15

“The Spanish Infanta”

Henry VII was now well established on his throne. His court poet, Pietro Carmeliano, observed that England’s honor was “in such wise now enhanced that all Christian regions pursue unto thee for alliance, confederation, and unity.” In March, having satisfied Ferdinand and Isabella that his crown was secure, the King concluded the treaty with Spain, and within the next two years would make alliances with Scotland, Burgundy, the Holy Roman Empire, and Flanders as well.

On January 11, 1500, Ferdinand and Isabella informed Puebla that Princess Katherine was to come to England “as soon as the Prince of Wales shall have accomplished the fourteenth year of his age,” which would be the following September. But soon afterward Don Juan Manuel, a servant of Philip of Burgundy, told Henry VII that the princess would be sent in the spring, “without waiting for the accomplishment of the fourteenth year of the age of the Prince of Wales, if the state of health of the Queen would permit it.” There is no other hint that Elizabeth was unwell at this time, so possibly there was speculation that she was pregnant again, which proved to be unfounded. Puebla added, “The sums spent in preparation for the reception of the princess are enormous.”

He was still fretting about the favors that the King and Queen of England were pressing on him. He “did not like to accept the bishopric or the marriage offered to him because it seemed to him that a true servant of [Ferdinand and Isabella] ought not to do so.” It seemed the sovereigns agreed with him, because they failed to respond to the proposals, for which Puebla thanked them the following June, when he said he feared that Henry VII would still pursue the matter, and expressed his fears that the sovereigns would no longer trust him “if he were married by the Queen of England to a rich English lady.”¹ Evidently Elizabeth finally got the message that her offer was unwelcome, and dropped the matter.

From June 1499, England had suffered one of its worst-ever plague epidemics, which raged on through a mild winter into the late spring of 1500; in London alone, which suffered the most, it was said (probably with some exaggeration) that thirty thousand died. After “often change of places”² to escape contagion, Henry decided to take Elizabeth abroad to Calais, the last remaining outpost of England’s continental territories. His intention was not only to avoid the pestilence but also to meet with Archduke Philip.

With no pretenders left to challenge him, the King could safely go abroad at last, but not without anxiety, for it is clear his departure lacked fanfares. Puebla wrote: “The internal peace of the kingdom is perfect. It is so great that the King and Queen left England. Until two days beforehand no one knew of their intended journey.”³ The royal party traveled down from Greenwich to Dover with their households, attended by heralds and men-at-arms, and crossed the sea to Calais on May 8,⁴ arriving that night. This was the only time Elizabeth ever went abroad.

The next day the King and Queen put on a splendid show when, “with many lords, ladies, knights, esquires, gentlemen, and yeomen,” they set out to greet the Archduke, who had married Juana of Castile, Katherine of Aragon’s sister. Elizabeth was attended by fifty ladies of rank, all “beautifully adorned,” with Katherine Gordon prominent among them. The royal couple received the handsome but dissolute young Archduke with much pomp at Our Lady of St. Peter’s Church outside the city walls. The church had been “richly hanged with arras” and “parted with hangings into divers offices,” including an area where a feast was served. “And when they had all dined and communed, there was a rich banquet” of strawberries, cream, spice cakes, and cherries. Afterward, the Archduke “danced with the ladies of England, and then took leave of the King and Queen.”⁵

Over the next few days, Henry and Elizabeth entertained their guest with pageants, feasts, and jousts. “The King and the Archduke had a very long conversation, in which the Queen afterward joined. The interview was very solemn, and attended with great splendour.”⁶ Elizabeth’s presence was required because Henry and Philip had agreed that the Princess Mary, now four, should be betrothed to Philip’s eldest son, Charles,⁷ who had been born in February. Charles was the heir to the Habsburg territories and also to Spain, and in time he would be the master of vast domains, so this was a brilliant match for Mary.

Mary had recently been assigned a separate household, with ladies-in-waiting, gentlewomen, a wardrobe keeper, a schoolmaster, and a physician.⁸ In 1499 the three-year-old was provided with five beautiful gowns of green velvet edged with purple tinsel, black velvet edged with crimson, crimson velvet, blue velvet, and black velvet furred with ermine, as well as kirtles of tawny damask and black satin, both edged with black velvet, and two pairs of knitted hose.⁹ In 1502 the King would order that Mary be assigned the same number of attendants as Katherine of Aragon, then Dowager Princess of Wales.¹⁰

Mary showed much greater promise intellectually than her sister Margaret, and was given the advantage of a good education. She learned French and Latin, music, dancing, and embroidery. Her brothers’ tutor, Giles Dewes, taught her French. Like most of her family, she was musical. Her father the King gave her a lute, and she also learned to play the clavichord and the regal, a small portable organ. In 1502, after the Borgia Pope, Alexander VI, had proclaimed a Catholic Jubilee year, Elizabeth paid 12d. [£25] so Mary could have a “letter of pardon”¹¹—an indulgence that bought her remission from her sins. Possibly Elizabeth’s youngest daughter was a high-spirited, headstrong child whom she thought was in need of such remission—or the lesson the indulgence would have taught her.

The King and Queen stayed for forty days in Calais. On June 16, when the plague had abated, they sailed back to Dover¹² and journeyed directly to Greenwich. On or before their return, at a time when Prince Arthur’s health was giving them cause for concern, they were brought the tragic news that the infant Prince Edmund had died at the episcopal palace at Hatfield, Hertfordshire.¹³

Edmund had lived for fifteen months. It is often stated that he died on June 16, but Henry VII’s privy purse expenses for May list £242.11s.8d. [£117,900] “for the burial of my Lord Edmund,”¹⁴ and it would have taken longer than five days to arrange the ceremonial funeral. A payment on February 14 for “hawk bells” for Prince Henry at Hatfield¹⁵ suggests that all the younger royal children had been living there too, isolated from the pestilence, while their parents were abroad in Calais, and that Edmund did not die of plague but of some childhood ailment.

