Henry VIII
By Wendy J DunnLesson 2: Loyal Heart: Henry VIII and Catherine of Aragon.
Catherine and Henry
This segment aims to provide students with a better understanding of Catherine of Aragon and Henry VIII and their relationship.
“I beseech you, for all the love that hath been between us, let me have justice and right, take of my some pity and compassion, for I am a poor woman and a stranger, born out of your dominion. I have here no assured friend and much less indifferent counsel. I flee to you, as to the head of justice within this realm…“I take God and all the world to witness that I have been a true, humble and obedient wife, ever comfortable to your will and pleasure…,being always well pleased and contented with all things wherein you had any delight or dalliance, whether it were little or much…This twenty years or more I have been your true wife, and by me ye had had divers children, although it hath pleased God to call them from this world…And when you had me at the first, I take God to be my judge, I was a true maid, without touch of man. And whether this be true or no, I put it to your conscience.”
Catherine of Aragon, the lioness. (1)Catherine of Aragon to Henry VIII
February 18, 1516.
Gazing at his newborn, healthy daughter, King Hal consoled himself by saying, 'We are young enough, there will be sons to follow.'
We are young enough, there will be sons to follow, so said the confident 25 year old King. But not with Catherine of Aragon. Six-years older than the King, her body tired out from its frequent bouts with pregnancy, Catherine's childbearing years were fast drawing to a close. One more pregnancy - resulting in another stillbirth in 1518- followed the birth of her daughter Mary in 1516, then no more. Finis. In a sense this can only be regarded as a blessing. There is only so much heartbreak a woman can hope to bear. And six dead babies were more than enough heartbreak for any woman to withstand. Mary would be the only child of Catherine of Aragon to survive infancy and grow into adulthood.
Documented history suggests Catherine and Henry possessed completely different viewpoints about the future of their newborn daughter. By the future actions of Henry, we can only infer that Henry perceived that Catherine had failed in her duty as his Queen and consort to provide him with a son and heir. The 'War of Roses' was a memory from only 31 years ago, still very much in living history. The birth of a daughter was just not good enough. Indeed, let us here do Henry justice; he was only the second King of a dynasty that came to rule England upon very shaky and bloody ground. Henry VIII desperately wanted a son to pass his Kingdom onto, and not to a daughter with all the inherent problems that entailed.
But Catherine - the fifth and last child of Isabella of Castile, a renowned Queen Regnant who could and did rule in her own right - would have viewed the birth of a daughter in an entirely different light. Catherine would have been aware of the esteem Popes and Kings held for her mother, knowing too that her mother, the Queen, was a crusader. Indeed, not only a crusader but a woman who commanded armies - Catherine herself was born during one of Isabella's campaigns- as she achieved her goal of driving the might of the Moors from her dominions. Yes. Catherine entertained no doubts on a woman's ability to be a strong and able monarch.
Deep down, Henry must have known it was possible too. Not only entrusting his Kingdom to Catherine whenever he minded to go abroad and play the soldier king, he had the memory of the highly intelligent and politically able woman who had overseen his education - his grandmother Margaret Beaufort, Countess of Richmond.
Sometimes I'm very tempted to think his desire for a son could be brought down to a simply human desire, and had very little to do with the security of his Kingdom at all. 'I see God will not give me male children,' he said when his second wife Anne Boleyn gave birth to a dead son. For a man who often displayed a politician's insincerity, this statement resonates down the centuries with human despair and deep disappointment, ringing loudly with simple truth. Perhaps that is one of the reasons why the women in his life loved him, no matter the agony he inflicted on them. With their female sensitivity, they could sense a core within Henry VIII that truly suffered.
Now - was it simply because Henry fell so in love with Anne Boleyn and would do anything to get her that he steered his Kingdom into the blood-washed storms of 'his great matter?' It is possible. However, I feel certain if only one of Catherine's sons had lived the King would have not threatened the status quo and kept Catherine for his Queen and Mary's position would have been safe. History tells us that - before embarking in his unrelenting course to marry Anne Boleyn - Henry VIII clearly thought hard on the possibility of Mary being one day Queen Regnant. Why else would he send his young daughter to Ludlow, where she learnt to govern over a court of her own? Interestingly though - speaking loudly his doubt to us down the long centuries - he didn't rise her to the rank of 'Princess of Wales' before doing so.
