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

Though Roussillon and Cerdagne mattered nothing to Henry VII., the disposal of the rich duchy opposite his own shores was of importance to him. France, Spain, England, and the Empire were all trying to outbid one another for the marriage of the Duchess; and, as Charles VIII. of France was the most dangerous suitor, Henry was induced to send his troops across the Channel to Brittany to join those of Spain and the Empire, though neither of the latter troops came. From the first all the allies were false to each other, and hastened to make separate terms with France; Ferdinand and Maximilian endeavouring above all to leave Henry at war. When, at the end of 1491, Charles VIII. carried off the matrimonial prize of the Duchess of Brittany and peace ensued, none of the allies had gained anything by their tergiversation. Reasons were soon found by Ferdinand for regarding the marriage treaty between Arthur and Katharine as in abeyance, and once more pressure was put upon Henry to buy its fulfilment by another warlike coalition. The King of England stood out for a time, especially against an alliance with the King of the Romans, who had acted so badly about Brittany; but at length the English contingent was led against Boulogne by the King himself, as part of the allied action agreed upon. This time, however, it was Henry who, to prevent the betrayal he foresaw, scored off his allies, and without striking a blow he suddenly made a separate peace with France (November 1492). But yet he was the only party who had not gained what he had bid for. Roussillon and Cerdagne were restored to Ferdinand, in consequence of Henry’s threat against Boulogne; France had been kept in check during the time that all the resources of Spain were strained in the supreme effort to capture the last Moorish foothold in the Peninsula, the peerless Granada; the King of France had married the Duchess of Brittany and had thus consolidated and strengthened his realm; whilst Henry, to his chagrin, found that not only had he not regained Normandy and Guienne, but that in the new treaty of peace between Spain and France, “Ferdinand and Isabel engage their loyal word and faith as Christians, not to conclude or permit any marriage of their children with any member of the royal family of England; and they bind themselves to assist the King of France against all his enemies, and particularly against the English.” This was Henry’s first experience of Ferdinand’s diplomacy, and he found himself outwitted at every point. Katharine, all unconscious as she conned her childish lessons at Granada, ceased for a time to be called “Princess of Wales.”

      With the astute King of England thus cozened by Ferdinand, it is not wonderful that the vain and foolish young King of France should also have found himself no match for his new Spanish ally. Trusting upon his alliance, Charles VIII. determined to strike for the possession of the kingdom of Naples, which he claimed as representing the house of Anjou. Naples at the time was ruled by a close kinsman of Ferdinand, and it is not conceivable that the latter ever intended to allow the French to expel him for the purpose of ruling there themselves. But he smiled, not unkindly at first, upon Charles’s Italian adventure, for he knew the French king was rash and incompetent, and that the march of a French army through Italy would arouse the hatred and fear of the Italian princes and make them easy tools in his hands. The King of Naples, moreover, was extremely unpopular and of illegitimate descent: and Ferdinand doubtless saw that if the French seized Naples he could not only effect a powerful coalition to expel them, but in the scramble might keep Naples for himself; and this is exactly what happened. The first cry against the French was raised by the Pope Alexander VI., a Spanish Borgia. By the time Charles VIII. of France was crowned King of Naples (May 1495) all Italy was ablaze against the intruders, and Ferdinand formed the Holy League—of Rome, Spain, Austria, Venice, and Milan—to crush his enemies.