The little boy was given a state funeral. According to the provisions for the burial of a prince in Henry VII’s ordinances, his tiny corpse was “laid in a new chest covered with white damask, with a cross of red velvet thereon,” and an image of him “with a circlet on his head” was placed on top. The coffin and effigy were brought from Hatfield to London in “a chariot covered with black” pulled by “six horses trapped all in black,” followed by the chief mourner, Edward Stafford, Duke of Buckingham, and other lords, all wearing mourning robes with “their hoods fair hanging over their ears.” Torchbearers went before, and the Lord Mayor and guildsmen of London lined the streets as the cortege passed. The coffin was received by the grieving King at Westminster. Henry’s ordinances provided for him to wear “his robes of blue” for the occasion, and since those same ordinances make it clear that women were not barred,¹⁶ Elizabeth was perhaps there too, trying to come to terms with the pain of losing a second child in five years, and watching the little coffin as it was borne on a hearse into the abbey, where a dirge was sung over it and the lords kept watch overnight. The next day, June 22, Mass was said, and the interment in the Confessor’s Chapel followed.¹⁷ There is no record of a tomb being raised to mark Edmund’s burial place.

Sheen was not the only royal residence to be updated by Henry VII. In 1500–01 the King demolished the old palace at Greenwich and began rebuilding it, facing the buildings with red brick in the Burgundian style much favored by him and Elizabeth.

Accessed through an imposing gateway opposite Queen Margaret’s Pier, the new Greenwich Palace was designed around three courtyards, known as Fountain Court, Cellar Court, and Tennis Court. Its riverside facade boasted bay windows and an imposing five-storied tower, which probably housed Henry’s privy chamber. Elizabeth’s lodgings were in a parallel range that lay behind, the two suites connected at one end by the hall and chapel. At the other end a gallery gave access to the convent of the Observant Friars, which had been refounded by the King, who drew up elaborate instructions for a stained-glass window in the friars’ church depicting himself and his family; it was completed around 1503.¹⁸

In 1500 the King and Queen visited Coventry, where they were admitted as members of the Holy Trinity Guild, and watched a mystery play portraying the story of the world from Creation to Judgment Day. They also visited Nottingham.

That year, the King summoned Katherine of York and her husband, Lord William Courtenay, to court. By October they had settled in their house in Warwick Lane with their children, and afterward were both often at court; early in 1501, William was granted an annuity for his daily diligent attendance on the King. Elizabeth must have been pleased to have her sister near at hand.

In Spain, Isabella and Ferdinand were preparing to send the Infanta Katherine to England. Notwithstanding the assurances given by Elizabeth, Isabella evidently was anxious about her youngest child. “We ardently implore that the princess shall be treated by [King Henry] and the Queen as their own daughter,” she wrote to Pedro de Ayala on March 23, 1501.¹⁹ That month, Henry VII outlaid £14,000 [£6.8 million] for jewels from France “against the marriage of my Lord Prince.”²⁰ No expense was to be spared for the wedding of his heir, which would reflect everything he had achieved in securing this crucial alliance.

In mid-April the King and Queen kept their Easter court at Eltham.²¹ On May 8 the Portuguese ambassador in England reported to his master, King Manuel I, that “the Queen was supposed to be with child, but her apothecary told me that a Genoese physician affirmed that she was pregnant, yet it was not so.” Nevertheless, it looked very much like it to the ambassador, for she had “much embonpoint [plumpness] and large breasts.”²² This report and the double chin evident in the contemporary portrait in the Royal Collection (see Appendix 1) suggest that Elizabeth, like her father before her, was becoming prematurely obese in her thirties—or she had retained a fuller figure after her previous pregnancies.

That month, accompanied by her duenna, Doña Elvira Manuel, and a train of sixty people, Katherine left the Alhambra Palace in Granada on the first stage of what was to prove a slow journey to England. In July, Puebla reported: “The King, the Queen, and the Prince of Wales have great pleasure in hearing that the Princess Katherine is beginning to speak French. The Queen especially rejoices in the progress the princess is making in the French language.”²³ It meant she would be able to converse more easily with the daughter-in-law whose arrival she so eagerly anticipated.

On October 2, Katherine of Aragon at last arrived in England, coming ashore at Plymouth after a stormy voyage. Ladies and officials had been appointed “to give their attendance upon the princess at her landing,” summoned by letters sent by the Queen herself.²⁴There was a formal reception, with “the King’s commendations made by my Lord Steward, the Queen’s by her chamberlain.”²⁵ Elizabeth’s officers were actively involved in all the preparations, for the marriage of her son was an event that came within her sphere of influence. Her master of horse provided five chariots and twenty palfreys for the princess and her ladies, and henchmen to ride with them; her chamberlain was in charge of the etiquette to be observed and matters of precedence.²⁶

When Katherine of Aragon set out on her journey eastward to London, she received a rapturous welcome from the people who flocked to see her on the way. “The princess could not have been received with greater joy had she been the Savior of the World,” a member of her suite reported to Queen Isabella.²⁷

Henry and Elizabeth were then staying in the Tower of London, where they were preparing for the wedding celebrations. There were daily jousts on the tournament ground before the White Tower, and feasts in the King’s Hall, the great hall in the Inmost Ward. But Henry had a more pressing matter on his mind: he wanted to see his son’s bride and be reassured that she was as fit a mate for Arthur as he had been led to believe.

The prince traveled from Ludlow, met up with his father, and rode with him to greet his bride. They caught up with the princess at Dogmersfield, Hampshire, on November 4. There was a tense altercation when Katherine appeared veiled, and her duenna and the Spanish ambassador informed the King that Spanish protocol dictated she must remain so until she was married; but Henry, ever suspicious, and no doubt fearful that his son’s bride was deformed or ugly, stood his ground. “Tell the lords of Spain,” he commanded, “that the King will see the princess even were she in her bed.” The veil was lifted. Arthur later wrote to Ferdinand and Isabella that he “had never felt so much joy in his life as when he beheld the sweet face of his bride,” and he vowed to be “a true and loving husband all his days.”²⁸ After the meeting he returned with his father to London to rejoin the Queen, with Katherine’s procession following.

