The Other Tudors (6 page)

When Henry VII had met Joanna during this visit to England, albeit for a few days, he had expressed romantic feelings for her: ‘If when she was in England I had acted as I secretly wished, I would by every means have prevented her leaving my court. But I was prevented by my Council.’
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He told the Spanish Ambassador that he believed her to be unhappy rather than mad. He said Philip the Handsome’s unfaithfulness obviously upset her. He, on the other hand, would love and cherish her.

Joanna appears to have suffered some kind of nervous debilitation. Her symptoms were depression (partly brought on by her husband’s public infidelities) and a habit of forthright speech. The symptoms might indicate manic depression. Despite this, in England at least, the marriage was considered seriously. Dr Roderigo Gondesalvi de Puebla, the Spanish Ambassador in London from 1487, wrote to Ferdinand: ‘… the English seem little to mind her insanity, especially since I have assured them that the derangement of her mind would not prevent her from bearing children.’
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Ferdinand kept Henry VII dangling, right up until his death in 1509. In March 1507, Ferdinand wrote to his daughter Catherine, whom he was using as a go-between:

Catherine wrote to Joanna, despite his advice, in October 1507:

In reality, Ferdinand had no intention of letting the heiress of Castile out of his hands. He may very well have exaggerated Joanna’s grief and depression on her husband’s death, and had her confined as a madwoman. She was sent to the castle at Tordesillas, near Valladolid in Castile, the place where her grandmother was incarcerated after a metal breakdown. Poor Joanna finally died in 1555, having spent almost 50 years in confinement.

The ‘Joanna Affair’ led to the only recorded quarrel between Henry VII and his son. The King had received a letter telling him that Ferdinand’s negotiations had been a sham and he was never to have Joanna. He called the Prince in to sympathise. Henry, with a lack of tact, was unenthusiastic and gave his opinion that Joanna was mad and the King was too old to be considering marriage. The King was extremely angry at such a blunt assessment of the situation and shouted at his son. One of the court ladies reported to the Spanish Ambassador, ‘He scolded the prince as though he would kill him.’
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The Prince had another reason to throw cold water on the thought of his father remarrying. If there should be more princes, this could only be bad news for young Henry. He had the worrying example of his grandfather, Edward IV, before him; his brother George, Duke of Clarence, had tried to usurp his throne and his other brother, Richard, Duke of Gloucester, had actually deposed the rightful heir, Edward’s son. All too often royal brothers had a habit of plotting to extend their own power and influence at the expense of the king and the kingdom.

However, as time passed, Henry remained the only son. As such, one of the first responsibilities of the new Prince of Wales was to contract an eligible marriage alliance. As early as June 1503, it was agreed that Henry and Catherine should marry the following year when he would be 14 and Catherine would be 19 years old.

A series of delays to Catherine and Henry’s marriage followed, however. Isabella’s death in November 1504, leaving her inheritance of Castile to Joanna, meant that Ferdinand of Aragon lost part of his enormous importance in European politics, as his area of direct influence was now in Aragon alone. Trade treaties drawn up under Isabella were cancelled, and it looked very much as if Ferdinand would be unable to pay the second half of Catherine’s dowry of 100,000 crowns. In Prince Henry’s name, the King arranged a formal protest by his son against the proposed marriage that had been made.

This left Henry VII in a strong position; he still had Catherine in England, complete with the papal dispensation for her marriage to her late husband’s brother, and could resurrect the union at any time he wanted. He was also free to look elsewhere for a better match, or use the promise or threat of the marriage of the Prince of Wales in his continental diplomacy.

In 1504 Henry had expected to go to Ludlow, to enjoy at least limited power and freedom. Instead he was kept at Court under his father’s watchful eye. He was the precious only son; if the King died, young Henry could be crowned and secure before any of the rival claimants even knew of the death. Henry VII and his mother, Margaret, wanted to keep both eyes on the Prince of Wales.

Everything we know about Henry indicates he hated this life. He was handsome and healthy; he was surrounded by servants and friends to whom his every word was law and he had witnessed Arthur’s taste of independence. It is extremely unlikely that he found staying at home under the prying eyes of his father and grandmother at all to his liking.

In August 1504, the Spanish Ambassador to London, Hernan, duque de Estrada, wrote to Ferdinand and Isabella that Henry VII was devoted to his son: ‘Certainly there could be no better school in the world than the society of such a father as Henry VII. He is so wise and attentive to everything; nothing escapes his attention.’ He added that the King had told him, ‘I keep the prince with me because I wish to improve him.’
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This attention must have stifled the young Prince Henry, however. The Spanish Envoy, Gutiérrez Gómez de Fuensalida, wrote in 1508 that Henry was kept under supervision as if he were a girl. He could only go out by one door into the park, and then only with companions selected by his father (young men such as Charles Brandon and Edward Neville). No one could approach or speak to him without permission. He slept in a room that connected only with his father’s. He never spoke in public except to answer his father’s questions; he never attended any council meetings or audiences with ambassadors or deputations. Fuensalida was supposed to talk to the Prince about his marriage to Catherine of Aragon, but he was not allowed to see him without his father being present, let alone talk to him in private. At Richmond, Henry spent most days in the tiltyard, sometimes watched by his father.

The Prince had his own suite of apartments in Westminster Palace, reached through those of the King. He had footmen, a gentleman usher, a groom of the privy chamber, tutors, minstrels and players. Here at least he might occasionally be alone with his friends. During the evening entertainments, lords and ladies gathered together to hear stories and sing songs about romance and courtly love, to flirt (and more). In courtly love, ideally one should be in love with someone unattainable, preferably above you socially. Henry had few places to turn for this kind of ‘belle dame’ – and so he focused his attention on Catherine.

