The Wives of Henry the Eighth and the Parts They Played in History Part 1

The Wives of Henry the Eighth and the Parts They Played in History.

by Martin Hume.

PREFACE

Either by chance or by the peculiar working of our const.i.tution, 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 pa.s.sions, 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 a.s.sume 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, l.u.s.tful 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 pa.s.sages 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.

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 n.o.bles 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 n.o.bles 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 pa.s.sword; the flas.h.i.+ng 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 n.o.bles 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 princ.i.p.alities 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 kins.h.i.+p 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 pa.s.sage 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 aggrandis.e.m.e.nt 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 princ.i.p.al 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-d.u.c.h.ess 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 friends.h.i.+p 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 amba.s.sadors 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 amba.s.sador, 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 amba.s.sador to the end of his life, he was, to his bitter jealousy, always a.s.sociated 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 n.o.bles 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 amba.s.sador 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 pa.s.sive 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 amba.s.sadors 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 a.s.surance 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 flouris.h.i.+ng his bonnet and bowing low each time the names of Ferdinand and Isabel pa.s.sed 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 amba.s.sadors 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 circ.u.mstances 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 d.u.c.h.ess of Brittany. Though Roussillon and Cerdagne mattered nothing to Henry VII., the disposal of the rich duchy opposite his own sh.o.r.es was of importance to him. France, Spain, England, and the Empire were all trying to outbid one another for the marriage of the d.u.c.h.ess; 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 d.u.c.h.ess 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 d.u.c.h.ess 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 a.s.sist 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 n.o.bles 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 amba.s.sadors 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 inst.i.tutions"; 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 amba.s.sador 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, a.s.sured 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 d.u.c.h.ess 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 amba.s.sador 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 n.o.bles were already arranging jousts and tournaments for her entertainment. Ferdinand, on the other hand, continued to send rea.s.suring 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 s.h.i.+ps necessary for the pa.s.sage, 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 amba.s.sador 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 G.o.d had rarely been silent in her childish ears. So, with s.h.i.+ning 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 s.h.i.+p, 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 s.h.i.+ps finally into the safety of Plymouth harbour on Sat.u.r.day 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 s.h.i.+eld, 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.

CHAPTER II

1501-1509

KATHARINE'S WIDOWHOOD AND WHY SHE STAYED IN ENGLAND