Produced by Meredith Bach and the Online Distributed
Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net (This file was
produced from images generously made available by The
Internet Archive/American Libraries.)
THE WIVES OF HENRY THE EIGHTH
[Illustration: _HENRY VIII._
_From a portrait by_ JOST VAN CLEEF _in the Royal Collection at Hampton
Court Palace_]
The Wives
of
Henry the Eighth
AND THE PARTS THEY PLAYED
IN HISTORY
BY
MARTIN HUME
AUTHOR OF "THE COURTSHIPS OF QUEEN ELIZABETH"
"THE LOVE AFFAIRS OF MARY QUEEN OF SCOTS"
ETC. ETC. ETC.
"_These are stars indeed,
And sometimes falling ones._"
--SHAKESPEARE
LONDON
EVELEIGH NASH
1905
PREFACE
Either by chance or by the peculiar working of our constitution, the Queen
Consorts of England have as a rule been nationally important only in
proportion to the influence exerted by the political tendencies which
prompted their respective marriages. England has had no Catharine or Marie
de Medici, no Elizabeth Farnese, no Catharine of Russia, no Caroline of
Naples, no Maria Luisa of Spain, who, either through the minority of their
sons or the weakness of their husbands, dominated the countries of their
adoption; the Consorts of English Kings having been, in the great majority
of cases, simply domestic helpmates of their husbands and children, with
comparatively small political power or ambition for themselves. Only those
whose elevation responded to tendencies of a nationally enduring
character, or who represented temporarily the active forces in a great
national struggle, can claim to be powerful political factors in the
history of our country. The six Consorts of Henry VIII., whose successive
rise and fall synchronised with the beginning and progress of the
Reformation in England, are perhaps those whose fleeting prominence was
most pregnant of good or evil for the nation and for civilisation at
large, because they personified causes infinitely more important than
themselves.
The careers of these unhappy women have almost invariably been considered,
nevertheless, from a purely personal point of view. It is true that the
many historians of the Reformation have dwelt upon the rivalry between
Katharine of Aragon and Anne Boleyn, and their strenuous efforts to gain
their respective ends; but even in their case their action has usually
been regarded as individual in impulse, instead of being, as I believe it
was, prompted or thwarted by political forces and considerations, of which
the Queens themselves were only partially conscious. The lives of Henry's
Consorts have been related as if each of the six was an isolated
phenomenon that had by chance attracted the desire of a lascivious despot,
and in her turn had been deposed when his eye had fallen, equally
fortuitously, upon another woman who pleased his errant fancy better. This
view I believe to be a superficial and misleading one. I regard Henry
himself not as the far-seeing statesman he is so often depicted for us,
sternly resolved from the first to free his country from the yoke of Rome,
and pressing forward through a lifetime with his eyes firmly fixed upon
the goal of England's religious freedom; but rather as a weak, vain,
boastful man, the plaything of his passions, which were artfully made use
of by rival parties to forward religious and political ends in the
struggle of giants that ended in the Reformation. No influence that could
be exercised over the King was neglected by those who sought to lead him,
and least of all that which appealed to his uxoriousness; and I hope to
show in the text of this book how each of his wives in turn was but an
instrument of politicians, intended to sway the King on one side or the
other. Regarded from this point of view, the lives of these six unhappy
Queens assume an importance in national history which cannot be accorded
to them if they are considered in the usual light as the victims of a
strong, lustful tyrant, each one standing apart, and in her turn simply
the darling solace of his hours of dalliance. Doubtless the latter point
of view provides to the historian a wider scope for the description of
picturesque ceremonial and gorgeous millinery, as well as for pathetic
passages dealing with the personal sufferings of the Queens in their
distress; but I can only hope that the absence of much of this sentimental
and feminine interest from my pages will be compensated by the wider
aspect in which the public and political significance of Henry's wives is
presented; that a clearer understanding than usual may thus be gained of
the tortuous process by which the Reformation in England was effected, and
that the figure of the King in the picture may stand in a juster
proportion to his environment than is often the case.
MARTIN HUME.
LONDON, _October_ 1905.
