When the Queen of England, Catherine of Valois, died in 1437, she was quickly buried in an airtight coffin. And when the lid accidentally slid off during repair works to the tomb over two centuries later, her mummified remains were revealed to the workers.
Catherine, as it turns out, was unusually well-preserved. A beautiful woman in life, she remained a beautiful woman in death, her skin so well-kept her cheeks still blushed.
People were fascinated by Catherine of Valois’ completely intact body. They could not believe it. Some saw it as some sort of special favor of God, or even as a sign of divinity.
One man — the notorious philanderer and diarist Samuel Pepys — was particularly intrigued. He was a man of rather loose morals, a man no maid could ever save herself from. In fact his diaries are full of the most nasty things one could think of:
"coming up suddenly, did find me imbracing the girl con [with] my hand sub [under] su [her] coats; and endeed I was with my main [hand] in her cunny. I was at a wonderful loss upon it and the girl also...."
That’s Pepys describing his wife running in on him with his hand up the maid’s dress… and, up the maid. On his birthday in 1667, Pepys decided maids, neighbor women and shopkeepers daughters weren’t enough for his appetites. He wanted to kiss a queen. So he went to see the tomb of Catherine of Valois:
“I to the Abbey went, and by favour did see the body of Queen Catherine of Valois, and had the upper part of the body in my hands, and I did kiss her mouth, reflecting upon it I did kiss a Queen: and this my birthday and I thirty-six years old and I did kiss a Queen.”
Samuel Pepys broke into a tomb and kissed the cold dead lips of a beautiful queen that had died two centuries prior. Catherine of Valois’ suffering did not end here — she continued to be displayed like a curiosity until finally Queen Victoria had the lid of the coffin closed off and reburied her long-dead ancestor.
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