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

by Amy Licence

  As a child in Spain, Catherine had witnessed the extravagant mourning of young widows. Her eldest sister, Isabel, had been widowed at the age of twenty, when her husband was killed in a riding accident. Her response had been to immerse herself in mourning and the comfort of religion, hacking off her long hair and fasting until she was ‘thinner than a dried-out tree’. At the age of eleven, she would also have heard of the grief of her sister-in-law, Margaret of Austria, following her short and passionate match to Catherine’s brother, John. Margaret remarried but her second husband died in 1504, leading her to vow she would remain a widow and earning her the name ‘Lady of Mourning’. Catherine, though, had other ideas. There was little more she wanted than to become a wife and queen.

  It was at this point that Henry VII came up with a shocking plan. Upon Arthur’s death, his own wife, Elizabeth, had consoled him with the idea that they would have more children. Although she was thirty-six, and considered old in terms of childbearing, she conceived quickly and was brought to bed early of a daughter in the Tower of London. Tragically, though, neither mother nor child survived. Protocol suggests it is unlikely that Catherine attended the solemn funeral, where Elizabeth’s full-length effigy lay upon a coffin draped with black velvet and topped by a white gold cross. The loss of Arthur was a considerable blow, but, miles from her parents, her main source of comfort may well have been the bereaved queen. With Elizabeth’s death Catherine would have lost an ally, an alternative mother figure, and witnessed the effects of grief upon the king and his son. Now the whole court was in mourning again.

  In April 1503, only two months after Elizabeth’s death, Henry suggested that he might take Catherine as his new bride. At this point he was forty-six and, although ‘still remarkably attractive’, with a ‘cheerful’ face, his ‘teeth were few, poor and blackish, his hair was thin and white, his complexion sallow’.4 Catherine was seventeen. The proposition, if she was aware of it, must have been a shock. It was not the reason she had been sent to England and the contrast between Henry VII and his new heir was considerable. Isabella wrote back to the Duke d’Estrada in horror, describing the match as a ‘very evil thing, one never before seen and the mere mention of which offends the ears … we would not for anything in the world that it should take place’. To Dona Elvira, she repeated her wish for Catherine’s immediate return to Spain and made arrangements for her to join the returning merchants’ fleet, then in Flanders.5 ‘In this way the king will be deprived of the hope of marrying her.’ Whether or not Henry was truly set upon this ‘barbarous and dishonest’6 course of action, the question of his remarriage was soon set aside in favour of his son.

  In June 1503, to her great relief, Catherine’s betrothal to Prince Henry was finalised by the Bishop of Salisbury. Her marriage portion would comprise the remaining half of the original 200,000 scudos, to be made up of ‘coined gold’, plate and vessels of gold and silver, jewels, pearls and ornaments, ‘according to the valuation of silversmiths in London’.7 Both sides acknowledged that Catherine’s previous marriage placed her and Henry within the prohibited degrees of affinity, so a papal dispensation was necessary. However, the Spaniards were taking no chances. They did not trust Henry not to find some legal loophole, so they stipulated that the dispensation must cover the eventuality that the union with Arthur ‘had been consummated’.8 Ferdinand was in little doubt about his daughter’s inexperience. Either Catherine or her ladies must have communicated fairly directly with him regarding the intimate details of her married life. He clarified that ‘although they were wedded, Prince Arthur and Princess Catherine never consummated their marriage. It is well known that the princess is still a virgin. But as the English are much disposed to cavil, it has seemed to be more prudent to provide for the case as though the marriage had been consummated.’9 Thus Ferdinand hoped to prevent any problems arising in the future regarding Catherine’s marriage and status. With just one small twist of fate, the topic may never have arisen again.

