In November 1534 the duke took a fourth wife, his deceased consort’s ward, the Lady Katherine Willoughby d’Eresby, a child of fifteen, whose rich dower had evidently excited his rapacity; for, notwithstanding his vast landed possessions, he was in constant want of ready money, Mary Tudor’s income having been very scanty, and most irregularly paid. Katherine was the only child of the lately deceased William, Lord Willoughby d’Eresby by his second wife, Doña Maria de Sarmiento y Salinas, a Spanish noblewoman and a faithful and tried attendant upon Queen Katherine. It seems incredible that such a pious woman should have approved of so unnatural an alliance, but in Tudor times the voice of Nature herself was often hushed, and that of personal and political interest alone heard. Katherine, Duchess of Suffolk, of whom we shall see more anon, developed into a very handsome and cultured woman, and was the authoress of quite the most brilliant and witty letters in the English epistolary literature of the period. She had the distinction of being sketched by Holbein, and her portrait is one of the most beautiful in the king’s collection. By this lady, Suffolk had two sons, who survived him and became successively Dukes of Suffolk. They were reputed to be exceedingly clever lads, and were educated with Prince Edward. Both died at an early age, on July 6th, 1551, of the “sweating sickness,” at Bugden, in Huntingdonshire, within a few hours of each other and in the same bed.[49] Shortly after his fourth marriage, Suffolk wrote to his mother-in-law, the dowager Lady Willoughby, that he had been ordered to proceed to Bugden Hall to reduce the household of the “Princess Dowager,” as the divorced queen was now called, and to induce her to remove to Fotheringhay Castle. He adds that he wishes “an accident might befall him” to prevent his undertaking so unpleasant an expedition. Notwithstanding this heroic desire, Suffolk arrived at Bugden Hall late in December[50] 1534/5, and behaved so abominably that the poor queen, stung to the quick by the repeated humiliations and insults heaped upon her and her handful of faithful retainers, rose and swept haughtily from his presence. She resolutely refused to go to Fotheringhay, which, she had heard, was “damp,” but after much more trouble she submitted to being sent to Kimbolton, where she arrived early in the following January. [Illustration: [_To face p._ 74 KATHERINE WILLOUGHBY, DUCHESS OF SUFFOLK (_From an engraving, by Bartolozzi, after Holbein_)] On January 7, 1535/6, the sorely tried and persecuted queen passed quietly away at Kimbolton Castle, in the arms of Lady Willoughby, and in the presence of Eustache Chapuys, the imperial ambassador; being “done to death by cruelty,” as her Spanish chronicler quaintly and faithfully puts it.[51]