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

affianced wife meant very much for Henry VII. and his house. He had already, by a master-stroke of diplomacy, betrothed his eldest daughter to the King of Scots, and was thus safe from French intrigue on his vulnerable northern border, whilst the new King of France was far too apprehensive of Ferdinand’s coalition to arouse the active enmity of England. The presence of Ferdinand’s daughter on English soil completed the security against attack upon Henry from abroad. It is true that the Yorkists and their friends were still plotting: “Solicited, allured and provoked, by that old venomous serpent, the Duchess of Burgundy, ever the sower of sedition and beginner of rebellion against the King of England;”[3] but Henry knew well that with Katharine at his Court he could strike a death-blow, as he soon did, at his domestic enemies, without fear of reprisals from her brother-in-law Philip, the present sovereign of Burgundy and Flanders.

      Messengers were sent galloping to London to carry to the King the great news of Katharine’s arrival at Plymouth; but the roads were bad, and it was not Henry’s way to spoil his market by a show of over-eagerness, and though he sent forward the Duchess of Norfolk and the Earl of Surrey to attend upon the Princess on her way towards London, the royal party did not set out from Shene Palace to meet her until the 4th November. Travelling through a drenching rain by short stages from one seat to another, Henry VII. and his daughter-in-law gradually approached each other with their splendid troops of followers, all muffled up, we are told, in heavy rain cloaks to shield their finery from the inclemency of an English winter. Young Arthur, coming from the seat of his government in Wales, met his father near Chertsey, and together they continued their journey towards the west. On the third day, as they rode over the Hampshire downs, they saw approaching them a group of horsemen, the leader of which dismounted and saluted the King in Latin with a message from Ferdinand and Isabel. Ladies in Spain were kept in strict seclusion until their marriage, and the messenger, who was the Protonotary Cañazares, sent with Katharine to England to see that Spanish etiquette was not violated, prayed in the name of his sovereigns that the Infanta should not be seen by the King, and especially by the bridegroom, until the public marriage was performed. This was a part of the bargain that the cautious Puebla had not mentioned, and Henry was puzzled at such a request in his own realm, where no such oriental regard for women was known. Hastily taking counsel of the nobles on horseback about him, he decided that, as the Infanta was in England, she must abide by English customs. Indeed the demand for seclusion seems to have aroused the King’s curiosity, for, putting spurs to his horse, with but a small following, and leaving the boy bridegroom behind, he galloped on to Dogmersfield, at no great distance away, where the Infanta was awaiting his arrival. When he came to the house in which she lodged, he found a little group of horrified Spanish prelates and nobles, the Archbishop of Santiago, the Bishop of Majorca, and Count Cabra, at the door of the Infanta’s apartments, barring entrance. The Princess had, they said, retired to her chamber and ought not to be disturbed. There was no restraining a king in his own realm, however, and Henry brushed the group aside. “Even if she were in bed,” he said, “he meant to see and speak with her, for that was the whole intent of his coming.”

      Finding that Spanish etiquette would not be observed in England, Katharine made the best of matters and received Henry graciously, though evidently her Latin and French were different from his; for they were hardly intelligible to one another. Then, after the King had changed his travelling garb, he sent word that he had a present for the Princess; and led in the blushing Prince Arthur to the presence of his bride. The conversation now was more easily conducted, for the Latin-speaking bishops were close by to interpret. Once more, and for the fourth time, the young couple formally pledged their troth; and then after supper the Spanish minstrels played, and the ladies and gentlemen of Katharine’s suite danced: young Arthur, though unable to dance in the Spanish way, trod an English measure with Lady Guildford to show that he was not unversed in courtly graces.[4]

