Catherine of Aragon
Catherine of Aragon was born in the early hours of the 16th of December 1485 at the Archbishop's Palace of Alcalá de Henares, the youngest child of two reigning monarchs. Her parents were Isabella I of Castile and Ferdinand II of Aragon, the most powerful royal couple in Europe. Before she was four years old, she had been promised in marriage to a boy she had never met, on the other side of the continent.
She would become Queen of England, then be stripped of that title. She would be the first known female ambassador in European history. She would be the reason England broke from the Catholic Church. And when she died at Kimbolton Castle in January 1536, even her adversary Thomas Cromwell admitted: "If not for her sex, she could have defied all the heroes of History."
How did a Spanish princess, widowed at sixteen, become the most politically consequential woman in Tudor England? What drove her refusal to yield, even as Henry VIII dismantled the religious world she had built her life around? And what did her stubbornness ultimately cost, and what did it change?
Alessandro Geraldini, a clerk in Holy Orders, was Catherine's tutor. Under his instruction, she studied arithmetic, canon law, civil law, classical literature, genealogy, heraldry, history, philosophy, religion, and theology. She read and wrote in Castilian Spanish and Latin. She also spoke French and Greek. Erasmus would later remark that she "loved good literature which she had studied with success since childhood".
She was not simply educated for display. The daughter of Isabella I of Castile, who had herself co-ruled a kingdom, Catherine absorbed the expectation that a royal woman could govern. She also learned embroidery, lace-making, sewing, spinning, weaving, music, dancing, and drawing. At court, good manners and etiquette were drilled into her alongside Aristotle.
Physically, she was quite short, with long red hair, wide blue eyes, a round face, and a fair complexion. Through her maternal line, she descended from the House of Lancaster, the English royal house. Her great-grandmother Catherine of Lancaster and her great-great-grandmother Philippa of Lancaster were both daughters of John of Gaunt and granddaughters of Edward III of England. This made her third cousin of her eventual father-in-law, Henry VII, a connection that would later matter in Tudor succession calculations.
She was betrothed to Arthur, Prince of Wales, by proxy on the 19th of May 1499, when she was thirteen. The two corresponded in Latin until Arthur turned fifteen.
Catherine departed from A Coruña on the 17th of August 1501, at fifteen years old. She met Arthur on the 4th of November at Dogmersfield in Hampshire. Arthur wrote to his parents that he was immensely happy to "behold the face of his lovely bride". Ten days after that meeting, on the 14th of November 1501, they married at Old St. Paul's Cathedral, both of them fifteen years old. A dowry of 200,000 ducats had been arranged, with half paid shortly after the ceremony.
Arthur was sent to Ludlow Castle to preside over the Council of Wales and the Marches, as was his duty as Prince of Wales. Catherine went with him. A few months later, both fell ill, possibly with the sweating sickness that was moving through the area. Arthur died on the 2nd of April 1502. Catherine recovered to find herself a widow at sixteen.
Henry VII now faced a financial problem. Returning Catherine to Spain meant returning her dowry, half of which he had not yet received. Rumours briefly circulated that Catherine herself might marry the widowed king, but nothing came of them. She was eventually promised to Henry's second son, also named Henry, who was five years her junior. Then Catherine's mother Isabella died, and Castile, a far larger kingdom than Aragon, passed not to Catherine but to her elder sister Joanna. Catherine's marriage market value, as contemporaries coldly calculated it, dropped.
She lived at Durham House in London as a virtual prisoner, with little money, obliged to support her ladies-in-waiting from her own limited means. She later wrote to her father: "I choose what I believe, and say nothing. For I am not as simple as I may seem." In 1507, Henry VII's court expected to manipulate her. Instead, she was appointed Spanish ambassador to England, the first known female ambassador in European history.
On the 11th of June 1513, Henry VIII formally appointed Catherine as Regent of England with the titles "Governor of the Realm and Captain General" while he crossed to France on a military campaign. Within weeks, Scotland invaded England's northern border.
