The Wives of Henry the Eighth and the Parts They Played in History Part 2

CHAPTER III

1509-1527

KATHARINE THE QUEEN--A POLITICAL MARRIAGE AND A PERSONAL DIVORCE

"Long live King Henry VIII.!" cried Garter King of Arms in French as the great officers of state broke their staves of office and cast them into the open grave of the first Tudor king. Through England, like the blast of a trumpet, the cry was echoed from the hearts of a whole people, full of hope that the n.i.g.g.ardliness and suspicion which for years had stood between the sovereign and his people were at last banished. The young king, expansive and hearty in manner, handsome and strong as a pagan G.o.d in person, was well calculated to captivate the love of the crowd. His prodigious personal vanity, which led him to delight in sumptuous raiment and gorgeous shows; the state and ceremony with which he surrounded himself and his skill in manly exercises, were all points in his favour with a pleasure-yearning populace which had been squeezed of its substance without seeing any return for it: whilst his ardent admiration for the learning which had during his lifetime become the fas.h.i.+on made grave scholars lose their judgment and write like flattering slaves about the youth of eighteen who now became unquestioned King of England and master of his father's h.o.a.rded treasures.

As we shall see in the course of this history, Henry was but a whited sepulchre. Young, light-hearted, with every one about him praising him as a paragon, and his smallest whim indulged as a divine command, there was no incitement for the exhibition of the baser qualities that underlay the big, popular manner, the flamboyant patriotism, and, it must be added, the real ability which appealed alike to the gentle and simple over whom he was called to rule. Like many men of his peculiar physique, he was never a strong man morally, and his will grew weaker as his body increased in gross flabbiness. The obstinate self-a.s.sertion and violence that impressed most observers as strength, hid behind them a spirit that forever needed direction and support from a stronger soul. So long as he was allowed in appearance to have his own way and his policy was showy, he was, as one of his wisest ministers said in his last days, the easiest man in the world to manage. His sensuality, which was all his own, and his personal vanity, were the qualities by means of which one able councillor after another used him for the ends they had in view, until the bridle chafed him, and his temporary master was made to feel the vengeance of a weak despot who discovers that he has been ruled instead of ruling. In Henry's personal character as sketched above we shall be able to find the key of the tremendous political events that made his reign the most important in our annals; and we shall see that his successive marriages were the outcome of subtle intrigues in which representatives of various parties took advantage of the King's vanity and lasciviousness to promote their own political or religious views. That the emanc.i.p.ation of England from Rome was the ultimate result cannot fairly be placed to Henry's personal credit. If he could have had his own way without breaking with the Papacy he would have preferred to maintain the connection; but the Reformation was in the air, and craftier brains than Henry's led the King step by step by his ruling pa.s.sions until he had gone too far to retreat. To what extent his various matrimonial adventures served these intrigues we shall see in the course of this book.

That Henry's marriage with Katharine soon after his accession was politically expedient has been shown in the aforegoing pages; and the King's Council were strongly in favour of it, with the exception of the Archbishop of Canterbury, Lord Chancellor Warham, who was more purely ecclesiastical than his colleagues, and appears to have had doubts as to the canonical validity of the union. As we have seen, the Pope had given a dispensation for the marriage years before, in terms that covered the case of the union with Arthur having been duly consummated, though Katharine strenuously denied that it had been, or that she knew how the dispensation was worded. The Spanish confessor also appears to have suggested to Fuensalida some doubts as to the propriety of the marriage, but King Ferdinand promptly put his veto upon any such scruples. Had not the Pope given his dispensation? he asked; and did not the peace of England and Spain depend upon the marriage? The sin would be not the marriage, but the failure to effect it after the pledges that had been given. So the few doubters were silenced; young Henry himself, all eager for his marriage, was not one of them, nor was Katharine, for to her the match was a triumph for which she had worked and suffered for years: and on the 11th June 1509 the pair were married privately by Warham at Henry's palace of Greenwich.

Rarely in its long history has London seen so brave a pageant as the bride and bridegroom's triumphal pa.s.sage through the city on Sat.u.r.day the 21st June from the Tower to Westminster for their coronation. Rich tapestries, and hangings of cloth of gold, decked the streets through which they pa.s.sed. The city companies lined the way from Gracechurch Street to Bread Street, where the Lord Mayor and the senior guild stood in bright array, whilst the goldsmiths' shops in Chepe had each to adorn it a figure of the Holy Virgin in white with many wax tapers around it. The Queen rode in a litter of white and gold tissue drawn by two snowy palfreys, she herself being garbed in white satin and gold, with a dazzling coronet of precious stones upon her head, from which fell almost to her feet her dark russet hair. She was twenty-four years of age, and in the full flush of womanhood; her regular cla.s.sical features and fair skin bore yet the curves of gracious youth; and there need be no doubt of the sincerity of the ardent affection for her borne by the pink and white young giant who rode before her, a dazzling vision of crimson velvet, cloth of gold, and flas.h.i.+ng precious stones. "G.o.d save your Grace," was the cry that rattled like platoon firing along the crowded ways, as the splendid cavalcade pa.s.sed on.

The next day, Sunday, 24th June, the pair were crowned in the Abbey with all the tedious pomp of the times. Then the Gargantuan feast in Westminster Hall, of which the chronicler spares us no detail, and the endless jousts and devices, in which roses and pomegranates, castles and leopards jostled each other in endless magnificence, until a mere catalogue of the splendour grows meaningless. The death of the King's wise old grandmother, the Countess of Richmond, interrupted for a time the round of festivities; but Henry was too new to the unchecked indulgence of his taste for splendour and pleasure to abandon them easily, and his English councillors, as well as the watchful Spanish agents, began before many weeks were over to hint gravely that the young king was neglecting his business. Katharine appears to have entered fully into the life of pleasure led by her husband. Writing to her father on the 29th July, she is enthusiastic in her praise. "We are all so happy," she says; "our time pa.s.ses in continual feasting." But in her case, at least, we see that mixed with the frivolous pleasure there was the personal triumph of the politician who had succeeded. "One of the princ.i.p.al reasons why I love my husband the King, is because he is so true a son to your Majesty. I have obeyed your orders and have acted as your amba.s.sador. My husband places himself entirely in your hands. This country of England is truly your own now, and is tranquil and deeply loyal to the King and to me." What more could wife or stateswoman ask? Katharine had her reward. Henry was hers and England was at the bidding of Ferdinand, and her sufferings had not been in vain. Henry, for his part, was, if we are to believe his letters to his father-in-law, as much enamoured of his wife as she was satisfied with him.[19]

And so, amidst magnificent shows, and what seems to our taste puerile trifling, the pair began their married life highly contented with each other and the world. The inevitable black shadows were to come later. In reality they were an entirely ill-matched couple, even apart from the six years' disparity in their ages. Henry, a bluff bully, a coward morally, and also perhaps physically,[20] a liar, who deceived himself as well as others, in order to keep up appearances in his favour, he was just the man that a clever, tactful woman could have managed perfectly, beginning early in his life as Katharine did. Katharine, for all her goodness of heart and exalted piety, was, as we have seen, none too scrupulous herself; and if her ability and dexterity had been equal to her opportunities she might have kept Henry in bondage for life. But, even before her growing age and fading charms had made her distasteful to her husband, her lack of prudence and management towards him had caused him to turn to others for the guidance that she might still have exercised.

