Читать книгу Other Tudors: Henry VIII's Mistresses & Bastards - Philippa Jones - Страница 11

Born on 28 June 1491 at Greenwich Palace, Henry was the second son of Henry VII and Elizabeth of York. Henry VII was 34 when his second son was born and had been king for six years. At the time of Henry’s birth, Elizabeth was already recognised as a devoted wife and mother. The only surviving contemporary portrait of her shows a plump lady, pale skinned with fair, red-gold hair. Sources of the time give us further insight – the Spanish Ambassador wrote of Elizabeth that she was ‘kept in subjection by the mother of the king’, and was shown little love by either. Others described Elizabeth as beautiful, noble, beloved, great in ‘charity and humanity.’⁵

Almost immediately, Henry was separated from his mother and given his own household at Eltham with his brother Arthur, the Prince of Wales, his sister Margaret and the children who followed. The Royal Court travelled a great deal, and it would have been almost impossible to take children with it as there were too many strangers, who might bring disease or attempt assassination. The King, however, needed to keep himself in the public eye, and the houses where he and his Court stayed needed to be cleaned, after only a few months, so the never-ending movement was a necessity for the King and Queen.

In June 1491 when Henry was born, Margaret Beaufort was in the midst of organising the royal nursery at Eltham; Elizabeth was hardly involved at all. Margaret would, therefore, be the person the young prince would come into contact with most frequently. Her religion now dominated her life. She had taken a vow of perpetual chastity and, despite being married, she dressed like a nun. Margaret’s powerful, dominant role in Henry’s life was to reinforce his distaste for strong-willed women and his liking for those who gave in to him rather than thwarted him.

By September 1494 the three-year-old Henry was already Constable of Dover Castle, Warden of the Cinque Ports, Earl Marshal of England and Lieutenant of Ireland. The Duke of York was added to his titles in answer to the claims of Perkin Warbeck (who claimed to be Richard, Duke of York, son of Edward IV, one of the lost Princes in the Tower who had disappeared whilst under the protection of their uncle, Richard III). Henry was first made a Knight of the Bath and, on 18 May 1495, Knight of the Order of the Garter. From the time he was first aware, Henry knew he was special, the centre of attention, as grown men – politicians and soldiers – bowed down to him.

Between late 1496 and early 1497 Arthur went to Ludlow, Shropshire, to set up a separate household as Prince of Wales. With Arthur gone, Eltham became the household of Henry, Duke of York. Even though his sister Margaret was older, as a son Henry took precedence. However, he would always stand second to Arthur, as the future king.

Some historians and novelists like to portray Henry as jealous, determined to outdo Arthur in everything to prove he was better. However, there is no evidence that Henry resented or was jealous of his brother, or that he failed to acknowledge that he would have to find his own place in the world, once Arthur became king.

During the Cornish ‘rebellion’ of 1497, the local people rose up against taxes forced on them by Henry VII to pay for opposing the pretender, Perkin Warbeck, in the north, far away from Cornwall, in southwest England. When it looked as if the Cornish rebels would reach London unopposed, Elizabeth of York and the young Henry sheltered at the Coldharbour, a house near the Tower of London, and then, on Monday 12 June, in the Tower itself.⁶ Thus, Henry was finally able to spend time with his mother. They were together, without any other family members, and were in some danger. For a week they supported and encouraged each other.

Once the rebellion was crushed (with 2,000 dead at Blackheath in south London), the Cornish were allowed to return home, but were heavily fined. Later that same year some of the Cornish rebels joined forces with other West Country malcontents in support of Warbeck. Although the leaders were executed, the rest again received heavy fines. The result may well have been that six-year-old Prince Henry learned to distrust leniency. Two of his wives were to pay the price for this lesson. Other kings divorced unwanted wives and then imprisoned them or sent them to nunneries; Henry executed them.

Lord Herbert of Cherbury stated in The Life and Raigne of Henry the Eighth, published in 1649, that Prince Henry, as a younger son, was destined for the Church. There is no other evidence for this interesting claim. In fact, given the rate of infant mortality, Henry stood a good chance of becoming Prince of Wales and would have been educated accordingly. In his will, dated 14 October 1496, Jasper Tudor left his lands and wealth to Henry, to give some independence to the future king’s younger brother; the will specifically mentions that if Henry became Prince of Wales, the estate was to go to Henry VII, Jasper’s nephew, instead.