      Arthur appears to have been a slight, fair, delicate lad, amiable and gentle, and not so tall as his bride, who was within a month of sixteen years, Arthur being just over fifteen. Katharine must have had at this time at least the grace of girlhood, though she never can have been a great beauty. Like most of her mother’s house she had pale, rather hard, statuesque features and ruddy hair. As we trace her history we shall see that most of her mistakes in England, and she made many, were the natural result of the uncompromising rigidity of principle arising from the conviction of divine appointment which formed her mother’s system. She had been brought up in the midst of a crusading war, in which the victors drew their inspiration, and ascribed their triumph, to the special intervention of the Almighty in their favour; and already Katharine’s house had assumed as a basis of its family faith that the cause of God was indissolubly linked with that of the sovereigns of Castile and Leon. It was impossible that a woman brought up in such a school could be opportunist, or would bend to the petty subterfuges and small complaisances by which men are successfully managed; and Katharine suffered through life from the inflexibility born of self-conscious rectitude.

      Slowly through the rain the united cavalcades travelled back by Chertsey; and the Spanish half then rode to Kingston, where the Duke of Buckingham, with four hundred retainers in black and scarlet, met the bride, and so to the palace at Kennington hard by Lambeth, where Katharine was lodged until the sumptuous preparations for the public marriage at St. Paul’s were completed. To give a list of all the splendours that preceded the wedding would be as tedious as it is unnecessary; but a general impression of the festivities as they struck a contemporary will give us a far better idea than a close catalogue of the wonderful things the Princess saw as she rode her white palfrey on the 12th November through Southwark, over London Bridge, and by Cheapside to the Bishop of London’s house adjoining St. Paul’s. “And, because I will not be tedious to you, I pass over the wise devices, the prudent speeches, the costly works, the cunning portraitures, practised and set forth in seven beautiful pageants erected and set up in divers places of the city. I leave also the goodaly ballds, the sweet harmony, the musical instruments, which sounded with heavenly noise in every side of the street. I omit the costly apparel, both of goldsmith’s work and embroidery, the rich jewels, the massy chains, the stirring horses, the beautiful bards, and the glittering trappers, both with bells and spangles of gold. I pretermit also the rich apparel of the Princess, the strange fashion of the Spanish nation, the beauty of the English ladies, the goodly demeanour of the young damosels, the amorous countenance of the lusty bachelors. I pass over the fine engrained clothes, the costly furs of the citizens, standing upon scaffolds, railed from Gracechurch to St. Paul’s. What should I speak of the odoriferous scarlets, and fine velvet and pleasant furs, and rich chains, which the Mayor of London with the Senate, sitting on horseback at the little conduit in Chepe, ware upon their bodies and about their necks. I will not molest you with rehearsing the rich arras, the costly tapestry, the fine cloths of silver and of gold, the curious velvets and satins, the pleasant silks, which did hang in every street where she passed; the wine that ran out of the conduits, the gravelling and railing of the streets, and all else that needeth not remembring.”[5] In short, we may conclude that Katharine’s passage through London before her wedding was as triumphal as the citizens could make it. Even the common people knew that her presence in England made for security and peace, and her Lancastrian descent from John of Gaunt seemed to add promise of legitimacy to future heirs to the crown.

      A long raised gangway of timber handsomely draped ran from the great west door of St. Paul’s to the entrance to the choir. Near the end of the gangway there was erected upon it a high platform, reached by steps on each side, with room on the top for eight persons to stand. On the north side of the platform sat the King and Queen incognito in a tribune supposed to be private; whilst the corporation of London were ranged on the opposite side. The day of the ceremony was the 14th November 1501, Sunday and the day of St. Erkenwald, and all London was agog to see the show. Nobles and knights from every corner of the realm, glittering and flashing in their new finery, had come to do honour to the heir of England and his bride. Both bride and bridegroom were dressed in white satin, and they stood together, a comely young pair, upon the high scarlet stage to be married for the fifth time, on this occasion by the Archbishop of Canterbury. Then, after mass had been celebrated at the high altar with Archbishops, and mitred prelates by the dozen, a procession was formed to lead the newly married couple to the Bishop of London’s palace across the churchyard. The stately bride, looking older than her years, came first, followed by a hundred ladies; and whilst on her