Tudor Queens of England (16 page)

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was not her husband but her elder daughter Joanna. Joanna was married to the Archduke Philip of the Netherlands and the mother of two promising sons, but many Castilian nobles did not fancy the alien Philip as King Consort, preferring the terms of Isabella’s will. A sharp political struggle then ensued, during which Philip and Joanna went to Spain and successfully asserted their rights. However in 1506 Philip died and Joanna (it was conveniently alleged) became deranged. This enabled Ferdinand to reassert himself as Regent, but it also meant that, if Joanna was deemed disqualifi ed the next heir to the throne was Catherine. She thus became one complication too many for her father who was quite happy for her to remain in England, marriage or no marriage. Poor Catherine, now aged 20, was thus left in limbo as Dowager Princess of Wales, without a role and with inadequate fi nancial support. Her endowment of one-third of the revenues of Wales had come to an end with Arthur’s death and Henry cancelled the replacement allowance of £1,200 a year when her betrothal to the new Prince of Wales was cancelled. Thereafter he made her only spasmodic payments, apparently as the spirit move

d him.25

Meanwhile, both the widowed kings were on the look out for new partners. Ferdinand took the opportunity to end his long-running feud with France and signed the treaty of Blois with Louis XII in October 1505, one of the conditions of which was that he should marry Louis’s niece, Germaine de Foix, and that wedding duly took place on 18 March 1506. This not only strengthened Ferdinand’s hand in Spain; it also distanced him from the King of England. There was never any question of hostilities, but relations cooled. Henry was less successful, and perhaps less determined. His fi rst target seems to have been the widowed Queen Joan of Naples, who was Ferdinand’s niece, and his envoys sent a very precise physical description of the lady from Valencia in J

une 1505.26 F
erdinand declared himself in favour of the proposal but nothing eventually came of it. However attractive Joan may have been, she would, it appears, have been no substitute for Elizabeth. Neighbouring princes were also keen to take advantage of the King’s availability. The Archduke Philip offered his sister Margaret, the widowed Duchess of Savoy, and a treaty was actually signed to effect that in 1506. Louis XII proffered his niece, Margaret of Angouleme. In the event it was the ladies themselves who declined the prospect but Henry’s pursuit was dutiful rather than enthusiastic. He was clearly more interested in using the negotiations for diplomatic purposes than he was in actually getting married again. It may have been a factor that his own health was in slow decline. The main purpose of marrying again would have been to strengthen his dynasty by begetting more children and it may well be that by about 1505 Henry was beginning to feel that that feat was beyond him. For whatever reason, he did not marry again and when he died in April 1509 he

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left an adult son (just) and a widowed daughter-in-law, both ready to start again. The rumours that he had at one time designs on Catherine himself appear to be without foundation and, knowing the King’s scrupulosity, are intrinsically improbable. His last matrimonial move was on behalf of his younger daughter, Mary, then aged 11. On 1 October 1508 he completed a treaty with Margaret of Savoy, his erstwhile intended and by then governor of the Netherlands, to wed her to Margaret’s eight-year-old charge, the Archduke Charles – later the Emperor Charles V – but once again the treaty proved abortive.

27

Of all the women we have so far considered, Elizabeth of York appears to have been the most gentle and the most conventional of queens. Despite the intrinsic strength of her political position, she never seems to have made the slightest attempt to exploit it and although her position as the heir of York is constantly alluded to there is never any suggestion that it threatened the King’s position. Her infl uence was nearly all behind the scenes. It should not be discounted for that reason but is extraordinarily diffi cult to assess. After her death one commentator described her as ‘one of the most gracious and best beloved princesses of the world’

28
, while the Venetian ambassador called her ‘a very handsome woman, and in conduct very able’. She was an ideal helpmate, and also discharged her parental duty with notable success. In spite of the bitter disappointments of Edmund’s and Arthur’s deaths, she left two children who were to dominate the succeeding centuries: Henry VIII, the father of Mary and Elizabeth, and Margaret, the grandmother of Mary of Scotland and great grandmother of James VI and I.
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5