The first rift of which we hear came less than a year after the marriage.

Friar Diego, who was now Katharine's chancellor, wrote an extraordinary letter to King Ferdinand in May 1510, telling him of a miscarriage that Katharine had had at the end of January; the affair he says having been so secret that no one knew it but the King, two Spanish women, the physician, and himself; and the details he furnishes show him to have been as ignorant as he was impudent. Incidentally, however, he says: "Her Highness is very healthy and the most beautiful creature in the world, with the greatest gaiety and contentment that ever was. The King adores her, and her Highness him." But with this letter to the King went another to his secretary, Almazan, from the new Spanish amba.s.sador, Carroz, who complains bitterly that the friar monopolises the Queen entirely, and prevents his access to her. He then proceeds to tell of Henry and Katharine's first matrimonial tiff. The two married sisters of the Duke of Buckingham were at Court, one being a close friend of Katharine whilst the other was said to be carrying on an intrigue with the King through his favourite, Sir William Compton. This lady's family, and especially her brother the Duke, who had a violent altercation with Compton, and her sister the Queen's friend, shocked at the scandal, carried her away to a convent in the country. In revenge for this the King sent the Queen's favourite away, and quarrelled with Katharine. Carroz was all for counselling prudence and diplomacy to the Queen; but he complains that Friar Diego was advising her badly and putting her on bad terms with her husband.

Many false alarms, mostly, it would seem, set afloat by the meddling friar, and dwelt upon by him in his letters with quite unbecoming minuteness, kept the Court agog as to the possibility of an heir to the crown being born. Henry himself, who was always fond of children, was desperately anxious for a son; and when, on New Year's Day 1511, the looked-for heir was born at Richmond, the King's unrestrained rejoicing again took his favourite form of sumptuous entertainments, after he had ridden to the shrine of Our Lady at Walsingham in Norfolk to give thanks for the favour vouchsafed to him. Once again Westminster glittered with cloth of gold and gems and velvet. Once again courtiers came to the lists disguised as hermits, to kneel before Katharine, and then to cast off their gowns and stand in full panoply before her, craving for leave to tilt in her honour. Once again fairy bowers of gold and artificial flowers sheltered sylvan beauties richly bedizened, the King and his favourites standing by in purple satin garments with the solid gold initials of himself and his wife sewn upon them. Whilst the dazzling company was dancing the "scenery" was rolled back. It came too near the crowd of lieges at the end of the hall, and pilfering fingers began to pluck the golden ornaments from the bowers. Emboldened by their immunity for this, people broke the bounds, swarmed into the central s.p.a.ce, and in the twinkling of an eye all the lords and ladies, even the King himself, found themselves stripped of their finery to their very s.h.i.+rts, the golden letters and precious tissues intended as presents for fine ladies being plunder now in grimy hands that turned them doubtless to better account.

Henry in his bluff fas.h.i.+on made the best of it, and called the booty largesse. Little recked he, if the tiny heir whose existence fed his vanity throve. But the babe died soon after this costly celebration of his birth.

During the ascendency that the antic.i.p.ated coming of a son gave to Katharine, Ferdinand was able to beguile Henry into an offensive league against France, by using the same bait that had so often served a similar purpose with Henry VII.; namely, the reconquest for England of Guienne and Normandy. Spain, the Empire, the Papacy, and England formed a coalition that boded ill for the French cause in Italy. As usual the showy but barren part fell to Henry. Ferdinand promised him soldiers to conquer Normandy, but they never came. All Ferdinand wanted was to keep as many Frenchmen as possible from his own battle-grounds, and he found plenty of opportunities for evading all his pledges. Henry was flattered to the top of his bent. The Pope sent him the blessed golden rose, and saluted him as head of the Italian league; and the young king, fired with martial ardour, allowed himself to be dragged into war by his wife's connections, in opposition to the opinion of the wiser heads in his Council. A war with France involved hostilities with Scotland, but Henry was, in the autumn of 1512, cajoled into depleting his realm of troops and sending an army to Spain to attack France over the Pyrenees, whilst another force under Poynings went to help the allies against the Duke of Gueldres. The former host under the Marquis of Dorset was kept idle by its commander because it was found that Ferdinand really required them to reduce the Spanish kingdom of Navarre, and after months of inactivity and much mortality from sickness, they returned ingloriously home to England. This was Henry's first experience of armed alliances, but he learned nothing by experience, and to the end of his life the results of such coalitions to him were always the same.

But his ambition was still unappeased, and in June 1513 he in person led his army across the Channel to conquer France. His conduct in the campaign was puerile in its vanity and folly, and ended lamely with the capture of two (to him) unimportant fortresses in the north, Therouenne and Tournai, and the panic flight of the French at the Battle of the Spurs or Guingate.

Our business with this foolish and fruitless campaign, in which Henry was every one's tool, is confined to the part that Katharine played at the time. On the King's ostentatious departure from Dover he left Katharine regent of the realm, with the Earl of Surrey--afterwards Duke of Norfolk--to command the army in the north. Katharine, we are told, rode back from Dover to London full of dolour for her lord's departure; but we see her in her element during the subsequent months of her regency. Bold and spirited, and it must be added utterly tactless, she revelled in the independent domination which she enjoyed. James IV. of Scotland had threatened that an English invasion of France would be followed by his own invasion of England. "Let him do it in G.o.d's name," shouted Henry; and Katharine when the threat was made good delivered a splendid oration in English to the officers who were going north to fight the Scots.