Catherine worked from Richmond Palace, where she was "horrible busy with making standards, banners, and badges". She wrote to towns including Gloucester asking them to send muster lists of available soldiers. On the 3rd of September 1513, she ordered Thomas Lovell to raise an army in the midland counties. Five days later, she was issued with banners at Richmond and rode north in full armour to address the troops, despite being heavily pregnant at the time.
News of the English victory at the Battle of Flodden Field reached her near Buckingham, though one Italian newsletter placed her a hundred miles north of London. Her speech before the troops was so striking that it was reported to the historian Peter Martyr d'Anghiera in Valladolid within a fortnight of the battle.
From Woburn Abbey, Catherine wrote to Henry and sent him a piece of the bloodied coat of King James IV of Scotland, who died at Flodden, suggesting he use it as a banner at the siege of Tournai. Louis d'Orléans, Duke of Longueville, had been captured at Thérouanne, and Henry sent him to stay in Catherine's household. She wrote to Wolsey that she would prefer the Duke in the Tower of London while the Scots remained "so busy as they now be".
Catherine's daughter Mary was born on the 18th of February 1516, the only one of their children to survive. By 1520, Catherine's nephew, the Holy Roman Emperor Charles V, paid a state visit to England, and she urged Henry toward an alliance with Charles rather than France.
By 1525, Henry VIII had become infatuated with Anne Boleyn, a lady-in-waiting, who was between ten and seventeen years younger than he was. He began to interpret a passage in Leviticus as divine condemnation of his marriage to his brother's widow, even though Catherine insisted to her dying day that her marriage to Arthur had never been consummated. Henry sent his secretary William Knight to Pope Clement VII to seek an annulment, arguing that the dispensation from Pope Julius II had been obtained by false pretenses.
The timing was catastrophically bad for Henry. Pope Clement was, at that time, the prisoner of Catherine's nephew, Emperor Charles V, following the Sack of Rome in May 1527. Knight could not reach the Pope, and returned without accomplishing anything. Henry handed the matter to Cardinal Thomas Wolsey, who convened an ecclesiastical court in England with a papal representative presiding. The Pope recalled his legate before any decision was reached. Wolsey was dismissed from public office in 1529 and subsequently died in 1530 before he could be arrested for treason.
Catherine was banished from court and her rooms given to Anne Boleyn. In a letter to Emperor Charles V in 1531, she described her treatment as enough "to shorten ten lives, much more mine". When Archbishop William Warham died, the Boleyn family's chaplain Thomas Cranmer was appointed to replace him. John Fisher became Catherine's most trusted counsellor and appeared in the legates' court on her behalf, declaring that like John the Baptist, he was ready to die for the indissolubility of marriage. Among those who supported Catherine's position were Thomas More, Henry's sister Mary Tudor, the Holy Roman Emperor Charles V, Pope Paul III, and Protestant reformers Martin Luther and William Tyndale.
On the 23rd of May 1533, Cranmer convened a special court at Dunstable Priory and declared Catherine's marriage to Henry unlawful. Five days later, on the 28th of May 1533, he ruled that Henry's marriage to Anne was valid. Catherine refused to accept either ruling.
Catherine's movements after her banishment from court traced a narrowing circuit across the English Midlands. She went first to The More Castle in Hertfordshire in late 1531, then to the Royal Palace of Hatfield, then to Elsyng Palace in Enfield, then to Ampthill Castle in Bedfordshire, then to Buckden Towers in Cambridgeshire. In May 1534 she was transferred to Kimbolton Castle, also in Cambridgeshire, where she confined herself to a single room, leaving it only to attend Mass. She wore the hair shirt of the Franciscans and fasted continuously.
Henry refused to let her see her daughter Mary or communicate with her in writing. He offered both mother and daughter better quarters and permission to meet, on the condition that they acknowledge Anne Boleyn as queen. Both refused. Sympathisers quietly passed letters between the two in secret.
In late December 1535, sensing her death approaching, Catherine wrote her will and sent a letter to Emperor Charles V asking him to protect Mary. She also wrote what has been attributed as a final letter to Henry, which begins: "My most dear lord, king and husband, the hour of my death now drawing on..." The letter pardons Henry, commends Mary to his care, and asks provisions for her three remaining maids. It closes: "mine eyes desire you above all things." Scholars have questioned the letter's authenticity but not, the source notes, the attitude it expresses.
