December 17, 2024 • 26 mins
Catherine of Aragon was the first wife of King Henry VIII.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Welcome to Noble Blood, a production of iHeartRadio and Grimm
and Mild from Aaron Manky. Listener discretion advised.
Speaker 2 (00:09):
This is Danishchwart's host of Noble Blood. I am off
taking a brief maternity leave and so this week I
am so excited to share one of my absolute favorite
early episodes of the show from the archives, an episode
about Henry the Eighth's first wife, Katherine. Though most people
only associate her with the end of her life and
(00:30):
Henry's attempts to divorce her, this episode focuses mainly on
Catherine's early life, back before she married Henry the Eighth,
when she was trapped in limbo as a bargaining chip
in England after the death of her first husband, I
hope you enjoy.
Speaker 1 (00:51):
After a long and treacherous journey from her cloistered life
in Spain, Princess Catherine finally made it safely to English shores. Catherine,
the 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.
(01:15):
Though she was only fifteen, Catherine already felt like a woman. Technically,
she was already married to Arthur, the Prince of Wales,
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
(01:35):
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
exchanged flowery letters in their mutual language Latin, they wrote
like teenagers pretending to be adults. Their tutors had handily
(01:58):
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
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
(02:20):
and chaperones, rode to Berkshire and then to a bishop's
house in Dogsmurfield. Even through a full day of sweaty
travel along roads pock marked with dust and holes, Catherine
embodied propriety above all else. She wore a long velvet
gown in the demure Spanish style and a veil over
(02:43):
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
the bishop's house was already dark, and Catherine's ladies politely
demurred the bishop's offer of dinner, and they swept their
(03:06):
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 was
furious when he arrived, only to be told by Catherine's
chaperone that the princess had had an exhausting travel day
(03:28):
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? Just a cunning 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
(03:52):
to see Princess Catherine. After a few moments, Catherine and
her ladies emerged from her bedchamber. Catherine wore a heavy
black veil over her face. Henry the seventh was sure
they were hiding something, and so he strode over and,
without even a word of introduction, flung the veil back.
(04:14):
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. Very well,
the king said, and he bid her good night. That
(04:34):
interaction would represent Catherine's tenuous position in England for the
next thirty five years. The rest of her life. She
was more symbol than a woman, both a bargaining chip
and an obstacle. For the rest of Catherine's life, she
would be fighting an increasingly challenging battle to maintain her dignity.
(04:55):
She was a player in an unwinnable game, a hostage
for of Henry the seventh and then ultimately of Henry
the Eighth, her brother in law, who first became her
husband and then became her enemy. I'm Danas Schwartz, and
this is noble blood. Catherine didn't know it, but blood
(05:22):
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
was to be weed to Arthur, the heir to the
throne of England, then King Henry the seventh would need
to kill a prisoner. Not just any prisoner, he would
(05:45):
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
the former King Richard the Third. England's new King, Henry
the seventh, had beat Richard the Third in battle and
(06:07):
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 was
no real threat while he was imprisoned half mad from loneliness,
but he was still a threat, and Ferdinand of Aragon
(06:27):
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 Castile. Catherine's bloodline was impeccable technically on
her mother's side. She even had a better blood claim
to the English throne than Henry the Seventh. That was
(06:50):
most of the reason that Henry the seventh wanted her
for his son. Catherine represented old European royalty everything that
he aspired for the new House of Tutor to be,
and so King Henry the seventh trumped up charges of
an escape attempt and had Warwick executed. Princess Catherine would
(07:10):
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, Catherine was shipped
to England for a wedding that would make all of
Europe pay attention. Catherine came to London two days before
(07:34):
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 also wore a
jaunty little cap on her head with gold lace to
tie it beneath her chin in the Venetian style. Escorted
(07:58):
by the Lord Mayor of London, and 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 whilst dragon and
green represented her husband to be Arthur, the Prince of Wales.
(08:18):
In another tableaux, 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 the fruit of
your belly, your substance and fruits I shall increase and multiply.
(08:39):
England was coming out of civil war between the Yorks
and the Lancasters. The dynasty wasn't entirely secure yet, but
Henry the seventh and his heir, Arthur, represented a stable future,
and now they had this young, beautiful Spanish princess who
was ready to continue the Tudor line. When Arthur and
(09:00):
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 learn English
soon enough. Arthur's little brother, Henry, then just ten years old,
(09:25):
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 robes trimmed with ermine.
When they completed their vows, doves and rabbits were released
(09:48):
outside Saint Paul's Cathedral. In a moment of delicious chaos,
a children's choir sang them out and into their marriage bed.
