Six Wives (26 page)
Authors: David Starkey
At the beginning of July Henry paid a flying visit to Wolsey at Greenwich, leaving the Queen and most of the Court at Woodstock. He returned on the 5th at 8 o'clock at night to the best homecoming present of all. 'And the Queen did meet with his Grace at his chamber door, and showed unto him, for his welcome home, her belly something great, declaring openly she was quick with child.' Catherine's 'dangerous time' had passed. Henry immediately ordered a
Te Deum
to be sung at St Paul's and another at Woodstock.
9
Te Deum
to be sung at St Paul's and another at Woodstock.
9
It was decided that the lying-in should take place at Greenwich, and, in the second half of July, the Court moved there by slow stages. In August, the Pope asked whether Catherine were with child, and expressed himself delighted when he was told she was. 'Hopes it will be a Prince who will be the prop of the universal peace of Christendom,' the Cardinal Protector of England added for himself. In October, Giustiniani expressed the same hope more baldly: 'God grant she may give birth to a son, so that, having a heir male, the King may not be hindered from embarking, if necessary, in any great undertaking.' The delivery, he reported, was expected 'within a month or rather more'. The Prior of Canterbury was warned to be ready to send the font for the christening. The anticipation was now overwhelming.
10
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On 10 November Catherine went into labour and, during the night, was delivered of a child. It was another girl, 'to the vexation of everybody', Giustiniani reported, for 'never had the kingdom so anxiously desired anything as it did a Prince'. As though aware of her irrelevance to the great scheme of things, the baby died shortly thereafter.
11
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The great font was returned to Canterbury. It would not be needed again while Catherine was Queen.
29. On the shelf
C
atherine was now on the shelf – in the sense that she was stuck in that limbo reserved for wives whose husbands do not much care about them one way or another. She became uglier and duller and more devoted to learning and religion. Meanwhile, Henry took mistresses, spent time with the boys and even, occasionally, immersed himself in the serious business of government. There was no public scandal and the structure of the Court, with its separate apartments for the King and Queen, staffed by separate Households, easily accommodated their increasingly separate and different lives.
atherine was now on the shelf – in the sense that she was stuck in that limbo reserved for wives whose husbands do not much care about them one way or another. She became uglier and duller and more devoted to learning and religion. Meanwhile, Henry took mistresses, spent time with the boys and even, occasionally, immersed himself in the serious business of government. There was no public scandal and the structure of the Court, with its separate apartments for the King and Queen, staffed by separate Households, easily accommodated their increasingly separate and different lives.
* * *
The decline in Catherine's appearance in her thirties was very marked. The last wholly favourable comment about her was made in 1514, when she was in her thirtieth year and at the beginning of her fourth pregnancy. 'The Queen', the Netherlands ambassador reported, 'is of a lively and gracious disposition; quite the opposite of the Queen her sister [Juana the Mad] in complexion and manner.' But the breach with Spain and two miscarriages in quick succession took their toll. By spring 1515, the new Venetian ambassador Giustiniani and his suite thought that Catherine cut a poor figure. Overdressed and unattractive, she was outshone not only by her magnificent husband but by her ladies as well. 'She is rather ugly than otherwise', the ambassador wrote, 'but the damsels of her Court are handsome, and make a sumptuous appearance'. Four years later, in 1519, Giustiniani was reduced to scraping the barrel of compliment. 'She was not handsome, though she had a very beautiful complexion.' Francis I, speaking at the same time, was blunter. 'He [King Henry] has an old deformed wife,' he said, 'while he himself is young and handsome.'
1
'Deformed' is, of course, a characteristic Gallic sexual hyperbole. Francis meant only that Catherine had become very fat. Unfortunately for Catherine, early-sixteenth-century fashion favoured slimness in women. So did Henry's own preferences. Nor, alas, did Catherine have the build to carry it off. For she seems to have been very short. When she was young and pretty and svelte, the effect was charming. But with continuous childbearing (she was pregnant at least seven times in the nine years from 1509 to 1518) and repeated stress and disappointment, her once trim figure broadened and layers of fat swelled her face and body. By the time she reached the menopause, which seems to have come to her very early at about thirty-five, she was (like the middle-aged Queen Victoria) nearly as wide as she was tall.
