Six Wives (6 page)

    The civil war, later known as the Wars of the Roses, pitted the House of Lancaster (with its badge of the Red Rose) against the House of York (with its badge of the White Rose). Eventually the House of York won. In 1471, Edward IV made his claim secure by killing Henry VI and his son Prince Edward: the main Lancastrian descent was now extinguished.

    But John of Gaunt, like most of his rank, had had a complex marital history. His marriage to his first wife, the heiress Blanche of Lancaster, was an affair of state. But, according to Chaucer's poem
The Book of the
Duchess
, it blossomed into a love affair as well. Gaunt's second marriage, however, to Constance of Castile, continued as it had begun, as a marriage of convenience. Gaunt consoled himself with Catherine Swinford, the wife of one of his senior household officers. He had several children by her, whom he had legitimated by the surname of Beaufort, and he married her after Constance's death.

    The descendants of the Beauforts, who were given the Dukedom of Somerset, had a claim to the throne, though it was rendered doubtful both by their original bastardy and by the terms of their legitimation.

    Another satellite family of the Lancastrian dynasty was the Tudors. They descended from an extraordinary marriage between the QueenDowager Catherine, Henry V's widow, and a young, attractive Welsh yeoman of her household, Owen Tudor. His sons, Edmund and Jasper, were recognised as Henry VI's half-brothers and given the earldoms of Richmond and Pembroke respectively. Edmund, the elder, was then married to the heiress of the Duke of Somerset, Lady Margaret Beaufort. Margaret was only twelve but the marriage was consummated regardless. Shortly afterwards Richmond died and Margaret, after a terrible pregnancy and delivery which left her unable to have any more children, gave birth to a son, Henry Tudor, Earl of Richmond.

    With the extinction of the main Lancastrian line in 1471, Henry Tudor became the Lancastrian claimant. It seemed of little importance at the time as he was a penniless exile in Brittany while in England Edward IV sat securely on the throne. But in 1483, Edward IV too died prematurely, of gluttony and lechery, and his young sons, Edward and Richard, were usurped by their uncle, Richard, Duke of Gloucester. He proclaimed himself Richard III and imprisoned the Princes in the Tower, where, almost certainly, he had them murdered.

    Richard's usurpation split the Yorkist party down the middle and transformed Henry Tudor's position. Swearing to marry Edward IV's eldest daughter, Elizabeth, Henry set sail for England in the summer of 1485. The expedition was funded by the French and most of the troops were French mercenaries. The fleet landed in Milford Haven at the south-western tip of Wales (Henry always made much of his Welsh ancestry) and Henry marched to meet Richard III at Bosworth, near Leicester. Richard was defeated and killed, and Henry Tudor, crowned with the coronet which had fallen from Richard's helmet, was proclaimed Henry VII on the battlefield.
²

    Five months later, after his coronation at Westminster and his acknowledgement by Parliament, he fulfilled his promise and married Elizabeth of York in January 1486. The new House, which united the rival claims of York and Lancaster, was given a new badge, the Tudor Rose, which, white within and red without, combined the Lancastrian and Yorkist badges. Elizabeth conceived immediately and was delivered of a son in September. He was born in Winchester, the old capital of Wessex, which was increasingly identified with the still older, mythical capital of Britain, Camelot. And he was christened Arthur, after Camelot's king.
³

H
enry VII's accession had presented Ferdinand with another opportunity for dynastic diplomacy. Here was another 'New Prince' who had reunited his country after a long civil war. Henry Tudor had inherited England's traditional enmity to France. And he had a son. What England had to offer and Ferdinand to give fitted like a plug and socket. Ferdinand made the first move and sent Spanish commissioners to England in 1488. The following year an English Embassy went to Spain to conclude matters. They agreed to a treaty of alliance and an engagement to marry Henry's son Arthur to Ferdinand's youngest daughter Catherine. As was usual at the time, the marriage agreement provided for a set of reciprocal financial arrangements: Catherine's parents were to pay Henry VII a marriage portion of 200,000 crowns (about £40,000) in two instalments while, in return, Henry was to settle one third of the lands of the Prince of Wales on Catherine to generate a 'dower' or income for her in the event of Arthur's death. The treaty was signed in March 1489 at Medina del Campo and it was there, as we have seen, that the English envoys had caught their first glimpse of the little Princess who was to be their Queen.
¹

