Catherine, of Aragon, Queen, consort of Henry VIII, King of England, 1485-1536

Catherine of Aragon (Spanish: Catalina; 16 December 1485 – 7 January 1536) was Queen of England as the first wife of King Henry VIII from their marriage on 11 June 1509 until their annulment on 23 May 1533. She was previously Princess of Wales as the wife of Henry's elder brother, Arthur, Prince of Wales.

The daughter of Isabella I of Castile and Ferdinand II of Aragon, Catherine was three years old when she was betrothed to Prince Arthur, heir apparent to the English throne. They married in 1501, but Arthur died five months later. Catherine held the position of ambassador of the Aragonese crown to England in 1507, the first known female ambassador in European history.[1] She married Arthur's younger brother, the recently ascended Henry VIII, in 1509. For six months in 1513, she served as regent of England while Henry VIII was in France. During that time the English crushed and defeated the Scottish at the Battle of Flodden, an event in which Catherine played an important part with an emotional speech about English courage.[2]

By 1525, Henry VIII was infatuated with Anne Boleyn and dissatisfied that his marriage to Catherine had produced no surviving sons, leaving their daughter Mary as heir presumptive at a time when there was no established precedent for a woman on the throne. He sought to have their marriage annulled, setting in motion a chain of events that led to England's schism with the Catholic Church. When Pope Clement VII refused to annul the marriage, Henry defied him by assuming supremacy over religious matters. In 1533 their marriage was consequently declared invalid and Henry married Anne on the judgement of clergy in England, without reference to the pope. Catherine refused to accept Henry as supreme head of the Church in England and considered herself the king's rightful wife and queen, attracting much popular sympathy.[3] Despite this, Henry acknowledged her only as dowager princess of Wales. After being banished from court by Henry, Catherine lived out the remainder of her life at Kimbolton Castle, dying there in January 1536 of cancer. The English people held Catherine in high esteem, and her death set off tremendous mourning.[4] Her daughter Mary would become the first undisputed English queen regnant in 1553.

Catherine commissioned The Education of a Christian Woman by Juan Luis Vives, and Vives dedicated the book, controversial at the time, to the Queen in 1523. Such was Catherine's impression on people that even her enemy Thomas Cromwell said of her, "If not for her sex, she could have defied all the heroes of History."[5] She successfully appealed for the lives of the rebels involved in the Evil May Day, for the sake of their families.[6] Catherine also won widespread admiration by starting an extensive programme for the relief of the poor.[6][7] She was a patron of Renaissance humanism, and a friend of the great scholars Erasmus of Rotterdam and Thomas More.[7]

Catherine was born at the Archbishop's Palace of Alcalá de Henares near Madrid, on the early hours of 16 December 1485. She was the youngest surviving child of King Ferdinand II of Aragon and Queen Isabella I of Castile.[8] Catherine was quite short in stature[9] with long red hair, wide blue eyes, a round face, and a fair complexion.[10] She was descended, on her maternal side, from the House of Lancaster, an English royal house; her great-grandmother Catherine of Lancaster, after whom she was named, and her great-great-grandmother Philippa of Lancaster were both daughters of John of Gaunt and granddaughters of Edward III of England. Consequently, she was third cousin of her father-in-law, Henry VII of England,[11] and fourth cousin of her mother-in-law Elizabeth of York.

Catherine was educated by a tutor, Alessandro Geraldini, who was a clerk in Holy Orders. She studied arithmetic, canon and civil law, classical literature, genealogy and heraldry, history, philosophy, religion, and theology. She had a strong religious upbringing and developed her Roman Catholic faith that would play a major role in later life.[12] She learned to speak, read and write in Castilian Spanish and Latin, and spoke French and Greek. She was also taught domestic skills, such as cooking, dancing, drawing, embroidery, good manners, lace-making, music, needlepoint, sewing, spinning, and weaving.[13] Scholar Erasmus later said that Catherine "loved good literature which she had studied with success since childhood".[14]