Perhaps now - with his passion burning bright for a woman who refused to be his mistress - he pondered hard upon other ways of achieving his desires. My reading of the King's character is that he was a man who wanted sons. Not just because the lack of sons made his kingdom insecure, but because the lack of sons hurt him where it hurt him most- his ego. So – Henry convinced himself that his marriage to Catherine was unclean, incestuous. Catherine had been married to his brother and so Henry's own subsequent relationship with her was accursed. Henry VIII, the bible scholar, could easily cite the relevant Bible passage, but that didn't make it less tragic for her.
Catherine - a wife and mother worth her salt and not inclined to disappear quietly into the suggested convent nor from a marriage that had lasted twenty-two years - was determined to fight tooth and nail for her daughter's rights and for her beloved husband's imperilled soul. So Henry separated Mary from her mother. He probably believed this separation would cause Catherine to stop and think about her actions and whether doing what 'the king' expected might be a good idea if it gave Catherine her daughter back.
Now- this is the moment I must pause and attempt my best to be fair to 'Bluff King Hal.' In my novel, Dear Heart, How Like You This?, I have a scene where Henry and his sister Mary argue the rights and wrongs of his attempts to replace Catherine- England's 'beloved' queen'- with 'Black-eyed Nan.' Mary, dowager queen of France and duchess of Suffolk, placed herself very much in Catherine's camp. In the scene I created, there were several important issues that his sister Mary raised, the most important one being that Catherine had not failed to provide Henry with an heir. She had provided Henry with Mary, clearly possessing so many of the Tudor characteristics, a young, intelligent girl who could be taken under her father's wing and trained for queenship. Mary also reminded him that her niece could marry- just who would have been a hard choice for Henry, I admit, but it remains still a valid solution- and thus - if fortune smiled upon the union- provide the kingdom with male heirs, grandsons to the king. If Mary had married at eighteen, it is possible that an heir from her body would have been close to the age of majority by the time of the King's death. The other argument that Mary voiced was that Catherine was queen anointed- a ritual of such deep meaning that it could never truly be undone.
Henry's arguments mostly centred on his desire for a new, valid marriage and his desire for a legitimate son of 'his body.' But, in this imagined scene, there is one point he raised that could be seen as a justification for his decision now to turn away from the possibility of Mary as queen regnant. Mary, being very much her mother's daughter, was very drawn to her 'mother's kin.' As a six-year old, she had met Charles V, the head of this family; was, indeed, betrothed to him. Despite his marriage to someone else, her loyalty to this family (Charles specially and later his son Philip) steered the course of much of her life. This loyalty was something that worried Henry. He was a nationalistic king and would not have desired England to become just one of the many dominions belonging to the Habsburg royal family.
The demise of Catherine of Aragon in 1536 brought great relief to Henry VIII. Receiving the 'glad tidings' of her death, the king cried to Chapuys, the Spanish ambassador, 'God be praised, the old harridan is dead, we are free from all suspicion of war.' The king, 'transported with joy' (Chapuys' words), decided to really celebrate, dressing himself and his court in yellow. Anne Boleyn, the second wife of Henry VIII, excused this to the same ambassador by saying yellow was the colour of Royal Spanish mourning. (1)
But Chapuys had eyes and a mind for himself. He knew what it meant when the king took his two year-old daughter Elizabeth - garbed also in yellow - in his arms, blithely presenting her to the court as their 'princess Elizabeth', clearly putting aside Mary, now nearing her twentieth birthday. Chapuys was good friend to both Mary and Catherine. Indeed, Catherine said to him, just days before her death, after learning her husband had denied her the presence of Mary, "I can die in your arms, not abandoned- like one of the beasts." (2) Catherine was to die not in Chapuys' arms, but two days later in the arms of her childhood friend, Maria Salinas. (3)
(1) Hester Chapman, The challenge of Anne Boleyn, U.S.A, 1974, page 185
(2) Garrett Mattingly, Catherine of Aragon, 1942, page 305
(3) Mattingly, Work cited. 307.
References:
Garrett Mattingly, Catherine of Aragon, 1942
Hester Chapman, The challenge of Anne Boleyn, U.S.A, 1974.
Resources:
Dear Heart, How Like You This? (Metropolis Ink, 2002) tells the story of Sir Thomas Wyatt and his lifelong-love for his cousin Anne Boleyn, the tragic second wife of Henry VIII of England.
Was it the King’s belief that his marriage was ‘unclean’ through Catherine’s prior marriage to Henry’s own brother, and thus accursed in the eyes of God, the only reason the King sought to divorce Catherine of Aragon?
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