    The English pressed for Catherine to be sent immediately. But over a decade was to elapse before she set foot on English soil and, many times during that period, it seemed likely that the marriage would be abandoned. For neither King had got what he wanted from the treaty. A joint intervention in Brittany had failed. Then, after many hesitations (after all, the French had effectively placed him on the throne) Henry VII had invaded France in 1492. But he invaded alone. After only a few weeks campaigning, he made the separate Peace of Étaples with France and called off his invasion in return for a pension (as the French called it) or tribute (as the English preferred to name it). Ferdinand riposted by making his own settlement with France, which recognised his gains in the Pyrenees.

    Still worse, Henry's grasp on the throne soon looked shaky. A young Fleming called Perkin Warbeck managed to pass himself off as Richard, Duke of York, the younger of the Princes in the Tower, and won widespread support, both within England and abroad. To try to counter his claims, Henry had his second son Henry, born in 1491, made Duke of York. The boy, though only three, was already able to ride a great horse to the ceremony. The King invested him with the coronet, the sword and the rod of a duke, then, in an uncharacteristically impulsive gesture of fatherly pride, picked him up in his arms and stood him on the table where everybody could see him.
²

    Perkin Warbeck, meanwhile, had been taken up by the young, ambitious King of Scots, James IV. James married Perkin to his relative, Lady Catherine Gordon, and, hostile as usual to his southern neighbour, swore to help him recover the English throne. In return, Perkin promised to cede Berwick and other disputed borderlands to Scotland.

    Things now looked bad both for the Anglo-Spanish treaty and for Henry VII himself. But circumstances suddenly changed. Ferdinand, about to begin a life-and-death struggle with the French in Italy, discovered a new interest in the English alliance in the hope that Henry might be persuaded, once more, to distract the French in the north while he attacked them in the south. And Ferdinand's ambassador to England, Dr De Puebla, decided to help in the solution of Henry's domestic problems.

    De Puebla had been one of the original ambassadors who had come to England to negotiate the alliance in 1488, and he was sent back there as resident ambassador in 1495. This time he stayed. He liked England and he respected the English King even more. Indeed, he had – or so his many enemies in the Spanish diplomatic service whispered – become more English than Spanish. The truth probably is that De Puebla had come to think that English and Spanish interests were so closely interwoven that by serving the one he automatically advanced the cause of the other.
³

    In October 1496 the Anglo-Spanish treaties were renewed. Emboldened by this diplomatic backing, Henry VII decided to punish James IV for his support of Perkin by invading Scotland the following spring. The armies were marshalled but, just as they were marching north, the Cornish rose in a great revolt to protest against the taxation which had been imposed to finance the Scottish war. With the King's armies already on the way to Scotland, there was nothing between the rebels and London. Henry shadowed them to the north while Queen Elizabeth hastened to London and took refuge in the Tower with her second son, Henry Duke of York. The rebels marched round the city to the south and met the King, who by this time had gathered his forces, at Blackheath on 17 May. The King was victorious. But it had been a close-run thing.
⁴

    Meanwhile, De Puebla, working in concert with the Spanish ambassador in Scotland, had got James IV to wash his hands of Perkin. The Pretender was despatched with his wife and a few ships and made first for Ireland, which for once failed to rise, and then for Cornwall, in the hope of taking advantage of the aftermath of revolt. By the time he landed in September, however, it was too late and, after a forlorn attempt to besiege Exeter, he surrendered on 5 October. 'This day came Perkin Werbek,' Henry's account book noted exultantly. Henry wrote personally to De Puebla with the glad tidings. His letter is addressed 'To our most beloved . . . De Puebla' and, in his gratitude, he sought permission (which was not given) from Ferdinand and Isabella to reward their ambassador with an English bishopric.
⁵

    From this moment, Catherine's possible English destiny turned into a certainty.