Elizabeth had gone to stay at the newly rebuilt and restored palace at Sheen. By November 1501 the King had “finished much of his new building at his manor of Sheen, and again furnished and repaired that [which] before was perished with fire.”²⁹ The renovated palace, which cost over £20,000 [£9.7 million], had only recently been made ready for occupation by the royal family. Built in late, ornate Perpendicular style around two broad, paved courtyards, it covered ten acres and faced the Thames to the south. It was dominated by Henry V’s massive donjon tower, which had survived the fire and was completely restored. Now surmounted by fourteen turrets, pepper-pot domes, and pinnacles, it contained the King’s and Queen’s suites of privy lodgings.

Lancaster Herald described the new palace as “this earthly and second paradise of England, the spectacular and beauteous example of all proper lodgings.” He noted the towers, pinnacles, and weather vanes sporting the royal arms, painted and gilded, on every building in the complex; on windy days the tinkling of the vanes was “right marvelous.”³⁰

The palace was approached through a massive gatehouse with an archway eighteen feet high and eleven feet wide, which gave access from the green in front to the Great Court. Above the archway was emblazoned the Tudor royal arms supported by the red dragon of Cadwaladr and the greyhound of Richmond. From the gatehouse extended “a strong and mighty brick wall of great length,” encircling the palace complex. Lancaster Herald described it as having “towers in each corner and angle, and also in the midway,” with several stout oak gates studded with nails and crossed with iron bars. “Galleries with many windows full lightsome and commodious” overlooked the Great Court, where there were “pleasant chambers for such lords and men of honor that wait upon the King’s Grace.” A two-hundred-foot-long gallery afforded excellent views of the gardens.

The smaller inner court—the River Court—was paved with marble and boasted a stone conduit and a drinking fountain sculpted with lions and red dragons guarding branches of red roses, from which the water ran clear and pure to a cistern beneath. This was where people washed their hands, for there was no running water inside the palace. To the west side was the great hall, a hundred feet long and resplendent with a tiled floor, a central hearth, and a timber roof lined with lead and decorated with hanging pendants and carved knots—all “most glorious and joyful to behold.”³¹ The walls were hung with rich cloths of Arras, including a fabulous one depicting “The Destruction of Troy,” and there were “pictures”—probably statues—of “the noble kings of this realm in their harness [armor] and robes of gold, like bold and valiant knights”—with Henry VII naturally prominent among them. Beneath the hall was a cellar, and next to it, on the ground floor, the Royal Wardrobe and domestic offices—“the pantry, buttery, kitchen, and scullery.” Coal and fuel were stored in the yards outside, well out of sight of the royal family.

On the opposite side of the courtyard to the hall, up a flight of stairs, was the chapel, “well paved, glazed, and hung with cloth of Arras” and gold, with an undercroft beneath it. The altar was set with jewels and relics and laden with rich plate, and pictures of virtuous and pious kings of England—doubtless including St. Edward the Confessor and Henry VI—were displayed on the walls. A private closet to the left of the altar was shared by Elizabeth, her children, Margaret Beaufort, and their attendants, while the King’s closet was on the right side. Both closets were furnished with carpets, cushions, and silk curtains. The chapel ceiling was “checkered with timber lozengewise, painted azure, having between every check a red rose of gold or a portcullis.”³²

From the chapel “extended goodly passages and galleries, paved, glazed, and painted,” adorned with golden badges sporting Tudor roses and portcullises. These led to the three-storied donjon, which was accessed through an imposing arched doorway sculpted with the royal arms and the red dragon of Cadwaladr, and was notable for its many windows. Here, on the first floor, were the King’s chambers, the first, second, and third of which (watching chamber, presence chamber, and privy chamber) were hung with costly cloth of Arras; each room had “white-limed” and “checkered” ceilings, and “goodly bay windows” overlooking the river.

Below, connected by a great staircase, were “divers and many more goodly chambers both for the Queen’s Grace, the prince and princess, my lady the King’s mother, the Duke of York and Lady Margaret, and all the King’s noble kindred and progeny.” These suites contained “pleasant dancing chambers and secret closets” and were “most richly enhanged, decked, and beseen.” More fine rooms were to be found in a new four-storied tower attached to the donjon.

Both the King’s and Queen’s apartments were on the southeast side of the donjon and overlooked “most fair and pleasant” enclosed gardens and galleries with open loggias, a feature never before seen in England. There were kitchen gardens and orchards to the west, and a privy garden to the east. The latter had symmetrical railed beds with “royal knots” of flowers, and lions and dragons on decorative poles; alleys led through the beds and beyond, to “places of disport” and “houses of pleasure”—bowling alleys, archery butts, and tennis courts—another feature borrowed from the Burgundians.³³

Henry VII gave the palace a new name: “from this time, it was commanded by the King that it should be called Rich Mount,” or Richmond, “because his father and he were earls of Richmond” in Yorkshire.³⁴ It became his favorite residence, and remained the largest English royal palace until Hampton Court was built in 1514.

In 1499, Henry VII had founded, or refounded, six English houses for Observant (Grey) Friars of the Order of St. Francis, one of which was at Richmond. In May 1502 the King gave the friars the old manor buildings and chapel of Byfleet, and work began immediately on converting them into a convent. This was screened off from the palace by an orchard—no ordinary orchard, but a charming pleasaunce “with royal knots alleyed and herbed”; along its alleys were set statues of “many marvelous beasts, as lions, dragons, and such other divers kind, with many vines, seeds, and strange fruit right goodly beset.” And “in the lower end of this garden beith pleasant galleries and houses of pleasure to disport in.” Galleries, beasts, and houses of pleasure were all features of the Burgundian palaces.³⁵

Richmond was not just a beautiful palace but a showpiece, a visual statement of Henry VII’s achievements. Rampant with heraldry and resplendent with the very latest in Tudor taste, it was the flagship residence of the new dynasty, a treasure house packed with the symbols of power, wealth, and majesty—the ultimate in conspicuous display. Sadly, Elizabeth did not live to see it completed.

