Catherine of York (14 August 1479 – 15 November 1527) was the sixth daughter of King Edward IV of England and his queen consort Elizabeth Woodville.

Henry VII married the eldest of Edward IV's daughters, Elizabeth, and Catherine became a valuable diplomatic asset: marriage plans with John, Prince of Asturias and later with James Stewart, Duke of Ross were made for her, but in both cases it did not come to a wedding.

In 1502, Catherine's husband was suspected of being involved in the conspiracy of the House of York pretender to the throne, Edmund de la Pole, and was soon arrested, deprived of his property and rights to inherit and transfer his father's titles and possessions to his children.

Documents have been preserved related to the manufacture of a baptismal font for her by Piers Draper;[1] based on them, historians date the birth of the princess on 14 August 1479 or a little earlier.

[13] The king was moved to the Tower of London, where he was later joined by his only full-brother, Richard; together with the rest of the children, among whom was Catherine, the dowager queen took refuge in Westminster Abbey.

Tudor historian Edward Hall writes that Richard III "made all the daughters of his brother solemnly arrive at his palace; as if with him new—familiar and loving entertainment—they were supposed to forget ... the trauma inflicted on them and the tyranny that preceded this".

He fulfilled his promise and married Elizabeth of York, and also canceled the Titulus Regius act, which deprived the children of Edward IV of titles and rights to the throne.

The House of Courtenay, a French noble family of the County of Gâtinais,[29] also descended from King Edward I of England through his daughter Elizabeth of Rhuddlan.

[47] However, a few months later, disgrace began: William Courtenay was arrested and sent to prison[48][49] on suspicion of participating in the conspiracy of the Yorkist pretender to the throne, Edmund de la Pole.

[51] Elizabeth of York ordered that Lady Margaret Coton take care of the upbringing and education of Catherine's children, and allocated funds for this.

Catherine's children were moved under the protection of Coton to Sir John Hussey's country house at Havering-atte-Bower,[50] which at that time was located on lands that were in the use of the queen or her mother.

Catherine's grief was aggravated by the fact that the child's illness was transient, and his mother, who was with the queen in Notley, did not have time to go to the bedside of her dying son.

[56] Probably, the son of the late queen, Henry, Prince of Wales, who by that time had become the heir to the throne, also provided some assistance to the aunt, but there is no documentary evidence of this either.

[57] The Courtenays were present at all the celebrations at court, and both were in such favour with the young king that Catherine became the only godmother[e] of the heir to the throne, Henry, Duke of Cornwall, who was born on 1 January 1511.

[59] Catherine's father-in-law died in 1509,[60] and formally her husband became the heir to the Earl's title and possessions, however, in order to receive the inheritance, William needed the approval of the king and the repeal of the act of deprivation.

[59] Despite the friendly attitude towards his aunt and her husband, Henry VIII put forward a number of conditions under which William Courtenay could transfer the title and possessions of his father.

One of these conditions was the renunciation of Catherine's claims to the lands of the Earldom of March[61] (to which she was also entitled as one of the descendants of Anne de Mortimer), and as her father's personal, non-crown property.

[63] By the time all the formalities related to the transfer of the title to William Courtenay were completed, he was already seriously ill; on 9 June 1511 he died of pleurisy[64][65] at the Palace of Placentia, where he was staying with his wife.

[71] In February 1512, Catherine sent a petition to Parliament on behalf of her son, in which she asked to consider the issue of inheriting the title and possessions of his late father by young Henry Courtenay.

Mary Anne Everett Green retells a local legend that shortly after her marriage to Henry Somerset (son and heir of the Earl of Worcester), Margaret, during a visit to her mother at Colcombe Castle, choked on a fish bone and died; the same version is confirmed by the inscription on her grave.

[78][79] A year earlier, Elizabeth Grey, Viscountess Lisle, was placed under her care and became the first wife of Catherine's son Henry, who was granted several mansions and other benefits.

[82] In 1519, Sir Hugh Conway died, claiming some of the possessions of Courtenay, and Catherine, through an act of Parliament, was returned the lands that were in the life interest of the deceased.

[80] Detailed records from the early 1520s show that Catherine lived a life befitting her origins:[80] she regularly bought luxury items such as spices, French and Rhenish wines, and expensive fabrics (such as velvet and satin).

[85] In the 1520s, the princess was fond of hunting, listened to minstrels, kept three jesters; on New Year's holidays in 1524, several troupes of actors visited Catherine's house, as well as epiphany singers from Exeter.

However, the fact that the inventory list of Catherine's property, compiled after her death, included a cart with horses, may indicate a decrease in the activity of the princess in her later years.

[88] Historical documents describe the princess as a very kind person: she never quarreled with her neighbors if they happened to shoot game in her possessions, and did not severely punish the poor if they decided to eat strawberries or a rabbit on her land; in addition, she regularly distributed generous alms.

[89] On 2 May 1527, Catherine made a will in which for the most part she took care of her soul: she ordered the payment of £21 a year for an unlimited period to three priests who were to say mass daily in St. Peter's Church in Tiverton in the presence of three poor men, who also received payouts once a week.

[98] Catherine and her husband William Courtenay had three children:[7] Since not a single brother of the princess survived to the reign of the kings from the Tudor dynasty, and her sisters (with the exception of Queen Elizabeth) did not leave surviving descendants recognized by the crown,[h] Catherine's children became the only ones of all the grandchildren of Edward IV who inherited dangerous claims to the English throne from the House of York,[1] which played a fatal role in the life of the descendants of the princess.

The only son of Gertrude was much less fortunate: he spent most of his life in prison and was released only during the reign of Queen Mary I; in 1554, Edward Courtenay took only a passive part in Wyatt's rebellion, due to which he was expelled from the country, but not executed.