In 1494, John Skelton, an academic and poet, became tutor to Prince Arthur and later to Henry. Skelton was a notable Latin scholar, a skill much appreciated by Henry VII; he wanted the Prince to learn Latin as this was the language of kings, in which most communications were made. Henry VII himself had little Latin, and regretted it as this put him at a disadvantage in international circles.

By 1502, Skelton gave his services exclusively to Prince Henry. Delighted at the rank of his pupil, Skelton wrote in praise of his charge:

‘There grows from the red-rose bush a fair-flowering shoot, a delightful small new Rose, worthy of its stock, a noble Henry born of famous line, a boy noble in the nobility of his father; and furthermore a brilliant pupil, worthy to be sung as such …’⁷

Skelton taught Henry Latin grammar, rhetoric and logic; he further introduced arithmetic, geometry, astronomy, music and theology into the curriculum. Skelton wanted learning to be enjoyable, so he let Henry read the Latin poets and historians. Lessons were taught in English, rather than French or Latin, so that Henry would be fluent in his native language. Skelton may also have mentioned to Henry his own ideas about how abuses in the Church and the State needed to be removed, whilst the actual Church and State were protected.

Skelton was with Henry for a greater part of the day. Up for matins at 6 a.m., followed by breakfast, Henry would have had classes all morning and into the afternoon, breaking only to eat at 10 or 11 a.m. He then took part in sporting activities until evensong and his next meal at 4 p.m. After this would be entertainment until bed at 8 or 9 p.m.

Lord Mountjoy was taken into Henry’s household as his companion, mentor and role model. Thirteen years older than Henry, Mountjoy’s job was to teach him to behave like a gentleman. Mountjoy’s grandmother was Anne neville, sister of Cicely who married Richard, Duke of York in 1438, the parents of Edward IV. Mountjoy was an ideal role model in many ways – elegant, handsome, serious, sensible, beautifully mannered, intelligent and good at sports and games. He had studied at Queens’ College, Cambridge and was a patron of the Dutch writer, philosopher and humanist, Desiderius Erasmus (1466?–1536). Mountjoy also liked women, marrying four times (the first time when Henry was six). Henry would have observed his mentor enter cheerfully into matrimony and would have learned a little about love and respect.

Skelton tried to teach Henry that his head should rule his heart and that he should not give way to passions, emotional or sexual. In 1501 Skelton wrote Speculum Principis (A Mirror for Princes), a textbook for young Henry with such aphorisms as, ‘Choose a wife for yourself. Prize her always and uniquely.’⁸ Skelton’s writings may also have informed Henry’s view that certain women were not to be respected – women who betrayed their husbands or lovers. In ‘Womanhood, Wanton, Ye Want’, comparing a woman’s chastity to a locked door, Skelton wrote:

Your key is meet for every lock,

Your key is common and hangeth out;

Your key is ready, we need not knock,

Not stand long resting there about;

Of your doorgate we have no doubt … ⁹

This philosophy is reflected in Henry’s attitude to several of his mistresses. They are the ‘wantons’ – ladies who betray their marriage vows, even with the King. They may be loved, but they can be left without feelings of guilt, as they are unworthy of his respect. The long-term mistresses may be found husbands, but they are faithful to the King; the husband is mere window dressing. They are worthy of respect as long as the King is their sole lover. Only when he was young and finding his feet did Henry take mistresses who had enjoyed previous relationships, Anne Hastings with Sir William Compton and Jane Popincourt with the duc de Longueville. In later years, Henry made a great fuss of demanding that his wives should be virgins when they came to the marriage bed.

The year before Henry’s birth, Prince Arthur, then aged two, was betrothed to Catherine of Aragon, the daughter of Ferdinand of Aragon and Isabella of Castile, the rulers of Spain. The Spanish were constructing an alliance against the menace of France by marrying their children into the royal houses of England, Portugal and the Holy Roman Empire (based on Austria and the netherlands). Ferdinand and Isabella, however, were unwilling to send their daughter to England while there were questions as to the strength of the Tudors’ hold on the throne. In March 1500, after King Henry had executed a couple of Pretenders, along with the imprisoned, unfortunate Earl of Warwick who had a strong claim to the throne, the Spanish signed a treaty of alliance and said that Catherine would be in England in May (in fact she did not arrive until the following year). England was now safe. Even the young Prince could learn the lesson that a dead enemy is no threat.

