Above: Arthur Tudor, Prince of Wales.
Arthur Tudor, born in 1486, had been groomed from birth for a glorious future as king of England. Arthur would have known that, when his illustrious father Henry VII died, he would succeed to the throne as King Arthur I. He had been named after the heroic king of legend, 'in honour of the British race', while confirming the Tudors' mythical descent from King Arthur. However, England was not to experience a king named Arthur I. On 2 April 1502, aged only fifteen, Arthur Prince of Wales died at Ludlow Castle,
Arthur's death left his young wife, Katherine of Aragon, a widow aged only sixteen. The marriage of the Prince of Wales had been discussed as early as 1488, and on 27 March 1489 the Treaty of Medina del Campo was signed, in which the marriage of Arthur and Katherine was provided for when they came of age. At Woodstock in 1497, a proxy betrothal took place, and two proxy marriages followed in 1499 and 1500. Finally, in late 1501, Katherine arrived in England and was married to Arthur on 14 November at St. Paul's Cathedral in a lavish ceremony. Celebrations went on for days as the capital rejoiced at the marriage of its future rulers. Soon afterwards, the Prince and Princess of Wales departed for the marches of Wales. They resided at Ludlow Castle. There had been some uncertainty as to whether the royal couple should immediately live together. Henry VII believed that his son was not old or mature enough to fulfil 'the duties of a husband', and he wrote to the Spanish monarchs explaining that his son's 'tender age' prevented cohabitation with Katherine. King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella agreed that the couple should not live together for some time, although Henry VII eventually decided that Katherine should accompany her husband to Wales.
Above: Ludlow Castle.
In the spring of 1502, however, according to the King's Printer Richard Grafton, 'there suddenly came a lamentable loss and mischance to the king, the queen and all the people'. The Receyt of the Lady Kateryne recorded that, 'from the Feast of the Nativity of Christ unto the solemn feast of the Resurrection, at the which season grew and increased upon his body, whether it was by surfeit or cause natural, a lamentable and most pitiful disease and sickness'. It is uncertain what it was that struck Arthur. Writers have suggested plague, tuberculosis, the sweating sickness, influenza, or testicular cancer. In her recent biography of Elizabeth of York, Alison Weir concludes that it was probably tuberculosis which killed Arthur. Whatever it was, on the morning of 2 April, the prince died, commending 'with most fervent devotion his spirit and soul to the pleasure and hands of Almighty God'.
Arthur's death was met with shock, dismay and grief at court. Henry VII, devastated, sent for his wife in his hour of need: 'When the King understood these sorrowful, heavy tidings, he sent for the Queen, saying that he and his wife would take their powerful sorrow'. Indeed, the occasion of their son's death brought the royal couple together and provides evidence of their close, loving relationship. Queen Elizabeth comforted her husband: 'After she was come and saw the King her lord in that natural and painful sorrow, she, with full great and constant and comfortable words, besought his Grace that he would first, after God, consider the weal of his own noble person, of the comfort of his realm, and of her'. She reminded him that they were both young and could have more children. They still had a healthy son, Henry, then aged ten, who was now heir to the throne. The king, cheered by her words, thanked her for 'her good comfort'. However, when the queen departed to her own rooms, she collapsed with grief and sorrow. The king was sent for, it now being his turn to comfort and console his devastated wife.
Above: Katherine of Aragon, Princess of Wales and, later, Queen of England.
We can only wonder how different the history of England might have been had Arthur survived and succeeded to the throne following his father's death. Given that Henry VII was to die in 1509, Arthur would have been twenty-two years of age when he became king of England. Would he and Katherine have had several children by then? Would the English succession have already been assured well before Arthur became king? What would have happened to his brother, Henry? We can but speculate. Yet, as Rosemary Horrox notes: 'With the benefit of hindsight the most important consequence of Arthur's early death was the remarriage of his widow to the prince's younger brother, the future Henry VIII, and the controversy to which that later gave rise concerning the consummation or otherwise of Katherine's first marriage'.
Above: a portrait thought to be of the teenaged Katherine of Aragon (left).
The Archbishop's Palace, Alcala de Henares (right).
