The House of Tudor (11 page)

There was general and sincere mourning for the Queen who had always been popular. ‘She was a woman of such a character’, says Polydore Vergil, ‘that it would be hard to judge whether she displayed more of majesty and dignity in her life than wisdom and moderation.’ Everyone who knew her seems to agree that she was beautiful, noble, gentle and wise - a loving wife and mother, a dutiful daughter and a generous and affectionate sister. After allowing for the usual excesses of post mortem panegyric, a picture emerges of a placid, sweet-tempered, warmhearted woman, conventionally pious and naturally indolent, content to let others take the lead. Some foreign observers hinted that the Queen was deliberately kept in the background by her mother-in-law and resented the older woman’s dominating influence. Very possibly Elizabeth found the constant, busy presence of Margaret Beaufort something of a trial but she seems to have been willing enough to let ‘my lady the King’s mother’ take over such tedious chores as drawing up rules of court etiquette and keeping an eye on the servants. As for her relationship with her husband, we know little enough about the private life of the first Tudor king and his consort but there is really no evidence to support the contention, first put forward by Francis Bacon, that Henry treated her with cold indifference. On the contrary, such evidence as does exist indicates that theirs was a good marriage, based on mutual tenderness and respect.

Elizabeth was given an elaborate and expensive funeral. On 22 February the coffin, resting on an open chariot draped with black velvet and followed by the officers of the household and representatives of the peerage, the judiciary and the church, was drawn by six horses through streets lined with torch-bearers to Westminster. Next day the Queen was buried in the Abbey, her sister Katherine Courtenay officiating as chief mourner. The King was not present. He had ‘departed to a solitary place to pass his sorrow, and would no man should resort to him but those whom he had appointed.’

The fact that Henry began almost immediately to think of re-marriage need in no way detract from the sincerity of his grief. He was intensely conscious that the future of the dynasty, of everything he had worked and struggled for, everything he had built up over the past twenty years hung on the life of an eleven-year-old boy. Personal feelings set aside, it was the King’s clear duty to his house and to his people to take another wife and beget more sons while there was still time.

Henry’s first choice, which so horrified his nineteenth-century biographers, fell on his daughter-in-law Catherine of Aragon. By contemporary standards, though, there was nothing particularly shocking about this idea and, from Henry’s point of view, it had a good deal to recommend it. Catherine was seventeen now, fully old enough for childbearing; she was ready at hand and no protracted negotiations would be necessary. It is true that her parents rejected the proposal indignantly, but they are more likely to have been motivated by political than by moral considerations. The Spanish monarchs were interested in providing for the next generation. They had no intention of wasting a young and nubile princess on a man old enough to be her grandfather. Henry, perhaps fortunately for his reputation, did not press the point and when Ferdinand offered his niece, the widowed Queen of Naples, as a more suitable candidate for the position of Queen of England, the King at once despatched an embassy with instructions to inspect the lady and report in detail on her physical and financial potentialities. Among a long list of items, the envoys were to notice whether or not she painted her face, ‘to mark her breasts and paps, whether they be big or small’, and, if possible, get close enough to smell her breath. There were a number of hidden hazards attached to long-distance courtship and Henry, always a prudent man, was guarding against as many as he could think of.

Meanwhile, the terms of the marriage contract between Catherine and young Henry were being finalized. Their betrothal was solemnized at the Bishop of Salisbury’s house in Fleet Street on 25 June 1503, three days before the prince’s twelfth birthday, and it was agreed that the wedding day should be set as soon as he had completed his fourteenth year - conditional on the necessary dispensation being forthcoming from Rome and on Spain being able to prove that the second half of the bride’s dowry was in London ready for payment.