As soon as he arrived at Greenwich, the King “was met by the Queen’s Grace, whom he ascertained and made privy to the acts and demeanor between himself, the prince, and the princess, and how he liked her person and behavior.”³⁶ Elizabeth must have been delighted to hear that her son’s bride was pretty and golden-haired, with a pleasing dignity.

Preparations for the coming wedding advanced briskly. There was much discussion of the etiquette to be observed when Katherine was presented to the Queen. Elizabeth and Margaret Beaufort were drawing up lists of the ladies who were to attend her and the princess during the reception celebrations;³⁷ Margaret would also arrange for Katherine to share several household officers with her. On November 2, Elizabeth appointed Agnes Tilney, Countess of Surrey, “with certain ladies awaiting upon her,” “to meet and receive the princess” at Amesbury.³⁸

On November 9, Katherine was welcomed at Kingston-upon-Thames by Prince Henry, who escorted her to the Archbishop of Canterbury’s palace at Lambeth, where she was to lodge before her marriage. Here, a letter from the King awaited her, expressing his great “pleasure, joy, and consolation” at her coming, and assuring her that he and the Queen would treat her “like our own daughter.”

The next day the King and Queen were rowed to London in separate barges, Elizabeth attended by a “goodly company of ladies.” They took up residence in Baynard’s Castle, where the Queen made “ready for inducting the noble Princess of Spain.”³⁹ Margaret Beaufort was busily renovating nearby Coldharbour to make it a fit residence for Arthur and Katherine after their marriage.

On November 12, as all the bells of London rang out, banners fluttered from windows, crowds packed the streets, music sounded from every side, and the conduits ran with free wine, Katherine made her formal entry into the City.⁴⁰ She was greeted by a series of lavish pageants in the Burgundian style as she passed along the processional route; all were designed to underline the success of the Tudor dynasty in obtaining such a highborn princess for the heir to the throne. In Cornhill, “in a house wherein there dwelled William Geoffrey, haberdasher, stood the King, the Queen, and many great estates of the realm,” watching the procession with Prince Arthur. Henry, his son, Derby, Oxford, Shrewsbury, and some French envoys were at one window, while “in another chamber stood the Queen’s good Grace, my lady the King’s mother, my Lady Margaret, my lady [Mary] her sister, with many other ladies of the land, not in very open sight like as the King’s Grace did with his manner and party.” The Londoners had displayed a somewhat excessive zeal for flattery, for nearby was a pageant portraying Henry VII as God the Father and Prince Arthur as God the Son. Henry also paid for a “standing” in Cheapside from which to view the proceedings, but seems not to have used it, unless he moved by a circuitous route from Cornhill, ahead of the procession.

It was from her window in Cornhill that Elizabeth glimpsed her new daughter-in-law for the first time, as Katherine’s procession passed below; looking out, she would have seen a young girl riding “a great mule richly trapped after the manner of Spain,” flanked by Prince Henry and the papal legate, and wearing “rich apparel” in the Spanish mode: “a little hat fashioned like a cardinal’s hat of pretty braid with a lace of gold to stay it, her hair hanging down about her shoulders, which is fair auburn, and a coif between her head and her hat of a carnation color.” A little way behind walked the Queen’s master of horse leading a spare palfrey with a sidesaddle. At the climax of the procession, the bride-to-be was led by the Archbishop of Canterbury into St. Paul’s Cathedral, where she said her prayers and made an offering at the shrine of St. Erkenwald before retiring to the adjacent Bishop’s Palace for the night.

The following afternoon, on the eve of her wedding, the princess went to Baynard’s Castle to be presented to her mother-in-law. She was again accompanied by Elizabeth’s master of horse and “a right great assembly” of splendidly attired gentlemen and “certain ladies: some of the Queen’s, and some of the princess’s, at the Queen’s nomination.” The Queen’s chamberlain “received her at the foot of the grece [stairs] that goes up to the Queen’s chamber.” During her audience, she and Elizabeth both spoke in Latin, and they enjoyed “pleasant and goodly communication, dancing, and disports. Thus, with honor and mirth, this Saturday was expired and done,” and it was late when Katherine departed for Lambeth Palace to make ready for her wedding day. Already Elizabeth had begun the process of preparing her successor for the role she would one day occupy, and probably Katherine was glad to have the guidance of a kindly mother-in-law who could initiate her into the realities and mysteries of English court life.

After Katherine left, Elizabeth rode to Lord Bergavenny’s London house in Great St. Bartholemew’s by St. Paul’s, where she and the King were spending the night before the wedding. George Neville, Baron Bergavenny, had fought for Henry against the Cornish rebels and was Lord Warden of the Cinque Ports; he had accompanied Henry and Elizabeth to Calais the previous year. His first wife had been a granddaughter of Elizabeth’s aunt, Joan Wydeville.⁴¹ His house, which was burned down in the Great Fire of 1666, stood where the Stationers and Newspaper Makers Hall now stands in Stationers Hall Court; its inner courtyard occupies the site of the garden of Abergavenny House.

On November 14, Arthur and Katherine were married in St. Paul’s Cathedral. The King had done his utmost to underline the importance of the nuptials. “Within the church was erected a platform, or stage, six feet high and extending from the west door to the uppermost step of the choir; in the middle of this platform was a high stand, like a mountain, which was ascended on every side with steps covered over with red worsted. Against this mountain on the north side was ordained a standing for the King and his friends; and upon the south side was erected another standing, which was occupied by the Lord Mayor and aldermen of London.”

