The Six Wives & Many Mistresses of Henry VIII: The Women's Stories

by Amy Licence

  This triangle of Henry, Catherine and Anne has fascinated readers for centuries and will, no doubt, continue to do so. However, his other wives and mistresses have often been glossed over in traditional narratives as having less of an impact upon English history. This book rejects that approach. Instead, it seeks to understand the experiences of all the women wooed and won by Henry – or, rather, by a number of different Henrys – over the course of the years. They may have left less of a mark on national politics and shared his bed for less time but Henry was no less important to them as a result. The king may be the factor they have in common but the focus is firmly on them.

  The question of evidence is also central to this book. No chronicler or ambassador followed Henry into his bedchamber and modern knowledge of his two known mistresses hangs upon accidents. The large amount of material relating to his wives reflects their public position; it should be unsurprising, then, that there is a veil of silence drawn over those whom Henry kept behind closed doors. This secrecy was a personal and dynastic shield and was cultivated by the king in the same way that he manufactured his image in portraits and pageants. Early in his reign Henry learned of the need to choose his confidants carefully, and the extent to which Thomas Wolsey, a cardinal and papal legate, facilitated the arrival of Henry’s illegitimate son shows how well the king was served. Also, by the late 1530s he had executed the majority of the rakish young men known as his ‘minions’, who were his early secret confidants, closing off another potential avenue of memoirs, letters and records. However, the amount of direct and suggestive evidence about his extramarital adventures – the anecdotes, scattered records and comments of his contemporaries – build a picture of a libidinous monarch whose personal sensitivity helped conceal much of his private behaviour. It would seem, after much research and reflection, that the title The Six Wives and Many Mistresses is an accurate representative of the king’s love life. This is a reassessment of Henry the lover through the eyes of the women who shared his bed.

  Yet with this blood of ours the blood of kings

  Shall be co-mixed, and with their fame our fame

  Shall be eternis’d in the mouths of men

  The Famous History of the Life and

  Death of Captain Thomas Stukeley

  PART ONE

  Catherine of Aragon

  1

  A Maid from Spain, 1485–1500

  Not of adventure, but of free election

  Ye toke this name, Kateryn, for very love and trust

  Which name is regestered in the high court above

  And, as I holpe you to Criste, your first mate,

  So have I purveyd a second spouse trewe

  But ye for him the first shalnot forsake1

  On 15 December 1485, a baby girl was born in the Palace of Alcalá de Henares, just over twenty miles north of Madrid, in central Spain. It was the thirteenth-century seat of the local archbishop, fortified against the infidels, with thick walls of yellow stone and red brick fusing the best of Renaissance and Moorish design. Little of the building now survives, but it is likely to have been decorated in the ornate Mudéjar style of elegant white filigree carving, tile work and ornamental metals set around gracious courtyards. The air would have been thick with the scents of pine groves and olives, oranges, spices and incense. Long summers saw temperatures soar across that parched landscape, while winters could prove desperately cold.

  Amid one such winter, with the palace fires blazing, the little girl arrived. Her mother, the thirty-four-year-old Isabella, Queen of Castile, was no stranger to the rigours and dangers of childbirth. She had already borne six children, four of whom had survived the process, but this daughter would be her last. Contemporary accounts portray the queen as paradoxically sweet and ruthless. Austrian humanist Jerónimo Münzer wrote that she was ‘tall, somewhat chubby and of agreeable countenance’. She was devout, wise and ‘constantly at the side of her husband’, although her ‘sweet disposition’ was coupled with a warlike ferocity that underpinned her conflicts with the Portuguese, Jews and Moors. Her secretary, Hernando del Pulgar, described her as ‘intelligent and discreet’ and ‘disposed to doing justice’, pursuing the ‘path of sternness rather than that of mercy’.2 She had blue eyes and while Münzer described her hair as reddish, Juan de Mariana called it golden and commented that she ‘wore no make-up’, ‘demonstrating a singular gravity, modesty and moderation’.3

  Isabella had been married since the age of eighteen to her second cousin Ferdinand II of Aragon in a match which unified much of Spain. Yet she had been no mild, blushing bride. Before the ceremony, in 1469, the groom had agreed to a series of eight concessions initiated by his future wife, promising to maintain native customs in her kingdoms and respect her male relatives. Another clause related to their future offspring, whom he vowed to never remove from her or take out of their lands without her permission.4 In 1492, Ferdinand was described as ‘darkened through the labour of war’, with ‘long brown hair and his bread trimmed in the style of the time, with broad eyebrows, balding, with a small mouth, red lips, small and thin teeth, broad shoulders, a straight neck, a clear voice, quick of tongue, a clear mind, of grave and proper judgement, with a gentle and courteous manner and merciful towards those with whom he negotiated’.5 He would play a key role, albeit a distant one, in his daughter’s future career.