  With the political hot potato of Catherine’s virginal status in abeyance, arrangements went ahead for her to marry again. The ceremony was to take place ‘as soon as Prince Henry shall have completed the fourteenth year of his age’, which would be in June 1505, and Catherine was to ‘enjoy, during the lifetime of her royal husband, all the privileges and revenues that other queens of England have enjoyed before her’.10 Finally, it appeared that Catherine’s future would unfold as she had hoped. She was now a frequent visitor at the Tudor court, participating in feasts and hunts, travelling to Windsor, Richmond and Westminster. There would have been occasions for her to observe the boy who would become her next husband. Both had found their futures altered considerably since the day they and Arthur had made such a striking trio in white silk for the wedding celebrations of autumn 1501. At the least, a degree of familiarity or sympathy would have sprung up between them, if not a friendship; perhaps even more.

  Catherine would have witnessed the arrangements being made for the marriage of Princess Margaret to King James IV of Scotland. Margaret was four years younger than Catherine, a possible friend and comfort, but the pair would have only had a brief window to become friends before Margaret left England. Hearing about the proxy marriage at Richmond, with the Scottish ambassador draped in cloth of gold, and seeing the preparations for Margaret’s departure, with her crimson Italian bed hangings embroidered with red roses, Catherine would have been reminded of her own marital journey. Amid the jousting and feasting that followed, did she reflect on how soon the excitement of her arrival and celebrations of her wedding had turned to grief? When Margaret left Richmond, accompanied by the king, on 27 June 1503, they left behind the newly betrothed couple of Catherine and Henry. Perhaps the pair drew closer together during this time, as a result of their recent losses. It is not difficult to imagine the young widow and the teenage prince dining together or riding in Richmond Park, reminiscing about departed loved ones.

  Widowhood in the early sixteenth century could sometimes confer status and independence. Under English common law, the position of a femme sole, a woman without a man, was one of greater financial freedom and control, allowing her to own property, make contracts and manage the affairs of her unmarried children. However, this would not prove to be the case for Catherine. She had little power over her future and was instructed by her parents to be submissive while the game of diplomatic relations played out over her head. After the death of Elizabeth of York, she lacked an English mother figure at court to fight her cause and she continued to struggle with the language.11 Then, in November 1504, she received news of the death of her mother, Isabella of Castile, who had passed away at Medino del Campo at the age of fifty-three. Less than four months later, while she was still in deepest mourning, she was shocked by the news that her father had remarried. His new wife was Germaine de Foix, niece of Louis XII of France and his own great-niece, who, at seventeen, was three years younger than Catherine herself.

  Apart from any personal dislike Catherine may have felt for her father’s new marriage, it was to prove an unexpected political setback for her cause. Her wedding to Prince Henry should have been imminent, after Pope Julius II had finally issued a dispensation for the pair to wed in November 1504. As Henry approached his fourteenth birthday the following summer, preparations should have been made for pageants and feasts, lengths of material ordered, jewels chosen and seamstresses kept busy, plying their needles with gold and silver thread. But this new Spanish–French match had annoyed the English king. For centuries, Spain and England had been traditional allies in the ‘auld alliance’ against their common enemy of France. After all the overtures of friendship in recent years and the treaties confirming their position, Henry VII considered the Aragon–Foix marriage to be an act of betrayal. He stated that Ferdinand had been ‘ensnared’ by the French and repaid the love of the English ‘with ingratitude’.12

  Isabella’s death created a further financial barrier to Catherine’s marriage. Traditionally a separate kingdom fro
m Aragon, Castile now passed intact to her eldest surviving daughter, Joanna. It had always been a larger, more influential region than Aragon, so Catherine was now the daughter of Aragon only, instead of the joint kingdoms, decreasing her marital value. Also, Joanna, or rather her controlling husband Philip, now held the purse strings when it came to the payment of the second half of Catherine’s dowry. Isabella’s will allowed for Ferdinand to rule in the event of Isabella’s incapacity or absence, but Philip was determined to claim the Castilian throne.

  For Henry VII, the loss of Castile and Ferdinand’s new union proved to be a huge financial disappointment. He now considered the possibility of cancelling Catherine’s match altogether so that he might make a more lucrative European alliance for his son, perhaps with the French princess, Margaret of Angoulême, later known as Margaret of Navarre. Born in 1492, Margaret was closer to Henry in age than Catherine, and was already renowned as a beautiful, educated and intelligent young woman. She would later become an author and the patroness of humanists and reformers. However, the king was reluctant to let Catherine leave England, which would necessitate the return of that part of her dowry which had already been paid. His desire to pursue a French match, retain Catherine’s money and punish Ferdinand underpinned the events of June 1505.

