often laid low by the peril she never had a chance to endure: child-bearing. Anna of Cleves had outlived Henry VIII, the man to whom she had been ‘married’ for six months, by ten years.” – Antonia Fraser, The Wives of Henry VIII