CONTENTS
PAGE
CHAPTER I
1488-1501
INTRODUCTORY--WHY KATHARINE CAME TO ENGLAND--POLITICAL MATRIMONY 1
CHAPTER II
1501-1509
KATHARINE'S WIDOWHOOD AND WHY SHE STAYED IN ENGLAND 25
CHAPTER III
1509-1527
KATHARINE THE QUEEN--A POLITICAL MARRIAGE AND A PERSONAL DIVORCE 72
CHAPTER IV
1527-1530
KATHARINE AND ANNE--THE DIVORCE 124
CHAPTER V
1530-1534
HENRY'S DEFIANCE--THE VICTORY OF ANNE 174
CHAPTER VI
1534-1536
A FLEETING TRIUMPH--POLITICAL INTRIGUE AND THE BETRAYAL OF ANNE 225
CHAPTER VII
1536-1540
PLOT AND COUNTERPLOT--JANE SEYMOUR AND ANNE OF CLEVES 289
CHAPTER VIII
1540-1542
THE KING'S "GOOD SISTER" AND THE KING'S BAD WIFE--THE LUTHERANS
AND ENGLISH CATHOLICS 350
CHAPTER IX
1542-1547
KATHARINE PARR--THE PROTESTANTS WIN THE LAST TRICK 398
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
HENRY VIII _Frontispiece_
_From a portrait by_ JOST VAN CLEEF _in the Royal
Collection at Hampton Court Palace._
KATHARINE OF ARAGON _To face page_ 96
_From a portrait by_ HOLBEIN _in the National
Portrait Gallery._
ANNE BOLEYN " " 192
_From a portrait by_ LUCAS CORNELISZ _in the National
Portrait Gallery._
JANE SEYMOUR " " 288
_From a painting by_ HOLBEIN _in the Imperial
Collection at Vienna._
ANNE OF CLEVES " " 336
_From a portrait by a German artist in St. John's
College, Oxford. Photographed by the Clarendon
Press, and reproduced by the kind permission of
the President of St. John's College._
KATHARINE HOWARD " " 384
_From a portrait by an unknown artist in the National
Portrait Gallery._
KATHARINE PARR " " 400
_From a painting in the collection of the_ EARL OF
ASHBURNHAM. _Reproduced by the kind permission of
the owner._
HENRY VIII " " 432
_From a portrait by_ HOLBEIN _in the possession of
the Earl of Warwick. Reproduced by the kind permission
of the owner._
THE WIVES OF HENRY THE EIGHTH
CHAPTER I
1488-1501
INTRODUCTORY--WHY KATHARINE CAME TO ENGLAND--POLITICAL MATRIMONY
The history of modern Europe takes its start from an event which must have
appeared insignificant to a generation that had witnessed the violent end
of the English dominion in France, had been dinned by the clash of the
Wars of the Roses, and watched with breathless fear the savage hosts of
Islam striking at the heart of Christendom over the still smoking ruins of
the Byzantine Empire.
Late one night, in the beginning of October 1469, a cavalcade of men in
the guise of traders halted beneath the walls of the ancient city of Burgo
de Osma in Old Castile. They had travelled for many days by little-used
paths through the mountains of Soria from the Aragonese frontier town of
Tarrazona; and, impatient to gain the safe shelter of the fortress of
Osma, they banged at the gates demanding admittance. The country was in
anarchy. Leagues of churchmen and nobles warred against each other and
preyed upon society at large. An impotent king, deposed with ignominy by
one faction, had been as ignominiously set up again by another, and royal
pretenders to the succession were the puppets of rival parties whose
object was to monopolise for themselves all the fruits of royalty, whilst
the monarch fed upon the husks. So when the new-comers called peremptorily
for admittance within the gates of Osma, the guards upon the city walls,
taking them for enemies or freebooters, greeted them with a shower of
missiles from the catapults. One murderous stone whizzed within a few
inches of the head of a tall, fair-haired lad of good mien and handsome
visage, who, dressed as a servant, accompanied the cavalcade. If the
projectile had effectively hit instead of missed the stripling, the whole
history of the world from that hour to this would have been changed, for
this youth was Prince Ferdinand, the heir of Aragon, who was being
conveyed secretly by a faction of Castilian nobles to marry the Princess
Isabel, who had been set forward as a pretender to her brother's throne,
to the exclusion of the King's doubtful daughter, the hapless Beltraneja.
A hurried cry of explanation went up from the travellers: a shouted
password; the flashing of torches upon the walls, the joyful recognition
of those within, and the gates swung open, the drawbridge dropped, and
thenceforward Prince Ferdinand was safe, surrounded by the men-at-arms of
Isabel's faction. Within a week the eighteen-years-old bridegroom greeted
his bride, and before the end of the month Ferdinand and Isabel were
married at Valladolid.
To most observers it may have seemed a small thing that a petty prince in
the extreme corner of Europe had married the girl pretender to the
distracted and divided realm of Castile; but there was one cunning, wicked
old man in Barcelona who was fully conscious of the importance of the
match that he had planned; and he, John II. of Aragon, had found an apt
pupil in his son Ferdinand, crafty beyond his years. To some extent Isabel
must have seen it too, for she was already a dreamer of great dreams which
she meant to come true, and the strength of Aragon behind her claim would
insure her the sovereignty that was to be the first step in their
realisation.
