The House of Tudor

by Alison Plowden

  Across the bridge, in the widest part of Gracious Street, stood a most realistic-looking castle, but actually constructed, the chronicler is careful to explain, of timber covered with painted canvas. Its battlements were decorated with red and white roses, with gold fleur de lys, peacocks, greyhounds, white harts and other heraldic devices. Over the entrance hung a large portcullis ‘and in every joint of the portcullis a red rose’. This was topped by the royal arms painted on a shield of mock stone, and ‘on the highest of all the whole pageant, a red dreadful dragon, holding a staff of iron and on the staff a great crown of gold’. In Cornhill there was an astrological pageant, displaying the moon and other celestial bodies, with the angel Raphael waiting to remind the princess that marriage was ordained for love, with virtue and reverence and the procreation of children, and not for sensual lust and appetite. By the great conduit in Cheapside was a pageant of the sun, with a figure intended to symbolize Prince Arthur standing in a gilded chariot. By the standard in Cheapside, on a raised platform profusely embellished with red roses, greyhounds, lions and dragons, stood a great throne surrounded by burning tapers in gold candlesticks and ‘innumerable angels singing full harmoniously’. Here was seated no less a person than God the Father, ready to exhort the princess to the love of God and of Holy Church in several stanzas of rather doubtful verse.

  ‘Look ye’, he declared, ‘walk in my precepts and obey them well.

  And here I give you that same blessing that I

  Gave my well-beloved children of Israel;

  Blessed be the fruit of your belly.’

  No one, least of all the Almighty’s anonymous scriptwriter, could have guessed how bitterly ironical his words would turn out to be.

  The Spaniards, of course, were accustomed to religious shows and processions, but they had never seen anything quite on this scale before and they rode wide-eyed behind the scarlet-robed Lord Mayor and aldermen through a fairy-tale city, with the trumpets braying and the Tower cannon booming in their ears. ‘The princess’, exclaimed the Licentiate Alcares, ‘could not have been received with greater joy had she been the saviour of the world.’

  The Londoners packing the streets and hanging out of every window along the route were regrettably inclined to laugh at the outlandish appearance of the foreigners, but for the princess herself there was nothing but praise. Catherine, in rich Spanish apparel, was riding a gorgeously trapped mule and wore ‘a little hat fashioned like a cardinal’s hat...with a lace of gold at this hat to stay it, her hair hanging down about her shoulders’. She must have made a charmingly exotic picture and young Thomas More, a law student at Lincoln’s Inn, declared enthusiastically ‘there is nothing wanting in her that the most beautiful girl should have’. The royal family, who were watching the show from a merchant’s house in Cheapside, had every reason to be pleased, and for the King and Queen there was the added satisfaction of seeing ten-year-old Prince Henry carrying out his first important public engagement with perfect aplomb, as he rode through the crowded streets at his new sister’s right hand.

  The procession ended with a final pageant at the entrance to St. Paul’s Churchyard, and Catherine and her retinue were installed in the Bishop of London’s palace which adjoined the west door of the cathedral. Next day, the eve of the wedding, there was a state reception for the Spanish dignitaries in the great hall of Baynard’s Castle, the King sitting under a cloth of estate with his two sons on either side of him. In the afternoon the princess paid a ceremonial visit to the Queen and afterwards there was more dancing and merrymaking, so that it was quite late in the evening before she returned by torchlight to her lodging. ‘Thus’, remarks the chronicler, ‘with honour and mirth this Saturday was expired and done.’

  Prince Arthur arrived at St. Paul’s between nine and ten o’clock on the morning of Sunday, 14 November escorted by the Earls of Oxford and Shrewsbury, and shortly afterwards the bride emerged from the bishop’s palace. She was met at the west door of the cathedral by the Archbishop of Canterbury, supported by eighteen other bishops and abbots mitred, and led down the six-hundred-foot length of the great church to the choir. Prince Henry giving her his right hand and Cecily of York bearing her train. Bride and groom were both dressed in white satin, Catherine’s gown being made very wide ‘with many pleats, much like unto men’s clothing’ and worn over a Spanish hooped farthingale, while a white silk veil bordered with pearls and precious stones covered her face.

