CHAPTER 2

A TRUE FRIENDSHIP AND ALLIANCE

We have this moment received news of the death of the most serene Ferdinand, King of Aragon; and it is supposed this was known some days ago to his Majesty, but kept secret, because of the most serene Queen’s being on the eve of her delivery.¹

—GIUSTINIANI TO THE DOGE AND SENATE, FEBRUARY 20, 1516

MARY CAME INTO THE WORLD DURING A SEASON OF MOURNING. Just days before her birth, news reached the English court of the death of Katherine’s father. Solemn requiems were sung at St. Paul’s, but the queen was not informed of her loss until after she had safely given birth.² Ferdinand’s death marked the passing of the last of Mary’s grandparents, and though she never knew any of them, with her steely determination, Catholic devotion, and strong sense of her right to rule, she would prove to be every inch their heir. She was, unmistakably, both a Spaniard and a Tudor.

Her mother, Katherine, was the daughter of Ferdinand of Aragon and Isabella of Castile, her father the son of Henry Tudor (Henry VII) and Elizabeth of York. Both sets of grandparents had brought unity to their war-torn kingdoms after years of disputed successions. Henry Tudor’s defeat of Richard III at the Battle of Bosworth in 1485 had ended thirty-three years of incipient civil war between the Houses of York and Lancaster, two rival branches of the Plantagenet family that had ruled England since the twelfth century. Henry, a Lancastrian, claimed the throne through his mother, Margaret Beaufort, and her descent from John of Gaunt, duke of Lancaster, the son of Edward III. Following the accession of the Yorkist king, Edward IV, in 1471, Henry had fled to Brittany for fear that Edward would act against him as the remaining Lancastrian claimant. Twelve years later, after Edward had died, his brother Richard, duke of Gloucester, usurped the throne. He imprisoned, and most likely murdered, his nephew Edward V, and was crowned King Richard III on July 6, 1483. Realizing Richard’s unpopularity, Henry saw an opportunity to win the throne. He set sail from Brittany with French men and ships and landed at Milford Haven in August 1485. On the twenty-second he overwhelmed the king’s forces at Bosworth, near Leicester, and killed Richard III in the midst of the battle. Five months after his accession, Henry married Elizabeth of York, the eldest daughter and surviving heir of the Yorkist king, Edward IV, thereby uniting the warring Plantagenet family. The establishment of the Tudor dynasty was made secure by the birth of their first son and heir, Arthur, on September 19, 1486, a daughter Margaret, and a second son, Prince Henry, five years later, to be followed by another daughter, Mary.

Mary’s grandmother Isabella of Castile had also fought to win her throne, after her father disinherited her. Alongside her husband Ferdinand, king of Aragon, she campaigned for five years in a bitter civil war before emerging triumphant and claiming the crown of Castile. The only queen regnant in fifteenth-century Europe, she doggedly reasserted her position in the face of her husband’s attempts to share her power. It would be a marriage of equals, with both sovereigns ruling in their own right. Ferdinand and Isabella became the foremost monarchs in Europe, with a crusading zeal that characterized the Spanish monarchy. Their shared aim became the Reconquista of Granada, the last Muslim kingdom in Spain. The Reconquista was to be the climax of the Crusade, the medieval Christian enterprise against the Muslims that had begun in the twelfth century. Isabella, determined, single-minded, and fervently Catholic, saw the campaign as her divine purpose and rode with her knights, rallying her troops. The war lasted for ten years before finally, on January 2, 1492, the last Muslim leader, Muhammad II, surrendered complete control of Granada. It was the culmination of several centuries of reconquest and a great Christian triumph. In the years that followed, the Spanish Inquisition, established first in Castile and then in Aragon, secured the expulsion of all remaining Jews and Muslims. “The Catholic Kings,” as they were entitled by Pope Alexander IV, had created a unified Spain and an entirely Catholic kingdom.

Katherine, the youngest of Ferdinand and Isabella’s five children, was born on December 16, 1485, in the midst of the Reconquista at the archbishop of Toledo’s palace northeast of Madrid. She was named after her mother’s English grandmother, a daughter of John of Gaunt, duke of Lancaster, who had married Enrique III of Castile. Following the defeat of the Moors, the Alhambra—the former residence of the Muslim kings—became Katherine’s home, and from there she witnessed the expulsion of the Jews and the activities of the Inquisition.

Isabella was determined that her four daughters be educated properly and have what she had been denied. She had received only a meager schooling as a child and had later taught herself to read Latin while campaigning. Along with learning the “female arts” of dancing, music, needlework, and embroidery, Katherine learned the works of the Latin Fathers of the Church—Ambrose, Augustine, Gregory, and Jerome—and those of the Latin Christian poets. But whereas her brother, Juan, was educated to rule, Katherine and her sisters were expected to cement foreign policy alliances as the wives of European princes. First Isabella, Katherine’s eldest sister, was married to Prince Alfonso of Portugal, then Juana to the Archduke Philip of Burgundy, and later Maria to Prince Manoel of Portugal. When it was Katherine’s turn, her parents looked to England.

Ferdinand and Isabella wanted an Anglo-Spanish alliance as a counterpoise to French aggression in Italy. For Henry VII a union with Spain was a great diplomatic coup, a means to bolster the fledgling Tudor dynasty and England’s place in Europe. Founded on their common interest of restraining the growing power of France, the Treaty of Medina del Campo of March 28, 1489, provided for mutual cooperation. It would form the basis of an Anglo-Spanish bond that would endure for the first half of the sixteenth century.