  Isabella’s labour progressed through the day and night of 16 December. Herbs and wine, prayers and religious icons would have been offered to help relieve her pain. She was stoical in suffering, though, one visitor to her court later reporting that ‘neither when in pain through illness nor during the pains of childbirth … did [her ladies] ever see her complain’.6 The child was healthy. She was checked by the midwives and washed in a little brass basin before being handed to her mother. Isabella’s treasurer, Gonzalo de Baeza, kept detailed records of the baby’s early days, from the name of her first nurse, Elena de Carmona, to her christening by the Bishop of Palencia, when she wore a gown of white brocade lined with green velvet and edged in gold lace.7 She may have been named after her English great-grandmother, Catherine of Lancaster, or Catalina in her native tongue. It was an early indication of the destiny they had in mind for her.

  Just over a thousand miles to the north, Catherine’s future homeland had recently undergone some dramatic changes. She had been conceived in mid-March 1485 but very soon after this, before Isabella may have even suspected her condition, England’s brief stability began to unravel. News came of scandalous rumours at Richard III’s court, followed by the death of Queen Anne and the threat of invasion to the realm. It was still a distant reality, though, for the pregnant Isabella. Throughout that summer she was preoccupied by her own war with Granada, travelling from Cordoba to Baena and Jaén in the south. It is likely that she stayed in the castle of Santa Catalina, originally an eighth-century Moorish palace, rebuilt with five towers and a chapel to the saint. It would have been around this time that she first felt her baby move, or quicken, and she may have given thanks at the altar there, suggesting an alternative source for the child’s name. St Catherine, or Catalina in Spanish, had been a princess, a scholar and martyr to her faith, considered beautiful, dignified and intelligent. It was certainly a legacy that her namesake would live up to. Before Isabella left for Alcalá de Henares that September, news came from England of a major battle which had seen the defeat of the ruling House of York.

  England’s history over the last three decades had been turbulent. Tales of conflict and the betrayal of anointed kings would have been familiar to Isabella as a child, as ambassadors, merchants and visitors crossed the Channel and travelled south. In 1455, when she was only four, long-standing political tensions had erupted into bloodshed while England swung between the rule of the Yorkists and Lancastrians. Then, fighting between rival claimants had given way to treachery and treason between brothers. The last medieval king, Richard III, had declared his own nephews to be illegitimate and had taken the crown for himself in 14
83. Yet his reign had been brief. That summer of 1485, an invasion force led by Henry Tudor, the half-nephew of the last Lancastrian king, had defeated and killed Richard at the Battle of Bosworth Field. A new regime had begun.

  By the time Isabella had arrived at her lying-in place, Tudor had been crowned as Henry VII in Westminster Abbey. As a newcomer on the international stage, though, Henry’s position was not yet secure and the recent rapid changes led the Spanish monarchs to display a degree of uncertainty, perhaps even scepticism. That November, when explorer Christopher Columbus captured four Venetian boats full of Spanish merchandise, Ferdinand and Isabella wrote from Alcalá de Henares requesting his arrest if he landed at an English port, but the name of the English king was omitted from the document in case things had changed again.8 Henry VII, however, was not going anywhere. When baby Catherine was a month old he married Elizabeth of York, the daughter of Edward IV and descendant of the York Plantagenet line, and only eight months later she delivered a son, whom they named Arthur. This was Ferdinand and Isabella’s chance. As early as March 1487, when Arthur was six months old, they approached Henry with the suggestion of marrying their youngest daughter to the new Tudor prince.