This is not the place to tell how the nobles of Castile found to their
dismay that in Ferdinand and Isabel they had raised a King Stork instead
of King Log to the throne, and how the Queen, strong as a man, subtle as a
woman, crushed and chicaned her realms into order and obedience. The aims
of Ferdinand and his father in effecting the union of Aragon and Castile
by marriage went far beyond the Peninsula in which they lived. For ages
Aragon had found its ambitions checked by the consolidation of France. The
vision of a great Romance empire, stretching from Valencia to Genoa, and
governed from Barcelona or Saragossa, had been dissipated when Saint Louis
wrung from James the Conqueror, in the thirteenth century, his recognition
of French suzerainty over Provence.
But Aragonese eyes looked still towards the east, and saw a Frenchman ever
in their way. The Christian outpost in the Mediterranean, Sicily, already
belonged to Aragon; so did the Balearic isles: but an Aragonese dynasty
held Naples only in alternation and constant rivalry with the French house
of Anjou; and as the strength of the French monarchy grew it stretched
forth its hands nearer, and ever nearer, to the weak and divided
principalities of Italy with covetous intent. Unless Aragon could check
the French expansion across the Alps its own power in the Mediterranean
would be dwarfed, its vast hopes must be abandoned, and it must settle
down to the inglorious life of a petty State, hemmed in on all sides by
more powerful neighbours. But although too weak to vanquish France alone,
a King of Aragon who could dispose of the resources of greater Castile
might hope, in spite of French opposition, to dominate a united Italy, and
thence look towards the illimitable east. This was the aspiration that
Ferdinand inherited, and to which the efforts of his long and strenuous
life were all directed. The conquest of Granada, the unification of Spain,
the greed, the cruelty, the lying, the treachery, the political marriages
of all his children, and the fires of the Inquisition, were all means to
the end for which he fought.
But fate was unkind to him. The discovery of America diverted Castilian
energy from Aragonese objects, and death stepped in and made grim sport of
all his marriage jugglery. Before he died, beaten and broken-hearted, he
knew that the little realm of his fathers, instead of using the strength
of others for its aims, would itself be used for objects which concerned
it not. But though he failed his plan was a masterly one. Treaties, he
knew, were rarely binding, for the age was faithless, and he himself never
kept an oath an hour longer than suited him; but mutual interests by
kinship might hold sovereigns together against a common opponent. So, one
after the other, from their earliest youth, the children of Ferdinand and
Isabel were made political counters in their father's great marriage
league. The eldest daughter, Isabel, was married to the heir of Portugal,
and every haven into which French galleys might shelter in their passage
from the Mediterranean to the Bay of Biscay was at Ferdinand's bidding.
The only son, John, was married to the daughter of Maximilian, King of the
Romans, and (from 1493) Emperor, whose interest also it was to check the
French advance towards north Italy and his own dominions. The second
daughter, Juana, was married to the Emperor's son, Philip, sovereign, in
right of his mother, of the rich inheritance of Burgundy, Flanders,
Holland, and the Franche Comte, and heir to Austria and the Empire, who
from Flanders might be trusted to watch the French on their northern and
eastern borders; and the youngest of Ferdinand's daughters, Katharine, was
destined almost from her birth to secure the alliance of England, the
rival of France in the Channel, and the opponent of its aggrandisement
towards the north.
Ferdinand of Aragon and Henry Tudor, Henry VII., were well matched. Both
were clever, unscrupulous, and greedy; each knew that the other would
cheat him if he could, and tried to get the better of every deal, utterly
regardless not only of truth and honesty but of common decency. But,
though Ferdinand usually beat Henry at his shuffling game, fate finally
beat Ferdinand, and a powerful modern England is the clearly traceable
consequence. How the great result was brought about it is one of the
principal objects of this book to tell. That Ferdinand had everything to
gain by thus surrounding France by possible rivals in his own interests is
obvious, for if his plans had not miscarried he could have diverted France
whenever it suited him, and his way towards the east would have been
clear; but at first sight the interest of Henry VII. in placing himself
into a position of antagonism towards France for the benefit of the King
of Spain is not so evident. The explanation must be found in the fact that
he held the throne of England by very uncertain tenure, and sought to
disarm those who would be most able and likely to injure him. The royal
house of Castile had been closely allied to the Plantagenets, and both
Edward IV. and his brother Richard had been suitors for the hand of
Isabel. The Dowager-Duchess of Burgundy, moreover, was Margaret
Plantagenet, their sister, who sheltered and cherished in Flanders the
English adherents of her house; and Henry Tudor, half a Frenchman by birth
and sympathies, was looked at askance by the powerful group of Spain, the
Empire, and Burgundy when first he usurped the English throne. He knew
that he had little or nothing to fear from France, and one of his earliest
acts was in 1487 to bid for the friendship of Ferdinand by means of an
offer of alliance, and the marriage of his son Arthur, Prince of Wales,
then a year old, with the Infanta Katharine, who was a few months older.
