Catherine of Aragon arrived in London in 1501 with a retinue that included the first recorded Africans ever to enter the city. She was sixteen, auburn-haired, blue-eyed, and widely described as the most beautiful creature in the world. She had been raised to rule, educated in Latin, Greek, French, law, philosophy, theology, and statecraft, and now she was about to marry Prince Arthur, heir to the throne of England. The wedding took place on November 14, 1501, in a lavish ceremony fitting their royal rank.
It was the only public royal bedding of English royalty in the sixteenth century, with courtiers following the couple into the chamber before leaving them alone. The next morning, Arthur boasted of having been in the midst of Spain, though whether that was teenage bravado or truth was never established. The marriage did not last long enough for anyone to find out. A fatal sweating sickness swept through the area near Wales where the young couple had begun their life together.
Both fell desperately ill, bedridden and delirious. Catherine survived. Arthur did not. At sixteen, she was a widow.
Her position became precarious instantly. Her father-in-law, King Henry VII, was anxious to keep her dowry, and sending her back to Spain meant returning the full sum. His proposed solution was disturbing: the forty-five-year-old monarch wanted to marry Catherine himself. Her parents protested so vigorously that the king finally relented, and the new suitor became the young and handsome Prince Harry, the future Henry VIII.
He was five years younger than Catherine. The marriage was delayed, partly because Catherine’s father was slow in handing over the rest of her dowry, and partly because the relationship between England and Spain had deteriorated. In 1505, the moment Henry turned fourteen, he formally refused to marry the Spanish princess. Catherine had to think fast to stay in the race for the crown.
Her father suggested a radical move: instead of a royal bride, Catherine would become the Spanish ambassador to England, making her the first female ambassador in European history. The ploy worked, and she remained in England, where she could win Henry back. Seven years later, on June 11, 1509, Henry finally agreed to marry her. He was now King of England, and Catherine became Queen.
Her coronation followed within days. Henry was seventeen. Catherine was twenty-three. The marriage was scandalous because she had been wed to Henry’s brother.
The couple had to obtain special dispensation from the pope, granted only after Catherine assured church authorities that her union with Arthur had never been consummated. That assurance may well have been true, but the first marriage would come back to haunt her. Just months after the wedding, Catherine was pregnant. Five months later, she went into premature labor and gave birth to a stillborn girl.
She became pregnant again and delivered a healthy boy, christened Henry after his father. The young royals breathed a sigh of relief. The prince lived for only fifty-two days. Despite their losses, Henry gave Catherine unprecedented political power, naming her Regent while he campaigned in France.
Scotland saw an opening and invaded England, assuming the queen would be a weak ruler. She was not. Catherine raised armies, made banners, and marshaled allies, then rode north in full armor in September 1513, while seven months pregnant, and gave an inspirational speech to her men. Days later, she sent her husband the torn and bloody coat of King James IV of Scotland, who had been killed in battle, and suggested Henry use it as a banner in his own campaigns.
The stress may have been too much. On September 17, 1513, just days after rallying her troops, Catherine went into premature labor again. The child was another stillborn boy. The next year, the same tragedy repeated.
It was her fourth failed pregnancy in five years, and the queen was becoming desperate. In 1516, Catherine finally gave birth to a child who would survive into adulthood: the future Queen Mary I of England. But Henry was not pleased. Instead of celebrating, he began an affair with Bessie Blount, which lasted three years and produced a healthy illegitimate son, Henry Fitzroy.
Why so many of Catherine’s pregnancies failed remains a matter of debate. Some have argued that she suffered from anorexia during her difficult widowhood after Arthur’s death, when poverty and uncertainty left her frequently ill and depressed. Estimates of the number of pregnancies she endured range up to nine, with only one child reaching adulthood. In 1522, Catherine made a fatal error.
She hired Anne Boleyn as one of her ladies-in-waiting. Anne was a double threat to her crown. She was bewitchingly beautiful and refused to sleep with Henry without a ring, which only increased his desire. And she was eleven years younger than the queen, still capable of giving Henry the male heir he desperately needed.
