March 17, 2020 • 25 mins
Catherine of Aragon was Henry VIII's first wife.
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Welcome to Noble Blood, a production of I Heart Radio
and Aaron Manky. Listener discretion is advised. After a long
and treacherous journey from her cloistered life in Spain, Princess
Catherine finally made it safely to English shores. Katherine, the
(00:22):
daughter of the illustrious Ferdinand and Isabella, was devoutly religious,
and so as soon as her ship had landed on
the English coast, she insisted on going immediately to church.
Though she was only fifteen, Catherine already felt like a woman. Technically,
she was already married to Arthur, the Prince of Wales,
(00:44):
heir to the English throne. They had been married by
proxy the year before, and they had been betrothed since
she was three, and so the teenager knew how to
carry herself like a woman, to carry herself as a
representative of her parents and of her nation. Because she
was she had never met her husband. Although they had
(01:07):
exchanged flowery letters in their mutual language Latin, they wrote
like teenagers, pretending to be adults. Their tutors had handily
supplied them with phrases, promises of love and devotion and
the long awaited pleasure of gazing upon one another's faces.
Even after making it to England, it would still be
(01:29):
days before Catherine met the man with whom she had
promised to spend the rest of her life. From the coast,
Catherine and her party Spanish servants and ladies and ambassadors
and chaperones, road to Berkshire and then to a bishop's
house in Dogsmrefield. Even through a full day of sweaty
travel along roads pock marked with dust and holes, Katherine
(01:54):
embodied propriety above all else. She wore a long velvet
gown in the demure Spanish style and to veil over
her face, and she rode in a carriage with the
curtains drawn, even when the summer heat forced its way
through them and made the skin underneath the fabric of
Catherine's dress prickle with sweat. When they made it to
(02:18):
the bishop's house, it was already dark, and Catherine's ladies
politely demurred the bishop's offer of dinner, and they swept
their princess to bed. But word had already made it
to the King of England, Henry the Seventh, that his
future daughter in law had arrived. He rode out immediately
to inspect the goods as it were, and so he
(02:40):
was furious when he arrived, only to be told by
Catherine's chaperone that the princess had had an exhausting travel
day and that she had retired to her bedroom for
the night. King Henry the seventh was outraged. Was the
princess deformed? Was the portrait? They had sent? The cunning
(03:00):
lie on the part of the Spanish monarchy to trick
them and make them appear the fool? Were they sending
his son damaged goods? He was the king, and he
demanded to see Princess Catherine. After a few moments, Catherine
and her ladies emerged from her bed chamber. Catherine wore
a heavy black veil over her face. Henry the seventh
(03:24):
was sure they were hiding something, and so he strode
over and, without even a word of introduction, flung the
veil back. He was surprised, in spite of himself, she
was exactly as her portrait had presented her, a beautiful
fifteen year old girl with clear, creamy skin and thick
red hair. Her blue eyes were bleary but light and intelligent.
(03:49):
Very well, the king said, and he bid her good night.
That interaction would represent Catherine's tenuous position in England for
the next thirty five years. The rest of her life,
she was more a symbol than a woman, both a
bargaining chip and an obstacle. For the rest of Catherine's life,
(04:09):
she would be fighting an increasingly challenging battle to maintain
her dignity. She was a player in an unwinnable game,
a hostage first of Henry the Seventh and then ultimately
of Henry the eight, her brother in law, who first
became her husband and then became her enemy. I'm Danis Schwartz,
(04:33):
and this is noble blood. Catherine didn't know it, but
blood had already been shed to pave the way for
her journey to England. In the course of her marriage negotiations,
back when she was still a toddler crawling on her
mother's lap, her father had demanded that if their princess
(04:55):
was to be wed to Arthur, the heir to the
throne of England, and King Henry the Seven, would need
to kill a prisoner. Not just any prisoner. He would
need to kill the young Earl of Warwick, a boy
who had been in isolation in the Tower of London
for nearly fifteen years. The Earl of Warwick, still only
in his early twenties, was the nephew and heir of
(05:18):
the former King Richard the Third. England's new King, Henry
the seventh, had beat Richard of the Third in battle
and made an advantageous marriage to Elizabeth of York afterward,
but no one really believed that he had any worthwhile
blood claim to the English throne. Someone like the Earl
of Warwick did have that blood claim. Sure, the Earl
(05:39):
was no real threat while he was imprisoned half mad
from loneliness, but he was still a threat, and Ferdinand
of Arragon did not want any threats if his daughter
was to come to England. She was an incredibly eligible princess,
the youngest daughter of a United Spain a Ferdinand of
Aragon and Isabella of Castie Eel. Catherine's bloodline was impeccable
(06:03):
technically on her mother's side. She even had a better
blood claim to the English throne than Henry the seventh.