Marriage was in the air that summer. Two days after seeing his son betrothed, the King set out from Richmond to escort his elder daughter, thirteen-year-old Margaret, on the first stage of her journey to the Scottish Border. As father and daughter travelled north through those long-ago June days they naturally had no conception of the far-reaching consequences which were to flow from the marriage of Margaret Tudor and James IV of Scotland; nor could they have foreseen that exactly one hundred years later Margaret’s great-grandson would be making his journey south to be crowned at Westminster. It is true that when the Scottish marriage project was first being discussed at the council table, some councillors had put the case that ‘if God should take the King’s two sons without issue, then the kingdom of England would fall to the King of Scotland, which might prejudice the monarchy of England’; but Henry had replied that if such a thing were to happen, ‘Scotland would be but an accession to England, and not England to Scotland, for the greater would draw the less.’ This prescient piece of political wisdom ‘passed as an oracle’, at least according to Francis Bacon, and seems to have silenced any further criticism. In any case, the solid advantages of an alliance which would break the long-standing bond between England’s ancestral enemies, Scotland and France, and secure her vulnerable land frontier, as well as put an end to the costly and destructive nuisance of organized Border raiding, obviously outweighed future imponderables and must be welcomed by all sensible men. The King, long-sighted though he was, could scarcely have envisaged the political complications or the personal tragedies which this union of ‘the thistle and the rose’ would inflict on his immediate descendants.

Henry accompanied the bridal party as far as his mother’s house at Collyweston, which lay just south of Stamford, conveniently close to the Great North Road. Here the family goodbyes were said and young Margaret was handed over to the charge of the Earl and Countess of Surrey who would be responsible for delivering her safely to her husband. The King was sending his daughter off in style (apart from anything else, this was an excellent opportunity to show the Tudor flag in the seldom visited North Country) and as well as the Surreys and their train, ‘there was appointed many great lords, nobles, knights, ladies, squires, gentlewomen and others for to convey her from place to place’. In addition to the regular escort, ‘the nobles of the country, governors of towns, other officers of the lordships, mayors, sheriffs, aldermen, burgesses, and citizens of the towns through which she should pass’ came out to greet the princess and ‘make her all honour and reverence’. It was only to be expected, of course, that the county magnates, royal officers and civic dignitaries would be meticulous in paying their respects, but everywhere along the route the ordinary people left their harvesting to crowd the roadside to see the noble company, bringing ‘great vessels full of drink’ which they pressed on the thirsty travellers in a spontaneous gesture of hospitality. In every town and village the church bells pealed a welcome as soon as the cavalcade, in its cloud of summer dust, was sighted on the road; the royal trumpeters would answer with a fanfare, while ‘Johannes and his company, minstrels of musick’ struck up a tune on their instruments.

The English crossed the Border at Berwick on i August and were met by the Scots at Lamberton. King James, now a mature and experienced man in his late twenties, was known to be keeping a mistress - all the same, he was noticeably kind and attentive to his little bride, and taking every opportunity to kiss her and show her special courtesies in public.

The wedding took place at Edinburgh on 8 August, but although Margaret played her part gracefully enough in the various ceremonials and festivities, she was not happy. A plump, round-faced child, her somewhat stolid exterior concealed a passionate, headstrong nature, with a ‘great twang’ of the Tudor, or rather of the Plantagenet temper, and a sharp eye for a grievance. She felt that King James was taking altogether too much notice of the Earl of Surrey - ‘he cannot forbear the company of him no time of the day’ - also that Surrey was ganging up with the Scots against her, and she wrote querulously and rather incoherently to her father: ‘He [Surrey] and the Bishop of Murray order everything as nigh as they can to the King’s pleasure. I pray God it may be for my poor heart’s ease in time to come...God send me comfort to His pleasure and that I and mine that be left here with me be well entreated such ways as they have taken.’ The letter ended, rather pathetically, with a wish that ‘I would I were with your Grace now, and many times more.’

Henry was probably not unsympathetic over his daughter’s difficulties in finding her feet and adjusting to her new surroundings, but Margaret was on her own now -a Queen and a married woman - she would have to conquer her homesickness as best she could. In any case, the King was occupied that autumn getting to know his son and heir. There had, of course, been no question of sending this Prince of Wales away to Ludlow or anywhere else, he was far too precious, and Hernan Duque reported to Queen Isabella in January 1504 that the prince was now often in the King’s company. Duque, after commenting approvingly on the affectionate relationship which existed between father and son, remarked that in his opinion the prince could have no better school than the society of such a wise and careful governor. Isabella, although no doubt pleased to hear about the satisfactory progress of her daughter’s fiancé’s education, was even more gratified by the information that he was growing into a big, strong youth and giving every promise that he would reach maturity.

