History: Kate will be sixth Queen Catherine

The first Queen to share her name was Catherine of Valois, who married Henry V at Troyes Cathedral in 1420. She was Queen consort for just two years before her husband died, leaving her baby son Henry VI on the throne at the age of nine months.

When she died in 1437 she was interred at Westminster Abbey, but her coffin was accidentally opened in Tudor times and for hundreds of years her corpse was something of a macabre tourist attraction until it was finally reburied by the Victorians.

Catherine of Aragon was the next Queen to bear the name when she became Henry VIII’s first wife in 1509. After a 24-year marriage cursed by the stillbirths and early deaths of several sons, Henry was so desperate to have the marriage annulled that when the Pope refused to give his consent he broke away from Rome and founded the Church of England.

She at least avoided the fate of her next namesake, Catherine Howard, who was beheaded in 1542, after two years of marriage to Henry VIII, on the grounds of adultery.

She was succeeded by Catherine Parr, who married Henry in 1543 and remained Queen until his death in 1547.

Catherine of Braganza, who married Charles II in 1662, was both Portuguese and a Catholic, making her instantly unpopular with the British public, and failed to produce any surviving offspring.

She also had to suffer the humiliation of her husband fathering numerous illegitimate children by his many mistresses.

-By Gordon Rayner, Chief Reporter 11:57AM GMT 16 Nov 2010

Kate Middleton will become the sixth Queen Catherine. Catherine Parr, right, was the fourth after marrying Henry VIII Photo: Paul Vincente/PA/Alamy