  The man entrusted with the task was Dr Roderigo De Puebla, the first Spanish resident ambassador in England. On 30 April 1488 he received instructions to conclude a treaty between Catherine and Prince Arthur, then aged two and a half and eighteen months respectively.9 Henry VII responded from Windsor that July, congratulating the Spanish on their success against the Moors and hoping ‘the friendship already existing between them will soon be rendered stronger by the ties of blood’. The same day, De Puebla confirmed that Catherine’s marriage portion was expected to be 200,000 gold scudos, with the value of one scudo being 4s 2d.10 This made one Spanish scudo slightly more than the average weekly wage for an English labourer in the mid-fifteenth century, or the cost of eighty eggs or six gallons of wine.11 The contract was set out in the Treaty of Medina del Campo, signed by Ferdinand and Isabella in March 1489 and ratified by Henry VII the following year.

  With the initial arrangements made, the young pair settled down to wait until they were old enough to live together as man and wife. Certainly Arthur was too young to be aware of the situation, and although young Catherine may have been informed, and was perhaps even pleased to be a source of success to her parents, both families were aware that many dynastic matches were made young and broken before they were consummated. Arthur was invested as Prince of Wales in 1490 and established in his own household at Ludlow, where he embarked on his education under the supervision of three successive tutors. In training for his future reign, the boy followed a syllabus including history, poetry, classics, rhetoric, ethics, archery and dancing. The years passed.

  In the meantime, Catherine was being prepared for her role. She was not only taught the traditional feminine accomplishments of embroidery and dancing, but studied similar topics to Arthur, including religion, canon and civic law. Her future mother-in-law, Queen Elizabeth, advised her to take every opportunity to speak French ‘in order to learn the language and be able to converse in it when she comes to England’. Additionally, she should learn to drink wine, as ‘the water of England is not drinkable, and even if it were, the climate would not allow the drinking of it’.12 As Catherine reached a suitable marriageable age, her departure was delayed over concerns about her mother’s health, an outbreak of the plague and fears over the influence of Yorkist pretenders challenging the Tudor regime. The English urged Ferdinand and Isabella not to delay sending their daughter, so that she could accustom herself to life in the country she would one day rule over and they could begin the process of moulding her according to English habits. The Spanish ambassador to Scotland, Don Pedro de Ayala, had experience of the climate and customs of the English court and wrote to confirm that Catherine would suffer ‘grave inconveniences’ on account of the ‘manner and way of life of the people in this island’ and it was better to send her at once, ‘before she had learnt to appreciate our [Spanish] habits’.13

  Technically, Catherine became Arthur’s wife without leaving Spanish soil at all. On 12 March, the thirteen-year-old princess wrote to De Puebla in Latin, empowering him to ‘repeat and re-enact, in her name, all he has concluded and done in respect to the said marriage’.14 Her parents echoed her desire, stating that it was time to conclude the union as the papal dispensation had arrived from Rome.15 The paperwork was required because both parties were still below the minimum legal age for marriage. At nine o’clock in the morning on 19 May 1499, after first Mass, a proxy ceremony was held in the chapel at Bewdley Palace in Worcestershire. Situated about twenty miles east of Ludlow, it had become a royal palace under the Yorkist king Edward IV, Arthur’s maternal grandfather, and was used by the young prince when presiding over the Council of the Marches. Standing in for Catherine, De Puebla was well placed to record the details.

  John Arundel, Bishop of Coventry and Lichfield, officiated at the ceremony. He explained to the groom that the process of declaration would make the union ‘henceforth indissoluble’. The short, dark-haired boy, only twelve years old, replied ‘in a loud and clear voice’ that he ‘was very much rejoiced to contract with Catherine, Princess of Wales … from his deep and sincere love’ for her.16 De Puebla spoke Catherine’s part, before joining hands with the prince on behalf of his ‘lawful and undoubted wife’.17 A second proxy ceremony was enacted at Ludlow that October, with De Puebla again taking the role of blushing bride at the Prince’s side and then at the banquet that followed, where he was afforded more respect ‘than he had ever before received in his life’.18 After the ceremony, Arthur wrote to Catherine that he ‘felt an earnest desire to see her’ and begged that her departure might be hastened, as ‘the delay respecting her coming is very grievous’. He entreated that he ‘may often and speedily hear from her’ and signed himself ‘her loving spouse’.19 It was a strange situation; a marriage with the bride and groom in separate countries, never having met. All that remained now was for Catherine to travel to England.