The Arthur was at this point only fifteen years old,
and I've a particularly sickly constitution. The morning after his wedding,
he strolled out of his bed chamber and bodily told
his friends to pour him in ale. Marriage is thirsty work,
(10:12):
he said, poking a friend in the ribs. Gentlemen, he announced,
when he had his meed to hold high. I have
spent the night in Spain. Catherine privately told her ladies
that they hadn't 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
(10:35):
of catherine Spanish entourage home, leaving Catherine more isolated than
she had ever been in her entire life, in a
strange country and in bed with a stranger. King Henry
tried to distract her that day. 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
(10:56):
towards the land she had left and to which would
now never return. Though Arthur's health seemed to decline in
the weeks following his wedding, the pale, weedy boy becoming
even paler and weedier, he was still the Prince of Wales,
and so the newlywed couple set off to Ludlow Castle
(11:19):
in the Welsh Marshes so Arthur could gain some experience
in governance. As Arthur's color continued to fade, courtiers joked
that the boy was just over exerting himself in the
marriage bed. When both Catherine and Arthur fell sick, with
the sweating sickness drenching their clothes, leaving them delirious with fever,
(11:40):
people stopped making jokes. On April third, a 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 his confessor, who recited, stuttering, if we
receive good things at the hand of God, why may
(12:02):
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 of Wales and heir to the English throne, was dead.
(12:25):
When Catherine recovered from this wedding 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,
Catherine did not attend her husband's funeral. Shrouded in black
(12:47):
in heavy veils, she returned to London to see what
her future would entail. Catherine's father, King Ferdinand, demanded that
England repay her dowry. It was ociation tactic to frighten
Henry the seventh into agreeing to a new betrothal to
his next son, the new Heir Henry. There were a
(13:10):
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
matter much, as Henry aged by the time he was
fourteen able to consummate a marriage. It wouldn't raise too
(13:31):
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.
Leviticus explicitly forbade marriage between a man and his brother's wife,
declaring outright that such a union would be cursed with childlessness.
(13:55):
But then again, in Deuteronomy it basically encouraged for a
man to make Mary his brother's widow if the couple
was childless. It's painted as an act of charity. But
that religious complication could be brushed aside if the marriage
between Catherine and Arthur was never consummated. Impatient with the
hemming and hawing of advisers ambassadors, King Henry the seventh
(14:19):
summoned Katherine and explicitly asked her if she and Arthur
had slept together. Catherine shook her head. She and Arthur
had 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
(14:40):
marry Spain. So it was agreed the marriage was set
to take place in fifteen o five, when Prince Henry
was fourteen 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
(15:01):
Henry were formally betrothed in a ceremony, in which Catherine
wore white, looking as virginal as she possibly could, with
her hair unbound in loose waves down past her shoulder
to signify her purity. But until Henry turned fourteen, Catherine
remained in England, not quite a guest but not quite
(15:23):
a member of the royal family either. She was given
a minimal household and an allowance, but not much else.
But then Catherine's 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,
(15:44):
Castile went to Catherine's older sister, Juana, but everyone knew
that Juana was volatile, verging on unhinged, and so the
real power was Swana's husband, Philip the Hansom, the son
of the Holy Roman Emperor. But all that just meant
that with Isabella dead, Katherine was no longer a princess
of a United Spain. She was instead just the princess
(16:07):
now of the smaller, less important region of Argonne, her
father's kingdom. Henry Tudor was going to be the King
of England someday he could probably find a much better marriage. Abruptly,
King Henry the seventh stopped Catherine's allowance. The King began
(16:31):
treating her with cool disdain when he didn't outright ignore her.
Catherine 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
(16:55):
was no mention of any upcoming wedding. Catherine became aware
with the 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
(17:18):
Henry would need to marry Catherine after all. All the while,
Catherine's circumstances 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
(17:38):
bowl of gossip and speculation and pity. With no allowance,
Catherine had 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
(17:59):
position of to tell them that there were no dowries available.
Her servants were working for nothing but loyalty. The few
gowns that Catherine had brought with her from Spain were
growing thin and threadbare, and 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
(18:21):
construct from her meager belongings. Catherine continued to send frantic
letters to her father, begging him for some financial support,
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,
(18:51):
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
(19:11):
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 Juana and Philip to see how
poorly their kin was being treated, but Catherine didn't mind.
(19:35):
She was seeing her sister again, and when she got
her alone, she could beg Juana to put in a
good word for her with King Henry. Maybe, if Juana
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 alone time with Juana.