The royal standing—a “high place set in the nave and body of the church,” which was “decked and trimmed for the King and Queen and such others as they appointed to have”—was a kind of private box above the consistory, allowing Henry and Elizabeth privately to “go out of the Bishop’s Palace into the same consistory, and there hear and see the ceremonies of the marriage at their pleasure,” watching “in secret manner” from behind a lattice. The focus during the ceremony was to be on Arthur and Katherine, and Henry and Elizabeth “would make no open show of appearance.”

On the morning of the wedding day, the royal entourages assembled at the Tower. Elizabeth was wearing an embroidered white satin gown and a purple velvet train. She traveled with the bride in an open chariot from the Tower to St. Paul’s, following behind the King, who rode a white horse and looked splendid in his red velvet robes, his breastplate studded with diamonds, rubies, and pearls, and a belt of rubies at his waist. On arrival, the royal couple retired with the bride into the Bishop’s Palace, where Henry and Elizabeth discreetly entered the cathedral. Elizabeth’s sister Katherine and Lord William Courtenay were among the illustrious guests, as was Margaret Beaufort, who “wept marvelously” through the service.

Katherine emerged from the Bishop’s Palace to the sound of trumpets, shawms, and sackbuts, clad in white and gold satin. Beneath her wide-skirted gown she wore hoops—the first Spanish farthingale ever seen in England, which naturally drew much comment, as did her rich coronet and voluminous veil, or mantilla, of silk edged with a border of gold and precious stones, beneath which her long red-gold hair flowed loose down her back. She was escorted to her groom by her future brother-in-law (and husband), ten-year-old Henry, Duke of York, impressive in silver tissue embroidered with gold roses. Arthur, like his bride, was wearing white satin.

In the cathedral, the prince and princess “ascended the mount, one on the north and the other on the south side, and were there married by [Henry Deane] the Archbishop of Canterbury, assisted by nineteen bishops and abbots. The King, the Queen, and the King’s mother stood in the place aforementioned, where they heard and beheld the solemnization, which, being finished, the Archbishop and bishops took their way from the mountain across the platform, which was covered with blue ray cloth, into the choir, and so to the high altar. The prelates were followed by the bride and bridegroom. The Princess Cecily bore the train of the bride, and after her followed one hundred ladies and gentlewomen in right costly apparel. Then the mayor, in a gown of crimson velvet, and his brethren, in scarlet, went and sat in the choir whilst Mass was said.” For this, the young couple went through the rood screen and choir to the high altar. The Mass finished, they knelt to receive the blessing of the King and Queen, then proceeded to the church door, where Arthur publicly dowered his bride with one-third of his income as Prince of Wales, as the crowds outside roared their approval, crying, “King Henry! Prince Arthur!” and the trumpets, shawms, and sackbuts blared out once more in celebration. Katherine was now second lady in the land after the Queen.

Afterward the Prince and Princess of Wales were conducted in a grand procession led by Prince Henry to the Bishop’s Palace, where a great feast was prepared, “to which the Lord Mayor and aldermen were invited.” The latter had stationed themselves by the entrance to get a good view of the bride. The royal party and their guests were served on gold plate valued at £1,200 [£583,300], and the new Princess of Wales dined off plate of solid gold ornamented with pearls and precious stones worth £20,000 [£9.7 million]. “It was wonderful to behold the costly apparel and the massive chains of gold worn on that day.”

At the end, the newly wedded couple were put to bed together in a ceremony witnessed by most of the court. The prince was escorted by his lords and gentlemen to the nuptial chamber, “wherein the princess before his coming was reverently laid and disposed,” and after the bed had been blessed and the newlyweds left alone to do their dynastic duty, the King and Queen departed for Baynard’s Castle.

There then followed one of the most controversial wedding nights in history. It was stated years later that fifteen-year-old Arthur claimed beforehand that he felt “lusty and amorous,” and it was reported at the time, by the herald who wrote an account of the wedding celebrations, that “thus these worthy persons concluded and consummated the effect and complement of matrimony.”

But did they? Doña Elvira stated some months later that they did not, and in 1503, King Ferdinand would tell his ambassador in Rome: “The truth is that the marriage was not consummated, and that the princess our daughter remained as whole as she was before she married.”⁴² Years afterward Katherine would swear that she and Arthur had spent just seven nights together, and that she emerged from her marriage “as intact and undefiled as she had come from her mother’s womb,”⁴³ but Henry VIII, her second husband, professed to be not so sure about that. In 1529, when he was trying to move heaven and earth to have his marriage to Katherine dissolved, on the grounds that canon law forbade him to marry his brother’s widow, Lady Guildford, who was present at the wedding celebrations in 1501, would depose in the legatine court that Arthur and Katherine spent their wedding night in bed together, and that Queen Katherine had afterward told her that “they lay together in bed as man and wife all alone five or six nights after the marriage.” William Thomas, a groom of Arthur’s privy chamber, stated that he himself “made Arthur ready for bed, and conducted him clad in his nightgown unto the princess’s bedchamber often and sundry times; and that at the morning he received him at the said doors and waited upon him to his own privy chamber.”⁴⁴

None of this proved that the couple had actually had sex, but naturally Henry VIII needed testimony to show that the marriage had been consummated, and others were ready to come forward in 1529 to give evidence to that effect. The King’s close friend, Charles Brandon, Duke of Suffolk, declared that he had heard from Maurice St. John, the prince’s attendant, that Arthur’s decline in 1502 “grew by reason that [he] lay with the Lady Katherine.” Sir Anthony Willoughby recalled that, the morning after his wedding, “the prince spoke before divers witnesses these words: ‘Willoughby, give me a cup of ale, for I have been this night in the midst of Spain. It is good pastime to have a wife!’ Which words he repeated divers other times.” The fact he repeated them so often might suggest that Arthur was boasting to cover up his failure in bed, because he knew what was expected of him. St. John had also mentioned Arthur’s thirst to Robert Ratcliffe, now Viscount Fitzwalter, who recalled that St. John asked the prince why his throat was so dry, whereupon he replied, “I have been in Spain this night.”⁴⁵

