Patience, Princess Catherine
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For Catherine, there were no more live births. For Henry, there was a new mistress: Elizabeth Blount. In 1519 she bore him a son whom he named Henry, adding Fitzroy—"the king's son." The humiliation was almost more than Catherine could bear, yet she dutifully attended the celebration at which King Henry presented his bastard child to the court. The infant was provided with a complete household, befitting the son of a king.
Catherine forgave Henry, but she would not forgive him passing over their daughter, Mary, princess of Wales, to give his bastard son a string of royal titles, as though he were heir to the throne. When Catherine objected, the king punished her by taking away three of her Spanish ladies-in-waiting.
In the winter of 1521 Catherine again lost a stillborn child and knew this would be her last pregnancy. That was the first time she heard Henry say: "Perhaps it is as the Scriptures said—our marriage is sinful, and we are condemned to die without sons."
There were more mistresses, many of them ladies of Catherine's court. Most came and went in a matter of weeks as the king's interest moved restlessly from one to the next, lighting at last upon Mary Boleyn, who was, in time, replaced by her younger sister, Anne Boleyn, a woman of dark looks, biting wit, flirtatious manner, and unequalled ambition.
Anne joined Catherine's court in 1522, when she returned from France and the court of King Francis. Catherine watched their flirtation with as much patience as she could muster. Five years later Henry informed Catherine that their marriage was at an end, and that he intended to divorce her to marry Anne.
"The marriage never was," he said. "Our union was based on a misunderstanding of Scripture. It is an abomination in the sight of God! As a matter of conscience, we must divorce."
For more than six years Catherine continued to insist that she was the king's legal wife, her previous marriage to Arthur was unconsummated, and there were no grounds for divorce. Through Henry's petitions to Rome, his appeals to the intellectuals of Europe, and his attempts to intimidate and humiliate her, Catherine stood firm.
Finally Henry ordered Catherine to leave Greenwich Palace for Richmond. There were subsequent moves, each to a lodging more isolated and uncomfortable than the one before. From these remote places, Queen Catherine learned of the annulment of her marriage, the king's marriage to Anne Boleyn, and Anne's coronation with her great pregnant belly showing beneath her robes. In July of 1533, Henry ordered Catherine to move once more, this time to Buckden. Along the way well-wishers lined the road, cheering and calling out their support. In her more than twenty years as their queen, Catherine had become much beloved of the people, and the outpourings of loyalty and devotion touched her deeply, angering the warders who accompanied her.
Queen Catherine was later moved one last time, from Buckden to Kimbolton Castle, another dank and unhealthful place. There were numerous attempts to frighten her, threatening her and her daughter with martyrdom if she refused to acknowledge Anne Boleyn as rightful queen. Catherine resolved to go to her death willingly, if that was to be her fate.
Catherine's health deteriorated. On January 7, 1536, she died without having yielded to the king's demands that she renounce her title as queen. Some suspected that she might have been subjected to a slow poison, but these suspicions went unproven.
King Henry's marriage to Anne Boleyn produced one child, Elizabeth, and ended with Anne's execution, ordered by the king himself, only five months after Catherine's death. King Henry married four more times before his death on January 28, 1547. He was succeeded as king by Edward, his son by his third wife, Jane Seymour. When Edward died in 1553, Princess Mary, daughter of Catherine of Aragon, was crowned queen.