That was most of the reason that Henry the seventh
wanted her for his son. Catherine represented old European royalty
everything that he aspired for the brand new House of
Tudor to be, and so King Henry the seventh trumped
(06:24):
up charges of an escape attempt and had Warwick executed.
Princess Catherine would be marrying the future King of England.
Henry the seventh guaranteed it, and so Spain agreed on
a dowry of two hundred thousand crowns, and when young
Prince Arthur turned fourteen old enough to consummate a marriage,
(06:44):
Catherine was shipped to England for a wedding that would
make all of Europe pay attention. Catherine came to London
two days before her wedding in a gown with bell
shaped sleeves and a hooped petticoat that made her as
wide as she was high. The look was unlike anything
anyone was wearing in England. It was unmistakably Spanish. Catherine
(07:09):
also wore a jaunty little cap on her head with
gold lace to tie it beneath her chin in the
Venetian style. Escorted by the Lord Mayor of London, Catherine
came through the city to watch the elaborate pageants that
people had set up for her, tableaus with sets and
costumes on the street. In one tableau, a paper Welsh
(07:32):
dragon and green represented her husband to be Arthur, the
Prince of Wales. In another tableau, the archangel Gabriel came
down to a figure meant to represent Catherine, reminding her
that her chief duty was for the procreation of children.
A god character then came down and declared, blessed be
(07:53):
the fruit of your belly, your substance and fruits I
shall increase and multiply. England was coming out of civil
war between the Yorks and the Lancasters. The dynasty wasn't
entirely secure yet, but Henry the Seven and his heir
Arthur represented a stable future. And now they had this young,
(08:14):
beautiful Spanish princess who was ready to continue the tutor line.
When Arthur and Catherine finally met in person, they smiled
and blushed, still teenagers even as they were play acting adults.
They tried to converse in Latin, but they found that
they couldn't quite understand each other. They had been taught
different pronunciations. A Spanish ambassador assured Arthur that Catherine would
(08:39):
learn English soon enough. Arthur's little brother, Henry, then just
ten years old, peeked out at the princess, who had
arrived from a distant land. He whispered into his brother's
coat that she was beautiful. Arthur smiled, and he kissed
Catherine on the cheek. The wedding was a spectacle, with
Arthur and Catherine both in heavy crowns and in velvet
(09:01):
robes trimmed with ermine. When they completed their vows, doves
and rabbits were released outside St. Paul's cathedral. In a
moment of delicious chaos, a children's choir sang them out
and into their marriage bed. The Warthur was at this
point only fifteen years old and have a particularly sickly constitution.
(09:23):
The morning after his wedding, he strolled out of his
bed chamber and bodily told his friends to pour him
an ale. Marriage is thirsty work, he said, poking a
friend in the ribs. Gentlemen, he announced, when he had
his mead to hold high. I have spent the night
in Spain. Catherine privately told her ladies that they hadn't
(09:45):
done anything but sleep side by side and offer each
other a chaste kiss good night. The day after the wedding,
King Henry the seventh sent most of catherine Spanish entourage home,
leaving Catherine more isolated than she ever been in her
entire life in a strange country and in bed with
the stranger King Henry tried to distract her that day.
(10:08):
He showed her his library, and he let her choose
a new ring for herself, But Catherine couldn't stop looking
out the window, looking back towards the land she had
left and to which he would now never return. Though
Arthur's health seemed to decline in the weeks following his wedding,
(10:29):
the pale, weedy boy becoming even paler and weedier, he
was still the Prince of Wales, and so the newly
wed couple set off to Ludlow Castle in the Welsh
Marshes so Arthur could gain some experience in governance. Because
Arthur's color continued to fade, courtiers joked that the boy
was just over exerting himself in the marriage bed. When
(10:52):
both Catherine and Arthur fell sick, with the sweating sickness
drenching their clothes, leaving them delirious with fever, people stopped
making jokes. On April three, Confessor woke King Henry the
Seventh in the middle of the night in his palace
in Surrey. The King, still bleary eyed, just stared at
(11:14):
his confessor, who recited, stuttering, if we receive good things
at the hand of God, why may we not endure
evil things. The King didn't respond, and so the confessor
lowered his eyes, and he was forced to continue. Your
dearest son, he said, hath departed to God. Arthur, Prince
(11:39):
of Wales and heir to the English throne, was dead.
When Catherine recovered from the sweating sickness, she woke to
a new life as a widow alone in a foreign land.
She had been married for only six months. As tradition dictated,
(12:02):
Catherine did not attend her husband's funeral. Shrouded in black
in heavy veils, she returned to London to see what
her future wouldn't tail. Catherine's father, King Ferdinand, demanded that
England repay her dowry. It was negotiation tactic to frighten
Henry the seventh into agreeing to a new betrothal to
(12:25):
his next son, the new heir Henry. There were a
few obstacles that would prevent Catherine from becoming engaged to
the very young Henry Tudor. First, that Catherine was over
five years older than him. The new widow was sixteen.
