Wives of Henry the Eighth and the Parts They Played in History — Why Katharine Came to England, Part 2

For the next two years the political intrigues of Europe centered around the marriage of the young Duchess of Brittany.

Though Roussillon and Cerdagne mattered nothing to Henry VII.

, the disposal of the rich duchy opposite his own shores was of importance to him.

France, Spain, England, and the Empire were all trying to outbid one another for the marriage of the Duchess; 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 Duchess 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 Duchess 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 assist 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 nobles 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 ambassadors 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 institutions"; 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 ambassador 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, assured 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 duchess 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 ambassador 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 nobles were already arranging jousts and tournaments for her entertainment.

Ferdinand, on the other hand, continued to send reassuring 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 ships necessary for the passage, 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 ambassador 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 God had rarely been silent in her childish ears.

So, with shining 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 ship, 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 ships finally into the safety of Plymouth harbour on Saturday 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 shield, 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