"Remember," she said, "that the Lord smiled upon those who stood in defence of their own. Remember that the English courage excels that of all other nations upon earth."[21] Her letters to Wolsey, who accompanied Henry as almoner, or rather secretary, are full of courage, and as full of womanly anxiety for her husband. "She was troubled," she wrote, "to learn that the King was so near the siege of Therouenne," until Wolsey's letter a.s.sured her of the heed he takes to avoid all manner of dangers. "With his life and health nothing can come amiss with him, without them I see no manner of good thing that shall fall after it." But her tactlessness even in this letter shows clearly when she boasts that the King in France is not so busy with war as she is in England against the Scots. "My heart is very good of it, and I am horribly busy making standards, banners, and badges."[22] After congratulating Henry effusively upon the capture of Therouenne and his meeting with the Emperor, Katharine herself set forth with reinforcements towards Scotland, but before she had travelled a hundred miles (to Woburn) she met the couriers galloping south to bring her the great news of Surrey's victory at Flodden Field. Turning aside to thank Our Lady of Walsingham for the destruction of the Scottish power, Katharine on the way sent the jubilant news to Henry. James IV. in his defeat had been left dead upon the field, clad in his check surcoat, and a fragment of this coat soaked with blood the Queen sent to her husband in France, with a heartless gibe at his dead brother-in-law. We are told that in another of her letters first giving the news of Flodden, and referring to Henry's capture of the Duke of Longueville at Therouenne, she vaingloriously compared her victory with his.[23] "It was no great thing for one armed man to take another, but she was sending three captured by a woman; if he (Henry) sent her a captive Duke she would send him a prisoner king." For a wife and _loc.u.m tenens_ to write thus in such circ.u.mstances to a supremely vain man like Henry, whose martial ambition was still una.s.suaged, was to invite his jealousy and dislike. His people saw, as he with all his boastfulness cannot fail to have done, that Flodden was the real English victory, not Therouenne, and that Katharine and Surrey, not Henry, were the heroes. Such knowledge was gall and wormwood to the King; and especially when the smoke of battle had blown away, and he saw how he had been "sold" by his wife's relations, who kept the fruit of victory whilst he was put off with the sh.e.l.l.

From that time Katharine's influence over her husband weakened, though with occasional intermission, and he looked for guidance to a subtler mind than hers. With Henry to France had gone Thomas Wolsey, one of the clergy of the royal chapel, recently appointed almoner by the patronage of Fox, Bishop of Winchester, Henry's leading councillor in foreign affairs. The English n.o.bles, strong as they still were territorially, could not be trusted with the guidance of affairs by a comparatively new dynasty depending upon parliament and the towns for its power; and an official cla.s.s, raised at the will of the sovereign, had been created by Henry VII., to be used as ministers and administrators. Such a cla.s.s, dependent entirely upon the crown, were certain to be distasteful to the n.o.ble families, and the rivalry between these two governing elements provided the germ of party divisions which subsequently hardened into the English const.i.tutional tradition: the officials usually being favourable to the strengthening of the royal prerogative, and the n.o.bles desiring to maintain the check which the armed power of feudalism had formerly exercised. For reasons which will be obvious, the choice of both Henry VII. and his son of their diplomatists and ministers fell to a great extent upon clergymen; and Wolsey's brilliant talents and facile adaptiveness during his close attendance upon Henry in France captivated his master, who needed for a minister and guide one that could never become a rival either in the field or the ladies' chamber, where the King most desired distinction.

Henry came home in October 1513, bitterly enraged against Katharine's kin, and ripe for the close alliance with France which the prisoner Duke of Longueville soon managed to bring about. What mattered it that lovely young Mary Tudor was sacrificed in marriage to the decrepit old King Louis XII., notwithstanding her previous solemn betrothal to Katharine's nephew, young Charles of Austria, and her secret love for Henry's bosom friend, Sir Charles Brandon? Princesses were but pieces in the great political game, and must perforce take the rough with the smooth. Henry, in any case, could thus show to the Spaniard that he could defy him by a French connection. It must have been with a sad heart that Katharine took part in the triumphal doings that celebrated the peace directed against her father. The French agents, then in London, in describing her say that she was lively and gracious, quite the opposite of her gloomy sister: and doubtless she did her best to appear so, for she was proud and schooled to disappointment; but with the exception of the fact that she was again with child, all around her looked black. Her husband openly taunted her with her father's ill faith; Henry was carrying on now an open intrigue with Lady Tailebois, whom he had brought from Calais with him; Ferdinand the Catholic at last was slowly dying, all his dreams and hopes frustrated; and on the 13th August 1514, in the palace of Greenwich, Katharine's dear friend and sister-in-law, Mary Tudor, was married by proxy to Louis XII.

Katharine, led by the Duke of Longueville, attended the festivity. She was dressed in ash-coloured satin, covered with raised gold embroidery, costly chains and necklaces of gems covered her neck and bust, and a coif trimmed with precious stones was on her head.[24] The King at the ball in the evening charmed every one by his graceful dancing, and the scene was so gay that the grave Venetian amba.s.sador says that had it not been for his age and office he would have cast off his gown and have footed it with the rest.

But already sinister whispers were rife, and we may be sure they were not unknown to Katharine. She had been married five years, and no child of hers had lived; and, though she was again pregnant, it was said that the Pope would be asked to authorise Henry to put her aside, and to marry a French bride. Had not his new French brother-in-law done the like years ago?[25] To what extent this idea had really entered Henry's head at the time it is difficult to say; but courtiers and diplomatists have keen eyes, and they must have known which way the wind was blowing before they talked thus. In October 1514 Katharine was borne slowly in a litter to Dover, with the great concourse that went to speed Mary Tudor on her loveless two months' marriage; and a few weeks afterwards Katharine gave birth prematurely to a dead child. Once more the hopes of Henry were dashed, and though Peter Martyr ascribed the misfortune to Henry's unkindness, the superst.i.tious time-servers of the King, and those in favour of the French alliance, began to hint that Katharine's offspring was accursed, and that to get an heir the King must take another wife. The doings at Court were still as brilliant and as frivolous as ever; the King's great delight being in adopting some magnificent, and, of course, perfectly transparent disguise in masque or ball, and then to disclose himself when every one, the Queen included, was supposed to be lost in wonder at the grace and agility of the pretended unknown. Those who take pleasure in the details of such puerility may be referred to Hall's _Chronicle_ for them: we here have more to do with the hearts beneath the finery, than with the trappings themselves.

That Katharine was striving desperately at this time to retain her influence over her husband, and her popularity in England, is certain from the letter of Ferdinand's amba.s.sador (6th December 1514). He complains that on the recommendation of Friar Diego Katharine had thrown over her father's interests in order to keep the love of Henry and his people. The Castilian interest and the Manuels have captured her, wrote the amba.s.sador, and if Ferdinand did not promptly "put a bridle on this colt"

(_i.e._ Henry) and bring Katharine to her bearings as her father's daughter, England would be for ever lost to Aragon.[26] There is no doubt that at this time Katharine felt that her only chance of keeping her footing was to please Henry, and "forget Spain," as Friar Diego advised her to do.