Ferdinand at the time was trying to bring about a match between his
eldest daughter, Isabel, and the young King of France, Charles VIII., and
was not very eager for a new English alliance which might alarm the
French. Before the end of the year, however, it was evident that there was
no chance of the Spanish Infanta's marriage with Charles VIII. coming to
anything, and Ferdinand's plan for a great coalition against France was
finally adopted.
In the first days of 1488 Ferdinand's two ambassadors arrived in London to
negotiate the English match, and the long duel of diplomacy between the
Kings of England and Spain began. Of one of the envoys it behoves us to
say something, because of the influence his personal character exercised
upon subsequent events. Rodrigo de Puebla was one of the most
extraordinary diplomatists that can be imagined, and could only have been
possible under such monarchs as Henry and Ferdinand, willing as both of
them were to employ the basest instruments in their underhand policy.
Puebla was a doctor of laws and a provincial mayor when he attracted the
attention of Ferdinand, and his first diplomatic mission of importance was
that to England. He was a poor, vain, greedy man, utterly corrupt, and
Henry VII. was able to dominate him from the first. In the course of time
he became more of an intimate English minister than a foreign ambassador,
though he represented at Henry's court not only Castile and Aragon, but
also the Pope and the Empire. He constantly sat in the English council,
and was almost the only man admitted to Henry's personal confidence. That
such an instrument would be trusted entirely by the wary Ferdinand, was
not to be expected: and though Puebla remained in England as ambassador
to the end of his life, he was, to his bitter jealousy, always associated
with others when important negotiations had to be conducted. Isabel wrote
to him often, sometimes threatening him with punishment if he failed in
carrying out his instructions satisfactorily, sometimes flattering him and
promising him rewards, which he never got. He was recognised by Ferdinand
as an invaluable means of gaining knowledge of Henry's real intentions,
and by Henry as a tool for betraying Ferdinand. It is hardly necessary to
say that he alternately sold both and was never fully paid by either.
Henry offered him an English bishopric which his own sovereigns would not
allow him to accept, and a wealthy wife in England was denied him for a
similar reason; for Ferdinand on principle kept his agents poor. On a
wretched pittance allowed him by Henry, Puebla lived thus in London until
he died almost simultaneously with his royal friend. When not spunging at
the tables of the King or English nobles he lived in a house of ill-fame
in London, paying only twopence a day for his board, and cheating the
other inmates, in the interests of the proprietor, for the balance. He
was, in short, a braggart, a liar, a flatterer, and a spy, who served two
rogues roguishly and was fittingly rewarded by the scorn of honest men.
This was the ambassador who, with a colleague called Juan de Sepulveda,
was occupied through the spring of 1488 in negotiating the marriage of the
two babies--Arthur, Prince of Wales, and the Infanta Katharine. They found
Henry, as Puebla says, singing _Te Deum Laudamus_ about the alliance and
marriage: but when the parties came to close quarters matters went less
smoothly. What Henry had to gain by the alliance was the disarming of
possible enemies of his own unstable throne, whilst Ferdinand needed
England's active or passive support in a war against France, for the
purpose of extorting the restoration to Aragon of the territory of
Roussillon and Cerdagne, and of preventing the threatened absorption of
the Duchy of Brittany into the French monarchy. The contest was keen and
crafty. First the English commissioners demanded with the Infanta a dowry
so large as quite to shock Puebla; it being, as he said, five times as
much as had been mentioned by English agents in Spain. Puebla and
Sepulveda offered a quarter of the sum demanded, and hinted with pretended
jocosity that it was a great condescension on the part of the sovereigns
of Spain to allow their daughter to marry at all into such a parvenu
family as the Tudors. After infinite haggling, both as to the amount and
the form of the dowry, it was agreed by the ambassadors that 200,000 gold
crowns of 4s. 2d. each should be paid in cash with the bride on her
marriage. But the marriage was the least part of Ferdinand's object, if
indeed he then intended, which is doubtful, that it should take place at
all. What he wanted was the assurance of Henry's help against France; and,
of all things, peace was the first need for the English king. When the
demand was made therefore that England should go to war with France
whenever Ferdinand chose to do so, and should not make peace without its
ally, baited though the demand was with the hollow suggestion of
recovering for England the territories of Normandy and Guienne, Henry's
duplicity was brought into play. He dared not consent to such terms, but
he wanted the benevolent regards of Ferdinand's coalition: so his
ministers flattered the Spanish king, and vaguely promised "mounts and
marvels" in the way of warlike aid, as soon as the marriage treaty was
signed and sealed. Even Puebla wanted something more definite than this;
and the English commissioners (the Bishop of Exeter and Giles Daubeney),
"took a missal in their hands and swore in the most solemn way before the
crucifix that it is the will of the King of England first to conclude the
alliance and the marriage, and afterwards to make war upon the King of
France, according to the bidding of the Catholic kings." Nor was this all:
for when Puebla and his colleagues later in the day saw the King himself,
Henry smiled at and flattered the envoys, and flourishing his bonnet and
bowing low each time the names of Ferdinand and Isabel passed his lips,
confirmed the oath of his ministers, "which he said we must accept for
plain truth, unmingled with double dealing or falsehood."[1] Ferdinand's
ambassadors were fairly dazzled. They were taken to see the infant
bridegroom; and Puebla grew quite poetical in describing his bodily
perfections, both dressed and _in puribus naturalibus_, and the beauty and
magnificence of the child's mother were equally extolled. The object of
all Henry's amiability, and, indeed, of Puebla's dithyrambics also, was to
cajole Ferdinand into sending his baby daughter Katharine into England at
once on the marriage treaty alone. With such a hostage in his hands, Henry
knew that he might safely break his oath about going to war with France to
please the Spanish king.
But Ferdinand was not a man easy to cajole, and when hapless, simple
Sepulveda reached Spain with the draft treaty he found himself in the
presence of two very angry sovereigns indeed. Two hundred thousand crowns
dowry, indeed! One hundred was the most they would give, and that must be
in Spanish gold, or the King of England would be sure to cheat them over
the exchange; and they must have three years in which to pay the amount,
for which moreover no security should be given but their own signatures.
The cost of the bride's trousseau and jewels also must be deducted from
the amount of the dowry. On the other hand, the Infanta's dowry and income
from England must be fully guaranteed by land rents; and, above all, the
King of England must bind himself at the same time--secretly if he likes,
but by formal treaty--to go to war with France to recover for Ferdinand
Roussillon and Cerdagne. Though Henry would not go quite so far as this,
he conceded much for the sake of the alliances so necessary to him. The
dowry from Spain was kept at 200,000 crowns, and England was pledged to a
war with France whenever Ferdinand should find himself in the same
position.
With much discussion and sharp practice on both sides the treaties in this
sense were signed in March 1489, and the four-years-old Infanta Katharine
became Princess of Wales. It is quite clear throughout this early
negotiation that the marriage that should give to the powerful coalition
of which Ferdinand was the head a family interest in the maintenance of
the Tudor dynasty was Henry's object, to be gained on terms as easy as
practicable to himself; whereas with Ferdinand the marriage was but the
bait to secure the armed co-operation of England against France; and
probably at the time neither of the kings had any intention of fulfilling
that part of the bargain which did not specially interest him. As will be
seen, however, the force of circumstances and the keenness of the
contracting parties led eventually to a better fulfilment of the treaty
than was probably intended.
For the next two years the political intrigues of Europe centered around
the marriage of the young Duchess of Brittany. Though Roussillon and
Cerdagne mattered nothing to Henry VII., the disposal of the rich duchy
opposite his own shores was of importance to him. France, Spain, England,
and the Empire were all trying to outbid one another for the marriage of
the Duchess; and, as Charles VIII. of France was the most dangerous
suitor, Henry was induced to send his troops across the Channel to
Brittany to join those of Spain and the Empire, though neither of the
latter troops came. From the first all the allies were false to each
other, and hastened to make separate terms with France; Ferdinand and
Maximilian endeavouring above all to leave Henry at war. When, at the end
of 1491, Charles VIII. carried off the matrimonial prize of the Duchess of
Brittany and peace ensued, none of the allies had gained anything by
their tergiversation. Reasons were soon found by Ferdinand for regarding
the marriage treaty between Arthur and Katharine as in abeyance, and once
more pressure was put upon Henry to buy its fulfilment by another warlike
coalition. The King of England stood out for a time, especially against an
alliance with the King of the Romans, who had acted so badly about
Brittany; but at length the English contingent was led against Boulogne by
the King himself, as part of the allied action agreed upon. This time,
however, it was Henry who, to prevent the betrayal he foresaw, scored off
his allies, and without striking a blow he suddenly made a separate peace
with France (November 1492). But yet he was the only party who had not
gained what he had bid for. Roussillon and Cerdagne were restored to
Ferdinand, in consequence of Henry's threat against Boulogne; France had
been kept in check during the time that all the resources of Spain were
strained in the supreme effort to capture the last Moorish foothold in the
Peninsula, the peerless Granada; the King of France had married the
Duchess of Brittany and had thus consolidated and strengthened his realm;
whilst Henry, to his chagrin, found that not only had he not regained
Normandy and Guienne, but that in the new treaty of peace between Spain
and France, "Ferdinand and Isabel engage their loyal word and faith as
Christians, not to conclude or permit any marriage of their children with
any member of the royal family of England; and they bind themselves to
assist the King of France against all his enemies, and _particularly
against the English_." This was Henry's first experience of Ferdinand's
diplomacy, and he found himself outwitted at every point. Katharine, all
unconscious as she conned her childish lessons at Granada, ceased for a
time to be called "Princess of Wales."