In August 1504, the King went on progress with Prince Henry, Princess Mary and the Dowager Princess Catherine. Henry and Catherine spent time together riding, hunting and talking. It is impossible to know what they talked about, whether he felt sorry for her, alone in a strange country, unsure of her future, at the mercy of his father’s whims. Perhaps they fell in love; perhaps they found company in a shared misery of powerless subjection. Catherine had a lot to be worried about. Her mother was dead, and there was now open conflict between her father and his son-in-law and daughter, Philip the Handsome and Joanna. Both parties sought to use Catherine to gain King Henry’s support.

In October 1505, Henry sent a letter to Pope Julius II. The letter complained that Catherine had taken to fasting, prayer, abstinence and pilgrimage; and that this might affect her health and particularly her ability to have children later. The Pope wrote back, giving the Prince, as her betrothed husband, permission to order her to stop, ‘We … grant you permission to restrain the aforesaid Catherine, your wife, and to compel her not to observe without your permission any vows or purposes of prayer, fasts, abstinences or pilgrimages ...’
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Poor Catherine began to look less and less like a future queen of England. Louis XII of France offered Margaret of Angoulême, the Dauphin’s sister, as a future wife for the Prince. Philip the Handsome offered his daughter Eleanor but Henry VII held up the Prince’s marriage for political reasons. This had a major effect on Henry – his later marriages, except one, were for personal desire rather than for political advantage. When Henry fell in love, he wished to form an immediate relationship; any suggestion that he couldn’t or shouldn’t took him back to the time of his subjection under the orders of his father and would be ruthlessly denied.

Henry VII set about cutting down the size of Catherine’s establishment while she languished in political limbo. In December 1505 Catherine was invited to Court for Christmas. The King then closed her household at Durham House and told her that henceforward she would live at Westminster with a handful of servants (five ladies, a master of the hall, treasurer and physician), completely at his financial mercy. She was given a small suite of rooms as far away from Prince Henry as possible; he only saw her at church and when she was invited to join formal occasions. Her father, Ferdinand, sent her occasional gifts, but he expected her to use her tenuous position at court to work on his behalf.

It is sometimes amazing how badly parents can misjudge their children. The King had promised Henry that he would marry Catherine, then told him, no. Catherine was still there at Court; not only regal, young and lovely, but also living in fear and poverty because of his father. The situation could not fail to arouse in Prince Henry every emotion from sexual interest and a chivalric desire to rescue her, to an impotent pity that he could not do so, and a resultant despising of his father and hatred of his own powerless situation.

Despite his confined existence at his father’s Court, Henry was developing into a remarkable young man. By the time he was 16, Henry was described as extremely handsome, over six foot tall and well muscled. However, the King still treated his son and heir like a child, refusing him a separate household and doling out pocket money to him. These humiliations would never be forgotten; King Henry VIII would never allow anyone, by his estimation, to demean or belittle him in any way.

In 1508, aged 17, Henry began appearing in tourneys and jousts himself. He was magnificent and the people loved him, courtiers and commoners alike. He was not praised merely because he was the King’s son; it would have been almost impossible for him to survive in the jousting field unscathed if he had not had the strength, skill and judgement to do well. He truly was a remarkable athlete.

There were no reported rumours about any sexual liaisons before Prince Henry’s marriage; however, he was a healthy, handsome young man and Westminster was a big palace; Henry VII could not have watched his son all the time. When Henry VIII was married to Anne Boleyn, there was a vicious and certainly unfounded rumour that he had had affairs with Anne, her sister Mary, and their mother, Elizabeth Boleyn, who had been one of his own mother’s ladies! Henry’s response was, ‘Never with the mother’, although if she had been one of those ladies, young and lovely, it had at least been a viable possibility.
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In the last years of his reign Henry VII suffered from ill health, as did his aging mother. The Prince must have chafed under their control. In March 1508 the second half of Catherine’s dowry arrived in England and there was no reason now why the marriage should not take place within a few months, as previously agreed. However, in 1509, as Henry became ill, plans for the Prince’s marriage were proceeding, but with little mention of Catherine. The two foremost contenders were Margaret of Angoulême and Catherine’s niece, Eleanor.

In April 1508 the King finally realised that Ferdinand had no intention of allowing him to marry Joanna and that the negotiations carried out through Catherine (all based on her father’s lies) had been designed to gain advantage for her own marriage. Catherine suffered as a result; she was excluded from the May festivities in 1508. Her accommodation was moved at Easter to rooms over the stables. Her food was sometimes inedible and was enlivened only by occasional gifts from her friends. Her clothes were threadbare , her servants’ worse, and she was forced to sell the plate and jewels that had originally formed part of her dowry as a means to survive.

This enabled Henry VII to now hold up the marriage on the grounds that Catherine’s jewels and plate had been used or sold, and so their equivalent in coin must be provided to complete the dowry. He still thought he could force Ferdinand into letting him marry Joanna, and he wanted the marriage between Philip and Joanna’s son, Charles, and his daughter, Mary, ratified; he was also enthusiastic about Henry marrying Charles’s sister, Eleanor.

Despite all the talk of marriage, Henry VII ended his life without female company. His mother was a virtual recluse at the end, his eldest daughter was in Scotland, and his son’s fiancée was living in poverty, ignored and shunned. Only his youngest daughter brought pleasure into his life – Princess Mary was a darling.

In 1509 Henry VII’s health began to fail and he was too ill to attend the Easter services. Before his death, Henry VII’s councillors, William Warham (Archbishop of Canterbury), John Fisher (Bishop of Rochester) and Richard Fox (Bishop of Winchester), asked him for his last wishes. They reported to Fuensalida that Henry VII had stated that he wanted his son to be free to choose a wife for himself. The Prince, however, said that his father told him to marry Catherine.