The young prince was eleven, but that age difference wouldn't
(12:45):
matter much as Henry aged by the time he was
fourteen able to consummate a marriage. It wouldn't raise too
many eyebrows for him to be going to bed with
an older woman. But the much bigger barrier was the Bible,
which forbade a man to marry his brother's widow. To
be fair, the Bible wasn't entirely clear on the matter.
(13:06):
Leviticus explicitly forbade marriage between a man and his brother's wife,
declaring outright that such a union would be cursed with childlessness.
But then again, in Deuteronomy, it's basically encouraged for a
man to marry his brother's widow. If the couple was childless,
it's painted as an act of charity. But that religious
(13:26):
complication could be brushed aside if the marriage between Catherine
and Arthur was never consummated. Impatient with the hemming and
hawing of advisers and ambassadors, King Henry the seventh summoned
Katherine and explicitly asked her if she and Arthur had
slept together. Catherine shook her head. She and Arthur had
(13:48):
laid together for six nights, but never as a man
and wife. There Henry the seventh said, do you see simple,
we shall keep the dowry and Henry shall Mary Spain.
So it was agreed the marriage was set to take
place in fifteen o five, when Prince Henry was fourteen
(14:09):
years old. Spain would send a delegation to the Pope
for special dispensation in order to settle any lingering doubts
about the marriage's legality, and so Catherine and Henry were
formally betrothed in a ceremony in which Catherine wore white,
looking as virginal as she possibly could, with her hair
(14:29):
unbound in loose waves down past her shoulder to signify
her purity. But until Henry turned fourteen, Katherine remained in England,
not quite a guest but not quite a member of
the royal family either. She was given a minimal household
and an allowance, but not much else. But then Catherine's
(14:51):
mother died in Spain, the illustrious Isabella of Castile. That
would be devastating under any circumstance, but with her mother's death,
Catherine lost her dynastic importance. Technically, Castile went to Catherine's
older sister Juana. But everyone knew that Juana was volatile,
verging on unhinged, and so the real power was Juana's husband,
(15:13):
Philip the Hansom, the son of the Holy Roman Emperor.
But all that just meant that with Isabella dead, Catherine
was no longer a princess of a United Spain. She
was instead just the princess now of the smaller, less
important region of Argon. Her father's kingdom. Henry Tudor was
(15:35):
going to be the King of England some day. He
could probably find a much better marriage. Abruptly, King Henry
the Seventh stopped Catherine's allowance. The king began treating her
with cruel disdain when he didn't outright ignore her. Catherine
(15:55):
wasn't sent back to Spain, of course, not that would
mean having to give back her dowry, but Catherine was
kept more like a hostage, temporarily kept safe and confined
until a better marriage match for Henry Tudor could be made.
Henry's fourteenth birthday came and went, and there was no
mention of any upcoming wedding. Catherine became aware, with the
(16:20):
sinking feeling that there may be no wedding coming at all.
She didn't know that King Henry the seventh had already
brought his son to the Bishop of Winchester to have
him formally revoke the promise of betrothal. He made the
two kept it a secret in case Henry would need
to marry Catherine after all. All the while, Catherine's circumstances
(16:43):
became more and more desperate. From the house she had
been staying at in London. Catherine was brought to court
so that the King could save on the cost of
maintaining a separate household for her. But living in court
meant that she was in a constant fish bowl of
gossip and speculation and pity. With no allowance, Catherine had
(17:04):
no way to pay her staff or pay the dowries
of her loyal ladies in waiting, who had come with
her all the way from Spain in the hopes that
they would be making an advantageous marriage while they were
in England. Now Catherine was in the humiliating position of
having to tell them that there were no dowries available.
Her servants were working for nothing but loyalty. The few
(17:26):
gowns that Catherine had brought with her from Spain were
growing thin and threadbare. An inches too short on the
growing teenage girl. She was heavily in debt to London
merchants for the few necessities that she couldn't borrow or
construct from her meager belongings. Catherine continued to send frantic
letters to her father, begging him for some financial support,
(17:50):
but Ferdinand refused. Catherine was under the supervision of King
Henry the Seventh and her upkeep was his responsibility. It
was four torturous years of limbo, confusion, loneliness, and humiliation.
(18:10):
But then there was one bright spot. In January of
fifteen o six, Catherine's sister Juana and her husband Philip
were sailing from the Low Countries to Spain when they
were shipwrecked off the coast of England, and the pair
were coming to visit the English court. Catherine had not
seen her sister for ten years, and she was thrilled
(18:31):
at the prospect of her union. When Juana and Philip
arrived at court, Catherine was surprised to see that she
was invited to sit at the top table. Catherine was
treated with a kindness that was now so unfamiliar to
her that it made her uneasy. King Henry the Seventh
clearly did not want Juan and Philip to see how
poorly their kin was being treated. But Catherine didn't mind.