When the King of France died on New Year's Day, 1515, and his young widow--Katharine's friend, Mary Tudor--clandestinely married her lover, Charles Brandon, Katharine's efforts to reconcile her husband to the peccant pair are evidence, if no other existed, that Henry's anger was more a.s.sumed than real, and that his vanity was pleased by the submissive prayers for his forgiveness. As no doubt the Queen, and Wolsey, who had joined his efforts with hers, foresaw, not only were Mary and Brandon pardoned, but taken into high favour. At the public marriage of Mary and Brandon at Greenwich at Easter 1515 more tournaments, masques and b.a.l.l.s, enabled the King to show off his gallantry and agility in compet.i.tion with his new brother-in-law; and on the subsequent May Day at Shooter's Hill, Katharine and Mary, who were inseparable, took part in elaborate and costly _al fresco_ entertainments in which Robin Hood, several pagan deities, and the various attributes of spring, were paraded for their delectation. It all sounds very gay, though somewhat silly, as we read the endless catalogues of bedizenment, of tilts and races, feasting, dancing, and music that delighted Henry and his friends; but before Katharine there ever hovered the spectre of her childlessness, and Henry, after the ceremonial gaiety and overdone gallantry to his wife, would too frequently put spurs to his courser and gallop off to New Hall in Ess.e.x, where Lady Tailebois lived.

A gleam of hope and happiness came to her late in 1515 when she was again expecting to become a mother. By liberal gifts--"the greatest presents ever brought to England," said Henry himself--and by flattery unlimited, Ferdinand, almost on his death-bed, managed to "bridle" his son-in-law, to borrow a large sum of money from him and draw him anew into a coalition against France. But the hope was soon dashed; King Ferdinand died almost simultaneously with the birth of a girl-child to his daughter Katharine.

It is true the babe was like to live, but a son, not a daughter, was what Henry wanted. Yet he put the best face on the matter publicly. The Venetian amba.s.sador purposely delayed his congratulations, because the child was of the wrong s.e.x; and when finally he coldly offered them, he pointedly told the King that they would have been much more hearty if the child had been a son. "We are both young," replied Henry. "If it is a daughter this time, by the grace of G.o.d sons will follow." The desire of the King for a male heir was perfectly natural. No Queen had reigned independently over England; and for the perpetuation of a new dynasty like the Tudors the succession in the male line was of the highest importance.

In addition to this, Henry was above all things proud of his manliness, and he looked upon the absence of a son as in some sort reflecting a humiliation upon him.

Katharine's health had never been robust; and at the age of thirty-three, after four confinements, she had lost her bloom. Disappointment and suffering, added to her const.i.tutional weakness, was telling upon her, and her influence grew daily smaller. The gorgeous shows and frivolous amus.e.m.e.nts in which her husband so much delighted palled upon her, and she now took little pains to feign enjoyment in them, giving up much of her time to religious exercises, fasting rigidly twice a week and saints' days throughout the year, in addition to the Lenten observances, and wearing beneath her silks and satins a rough Franciscan nun's gown of serge. As in the case of so many of her kindred, mystical devotion was weaving its grey web about her, and saintliness of the peculiar Spanish type was covering her as with a garment. Henry, on the contrary, was a full-blooded young man of twenty-eight, with a physique like that of a butcher, held by no earthly control or check upon his appet.i.tes, overflowing with vitality and the joy of life; and it is not to be wondered at that he found his disillusioned and consciously saintly wife a somewhat uncomfortable companion.

The death of Louis XII., Maximilian, and Ferdinand, and the peaceful accession of young Charles to the throne of Spain and the prospective imperial crown, entirely altered the political aspect of Europe. Francis I. needed peace in the first years of his reign; and to Charles it was also desirable, in order that his rule over turbulent Spain could be firmly established and his imperial succession secured. All the English ministers and councillors were heavily bribed by France, Wolsey himself was strongly in favour of the French connection, and everybody entered into a conspiracy to flatter Henry. The natural result was a league first of England and France, and subsequently a general peace to which all the princ.i.p.al Christian potentates subscribed, and men thought that the millennium had come. Katharine's international importance had disappeared with the death of her father and the accession of Charles to the throne of Aragon as well as to that of Castile. Wolsey was now Henry's sole adviser in matters of state and managed his master dexterously, whilst endeavouring not entirely to offend the Queen. Glimpses of his harmonious relations with Katharine at this time (1516-1520) are numerous. At the splendid christening of the Princess Mary, Wolsey was one of the sponsors, and he was "gossip" with Katharine at the baptism of Mary Tudor d.u.c.h.ess of Suffolk's son.

Nor can the Queen's famous action after the evil May Day (1517) have been opposed or discountenanced by the Cardinal. The universal peace had brought to London hosts of foreigners, especially Frenchmen, and the alien question was acute. Wolsey, whose sudden rise and insolence had deeply angered the n.o.bles, had, as princ.i.p.al promoter of the unpopular peace with France, to bear a full share of the detestation in which his friends the aliens were held. Late in April there were rumours that a general attack upon foreigners by the younger citizens would be made, and at Wolsey's instance the civic authorities ordered that all the Londoners should keep indoors. Some lads in Chepe disregarded the command, and the Alderman of the Ward attempted to arrest one of them. Then rose the cry of "'Prentices and Clubs! Death to the Cardinal!" and forth there poured from lane and alley riotous youngsters by the hundred, to wreak vengeance on the insolent foreigners who took the bread out of worthy Englishmen's mouths.

Sack and pillage reigned for a few hours, but the guard quelled the boys with blood, the King rode hastily from Richmond, the Lieutenant of the Tower dropped a few casual cannon-b.a.l.l.s into the city, and before sunset all was quiet. The gibbets rose at the street corners and a b.l.o.o.d.y vengeance fell upon the rioters. Dozens were hanged, drawn, and quartered with atrocious cruelty; and under the ruthless Duke of Norfolk four hundred more were condemned to death for treason to the King, who, it was bitterly said in London, loved outlanders better than his own folk. It is unlikely that Henry really meant to plunge all his capital in mourning by hanging the flower of its youth, but he loved, for vanity's sake, that his clemency should be publicly sought, and to act the part of a deity in restoring to life those legally dead. In any case, Katharine's spontaneous and determined intercession for the 'prentice lads would take no denial, and she pleaded with effect. Her intercession, nevertheless, could hardly have been so successful as it was if Wolsey had been opposed to it; and the subsequent comedy in the great Hall at Westminster on the 22nd May was doubtless planned to afford Henry an opportunity of appearing in his favourite character. Seated upon a canopied throne high upon a das of brocade, surrounded by his prelates and n.o.bles and with Wolsey by his side, Henry frowned in crimson velvet whilst the "poore younglings and olde false knaves" trooped in, a sorry procession, stripped to their s.h.i.+rts, with halters around their necks. Wolsey in stern words rebuked their crime, and scolded the Lord Mayor and Aldermen for their laxity; ending by saying they all deserved to hang. "Mercy! gracious lord, mercy!"

cried the terrified boys and their distracted mothers behind; and the Cardinal and the peers knelt before the throne to beg the life of the offenders, which the King granted, and with a great shout of joy halters were stripped from many a callow neck, and cast into the rafters of the Hall for very joy. But all men knew, and the mothers too, that Wolsey's intercession was only make-believe, and that what they saw was but the ceremonial act of grace. The Queen they thanked in their hearts and not the haughty Cardinal, for the King had pardoned the 'prentices privately days before, when Katharine and her two sisters-in-law, the widowed Queens of France and Scotland, had knelt before the King in unfeigned tears, and had clamoured for the lives of the Londoners. To the day of the Queen's unhappy death this debt was never forgotten by the citizens, who loved her faithfully to the end far better than any of her successors.