  After the marriage service conducted by the Archbishop, which lasted more than three hours, the newly-wedded pair went hand in hand towards the high altar, turning to the south and north so that ‘the present multitude of people might see and behold their persons’. Trumpets, shawns and sackbuts sounded, and a great shout went up inside the cathedral, ‘some crying King Henry, some in likewise crying Prince Arthur’. Outside, the bells crashed, the conduits ran with wine and the waiting crowds cheered themselves hoarse.

  As soon as the long-drawn-out religious ceremonies were over, the wedding guests trooped across the churchyard to the bishop’s palace, where a feast of ‘the most delicate dainties and curious meats that might be purveyed and gotten within the whole realm of England’ was laid out for them.

  That day of pageantry, piety, emotion and over-eating ended with the customary ceremonious bedding of bride and groom, the prince being conducted by his lords and gentlemen (few of them entirely sober by this time) to the bridal chamber ‘wherein the princess before his coming was reverently laid and disposed’. The marriage bed was blessed by the assembled bishops and at last the young couple was left alone. A quarter of a century later, the details of that public bedding were to be as publicly re-hashed - even Arthur’s boyish boast of the following morning was produced in evidence. He had called for a drink, remembered someone, saying he had been that night in Spain and found it thirsty work.

  The celebrations lasted a full fortnight. On Monday, while the princess rested in her apartments, the Spanish visitors were entertained to dinner and supper by the King’s mother and her husband, Lord Derby. On Tuesday, the King and all the quality went in state to hear mass at St. Paul’s and on Wednesday a number of new Knights of the Bath were created. On Thursday the Court moved to Westminster, where a tiltyard had been set up on the open space in front of Westminster Hall for a grand tournament in honour of the wedding - the champions vying with one another over the magnificence of their turn-out. On Friday, there was a state banquet inside the Hall with the new Princess of Wales seated on the King’s right hand. There was more ‘disguising’: a castle set on wheels with ladies looking out of the windows and singing boys warbling on the turrets was drawn in by a team of prototype pantomime horses - four heraldic beasts painted gold and silver and each containing two men, ‘one in the forepart and another in the hindpart’. This wonder was followed by a ship in full sail and finally by a third pageant ‘in likeness of a great hill...in which were enclosed eight goodly knights with their banners spread and displayed, naming themselves the Knights of the Mount of Love’. When these set pieces had been exclaimed over and towed away, the musicians struck up for dancing. The younger members of the royal family took the floor and Prince Henry, energetically partnering his sister Margaret, ‘perceiving himself to be accumbered by his clothes’, threw off his gown and danced in his jacket, much to the amusement of his parents.

  It was the end of November before the party began to break up. Catherine was to keep a permanent staff of about sixty Spanish attendants, but dignitaries such as the Count of Cabra, the Archbishops of Toledo and Santiago, and the Bishops of Malaga and Majorca had only come to see her safely married and now, surfeited with hospitality and laden with expensive presents, they were ready to leave for Southampton to face another sea crossing. When the moment of parting came, the little bride (she was not yet sixteen) shed some tears, and we have a glimpse of the King taking a rather woebegone princess into his library at Richmond and showing her ‘many goodly pleasant books’ in an attempt to
cheer her up. The next few months were bound to be a difficult period of adjustment for the Spanish girl and, before the royal family returned to its normal routine, a decision had to be taken about her immediate future.

  Arthur must go back to Ludlow where, as Prince of Wales, he represented his father on the Welsh Marches and where he was learning the business of government under the guidance of a small but carefully chosen band of advisers. The question which now arose was, should his wife go with him? Some people doubted whether, at barely fifteen, the prince was old enough or strong enough to undertake the duties of a husband. They also questioned the wisdom of exposing the newly arrived princess to the rigours of life on the north-west frontier, especially in the dead of winter. Surely it would be better to leave her at Court for a while, where the Queen could keep an eye on her and teach her something of English ways? This would certainly seem to have been the most humane and prudent course, but the King hesitated. Whether he was thinking about the expense of maintaining a separate establishment for his daughter-in-law, whether he was worried about possible difficulties with Spain if she was kept apart from her husband, or whether he simply felt that the two young people should be given a chance to get to know each other away from the distractions of the Court is nowhere recorded; but whatever considerations influenced his decision, when Arthur left for Shropshire in December, Catherine and her Spanish household went too.