When Catherine of Aragon arrived in October 1501, the Royal Family was at Richmond Palace. Henry VII waited until she was at Dogmersfield, where he went to meet her. Prince Arthur came to meet them from Ludlow. The Princess was then taken to Lambeth Palace in London and Prince Arthur went to the King’s Wardrobe, a royal residence near St Paul’s Cathedral. It had been decided that the 10-year-old Henry would escort Catherine into the City of London two days before her wedding, so she could see the pageants and tableaux set up in honour of the marriage on her way to the Bishop’s Palace, where she would stay until the wedding. All the displays praised Arthur’s regal manliness and emphasised Catherine’s role as the future mother of kings.

Henry also led the bride to church, and after the marriage returned Catherine to the Bishop’s Palace for the banquet. After the feast, came the much disputed wedding night. Arthur contended that his marriage had been consummated. The morning after, he called ostentatiously for wine: He is reputed to have said, ‘I have this night been in the midst of Spain, which is a hot region, and that journey maketh me so dry.’¹⁰ This was later denied by Catherine. She maintained, when the question arose, that Arthur had wanted to appear more healthy and manly before his friends and servants. She said that she was sexually ‘as intact as when I emerged from my mother’s womb.’¹¹

As regards Henry’s marriage, there appears to have been one tentative suggestion that he might marry Eleanor, daughter of the Holy Roman Emperor, Maximilian, whose grandson Charles was promised to Henry’s sister, Mary. Was this to reduce the number of heirs and claimants to the throne and to keep Henry from having a son for whom he might grow too ambitious? If Prince Henry did marry, it should certainly be to a lady who had no aspirations to the English throne through her own family or to a foreign princess who needed a resident prince consort to dwell abroad.

Shortly after Arthur and Catherine’s wedding, Edmund de la Pole, Earl of Suffolk, the son of Edward IV’s sister Elizabeth and a claimant to the throne, who had returned to England under the King’s promise of safety, again fled to France, taking his brother Richard with him. Driven by suspicion, Henry VII took immediate action against all those remaining who had any claim to the throne. In March 1502, William Courtenay (husband of Queen Elizabeth’s sister Katherine), William de la Pole (brother of Edmund and Richard) and James Tyrrell (Governor of Guisnes, near Calais), who had received Edmund de la Pole when he fled in 1499, were all imprisoned in the Tower of London. William Courtenay was found guilty of treason and sentenced to death, but was merely imprisoned until Henry VII’s death, when Henry VIII released him. William de la Pole stayed in prison for 38 years, and died there. JamesTyrrell was executed in May 1502, having supposedly confessed, almost 20 years after the event, that he had arranged the murders of Edward V and Richard, Duke of York, the Princes in the Tower, under orders from Richard III.

On a happier note, Henry VII and Elizabeth of York were delighted with their son’s bride. Catherine of Aragon was pretty and mature beyond her years, only a year older than her husband. She had been brought up to play the part of the Princess of Wales and later Queen of England. She was plump and graceful, with small hands and feet, long chestnut-brown hair and a flawless, fair complexion. She was well read, regal, dignified and pious, although she lacked spontaneity or humour, and was incapable of subterfuge or compromise. Her husband was tall and fair, with the family good looks. The question of his health does not seem to have arisen. As it would have been of great interest to the other European rulers if Arthur had been sickly, it would have been avidly reported; it is therefore safe to say that he enjoyed reasonably robust good health. However, in view of what followed, Prince Arthur may already have been showing the first symptoms of the illness that killed him.

The couple set up their household and spent their brief married life at Ludlow Castle. On 2 April 1502, Prince Arthur died there, after only five months of marriage. For most of this time, he had been ill with ‘consumption’ and the longed-for second wedding night never happened. The Prince’s ailment is usually diagnosed as tuberculosis, but it may very well have been pneumonia. Catherine herself was extremely ill, so much so that she was unable to attend Arthur’s funeral at Worcester Cathedral, and it was some months before she could be moved to London. Her mother-in-law, Elizabeth, sent a sombre, black-draped litter for Catherine to travel in slowly and safely to Durham House, on the Strand, where she set up her household and where Henry VII paid £100 a month to keep her in the style of Dowager Princess of Wales. Despite rumours to the contrary, Catherine showed no signs of being pregnant, wholly due, she would maintain, to nothing of a sexual nature having happened. She remained in England, waiting for her parents and father-in-law to decide what should become of her.

Henry VII decided that his second son, who was now Prince of Wales, should marry Catherine – chiefly so that he could maintain an alliance with Spain, and also, in no small part, so that he could keep her dowry. Henry VII’s reputation for meanness was, it seems, well founded. Prince Henry does not appear to have been unwilling, as he seemed to admire his brother’s bride and wished for the marriage.