Catherine died at Kimbolton on the 7th of January 1536. Rumours of poisoning circulated, possibly implicating Gregory di Casale. A black growth on her heart, discovered during embalming, was taken at the time as evidence of poison. Modern medical experts attribute the discolouration to cancer. On the day of her funeral, Anne Boleyn miscarried a male child. Henry did not attend Catherine's funeral and forbade Mary from attending.
Catherine was a member of the Third Order of Saint Francis and was exacting in her religious obligations. Her personal devotions centred on the Mass, prayer, Confession, and penance rather than the celebration of saints and holy relics. After the annulment, she was quoted saying: "I would rather be a poor beggar's wife and be sure of heaven, than queen of all the world and stand in doubt thereof by reason of my own consent."
She commissioned Juan Luis Vives to write The Education of a Christian Woman, a controversial book that argued women have the right to an education; Vives dedicated it to her in 1523. Education among women became fashionable in England partly because of her influence. She also donated large sums to several colleges, won wide admiration for a substantial programme of relief for the poor, and successfully appealed for the lives of the rebels involved in the Evil May Day, on behalf of their families.
At Peterborough Cathedral, where she was buried with the ceremony due a Dowager Princess of Wales and not a queen, her tomb reads "Katharine Queen of England". In the twentieth century, Queen Mary of Teck gave her grave an upgrade and added banners there designating her as a Queen of England. Every year a service is held at the cathedral in her memory, with processions, candles, pomegranates, and flowers placed on her grave. The Spanish Ambassador to the United Kingdom attended the commemoration of the 470th anniversary of her death. In her birthplace of Alcalá de Henares, a statue shows her as a young woman holding a book and a rose.
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Who was Catherine of Aragon and why was she important?
Catherine of Aragon was Queen of England as the first wife of Henry VIII from 1509 to 1533 and the youngest daughter of Queen Isabella I of Castile and King Ferdinand II of Aragon. Her refusal to accept an annulment of her marriage set off a chain of events that led to England's break from the Catholic Church. Thomas Cromwell, her adversary, said of her: "If not for her sex, she could have defied all the heroes of History."
When and where was Catherine of Aragon born?
Catherine of Aragon was born in the early hours of the 16th of December 1485 at the Archbishop's Palace of Alcalá de Henares, near Madrid, in Spain. She was the youngest surviving child of Ferdinand II of Aragon and Isabella I of Castile.
Why did Henry VIII want to annul his marriage to Catherine of Aragon?
By 1525, Henry VIII was infatuated with Anne Boleyn and dissatisfied that his marriage to Catherine had produced no surviving male heir. He interpreted a biblical passage as divine condemnation of marrying a brother's widow and sought an annulment on the grounds that the papal dispensation allowing the marriage had been obtained by false pretenses. His inability to secure this annulment from Pope Clement VII, who was at the time a prisoner of Catherine's nephew Emperor Charles V, led Henry to break with the Catholic Church.
What role did Catherine of Aragon play as regent of England?
On the 11th of June 1513, Henry VIII appointed Catherine regent with the titles "Governor of the Realm and Captain General" while he campaigned in France. During that time, she organised England's military response to a Scottish invasion, rode north in full armour while heavily pregnant to address the troops, and sent Henry a piece of the bloodied coat of King James IV of Scotland, who died at the Battle of Flodden Field.
Where did Catherine of Aragon die and what was the cause?
Catherine of Aragon died at Kimbolton Castle in Cambridgeshire on the 7th of January 1536. Modern medical experts agree the cause was cancer, though rumours of poisoning circulated at the time after a black growth was discovered on her heart during embalming.
What did Catherine of Aragon contribute to women's education?
Catherine commissioned Juan Luis Vives to write The Education of a Christian Woman, a controversial book arguing that women have the right to an education, which Vives dedicated to her in 1523. Education among women became fashionable in England partly because of her influence, and she donated large sums of money to several colleges.
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