(19:55):
Before Catherine even had a moment to ask Juana for help.
Juana again 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.
(20:17):
But while the two women were speaking, Philip was meeting
with King Henry the Seventh and secretly trying to arrange
negotiations for his Juana'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 the meeting
(20:40):
in England, Philip died, only twenty eight years old. They
say that his death Leftuana 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 poled away
(21:00):
while she sobbed. Catherine had no allies left. 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
(21:22):
the proper appearance required for her station. 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
(21:43):
them apart and then banished Catherine to Fulham. Affection would
have no place in the negotiations of who 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
(22:05):
and flirtatious glances, but they knew enough not to make
their affections public. But then a struggle of 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
(22:28):
his new bride. He had seen Catherine of Arragon from
back when she was a beautiful girl. He 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
(22:51):
shining armor. King Henry the Eighth was in charge, and
he would marry whoever he wanted. That's the story of
how Catherine of Aragon married King Henry the Eighth. But
keep listening after a brief sponsor break to hear about
(23:13):
how their story ended. They were married 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.
(23:38):
Although Catherine bore a daughter, Mary, there was no legitimate
tutor son, no one to carry on the precarious dynasty
that had been the reason for securing Catherine of Aragon
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
(24:01):
since she had been married to his brother, the marriage
was never legitimate to begin with. Catherine could have agreed,
She could have bit her tongue 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 Katherine never wavered from her story.
(24:24):
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 allow her to agree to
a divorce, and so prideful, stubborn, righteous Catherine once again
became a hostage in England. She was moved from pallace
(24:48):
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. She was forbidden from
se 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 Katherine agreed
(25:11):
for the marriage to be annulled. She refused. Katherine of
Aragon died, maintaining that she was the rightful Queen of
England and Henry the Eighth's only true wife. Noble Blood
(25:32):
is a production of iHeartRadio and Grim and Mild from
Aaron Manke. Noble Blood is hosted by me Dana Schwartz,
with additional writing and research by Hannah Johnston, hannah's Wick,
Courtney Sender, Amy Hit and Julia Milaney. The show is
edited and produced by Jesse Funk, with supervising producerrima Ill
(25:54):
Kayli and executive producers Aaron Manke, Trevor Young, and Matt Frederick.
For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,
or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
Welcome to Noble Blood, a production of iHeartRadio and Grimm
and Mild from Aaron Manky. Listener discretion advised.
Speaker 2 (00:09):
This is Danishchwart's host of Noble Blood. I am off
taking a brief maternity leave and so this week I
am so excited to share one of my absolute favorite
early episodes of the show from the archives, an episode
about Henry the Eighth's first wife, Katherine. Though most people
only associate her with the end of her life and
(00:30):
Henry's attempts to divorce her, this episode focuses mainly on
Catherine's early life, back before she married Henry the Eighth,
when she was trapped in limbo as a bargaining chip
in England after the death of her first husband, I
hope you enjoy.
Speaker 1 (00:51):
After a long and treacherous journey from her cloistered life
in Spain, Princess Catherine finally made it safely to English shores. Catherine,
the 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.
(01:15):
Though she was only fifteen, Catherine already felt like a woman. Technically,
she was already married to Arthur, the Prince of Wales,
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
(01:35):
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
exchanged flowery letters in their mutual language Latin, they wrote
like teenagers pretending to be adults. Their tutors had handily
(01:58):
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
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
(02:20):
and chaperones, rode to Berkshire and then to a bishop's
house in Dogsmurfield. Even through a full day of sweaty
travel along roads pock marked with dust and holes, Catherine
embodied propriety above all else. She wore a long velvet
gown in the demure Spanish style and a veil over
(02:43):
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
the bishop's house was already dark, and Catherine's ladies politely
demurred the bishop's offer of dinner, and they swept their
(03:06):
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 was
furious when he arrived, only to be told by Catherine's
chaperone that the princess had had an exhausting travel day
(03:28):
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? Just a cunning 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
(03:52):
to see Princess Catherine. After a few moments, Catherine and
her ladies emerged from her bedchamber. Catherine wore a heavy
black veil over her face. Henry the seventh was sure
they were hiding something, and so he strode over and,
without even a word of introduction, flung the veil back.
(04:14):
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. Very well,
the king said, and he bid her good night. That
(04:34):
interaction would represent Catherine's tenuous position in England for the
next thirty five years. The rest of her life. She
was more symbol than a woman, both a bargaining chip
and an obstacle. For the rest of Catherine's life, she
would be fighting an increasingly challenging battle to maintain her dignity.