The Queen as Foreign Ally: Catherine of Aragon and

Anne of Cleves

Catherine had come to England in 1501 as the pledge of an alliance between Henry VII and her father, Ferdinand of Aragon. The marriage that had sealed that alliance had lasted only a few months and, at the age of 17, Catherine had been left a widow. In order to maintain the alliance, and avoid repaying that part of her dowry that he had already received, Henry had then proposed and Ferdinand had agreed to betroth her to Arthur’s younger brother, Henry, a step for which a dispensation from consanguinity was required. At fi rst it had been suspected that Arthur had left his widow pregnant, but by the time that the dispensation was issued it was clear that that was not the case. It was, however, assumed that the union had been consummated, in spite of the protestations of her

duenna
, Donna Elvira, and of Catherine herself, because it was the consummation rather than the ceremony of marriage that created the consanguinity.
1
The second marriage, however, had not taken place. The kings drifted apart and in June 1505, when the younger Henry reached his fourteenth birthday, his father caused him to repudiate the agreement. This should have been the signal for Catherine to go home but political circumstances in Castile made her presence in Spain unwelcome to her father, as we have seen, so she remained in England as the Dowager Princess of Wales. In 1507, when she was 22 and still unmarried, her father had accredited her as his ambassador in England, thus giving her a unique formal recognition.
2
It had been common in the past for royal consorts to act as
de facto
representatives of their families in England – but Catherine was not such a consort, and there was no precedent for an unmarried woman to act as an ambassador. Her role proved to be complex and exacting because Ferdinand’s remarriage had left him in alliance with France, a move that Henry had sought to counter by closer ties to the Habsburgs. It was for that reason that she found herself involved in a negotiation with Maximilian for a marriage between the King of England and her own sister Juana, the widow of King Phillip. The fact that Juana was alleged to be insane does not appear to have deterred either of the negotiators. It is not surprising that Catherine

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soon called for reinforcements. She did not trust her nominal colleague in the embassy, the long serving but by now somewhat ineffectual Dr De Puebla, and asked her father to send a suitable nobleman as her colleague.

3
As his interests would be directly threatened by the proposed marriage, he responded swiftly and Don Guitierre Gomez de Fuensalida reached England on 22 February 1508. Fuensalida was inexperienced and inept, but he was disposed to listen to Catherine, who in turn had learned from the much-despised De Puebla.
4
It was probably as much the result of Henry’s deteriorating health as of the diplomatic efforts of the Spaniards, but the marriage never happened, and when the King died on 21 April 1509, she found herself facing a completely different situation. During the lean years between 1502 and 1507, when she had had nothing to do and very little money, and while her remaining Spanish servants drifted away or got married, Catherine had consoled herself with pious exercises. She had also convinced herself that it was the will of God that she should marry Prince Henry. This conviction reconciled her to staying in England and survived his formal repudiation of the agreement in 1505. Indeed the latter was a diplomatic chess move and the young Prince’s true feelings are unknown. The very next year he was referring to her as his ‘most dear and well beloved consort, the princess my wife …’ but that may also have been a diplomatic move intended to press Maximilian. When Henry VIII came to the throne his relations with his sisterin-law can only be deduced. They must have known each other well by sight and that may have been suffi cient to establish a mutual attraction. At almost 18, Henry was a magnifi cent specimen, with his maternal grandfather’s imposing physique – already head and shoulders taller than most of his servants. At this stage of her life Catherine was apparently slender and petite, auburn haired and pretty – if Michael Sittow’s portrait is to be trusted. Whether, however, they had had any opportunity to become familiar with each other, we do not know. According to Fuensalida (who was not the sharpest of observers) the young Prince had been carefully chaperoned right up to the moment of his accession and kept busy with his books and physical exercises. At the same time Catherine lived at court after her allocation of Durham House was withdrawn in November 1505 and her ambassadorial duties required frequent attendance. It is certainly true that Henry’s father gave him no formal duties or responsibilities, beyond his purely notional responsibilities as Prince of Wales, but his virtual seclusion is unlikely. Unlike his brother at a similar age, he seems never to have visited the Marches, let alone lived there.
5

Nevertheless the speed and effectiveness with which he seized the reins of government in May 1509 appears to give the lie to Fuensalida’s description of a boy brought up ‘almost like a young damsel’. Years later, and in very different