The sweating sickness in the autumn of 1517 sent Henry and his wife as far away from contagion as possible, for sickness always frightened the big bully into a panic. During his absence from London, Wolsey was busy negotiating a still closer alliance with France, by the marriage of the baby Princess Mary to the newly born Dauphin. It can hardly have been the match that Katharine would have chosen for her cherished only child, but she was a cypher by the side of Wolsey now, and made no open move against it at the time. Early in the spring of 1518 the plague broke out again, and Henry in dire fear started upon a progress in the midlands. Richard Pace, who accompanied him, wrote to Wolsey on the 12th April telling him as a secret that the Queen was again pregnant. "I pray G.o.d heartily," he continued, "that it may be a prince to the surety and universal comfort of the realm;" and he begs the Cardinal to write a kind letter to the Queen.

In June the glad tidings were further confirmed, as likely to result in "an event most earnestly desired by the whole kingdom." Still dodging the contagion, the King almost fled from one place to another, and when at Woodstock in July Henry himself wrote a letter to Wolsey which tells in every line how anxious he was that the coming event should be the fulfilment of his ardent hope. Katharine had awaited him at Woodstock, and he had been rejoiced at the confident hope she gave him. He tells Wolsey the news formally, and says that he will remove the Queen as little and as quietly as may be to avoid risk. Soon all the diplomatists were speculating at the great things that would happen when the looked-for prince was born; and it was probably the confident hope that this time Henry would not be disappointed, that made possible the success of Wolsey's policy and the marriage of the Princess Mary with the infant Dauphin. Of Wolsey's magnificent feasts that accompanied the ratification of peace and the betrothal on the 5th October, feasts more splendid, says the Venetian amba.s.sador, than ever were given by Caligula or Cleopatra, no account can be given here. It was Wolsey's great triumph, and he surpa.s.sed all the records of luxury in England in its celebration. The sweet little bride dressed in cloth of gold stood before the thrones upon which her father and mother sat in the great Hall of Greenwich, and then, carried in the arms of a prelate, was held up whilst the Cardinal slipped the diamond wedding-ring upon her finger and blessed her nuptials with the baby bridegroom. That the heir of France should marry the heiress of England was a danger to the balance of Europe, and especially a blow to Spain. It was, moreover, not a match which England could regard with equanimity; for a French King Consort would have been repugnant to the whole nation, and Henry could never have meant to conclude the marriage finally, unless the expected heir was born. But alas! for human hopes. On the night of 10th November 1518, Katharine was delivered of a daughter, "to the vexation of as many as knew it," and King and nation mourned together, now that, after all, a Frenchman might reign over England.

To Katharine this last disappointment was bitter indeed. Her husband, wounded and irritated, first in his pride, and now in his national interests, avoided her; her own country and kin had lost the English tie that meant so much to them, and she herself, in poor health and waning attractions, could only mourn her misfortunes, and cling more closely than ever to her one darling child, Mary, for the new undesired infant girl had died as soon as it was born. The ceaseless round of masking, mummery, and dancing, which so much captivated Henry, went on without abatement, and Katharine perforce had to take her part in it; but all the King's tenderness was now shown not to his wife but to his little daughter, whom he carried about in his arms and praised inordinately.[27] So frivolous and familiar indeed had Henry's behaviour grown that his Council took fright, and, under the thin veil of complaints against the behaviour of his boon companions, Carew, Peachy, Wingfield, and Brian, who were banished from Court, they took Henry himself seriously to task. The four French hostages, held for the payment of the war indemnity, were also feasted and entertained so familiarly by Henry, under Wolsey's influence, as to cause deep discontent to the lieges, who had always looked upon France as an enemy, and knew that the unpopular Cardinal's overwhelming display was paid for by French bribes. At one such entertainment Katharine was made to act as hostess at her dower-house of Havering in Ess.e.x, where, in the summer of 1519, we are told that, "for their welcomyng she purveyed all thynges in the most liberalist manner; and especially she made to the Kyng suche a sumpteous banket that he thanked her hartely, and the strangers gave it great praise." Later in the same year Katharine was present at a grand series of entertainments given by the King in the splendid new manor-house which he had built for Lady Tailebois, who had just rejoiced him by giving birth to a son. We have no record of Katharine's thoughts as she took part here in the tedious foolery so minutely described by Hall. She plucked off the masks, we are told, of eight disguised dancers in long dominos of blue satin and gold, "who danced with the ladies sadly, and communed not with them after the fas.h.i.+on of maskers." Of course the masqueraders were the Duke of Suffolk (Brandon) and other great n.o.bles, as the poor Queen must well have known; but when she thought that all this mummery was to entertain Frenchmen, and the house in which it pa.s.sed was devoted to the use of Henry's mistress, she must have covered her own heart with a more impenetrable mask than those of Suffolk and his companions, if her face was attuned to the gay sights and sounds around her.

[Ill.u.s.tration: _KATHARINE OF ARAGON_

_From a portrait by_ HOLBEIN _in the National Portrait Gallery_]

Katharine had now almost ceased to strive for the objects to which her life had been sacrificed, namely, the binding together of England and Spain to the detriment of France. Wolsey had believed that his own interests would be better served by a close French alliance, and he had had his way. Henry himself was but the vainglorious figure in the international pageant; the motive power was the Cardinal. But a greater than Wolsey, Charles of Austria and Spain, though he was as yet only a lad of nineteen, had appeared upon the scene, and soon was to make his power felt throughout the world. Wolsey's close union with France and the marriage of the Princess Mary with the Dauphin had been meant as a blow to Spain, to lead if possible to the election of Henry to the imperial crown, in succession to Maximilian, instead of the latter's grandson Charles. If the King of England were made Emperor, the way of the Cardinal of York to the throne of St. Peter was clear. Henry was flattered at the idea, and was ready to follow his minister anywhere to gain such a showy prize. But quite early in the struggle it was seen that the unpopular French alliance which had already cost England the surrender of the King's conquests in the war was powerless to bring about the result desired. Francis I., as vain and turbulent as Henry, and perhaps more able, was bidding high for the Empire himself. His success in the election would have been disastrous both to Spain and England, and yet the French alliance was too dear to Wolsey to be easily relinquished, and Francis was a.s.sured that all the interest of his dear brother of England should be cast in his favour, whilst, with much more truth, the Spanish candidate was plied with good wishes for his success, and underhand attempts were made at the same time to gain the electors for the King of England.[28] Wolsey hoped thus to win in any case; and up to a certain point he did so; for he gave to Charles the encouragement he needed for the masterly move which soon after revolutionised political relations.