(18:55):
She was seeing her sister again, and when she got
her alone, she could beg Juan at to in a
good word for her with King Henry. Maybe if Juanna
asked him, Henry would finally set the marriage between Catherine
and the Prince. When their meeting finally came, Catherine was
only permitted half an hour of a lone time with Juanna.
(19:15):
Before Catherine even had a moment to ask Juana for help,
Juanna began in a panic, telling her sister how miserable
she was with Philip and his philandering, how she knew
that he was cheating on her, but how she was
too madly in love with him to confront him about it,
and before she knew it, the meeting was over. Catherine
had never had a chance to ask her for help.
(19:37):
But while the two women were speaking, Philip was meeting
with King Henry the seventh and secretly trying to arrange
negotiations for his and Juanna's daughter Eleanor to be the
one to marry Prince Henry. The visit that was supposed
to be Catherine's salvation was actually a betrayal. Catherine never
saw her sister again, and just six months after at
(20:00):
the meeting in England, Philip died, only twenty eight years old.
They say that his death left Wana unhinged, that she
refused to let him be buried, and that she kept
his corpse in an open coffin, continually kissing and embracing
the decaying body of her former husband until it was
pulled away while she sobbed. Catherine had no allies left.
(20:26):
She was deeply in debt from supplying her staff with
clothing and food, left without even enough money to buy
herself a new nightgown. She was pawning her possessions, her
last relics of home, one by one, in order to
maintain a semblance of the proper appearance required for her station.
(20:48):
Prince Henry, who had once been a cherubic ten year old,
had grown into a young man. But when Henry showed
even a fraction of affection towards Catherine, a woman he
had known for almost all of his formative years, the
king forced them apart and then banished Catherine to Fulham.
Affection would have no place in the negotiations of who
(21:10):
an heir would marry. Catherine, now an old maid at
twenty one years old, returned to court only for the
tournaments of Prince Henry's sixteenth birthday celebrations. The two exchanged
shy smiles and flirtatious glances, but they knew enough not
to make their affections public. But then a stroke of
(21:32):
luck for Catherine, her captor, Henry the Seventh, died of tuberculosis,
and Prince Henry became Henry the Eighth. It seemed a
foregone conclusion who the golden new teenage king would be
choosing for his new bride. He had seen Catherine of
Arragon from back when she was a beautiful girl. He
(21:54):
had seen her grow through hardship and suffering into a
beautiful young woman. She was his first crush, the face
he always pictured when he imagined his queen, and he
was the king. Now Henry the Eighth was her savior
her night in shining armor, King Henry the Eighth was
(22:14):
in charge, and he would marry whoever he wanted. That's
the story of how Catherine of Arragon married King Henry
the Eighth. But keep listening. After a brief sponsor break
to hear about how their story ended. They were married
(22:45):
for twenty four years, but what had once been alight
with youth and promise eventually became sour and hard. One
miscarriage became two became seven. Although Catherine bore a daughter, Mary,
there was no legitimate tudor son, no one to carry
on the precarious dynasty that had been the reason for
(23:08):
securing Catherine of Arragon in marriage in the first place.
Most people know the story from then how Henry became
besotted with Anne Boleyn and attempted to force Catherine into
a divorce, claiming that since she had been married to
his brother, their marriage was never legitimate to begin with.
Catherine could have agreed, She could have bit her tongue
(23:30):
and allowed the marriage to be annulled, to just agree
with whatever Henry said and let herself settle into a
position of well loved sister of the king. But Catherine
never wavered from her story. Her wedding with Arthur was
never consummated, her marriage with Henry was true, and her
daughter Mary was legitimate. Catherine's devout Catholic faith would never
(23:56):
allow her to agree to a divorce, and so prideful stubborn,
righteous Katherine once again became a hostage in England. She
was moved from palace to palace, each one bleaker and
colder and more isolated than the last. More and more
of her servants and friends were stripped away from her.
(24:18):
She was forbidden from seeing her daughter Mary, though Katherine
pled for her and Mary begged to see her mother,
they would be allowed to see each other. Henry said
only if Catherine agreed for the marriage to be annulled.
She refused. Catherine of Arragon died, maintaining that she was
(24:38):
the rightful Queen of England and Henry the eighth only
true wife. Noble Blood is a production of I Heart
Radio and Aaron Mankey. The show was written and hosted
by Dana Schwartz and produced by Aaron Mankey, Matt Frederick,
(25:00):
Alex Williams, and Trevor Young. Noble Blood is on social
media at Noble Blood Tales, and you can learn more
about the show over at Noble Blood Tales dot com.