A true friendship and alliance shall be observed henceforth between Ferdinand and Isabella, their heirs and subjects, on the one part, and Henry, his heirs and subjects, on the other part. They promise to assist one another in defending their present and future dominions against any enemy whatsoever…. As often as and whenever Ferdinand and Isabella make war with France, Henry shall do the same, and conversely…. In order to strengthen this alliance the Princess Katherine is to marry Prince Arthur. The marriage is to be contracted per verba de futuro as soon as Katherine and Arthur attain the necessary age.³

Isabella “made very particular honour [of the English ambassadors], for she prized her Lancastrian kinship with Henry, and saw a connection with England, as with Burgundy, important to pre-eminence in Europe.”⁴ And so, from the age of three, Katherine knew her future would be as an English queen. Her mother was reluctant for her to go: she was the youngest of her children and the last to marry; but finally, aged sixteen, Katherine set sail for England to marry Henry VII’s son Arthur.⁵ Upon the Spanish princess’s arrival at Plymouth, the licentiate Alcares wrote to tell Isabella that “she could not have been received with greater rejoicings if she had been the Saviour of the World.”⁶

Katherine and Arthur were married on November 14, 1501, at St. Paul’s Cathedral. It was a magnificent ceremony and one that heralded the Anglo-Spanish alliance—the defining moment of the Tudor dynasty.⁷ After a week of splendid banquets and tournaments, the royal couple journeyed to Ludlow in Shropshire to govern the Principality of Wales, as was the ancient custom for the heir to the throne. But though long in the making, the marriage was to last less than six months. On April 2, Arthur, then sixteen, died suddenly; most accounts suggest it was tuberculosis, or “consumption.” The foundations on which the Anglo-Spanish entente had been constructed had crumbled.

Yet it was an alliance too important for either party to lose. As soon as news reached Spain of Arthur’s death, Ferdinand and Isabella mooted the possibility of Katherine marrying the new heir to the throne, ten-year-old Prince Henry. Because of their consanguinity, a dispensation had to be sought from Pope Julius II, although Katherine insisted that her marriage to Arthur had never been consummated. On June 23, 1503, a new treaty was signed and agreement reached for Prince Henry and Katherine to be married in five years’ time. But when Queen Isabella died in November 1504, the personal union of Castile and Aragon, founded on her marriage with Ferdinand, was shattered. Isabella had bequeathed Castile to her daughter Juana, who was married to Philip of Burgundy. He claimed the throne in her name, while Ferdinand of Aragon took power as regent. Katherine’s worth as a bride fell dramatically. She was no longer princess of the Iberian Peninsula, and an alliance with Aragon alone was of limited value. Henry VII now abandoned marriage negotiations with Ferdinand.

Katherine, meanwhile, was stranded. She remained in England, mourning the loss of her mother, with little money and no clear status. She petitioned her father to come to her aid, describing how she was in debt and how greatly she needed money “not for extravagant things” but “only for food”; she was “in the greatest trouble and anguish in the world.”⁸

ON APRIL 21, 1509, amid scenes of great celebration, seventeen-year-old Prince Henry was proclaimed king of England. “Heaven and earth rejoices,” wrote Lord Mountjoy to the Dutch humanist Desiderius Erasmus; “everything is full of milk and honey and nectar. Avarice has fled the country. Our King is not after gold, or gems, or precious metals, but virtue, glory, immortality.”⁹ Soon after his accession, Henry sought to establish his European status by reasserting England’s claim to the French Crown. He needed allies and looked to renew the alliance with Ferdinand of Aragon and marry his brother’s widow, Katherine. On June 11 they exchanged vows at the Franciscan church at Greenwich.

“Most illustrious Prince,” Henry was asked, “is it your will to fulfil the treaty of marriage concluded by your father, the late King of England and the parents of the Princess of Wales, the King and Queen of Spain; and, as the Pope has dispensed with this marriage, to take the Princess who is here present for your lawful wife?” Both parties answered, “I will.”¹⁰

Two weeks later, Henry and Katherine were crowned together at Westminster Abbey. He was eighteen, handsome, and athletic; she was twenty-three and described as “the most beautiful creature in the world.” Well educated and accomplished, she loved music, dancing, and hawking almost as much as Henry did. She was, in many ways, the ideal royal bride. Both were equally learned and pious and were keen readers of theological works. Katherine spent hours at her devotions, rising at midnight to say Matins and at dawn to hear Mass, and, very much her mother’s daughter, she proved to be politically able and determined. As Henry prepared for war with France in 1512, Katherine was closely involved. “The King is for war, the Council against and the Queen for it,” one Venetian diplomat reported.¹¹

While Henry embarked on his campaign, capturing the towns of Thérouanne and Tournai in northern France, Katherine remained in England as “Regent and Governess of England, Wales and Ireland,” with authority to raise troops and supervise preparations for war against the Scots. Ten years earlier, when James IV of Scotland had married Henry’s elder sister, Margaret, he had sworn “perpetual peace” with England. He had now been persuaded by the French to renew their “auld alliance” against England. War was declared in August, and James launched an invasion across the border. As Peter Martyr, the contemporary Italian historian, reported:

Queen Katherine, in imitation of her mother Isabella … made splendid oration to the English captains, told them to be ready to defend their territory … and they should remember that English courage excelled that of all other nations. Fired by these words, the nobles marched against the Scots … and defeated them.¹²

The Scottish king was killed at Flodden Field. It was one of England’s most resounding victories over the Scots and Katherine’s finest hour. She wrote triumphantly to Henry, “In this your grace shall see how I can keep my promise, sending you for your banners a King’s coat. I thought to send himself unto you, but our Englishmen’s hearts would not suffer it.”¹³ Following in the footsteps of her mother, Isabella, she had proved to be a great warrior queen, mustering troops and delivering rousing orations. Ironically, it would be the womanly “duties” of pregnancy and childbirth—her inability to provide a male heir—that would be her undoing.