The question of whether or not the first marriage had been consummated was ignored; a papal dispensation was issued that allowed Henry to have children with his brother’s widow, regardless of her state of virginity. Strictly speaking, this second marriage was against church law if Arthur and Catherine had had sex, and Arthur’s insistence that they had would later give Henry his grounds for divorce. The Catholic Church, basing its judgement on Holy Scripture, forbade a man to marry his brother’s widow if they had had a sexual relationship. At the time, political expediency overrode Church law and the Pope absolved all parties from any sin.

Catherine maintained that she and Arthur had never consummated their marriage. Catherine was extremely pious and it is unlikely that she lied about something as serious as this, even with a papal dispensation. Had she not been a virgin when she married Henry she would, in her own eyes, have been guilty of a mortal sin. Catherine’s later strength of conviction at the breakdown of her marriage to Henry VIII seems hard to imagine if she had known in her heart of hearts that her marriage to Arthur had been consummated. Catherine would not compromise as far as her religion was concerned and she would never tell a serious lie.

For the young Henry the change from Duke of York to Prince of Wales must have been an exciting one. He stepped into his brother’s shoes, presumably with a mixture of sadness and delight. He took on many of his brother’s officers of the Court. Skelton, however, lost his place as Henry’s tutor. It may have been because his writing was getting more scurrilous (for example, the Bouge of Court, which painted the court as corrupt and self-seeking) and vulgar (‘Womanhood, Wanton, Ye Want’), or because he had an arrogant, quarrelsome nature. In 1504, he was appointed rector of Diss, norfolk, with a stipend and pension from the King. William Hone became Henry’s new tutor. Unlike the colourful Skelton, little is known about the worthy, dull Hone.

Still ruled by his tutors, the young Prince slept, ate, studied, worshipped and played games; he signed documents, but never attended meetings. He also now learned Italian, Spanish, medicine, astronomy, geometry and arithmetic. When Lord Mountjoy was in England, they read history together and worked on Henry’s Latin. Henry shared his lessons, in part, with his sisters, Margaret and Mary. He also shared lessons with the pages, who were his companions and personal servants. These included Charles Brandon, his best friend; John St John, his grandmother’s great-nephew; Edward neville (so physically like Henry that they were sometimes mistaken for each other); and Henry Courtenay, son of Elizabeth of York’s sister.¹²

Just after Arthur’s death, Henry suffered another bereavement. Elizabeth of York died on 11 February 1503, after giving birth to a baby daughter, Catherine, who also died a few days later. Elizabeth was just 38 years old. Shortly after her death, Elizabeth’s children were taken to see her laid out in her robes of state. They knelt and prayed by her bed. Henry was just 12 years old, and was the King’s only son and heir. What thoughts went through the boy’s head as he gazed at the dead face of his beloved mother can only be imagined. To Henry, Elizabeth was a mixture of reality and myth – woman, queen and goddess – a child’s ideal of female perfection. The impact of her loss and that last farewell in the darkened room with candles flickering made a lasting impression on the young Prince.

The Court became far more serious and much less fun with the deaths of Arthur and Elizabeth. It has been suggested that Prince Henry and Queen Elizabeth had been particularly close, forming an alliance as they were both ‘powerless when compared with the King and Lady Margaret Beaufort.’¹³ Henry had already suffered the loss of his siblings Elizabeth, Edmund and Arthur, and now he had also lost baby Catherine and his idolised mother. He grew to fear illness, and that those he loved could be taken from him without warning. He learned not to care too deeply for anyone, to avoid the hurt.

Over the years, Henry perfected an image of his dead mother that he used to measure other women against. Every wife and every mistress was assessed against this impossible yardstick.

Who was he to love now?

In August 1503, Henry escorted his 13-year-old sister, Princess Margaret, north on her way to marry the Scottish King, James IV. Margaret was a bossy, self-obsessed little madam, and it seems likely that Henry felt few qualms about losing her. His only female contacts now were his sweet little sister Mary and his elderly 58-year-old religious, dominant grandmother.

Henry VII, however, had already enjoyed one good and fruitful marriage – why not a second? He began looking for a new queen. Despite plans for Catherine to marry the new Prince of Wales, Henry VII tentatively suggested that he should marry the princess himself! Catherine’s parents, Ferdinand of Aragon and Isabella of Castile vetoed the idea of this amended match. True, their daughter would be queen of England, but even if Henry VII gave her a son, the new baby would be unlikely to become king, with an existing and healthy Prince of Wales. Henry VII, at the age of 46, was already an old man by the standards of the day, and might die soon; Catherine would be a widow again, and this time would have no chance of marrying the next English king. Isabella described his suggestion as: ‘… an evil thing, the mere mention of which offends the ears, and we would not for anything in the world that it should take place.’¹⁴ If it had been expedient, Ferdinand and Isabella would have agreed to the marriage in a second. However, they saw a better chance of a lasting alliance with Catherine married to the future King of England.