For more podcasts from I heart Radio, visit the I
heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to
your favorite shows. M
Welcome to Noble Blood, a production of I Heart Radio
and Aaron Manky. Listener discretion is advised. After a long
and treacherous journey from her cloistered life in Spain, Princess
Catherine finally made it safely to English shores. Katherine, the
(00:22):
daughter of the illustrious Ferdinand and Isabella, was devoutly religious,
and so as soon as her ship had landed on
the English coast, she insisted on going immediately to church.
Though she was only fifteen, Catherine already felt like a woman. Technically,
she was already married to Arthur, the Prince of Wales,
(00:44):
heir to the English throne. They had been married by
proxy the year before, and they had been betrothed since
she was three, and so the teenager knew how to
carry herself like a woman, to carry herself as a
representative of her parents and of her nation. Because she
was she had never met her husband. Although they had
(01:07):
exchanged flowery letters in their mutual language Latin, they wrote
like teenagers, pretending to be adults. Their tutors had handily
supplied them with phrases, promises of love and devotion and
the long awaited pleasure of gazing upon one another's faces.
Even after making it to England, it would still be
(01:29):
days before Catherine met the man with whom she had
promised to spend the rest of her life. From the coast,
Catherine and her party Spanish servants and ladies and ambassadors
and chaperones, road to Berkshire and then to a bishop's
house in Dogsmrefield. Even through a full day of sweaty
travel along roads pock marked with dust and holes, Katherine
(01:54):
embodied propriety above all else. She wore a long velvet
gown in the demure Spanish style and to veil over
her face, and she rode in a carriage with the
curtains drawn, even when the summer heat forced its way
through them and made the skin underneath the fabric of
Catherine's dress prickle with sweat. When they made it to
(02:18):
the bishop's house, it was already dark, and Catherine's ladies
politely demurred the bishop's offer of dinner, and they swept
their princess to bed. But word had already made it
to the King of England, Henry the Seventh, that his
future daughter in law had arrived. He rode out immediately
to inspect the goods as it were, and so he
(02:40):
was furious when he arrived, only to be told by
Catherine's chaperone that the princess had had an exhausting travel
day and that she had retired to her bedroom for
the night. King Henry the seventh was outraged. Was the
princess deformed? Was the portrait? They had sent? The cunning
(03:00):
lie on the part of the Spanish monarchy to trick
them and make them appear the fool? Were they sending
his son damaged goods? He was the king, and he
demanded to see Princess Catherine. After a few moments, Catherine
and her ladies emerged from her bed chamber. Catherine wore
a heavy black veil over her face. Henry the seventh
(03:24):
was sure they were hiding something, and so he strode
over and, without even a word of introduction, flung the
veil back. He was surprised, in spite of himself, she
was exactly as her portrait had presented her, a beautiful
fifteen year old girl with clear, creamy skin and thick
red hair. Her blue eyes were bleary but light and intelligent.
(03:49):
Very well, the king said, and he bid her good night.
That interaction would represent Catherine's tenuous position in England for
the next thirty five years. The rest of her life,
she was more a symbol than a woman, both a
bargaining chip and an obstacle. For the rest of Catherine's life,
(04:09):
she would be fighting an increasingly challenging battle to maintain
her dignity. She was a player in an unwinnable game,
a hostage first of Henry the Seventh and then ultimately
of Henry the eight, her brother in law, who first
became her husband and then became her enemy. I'm Danis Schwartz,
(04:33):
and this is noble blood. Catherine didn't know it, but
blood had already been shed to pave the way for
her journey to England. In the course of her marriage negotiations,
back when she was still a toddler crawling on her
mother's lap, her father had demanded that if their princess
(04:55):
was to be wed to Arthur, the heir to the
throne of England, and King Henry the Seven, would need
to kill a prisoner. Not just any prisoner. He would
need to kill the young Earl of Warwick, a boy
who had been in isolation in the Tower of London
for nearly fifteen years. The Earl of Warwick, still only
in his early twenties, was the nephew and heir of
(05:18):
the former King Richard the Third. England's new King, Henry
the seventh, had beat Richard of the Third in battle
and made an advantageous marriage to Elizabeth of York afterward,
but no one really believed that he had any worthwhile
blood claim to the English throne. Someone like the Earl
of Warwick did have that blood claim. Sure, the Earl
(05:39):
was no real threat while he was imprisoned half mad
from loneliness, but he was still a threat, and Ferdinand
of Arragon did not want any threats if his daughter
was to come to England. She was an incredibly eligible princess,
the youngest daughter of a United Spain a Ferdinand of
Aragon and Isabella of Castie Eel. Catherine's bloodline was impeccable
(06:03):
technically on her mother's side. She even had a better
blood claim to the English throne than Henry the seventh.