Predictably, the peers of England, in their scramble to ingratiate themselves with Henry VIII, were ready to brag about their own prowess at Arthur’s age. George Talbot, Earl of Shrewsbury, affirmed that “the prince knew his lady carnally because he might be able to do so, as he himself had been, who knew his wife before he was sixteen.” That did not mean anything, of course. The Duke of Norfolk also boasted that he too “at the same age did carnally know and use a woman,” but also said he had heard “from credible persons that Prince Arthur did lay with the Lady Katherine five or six nights after.” His wife the duchess stated that the couple had been “alone in bed together the next night after their marriage.”⁴⁶

In 1531, however, at a hearing in Zaragoza, one of Katherine’s attendants would testify that, on the day after the wedding, “Francesca de Caceres, who was in charge of dressing and undressing [her], and whom she liked and confided in a lot, was looking sad and telling the other ladies that nothing had passed between Prince Arthur and his wife.”⁴⁷

Nowadays many people find it hard to accept that two teenagers shared a bed and did not have sex. It was incumbent upon them, after all, to produce an heir to ensure the future of the Tudor dynasty: the consummation of their marriage was their duty. Others find it hard to believe that Katherine of Aragon, a devout woman of great integrity and principle, would vigorously maintain that her marriage to Arthur was not consummated if it had been. It has been said she might have lied to protect her position and her daughter’s status, but for the avoidance of doubt, the Pope had actually issued two dispensations allowing her to marry Henry, one providing for the first marriage having been consummated. So she had no need to lie, for in the eyes of the Church her second marriage was valid anyway.

It is important to remember that Henry VIII’s doubts of conscience came at a time when he was desperate to have a male heir—and to marry Anne Boleyn. But his adultery with Anne’s sister Mary placed him in the same forbidden degree of affinity to Anne as he was to Katherine by virtue of her marriage to his brother. When Katherine publicly challenged him to deny in open court that she had come to him “a true maid without touch of man,” he remained silent; and when she vowed to Pope Clement VII that she would accept whatever he decided about her virginity if her husband would swear under oath that he knew her marriage to Arthur had been consummated, Henry failed to respond.⁴⁸

There was a prevalent belief that early indulgence in sex by young people who were not physically mature was detrimental to health, and there had been a recent example that appeared to prove it. In 1497, Katherine’s only surviving brother, the Infante Juan, Prince of Asturias, had died at nineteen—disastrously for the Spanish succession. The cause was possibly tuberculosis, but opinion generally held that overindulgence in the marriage bed had proved fatal. In 1533, Henry Fitzroy, Duke of Richmond, Henry VIII’s bastard son, was married at fourteen but not permitted to live with his bride because he was considered too young.

Henry VII had good reason to be cautious. A dispatch sent to Ferdinand of Aragon by his envoy, Gutierre Gomez de Fuensalida, in July 1500 reveals that the King had had concerns then about the health of Prince Arthur. Fuensalida had “understood from a reliable source that the King has decided that the Prince will know his wife sexually on the day of the wedding, and then separate himself from her for two or three years, because it is said that in some way the Prince is frail, and the King told me that he wanted to have [Arthur and Katherine] with him for the first three years, so that the Prince should mature in strength.”⁴⁹ Evidence that emerged later about the state of Arthur’s health in the months that followed the marriage (see Chapter 16) supports the theory that it was never consummated at all.

Twelve days of celebrations had been planned, and there was further excitement on November 14, when envoys from James IV arrived in London to arrange their master’s marriage to Princess Margaret. There were no entertainments on the day after the wedding, when Katherine and Arthur were allowed some privacy, but on Tuesday, November 16, the King and Queen returned in state by river from Baynard’s Castle and, with the newly wedded prince and princess, “came to Paul’s Church, where they made their offering, dined in the Bishop’s Palace, and so returned.” Afterward, the royal party went to Westminster by river, attended by the Lord Mayor, the aldermen, and the sheriffs. “For the more royalty of the going of the King and Queen, [and] of the prince and princess, unto Westminster by water,” it had been decreed “that the King and Queen and the prince have their barges apart and pompously rigged and dressed,” and that minstrels should play for them as they sailed along the Thames.

On Thursday, November 18, the first of the planned tournaments was held. The wide yard before Westminster Hall had been strewn with gravel and sand “for the ease of the horses,” and lists were set up. Around the grounds were flower displays and artificial trees heavy with fruit. To the south was a stand hung with cloth of gold and furnished with cushions of the same costly fabric. “As soon as dinner was done in the court,” the Queen, the Princess of Wales, Cecily, Viscountess Welles, the other princesses, and a train of “two or three hundred ladies and gentlewomen” entered this stand from the right, and the King, Prince Arthur, Prince Henry, and many lords entered from the left.

“Round the whole area were stages built for the honest common people, which at their cost was hired by them in such numbers that nothing but visages presented themselves to the eye, without any appearance of bodies. And when the trumpets blew, the nobility and chivalry engaged to tilt appeared in the arena, riding under fanciful canopies borne by their retainers.” The Earl of Essex must have drawn many eyes, as he “had a mountain of green carried over him as his pavilion, and upon it many trees, rocks, and marvelous beasts climbing up the sides,” and “on the summit sat a goodly young lady, in her hair [with loose hair], pleasantly beseen.” The Queen’s half brother, Dorset, “had borne over him a rich pavilion of cloth of gold, himself always riding within the same, dressed in his armor.” Elizabeth’s brother-in-law, Lord William Courtenay, made his appearance “riding on a red dragon led by a giant, with a great tree in his hand.”

Twenty or thirty contestants rode around the arena, cheered on by the commons, then the tournament began, and they engaged in the tilt “with sharp spears, and in great jeopardy of their lives, breaking a great many lances on each other’s bodies.” Fortunately, no one was killed. When the jousts were over, the royal party, followed by throngs of lords and Londoners, proceeded into Westminster Hall, where a royal dais had been erected, and a magnificent cupboard—which stretched the whole length of the wall of the Court of Chancery—was laden with a display of plate, mostly of solid gold. Elizabeth, Margaret Beaufort, and the Princess Katherine sat down at elevated seats at the King’s left hand, with their ladies and the royal children on their side of the hall, while Prince Arthur sat at his father’s right hand, with the nobles seated according to degree on his side.

