On the twenty-third of February 1669, Samuel Pepys walked into Westminster Abbey and was offered a sight that no modern visitor could imagine. It was his thirty-sixth birthday, and the famous diarist was shown the remains of Catherine of Valois, a queen of England who had been dead for more than two centuries. He was allowed to touch the upper part of her body. Then he did something that would have been unthinkable for any later visitor to the abbey.

He kissed her. Pepys recorded the moment in his diary with a mixture of wonder and disbelief, noting that he had kissed a queen on the mouth. It stands as one of the strangest entries in his vast diary, and it reveals just how casually the remains of a medieval queen had come to be treated. For nearly three hundred years after her original tomb was destroyed, Catherine of Valois lay above ground in Westminster Abbey, her partially preserved body on display for anyone who cared to look.

How did the wife of England’s most legendary warrior king end up as a macabre curiosity in her own church? Catherine was born in Paris in 1401, the daughter of King Charles VI of France and Isabeau of Bavaria. Her life became entangled with English history when Henry V invaded France and won his famous victory at Agincourt in 1415. Five years later, the Treaty of Troyes attempted to end the long conflict between England and France.

As part of the agreement, Henry married Catherine. Their wedding took place in 1420, making her Queen of England. In December 1421, she gave birth to a son, the future Henry VI. But the marriage was remarkably short.

Henry V died in France in August 1422, most likely from dysentery, leaving Catherine a widow at about twenty-one years old. Her infant son became King Henry VI, and Catherine later became involved with a Welshman named Owen Tudor. The exact legal status of their relationship has long been debated, but they had several children together. That relationship became enormously important because one of their sons, Edmund Tudor, became the father of Henry Tudor.

Henry Tudor eventually defeated Richard III at the Battle of Bosworth in 1485 and became King Henry VII. Catherine of Valois was thus the grandmother of the first Tudor monarch, though she did not live to see it. Catherine died on January 3, 1437, at Bermondsey Abbey, only about thirty-five years old. Her body was taken to Westminster Abbey, where her funeral was held on February 10, and she was buried in the old Lady Chapel.

At that point, Catherine had received a perfectly respectable royal burial. She was not originally abandoned or deliberately denied a tomb. The strange treatment of her remains began decades later. In 1485, Catherine’s grandson Henry Tudor seized the English throne.

Henry VII was intensely concerned with establishing the legitimacy and grandeur of the new Tudor dynasty he had founded. One of the greatest architectural projects of his reign was the construction of a new and magnificent chapel at Westminster Abbey. Today it is known as the Henry VII Lady Chapel. But there was a problem.

An older Lady Chapel already stood on the site, and Catherine of Valois was buried inside it. Construction of the new Henry VII chapel began in 1503, which meant the existing medieval structure had to be demolished. Accordingly, Catherine’s tomb was dismantled and her remains were exhumed. There was nothing inherently shocking about moving a body under these circumstances.

Medieval and early modern churches were frequently remodeled, altered, and expanded, which sometimes forced the relocation of graves. But what happened next was far stranger. Catherine was never given a suitable replacement tomb. Instead, her remains were moved near the grave of her first husband, Henry V.

The Westminster Abbey records state that Catherine’s body was placed inside the enclosure of Henry V’s tomb in an open coffin made of loose wooden planks. What should have been a temporary arrangement became remarkably permanent. Catherine remained there for centuries. Under normal circumstances, a human body buried for decades would be expected to undergo extensive decomposition, but Catherine’s remains apparently became partially embalmed or dried out.

As a result, when her coffin was tampered with, parts of her body were still recognizable. This made Catherine a sort of curiosity. Visitors to Westminster Abbey could see the remains of a woman who had been Queen of England. As the decades passed, Catherine became less like a queen awaiting proper reburial and more like a grim tourist attraction.