That was most of the reason that Henry the seventh
wanted her for his son. Catherine represented old European royalty
everything that he aspired for the brand new House of
Tudor to be, and so King Henry the seventh trumped
(06:24):
up charges of an escape attempt and had Warwick executed.
Princess Catherine would be marrying the future King of England.
Henry the seventh guaranteed it, and so Spain agreed on
a dowry of two hundred thousand crowns, and when young
Prince Arthur turned fourteen old enough to consummate a marriage,
(06:44):
Catherine was shipped to England for a wedding that would
make all of Europe pay attention. Catherine came to London
two days before her wedding in a gown with bell
shaped sleeves and a hooped petticoat that made her as
wide as she was high. The look was unlike anything
anyone was wearing in England. It was unmistakably Spanish. Catherine
(07:09):
also wore a jaunty little cap on her head with
gold lace to tie it beneath her chin in the
Venetian style. Escorted by the Lord Mayor of London, Catherine
came through the city to watch the elaborate pageants that
people had set up for her, tableaus with sets and
costumes on the street. In one tableau, a paper Welsh
(07:32):
dragon and green represented her husband to be Arthur, the
Prince of Wales. In another tableau, the archangel Gabriel came
down to a figure meant to represent Catherine, reminding her
that her chief duty was for the procreation of children.
A god character then came down and declared, blessed be
(07:53):
the fruit of your belly, your substance and fruits I
shall increase and multiply. England was coming out of civil
war between the Yorks and the Lancasters. The dynasty wasn't
entirely secure yet, but Henry the Seven and his heir
Arthur represented a stable future. And now they had this young,
(08:14):
beautiful Spanish princess who was ready to continue the tutor line.
When Arthur and Catherine finally met in person, they smiled
and blushed, still teenagers even as they were play acting adults.
They tried to converse in Latin, but they found that
they couldn't quite understand each other. They had been taught
different pronunciations. A Spanish ambassador assured Arthur that Catherine would
(08:39):
learn English soon enough. Arthur's little brother, Henry, then just
ten years old, peeked out at the princess, who had
arrived from a distant land. He whispered into his brother's
coat that she was beautiful. Arthur smiled, and he kissed
Catherine on the cheek. The wedding was a spectacle, with
Arthur and Catherine both in heavy crowns and in velvet
(09:01):
robes trimmed with ermine. When they completed their vows, doves
and rabbits were released outside St. Paul's cathedral. In a
moment of delicious chaos, a children's choir sang them out
and into their marriage bed. The Warthur was at this
point only fifteen years old and have a particularly sickly constitution.
(09:23):
The morning after his wedding, he strolled out of his
bed chamber and bodily told his friends to pour him
an ale. Marriage is thirsty work, he said, poking a
friend in the ribs. Gentlemen, he announced, when he had
his mead to hold high. I have spent the night
in Spain. Catherine privately told her ladies that they hadn't
(09:45):
done anything but sleep side by side and offer each
other a chaste kiss good night. The day after the wedding,
King Henry the seventh sent most of catherine Spanish entourage home,
leaving Catherine more isolated than she ever been in her
entire life in a strange country and in bed with
the stranger King Henry tried to distract her that day.
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He showed her his library, and he let her choose
a new ring for herself, But Catherine couldn't stop looking
out the window, looking back towards the land she had
left and to which he would now never return. Though
Arthur's health seemed to decline in the weeks following his wedding,
(10:29):
the pale, weedy boy becoming even paler and weedier, he
was still the Prince of Wales, and so the newly
wed couple set off to Ludlow Castle in the Welsh
Marshes so Arthur could gain some experience in governance. Because
Arthur's color continued to fade, courtiers joked that the boy
was just over exerting himself in the marriage bed. When
(10:52):
both Catherine and Arthur fell sick, with the sweating sickness
drenching their clothes, leaving them delirious with fever, people stopped
making jokes. On April three, Confessor woke King Henry the
Seventh in the middle of the night in his palace
in Surrey. The King, still bleary eyed, just stared at
(11:14):
his confessor, who recited, stuttering, if we receive good things
at the hand of God, why may we not endure
evil things. The King didn't respond, and so the confessor
lowered his eyes, and he was forced to continue. Your
dearest son, he said, hath departed to God. Arthur, Prince
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of Wales and heir to the English throne, was dead.
When Catherine recovered from the sweating sickness, she woke to
a new life as a widow alone in a foreign land.
She had been married for only six months. As tradition dictated,
(12:02):
Catherine did not attend her husband's funeral. Shrouded in black
in heavy veils, she returned to London to see what
her future wouldn't tail. Catherine's father, King Ferdinand, demanded that
England repay her dowry. It was negotiation tactic to frighten
Henry the seventh into agreeing to a new betrothal to
(12:25):
his next son, the new heir Henry. There were a
few obstacles that would prevent Catherine from becoming engaged to
the very young Henry Tudor. First, that Catherine was over
five years older than him. The new widow was sixteen.