Instead, Isabella recommended Henry VII to consider marriage to Joan, the widowed Queen of naples, the daughter of her husband Ferdinand’s sister. She was 26 years old and ‘particularly well-qualified to console him in his deep affliction.’ However, she lacked a dowry, and she only held the throne of naples for her own lifetime. Henry might like her ‘comely neck’ and ‘womanly laughing cheer and good humour’, but he wanted more material benefit from a bride.¹⁵

While negotiations continued, Isabella of Castile died, and the political climate changed dramatically. Ferdinand of Aragon married again, to Germaine de Foix of navarre, and Henry VII may have briefly looked towards France for a wife. The Portuguese Ambassador, Thomas Lopez, wrote a letter dated 10 October 1505 to his master, Emanuel I of Portugal: ‘Sire, the king of England is treating to get married in France to the daughter [sister – Margaret of Angoulême] of the Count of Angoulême, the Dauphin, or to his mother [Louise of Savoy] and he has sent thither for that purpose the Lord Somerset his ambassador.’¹⁶ Possibly to spite Ferdinand, whom he suspected of duplicity in the marriage negotiations, Henry VII suggested that he might marry Margaret of Austria, sister of Philip the Handsome, the son of the Holy Roman Emperor. Philip had married Joanna, the eldest daughter of Ferdinand and Isabella; when Isabella died, it was Joanna, her eldest child, and not her husband Ferdinand of Aragon, who inherited the throne of Castile. Ferdinand and Philip were at loggerheads over Joanna’s inheritance and any suggestion that Henry VII was planning to ally himself to Philip would have annoyed Ferdinand greatly.

Margaret of Austria had first married John, Crown Prince of Spain, in 1497, but he died only a few months later. In 1501, Margaret married Philibert II, Duke of Savoy, who died in 1504. now Henry VII put pressure on Philip the Handsome, pushing him to forward this marriage. A treaty of friendship was signed between Henry and Philip in London, on 20 March 1506, one element of which promised Henry VII the hand of Margaret, along with a dowry of 300,000 crowns and an annual income of 30,000. In addition, Prince Henry was to marry Eleanor, the daughter of Philip and Joanna, and Princess Mary was to marry their eldest son Charles, who was heir to Spain through his mother and to the Holy Roman Empire through his father.

Neither side seems to have pushed the marriage; Margaret herself was opposed to the union. Late in 1506, however, circumstances changed. Philip the Handsome died suddenly on 25 September, and Henry immediately approached Ferdinand, asking for the hand of his newly widowed daughter, Joanna; she had had six children with Philip – Charles, Ferdinand, Eleanor, Isabella, Mary and Katherine – which boded well for new princes and princesses of England.

On 15 January 1506, Philip the Handsome and Joanna had been stranded in England by a storm when their ship was damaged; Philip was on his way to Spain to attack Ferdinand, who was refusing to give up control of Castile to Joanna, as rightful heir. Prince Henry was sent to Winchester to meet Philip who had landed at Melcombe Regis, near Weymouth, Dorset. Joanna had stopped at Wolverton Manor, Dorset, as she was suffering from a bout of illness.

Philip and the young Henry took to each other immediately and were able to talk in French. Philip the Handsome was everything the Prince thought a king should be – handsome, religious, brave, aggressive in war, fond of wine, women (he enjoyed a string of casual sexual encounters) and song. Henry VII met the pair just outside Windsor the following day. During the month of the visit, Henry and Philip were constantly in one another’s company. The King spent extravagantly to impress Philip and everything was sumptuous and exuberant. On 10 February Joanna joined the party at Windsor.

