[The following is in regards to the death of the first wife of Henry VIII, Catherine of Aragon.]
To Henry she wrote: -
My most dear lord, king, and husband, The hour of my death now drawing on, the tender love I owe you forceth me, my case being such, to commend myself to you, and to put you in remembrance with a few words of the health and safeguard of your soul which you ought to prefer before all worldly matters, and before the care and pampering of your body, for the which you have cast me into many calamities and yourself into many troubles. For my part, I pardon you everything, and I wish and devoutly pray God that He will pardon you also. For the rest, I commend unto you our daughter Mary, beseeching you to be a good father unto her, as I have heretofore desired. I entreat you also, on behalf of my maids, to give them marriage portions, which is not much, they being but three. For all my other servants I solicit the wages due them, and a year more, lest they be unprovided for. Lastly, I make this vow, that mine eyes desire you above all things.
At ten that morning she received extreme unction, and then prayed, aloud, for more than two hours for her daughter, for the souls of all the people of England, and especially for her husband. At two in the afternoon of January 7, 1536, she died.
She was buried, by royal command, in the choir aisle of Peterborough Abbey, with no more than the honors due a princess dowager [an insult, as I understand it]. Few of the dispositions in her will were ever carried out. Few of the hopes with which she died were ever realized.
[…]
When Henry heard of his wife’s death, Chapuys wrote, the King dressed from top to toe in yellow with a white feather in his cap, gave a ball at Greenwich, and went about the revelers with the Princess Elizabeth in his arms, showing her off to everyone and saying, “God be praised, the old harridan is dead, now there is no fear of war.”
Source:
Mattingly, Garrett. “Part III: The Divorce of Henry VIII (1527-1536); Chapter Five, Sections v-vi” Catherine of Aragon. New York: Quality Paperback , 1990. 429-31. Print.
Further Reading:
Mary I of England / “Bloody Mary”
Elizabeth I of England / The Virgin Queen / Gloriana / Good Queen Bess
I do declare that the song, "ding dong the witch is dead" from The Wizard of Oz is based on the last quote of the passage:
This is canonical history now.