On New Year’s Day 1511, after a decade of living in England, Katherine finally achieved what she was brought there to accomplish: she produced a male heir to the throne. The king hosted a spectacular tournament in their son’s honor, and never had Henry, who dubbed himself “Sir Loyal Heart,” been so in love with his wife as on those glorious days of pageantry and celebration. But the boy, named for his father, died some days later.
In the nine years between 1509 and 1518, Katherine was pregnant at least seven times. After suffering two more stillbirths, on February 18, 1516, at the age of thirty-one, she finally bore a healthy daughter, the Princess Mary—“a baby who never cries,” Henry boasted. He remained optimistic about Katherine’s fertility, telling the Venetian ambassador, “The queen and I are both young, and if it is a girl this time, by God’s grace boys will follow.”
But there would be no more children of either gender. And as time wore on, it was clear that Katherine’s body had betrayed them both. Although there was nothing in English law to bar the succession of a female, in Henry’s mind, daughters didn’t count. His greatest desire was a legitimate son for the security and peace of the realm, and he began casting about for reasons to rid himself of Katherine and take a more nubile wife.
By 1519, when Henry’s mistress Bessie Blount had given him a bouncing baby boy who was everything he desired (except legitimate), Katherine’s influence with him was on the wane. So were her looks. Not only had she been replaced by Cardinal Wolsey as the king’s chief confidant, but a Venetian visitor to the English court remarked that Katherine was “rather ugly than otherwise.” Repeated pregnancies had thickened her waist. Her hair had darkened to a dull brown, losing its reddish luster. The queen retreated almost entirely from court life, rarely appearing in public beside her younger, taller, and still-handsome husband. She’d also become more overtly devout; under her garments she now mortified her tender flesh with the coarse habit of the third order of St. Francis.
Henry’s myriad reasons for the annulment of his first marriage are more properly part of the story of his relationship with Anne Boleyn. But one cause, in a nutshell, was that Katherine failed to do her job, which was to bear a son and heir. Katherine went through menopause in 1524 at the age of thirty-nine and suffered from a mysterious “female ailment” as well—possibly leucorrhea, an infection with a smelly yellow vaginal discharge—which may have sent Henry, who was very particular when it came to his women’s looks and hygiene, even further from her bed. Cardinal Wolsey cryptically wrote, “There are certain diseases in the queen defying all remedy, for which causes the king will never live with her.”
In 1527, after her nephew Charles V, the King of Spain and Holy Roman Emperor, sacked Rome and took the Pope hostage, Katherine and Henry had a falling out. By then, he had decided that she was no longer politically useful to him. And that same year, when Anne Boleyn had told Henry she would consent to be his queen, but never his mistress, he conveniently expressed doubts about the legitimacy of his marriage to Katherine.
After eighteen years of marriage, based on a dispensation from the very situation he was now certain invalidated their union, Henry cynically conceived the idea of an annulment—by claiming that he and Katherine had never been legally wed because they had violated the word of God. Brandishing a Bible, he invoked the words of Leviticus 20: “And if a man shall take his brother’s wife, it is an unclean thing: he hath uncovered his brother’s nakedness; they shall be childless.” Deciding that the Princess Mary was chopped liver, Henry chose to interpret “childless” as a reference to male offspring only, convinced that God had punished him for marrying Arthur’s wife by denying them sons, and that it was also God’s will that he be given the chance to have a boy. Getting rid of Katherine was the only way to break the curse.
However, the precept of Leviticus was violated frequently in dynastic royal marriages. King Manoel of Portugal had first wed Katherine’s oldest sister Isabella; after she died, he married their sister Maria. Not too many years before Henry’s crisis of conscience, the late King Afonso of Portugal had received a dispensation to marry his sister’s daughter, Juana la Beltraneja. And Henry himself was seriously considering wedding Henry Fitzroy, his bastard son by Bessie Blount, to the boy’s half sister, Princess Mary.
Nonetheless, Henry’s older sister, Margaret, had managed to pull off a divorce that very year on similar grounds to the Leviticus argument, so Henry had high hopes of success.