  1 Margaret Beaufort as a young girl; an unauthenticated portrait by an unknown artist.

  2 The young Henry Tudor; from the Recueil d’Arras.

  3 Pembroke Castle, birthplace of Henry Tudor.

  12 Henry, Duke of York, second son of Henry VII and his eventual successor.

  13 Arthur, Prince of Wales, by an unknown artist.

  14 The betrothal of Prince Arthur and Catherine of Aragon; an early sixteenth-century Flemish tapestry.

  15 Catherine of Aragon as a young girl; a portrait by Michel Sittow.

  They took the journey slowly, going by way of Abingdon, Oxford (where they spent Christmas, probably as guests of Magdalen College) and then north to Kenilworth. Here they turned westward, crossing the Severn at Bewdley and reaching the gloomy, medieval fortress of Ludlow Castle early in the New Year. We know very little of their life together but Arthur, who is said to have been ‘very studious and learned beyond his years’, would be kept busy working with his tutor, attending meetings of his council to listen while they debated points of local law and administration, and riding out on hunting expeditions when the weather was fine. Perhaps Catherine went with him sometimes, otherwise she would have had little to do but read or sit sewing with her ladies. There is nothing to suggest that she and Arthur ever succeeded in establishing any sort of close relationship. The prince was a quiet, shy boy, apparently content to stay in the background even at his own wedding, and the fact that they had no common language, apart from Latin and some schoolroom French, cannot have helped to break the ice. Catherine did not complain - she had been trained from babyhood to accept that her destiny would lie with strangers in a strange land - but it is hard to believe that she was happy.

  There were some diversions, of course. The Welsh chieftains, led by that old friend of the family Rhys ap Thomas, came in to pay their respects and Rhys left his son Griffith to serve the Prince and Princess of Wales. Catherine made another friend at Ludlow - Margaret Plantagenet, now married to Sir Richard Pole (not to be confused with the de la Poles incidentally), chamberlain of Arthur’s household. Margaret, tall, elegant and aristocratic, was the sister of the Earl of Warwick whose death had helped to make England safe for the Tudors, and for Catherine of Aragon. One might imagine that this would have created an impassable barrier between the two young women, but such situations were not uncommon in great families and the survivors learned to accept them with well-bred stoicism.

  In January 1500 Dr. de Puebla, the little Jewish lawyer who was King Ferdinand’s resident ambassador at Henry’s Court, had written triumphantly to his master that since Warwick’s execution England had never been so tranquil or so obedient, and that not a drop of doubtful royal blood remained. De Puebla was being rather more optimistic than accurate. There was still quite enough doubtful, that is, Plantagenet, royal blood in circulation to cause Henry Tudor intermittent anxiety, and during the summer of 1501 disaffection centering round the remaining de la Pole brothers had been simmering under the surface of the wedding preparations. Sometime in July or August, the eldest, Edmund, an arrogant and irresponsible young man who had nevertheless been treated with a good deal of forbearance by the King, fled to the Continent taking his next brother, Richard, with him. Richard sensibly adopted a career as a professional soldier and caused no further trouble to anyone, but Edmund, self-styled Duke of Suffolk and since 1499 the authentic White Rose, was taken up in a rather desultory way by the volatile Emperor Maximilian. Although Edmund de la Pole never looked like becoming a serious threat to the Tudor peace, Henry could not be quite comfortable in his mind while there was a Plantagenet on the loose in Europe.

  Apart from this familiar vexation, in the spring of 1502 Henry was at peace with his neighbours and could congratulate himself on the fact that, after many months of patient negotiation, he had finally succeeded in signing a treaty of friendship with Scotland - soon to be sealed by another marriage, between his daughter Margaret and the Scottish king. So when tragedy struck early in April, it came out of a comparatively clear sky.