Stages with scenes of a castle, a fully rigged ship with sails, and a “Mount of Love” were wheeled in, and pageants performed. The castle—representing Castile—was lit enticingly from inside, and eight gentlewomen could be seen looking out of its windows. At the top sat a lady wearing Spanish dress, representing Katherine of Aragon, and in the towers were the children of the King’s Chapel in full chorus. The castle was drawn by “marvelous beasts”—men dressed as gold and silver lions harnessed with huge gold chains. The ship was manned by mariners “who took care to speak wholly in seafaring terms,” and in it were men dressed as sailors and a girl playing a Spanish infanta. The princess in the castle was courted by “two well-behaved and well-beseen gentlemen called Hope and Desire,” who emerged from the ship, but she disdained them, at which point eight knights emerged from the “Mount of Love” and stormed the fortress, forcing the ladies to surrender, whereupon they emerged from the castle, partnered the victors and danced with them “goodly roundels and divers figures,” before vanishing out of sight.

Arthur now led his aunt Cecily onto the floor, “and danced two basse dances,⁵⁰ and then departed up again, the prince to his father and Lady Cecily to the Queen her sister.” Next, the Princess Katherine and one of her ladies, both wearing Spanish dress, danced two basse dances, then “both departed up to the Queen.” After this things livened up. Ten-year-old “Henry, Duke of York, having with him his sister, Lady Margaret, in his hand, came down and danced two dances, and went up to the Queen.” There was such applause that the pair came down again, and young Henry “suddenly threw off his robe and danced in his jacket with the Lady Margaret in so goodly and pleasant a manner that it was to the King and Queen a great and singular pleasure. Then the duke departed to the King and the Princess Margaret to the Queen.” At the end of the evening a hundred lords and knights paraded into the hall with gold cups of hippocras and gold plates of spices.

On the following Sunday, November 21, there “was laid out a table in the White Hall, or Parliament Chamber, for a lavish dinner. The King sat at the side table next to his own chamber, with Katherine at his right hand,” her duenna beside her. The door to the King’s chamber was open, and within “the Queen sat at the table at the bed’s feet, which was the table of most reputation of all the tables in the chamber,” proclaiming to the world the esteem in which Henry held Elizabeth. Seated below the Queen were her sisters Cecily and Katherine, Margaret Beaufort, and a Spanish bishop. Arthur presided over a third table, seated with his siblings, Margaret and Henry. After dinner Katherine presented the prizes won in the jousts. The Duke of Buckingham received a great diamond, Dorset got a ruby, and the rest rings set with precious stones. Then the King and Queen led their guests into Westminster Hall, where they watched an interlude and were diverted by disguisings and a pageant in which lords and ladies danced in celebration of the union of the prince and princess. Just before midnight eighty earls, barons, and knights served a void of hippocras and comfits, offering the royal family golden plates of spices and gold cups, which were filled from a golden ewer by a lord of high rank.

The bridal pair spent the next few days at Baynard’s Castle, during which period more tournaments took place, and there was a huge gathering in Westminster Hall for more disguisings and pageants, during which the King presented prizes to those who had been victorious in the jousts, and everyone departed “with excellent mirth and gladness.” On Saturday, November 27, the royal family and the court left London in sixty barges, among which numbered those of the Lord Mayor and the City livery companies, decorated with “their standards and streamers, with their cognizances right well decked.” The journey was made delightful by “the most goodly and pleasant mirths of trumpets, clarions, shawms, tabors, recorders, and other diverse instruments, to whose noise upon the water hath not been heard the like.” At Mortlake everyone “took horses and chariots, and so rode to Richmond,” arriving late at night by torchlight. The King had arranged for the celebrations to continue in the great palace, “the bright and shining star of building, the mirror and pattern of all palaces of delight, commodity, and pleasure, there intending to finish, conclude, and end the royalties of this most excellent wedding.”⁵¹

The next day being Sunday, the King and Queen attended Mass “with pricked song and organs, and goodly ceremonies in the choir and altars.” Then, “after divine service, the King sped with the court through his goodly gardens to his gallery on the walls,” where he and his family watched lords playing chess, backgammon, cards, and dice. Later “a framework with ropes was fixed in the garden, on which went up a Spaniard, and did many wondrous and delicious points of tumbling and dancing.” Afterward the King led a hunt in Richmond Park, which Elizabeth did not attend.

In the evening, Henry, Elizabeth, and Katherine took their places on the dais in the hall, which was lavishly furnished with carpets and gold cushions, and watched a pageant in the form of a rock drawn by three seahorses; on the rock sat models of mermaids, in which were hidden the children of the Chapel Royal, “who sang sweetly with quaint harmony.” When the pageant reached the dais, “instead of dancers were let out of the rock a great number of white doves and live rabbits, which creatures flew and ran about the hall, causing great mirth and disport.” At the end of the evening, after the void, the King distributed gifts to his Spanish guests, in gratitude for their having brought their princess safely to England, and so ended the wedding celebrations.

The next day Katherine bade farewell to the Spanish lords, who returned home bearing letters from the Queen for Ferdinand and Isabella. Noticing that she was looking sad and pensive after their departure, Henry realized she was homesick. Kindly, he took her and her ladies to his new library and showed her “many goodly pleasant books” to divert her; he even summoned a jeweler, from whose wares she was allowed to take her pick. The remaining jewels were given to her Spanish ladies.⁵²

At the end of November the court moved to Windsor Castle. It had been decided that Arthur should return to Ludlow to resume his duties, but there was much debate as to whether Katherine would go with him or stay with the Queen and Princess Margaret, at least for the winter. The King still felt that Arthur was not old enough to give free rein to “the duties of a husband,” and that the couple should wait a while before they lived together; others were worried that Katherine, coming from the warmer climate of Spain, would find it hard wintering on the Welsh border. Some councilors agreed that cohabitation should be delayed, on account of the “tender age of our son,” as Henry would explain to Ferdinand and Isabella in February.⁵³ The tragic memory of the Infante Juan had hovered like a specter over the debate.