  All at court were aware that Prince Henry was approaching the significant age of fourteen. At the end of the month he would be able to legally marry, or to repudiate the arrangements made for him by his father. Catherine was anticipating becoming the wife of the young man to whom she had grown closer over the past three years, having more time to get to know him than she had with Arthur. On 22 June 1505, Ferdinand wrote to advise his daughter to ‘revere and be very obedient to the king, as is her duty, and as being a means of making him love her more, and of doing more for her’.13 Henry VII’s secretary, Thomas Ruthal, drew up clauses for an ‘intimate treaty’ between England and Spain, and Henry was considering taking Catherine’s cousin Joan of Naples as his queen.

  Then, on the day before Prince Henry’s birthday, the very eve of the proposed match, these hopes were suddenly dashed. At Richmond Palace, before the Bishop of Winchester and other assembled dignitaries, the boy made a public declaration absolving him from any obligation to Catherine. Stating that ‘as he is [sic] now near the age of puberty … he will not ratify the said marriage contract, but, on the contrary, denounces it as null and void’.14 The move was probably prompted by King Henry’s frustration with Ferdinand’s refusal to pay the second half of Catherine’s dowry. The timing, coming a day before the betrothal would have become legally valid, was designed to humiliate the Spanish.

  7

  The Other Spanish Princess, 1506–07

  One there is, and euer one shalbe,

  For whose sake my hart is sore dyseasyd;

  For whose loue, welcom dysease to me!

  I am content so all partys be pleasyd:

  Yet, and God wold, I wold my payne were easyd!1

  It is not clear exactly when, or if, Catherine found out about Prince Henry’s repudiation of her. Perhaps she was shrewd enough to understand that it was part of the complex Anglo-Spanish dynamic, more a political reaction by the king to her father’s French alliance than a rejection of her person. Perhaps, after years of waiting, she did feel it as a betrayal. It is very unlikely that her feelings were taken into account by any of the men involved. Her long-cherished hopes, so nearly attained, had been dashed again, for reasons beyond her control. She was approaching her twenty-first birthday. By the same age, her mother and sisters Isabella, Joanna and Maria had already been married and all, save for the widowed Isabella, had borne at least one child. That September, Henry wrote to Ferdinand to assure him the wedding would still go ahead. If Catherine had been informed at all about her fiancé’s repudiation of her that June, she now learned that the interminable waiting game had begun again.

  Catherine may have believed that the broken engagement was her fault. In fact, it may have suited Henry VII and his son to make her believe so, as a lesson about her behaviour. Writing to the Pope in the preceding months, Prince Henry had complained that his intended wife had ‘threatened to make a vow dedicating herself to a life of vigorous contemplation and physical abstinence’.2 This sounds quite plausible, as religious devotion was the only protest within Catherine’s control, given the crippling financial and emotional restraints under which the princess found herself. Julius II responded that Catherine’s body was not her own property, that she was subject to Prince Henry as her future spouse: ‘A wife does not have complete authority over her own body apart from [separate from] her husband.’3 Thus Catherine’s perceived wilfulness became a valid justification for punishing her further, for passing the blame on to her for what was, in essence, a political decision.

  In spite of the recent uncertainties over her own future marriage, Catherine was still willing to intercede in the case of another potential bride. On 8 September she wrote to her father on behalf of Maria de Salazar, who had been in service to Queen Elizabeth and then to herself, and who now hoped to be married in Flanders. Catherine asked for the woman’s marriage portion to be clarified, as well as the pension that Ferdinand had bestowed on her father, a Captain Salazar. She urged speed, in order that Maria ‘may not lose this marriage, which is most good and honourable’ and so that ‘justice may be observed towards her’ for having served Catherine well ‘as a worthy woman’.4 She requested that the bearer of her letter should be rewarded with a captainship for his brother, and pleaded the case of her other waiting women, as they should marry, but she had ‘nothing to bestow upon them’.5 The following year she wrote again, this time on behalf of her doctor, who had nursed her through great illness, hoping that his son might be rewarded with an ecclesiastical benefice in Naples.6 Although her powers were limited in her current position of stasis, Catherine used what influence she had to further the causes of those who had served her well.

