[PARR CATHERINE]: (1512-1548) Queen of England and of Ireland 1543-47, the last of the six wives of King Henry VIII. A selection of strands of light brown, fair coloured hair, the lock apparently cut from the head of Catherine Parr, loosely contained in a 19th century folded 8vo sheet of notepaper bearing a contemporary annotation in dark ink, in full, 'Katherine Parrs Hair, last wife of Henry VIIIth - cut off in Worcestershire upon the body being exhumed by R. Powell Cotton'. Rare. VG

Catherine Parr died, aged around 35 or 36, on 5 September 1548, at Sudeley Castle in Gloucestershire, from childbed fever, having given birth to her only child, the daughter of her fourth husband, Thomas Seymour, six days earlier.
In May 1782, John Locust discovered the coffin of Queen Catherine in the ruins of the Sudeley Castle chapel. He opened the coffin and observed that the body, after 234 years, was in a surprisingly good condition. Reportedly the flesh on one of her arms was still white and moist. After taking a few locks of her hair, he closed the coffin and returned it to the grave.
The coffin was opened a few more times in the next ten years, including a disinterment by Colonel Richard Powell Cotton in 1783, when the present hair was apparently removed. Parr's coffin was finally officially reopened in 1817, when nothing but a skeleton remained. Her remains were then moved to the tomb of Lord Chandos whose family owned the castle at that time.