On leaving England Philip and Joanna went on to Spain. There they formulated a truce with Ferdinand who withdrew from Castile; however, when Philip died, on 25 September 1506, the cause was rumoured to be poison, administered on the orders of Ferdinand. Henry was devastated by the news of Philip’s death. The loss of someone he admired raised an interesting mention of his mother’s death and the effect that it had on the boy. He wrote to Erasmus on 17 January 1507:

‘The news of the death of the King of Castile, my wholly and entirely and best-loved brother, I had reluctantly received very long before your letter … For never, since the death of my dearest mother, hath there come to me more hateful intelligence … because it seemed to tear open again the wound to which time had brought insensibility.’¹⁷

When Henry VII had met Joanna during this visit to England, albeit for a few days, he had expressed romantic feelings for her: ‘If when she was in England I had acted as I secretly wished, I would by every means have prevented her leaving my court. But I was prevented by my Council.’¹⁸ He told the Spanish Ambassador that he believed her to be unhappy rather than mad. He said Philip the Handsome’s unfaithfulness obviously upset her. He, on the other hand, would love and cherish her.

Joanna appears to have suffered some kind of nervous debilitation. Her symptoms were depression (partly brought on by her husband’s public infidelities) and a habit of forthright speech. The symptoms might indicate manic depression. Despite this, in England at least, the marriage was considered seriously. Dr Roderigo Gondesalvi de Puebla, the Spanish Ambassador in London from 1487, wrote to Ferdinand: ‘… the English seem little to mind her insanity, especially since I have assured them that the derangement of her mind would not prevent her from bearing children.’¹⁹

Ferdinand kept Henry VII dangling, right up until his death in 1509. In March 1507, Ferdinand wrote to his daughter Catherine, whom he was using as a go-between:

‘She [Catherine] must tell the king that it is not yet known whether Queen Juana [Joanna] be inclined to marry again, but if the said Queen should marry again, it shall be with no other person than with the King of England … But the affair must be kept most secret; for if Queen Juana should hear anything about it, she would most probably do something quite to the contrary.’

Catherine wrote to Joanna, despite his advice, in October 1507:

‘… the great affection he [Henry VII] had felt and still feels towards your Royal Highness from that time [the meeting in 1506] until now, is well known … I do not doubt but that your Highness will become the most noble and the most powerful Queen in the world.’²⁰

In reality, Ferdinand had no intention of letting the heiress of Castile out of his hands. He may very well have exaggerated Joanna’s grief and depression on her husband’s death, and had her confined as a madwoman. She was sent to the castle at Tordesillas, near Valladolid in Castile, the place where her grandmother was incarcerated after a metal breakdown. Poor Joanna finally died in 1555, having spent almost 50 years in confinement.

The ‘Joanna Affair’ led to the only recorded quarrel between Henry VII and his son. The King had received a letter telling him that Ferdinand’s negotiations had been a sham and he was never to have Joanna. He called the Prince in to sympathise. Henry, with a lack of tact, was unenthusiastic and gave his opinion that Joanna was mad and the King was too old to be considering marriage. The King was extremely angry at such a blunt assessment of the situation and shouted at his son. One of the court ladies reported to the Spanish Ambassador, ‘He scolded the prince as though he would kill him.’²¹

The Prince had another reason to throw cold water on the thought of his father remarrying. If there should be more princes, this could only be bad news for young Henry. He had the worrying example of his grandfather, Edward IV, before him; his brother George, Duke of Clarence, had tried to usurp his throne and his other brother, Richard, Duke of Gloucester, had actually deposed the rightful heir, Edward’s son. All too often royal brothers had a habit of plotting to extend their own power and influence at the expense of the king and the kingdom.

However, as time passed, Henry remained the only son. As such, one of the first responsibilities of the new Prince of Wales was to contract an eligible marriage alliance. As early as June 1503, it was agreed that Henry and Catherine should marry the following year when he would be 14 and Catherine would be 19 years old.

A series of delays to Catherine and Henry’s marriage followed, however. Isabella’s death in november 1504, leaving her inheritance of Castile to Joanna, meant that Ferdinand of Aragon lost part of his enormous importance in European politics, as his area of direct influence was now in Aragon alone. Trade treaties drawn up under Isabella were cancelled, and it looked very much as if Ferdinand would be unable to pay the second half of Catherine’s dowry of 100,000 crowns. In Prince Henry’s name, the King arranged a formal protest by his son against the proposed marriage that had been made.

This left Henry VII in a strong position; he still had Catherine in England, complete with the papal dispensation for her marriage to her late husband’s brother, and could resurrect the union at any time he wanted. He was also free to look elsewhere for a better match, or use the promise or threat of the marriage of the Prince of Wales in his continental diplomacy.

In 1504 Henry had expected to go to Ludlow, to enjoy at least limited power and freedom. Instead he was kept at Court under his father’s watchful eye. He was the precious only son; if the King died, young Henry could be crowned and secure before any of the rival claimants even knew of the death. Henry VII and his mother, Margaret, wanted to keep both eyes on the Prince of Wales.