Isabella did not live to see that maturity (perhaps it was just as well). She died in the following November and at once the European scene changed. Juana, Duchess of Burgundy and Archduchess of Austria, succeeded her mother as Queen of Castile and it began to look very much as if the unity of the Spanish peninsula -which had been founded on the union between Isabella and Ferdinand - might now collapse. Isabella had left instructions in her will that Ferdinand should continue to govern Castile in Juana’s name, but not unnaturally Juana’s husband had his own ideas on that subject. If Philip von Hapsburg could find a viable way of removing Castile from the King of Aragon’s grasp, he would certainly use it. Meanwhile, the King of England, who disliked and distrusted Ferdinand, was thinking seriously of strengthening his ties with the Hapsburg family.

Henry wanted a personal meeting with Philip but did not achieve his objective until the beginning of 1506, and then only by a stroke of luck. On 7 January a fleet carrying Philip (now given the courtesy title of King of Castile), the Queen his wife, and a large retinue of Dutch and Flemish nobility sailed from Zeeland for Spain - though whether it went in peace or war nobody seemed very certain. As things turned out, it very nearly did not go at all. Gales in the Channel - the same ‘tempest of wind’ which in London blew down trees and tiles and the great weather-vane on St. Paul’s Cathedral - scattered the ships and forced them to seek refuge in ports all along the south coast from Rye to Falmouth. Philip’s own vessel, battered, leaking and with one of its masts snapped off, staggered into Melcombe near Weymouth.

As soon as the news reached London, the King sent Sir Thomas Brandon to escort these unexpected but welcome visitors to Windsor and Philip found himself enveloped in a bear hug of Tudor hospitality. An English eyewitness of the splendid show, laid on at not much more than a week’s notice, wrote complacently: ‘I suppose few or none that were there ever saw castle or other lodging in all things so well and richly appointed, and the great continual fair open household, so many noblemen so well appointed, and with so short warning as I think hath not been seen.’

If Philip chafed at the delay, he gave no sign of it. A large, fair, good-natured, rather slow-witted young man, he seems to have thoroughly enjoyed the entertainment provided for him - the hunting and hawking, the unlimited food and drink, the pageantry and display were all just what he liked. The other members of the royal family had also been summoned to Windsor, and on a non-hunting day Philip was invited ‘for pastime’ to watch the ladies dancing. His sister-in-law, Catherine of Aragon, showed off some of her Spanish dances, but Philip resisted her attempts to persuade him to take the floor himself. ‘I am a mariner’, he protested jovially, ‘and yet ye would cause me to dance!’ Catherine was followed by my lady Mary, the King’s younger daughter, nearly eleven now and the beauty of the family. Mary performed her party pieces with great self-possession, dancing and then playing on the lute and virginals, ‘and she was of all folks there greatly praised that of her youth in everything she behaved herself so very well.’

There was, of course, a serious purpose underlying all this jollity. Henry meant to take full advantage of a literally heaven-sent opportunity and the gay, relatively informal house-party atmosphere he had been at pains to create provided a useful screen behind which he and Philip could retire to talk business. There was plenty to talk about as the two Kings dined privately together in Henry’s secret chamber or sat apart ‘communing’ while the rest of the company played cards or danced and made music. Henry wanted a new commercial treaty with the Netherlands, giving England most favoured nation treatment. He wanted a general alliance with the Hapsburgs. But most of all he wanted Edmund de la Pole, still at large in Flanders under the Duke of Burgundy’s protection. The King had no illusions as to what might follow if he were to die before his heir was of full age -already reports of some disturbing gossip about ‘the world that should be after him if his grace happened to depart’ had reached his ears. The names of several possible successors had been mentioned, among them the Duke of Buckingham and Edmund de la Pole, but no one, ominously enough, had spoken of ‘my lord prince’.