At an early age, Catherine was considered a suitable wife for Arthur, Prince of Wales, heir apparent to the English throne, due to the English ancestry she inherited from her mother. Theoretically, by means of her mother, Catherine had a stronger legitimate claim to the English throne than King Henry VII himself through the first two wives of John of Gaunt, 1st Duke of Lancaster: Blanche of Lancaster and Constance of Castile. In contrast, Henry VII was the descendant of Gaunt's third marriage to Katherine Swynford, whose children were born out of wedlock and only legitimised after the death of Constance and the marriage of John to Katherine. The children of John and Katherine, while legitimised, were barred from inheriting the English throne, a stricture that was ignored in later generations. Because of Henry's descent through illegitimate children barred from succession to the English throne, the Tudor monarchy was not accepted by all European kingdoms. At the time, the House of Trastámara was the most prestigious in Europe,[11] due to the rule of the Catholic Monarchs, so the alliance of Catherine and Arthur validated the House of Tudor in the eyes of European royalty and strengthened the Tudor claim to the English throne via Catherine of Aragon's ancestry. It would have given a male heir an indisputable claim to the throne. The two were married by proxy on 19 May 1499 and corresponded in Latin until Arthur turned fifteen, when it was decided that they were old enough to be married.[15]

Catherine was accompanied to England by the ambassadors Diego Fernández de Córdoba y Mendoza, 3rd Count of Cabra, Alonso de Fonseca, archbishop of Santiago de Compostela, and Antonio de Rojas Manrique, bishop of Mallorca.[16] She brought a group of her African attendants with her, including one identified as the trumpeter John Blanke.[17] They are the first Africans recorded to have arrived in London at the time, and were considered luxury servants. They caused a great impression about the princess and the power of her family.[18] Her Spanish retinue was supervised by her duenna, Elvira Manuel.

At first it was thought Catherine's ship would arrive at Gravesend. A number of English gentlewomen were appointed to be ready to welcome her on arrival in October 1501. They were to escort Catherine in a flotilla of barges on the Thames to the Tower of London.[19]

hen-15-year-old Catherine departed from A Coruña on 17 August 1501 and met Arthur on 4 November at Dogmersfield in Hampshire.[21][22][23] Little is known about their first impressions of each other, but Arthur did write to his parents-in-law that he would be "a true and loving husband" and told his parents that he was immensely happy to "behold the face of his lovely bride". The couple had corresponded in Latin, but found that they could not understand each other's spoken conversation, because they had learned different Latin pronunciations.[24] Ten days later, on 14 November 1501, they were married at Old St. Paul's Cathedral.[11] A dowry of 200,000 ducats had been agreed, and half was paid shortly after the marriage.[25]

Once married, Arthur was sent to Ludlow Castle on the borders of Wales to preside over the Council of Wales and the Marches, as was his duty as Prince of Wales, and his bride accompanied him. A few months later, they both became ill, possibly with the sweating sickness, which was sweeping the area. Arthur died on 2 April 1502; 16-year-old Catherine recovered to find herself a widow.[26]

At this point, Henry VII faced the challenge of avoiding the obligation to return her 200,000-ducat dowry, half of which he had not yet received, to her father, as required by her marriage contract should she return home.[27] Following the death of Queen Elizabeth in February 1503, King Henry VII initially considered marrying Catherine himself, but the opposition of her father and potential questions over the legitimacy of the couple's issue ended the idea.[28] To settle the matter, it was agreed that Catherine would marry Henry VII's second son, Henry, Duke of York, who was five years younger than she was. The death of Catherine's mother, however, meant that her "value" in the marriage market decreased. Castile was a much larger kingdom than Aragon, and it was inherited by Catherine's elder sister, Joanna. Ostensibly, the marriage was delayed until Henry was old enough, but Ferdinand II procrastinated so much over payment of the remainder of Catherine's dowry that it became doubtful that the marriage would take place. She lived as a virtual prisoner at Durham House in London.[29] Some of the letters she wrote to her father complaining of her treatment have survived. In one of these letters she tells him that "I choose what I believe, and say nothing. For I am not as simple as I may seem." She had little money and struggled to cope, as she had to support her ladies-in-waiting as well as herself. In 1507 she served as the Spanish ambassador to England, the first female ambassador in European history.[1] While Henry VII and his counsellors expected her to be easily manipulated, Catherine went on to prove them wrong.[1]

Marriage to Arthur's brother depended on the Pope granting a dispensation because canon law forbade a man to marry his brother's widow (Lev. 18:16[a]). Catherine testified that her marriage to Arthur was never consummated as, also according to canon law, a marriage was dissoluble unless consummated.[30][31]