What made it worse, of course, was that she had married a husband who was younger and better-looking than she, and who had kept his youth and looks longer. Hence the contrast brutally noted by Francis. Catherine was probably aware of it too. Once, she had gloried in appearing at Henry's side. Now, she seemed to avoid all but essential Court ceremony and Giustiniani, who witnessed everything worth noticing at the Tudor Court between 1515 and 1519, reported on his departure that he 'had seen her but seldom'.
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Alienated, or perhaps self-exiled from English life, Catherine re-identified with her native Spain. Ambassadors were quick to note the change and to exploit it. So when the new Venetian Embassy visited her in 1515, Pasquaglio, 'knowing it would please her, addressed her in Spanish . . . The Queen answered also in Spanish, and then entered into a long familiar conversation about the affairs of Spain'. It was more than a matter of language and when, in 1519, Prince Charles, her sister Juana's son, was elected Holy Roman Emperor, 'the Queen of England,
being a
Spaniard
, evinced satisfaction at the success of her nephew'.
3
being a
Spaniard
, evinced satisfaction at the success of her nephew'.
3
In her altered circumstances, the Other World became as attractive as Iberia. Catherine had always been religious – more seriously so even than Henry, who prided himself on his piety. The difference is clear in Catherine's correspondence as regent, in which she is as anxious about her husband's spiritual health as his physical. 'Thanked be God of it,' she wrote to Henry after Flodden. 'And I am sure your Grace forgetteth not to do this, which shall be cause to send you many more such great victories, as I trust He shall do.' She rammed the point home in her letter to Wolsey, written the same day. 'This matter [the victory of Flodden] is so marvellous that it seemeth to be of God's doing alone. I trust the King shall remember to thank him for it.' But all of this was private, between the royal couple alone, even when mediated through Wolsey. By 1519, Catherine's piety had taken on a public dimension. 'The Queen', Giustiniani concluded his thumb-nail sketch, '[is] religious and as virtuous as words could express'.
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Nowadays, I suppose, we would talk of a change of image. In the first six years of her marriage to Henry, Catherine was 'lively and gracious'. She was young and pretty and sometimes flighty. She presided over jousts and the Court of Love. She was a powerful political influence on the King, and, for a few months, she ruled England as regent. She showed herself able, at least as able as Henry, and under her regency Tudor England won its greatest military victory before the Armada. She was religious. But the God she worshipped was the God of Battles.
In her thirties, Catherine lost most of this. She lost her looks, her political power and her husband's love. She had also failed to give him a son. But she found something that replaced them all: the love of God. She also retained the love of the people. For, like her, most Tudor women lost their looks and their figures in child-bearing. And many took to religion as a consolation. The difference, of course, was that Catherine performed on a wider stage.
* * *
So far, in her life in England, Catherine had trod many stages: the great walkway in St Paul's at her first wedding; the theatre in Westminster Abbey at her coronation; the painted grandstand in Palace Yard at the jousts for the birth of Prince Henry. But the largest and most important was in Westminster Hall after the 'Evil Mayday' riots in 1517.
These riots were a series of ugly, xenophobic attacks on foreigners in the City of London. Like such attacks nowadays, the actual violence was perpetrated by young, footloose men – the City apprentices. But the youthful rioters received tacit support from their elders and betters. The resulting disorders nearly got out of hand, and the King and Court, who were far more sympathetic to foreigners than the common folk, took a terrible revenge. The Duke of Norfolk (as Thomas Howard, Earl of Surrey, had been made in reward for Flodden) put the City under military occupation and decided to inflict exemplary punishment. Thirteen of the rioters, some of whom were little more than children, were convicted of high treason (since their foreign victims enjoyed the King's protection) and put to execution.
As usual, the Howards operated as a family firm. The executions were supervised by Norfolk's youngest son, now known as Lord Edmund Howard after his father's promotion, as Knight Marshall. The punishment for treason – hanging, drawing and quartering – was always horrible, but the actual pain inflicted varied greatly, depending on how the execution was carried out. Edmund Howard spared nothing: he 'showed no mercy but extreme cruelty to the poor younglings in their execution'. Some Londoners, no doubt, remembered his actions when, twenty-five years later, Lord Edmund's daughter, Catherine Howard, stepped onto the scaffold in her turn.
The stand-off between Court and capital had now become dangerous. Four hundred other rioters were in gaol, equally at risk of execution. At this point Catherine intervened. According to the Papal Nuncio, 'our most serene and compassionate Queen, with tears in her eyes and on bended knees, obtained their pardon'.