(04:55):
She was a player in an unwinnable game, a hostage
for of Henry the seventh and then ultimately of Henry
the Eighth, her brother in law, who first became her
husband and then became her enemy. I'm Danas Schwartz, and
this is noble blood. Catherine didn't know it, but blood
(05:22):
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
was to be weed to Arthur, the heir to the
throne of England, then King Henry the seventh would need
to kill a prisoner. Not just any prisoner, he would
(05:45):
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
the former King Richard the Third. England's new King, Henry
the seventh, had beat Richard the Third in battle and
(06:07):
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 was
no real threat while he was imprisoned half mad from loneliness,
but he was still a threat, and Ferdinand of Aragon
(06:27):
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 Castile. Catherine's bloodline was impeccable technically on
her mother's side. She even had a better blood claim
to the English throne than Henry the Seventh. That was
(06:50):
most of the reason that Henry the seventh wanted her
for his son. Catherine represented old European royalty everything that
he aspired for the new House of Tutor to be,
and so King Henry the seventh trumped up charges of
an escape attempt and had Warwick executed. Princess Catherine would
(07:10):
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, Catherine was shipped
to England for a wedding that would make all of
Europe pay attention. Catherine came to London two days before
(07:34):
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 also wore a
jaunty little cap on her head with gold lace to
tie it beneath her chin in the Venetian style. Escorted
(07:58):
by the Lord Mayor of London, and 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 whilst dragon and
green represented her husband to be Arthur, the Prince of Wales.
(08:18):
In another tableaux, 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 the fruit of
your belly, your substance and fruits I shall increase and multiply.
(08:39):
England was coming out of civil war between the Yorks
and the Lancasters. The dynasty wasn't entirely secure yet, but
Henry the seventh and his heir, Arthur, represented a stable future,
and now they had this young, beautiful Spanish princess who
was ready to continue the Tudor line. When Arthur and
(09:00):
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 learn English
soon enough. Arthur's little brother, Henry, then just ten years old,
(09:25):
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 robes trimmed with ermine.
When they completed their vows, doves and rabbits were released
(09:48):
outside Saint Paul's Cathedral. In a moment of delicious chaos,
a children's choir sang them out and into their marriage bed.
The Arthur was at this point only fifteen years old,
and I've a particularly sickly constitution. The morning after his wedding,
he strolled out of his bed chamber and bodily told
his friends to pour him in ale. Marriage is thirsty work,
(10:12):
he said, poking a friend in the ribs. Gentlemen, he announced,
when he had his meed to hold high. I have
spent the night in Spain. Catherine privately told her ladies
that they hadn't 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
(10:35):
of catherine Spanish entourage home, leaving Catherine more isolated than
she had ever been in her entire life, in a
strange country and in bed with a stranger. King Henry
tried to distract her that day. 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
(10:56):
towards the land she had left and to which would
now never return. Though Arthur's health seemed to decline in
the weeks following his wedding, the pale, weedy boy becoming
even paler and weedier, he was still the Prince of Wales,
and so the newlywed couple set off to Ludlow Castle
(11:19):
in the Welsh Marshes so Arthur could gain some experience
in governance. As Arthur's color continued to fade, courtiers joked
that the boy was just over exerting himself in the
marriage bed. When both Catherine and Arthur fell sick, with
the sweating sickness drenching their clothes, leaving them delirious with fever,
(11:40):
people stopped making jokes. On April third, a 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 his confessor, who recited, stuttering, if we
receive good things at the hand of God, why may
(12:02):
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 of Wales and heir to the English throne, was dead.
(12:25):
When Catherine recovered from this wedding 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,
Catherine did not attend her husband's funeral. Shrouded in black
(12:47):
in heavy veils, she returned to London to see what
her future would entail. Catherine's father, King Ferdinand, demanded that
England repay her dowry. It was ociation tactic to frighten
Henry the seventh into agreeing to a new betrothal to
his next son, the new Heir Henry. There were a
(13:10):
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
matter much, as Henry aged by the time he was
fourteen able to consummate a marriage. It wouldn't raise too
(13:31):
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.
Leviticus explicitly forbade marriage between a man and his brother's wife,
declaring outright that such a union would be cursed with childlessness.