C
atherine, of course, had never seen Arthur. But news of his appearance at different stages of his boyhood was sent back to Spain and, when she was old enough, was, no doubt, eagerly devoured by Catherine.

At first, the auguries were not favourable. Arthur had been born prematurely and had spent his first months fighting for his life. Almost all historians have assumed that this meant he grew up a weak and feeble child. And they have, as we shall see, built great superstructures of argument on the assumption. In fact, however, there is clear and repeated eye-witness evidence to the contrary – starting with the report of the first Spanish Embassy of 1488. The ambassadors were invited to inspect the infant prince first naked and then asleep. And they waxed lyrical at what they saw: 'He appeared to us so admirable that, whatever praise, commendation, or flattery any one might be capable of speaking or writing would only be truth in this case'.
¹

    Arthur's development continued on these impressive lines. His tutors gave him an even more thorough grounding in Latin than Catherine herself. He was also introduced to a wider range of heavyweight Classical authors. And his physical progress fully matched his educational achievement.
²

* * *

His betrothal to Catherine took place in the summer of 1497 as his father, triumphant over the Cornish rebels, was waiting for the trap set by De Puebla to close round Perkin. On 18 July, Henry VII ratified the new treaties with Spain. The following month, at Woodstock Palace to the north of Oxford, in the presence of his father and mother and the whole Court, Arthur pledged his troth to Catherine, and Catherine, impersonated by De Puebla, gave hers to him.
³

    A few days later, Arthur was present when his father gave audience to the Milanese ambassador; he even spoke to the Embassy himself. The ambassador was as impressed as the Spanish had been ten years earlier. 'The Prince of Wales', he reported home, is 'about eleven years of age, but taller than his years would warrant, of remarkable beauty and grace and very ready at speaking Latin'.
⁴

    As such reports were read to her, did Catherine think of how much Arthur seemed to resemble her own brilliant brother, Juan, who had just died? Maybe she thought, too, of his namesake – that other Arthur, the mythical king of Britain about whose exploits she had probably read in the three old Spanish volumes of
The History of King Arthur and the Knights
of the Round Table
in her mother's library.

T
hen, as now, the finer points of wedding preparations tended to belong to the female sphere. So, soon after Catherine's formal betrothal, her future mother-in-law, Elizabeth of York, started a flow of more-or-less helpful advice from England. And behind Queen Elizabeth was the formidable figure of
her
mother-in-law, Lady Margaret Beaufort.

    Lady Margaret, who enjoyed quasi–Queen Mother status as 'my lady the King's Mother', was a termagant. She was an unlovely mixture of
dévôte
and snob, equally committed to precise religious observance, on the one hand, and to the finest nuances of social
punctilio
, on the other. She also fancied herself as an expert in household management. She was, in short, the mother-in-law from hell.

    Catherine was to be much more fortunate in
her
mother-in-law. For Elizabeth, everybody agreed, was a real lady: 'the most distinguished and the most noble lady in the whole of England', as the Spanish ambassador (who belonged to a culture which had high standards in such matters) observed. She was beautiful, gracious, intelligent and, above all, a reconciler and healer in a royal family otherwise characterised by assertive and aggressive personalities. In short, hers was advice worth taking.
¹

    Elizabeth began with a 'get to know you' letter to Queen Isabella in December 1497. She begged Isabella to write 'very often', both about herself and Catherine. And she promised to keep up a similar flow of information to Spain about her beloved Arthur. The letter was written in Latin. But that does not mean that it was an impersonal communication drafted by a Humanist scribe. For when letters came back from Isabella and Catherine, Elizabeth took personal charge of the replies. 'The Latin Secretary [said] afterwards that he was obliged to write the said letters three or four times, because the Queen had always found some defects in them.' Was the effort worth it? 'They are not things of great importance in themselves,' De Puebla commented in forwarding them to Spain, 'but they show great and cordial love.' Clearly, Elizabeth had struck the right note.
²