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circumstances, the chronicler Edward Hall attributed his actions to the initiative of the council that he had inherited from his father, and whereas that may have been true in respect of his rapid moves against the unpopular Richard Empson and Edmund Dudley, it is unlikely to have been true of his marriage. Hall wrote:

‘… the king was moved by some of his council that it should be honourable and profi table to his realm to take to wife the Lady Katherine, late wife to his brother Prince Arthur deceased …’

6

In fact his council seems to have been taken by surprise. Henry himself later claimed that he had been piously acting in accordance with his father’s dying wish, but on 27 April, fi ve days after the old king’s death, the Council was unaware of any such instruction. On that day they assured Fuensalida that their master was completely uncommitted, and even added that he would be unlikely to consider his sister-in-law because of scruples ov

er the dispensation.7 Then,
a few days later, the ambassador was summoned back, and began his interview with a defensive speech, retailing all the diffi culties in Anglo-Spanish relations. Ferdinand had delayed giving his consent to the proposed marriage between his grandson Charles and the King’s sister Mary and he had dallied interminably about paying the balance of Catherine’s original dowry. At that point Henry, who had been waiting impatiently in an adjoining room, interrupted the proceedings with a message. What he wanted, he declared, was a triple alliance between himself, the Emperor and Ferdinand to curb the ambitions of France, and to that end he intended to marry Catherine forthwith.
8
All the wearying diffi culties about the dowry, about Mary’s betrothal and about Catherine’s status, were simply swept aside. Fuensalida’s erstwhile colleague was about to become Queen and his main duty now was to facilitate that as quickly as possible. The Princess was understandably jubilant. Through all the slights to which she had been subjected and all the diffi culties of being a female ambassador linked to a man who turned out to be an arrogant and foolish colleague, her faith in ultimate success had never wavered. Only at the very end, in March 1509, had she apparently given way to a brief fi t of despair. Now she was vindicated and being the pious soul that she was she attributed the entire astonishing reversal to God. He had heard and answered her pleas as only He could do, turning the King’s heart, which (like that of all princes and governors) was in His hand alone. The events of these dramatic days between April and June of 1509 made an indelible impression upon her mind.

Henry and Catherine were married on 11 June in the Franciscan church at Greenwich and crowned together at Westminster on midsummer’s day.

9 This was

unprecedented. Richard II, Henry V, Henry VI, Edward IV and Henry VII had all been unmarried at the time of their accessions but Richard and Henry VI had 90

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succeeded as minors and all their respective Queens had been crowned separately. Only in the case of Henry VIII did marriage intervene between accession and coronation in a way that made this unique event possible. Despite the fact that the King’s Council remained largely unchanged, the atmosphere of the court was transformed. Archbishop Warham remained as Chancellor, Richard Fox, Bishop of Winchester, remained Lord Privy Seal and the Earl of Surrey remained Treasurer, but there was a new king and that was what mattered. The fact that Henry was lavishly praised by humanist scholars on the look out for patronage is less important than the general contemporary evidence of how full of life and joy the royal couple were at this point. Their coronation was celebrated with a magnifi cent tournament, featuring the Knights of Pallas and the Knights of Diana, who symbolized that odd mixture of Italian humanism and Burgundian chivalry that was Henry’s distinctive trademark. There had been no such tournament in England since the high days of Edward IV. Although he had had no enthusiasm for these sports himself, Henry VII had made sure that his son had been instructed by the very best masters-at-arms and, at the time of his accession, Henry VIII had the reputation of being the fi nest jouster in the land. This may not have been entirely deserved, but he was certainly very profi cient, and for the next twenty years his enthusiasm for the sport was inexhaustible. On many subsequent occasions he was to enter the lists in person, but not this time. Jousting was a dangerous sport, even for the most accomplished and he was probably persuaded that the last thing England needed at such an auspicious juncture was for any misfortune to befall him. Instead he did honour to his mistress with ‘noble triumphs and goodly shows’, which featured the Queen’s symbol of the pomegranate ‘gilded with fi ne gold’ in every conceivable place. The joy of these days was somewhat tempered by the death at the end of June of the King’s grandmother, Margaret Beaufort, ‘a woman of singular wisdom and policy, and also of most virtuous life’ as the chro