CATHERINE OF ARAGON (1485-1536), queen of Henry VIII. of England, daughter of Ferdinand and Isabella of Spain, was born on the 15th or 16th of December 1485. She left Spain in 1501 to marry Arthur, prince of Wales, eldest son of King Henry VII., and landed at Plymouth on the 2nd of October. The wedding took place on the 14th of November in London, and soon afterwards Catherine accompanied her youthful husband to Wales, where, in his sixteenth year, the prince died on the 2nd of April 1502. On the 25th of June 1503, she was formally betrothed to the king's second son, Henry, now prince of Wales, and a papal dispensation for the alliance was obtained. The marriage, however, did not take place during the lifetime of Henry VII. Ferdinand endeavoured to cheat the English king of the marriage portion agreed upon, and Henry made use of the presence of the unmarried princess in England to extort new conditions, and especially to secure the marriage of his daughter Mary to the archduke Charles, grandson of Ferdinand, and afterwards Charles V. Catherine was thus from the first the unhappy victim of state politics. Writing to Ferdinand on the 9th of March 1509, she describes the state of poverty to which she was reduced, and declares the king's unkindness 'impossible to be borne any longer.'1 On the old king's death, however, a brighter prospect opened, for Henry VIII. decided immediately on marrying her, the wedding taking place on the 11th of June and the coronation on the 24th. Catherine now enjoyed a few years of married happiness; Henry showed himself an affectionate husband, and the alliance with Ferdinand was maintained against France. She was not without some influence in state affairs. During Henry's invasion of France in 1513 she was made regent; she showed great zeal and ardour in the preparations for the Scottish expedition, and was riding towards the north to put herself at the head of the troops when the victory of Flodden Field ended the campaign. The following year an affectionate meeting took place between the king and queen at Richmond on the return of the former. Ferdinand's treachery, however, in making a treaty with France roused Henry's wrath,2 and his angry reproaches fell upon his unfortunate wife; but she took occasion in 1520, during the visit of her nephew Charles V. to England, to urge the policy of gaining his alliance rather than that of France. Immediately on his departure, on the 31st of May 1520, she accompanied the king to France, on the celebrated visit to Francis I., called from its splendour the Field of the Cloth of Gold; but in 1522 war was declared against France and the emperor again welcomed to England. In 1521 she is represented by Shakespeare as pleading for the unfortunate duke of Buckingham.
These early years of happiness and of useful influence and activity had, however, been gradually giving way to gloom and disappointment. Between January 1510 and November 1518 Catherine gave birth to six children (including two princes), who were all stillborn or died in infancy except Mary, born in 1516, and rumour did not fail to ascribe this series of disasters to the curse pronounced in Deuteronomy on incestuous unions. In 1526 the condition of Catherine's health made it highly improbable that she would have more children. No woman had ever reigned in England, alone and in her own right, and to avoid a fresh dispute concerning the succession, and the revival of the civil war, a male heir to the throne was a pressing necessity. The act of marriage, which depended for its validity on the decision of the ecclesiastical courts, had, on account of the numerous dissolutions and dispensations granted, not then attained the security since assured to it by the secular law. For obtaining dissolutions of royal marriages the facilities were especially great. Pope Clement VII. himself permitted such a dissolution in the case of Henry's own sister Margaret, in 1528, proposed later as a solution of the problem that Henry should be allowed two wives, and looked not unfavourably, with the same aim, on the project for marrying the duke of Richmond to Mary, a brother to a sister.3 In Henry's case also the irregularity of a union, which is still generally reprobated and forbidden in Christendom, and which it was very doubtful that the pope had the power to legalize, provided a moral justification for a dissolution which in other cases did not exist. It was not therefore the immorality of the plea which obstructed the papal decree in Henry's favour, but the unlucky imprisonment at this time of Clement VII. at the hands of Charles V., Catherine's nephew, which obliged the pope, placed thus "between the hammer and the anvil," to pursue a policy of delay and hesitation. Nor was the immorality of Henry's own character the primary cause of the project of divorce. Had this been so, a succession of mistresses would have served as well as a series of single wives. The real occasion was the king's desire for a male heir. But, however clear this may be, the injustice done to Catherine was no less cruel and real. Rumours, probably then unfounded, of an intended divorce had been heard abroad as early as 1524. But the creation in 1525 of the king's illegitimate son Henry, as duke of Richmond - the title borne by his grandfather Henry VII - and the precedence granted to him over all the peers as well as the princess Mary, together with the special honour paid at this time by the king to his own half-sister Mary, were the first real indications of the king's thoughts. In 1526, and perhaps earlier, Wolsey had been making tentative inquiries at Rome on the subject. In May 1527 a collusive and secret suit was begun before the cardinal, who, as legate, summoned the king to defend himself from the charge of cohabitation with his brother's wife; but these proceedings were dropped.
Continued on page two.
Notes
1 Cal. of State Pap., England and Spain, i. 469.2 Letters and Papers, . 6627, 6705, and app. 261.
3 Ib. iv. 5072.
This article is from the 1911 edition of an encyclopedia, which is out of copyright here in the U.S. See the encyclopedia main page for disclaimer and copyright information.