The young prince was eleven, but that age difference wouldn't
(12:45):
matter much as Henry aged by the time he was
fourteen able to consummate a marriage. It wouldn't raise too
many eyebrows for him to be going to bed with
an older woman. But the much bigger barrier was the Bible,
which forbade a man to marry his brother's widow. To
be fair, the Bible wasn't entirely clear on the matter.
(13:06):
Leviticus explicitly forbade marriage between a man and his brother's wife,
declaring outright that such a union would be cursed with childlessness.
But then again, in Deuteronomy, it's basically encouraged for a
man to marry his brother's widow. If the couple was childless,
it's painted as an act of charity. But that religious
(13:26):
complication could be brushed aside if the marriage between Catherine
and Arthur was never consummated. Impatient with the hemming and
hawing of advisers and ambassadors, King Henry the seventh summoned
Katherine and explicitly asked her if she and Arthur had
slept together. Catherine shook her head. She and Arthur had
(13:48):
laid together for six nights, but never as a man
and wife. There Henry the seventh said, do you see simple,
we shall keep the dowry and Henry shall Mary Spain.
So it was agreed the marriage was set to take
place in fifteen o five, when Prince Henry was fourteen
(14:09):
years old. Spain would send a delegation to the Pope
for special dispensation in order to settle any lingering doubts
about the marriage's legality, and so Catherine and Henry were
formally betrothed in a ceremony in which Catherine wore white,
looking as virginal as she possibly could, with her hair
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unbound in loose waves down past her shoulder to signify
her purity. But until Henry turned fourteen, Katherine remained in England,
not quite a guest but not quite a member of
the royal family either. She was given a minimal household
and an allowance, but not much else. But then Catherine's
(14:51):
mother died in Spain, the illustrious Isabella of Castile. That
would be devastating under any circumstance, but with her mother's death,
Catherine lost her dynastic importance. Technically, Castile went to Catherine's
older sister Juana. But everyone knew that Juana was volatile,
verging on unhinged, and so the real power was Juana's husband,
(15:13):
Philip the Hansom, the son of the Holy Roman Emperor.
But all that just meant that with Isabella dead, Catherine
was no longer a princess of a United Spain. She
was instead just the princess now of the smaller, less
important region of Argon. Her father's kingdom. Henry Tudor was
(15:35):
going to be the King of England some day. He
could probably find a much better marriage. Abruptly, King Henry
the Seventh stopped Catherine's allowance. The king began treating her
with cruel disdain when he didn't outright ignore her. Catherine
(15:55):
wasn't sent back to Spain, of course, not that would
mean having to give back her dowry, but Catherine was
kept more like a hostage, temporarily kept safe and confined
until a better marriage match for Henry Tudor could be made.
Henry's fourteenth birthday came and went, and there was no
mention of any upcoming wedding. Catherine became aware, with the
(16:20):
sinking feeling that there may be no wedding coming at all.
She didn't know that King Henry the seventh had already
brought his son to the Bishop of Winchester to have
him formally revoke the promise of betrothal. He made the
two kept it a secret in case Henry would need
to marry Catherine after all. All the while, Catherine's circumstances
(16:43):
became more and more desperate. From the house she had
been staying at in London. Catherine was brought to court
so that the King could save on the cost of
maintaining a separate household for her. But living in court
meant that she was in a constant fish bowl of
gossip and speculation and pity. With no allowance, Catherine had
(17:04):
no way to pay her staff or pay the dowries
of her loyal ladies in waiting, who had come with
her all the way from Spain in the hopes that
they would be making an advantageous marriage while they were
in England. Now Catherine was in the humiliating position of
having to tell them that there were no dowries available.
Her servants were working for nothing but loyalty. The few
(17:26):
gowns that Catherine had brought with her from Spain were
growing thin and threadbare. An inches too short on the
growing teenage girl. She was heavily in debt to London
merchants for the few necessities that she couldn't borrow or
construct from her meager belongings. Catherine continued to send frantic
letters to her father, begging him for some financial support,
(17:50):
but Ferdinand refused. Catherine was under the supervision of King
Henry the Seventh and her upkeep was his responsibility. It
was four torturous years of limbo, confusion, loneliness, and humiliation.
(18:10):
But then there was one bright spot. In January of
fifteen o six, Catherine's sister Juana and her husband Philip
were sailing from the Low Countries to Spain when they
were shipwrecked off the coast of England, and the pair
were coming to visit the English court. Catherine had not
seen her sister for ten years, and she was thrilled
(18:31):
at the prospect of her union. When Juana and Philip
arrived at court, Catherine was surprised to see that she
was invited to sit at the top table. Catherine was
treated with a kindness that was now so unfamiliar to
her that it made her uneasy. King Henry the Seventh
clearly did not want Juan and Philip to see how
poorly their kin was being treated. But Catherine didn't mind.