  We are never likely to know exactly what Arthur died of. ‘A consumption’ say some authorities, but although the prince was almost certainly tubercular it wasn’t that alone which killed him. Some accounts blame the sweating sickness and if they are right Fate could scarcely have played a crueller joke on the House of Tudor, for this disease - a violent malarial type of fever, often fatal within twenty-four hours -had first appeared in England in 1485, brought over by the Norman mercenaries who landed at Milford Haven with Henry and Jasper. Of course, Arthur may equally well have picked up some respiratory infection which an already consumptive adolescent had been unable to withstand. Whatever the cause, on 2 April the Rosebush of England, embodiment of all his father’s hopes and dreams, was dead at the age of fifteen.

  Richard Pole’s courier found the Court at Greenwich in the early hours of the following Tuesday. The King’s confessor undertook to break the news but it was the Queen who supported her husband through the first raging storm of his grief and shock, reminding him that his mother ‘had never no more children but him only and that God had ever preserved him and brought him where he was’. They still had a fair prince and two fair princesses, and there might yet be more children. ‘God is where he was and we are both young enough’, said Elizabeth gallantly - she was thirty-six now and Henry forty-five.

  Later, though, back in her own apartments, the Queen’s brave front collapsed. ‘Natural and motherly remembrance of that great loss smote her so sorrowful to the heart’, says the chronicler, ‘that those about her were fain to send for the King to comfort her; and then his Grace, of true gentle and faithful love, in good haste came and relieved her, and showed her how wise counsel she had given him before and he, for his part, would thank God for his sons, and would she should do in likewise.’

  While the King and Queen clung together in their sorrow, struggling to come to terms with the will of a deity who could take their precious elder son on the very threshold of his manhood, and solemn dirges were sung in all the London churches, Arthur’s body lay in his own room at Ludlow, the black-draped coffin surrounded by candles burning day and night. On St. George’s Day it was carried in procession to the parish church, with Griffith ap Rhys walking in front bearing the banner of the prince’s arms and ‘fourscore poor men in black mourning habits holding fourscore torches, besides all the torches of the town’ bringing up the rear. Two days later the cortege set out for Worcester, the nearest cathedral, in the sort of weather which only an English April can produce - wild, wet and bitterly cold. The w
ind tore at the banners and trappings, pouring rain soaked the robes and hoods of the mourners and turned the road into a quagmire, so that at one stage oxen had to be used to draw the hearse. But the day of the funeral itself was mercifully fine and no detail of pomp or ceremony was omitted. The Earl of Surrey was chief mourner, supported by the Earls of Shrewsbury and Kent, and four bishops waited to conduct the service. ‘He would have had a hard heart that wept not’, remarked one eyewitness of the scene inside the cathedral and when the time came for the prince’s household officers to break their staves and cast them into the open grave, everyone was in tears.

  But in spite of disappointment and heartbreak, life and politics had to go on.

  Prince Henry, on whose health and well-being everything now depended, must be trained to take his brother’s place, and the future of the widowed Princess of Wales must be settled. When the news of Arthur’s death reached Spain, Ferdinand and Isabella’s immediate reaction had been to ask for the return of their daughter. ‘We cannot endure that a daughter whom we love should be so far away from us in her trouble’, wrote Isabella. They also demanded that Henry should put the princess in possession of her widow’s jointure - one-third of the revenues of Wales, Cornwall and Chester - and repay the first instalment of her dowry - 100,000 gold crowns. All this, though, was no more than the opening move in a fresh round of diplomatic bargaining intended to repair the broken link.

  The House of Tudor was not alone in its recent misfortune. The Spanish king and queen had lost three heirs in quick succession - their only son, their eldest daughter, Isabella of Portugal, and Isabella’s son, Dom Miguel. The kingdoms of Aragon and Castile would now pass to their next daughter, Juana, wife of Philip von Hapsburg, Duke of Burgundy and son of the Emperor Maximilian. Juana’s marriage, like Catherine’s, had originally been a part of the general policy of containing France in a ring of pro-Spanish alliances, but by the early 1500s it had assumed a special significance; for it was Juana’s son, Charles of Ghent, who would eventually inherit not only the rich Burgundian Netherlands and the Austrian domains of the Hapsburg family, but the crowns of Spain as well.