The Wives of Henry the Eighth and the Parts They Played in History. Martin A. S. Hume

the powerful coalition of which Ferdinand was the head should be conciliated by England.

      Henry VII. died at Richmond on the 22nd April 1509, making a better and more generous end than could have been expected from his life. He, like his rival Ferdinand, had been avaricious by deliberate policy; and his avarice was largely instrumental in founding England’s coming greatness, for the overflowing coffers he left to his son lent force to the new position assumed by England as the balancing power, courted by both the great continental rivals. Ferdinand’s ambition had o’erleaped itself, and the possession of Flanders by the King of Castile had made England’s friendship more than ever necessary thenceforward, for France was opposed to Spain now, not in Italy alone, but on long conterminous frontiers in the north, south, and east as well.

      Henry VIII. at the age of eighteen was well fitting to succeed his father. All contemporary observers agree that his grace and personal beauty as a youth were as remarkable as his quickness of intellect and his true Tudor desire to stand well in the eyes of his people. Fully aware of the power his father’s wealth gave him politically, he was determined to share no part of the onus for the oppression with which the wealth had been collected; and on the day following his father’s death, before himself retiring to mourning reclusion in the Tower of London, the unpopular financial instruments of Henry VII., Empson and Dudley and others, were laid by the heels to sate the vengeance of the people. The Spanish match for the young king was by far more popular in England than any other; and the alacrity of Henry himself and his ministers to carry it into effect without further delay, now that his father with his personal ambitions and enmities was dead, was also indicative of his desire to begin his reign by pleasing his subjects.

      The death of Henry VII. had indeed cleared away many obstacles. Ferdinand had profoundly distrusted him. His evident desire to obtain control of Castile, either by his marriage with Juana or by that of his daughter Mary with the nine-year-old Archduke Charles, had finally hardened Ferdinand’s heart against him, whilst Henry’s fear and suspicion of Ferdinand had, as we have seen, effectually stood in the way of the completion of Katharine’s marriage. With young Henry as king affairs stood differently. Even before his father’s death Ferdinand had taken pains to assure him of his love, and had treated him as a sovereign over the dying old king’s head. Before the breath was out of Henry VII., Ferdinand’s letters were speeding to London to make all things smooth. There would be no opposition now to Ferdinand’s ratification of his Flemish grandson’s marriage with Henry’s sister Mary. The clever old Aragonese knew there was still plenty of time to stop that later; and certainly young Henry could not interfere in Castile, as his father might have done, on the strength of Mary Tudor’s betrothal. So all went merry as a marriage bell. Ferdinand, for once in his life, was liberal with his money. He implored his daughter to make no unpleasantness or complaint, and to raise no question that might obstruct her marriage. The ambassador, Fuensalida, was warned that if the bickering between himself and the Princess, or between the confessor and the household, was allowed to interfere with the match, disgrace and ruin should be his lot, and Katharine was admonished that she must be civil to Fuensalida, and to the Italian banker who was to pay the balance of her dowry. The King of Aragon need have had no anxiety. Young Henry and his councillors were as eager for the popular marriage as he was, and dreaded the idea of disgorging the 100,000 crowns dowry already paid and the English settlements upon Katharine. On the 6th May, accordingly, three days before the body of Henry VII. was borne in gloomy pomp to its last resting-place at Westminster, Katharine wrote to her delighted father that her marriage with Henry was finally settled.

CHAPTER III

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1509-1527

      KATHARINE THE QUEEN—A POLITICAL MARRIAGE AND A PERSONAL DIVORCE

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      “Long live King Henry VIII.!” cried Garter King of Arms in French as the great officers of state broke their staves of office and cast them into the open grave of the first Tudor king. Through England, like the blast of a trumpet, the cry was echoed from the hearts of a whole people, full of hope that the niggardliness and suspicion which for years had stood between the sovereign and his people were at last banished. The young king, expansive and hearty in manner, handsome and strong as a pagan god in person, was well calculated to captivate the love of the crowd. His prodigious personal vanity, which led him to delight in sumptuous raiment and gorgeous shows; the state and ceremony with which he surrounded himself and his skill in manly exercises, were all points in his favour with a pleasure-yearning populace which had been squeezed of its substance without seeing any return for it: whilst his ardent admiration for the learning which had during his lifetime become the fashion made grave scholars lose their judgment and write like flattering slaves about the youth of eighteen who now became unquestioned King of England and master of his father’s hoarded treasures.

      As we shall see in the course of this history, Henry was but a whited sepulchre. Young, light-hearted, with every one about him praising him as a paragon, and his smallest whim indulged as a divine command, there was no incitement for the exhibition of the baser qualities that underlay the big, popular manner, the flamboyant patriotism, and, it must be added, the real ability which appealed alike to the gentle and simple over whom he was called to rule. Like many men of his peculiar physique, he was never a strong man morally, and his will grew weaker as his body increased in gross flabbiness. The obstinate self-assertion and violence that impressed most observers as strength, hid behind them a spirit that forever needed direction and support from a stronger soul. So long as he was allowed in appearance to have his own way and his policy was showy, he was, as one of his wisest ministers said in his last days, the easiest man in the world to manage. His sensuality, which was all his own, and his personal vanity, were the qualities by means of which one able councillor after another used him for the ends they had in view, until the bridle chafed him, and his temporary master was made to feel the vengeance of a weak despot who discovers that he has been ruled instead of ruling. In Henry’s personal character as sketched above we shall be able to find the key of the tremendous political events that made his reign the most important in our annals; and we shall see that his successive marriages were the outcome of subtle intrigues in which representatives of various parties took advantage of the King’s vanity and lasciviousness to promote their own political or religious views. That the emancipation of England from Rome was the ultimate result cannot fairly be placed to Henry’s personal credit. If he could have had his own way without breaking with the Papacy he would have preferred to maintain the connection; but the Reformation was in the air, and craftier brains than Henry’s led the King step by step by his ruling passions until he had gone too far to retreat. To what extent his various matrimonial adventures served these intrigues we shall see in the course of this book.

      That Henry’s marriage with Katharine soon after his accession was politically expedient has been shown in the aforegoing pages; and the King’s Council were strongly in favour of it, with the exception of the Archbishop of Canterbury, Lord Chancellor Warham, who was more purely ecclesiastical than his colleagues, and appears to have had doubts as to the canonical validity of the union. As we have seen, the Pope had given a dispensation for the marriage years before, in terms that covered the case of the union with Arthur having been duly consummated, though Katharine strenuously denied that it had been, or that she knew how the dispensation was worded. The Spanish confessor also appears to have suggested to Fuensalida some doubts as to the propriety of the marriage, but King Ferdinand promptly put his veto upon any such scruples. Had not the Pope given his dispensation? he asked; and did not the peace of England and Spain depend upon the marriage? The sin would be not the marriage, but the failure to effect it after the pledges that had been given. So the few doubters were silenced; young Henry himself, all eager for his marriage, was not one of them, nor was Katharine, for to her the match was a triumph for which she had worked and suffered for years: and on the 11th June 1509 the