Charles at this time (1519), young as he was, had already developed his marvellous mental and physical powers. Patient and self-centred, with all his Aragonese grandfather's subtlety, he possessed infinitely greater boldness and width of view. He knew well that the seven prince electors who chose the Emperor might, like other men, be bought, if enough money could be found. To provide it and give to him the dominant power of the world, he was ready to crush the ancient liberties of Castile, to squeeze his Italian and Flemish dominions of their last obtainable ducat, for he knew that his success in the election would dazzle his subjects until they forgot what they had paid for it. And so it happened. Where Francis bribed in hundreds Charles bribed in thousands, and England in the conflict of money-bags and great territorial interests hardly counted at all. When Charles was elected Emperor in June 1519, Henry professed himself delighted; but it meant that the universal peace that had been proclaimed with such a flourish of trumpets only three years before was already tottering, and that England must soon make a choice as to which of the two great rivals should be her friend, and which her enemy.

Francis nursed his wrath to keep it warm, and did his best to retain Henry and Wolsey on his side. Bribes and pensions flowed freely from France upon English councillors, the inviolable love of Henry and Francis, alike in gallantry and age, was insisted upon again and again; the three-year-old Princess Mary was referred to always as Dauphiness and future Queen of France, though when the little Dauphin was spoken of as future King of England, Henry's subjects pulled a wry face and cursed all Frenchmen. A meeting between the two allies, which for its splendour should surpa.s.s all other regal displays, was constantly urged by the French hostages in England by order of Francis, as a means of showing to the world that he could count upon Henry. To the latter the meeting was agreeable as a tribute to his power, and as a satisfaction to his love of show, and to Wolsey it was useful as enhancing his sale value in the eyes of two lavish bidders. To Charles, who shared none of the frivolous tastes of his rival sovereigns, it only appealed as a design against him to be forestalled and defeated. When, therefore, the preparations for the Field of the Cloth of Gold were in full swing early in the year 1520, Charles, by a brilliant though risky move such as his father Philip would have loved, took the first step to win England to his side in the now inevitable struggle for supremacy between the Empire and France. Whilst he was still wrangling with his indignant Castilian parliament in March, Charles sent envoys to England to propose a friendly meeting with Henry whilst on his way by sea from Spain to Flanders. It was Katharine's chance and she made the most of it. She had suffered long and patiently whilst the French friends.h.i.+p was paramount; but if G.o.d would vouchsafe her the boon of seeing her nephew in England it would, she said to his envoys, be the measure of her desires. Wolsey, too, smiled upon the suggestion, for failing Francis the new Emperor in time might help him to the Papacy.

So, with all secrecy, a solemn treaty was signed on the 11th April 1520, settling, down to the smallest details, the reception of Charles by Henry and Katharine at Sandwich and Canterbury, on his voyage or else at a subsequent meeting of the monarchs between Calais and Gravelines.

It was late in May when news came from the west that the Spanish fleet was sailing up the Channel;[29] and Henry was riding towards the sea from London ostensibly to embark for France when he learnt that the Emperor's s.h.i.+ps were becalmed off Dover. Wolsey was despatched post-haste to greet the imperial visitor and invite him to land; and Charles, surrounded by a gorgeous suite of lords and ladies, with the black eagle of Austria on cloth of gold fluttering over and around him, was conducted to Dover Castle, where before dawn next morning, the 27th May, Henry arrived and welcomed his nephew. There was no mistaking the cordiality of the English cheers that rang in peals from Dover to Canterbury and through the ancient city, as the two monarchs rode side by side in gorgeous array. They meant, as clearly as tone could speak, that the enemy of France and Queen Katharine's nephew was the friend for the English people, whatever the Cardinal of York might think. To Katharine it was a period of rejoicing, and her thoughts were high as she welcomed her sister's son; the sallow young man with yellow hair, already in t.i.tle the greatest monarch in the world, though beset with difficulties. By her stood beautiful Mary Tudor, d.u.c.h.ess of Suffolk, twice married since she had, as a child, been betrothed under such heavy guarantees to Charles himself; and, holding her mother's hand, was the other Mary Tudor, a prim, quaint little maid of four, with big brown eyes. Already great plans for her filled her mother's brain. True, she was betrothed to the Dauphin; but what if the hateful French match fell through, and the Emperor, he of her own kin, were to seal a national alliance by marrying the daughter of England? Charles feasted for four days at Canterbury, and then went on his way amidst loving plaudits to his s.h.i.+ps at Sandwich; but before he sailed he whispered that to Wolsey which made the Cardinal his servant; for the Emperor, suzerain of Italy and King of Naples, Sicily, and Spain, might do more than a King of France in future towards making a Pope.

By the time that Henry and Francis met early in June on the ever-memorable field between Ardres and Guisnes, the riot of splendour which surrounded the sovereigns and Wolsey, though it dazzled the crowd and left its mark upon history as a pageant, was known to the princ.i.p.al actors of the scene to be but hollow mockery. The glittering baubles that the two kings loved, the courtly dallying, the pompous ceremony, the masques and devices to symbolise eternal amity, were not more evanescent than the love they were supposed to perpetuate. Katharine went through her ceremonial part of the show as a duty, and graciously received the visit of Francis in the wonderful flimsy palace of wood, drapery, and gla.s.s at Guisnes; but her heart was across the Flemish frontier a few miles away, where her nephew awaited the coming of the King of England to greet him as his kinsman and future ally. Gravelines was a poor place, but Charles had other ways of influencing people than by piling up gewgaws before them. A single day of rough, hearty feasting was an agreeable relief to Henry after the glittering insincerity of Guisnes; and the four days following, in which Charles was entertained at Calais as the guest of Henry and Katharine, made up in prodigality for the coa.r.s.eness of the Flemish fare;[30] whilst Wolsey, who was already posing as the arbitrator between all Christian potentates, was secured to the side of the Emperor in future by a grant of the bulk of the income from two Spanish bishoprics, Badajoz and Palencia.