(18:55):
She was seeing her sister again, and when she got
her alone, she could beg Juan at to in a
good word for her with King Henry. Maybe if Juanna
asked him, Henry would finally set the marriage between Catherine
and the Prince. When their meeting finally came, Catherine was
only permitted half an hour of a lone time with Juanna.
(19:15):
Before Catherine even had a moment to ask Juana for help,
Juanna began in a panic, telling her sister how miserable
she was with Philip and his philandering, how she knew
that he was cheating on her, but how she was
too madly in love with him to confront him about it,
and before she knew it, the meeting was over. Catherine
had never had a chance to ask her for help.
(19:37):
But while the two women were speaking, Philip was meeting
with King Henry the seventh and secretly trying to arrange
negotiations for his and Juanna's daughter Eleanor to be the
one to marry Prince Henry. The visit that was supposed
to be Catherine's salvation was actually a betrayal. Catherine never
saw her sister again, and just six months after at
(20:00):
the meeting in England, Philip died, only twenty eight years old.
They say that his death left Wana unhinged, that she
refused to let him be buried, and that she kept
his corpse in an open coffin, continually kissing and embracing
the decaying body of her former husband until it was
pulled away while she sobbed. Catherine had no allies left.
(20:26):
She was deeply in debt from supplying her staff with
clothing and food, left without even enough money to buy
herself a new nightgown. She was pawning her possessions, her
last relics of home, one by one, in order to
maintain a semblance of the proper appearance required for her station.
(20:48):
Prince Henry, who had once been a cherubic ten year old,
had grown into a young man. But when Henry showed
even a fraction of affection towards Catherine, a woman he
had known for almost all of his formative years, the
king forced them apart and then banished Catherine to Fulham.
Affection would have no place in the negotiations of who
(21:10):
an heir would marry. Catherine, now an old maid at
twenty one years old, returned to court only for the
tournaments of Prince Henry's sixteenth birthday celebrations. The two exchanged
shy smiles and flirtatious glances, but they knew enough not
to make their affections public. But then a stroke of
(21:32):
luck for Catherine, her captor, Henry the Seventh, died of tuberculosis,
and Prince Henry became Henry the Eighth. It seemed a
foregone conclusion who the golden new teenage king would be
choosing for his new bride. He had seen Catherine of
Arragon from back when she was a beautiful girl. He
(21:54):
had seen her grow through hardship and suffering into a
beautiful young woman. She was his first crush, the face
he always pictured when he imagined his queen, and he
was the king. Now Henry the Eighth was her savior
her night in shining armor, King Henry the Eighth was
(22:14):
in charge, and he would marry whoever he wanted. That's
the story of how Catherine of Arragon married King Henry
the Eighth. But keep listening. After a brief sponsor break
to hear about how their story ended. They were married
(22:45):
for twenty four years, but what had once been alight
with youth and promise eventually became sour and hard. One
miscarriage became two became seven. Although Catherine bore a daughter, Mary,
there was no legitimate tudor son, no one to carry
on the precarious dynasty that had been the reason for
(23:08):
securing Catherine of Arragon in marriage in the first place.
Most people know the story from then how Henry became
besotted with Anne Boleyn and attempted to force Catherine into
a divorce, claiming that since she had been married to
his brother, their marriage was never legitimate to begin with.
Catherine could have agreed, She could have bit her tongue
(23:30):
and allowed the marriage to be annulled, to just agree
with whatever Henry said and let herself settle into a
position of well loved sister of the king. But Catherine
never wavered from her story. Her wedding with Arthur was
never consummated, her marriage with Henry was true, and her
daughter Mary was legitimate. Catherine's devout Catholic faith would never
(23:56):
allow her to agree to a divorce, and so prideful stubborn,
righteous Katherine once again became a hostage in England. She
was moved from palace to palace, each one bleaker and
colder and more isolated than the last. More and more
of her servants and friends were stripped away from her.
(24:18):
She was forbidden from seeing her daughter Mary, though Katherine
pled for her and Mary begged to see her mother,
they would be allowed to see each other. Henry said
only if Catherine agreed for the marriage to be annulled.
She refused. Catherine of Arragon died, maintaining that she was
(24:38):
the rightful Queen of England and Henry the eighth only
true wife. Noble Blood is a production of I Heart
Radio and Aaron Mankey. The show was written and hosted
by Dana Schwartz and produced by Aaron Mankey, Matt Frederick,
(25:00):
Alex Williams, and Trevor Young. Noble Blood is on social
media at Noble Blood Tales, and you can learn more
about the show over at Noble Blood Tales dot com.
For more podcasts from I heart Radio, visit the I
heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to
your favorite shows. M
Host
Dana Schwartz
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