When Catherine of Aragon’s body was prepared for burial in 1536, those who embalmed her noticed something deeply unsettling. Her corpse appeared perfectly healthy, save for one detail: her heart had turned black. For her supporters, it was proof that England’s former queen had been poisoned, done away with so that King Henry VIII and his new wife, Anne Boleyn, could rule without the shadow of the woman they had so cruelly discarded. Modern historians lean toward a quieter explanation, a cancer of the heart that can darken the organ.
But given everything Catherine endured, the older story of a queen dying of a broken heart held a poetic grip on the imagination that would not easily let go. Catherine’s life began far from tragedy. She was the daughter of Ferdinand of Aragon and Isabella of Castile, the formidable royal couple who had united Spain. Raised in that glittering court, she became one of the most educated princesses in Europe.
She mastered Spanish, Latin, French, and Greek, and studied arithmetic, law, classical literature, genealogy, history, philosophy, and theology. She was also schooled in cunning and the art of statecraft, lessons she would desperately need in the years to come. Her path to England was set when she was just three years old, her hand promised to Prince Arthur, heir to the English throne. When she arrived in London for her wedding, she caused a stir.
Among her retinue were African attendants, the first recorded Africans ever to enter the city, and observers called the young princess the most beautiful creature in the world. Catherine and Arthur were married on November 14, 1501, in a lavish ceremony befitting two royal heirs. Their wedding night was notable for an unusual reason: it was the only public royal bedding of English royalty in the sixteenth century, with courtiers following the couple to their chamber before leaving them alone. The next morning, Arthur reportedly boasted about having been in the midst of Spain, though whether that was teenage bravado or truth would never be known.
Whatever happened that night, the marriage was short-lived. Both fell dangerously ill with the sweating sickness that swept through the Welsh borderlands. Catherine fought for her life and survived. Arthur did not.
At just sixteen, Catherine of Aragon was a widow. Her position was precarious. Her father-in-law, King Henry VII, was anxious to keep her substantial dowry and suggested something astonishing: he wanted to marry Catherine himself. The Spanish court protested so fiercely that the king finally backed down, and the young widow was instead promised to his second son, Prince Harry, the future Henry VIII.
The marriage was delayed, partly because Catherine was five years older than the growing boy and partly because her father was painfully slow in producing the rest of her dowry. Relations between England and Spain soured, and many believed the marriage would never happen at all. In 1505, the moment Harry turned fourteen and could voice his own opinion, he formally refused to marry the Spanish princess. Catherine needed a way to remain in England and win Harry back.
Her father suggested a bold solution: she would become the Spanish ambassador to England. It was a stunning appointment, making her Europe’s first female ambassador, and it bought her the time she needed. After seven long years, on June 11, 1509, Henry VIII finally agreed to marry her. He was seventeen; she was twenty-three.
Their union required special dispensation from the pope because Catherine had previously been married to Henry’s brother, a dispensation granted only after Catherine swore she and Arthur had never consummated their marriage. That first marriage would return to haunt her in ways she could not yet imagine. For a time, Catherine’s life was happy. Henry was a handsome, athletic young king who shared her love of learning.
Within months, Catherine was pregnant. Five months later, she went into premature labor and gave birth to a stillborn girl. She became pregnant again and this time gave birth to a healthy son, christened Henry, but the infant died after fifty-two days. In 1513, with Henry away campaigning in France, Catherine was made Regent of England.
Seeing an opening, Scotland invaded. Catherine refused to cower. Seven months pregnant, she rode north in full armor, raised armies, and gave an inspirational speech to her troops. Her victory was crowned with a spectacular gesture: she sent her husband the bloodstained coat of King James IV of Scotland, suggesting he use it as a banner on the continent.
Days later, she went into premature labor again, giving birth to another stillborn boy. The pattern continued into the following year with yet another failed pregnancy. In 1516, Catherine finally gave birth to a child who would survive into adulthood: the future Queen Mary I. Henry, however, was far from pleased.
He wanted a son, and his eye had already wandered. He began a long affair with Bessie Blount, who gave him a healthy illegitimate son named Henry Fitzroy. Catherine bore most of his infidelities in silence, but this had been devastating. The physical toll of her many failed pregnancies, possibly aggravated by illness and depression during her years as a poor, uncertain widow, was taking an increasingly heavy toll.
Some estimates suggest Catherine suffered up to nine pregnancies with only one child surviving to adulthood. As Catherine’s childbearing years ended, Henry grew desperate for a male heir. In 1522, Catherine made a fatal misstep: she hired a young woman named Anne Boleyn as one of her ladies-in-waiting. Anne was younger than Henry, beautiful, and fiercely determined.
She refused to sleep with him unless he made her his queen, and her refusal only inflamed his desire. Henry began searching for any excuse to be free of Catherine. He claimed their marriage was cursed, that God had punished him for marrying his brother’s widow. Catherine was devastated.
She insisted she was the king’s true and legitimate wife, and her response to his suggestion that she quietly retire to a convent became legend: “God never called me to a nunnery. I am the king’s true and legitimate wife. ”
What became known as the King’s Great Matter dragged on for years and would eventually trigger the English Reformation, with Henry breaking with Rome and declaring himself head of the Church of England so he could annul his own marriage. But the personal cruelty Catherine endured was staggering.
In July 1531, Henry left her behind during a hunting trip and never returned. He moved his court without her, not even waking her to say goodbye. She never saw him again. He banished her from court and installed Anne Boleyn in her quarters.
Catherine was stripped of her title as queen, insisted on being called the Dowager Princess of Wales, a pointed degradation that reduced her to merely her first husband’s widow. Worse, Henry forbade her from seeing or even writing to their daughter Mary. For years, Catherine crossed from castle to castle on the margins of English life, trapped in rooms, denying herself food, and wearing a hair shirt meant to torment her skin as an act of penance. She later said of the ordeal that it was enough to shorten ten lives.
The English people, however, adored her. Female subjects in particular rallied to her side, seeing her as the wronged wife and Anne Boleyn as the other woman. Even Thomas Cromwell, Henry’s chief minister, admitted that if not for her sex, she would have defied all the heroes of history. In her final years, Catherine refused to acknowledge Anne Boleyn as queen and continued to command her own servants to address her by her rightful rank, even at great personal risk.
By 1535, her health was failing. Believing the end was near, Catherine wrote a last letter to Henry. It served as a will, an accusation, and an absolution. She forgave him for his wrongs, writing, “For my part I pardon you everything, and I wish to devoutly pray God that he will pardon you also.
” She asked him to care for their daughter Mary, then penned a final line that laid bare her enduring affection: “Lastly I make this vow, that mine eyes desire you above all things. ”
On January 7, 1536, Catherine of Aragon died at Kimbolton Castle. Her close friend Maria de Salinas had ridden nearly six miles on horseback to reach her, lying to guards about lost paperwork so she would not die alone. Henry and Anne Boleyn reportedly dressed in celebratory yellow upon hearing the news.
On the day of Catherine’s funeral, Anne Boleyn suffered a miscarriage of a male child. Catherine of Aragon was married to Henry for twenty-three years, eleven months, and nineteen days, longer than any of his other five wives. Considering that she died of natural causes in her own bed, she may have been one of the luckier ones among that unfortunate line, but no one who heard the tale of her blackened heart would ever believe it without remembering the queen who had, by all accounts, died of a broken one.