The First Governess of the Netherlands, Margaret of Austria. Eleanor E. Tremayne

joy, we write this portion of our letter with our own hand, in order to be able the better to express to you that you are very welcome, and that you may more perfectly understand our good wishes. We most earnestly entreat and beseech your Highness, from the bottom of our heart, to be as cheerful as though you were with the dearest and most beloved King and Queen of Spain, our cousins, and that you will stay in whatever part of our realms as cheerfully and without fear as though you were in Spain. In all and everything you want, do not spare us and our realms, for you will render us a great and most acceptable service by accepting anything from us.—Palace, Westminster, 3rd February.'[9]

      The king then begs her to stay at Southampton, and even offers to pay her a visit there:—

      'Most illustrious and most excellent Princess, our most noble and most beloved cousin,—We have received to-day the letter of the 2nd instant, which your Highness has written from the harbour of Southampton, and are much pleased with it. We are also very glad to learn the good news contained in your letter and the letter of the illustrious ambassador, whom our dearest cousins, the King and Queen of Spain, your most pious parents, have ordered to accompany you. He informs us of your prosperity and good success. We, on our part, have sent to inform you of our inviolable friendship, and to tell you how agreeable in every respect your arrival in our harbour has been to us. On Friday we sent you our servants and domestics, with injunctions to serve you in the same way as they serve ourselves; and a short time after they had left we wrote to your Excellence a letter with our own hand, to give you a hearty welcome in our harbour. We beseech you to have a cheerful face and a glad heart, to be happy and enjoy yourself as safely as though you were our own daughter, or had already reached the dominions of our said cousins the King and Queen of Spain, your pious parents. We pray your Highness, with all our heart, to dispose of us and of everything that is to be found in our realms, and to spare us in nothing, even if the thing is not to be had in our dominions, and to order any service which we are able to execute. For, by doing so, you will bestow on us a signal and most acceptable favour. As we hear that the wind is contrary to the continuation of your voyage, wishing that your Highness would repose and rest, our advice is, that you take lodgings in our said town of Southampton, and remain there until the wind becomes favourable and the weather clears up. We believe that the movement and the roaring of the sea is disagreeable to your Highness and to the ladies who accompany you. If you accept our proposal, and remain so long in our said town of Southampton that we can be informed of it, and have time to go and to see you before your departure, we certainly will go and pay your Highness a visit. In a personal communication we could best open our mind to you, and tell you how much we are delighted that you have safely arrived in our port, and how glad we are that the (friendship) with you and our dearest cousins the King and Queen of Spain, your most benign parents, is increasing from day to day. We desire to communicate to you in the best manner our news, and to hear from you of your welfare. May your Highness be as well and as happy as we wish.—From our Palace of Westminster.... February.'[10]

      We have no account of Margaret's accepting Henry's invitation, or of their meeting at this time. After these various adventures the princess at length arrived safely at the port of Santander in the early days of March 1497. An ambassador was sent to meet her with a train of one hundred and twenty mules laden with plate and tapestries. The young Prince of Asturias, accompanied by the king his father, hastened towards the north to meet his bride, whom they met at Reynosa and escorted to Burgos. When Margaret saw her future husband and the king approach, she attempted to kiss the latter's hands, which he tried to prevent her from doing, but she persevered, and kissed the king's hands as well as those of her future husband. On her arrival at Burgos she was received with the greatest marks of pleasure and satisfaction by the queen and the whole Court. Preparations were at once made for solemnising the marriage after the expiration of Lent, in a style of magnificence never before witnessed. The wedding ceremony took place on Palm Sunday, the 3rd of April, and was performed by the Archbishop of Toledo in the presence of the grandees and principal nobility of Castile, the foreign ambassadors and delegates from Aragon. Among these latter were the magistrates of the principal cities, wearing their municipal insignia and crimson robes of office, who seem to have had quite as important parts assigned by their democratic communities as any of the nobility or gentry. The wedding was followed by a brilliant succession of fêtes, tourneys, tilts of reeds, and other warlike spectacles, in which the matchless chivalry of Spain poured into the lists to display their prowess in the presence of their future queen. The chronicles of the day remark on the striking contrast exhibited at these entertainments between the gay and familiar manners of Margaret and her Flemish nobles, and the pomp and stately ceremonial of the Castilian Court, to which the Austrian princess, brought up as she had been at the Court of France, could never be wholly reconciled. The following quaint passage is from Abarca's Reyes de Aragon:—'And although they left the princess all her servants, freedom in behaviour and diversions, she was warned that in the ceremonial affairs she was not to treat the royal personages and grandees with the familiarity and openness usual with the houses of Austria, Burgundy, and France, but with the gravity and measured dignity of the kings and realms of Spain.'

      An inventory of the rich plate and jewels presented to Margaret on the day of her marriage is to be found in the sixth volume of memoirs of the Spanish Academy of History. The plate and jewels are said to be 'of such value and perfect workmanship that the like was never seen.'

      Nothing seemed wanting to the happiness of the young bride and bridegroom, and that summer they made a kind of triumphal progress through the great cities of the land. The marriage of the heir-apparent could not have been celebrated at a happier time. It took place in the midst of negotiations for a general peace, to which the nation looked for repose after so many years of uninterrupted war. The Court of the Spanish sovereigns was at the height of its splendour; Ferdinand and Isabella seemed to have reached the zenith of their ambitious dreams, when death stepped in, and destroyed their fondest hopes.

      Seven months after Prince John's marriage, his sister, Isabella, was united to the King of Portugal. The wedding took place at the frontier town of Valencia de Alcantara, in the presence of the Catholic sovereigns, without pomp or parade of any kind.

      While they were detained there, an express messenger brought tidings of the dangerous illness of their son, the Prince of Asturias. Prince John, accompanied by his youthful bride, had been on his way to his sister's wedding when he fell a victim to a malignant fever at Salamanca. The symptoms speedily assumed an alarming character. The prince's constitution, naturally delicate, sunk under the violence of the attack; and when his father, who came with all possible speed to Salamanca, arrived there, no hopes were entertained of his recovery.

      Ferdinand, however, tried to cheer his son with hopes he did not feel himself; but the young prince told him that it was too late to be deceived; that he was prepared to die, and that all he now desired was that his parents might feel the same resignation to the divine will which he experienced himself. Ferdinand took fresh courage from the heroic example of his son, whose forebodings were unhappily too soon realised. The doctors fearing to alarm Margaret, who was expecting shortly to become a mother, had kept from her the serious state of her husband's health as long as possible. Knowing that he was ill, she was anxious to go on a pilgrimage to pray for his recovery. 'When at last she was allowed to enter his room on the 4th October 1497 she was shocked to see the change which a few days had wrought in him. Her dying husband bade her farewell in a broken voice, recommending their unborn child to her tender care. Margaret pressed her lips to his, but when she found them already cold, overcome by emotion, she had to be carried half-dead from the room.' Bowed down with grief, she did not recover from the shock of her sudden bereavement, and soon after her husband's death, gave birth to a still-born child.[11]

      This double tragedy is pathetically described by the historian, Peter Martyr, who draws an affecting picture of the anguish of the young widow, and the bereaved parents. 'Thus was laid low the hope of all Spain.' 'Never was there a death which occasioned such deep and general lamentation throughout the land.' Ferdinand, fearful of the effect which the sudden news of this calamity might have on the queen, caused letters to be sent at brief intervals, containing accounts of the gradual decline of the prince's health, so as to prepare her for the inevitable stroke. Isabella, however, received the fatal tidings in a spirit of humble resignation, saying, 'The Lord hath given and the Lord hath taken away,