Queenship

16th-century woodcut of the coronation of Henry VIII of England and Catherine of Aragon showing their heraldic badges, the Tudor Rose and the Pomegranate of Granada
Wedding
Catherine's second wedding took place on 11 June 1509,[32] seven years after Prince Arthur's death. She married Henry VIII, who had only just acceded to the throne, in a private ceremony in the church of the Observant Friars outside Greenwich Palace. She was 23 years of age.[32][33]

Coronation
On Saturday 23 June 1509, the traditional eve-of-coronation procession to Westminster was greeted by a large and enthusiastic crowd. As was the custom, the couple spent the night before their coronation at the Tower of London. On Midsummer's Day, Sunday, 24 June 1509, Henry VIII and Catherine were anointed and crowned together by the Archbishop of Canterbury at a lavish ceremony at Westminster Abbey. The coronation was followed by a banquet in Westminster Hall. Many new Knights of the Bath were created in honour of the coronation.[32] In that month that followed, many social occasions presented the new Queen to the English public. She made a fine impression and was well received by the people of England.[26]

When Henry decided to annul his marriage to Catherine, John Fisher became her most trusted counsellor and one of her chief supporters. He appeared in the legates' court on her behalf, where he shocked people with the directness of his language, and by declaring that, like John the Baptist, he was ready to die on behalf of the indissolubility of marriage. Henry was so enraged by this that he wrote a long Latin address to the legates in answer to Fisher's speech. Fisher's copy of this still exists, with his manuscript annotations in the margin which show how little he feared Henry's anger. The removal of the cause to Rome ended Fisher's role in the matter, but Henry never forgave him.[61][62] Other people who supported Catherine's case included Thomas More; Henry's own sister Mary Tudor, Queen of France; María de Salinas; Holy Roman Emperor Charles V; Pope Paul III; and Protestant Reformers Martin Luther[63] and William Tyndale.[64]

Upon returning to Dover from a meeting with King Francis I of France in Calais, Henry married Anne Boleyn in a secret ceremony.[65] Some sources speculate that Anne was already pregnant at the time (and Henry did not want to risk a son being born illegitimate) but others testify that Anne (who had seen her sister Mary Boleyn taken up as the king's mistress and summarily cast aside) refused to sleep with Henry until they were married. Henry defended the lawfulness of their union by pointing out that Catherine had previously been married. If she and Arthur had consummated their marriage, Henry by canon law had the right to remarry.[66] On 23 May 1533, Cranmer, sitting in judgement at a special court convened at Dunstable Priory to rule on the validity of Henry's marriage to Catherine, declared the marriage unlawful, even though Catherine had testified that she and Arthur had never had physical relations. Five days later, on 28 May 1533, Cranmer ruled that Henry and Anne's marriage was valid.[67]

Until the end of her life, Catherine would refer to herself as Henry's only lawful wedded wife and England's only rightful queen, and her servants continued to address her as such. Henry refused her the right to any title but "Dowager Princess of Wales" in recognition of her position as his brother's widow.[65]

Catherine went to live at The More castle late in 1531.[68] After that, she was successively moved to the Royal Palace of Hatfield (May to September, 1532), Elsyng Palace, Enfield (September 1532 to February 1533), Ampthill Castle (February to July, 1533) and Buckden Towers (July 1533 to May 1534). She was then finally transferred to Kimbolton Castle, where she confined herself to one room, which she left only to attend Mass, dressed only in the hair shirt of the Order of St. Francis, and fasted continuously.[69] While she was permitted to receive occasional visitors, she was forbidden to see her daughter Mary. They were also forbidden to communicate in writing, but sympathisers discreetly conveyed letters between the two. Henry offered both mother and daughter better quarters and permission to see each other if they would acknowledge Anne Boleyn as the new queen; both refused.[68]

Her baptismal name was "Catalina", but "Katherine" was soon the accepted form in England after her marriage to Arthur.[82] Catherine herself signed her name "Katherine", "Katherina", "Katharine" and sometimes "Katharina". In a letter to her, Arthur, her husband, addressed her as "Princess Katerine". Her daughter Queen Mary I called her "Quene Kateryn", in her will. Rarely were names, particularly first names, written in an exact manner during the sixteenth century and it is evident from Catherine's own letters that she endorsed different variations.[b] Loveknots built into his various palaces by her husband, Henry VIII, display the initials "H & K",[c] as do other items belonging to Henry and Catherine, including gold goblets, a gold salt cellar, basins of gold, and candlesticks. Her tomb in Peterborough Cathedral is marked "Katharine Queen of England".[94][95]