Katherine had been blindsided by the news that Henry (through Wolsey) had secretly convened a commission to study the validity of their marriage. Not until several weeks after the hearings began on May 17, 1527, did Henry have the courage to confess what the Spanish ambassador had already disclosed to her. On June 22, the king informed his wife of his recent discovery “that they had been in mortal sin during all the years they had lived together, and that this being the opinion of many canonists and theologians whom he had consulted on the subject, he had come to the resolution, as his conscience was much troubled thereby, to separate himself from her a mensa et thoro [from board and bed] and wished her to choose the place to which she would retire.”
Katherine’s initial reaction was to be expected, “bursting into tears and being too agitated to reply.” Henry ended up awkwardly comforting his wife, reassuring her that “All should be done for the best,” before urging her to keep their conversation a secret and making an embarrassed exit from the chamber.
The queen felt betrayed, and she soon became embittered. But she was also well coached, garnering expert opinions to bolster her position. She countered Henry’s Leviticus argument with the insistence that she had never consummated her marriage with Arthur, a claim substantiated by her ladies-in-waiting—although other courtiers would later testify that Katherine had lost her virginity to him. Cardinal Wolsey counterpunched, informing the queen’s Almoner, Dr. Robert Shorton, that after Katherine’s wedding night in 1501 the Spanish ambassadors “did send the sheets they lay in, spotted with blood, into Spain, in full testimony and proof thereof.”
Tradition accepts Katherine’s testimony, painting her in a saintly glow that modern historians still strive to reproduce. But in the 1860s, G. A. Bergenroth discovered documents in the Spanish archives that contest Katherine’s assertion. Correspondence between her father, her nephew Charles, and the imperial ambassador Eustache Chapuys contains allegations that Katherine had not only lied about her virginity in order to remain in England, but that her pregnancy announced in February 1510, less than a year after her marriage to Henry, was also a sham. Bergenroth found a letter from Katherine’s confessor Friar Diego that states she had a miscarriage that January. Yet on May 27, 1510, Katherine wrote to Ferdinand to inform him that she lost the child “a few days ago.” In other words, for nearly half a year she kept the truth from her own father. Despite her genuine piety, Katherine was clearly capable of duplicity when it was politically advantageous to maintain a fiction. When all was said and done, she was the daughter of two powerful and highly manipulative monarchs and may have gleaned much from watching them in action.
To “divorce” Katherine, Henry sought a papal dispensation from Clement VII that would effectively overturn, or cancel, the previous dispensation issued by Pope Julius II. The earlier document dispelled with the prohibited degree of affinity, permitting Henry to wed his late brother’s wife. Now, nearly a quarter century later, the king was demanding that Clement’s dispensation uphold the nullity of his marriage to Katherine because she had been his late brother’s wife.
Negotiations to legally divest himself of Katherine so he could marry Anne Boleyn and make her his queen dragged on for six years, from 1527 to 1533. Aware that public sympathy was on her side, Katherine proved to be as tough and shrewd an adversary as Henry had ever faced. As the Great Matter progressed, she continually thwarted Henry’s desire for secrecy by broadcasting information regarding the events, and her feelings about them, to all the foreign ambassadors so that the entire interna
tional community would learn what was taking place in England. Although she claimed to be one woman alone against Henry’s mighty legal machine, she was receiving information and advice every step of the way. And there was at least one mole inside Henry’s private meetings with his lawyers and theologians who reported every detail to the queen.
One double agent risked his life to aid Katherine. Near the outset of the Great Matter, Wolsey had told her that only the original dispensation regarding her marriage to Arthur—which lay in Spain’s archives—would be admissible as evidence, and that the document she had produced could be discredited as a forgery. Luckily for the queen, Thomas Abell, the envoy who had been handpicked by the cardinal to fetch the original document, happened to have a conscience. He procured a legally notarized copy of the papal bull, admissible in any court. For abetting Katherine’s case, Abell spent the last six years of his life in the Tower; his body was tortured, his spirit was broken, and he was eventually hanged.