With the astute King of England thus cozened by Ferdinand, it is not
wonderful that the vain and foolish young King of France should also have
found himself no match for his new Spanish ally. Trusting upon his
alliance, Charles VIII. determined to strike for the possession of the
kingdom of Naples, which he claimed as representing the house of Anjou.
Naples at the time was ruled by a close kinsman of Ferdinand, and it is
not conceivable that the latter ever intended to allow the French to expel
him for the purpose of ruling there themselves. But he smiled, not
unkindly at first, upon Charles's Italian adventure, for he knew the
French king was rash and incompetent, and that the march of a French army
through Italy would arouse the hatred and fear of the Italian princes and
make them easy tools in his hands. The King of Naples, moreover, was
extremely unpopular and of illegitimate descent: and Ferdinand doubtless
saw that if the French seized Naples he could not only effect a powerful
coalition to expel them, but in the scramble might keep Naples for
himself; and this is exactly what happened. The first cry against the
French was raised by the Pope Alexander VI., a Spanish Borgia. By the time
Charles VIII. of France was crowned King of Naples (May 1495) all Italy
was ablaze against the intruders, and Ferdinand formed the Holy League--of
Rome, Spain, Austria, Venice, and Milan--to crush his enemies.
Then, as usual, he found it desirable to secure the benevolence of Henry
VII. of England. Again Henry was delighted, for Perkin Warbeck had been
received by Maximilian and his Flemish kinsmen as the rightful King of
England, and the Yorkist nobles still found aid and sympathy in the
dominions of Burgundy. But Henry had already been tricked once by the
allies, and was far more difficult to deal with than before. He found
himself, indeed, for the first time in the position which under his
successors enabled England to rise to the world power she attained;
namely, that of the balancing factor between France and Spain. This was
the first result of Ferdinand's coalition against France for the purpose
of forwarding Aragonese aims, and it remained the central point of
European politics for the next hundred years. Henry was not the man to
overlook his new advantage, with both of the great European powers bidding
for his alliance; and this time he drove a hard bargain with Ferdinand.
There was still much haggling about the Spanish dowry for Katharine, but
Henry stood firm at the 200,000 gold crowns, though a quarter of the
amount was to take the form of jewels belonging the bride. One stipulation
was that the new marriage was to be kept a profound secret, in order that
the King of Scots might not be alarmed; for Ferdinand was trying to draw
even him away from France by hints of marriage with an Infanta. By the new
treaty, which was signed in October 1497, the formal marriage of Arthur
and Katharine _per verba de presenti_ was to be celebrated when Arthur
had completed his fourteenth year; and the bride's dowry in England was to
consist of a third of the revenues of Wales, Cornwall, and Chester, with
an increase of the income when she became Queen.
But it was not all plain sailing yet. Ferdinand considered that Henry had
tricked him about the amount and form of the dowry, but the fear that the
King of France might induce the English to enter into a new alliance with
him kept Ferdinand ostensibly friendly. In the summer of 1598 two special
Spanish ambassadors arrived in London, and saw the King for the purpose of
confirming him in the alliance with their sovereigns, and, if we are to
believe Puebla's account of the interview, both Henry and his Queen
carried their expressions of veneration for Ferdinand and Isabel almost to
a blasphemous extent. Henry, indeed, is said to have had a quarrel with
his wife because she would not give him one of the letters from the
Spanish sovereigns always to carry about with him, Elizabeth saying that
she wished to send her letter to the Prince of Wales.