Everything we know about Henry indicates he hated this life. He was handsome and healthy; he was surrounded by servants and friends to whom his every word was law and he had witnessed Arthur’s taste of independence. It is extremely unlikely that he found staying at home under the prying eyes of his father and grandmother at all to his liking.

In August 1504, the Spanish Ambassador to London, Hernan, duque de Estrada, wrote to Ferdinand and Isabella that Henry VII was devoted to his son: ‘Certainly there could be no better school in the world than the society of such a father as Henry VII. He is so wise and attentive to everything; nothing escapes his attention.’ He added that the King had told him, ‘I keep the prince with me because I wish to improve him.’²²

This attention must have stifled the young Prince Henry, however. The Spanish Envoy, Gutiérrez Gómez de Fuensalida, wrote in 1508 that Henry was kept under supervision as if he were a girl. He could only go out by one door into the park, and then only with companions selected by his father (young men such as Charles Brandon and Edward neville). no one could approach or speak to him without permission. He slept in a room that connected only with his father’s. He never spoke in public except to answer his father’s questions; he never attended any council meetings or audiences with ambassadors or deputations. Fuensalida was supposed to talk to the Prince about his marriage to Catherine of Aragon, but he was not allowed to see him without his father being present, let alone talk to him in private. At Richmond, Henry spent most days in the tiltyard, sometimes watched by his father.

The Prince had his own suite of apartments in Westminster Palace, reached through those of the King. He had footmen, a gentleman usher, a groom of the privy chamber, tutors, minstrels and players. Here at least he might occasionally be alone with his friends. During the evening entertainments, lords and ladies gathered together to hear stories and sing songs about romance and courtly love, to flirt (and more). In courtly love, ideally one should be in love with someone unattainable, preferably above you socially. Henry had few places to turn for this kind of ‘belle dame’ – and so he focused his attention on Catherine.

In August 1504, the King went on progress with Prince Henry, Princess Mary and the Dowager Princess Catherine. Henry and Catherine spent time together riding, hunting and talking. It is impossible to know what they talked about, whether he felt sorry for her, alone in a strange country, unsure of her future, at the mercy of his father’s whims. Perhaps they fell in love; perhaps they found company in a shared misery of powerless subjection. Catherine had a lot to be worried about. Her mother was dead, and there was now open conflict between her father and his son-in-law and daughter, Philip the Handsome and Joanna. Both parties sought to use Catherine to gain King Henry’s support.

In October 1505, Henry sent a letter to Pope Julius II. The letter complained that Catherine had taken to fasting, prayer, abstinence and pilgrimage; and that this might affect her health and particularly her ability to have children later. The Pope wrote back, giving the Prince, as her betrothed husband, permission to order her to stop, ‘We … grant you permission to restrain the aforesaid Catherine, your wife, and to compel her not to observe without your permission any vows or purposes of prayer, fasts, abstinences or pilgrimages ...’²³

Poor Catherine began to look less and less like a future queen of England. Louis XII of France offered Margaret of Angoulême, the Dauphin’s sister, as a future wife for the Prince. Philip the Handsome offered his daughter Eleanor but Henry VII held up the Prince’s marriage for political reasons. This had a major effect on Henry – his later marriages, except one, were for personal desire rather than for political advantage. When Henry fell in love, he wished to form an immediate relationship; any suggestion that he couldn’t or shouldn’t took him back to the time of his subjection under the orders of his father and would be ruthlessly denied.

Henry VII set about cutting down the size of Catherine’s establishment while she languished in political limbo. In December 1505 Catherine was invited to Court for Christmas. The King then closed her household at Durham House and told her that henceforward she would live at Westminster with a handful of servants (five ladies, a master of the hall, treasurer and physician), completely at his financial mercy. She was given a small suite of rooms as far away from Prince Henry as possible; he only saw her at church and when she was invited to join formal occasions. Her father, Ferdinand, sent her occasional gifts, but he expected her to use her tenuous position at court to work on his behalf.

It is sometimes amazing how badly parents can misjudge their children. The King had promised Henry that he would marry Catherine, then told him, no. Catherine was still there at Court; not only regal, young and lovely, but also living in fear and poverty because of his father. The situation could not fail to arouse in Prince Henry every emotion from sexual interest and a chivalric desire to rescue her, to an impotent pity that he could not do so, and a resultant despising of his father and hatred of his own powerless situation.