Nor was Katherine about to go quietly. Her retreat into religious devotions had made her stronger, rather than more malleable. Furthermore, she loved Henry, as a queen, as a wife, and as a woman. “She assured me that she would live and die in the estate of matrimony,” averred Cardinal Campeggio, the papal legate who, along with Cardinal Wolsey, had been instructed by His Holiness to deliver an opinion on the Great Matter—as long as they took their sweet time about it.
One way that Pope Clement managed to make himself look like he was moving the matter forward was by granting Henry a papal dispensation that set aside the first degree of affinity with regard to Mary Boleyn. The document would have enabled Henry to marry Anne in the eyes of the Church, despite the fact that he’d bedded her sister. But without the decrees nullifying Henry’s marriage to Katherine, it was as good as the parchment it was written on. So, in February 1528, two English envoys set out for Rome with the king’s petition, bearing a letter from Cardinal Wolsey—which it must have choked him to write—extolling Anne’s many virtues of character.
That summer, pro-Katherine sentiment ran so high in London that there were demonstrations in the streets against Henry’s plan to divorce her. Realizing that he was losing in the court of public opinion, the king cast himself as the beleaguered party. He summoned as many subjects as he could into the great chamber at Bridewell Palace, where he lay the case before them, then sanctimoniously declared, “If it be adjudged that the Queen is my lawful wife, nothing will be more pleasant or acceptable to me, both for the clearness of my conscience, and also for the good qualities and conditions I know her to be in . . . so that if I were to marry again, if the marriage might be good, I would choose her above all women. But if it be determined in judgment that our marriage is against God’s law, then shall I sorrow, parting from so good a lady and loving companion.”
His words couldn’t have been further from the truth.
And Katherine was not fooled by them. She knew perfectly well that Henry hungered for the opposite verdict. And she also desired to know why, after so many years of living together as man and wife, Henry suddenly thought their marriage had been a sham, and therefore, the Princess Mary was a bastard. Katherine refused to accept Henry’s compromise to take the veil (which might have saved Mary’s legitimacy), because if she took his offer to enter an abbey, she would also be embracing the premise that she had broken God’s law, acknowledging that her marriage to Henry had been invalid from the start. Sticking to her original story, on October 27, 1528, she swore under the seal of the confessional in the presence of Cardinal Campeggio that she and Arthur had shared a bed only seven times during their brief marriage, but that they had never enjoyed intercourse on any of those nights, and therefore, she had remained a virgin.
Henry’s council, known as the legatine court, had commenced their hearings in June 1529. Katherine, more or less evicted by Henry, had by then taken up residence at Baynard’s Castle, where her wedding reception to Arthur had been held.
On June 21, Katherine stunned the council by testifying in person. Stepping down from her raised dais, she slowly threaded her way across the room to Henry’s platform, and dramatically knelt before her husband, remaining at his feet, although he twice tried to raise her up. Then, according to Campeggio, “in the sight of all the court and assembly, in broken English” she begged Henry “to consider her honor, her daughter’s and his; that he should not be displeased at her defending it, and should consider the reputation of her nation and relatives, who will be seriously offended; in accordance with what he had said about his good will, she had throughout appealed to Rome, where it was reasonable that the affair should be determined, as the present place was open to suspicion and because the cause is already [begun] at Rome.”
In her still-thick Spanish accent Katherine implored Henry, “I beseech you for all the love that hath been between us, let me have justice and right, take of me some pity and compassion, for I am a poor woman, and a stranger, born out of your dominion. I have here no assured friend and much less indifferent counsel. . . . I take God and all the world to witness that I have been to you a true, humble, and obedient wife, ever comfortable to your will and pleasure . . . , being always well pleased and contented with all things wherein you had any delight or dalliance, whether it were little or much . . . I loved all those whom ye loved, only for your sake, whether I had cause or no, and whether they were my friends or my enemies. This twenty years I have been your true wife, and by me ye have had divers children, although it hath pleased God to call them from this world, and when ye had me at the first I take God to be my judge, I was a true maid without taint of man. And whether this be true or no, I put it to your conscience.”