  2

  A Royal Welcome, 1501

  Now fayre, fayrest of every fayre,

  Princes most plesant and preclare,

  The lustyest one alyve that byne,

  Welcum of England to be Quene!1

  The arrangements had been made but still the princess lingered in Spain. A string of family losses, including her brother, sister and infant nephew, may have inclined Catherine’s mother to retain her longer than was strictly necessary. Grieving for her losses, Isabella was loath to depart with her youngest daughter, in the knowledge that she faced a long and arduous journey, with no guarantees of any future reunion. Ultimately, though, she was committed to Catherine’s role as future Queen of England. She wrote instructing De Puebla that she was honoured to hear of the preparations Henry had made for Catherine’s arrival, but that she ‘should not be the cause of any loss to England’ and that ‘the substantial part of the festival should be his love’.2 Henry, however, misleadingly characterised by later historians as something of a miser, did not take her advice; that March he spent a glorious £14,000 on nuptial jewels, proving that could part with his money when the situation required it. When Catherine finally set foot on English soil, she found he had spared little expense on celebrations.

  The journey was not easy. It took a long time for Catherine to reach the coast, pausing first to pray at the famous pilgrimage shrine of St James at Santiago de Compostela. Her fleet was delayed, then beaten back completely, by the inclement weather. Henry had sent a skilled pilot, Stephen Brett, to guide the Spanish fleet through the Bay of Biscay and around the tip of Brittany.3 Even he could do little to prevent the terrible storms they encountered and, having been blown off course to Southampton, which was considered the safest port, Catherine arrived at Portsmouth on Saturday 2 October 1501. The unsuspecting citizens turned out in an impromptu welcome to see the young princess and her exotic entourage disembark to the clamour of
church bells. Among them were a number of Africans, or ‘moors’, who excited much attention as the first recorded in England since the Roman period. On her long journey to London through the wet English autumn, Catherine had her first taste of her adoptive country, with its rolling fields, woodlands and villages clustered around perpendicular churches.

  There was a brief, bashful meeting with her young husband-to-be when she reached Dogmersfield in Hampshire. At first Catherine resisted, citing protocol, even taking to her bed, but Henry insisted and she had little choice but to capitulate. Until that point she had known Arthur only through his letters, a set of fairly formal Latin missives deploying the usual conventions of anticipation and an artificial sort of intimacy. His father ushered him in from the rain to meet her; a real boy of flesh and blood instead of a mere signature at the end of a piece of paper. She was shy but he was gentle, a dark-haired, thin youth, half a head shorter than her, with the hooded eyes and beaked nose of his father. With the help of the bishops they conversed in a sort of Latin, renewing the vows they had previously made in separate countries. Catherine summoned her minstrels and watched as he danced ‘right pleasant and honourably’,4 wondering what her life would be like with this slender, serious young man who was due to inherit the Tudor throne.

  Waiting for Catherine at Kingston-on-Thames, about thirteen miles south-west of Westminster, was her guide for the final leg of the journey. This was her first meeting with the future Henry VIII. Arthur’s younger brother was Duke of York, a sturdy and golden-haired boy of ten, reputedly as gregarious and energetic as his brother was serious and reflective. He conducted Catherine along the south bank of the Thames, conversing with her in Latin,5 before their arrival at London Bridge, where the spectacle began. The author of the Receyt of the Ladie Kateryne recorded her arrival in considerable detail, including verses stating how she had adopted an English name in honour of her new country. Catalina had become Catherine.6 Twelve pageants with special effects depicted astrological, historical and natural images; in one, the moon and sun passed through their spheres by the efforts of men on treadmills behind the scenes. St Catherine in her wheel and St Ursula smiled down on her from temporary scaffolds, although the infanta’s English was not good enough for her to understand their words of welcome. They were framed by blue and red tissue curtains, walls painted with flowers and pillars topped with the three-feather motif of the Prince of Wales, Lancastrian red roses and Beaufort portcullises.7 There were virgins, angels and saints; bulls, greyhounds and lions; dragons and centaurs, serpents and mermaids. The conduits ran with free wine. Trumpets, shawms and sackbuts made ‘heavenly noise’, children sang and officials greeted her, dressed in ‘rich jewels and massy chains’ and riding horses that sparkled with gold bells.8