On 16 December 1485, Queen Isabella of Castile gave birth to her fourth and final child, Catalina de Aragon, at the Archbishop's Palace at Alcala de Henares, north-east of Madrid. Catalina was, of course, known as Katherine of Aragon from the time of her arrival in England in 1501 to wed the eldest son of the king of England. Katherine was the youngest daughter of the 'Catholic monarchs', Ferdinand of Aragon and Isabella of Castile. She was named after her great-grandmother Katherine of Lancaster, daughter of John of Gaunt and his second wife Constanza of Castile. Although the royal couple were undoubtedly pleased with the birth of their daughter, a contemporary chronicler, Alfonso de Palencia, reported that they would have preferred a son, given the uncertain health of their only son and heir, Juan.
Katherine was baptised by the Bishop of Palencia shortly after her birth, and was clothed in a white brocade gown trimmed with gold lace and lined with green velvet. During her early years, the princess accompanied her parents on their travels through Spain as they continued the war against the Muslim emirate of Granada. In 1492, Katherine was present at the ceremonial conquest of the capital of the former Nasrid kingdom. Historians have conjectured that her exposure from an early age to the war of conquest and her parents' intense struggle to eliminate heresy from Spain would have bred in Katherine a strong hatred of heresy and a belief in the righteousness of the Roman Catholic Church.
Above: Isabella of Castile (left) and Ferdinand of Aragon (right), parents of Katherine of Aragon.
From an early age, Katherine's personal emblem was the pomegranate, which symbolised fertility (ironically, as it turned out). Although she tends to be represented in popular culture as old, dowdy and dumpy, Katherine was in fact a beautiful girl famously diminutive in stature, with long reddish-gold hair, blue eyes, and a fair complexion. Sir Thomas More wrote of her upon her arrival in England: 'There is nothing wanting in her that the most beautiful girl should have'. Alison Weir noted that Katherine's youthful 'plump prettiness... was to enchant her two future husbands'.
Katherine was educated by a clerk in holy orders, Alessandro Geraldini, and his brother Antonio, both of whom were Italian humanists. She studied arithmetic, Latin (and other languages), classical and vernacular literature, religion, and domestic skills. As Fraser notes, her strong religious upbringing helped to nurture and develop a faith that would sustain her during her turbulent life. The humanist scholar Erasmus was later to explain that Katherine 'loved good literature which she had studied with success since childhood'. Katherine came to be admired by both Erasmus and the Spanish humanist Juan Luis Vives as a model of Christian womanhood.
Above: statue of Katherine at Alcala de Henares (left).
Portrait of Katherine as queen (right).
From an early age, Katherine was groomed for queenship. Henry VII, king of England, proposed that his eldest son Arthur wed the youngest daughter of the Spanish monarchs, to cement the Anglo-Spanish alliance between the two kingdoms. At this time, the Tudor dynasty was viewed as precarious given continuing insurrections against it and the lingering turbulence of the conflict known as the Wars of the Roses, and so an alliance with the prestigious and internationally renowned Trastamara dynasty would bolster the legitimacy and authority of the Tudors considerably. The Treaty of Medina del Campo in 1489 agreed that, when they reached an appropriate age, Katherine and Arthur would marry. Ten years later, on 19 May 1499, they were married by proxy. In the second half of 1501, the fifteen-year-old princess departed for England, where she would spend the remaining 35 years of her life. In November, she married Arthur at St. Paul's Cathedral. Tragically, her husband died only five months later, and Katherine was left a widow - almost certainly a virgin widow - at only sixteen.
Above: Katherine's two husbands: Arthur (left) and Henry, later Henry VIII (right).
After a difficult and turbulent seven-year period in England, Katherine's happiness and future prosperity were secured when Henry VII died and his seventeen-year old son, Henry VIII, succeeded to the throne and chose to marry the beautiful and virtuous Katherine, aged twenty-three. The two were married at Greenwich Palace on 11 June 1509. Although, tragically, Katherine was never to bear her second husband a male heir, the royal couple could not have known that on their wedding day. To Katherine, a golden world beckoned, in which her future as England's queen seemed secured.