The room itself seemed to hold its breath waiting for the king’s reply. But Henry made no answer.
“If there be any just cause that you can allege against me, either of dishonesty, or matter lawful to put me from you,” Katherine continued, “I am content to depart to my shame and rebuke, and if there be none, I pray you to let me have justice at your hands.”
A week later, Arthur’s steward was brought to testify before the council. He recalled his late master’s wedding morning boast, “Willoughby, bring me a cup of ale, for I have been this night in the midst of Spain.” Whether Arthur’s words had been the truth or merely a macho pronouncement made by a scrawny adolescent, it didn’t help Katherine’s cause. Compounding matters, Katherine’s former tutor and confessor, Alessandro Geraldini, supported the steward’s testimony.
Anne Boleyn was elated at the possibility that Katherine had been lying about her chastity. But as far as Rome was concerned, the Great Matter remained unresolved, and it was in the papacy’s interests to stall for time for several reasons. In 1527, Rome had been sacked and the Pope temporarily taken prisoner by forces under the command of Katherine’s nephew Charles V of Spain. Consequently, it was a bad idea for the curia to do anything that might further anger Charles. It was vital to preserve the peace as well as the delicate balance of political power. And because the papacy also had grave doubts about Henry’s argument for an annulment, it was more comfortable for them to accept Katherine’s version of events.
Heartened by Rome’s delays, Katherine had not given up, nor had her supporters. The queen’s faction intended to reveal the real reason for Henry’s petition. In 1529, seventeen of Henry’s love letters to Anne Boleyn were stolen by an agent of Cardinal Campeggio, one of the papal legates charged with determining the Great Matter. The letters were brought to the Pope, and to this day they remain in the Vatican’s archives.
One day that summer, after the legatine court had been adjourned on a technicality—which conveniently delayed a verdict until October at the earliest—Katherine flung herself at her husband’s feet and begged him to take her back. She informed Henry that she refused to accept the decision of the biased English court and intended to appeal directly to the Pope. Appearing to be as concerned for Henry’s religious apostasy as she was about his marital infidelity, Katherine w
rote to the pontiff, passionately urging him to sanction Anne’s champions: . . . Your Holiness had promised to renew the brief issued at Bologna, and to issue another commanding the King, my lord, to dismiss and utterly to cast away this woman with whom he lives . . . my complaint is not against the King, my lord, but against the instigators and abettors of this suit. I trust so much in . . . the King’s natural virtues and goodness that if I could only have him with me two months, as he used to be, I alone would be powerful enough to make him forget the past. But they know this is true, so they contrive to prevent his being with me. . . . Therefore, put a bit in their mouths! Proceed to sentence! Then their tongues will be silenced and their hopes of mischief vanish; then they will set my lord at liberty and he will become once more the dutiful son of Your Holiness as he always was.
But Henry never veered from his course. In July of 1531, he saw Katherine of Aragon for the last time. She spent her final four and a half years in various royal demesnes, each one draftier than the last, struggling to maintain the modest household Henry had permitted her. Even so, she was almost always in arrears.
Over the years Katherine had adopted the roles of warrior-queen and attorney in her own defense, but when she realized that nothing could persuade her husband to depart from his course, she donned the martyr’s mantle. “Wherever the king commanded her, were it even to the fire,” she would go—although she had no intent to relinquish either her title or her marital status, declaring “in this world I will confess myself to be the king’s true wife, and in the next they will know how unreasonably I am afflicted.”
Katherine was caught between Scylla and Charybdis. As a wife, her primary duty was to obey her husband. But as a queen consort, she was expected to maintain her dignity and to lead and rule. And as a devout Catholic, her conscience had to be obeyed. To that end, in 1531, when the Duke of Suffolk, Charles Brandon, was deputized to pressure Katherine to step aside, he reported to the king that Katherine was prepared to obey his command, “but she owed obedience to two persons first. . . . God was the first; the second was her soul and conscience.”
Notorious Royal Marriages: A Juicy Journey through Nine Centuries of Dynasty, Destiny, and Desire Page 9