Despite his confined existence at his father’s Court, Henry was developing into a remarkable young man. By the time he was 16, Henry was described as extremely handsome, over six foot tall and well muscled. However, the King still treated his son and heir like a child, refusing him a separate household and doling out pocket money to him. These humiliations would never be forgotten; King Henry VIII would never allow anyone, by his estimation, to demean or belittle him in any way.

In 1508, aged 17, Henry began appearing in tourneys and jousts himself. He was magnificent and the people loved him, courtiers and commoners alike. He was not praised merely because he was the King’s son; it would have been almost impossible for him to survive in the jousting field unscathed if he had not had the strength, skill and judgement to do well. He truly was a remarkable athlete.

There were no reported rumours about any sexual liaisons before Prince Henry’s marriage; however, he was a healthy, handsome young man and Westminster was a big palace; Henry VII could not have watched his son all the time. When Henry VIII was married to Anne Boleyn, there was a vicious and certainly unfounded rumour that he had had affairs with Anne, her sister Mary, and their mother, Elizabeth Boleyn, who had been one of his own mother’s ladies! Henry’s response was, ‘never with the mother’, although if she had been one of those ladies, young and lovely, it had at least been a viable possibility.²⁴

In the last years of his reign Henry VII suffered from ill health, as did his aging mother. The Prince must have chafed under their control. In March 1508 the second half of Catherine’s dowry arrived in England and there was no reason now why the marriage should not take place within a few months, as previously agreed. However, in 1509, as Henry became ill, plans for the Prince’s marriage were proceeding, but with little mention of Catherine. The two foremost contenders were Margaret of Angoulême and Catherine’s niece, Eleanor.

In April 1508 the King finally realised that Ferdinand had no intention of allowing him to marry Joanna and that the negotiations carried out through Catherine (all based on her father’s lies) had been designed to gain advantage for her own marriage. Catherine suffered as a result; she was excluded from the May festivities in 1508. Her accommodation was moved at Easter to rooms over the stables. Her food was sometimes inedible and was enlivened only by occasional gifts from her friends. Her clothes were threadbare, her servants’ worse, and she was forced to sell the plate and jewels that had originally formed part of her dowry as a means to survive.

This enabled Henry VII to now hold up the marriage on the grounds that Catherine’s jewels and plate had been used or sold, and so their equivalent in coin must be provided to complete the dowry. He still thought he could force Ferdinand into letting him marry Joanna, and he wanted the marriage between Philip and Joanna’s son, Charles, and his daughter, Mary, ratified; he was also enthusiastic about Henry marrying Charles’s sister, Eleanor.

Despite all the talk of marriage, Henry VII ended his life without female company. His mother was a virtual recluse at the end, his eldest daughter was in Scotland, and his son’s fiancée was living in poverty, ignored and shunned. Only his youngest daughter brought pleasure into his life – Princess Mary was a darling.

In 1509 Henry VII’s health began to fail and he was too ill to attend the Easter services. Before his death, Henry VII’s councillors, William Warham (Archbishop of Canterbury), John Fisher (Bishop of Rochester) and Richard Fox (Bishop of Winchester), asked him for his last wishes. They reported to Fuensalida that Henry VII had stated that he wanted his son to be free to choose a wife for himself. The Prince, however, said that his father told him to marry Catherine.

Henry VII died on Saturday, 21 April 1509 at Richmond. His mother was his chief executrix and the head of the council arranging his burial. After the King died, Margaret moved from Richmond to the Tower to be with her grandson before his coronation. At the funeral, on 11 May 1508, Margaret Beaufort was given precedence over her granddaughter, Princess Mary, and Catherine, the Dowager Princess of Wales and future Queen.

Within a week the new King’s councillors were badgering Fuensalida to get the marriage with Catherine under way. Fox told him: ‘You must remember now that the King is King and not Prince. One must speak in a different way in this matter than when he was Prince.’²⁵ The last money payment came remarkably quickly. Henry VIII wanted Catherine of Aragon, he wanted a Habsburg alliance against France, and he wanted a war.

On 11 June 1509 Henry VIII and Catherine of Aragon were finally married at Greenwich, to both personal and public rejoicing. On 23 June Margaret Beaufort watched the formal public marriage procession of Henry VIII and Catherine from a room in a house in Cheapside, hired for her by her grandson. Her granddaughter, Mary, kept her company. Margaret attended the celebrations, but soon became ill. She died on 29 June, in Cheyneygates, the abbot’s lodging of Westminster Abbey. Her body was moved to the Abbey refectory on 3 July and finally buried in the Lady Chapel close to her beloved son.

Henry VIII was free at last.