  Regardless of the uncertainty over her future, Catherine was still not living in conditions to which her past entitled her. Little financial provision had been made for her as, in his will, Arthur had left everything he owned to his sister Margaret, an unusual step that has never been satisfactorily explained. In 1502 Henry VII had awarded her an annual income of £83 6s 8d, which was roughly the equivalent of the revenue of a nobleman of the day. Under the supervision of William Holybrand, appointed by the king to keep a close eye on her purse strings, she was unable to support her staff of fifty servants. Although her household had been scaled down since her widowhood and a few of her ladies had found husbands of their own, her staff were living in penury, ‘ready to ask for alms’ and were ‘all but naked’ for lack of funds to buy clothes. She had been forced to sell some bracelets in order to buy a dress of black velvet and claimed that, since her arrival in England, she had only purchased two new dresses.7 Caught in the crossfire of international relations, she was dependent on the king and in the difficult position of having to maintain her submissive position in spite of her belief that her destitution reflected ‘dishonour on his character’.8 The daughter of the King of Spain, raised to become Queen of England, who should have been decked in gold and silver finery, was forced into wearing rags.

  Although she had fully recovered from the illness that laid her low at Ludlow, Catherine’s health continued to be poor. In December 1505, she feared that she had ‘lost her health’ entirely. Suffering from various ‘agues’, hot and cold sweats, fever, stomach complaints and the loss of appetite, she pleaded for support from her father-in-law and her father. Her exhausted and malnourished body refused to cooperate when her surgeons attempted to bleed her, which was the usual cure-all of the time. She considered their help immaterial anyway, as the ‘moral afflictions’ of her position were ‘beyond the reach of the physician’.9 That month she was moved from Durham House to cramped lodgings on the ‘edge’ of the large complex of Westminster, so although she was technically closer to the court when it was in residence,
this represented a marginalisation.10 Although her health improved through 1506, her spirits remained depressed by the continuing conditions of poverty in which she was forced to live. By 1507, she was defying express orders not to sell off her gold and silver plate as she and her household were ‘obliged to live in rags’ and described her life as ‘martyrdom’.11 Yet, in spite of the ‘great … contempt’ shown to her, Catherine wrote to her father that, ‘though submissive, she cannot forget that she is the daughter of the King of Spain’.12 If nothing else, amid the greatest adversity, she remained regal.

  Then an unexpected chain of events altered the political scene. Since the death of Isabella, the purse strings of Castile, including funds for Catherine’s dowry, had been in the hands of her sister Joanna. Or, more specifically, since Ferdinand renounced his hold over his daughter in the 1505 Treaty of Salamanca, they were in the hands of Joanna’s husband, Philip the Handsome. Although she had only been ten at the time, Catherine would have recalled her elder sister’s departure from Spain and heard stories of the wedding in the Low Countries and the six healthy children she had subsequently borne. The marriage had started passionately enough, with Philip summoning a priest as soon as Joanna arrived, in order to legally consummate the union at once.

  Joanna fell deeply in love. As the years passed, though, her husband’s controlling behaviour, his infidelity and manipulation of her legal rights eroded the match and Joanna descended into depression and mental illness. Early in 1506, she and Philip defied advice not to travel in the middle of winter and sailed from Flanders to Castile to claim the throne, but they soon encountered terrible storms. The wind was so severe that, in London, the brass eagle weathervane was blown off the top of St Paul’s Cathedral.13 Having been tossed about for thirty-six hours, scattering their forty ships with great loss of life and the loss of the royal treasure ship, the royal galleon limped into the Dorset harbour of Melcombe Regis on 16 January. Although accidental, it was a wonderful opportunity for Catherine to see her sister again after nine years. It was also a chance for Henry VII to persuade Philip to release the remaining dowry and undermine the new Spanish–French alliance. Fate had landed them in his lap. He did not intend to let them go.