Doña Elvira and Pedro de Ayala urged that the princess remain behind, arguing that Ferdinand and Isabella would be “rather pleased than dissatisfied” if the couple “did not live together” for some time, on account of Arthur’s tender age. Katherine herself declared to the King that she had no other will than his in the matter. But her chaplain, backed by Dr. de Puebla (who had fallen out with Doña Elvira), insisted that it was the true wish of Ferdinand and Isabella that the prince and princess should not be separated; if they were, the Spanish sovereigns would be displeased and the homesick Katherine “in despair.” The “indecision continued four days, during which [the King] caused the prince to use his influence with the princess, and to persuade her to say that she preferred rather to go than to stay, and, as she refused to say it, the King, making show of great sorrow, decided that she should go to Wales, although nothing in the world he regretted more.” In this way Henry bowed to the perceived wishes of Katherine’s parents, declaring that he was allowing her to go to Wales “even to the danger of our own son.”⁵⁴ It was a decision he would soon come to rue. Elizabeth’s wishes in the matter are not recorded, but she may well have felt some concern.

On December 21, Arthur and Katherine left together for Ludlow, where they set up their small court. There, Arthur again presided over the Council of the Marches, learning how to govern his principality as a preparation for kingship, and continuing his studies with Dr. Linacre. Henry, Elizabeth, and their younger children spent Christmas at Richmond Palace.

Elizabeth was present when, on January 24, 1502, the treaty of marriage between Princess Margaret and James IV was concluded at Richmond,⁵⁵ and she played an important role in the ceremony of betrothal the following day, which was conducted with much pomp, and attended by many lords and high-ranking clergy, including Henry Deane, Archbishop of Canterbury, Thomas Savage, Archbishop of York, and Robert Blackadder, Archbishop of Glasgow. On this occasion, Katherine Courtenay and Katherine Gordon were in attendance on the Queen, and the latter took precedence after the royal party.

Clarencieux King of Arms left an account of the ceremonies: “First the King, the Queen, with their noble children, except the prince [Arthur], heard the High Mass” in the Royal Chapel, after which Richard FitzJames, Bishop of Rochester, “made a notable sermon.” Then “the King and the Queen, accompanied with the Duke of York, the Lady Mary,” the papal legate, the ambassadors, and the company of about ninety persons, processed to the Queen’s great chamber for the betrothal; the room had been newly decorated with entwined Tudor roses and Scottish thistles in honor of the occasion.

The King and Queen seated themselves beneath the canopy of estate, with Prince Henry and Princess Mary on stools at their feet. Princess Margaret stood before them, with all eyes upon her. During the ceremony, the Archbishop of Glasgow asked the King, the Queen, and the princess if they knew of any impediment, and all three assured him there was none.

Then the Archbishop turned to Margaret. “Are you content without compulsion, and of your own free will?”

And Margaret, displaying none of the independence of spirit of her later years, replied dutifully, “If it please my lord and father the King, and my lady my mother the Queen.” “The King showed her that it was his will and pleasure, and then she had the King’s and the Queen’s blessing,” whereupon the Archbishop proceeded to the betrothal ceremony, with Patrick Hepburn, Earl of Bothwell, standing proxy for the bridegroom.⁵⁶ Although she was not to go to Scotland until September 1503, Margaret was now Queen of Scots, and would henceforth be honored as such at her father’s court, and be assigned her own apartments at Westminster and Windsor.⁵⁷

Trumpets sounded from the leads of the chamber and minstrels played “in the best and most joyfullest manner” as “the King went to his own chamber to dinner” with the Scots and English ambassadors, and “the Queen took her daughter, the Queen of Scots, by the hand, and dined both at one mess, covered”—meaning that both were now married and therefore they covered their heads—in Elizabeth’s great chamber. Jousts followed in the afternoon, and in the evening there was “a notable banquet,” while in London Te Deums were sung in churches, bonfires were lit in celebration, and hogsheads of wine were passed around in the streets.

The next day the little Queen of Scots appeared in state in her mother’s chamber, and “by the voice of the principal officer there gave thanks to all those noble men who had taken pain to joust for her sake.” Prizes were presented to the winners in the lists, and afterward “there was in the hall a goodly pageant, curiously wrought with fenestrals [windows], having many lights burning in the same in manner of a lantern, out of which sorted various sorts [pairs] of morris [dancers].” There followed “a very goodly disguising of six gentlemen and six gentlewomen, which danced divers dances,” then one more “great and notable banquet.” The next day there was another tournament, after which the King distributed gifts to the Scots envoys.⁵⁸

Preparations were now put in hand for Margaret’s departure for Scotland. The Queen took a personal interest in her daughter’s trousseau, purchasing for her a gown of crimson velvet with cuffs of fur, white and orange sarcenet sleeves, three pewter basins, a brass chafer, two washing bowls, a fire pan, “a great trussing basket,” and a pair of bellows; she also paid “Giles the luter” for strings for the Queen of Scots’ lute.⁵⁹ A painter, called “Minour”—who was almost certainly Maynard Wewyck, the King’s painter—was commissioned to execute portraits of the King, the Queen, and the princess, which he took to Scotland himself and presented to James IV.⁶⁰

It might have seemed to Henry and Elizabeth that the high point of the King’s reign had been reached with the culmination of his hard-negotiated treaties, and that all was set fair for a glorious future. Yet the euphoria surrounding the wedding and betrothal celebrations did not long endure. In February 1502 two new threats to the Tudor dynasty emerged, and both would impact badly on Elizabeth.