But for all Henry's blandishments and friendliness, his constant requests
that Katharine should be sent to England met with never-failing excuses
and procrastination. It is evident, indeed, throughout that, although the
Infanta was used as the attraction that was to keep Henry and England in
the Spanish, instead of the French, interest, there was much reluctance on
the part of her parents, and particularly of Queen Isabel, to trust her
child, to whom she was much attached, to the keeping of a stranger, whose
only object in desiring her presence was, she knew, a political one. Some
anxiety was shown by Henry and his wife, on the other hand, that the young
Princess should be trained in a way that would fit her for her future
position in England. The Princess Margaret of Austria, daughter of
Maximilian, who had just married Ferdinand's heir, Prince John, was in
Spain, and Puebla reports that the King and Queen of England were anxious
that Katharine should take the opportunity of speaking French with her, in
order to learn the language. "This is necessary, because the English
ladies do not understand Latin, and much less Spanish. The King and Queen
also wish that the Princess should accustom herself to drink wine. The
water of England is not drinkable, and even if it were, the climate would
not allow the drinking of it." The necessary Papal Bulls for the marriage
of the Prince and Princess arrived in 1498, and Henry pressed continually
for the coming of the bride, but Ferdinand and Isabel were in no hurry.
"The manner in which the marriage is to be performed, and the Princess
sent to England, must all be settled first." "You must negotiate these
points," they wrote to Puebla, "_but make no haste_."[2] Spanish envoys of
better character and greater impartiality than Puebla urged that
Katharine should be sent "before she had become too much attached to
Spanish life and institutions"; though the writer of this admits the grave
inconvenience of subjecting so young a girl to the disadvantages of life
in Henry's court.
Young Arthur himself, even, was prompted to use his influence to persuade
his new wife to join him, writing to his "most entirely beloved spouse"
from Ludlow in October 1499, dwelling upon his earnest desire to see her,
as the delay in her coming is very grievous to him, and he begs it may be
hastened. The final disappearance of Perkin Warbeck in 1499 greatly
changed the position of Henry and made him a more desirable connection:
and the death without issue of Ferdinand's only son and heir about the
same time, also made it necessary for the Spanish king to draw his
alliances closer, in view of the nearness to the succession of his second
daughter, Juana, who had married Maximilian's son, the Archduke Philip,
sovereign of Flanders, who, as well as his Spanish wife, were deeply
distrusted by both Ferdinand and Isabel. In 1500, therefore, the Spanish
sovereigns became more acquiescent about their daughter's coming to
England. By Don Juan Manuel, their most skilful diplomatist, they sent a
message to Henry in January 1500, saying that they had determined to send
Katharine in the following spring without waiting until Arthur had
completed his fourteenth year. The sums, they were told, that had already
been spent in preparations for her reception in England were enormous, and
when in March there was still no sign of the bride's coming, Henry VII.
began to get restive. He and his country, he said, would suffer great
loss if the arrival of the Princess were delayed. But just then Ferdinand
found that the treaty was not so favourable for him as he had expected,
and the whole of the conditions, particularly as to the payment of the
dowry, and the valuation of the bride's jewels, had once more to be
laboriously discussed; another Spanish ambassador being sent, to request
fresh concessions. In vain Puebla told his master that when once the
Princess arrived all England would be at his bidding, assured him of
Henry's good faith, and his own ability as a diplomatist. Ferdinand always
found some fresh subject to be wrangled over: the style to be given to the
King of England, the number of servants to come in the train of Katharine,
Henry desiring that they should be few and Ferdinand many, and one of the
demands of the English king was, "that the ladies who came from Spain with
the Princess should all be beautiful, or at least none of them should be
ugly."
In the summer of 1500 there was a sudden panic in Ferdinand's court that
Henry had broken off the match. He had gone to Calais to meet for the
first time the young Archduke Philip, Ferdinand's son-in-law, and it was
rumoured that the distrusted Fleming had persuaded Henry to marry the
Prince of Wales to his sister the Arch duchess Margaret, the recently
widowed daughter in-law of Ferdinand. It was not true, though it made
Ferdinand very cordial for a time, and soon the relations between England
and Spain resumed their usual course of smooth-tongued distrust and
tergiversation. Still another ambassador was sent to England, and
reported that people were saying they believed the Princess would never
come, though great preparations for her reception continued to be made,
and the English nobles were already arranging jousts and tournaments for
her entertainment. Ferdinand, on the other hand, continued to send
reassuring messages. He was, he said, probably with truth now, more
desirous than ever that the marriage should take place when the bridegroom
had completed his fourteenth year; but it was necessary that the marriage
should be performed again by proxy in Spain before the bride embarked.
Then there was a delay in obtaining the ships necessary for the passage,
and the Spanish sovereigns changed their minds again, and preferred that
the second marriage, after Arthur had attained his fifteenth year, should
be performed in England. The stormy weather of August was then an excuse
for another delay on the voyage, and a fresh quibble was raised about the
value of the Princess's jewels being considered as part of the _first_
instalment of the dowry. In December 1500 the marriage was once more
performed at Ludlow, Arthur being again present and pledging himself as
before to Puebla.