The formal granting of the pardons was turned into a grand public display. The King came into Westminster Hall and sat in the seat of judgement. Fifteen thousand Londoners crowded into the body of the Hall, and the prisoners, stripped to their shirts and with nooses round their necks, were brought in. They fell on their knees and cried: 'Mercy!' Wolsey and the lords interceded for their pardon, which the King granted. The cheers rang out. But the person they were really cheering was Catherine.
5
Later, when Catherine came, in turn, to suffer, Londoners and their wives never forgot their loyalty to her.
5
Later, when Catherine came, in turn, to suffer, Londoners and their wives never forgot their loyalty to her.
30. Mary
B
ut, even as they grew apart, Catherine and Henry kept one thing in common. This was the welfare of their only surviving child, the daughter born in February 1516. She was named Mary, after Henry's favourite sister, and she turned into a fine child. Catherine doted on her and Henry, when the mood took him, was also a proud and indulgent father, who delighted in showing off his pretty little daughter.
ut, even as they grew apart, Catherine and Henry kept one thing in common. This was the welfare of their only surviving child, the daughter born in February 1516. She was named Mary, after Henry's favourite sister, and she turned into a fine child. Catherine doted on her and Henry, when the mood took him, was also a proud and indulgent father, who delighted in showing off his pretty little daughter.
One such occasion took place on 23 February 1518, when the Venetian ambassador, Giustiniani, had an audience at Windsor. The King ordered the Princess, who had just celebrated her second birthday, to be brought in. Solemnly, Wolsey, ambassador Giustiniani and the attendant lords kissed the child's hand. Then Mary caught sight of Friar Dionysius Memo, the great Venetian organist, who was then resident keyboard virtuoso at Henry's Court. 'Priest! priest!' she 'commenced calling out in English' and would not stop until Memo agreed to play for her. Henry was delighted at the display, which showed that Mary was in truth her father's daughter: musical, precocious and imperious far beyond her years. Taking her 'in his arms', he came over to Giustiniani and started singing Memo's praises in Latin: '
Per Deum! iste est
honestissimus vir
. . .' (God's Name! That man is a most worthy gentleman and one who is very dear to us . . .)
Per Deum! iste est
honestissimus vir
. . .' (God's Name! That man is a most worthy gentleman and one who is very dear to us . . .)
'Greater honour,' Giustiniani concluded, 'was paid to the Princess than to the Queen.' Catherine would not have minded: it showed that her daughter, despite her gender, was England's heir.
1
1
* * *
And raising Mary as a worthy heir to the throne became the major objective of Catherine's fourth decade. She drew on her own experience; she consulted leading scholars and commissioned educational treatises. Above all, she herself mothered her child, in a way that was highly unusual in a royal parent. Years later, when Mary had a serious teenage illness, Catherine, surely recollecting these childhood days, announced she would take personal charge of her daughter. 'There is no need', Catherine insisted, 'of any other person but myself to nurse her . . . I will put her in my own bed where I sleep, and will sit up with her when needful.' Rare even is the modern royal child who has such loving attention.
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Henry, too, was an unusually hands-on royal father. In the sixteenth century royal daughters – and even second sons, like Henry himself – were brought up by their mothers with little or no interference from their fathers. Instead kings concentrated largely on their eldest son and heir. They did not raise them themselves. But they did take care over the choice of those who did. They nominated their governors (the male equivalent of the Lady Mistress) and Households, and drew up elaborate regulations for their education and upbringing. The most important set of these regulations was issued by Edward IV, Mary's great-grandfather, 'as well for the virtuous guiding of the person' of his eldest son, Edward, Prince of Wales, 'as for the politic, sad [wise] and good rule of his Household'. These Ordinances served in turn as a model for the upbringing of Catherine's first husband, Arthur, and, in the fullness of time, for that of her daughter, Mary, as well.
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For Mary, of course, was not only Catherine's daughter; at this time she was Henry's only child and therefore his heir. And, long before she was sent off to Ludlow in the footsteps of Arthur and the Yorkist Prince Edward, her father treated her as Prince[ess] of Wales. Just as though she had been a boy, he hand-picked her governess, vetted the organisation of her Household and watched anxiously over her health.
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The result was that Mary had a hybrid upbringing. Sometimes she was reared like a royal daughter; sometimes like a Prince of Wales. And sometimes her mother took the lead and sometimes her father. But Catherine's, it seems safe to say, was the constant guiding hand. Catherine had her reward. For, when Mary had to choose, it was to her mother, not to her father, that she gave her unshakable loyalty.
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