Already the two great rivals were bidding against each other for allies, and Charles, though his resources were less concentrated than those of Francis, could promise most. Leo X. for his own territorial ambition, and in fear of Luther, rallied to the side of the Emperor, the German princes seconded their suzerain, and the great struggle for the supremacy of Christendom began in March 1521. England by treaty was bound to a.s.sist France, but this did not suit Wolsey or Henry in their new mood, and the Cardinal pressed his arbitration on the combatants. Francis reluctantly consented to negotiate; but minds were aflame with a subject that added fierceness to the political rivalry between Charles and Francis. The young Emperor, when he had met the German princes at Worms (April 1521), had thrown down the gage to Luther, and thenceforward it was war to the knife between the old faith and the new spirit. Henry, we may be certain to the delight of Katharine, violently attacked Luther in his famous book, and was flattered by the fulsome praises of the Pope and the Emperor. In the circ.u.mstances Wolsey's voyage to Calais for the furtherance of arbitration was turned into one to conclude an armed alliance with Charles and the Pope. The Cardinal, who had bent all others to his will, was himself bent by the Emperor; and the arbitrator between two monarchs became the servant of one. By the treaty signed at Bruges by Wolsey for Henry, Charles contracted an engagement to marry his little cousin, Princess Mary, and to visit England for a formal betrothal in the following year.

How completely Wolsey had at this time surrendered himself to the Emperor, is evident from Katharine's new att.i.tude towards him. During his period of French sympathy she had been, as we have seen, practically alienated from state affairs, but now in Henry's letters to Wolsey her name is frequently mentioned and her advice was evidently welcome.[31] During his absence in Flanders, for instance, Wolsey received a letter from Henry, in which the King says: "The Queen, my wife, hath desired me to make her most hearty recommendation unto you, as to him that she loveth very well; and both she and I would fain know when you would repair unto us." Great news came that the Emperor and his allies were brilliantly successful in the war, but in the midst of victory the great Medici, Pope Leo X., though still a man in his prime, died. There is no doubt that a secret promise had been made by Charles to Wolsey of his support in case a vacancy in the Papacy arose, but no one had dreamed of its occurring so quickly,[32] and Charles found his hand forced. He needed for his purpose a far more pliable instrument in the pontifical chair than the haughty Cardinal of York. So, whilst pretending to work strenuously to promote Wolsey's elevation, and thus to gain the goodwill of Henry and his minister, he took care secretly that some humbler candidate, such as the one ultimately chosen by the Conclave, his old schoolmaster, Cardinal Adrian, should be the new Pope. Wolsey was somewhat sulky at the result of the election, and thenceforward looked with more distrust on the imperial connection; but, withal, he put as good a face on the matter as possible; and when, at the end of May 1522, he again welcomed the Emperor in Henry's name as he set foot on English soil at Dover, the Cardinal, though watchful, was still favourable to the alliance. This visit of the young Emperor was the most splendid royal sojourn ever made in England; and Henry revelled in the ceremonies wherein he was the host of the greatest monarch upon earth.

Charles came with a train of a thousand horse and two thousand courtiers; and to feed and house such a mult.i.tude, the guilds of London, and even the princ.i.p.al citizens, were obliged to make return of all their spare beds and stocks of provisions in order to provide for the strangers. The journey of the monarchs was a triumphal progress from Dover through Canterbury, Sittingbourne, and Rochester to Gravesend. On the downs between Dover and Canterbury, Henry and a great train of n.o.bles was to have met his nephew; but the more to do him honour the King rode into Dover itself, and with pride showed his visitor his new great s.h.i.+p the _Harry Grace a Dieu_, and the rest of the English fleet; whereupon, "the Emperor and his lords much praised the making of the s.h.i.+ps, and especially the artillery: they said they had never seen s.h.i.+ps so armed." From Gravesend the gallant company rowed in the royal barges amidst salvoes of guns to Greenwich. There at the hall door of the palace stood Katharine surrounded by her ladies, and holding her tiny daughter by the hand.

Sinking upon one knee the Emperor craved his aunt's blessing, which was given, and thenceforward for five weeks the feasting and glorious shows went on without intermission.

On the second day after the arrival at Greenwich, whilst Henry was arming for a joust, a courier, all travel-stained and weary, demanded prompt audience, to hand the King a letter from his amba.s.sador in France. The King read the despatch with knitted brows, and, turning to his friend Sir William Compton, said: "Go and tell the Emperor I have news for him." When Charles came the letter was handed to him, and it must have rejoiced his heart as he read it. Francis bade defiance to the King of England, and thenceforward Henry and the Emperor were allies in arms against a common enemy. Glittering pageants followed in London and Windsor, where Charles sat as Knight of the Garter under triumphant Henry's presidency; masques and dances, banquets and hunting, delighted the host and surprised the guests with the unrestrained lavishness of the welcome;[33] but we may be certain that what chiefly interested Katharine and her nephew was not this costly trifling, but the eternal friends.h.i.+p between England and Spain solemnly sworn upon the sacrament in St. George's Chapel, Windsor, by the Emperor and Henry, and the binding alliance between them in peace and war, cemented by the pledge that Charles should marry his cousin Mary Tudor and no one else in the world. It was Katharine's final and greatest triumph, and the shadows fell thick and fast thereafter.

Henry promptly took his usual showy and unprofitable part in the war. Only a few weeks after the Emperor bade his new ally farewell, an English force invaded Picardy, and the Earl of Surrey's fleet threatened all French s.h.i.+pping in the Channel. Coerced by the King of England too, Venice deserted France and joined forces with the allies; the new Pope and the Italian princes did the same, and the Emperor's arms carried all before them in Italy. Henry was kept faithful to his ally by the vain hope of a dismemberment of France, in which he should be the princ.i.p.al gainer; the Pope Clement VII., the ambitious Medici, who succeeded Adrian in September 1523, hungered for fresh territory which Charles alone could give him; the rebel De Bourbon, the greatest soldier of France, was fighting against his own king; and in February 1525 the crus.h.i.+ng blow of Pavia fell, and Francis, "all lost except honour," was a prisoner in the hands of his enemy, who looking over Christendom saw none to say him nay but the bold monk at Wittemberg.