Whilst delaying the voyage of Katharine as much as possible, now probably
in consequence of her youth, her parents took the greatest of care to
convince Henry of the indissoluble character of the marriage as it stood.
Knowing the King of England's weakness, Isabel wrote in March 1501
deprecating the great expense he was incurring in the preparations. She
did not wish, she said, for her daughter to cause a loss to England,
either in money or any other way; but to be a source of happiness to
every one. When all was ready for the embarkation at Corunna in April
1501, an excuse for further delay was found in a rebellion of the Moors of
Ronda, which prevented Ferdinand from escorting his daughter to the port;
then both Isabel and Katharine had a fit of ague, which delayed the
departure for another week or two. But at last the parting could be
postponed no longer, and for the last time on earth Isabel the Catholic
embraced her favourite daughter Katharine in the fairy palace of the
Alhambra which for ever will be linked with the memories of her heroism.
The Queen was still weak with fever, and could not accompany her daughter
on the way, but she stood stately in her sternly suppressed grief,
sustained by the exalted religious mysticism, which in her descendants
degenerated to neurotic mania. Grief unutterable had stricken the Queen.
Her only son was dead, and her eldest daughter and her infant heir had
also gone to untimely graves. The hopes founded upon the marriages of
their children had all turned to ashes, and the King and Queen saw with
gloomy foreboding that their daughter Juana and her foreign husband would
rule in Spain as well as in Flanders and the Empire, to Spain's
irreparable disaster; and, worst of all, Juana had dared to dally with the
hated thing heresy. In the contest of divided interest which they foresaw,
it was of the utmost importance now to the Catholic kings that England at
least should be firmly attached to them; and they dared no longer delay
the sacrifice of Katharine to the political needs of their country.
Katharine, young as she was, understood that she was being sent to a far
country amongst strangers as much an ambassador as a bride, but she from
her birth had been brought up in the atmosphere of ecstatic devotion that
surrounded her heroic mother, and the din of battle against the enemies of
the Christian God had rarely been silent in her childish ears. So, with
shining eyes and a look of proud martyrdom, Katharine bade the Queen a
last farewell, turned her back upon lovely Granada, and through the torrid
summer of 1501 slowly traversed the desolate bridle-roads of La Mancha and
arid Castile to the green valleys of Galicia, where, in the harbour of
Corunna, her little fleet lay at anchor awaiting her.
From the 21st of May, when she last looked upon the Alhambra, it took her
nearly two months of hard travel to reach Corunna, and it was almost a
month more before all was ready for the embarkation with the great train
of courtiers and servants that accompanied her. On the 17th August 1501
the flotilla sailed from Corunna, only to be stricken the next day by a
furious north-easterly gale and scattered; the Princess's ship, in dire
danger, being driven into the little port of Laredo in the north of Spain.
There Katharine was seriously ill, and another long delay occurred, the
apprehension that some untoward accident had happened to the Princess at
sea causing great anxiety to the King of England, who sent his best seamen
to seek tidings of the bride. The season was late, and when, on the 26th
September 1501, Katharine again left Laredo for England, even her stout
heart failed at the prospect before her. A dangerous hurricane from the
south accompanied her across the Channel and drove the ships finally into
the safety of Plymouth harbour on Saturday the 2nd October 1501.
The Princess was but little expected at Plymouth, as Southampton or
Bristol had been recommended as the best ports for her arrival; and great
preparations had been made for her reception at both those ports. But the
Plymouth folk were nothing backward in their loyal welcome of the new
Princess of Wales; for one of the courtiers who accompanied her wrote to
Queen Isabel that "she could not have been received with greater
rejoicings if she had been the saviour of the world." As she went in
solemn procession through the streets to the church of Plymouth to give
thanks for her safety from the perils past, with foreign speech sounding
in her ears and surrounded by a curious crowd of fair folk so different
from the swarthy subjects of her mother that she had left behind at
Granada, the girl of sixteen might well be appalled at the magnitude of
the task before her. She knew that henceforward she had, by diplomacy and
woman's wit, to keep the might and wealth of England and its king on the
side of her father against France; to prevent any coalition between her
new father-in-law and her brother-in-law Philip in Flanders in which Spain
was not included; and, finally, to give an heir to the English throne,
who, in time to come, should be Aragonese in blood and sympathy.
Thenceforward Katharine must belong to England in appearance if her
mission was to succeed; and though Spain was always in her heart as the
exotic pomegranate of Granada was on her shield, England in future was the
name she conjured by, and all England loved her, from the hour she first
set foot on English soil to the day of the final consummation of her
martyrdom.