(13:55):
But then again, in Deuteronomy it basically encouraged for a
man to make Mary his brother's widow if the couple
was childless. It's painted as an act of charity. But
that religious complication could be brushed aside if the marriage
between Catherine and Arthur was never consummated. Impatient with the
hemming and hawing of advisers ambassadors, King Henry the seventh
(14:19):
summoned Katherine and explicitly asked her if she and Arthur
had slept together. Catherine shook her head. She and Arthur
had 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
(14:40):
marry Spain. So it was agreed the marriage was set
to take place in fifteen o five, when Prince Henry
was fourteen 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
(15:01):
Henry were formally betrothed in a ceremony, in which Catherine
wore white, looking as virginal as she possibly could, with
her hair unbound in loose waves down past her shoulder
to signify her purity. But until Henry turned fourteen, Catherine
remained in England, not quite a guest but not quite
(15:23):
a member of the royal family either. She was given
a minimal household and an allowance, but not much else.
But then Catherine's 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,
(15:44):
Castile went to Catherine's older sister, Juana, but everyone knew
that Juana was volatile, verging on unhinged, and so the
real power was Swana's husband, Philip the Hansom, the son
of the Holy Roman Emperor. But all that just meant
that with Isabella dead, Katherine was no longer a princess
of a United Spain. She was instead just the princess
(16:07):
now of the smaller, less important region of Argonne, her
father's kingdom. Henry Tudor was going to be the King
of England someday he could probably find a much better marriage. Abruptly,
King Henry the seventh stopped Catherine's allowance. The King began
(16:31):
treating her with cool disdain when he didn't outright ignore her.
Catherine 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
(16:55):
was no mention of any upcoming wedding. Catherine became aware
with the 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
(17:18):
Henry would need to marry Catherine after all. All the while,
Catherine's circumstances 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
(17:38):
bowl of gossip and speculation and pity. With no allowance,
Catherine had 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
(17:59):
position of to tell them that there were no dowries available.
Her servants were working for nothing but loyalty. The few
gowns that Catherine had brought with her from Spain were
growing thin and threadbare, and 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
(18:21):
construct from her meager belongings. Catherine continued to send frantic
letters to her father, begging him for some financial support,
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,
(18:51):
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
(19:11):
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 Juana and Philip to see how
poorly their kin was being treated, but Catherine didn't mind.
(19:35):
She was seeing her sister again, and when she got
her alone, she could beg Juana to put in a
good word for her with King Henry. Maybe, if Juana
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 alone time with Juana.
(19:55):
Before Catherine even had a moment to ask Juana for help.
Juana again 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.
(20:17):
But while the two women were speaking, Philip was meeting
with King Henry the Seventh and secretly trying to arrange
negotiations for his Juana'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 the meeting
(20:40):
in England, Philip died, only twenty eight years old. They
say that his death Leftuana 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 poled away
(21:00):
while she sobbed. Catherine had no allies left. 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
(21:22):
the proper appearance required for her station. 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
(21:43):
them apart and then banished Catherine to Fulham. Affection would
have no place in the negotiations of who 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
(22:05):
and flirtatious glances, but they knew enough not to make
their affections public. But then a struggle of 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
(22:28):
his new bride. He had seen Catherine of Arragon from
back when she was a beautiful girl. He 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
(22:51):
shining armor. King Henry the Eighth was in charge, and
he would marry whoever he wanted. That's the story of
how Catherine of Aragon married King Henry the Eighth. But
keep listening after a brief sponsor break to hear about
(23:13):
how their story ended. They were married 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.
(23:38):
Although Catherine bore a daughter, Mary, there was no legitimate
tutor son, no one to carry on the precarious dynasty
that had been the reason for securing Catherine of Aragon
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
(24:01):
since she had been married to his brother, the marriage
was never legitimate to begin with. Catherine could have agreed,
She could have bit her tongue 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 Katherine never wavered from her story.
(24:24):
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 allow her to agree to
a divorce, and so prideful, stubborn, righteous Catherine once again
became a hostage in England. She was moved from pallace
(24:48):
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. She was forbidden from
se 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 Katherine agreed
(25:11):
for the marriage to be annulled. She refused. Katherine of
Aragon died, maintaining that she was the rightful Queen of
England and Henry the Eighth's only true wife. Noble Blood
(25:32):
is a production of iHeartRadio and Grim and Mild from
Aaron Manke. Noble Blood is hosted by me Dana Schwartz,
with additional writing and research by Hannah Johnston, hannah's Wick,
Courtney Sender, Amy Hit and Julia Milaney. The show is
edited and produced by Jesse Funk, with supervising producerrima Ill
(25:54):
Kayli and executive producers Aaron Manke, Trevor Young, and Matt Frederick.
For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,
or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
Host
Dana Schwartz
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