Henry began searching for excuses to end his marriage. He claimed it was cosmically cursed, that he had broken God’s law by marrying his brother’s widow. Catherine was heartbroken by his attempt to deny their entire marriage. She knew she was the rightful Queen of England, and she swore to her dying day that she had never consummated the first union with Arthur.
Henry initially tried to persuade her to retire obediently to a convent. Her response became legendary: “God never called me to a nunnery. I am the king’s true and legitimate wife. ”
The dissolution of their marriage became known as the King’s Great Matter.
It dragged on for years and would eventually lead Henry to break with Rome, take control of the Church of England, annul his own marriage, and trigger the English Reformation. The personal toll on Catherine was cruel. In July 1531, Henry left her on a hunting trip and never returned. He moved the court without her, leaving the queen and their daughter Mary behind.
In a letter, Catherine wrote that he did not even wake her to say goodbye. She never saw him again. Henry banished her from court and installed Anne Boleyn in her former rooms. Over the next four years, Catherine was moved from castle to castle on the outskirts of English society.
Her habits grew increasingly disturbing. At Kimbolton Castle, she imprisoned herself in a single room, leaving only to attend Mass, denying herself almost all sustenance, and wearing a hair shirt, a coarse garment meant to torment the wearer, irritate the skin, and promote repentance. What was she repenting? Henry had also forbidden her from seeing or even speaking to their only daughter, Mary.
Catherine could hardly bear it. She risked treason charges by secretly sending letters to Mary. Henry wrote nagging letters demanding she recognize Anne Boleyn as the true Queen. Sometimes he resorted to bribery, offering Catherine and Mary better living quarters if they would submit.
Catherine staunchly refused. The English people loved her, and even Henry’s own chief minister, Thomas Cromwell, once admitted that if not for her sex, she would have defied all the heroes of History. Henry denied her the title of Queen and insisted on calling her the Dowager Princess of Wales, a pointed insult that reduced her to merely Prince Arthur’s widow. In 1533, Henry finally got the Archbishop of Canterbury to declare his marriage to Catherine null and void.
Five days later, he married Anne Boleyn in a secret ceremony. By her thirties, Catherine’s famous beauty had withered. She had gained weight and showed visible signs of stress from endless failed pregnancies. In 1535, she felt herself growing weaker with a strange malady.
Knowing the end was near, she reportedly penned a final letter to Henry. It functioned as a last will, an accusation, and an absolution all in one. She reminded him of his wrongs, then wrote, “For my part, I pardon you everything, and I wish to devoutly pray God that he will pardon you also. ” The final line was the most tender: “Mine eyes desire you above all things.
” She signed it “Catherine the Queen. ”
Henry banned her supporters from seeing her, but her best friend, Maria de Salinas, refused to let her die alone. She rode nearly six miles on horseback to reach her, then lied to the guards, claiming she had lost the paperwork granting her permission to enter. The lie worked.
Catherine died on January 7, 1536, at Kimbolton Castle. When her body was prepared for burial, her embalmer noted that her corpse appeared to be in perfect health except for one disturbing detail: her heart had turned black. Those loyal to Catherine whispered that Henry and Anne had poisoned her, that she had died of a broken heart. Modern historians believe instead that she died of cancer of the heart, a condition which can sometimes turn the organ black.
Henry and Anne dressed in celebratory yellow on the day of her death, though some claimed the color was actually a Spanish sign of mourning and was meant as a deferential act. Either way, Catherine’s rival received a final blow from beyond the grave. On the day of Catherine’s funeral, Anne Boleyn miscarried a son. Catherine had been married to Henry for twenty-three years, eleven months, and nineteen days, longer than any of his other five queens.
She was buried, and in time, her ghost was said to haunt the places where she had lived. Visitors reported seeing an apparition of a teenage girl in Tudor-era clothing, floating through halls and a nursery she never got to fill. She had been raised to be a ruler, and she died still insisting she was the true Queen of England.