People were apparently able to get very close to the corpse, and the most famous example of this occurred in the seventeenth century. Samuel Pepys recorded his extraordinary encounter in his diary. He was permitted to touch the upper part of Catherine’s body, and then he did something almost inconceivable for a modern visitor to Westminster Abbey. He kissed her.

He wrote about kissing Catherine on the mouth and reflected that he had kissed a queen. It is one of the strangest entries in his enormous diary. More importantly, it reveals how casually Catherine’s remains were being treated. This was not merely a sealed royal coffin temporarily stored inside a church.

A visitor was apparently able to approach the body, touch it, and actually kiss what remained of the queen’s face. It is difficult to imagine a more dramatic reversal of fortunes. Catherine had once been crowned Queen of England, and now her centuries-old corpse was an object of curiosity for visitors. The obvious question is why Westminster Abbey allowed this situation to continue.

There does not seem to have been a deliberate decision to humiliate Catherine or permanently deprive her of a grave. Instead, her extraordinary fate appears to have been the result of a combination of construction work, neglect, and changing attitudes toward the dead. Her original resting place disappeared when Henry VII built his new Lady Chapel. Her body was moved, but no one provided the queen with an alternative, permanent monument.

Then time passed. Years turned into decades, and decades turned into centuries. Once Catherine’s remains had stayed in the same spot for generations, the temporary arrangement became a de facto part of Westminster Abbey itself. There was also a completely different attitude toward human remains in earlier centuries.

Bodies, bones, graves, and relics were encountered far more frequently than most people experience today. Churches contained graves beneath their floors. Monuments could be opened or tampered with, and those interested in antiquities were fascinated by the physical remains of historical figures. Still, Catherine’s treatment was unusual enough to eventually provoke criticism.

A queen of England was still lying above ground hundreds of years after her death. Finally, action was taken. In 1778, Catherine’s remains were removed from their exposed location. They were placed in a vault beneath the Chapel of St Nicholas in Westminster Abbey.

More than 270 years had passed since her original tomb had been destroyed, and for the first time in centuries, Catherine’s remains were properly covered with earth. But even this was not her final resting place. Another century passed before the strange journey of Catherine’s body finally reached its end. During the nineteenth century, Westminster Abbey underwent major restoration and archaeological investigation.

The story of Catherine’s unusual burial attracted attention once again, and in 1878, during the reign of Queen Victoria, her remains were finally placed in what was intended to be their permanent resting place. Her remains were then buried beneath the altar in Henry V’s chapel. Catherine finally joined, at least symbolically, the husband whose astonishing military victories had helped make her Queen of England. It took 441 years after her death for Catherine’s remains to reach their final resting place.

An important distinction must be made here. It is often claimed that Catherine of Valois was left unburied for four hundred years, but this is not literally true. She was properly buried after her death in 1437, and her body remained in her original tomb for more than six decades. It was not until the early sixteenth century, when the new Henry VII chapel was under construction, that her tomb was destroyed and her body exhumed.

She was then left above ground for nearly three centuries before being reburied in 1778, and finally in 1878 she received her last resting place. The true story is arguably more interesting than the popular version. Catherine of Valois was buried as Queen of England, but a massive building project by her grandson led to the destruction of her tomb, and her partially preserved body was then kept above ground at Westminster Abbey for generations. Kings and queens came and went.

The Tudor dynasty rose and vanished. The Stuarts took the throne, England experienced civil war, a king was executed, and the monarchy was restored, and Catherine remained there. By the time Samuel Pepys kissed her remains in 1669, the woman he touched had lived in an entirely different medieval world more than two centuries earlier. Eventually, attitudes changed and Catherine was returned underground.

Still, it was not until 1878, 441 years after her death, that the wandering remains of Henry V’s queen finally reached the resting place where they lie today. Few royal bodies have undertaken such an extraordinary journey. Catherine of Valois was a French princess, an English queen, the mother of a king, and the grandmother of the founder of the Tudor dynasty, but she was also, for centuries after her death, something far stranger: a forgotten queen whose preserved body became one of the most somber sights in Westminster Abbey.