      Then, as usual, he found it desirable to secure the benevolence of Henry VII. of England. Again Henry was delighted, for Perkin Warbeck had been received by Maximilian and his Flemish kinsmen as the rightful King of England, and the Yorkist nobles still found aid and sympathy in the dominions of Burgundy. But Henry had already been tricked once by the allies, and was far more difficult to deal with than before. He found himself, indeed, for the first time in the position which under his successors enabled England to rise to the world power she attained; namely, that of the balancing factor between France and Spain. This was the first result of Ferdinand’s coalition against France for the purpose of forwarding Aragonese aims, and it remained the central point of European politics for the next hundred years. Henry was not the man to overlook his new advantage, with both of the great European powers bidding for his alliance; and this time he drove a hard bargain with Ferdinand. There was still much haggling about the Spanish dowry for Katharine, but Henry stood firm at the 200,000 gold crowns, though a quarter of the amount was to take the form of jewels belonging the bride. One stipulation was that the new marriage was to be kept a profound secret, in order that the King of Scots might not be alarmed; for Ferdinand was trying to draw even him away from France by hints of marriage with an Infanta. By the new treaty, which was signed in October 1497, the formal marriage of Arthur and Katharine per verba de presenti was to be celebrated when Arthur had completed his fourteenth year; and the bride’s dowry in England was to consist of a third of the revenues of Wales, Cornwall, and Chester, with an increase of the income when she became Queen.

      But it was not all plain sailing yet. Ferdinand considered that Henry had tricked him about the amount and form of the dowry, but the fear that the King of France might induce the English to enter into a new alliance with him kept Ferdinand ostensibly friendly. In the summer of 1598 two special Spanish ambassadors arrived in London, and saw the King for the purpose of confirming him in the alliance with their sovereigns, and, if we are to believe Puebla’s account of the interview, both Henry and his Queen carried their expressions of veneration for Ferdinand and Isabel almost to a blasphemous extent. Henry, indeed, is said to have had a quarrel with his wife because she would not give him one of the letters from the Spanish sovereigns always to carry about with him, Elizabeth saying that she wished to send her letter to the Prince of Wales.

      But for all Henry’s blandishments and friendliness, his constant requests that Katharine should be sent to England met with never-failing excuses and procrastination. It is evident, indeed, throughout that, although the Infanta was used as the attraction that was to keep Henry and England in the Spanish, instead of the French, interest, there was much reluctance on the part of her parents, and particularly of Queen Isabel, to trust her child, to whom she was much attached, to the keeping of a stranger, whose only object in desiring her presence was, she knew, a political one. Some anxiety was shown by Henry and his wife, on the other hand, that the young Princess should be trained in a way that would fit her for her future position in England. The Princess Margaret of Austria, daughter of Maximilian, who had just married Ferdinand’s heir, Prince John, was in Spain, and Puebla reports that the King and Queen of England were anxious that Katharine should take the opportunity of speaking French with her, in order to learn the language. “This is necessary, because the English ladies do not understand Latin, and much less Spanish. The King and Queen also wish that the Princess should accustom herself to drink wine. The water of England is not drinkable, and even if it were, the climate would not allow the drinking of it.” The necessary Papal Bulls for the marriage of the Prince and Princess arrived in 1498, and Henry pressed continually for the coming of the bride, but Ferdinand and Isabel were in no hurry. “The manner in which the marriage is to be performed, and the Princess sent to England, must all be settled first.” “You must negotiate these points,” they wrote to Puebla, “but make no haste.”[2] Spanish envoys of better character and greater impartiality than Puebla urged that Katharine should be sent “before she had become too much attached to Spanish life and institutions”; though the writer of this admits the grave inconvenience of subjecting so young a girl to the disadvantages of life in Henry’s court.

      Young Arthur himself, even, was prompted to use his influence to persuade his new wife to join him, writing to his “most entirely beloved spouse” from Ludlow in October 1499, dwelling upon his earnest desire to see her, as the delay in her coming is very grievous to him, and he begs it may be hastened. The final disappearance of Perkin Warbeck in 1499 greatly changed the position of Henry and made him a more desirable connection: and the death without issue of Ferdinand’s only son and heir about the same time, also made it necessary for the Spanish king to draw his alliances closer, in view of the nearness to the succession of his second daughter, Juana, who had married Maximilian’s son, the Archduke Philip, sovereign of Flanders, who, as well as his Spanish wife, were deeply distrusted by both Ferdinand and Isabel. In 1500, therefore, the Spanish sovereigns became more