Three years of costly war for interests not primarily their own had already disillusioned the English people. By methods more violent and tyrannical than ever had been adopted by any previous king, Henry had wrung from parliament supplies so oppressive and extortionate for the purposes of the war as to disgust and incense the whole country. Wolsey, too, had been for the second time beguiled about the Papacy he coveted, and knew now that he could not trust the Emperor to serve any interests but his own. The French collapse at Pavia, moreover, and pity for the captive Francis languis.h.i.+ng at Madrid, had caused in England and elsewhere a reaction in his favour. Henry himself was, as was his wont, violently angry at the cynical way in which his own hopes in France were shelved by Charles; and the Pope, alarmed now at the Emperor's unchecked dominion in Italy, and the insufficient share of the spoil offered to him, also began to look askance at his ally. So, notwithstanding the official rejoicings in England when the news of Pavia came, and the revived plan of Henry and Wolsey to join Bourbon in his intention to dismember France, with or without the aid of Charles, the Archbishop of Canterbury, Warham, correctly interpreted the prevailing opinion in England in his letter to Wolsey (quoted by Hallam), saying that the people had "more cause to weep than to rejoice" at the French defeat. The renewed extortionate demands for money aroused in England discontent so dangerous as to reach rebellion against the King's officers.[34] Risings in Kent and the eastern counties, and the outspoken remonstrances of the leaders of the middle and working cla.s.ses at length convinced Wolsey, and through him the King, that a change of policy was inevitable. England once more had been made the cat's-paw of Spain; and now, with an empty exchequer and a profoundly discontented people, was obliged again to s.h.i.+ft its balance to the side which promised the best hopes for peace, and to redress the equilibrium in Europe upon which the English power depended. France was still rich in resources, and was made to pay or rather promise the vast sum of two million crowns in instalments, and an annuity of a hundred thousand a year to the King for England's friends.h.i.+p, whilst Francis was forced to abandon all his claims on Italy and Burgundy (January 1526), and marry the Emperor's sister Leonora, before he was permitted to return to France, at peace once more. It is true that every party to the treaties endeavoured to evade the fulfilment of his pledges; but that was the custom of the times. The point that interests us here is that the new policy now actively pursued by Wolsey of close friends.h.i.+p with France, necessarily meant the ruin of Katharine, unless she was dexterous and adaptable enough either to reverse the policy or openly espouse it. Unfortunately she did neither. She was now forty-one years of age, and had ceased for nearly two years to cohabit with her husband. Her health was bad; she had grown stout, and her comeliness had departed; all hopes of her giving to the King the son and heir for whom he so ardently craved had quite vanished, and with them much of her personal hold upon her husband. To her alarm and chagrin, Henry, as if in despair of being succeeded by a legitimate heir, in 1525, before signing the new alliance with France, had created his dearly loved natural son, Henry Fitzroy, a duke under the royal t.i.tle of Duke of Richmond, which had been borne by his father; and Katharine, not without reason, feared the King's intention to depose her daughter, the betrothed of the Emperor, in favour of an English b.a.s.t.a.r.d. We have in previous pages noticed the peculiar absence of tact and flexibility in Katharine's character; and Wolsey's ostentatious French leanings after 1525 were met by the Queen with open opposition and acrimonious reproach, instead of by temporising wiliness. The Emperor's off-hand treatment of his betrothed bride, Mary Tudor, further embittered Katharine, who was thus surrounded on every side by disillusionment and disappointment.

Charles sent commissioners to England just before the battle of Pavia to demand, amongst other unamiable requirements, the prompt sending of Mary, who was only nine years old, to Flanders with an increased dowry. This was no part of the agreement, and was, as no doubt Charles foresaw and desired, certain to be refused. The envoys received from Henry and Katharine, and more emphatically from Wolsey, a negative answer to the request,[35] Mary being, as they said, the greatest treasure they had, for whom no hostages would be sufficient.[36] Katharine would not let her nephew slip out of his engagement without a struggle. Mary herself was made soon after to send a fine emerald to her betrothed with a grand message to the effect that when they came together she would be able to know (_i.e._ by the clearness or otherwise of the gem) "whether his Majesty do keep himself as continent and chaste as, with G.o.d's grace, she will." As at this time the Emperor was a man of twenty-five, whilst his bride had not reached ten years, the cases were hardly parallel; and within three months (in July 1525) Charles had betrothed himself to his cousin of Portugal. The treaty that had been so solemnly sworn to on the high altar at Windsor only three years before, had thus become so much waste-paper, and Katharine's best hopes for her child and herself were finally defeated. A still greater trial for her followed; for whilst Wolsey was drawing nearer and nearer to France, and the King himself was becoming more distant from his wife every day, the little Princess was taken from the loving care of her mother, and sent to reside in her princ.i.p.ality of Wales.[37] Thenceforward the life of Katharine was a painful martyrdom without one break in the monotony of misfortune.

Katharine appears never to have been unduly jealous of Henry's various mistresses. She, one of the proudest princesses in Christendom, probably considered them quite beneath her notice, and as usual adjuncts to a sovereign's establishment. Henry, moreover, was far from being a generous or complaisant lover; and allowed his lady favourites no great social and political power, such as that wielded by the mistresses of Francis I. Lady Tailebois (Eleanor Blount) made no figure at Court, and Mary Boleyn, the wife of William Carey, a quite undistinguished courtier, who had been Henry's mistress from about 1521,[38] was always impecunious and sometimes disreputable, though her greedy father reaped a rich harvest from his daughter's attractions. Katharine evidently troubled herself very little about such infidelity on the part of her husband, and certainly Wolsey had no objection. The real anxiety of the Queen arose from Henry's ardent desire for a legitimate son, which she could not hope to give him; and Wolsey, with his eyes constantly fixed on the Papacy, decided to make political capital and influence for himself by binding France and England so close together both dynastically and politically as to have both kings at his bidding before the next Pope was elected. The first idea was the betrothal of the jilted Princess Mary of ten to the middle-aged widower who sat upon the throne of France. An emba.s.sy came to London from the Queen Regent of France, whilst Francis was still a prisoner in Madrid in 1525, to smooth the way for a closer intimacy. Special instructions were given to the amba.s.sador to dwell upon the complete recovery of Francis from his illness, and to make the most of the Emperor's unfaithfulness to his English betrothed for the purpose of marrying the richly dowered Portuguese. Francis eventually regained his liberty on hard conditions that included his marriage with Charles's widowed sister Leonora, Queen Dowager of Portugal; and his sons were to remain in Spain as hostages for his fulfilment of the terms. But from the first Francis intended to violate the treaty of Madrid, wherever possible; and early in 1527 a stately train of French n.o.bles, headed by De Grammont, Bishop of Tarbes, came with a formal demand for the hand of young Mary Tudor for the already much-married Francis. Again the palace of Greenwich was a blaze of splendour for the third nuptials of the little princess; and the elaborate mummery that Henry loved was re-enacted.[39] On the journeys to and from their lodgings in Merchant Taylors' Hall, the Bishop of Tarbes and Viscount de Turenne heard nothing but muttered curses, saw nothing but frowning faces of the London people; for Mary was in the eyes of Henry's subjects the heiress of England, and they would have, said they, no Frenchman to reign over them when their own king should die.[40] Katharine took little part in the betrothal festivities, for she was a mere shadow now. Her little daughter was made to show off her accomplishments to the Frenchmen, speaking to them in French and Latin, playing on the harpsichord, and dancing with the Viscount de Turenne, whilst the poor Queen looked sadly on. Stiff with gems and cloth of gold, the girl, appearing, we are told, "like an angel," gravely played her part to her proud father's de