Catherine of Aragon

by Alison Prince

  2nd September 1512

  Another letter came from Dorset’s army today, and its contents were soon common gossip. The men are on the point of mutiny. They are nearly all ill now, with a stomach sickness that has killed many of them. They blame the garlic! So stupid – but I can’t help feeling sorry for them. Henry has sent a herald with a return message, telling Dorset the army must stay where it is for the winter, ready for a fresh campaign in the spring. “You see what I mean?” Michel said. “Totally absurd. They’ll all be dead.”

  29th September 1512

  Henry’s herald was shouted down. The soldiers would not listen, and their yells turned into a chant of “Home! Home! Home!” Henry will have to give in.

  11th December 1512

  The wretched stragglers who were once an army have come home. And Ferdinand has sent an incredibly insulting message, saying the English troops were of such poor quality that he couldn’t use them. He adds that he has had to make peace with the French for six months, for fear they might invade England, having seen how hopeless the English soldiers are.

  Henry is gibbering with rage. He was all for hanging the Marquess of Dorset the moment he set foot in England, but Catherine managed to dissuade him. It would do his reputation no good, she said. Better by far to show the watching world that England is still a nation to be feared. He must prepare for war next year. And this time, he must win.

  20th December 1512

  James of Scotland is still trying to negotiate a peace between France and her enemies. He sent an envoy to Paris – or at least, he tried to, but Henry turned the man back at the border. It’s hardly surprising, Michel says. Henry knows a French ship arrived at the Leith docks two weeks ago laden with wine and cloth of gold, but also with artillery guns of a new and very accurate kind, together with 300 cannon balls and a large quantity of gunpowder.

  13th January 1513

  Henry was in a fresh storm of rage this morning. His spies in Scotland tell him that James has received a letter from the French queen, Anne of Brittany, with which she sends her glove and a turquoise ring, begging him to come to the aid of France when England and Spain attack her.

  “She sent him her glove,” Michel said, exhausted after the hard work of restoring the King to something like good humour. “You know what that means. It is the traditional sign given to a knight by a lady in distress. Chivalry will not allow him to ignore it.”

  Henry is infuriated that his brother-in-law takes up this high moral tone – “Posing,” he bellowed, “as the saintly peace-keeper of Europe!” Henry hates peace. Enemies are a necessary and enjoyable evil, part of the great game of war, but peace is the ultimate wet-blanket, undoing the game itself. We all breathed more easily when he went storming out to the river, there to be ferried down to Woolwich, to inspect the progress of his new ships that are being built. Whole forests have been cut down for the sake of this armada, and the sky seems strangely open and empty where the great oaks used to stand. But Henry loves his ships, specially the huge flagship, the Great Harry. Suits of armour arrive daily from Italy and Spain, together with hundreds of fine new swords and daggers, and he has twelve immense cannon, sent by Maximilian, which he calls The Twelve Apostles.

  Both Catherine and Mary have received letters from Margaret in Scotland. She had a miscarriage in the autumn, and was ill for some time, and in recent weeks she has been much troubled by nightmares. She dreams constantly of her husband’s death, and of standing alone on a high cliff in a desolate place, with the sea crashing on rocks a long way below her. She always sends loving wishes to Henry in her letters, but I doubt whether he writes back to her. Scotland, too, is part of the great game of war, and to see it through the eyes of his sister would be dangerously close to wishing for peace.

  4th May 1513

  Henry is deeply perturbed about the Queen of France’s appeal to James. He has sent an envoy to Scotland – Nicholas West, the dry, virtuous Dean of Windsor – hoping to get a promise from James that he will not aid France in the coming war.

  12th May 1513

  West has returned, ruffled and angry, and the court is full of excited gossip, as usual. They try to pump Michel, who is closer to the King than any of them, but he tells them he is just the pet monkey, and hops and gibbers until they shrug and turn away. I know, as they do not, how much Henry confides in him, and what a strain it is to be called upon to find crumbs of comfort and amusement in a morass of bad news. West utterly failed to bribe James to stay on the English side. He failed, too, in a clumsy attempt to bribe Margaret, offering her the gold and jewels bequeathed to her by Arthur in return for a promise that she would persuade James not to help France. Margaret simply laughed and walked out, for which I admire her, and after that she removed herself and her small son, James, to the castle of Linlithgow. She is pregnant again, expecting a baby in the autumn, and I would hate to be in her situation, caught between two sides in the war which will now undoubtedly come soon.

  30th June 1513

  It has started. Henry and his great fleet have set sail, complete with all their guns and armour, banners, lances, provisions and horses (for he is taking his own cavalry this time). My fingers are sore from stitching, since this war is also a travelling pageant of Tudor glory. Every tunic and jerkin and cloak, every saddle-cloth and even every tent has been gold-embroidered, and the army set off under a moving forest of plumes and banners. We have used bale upon bale of cloth of gold, both red and white, and tissue of silver, as well as silks and velvets in crimson and blue and purple, and countless yards of green and white cloth have gone into the making of tents and covers for waggons. The armourers and smiths have been working equally hard, engraving designs of antelopes and swans on to breastplates and forging silver medallions for harnesses and little gold bells to tinkle on bridles. This is the greatest tournament of Henry’s life, and he has revelled in every moment of it.

  Catherine, too, has thrown herself into it all. She rode to Dover with Henry at the head of the long procession, and at the sea’s edge he proclaimed her Governor of the Realm in his absence, and put her in charge of northern defences. I did not go, for I am certainly pregnant again now, and it is making me often sick. Catherine agreed that I could stay at home when Michel spoke to her on my behalf. I felt ashamed to do so, for Catherine herself is expecting a child, and I suspect that she must despise me for giving in to such weakness. She ignores her condition, just as her mother did, the battling Isabella. Those who came back say she made a fiery speech to the assembled men. I can imagine how her Spanish-accented English rang out over the breaking of the waves.

  And now they are gone. Henry insisted on taking Michel with him, and Rosanna does not understand where Papa has gone. God keep him safe.

  29th July 1513

  A messenger brought news today that Henry met as arranged with the Emperor Maximilian’s army, under the walls of a French town called Thérouanne. It was pouring with rain. Such a shame, when the army had set out looking so glorious in its red and gold and Tudor-green. And Maximilian’s men were all in black. It must have amused Michel – Henry’s troops decked out in magnificence while the old Habsburg bandit sticks to practicalities. He does not play at war; it is his business.

  In Henry’s absence, Catherine has at once set about the business of running the country. I realize now what a soldier she is by instinct, for the first thing she did was to send a large army northwards, to cover the Scottish border against attack. She intends to raise a second army of new recruits, to reinforce the first, which is under the command of the Earl of Surrey. “If James attacks, he will get his fingers burned,” she said to me this evening. “And serve him right.”

  2nd September 1513

  I pray for Michel’s safety. Perhaps he is not in too much danger, for Henry’s war seems to be little more than a glorified tournament. A few villages have been sacked and burned, but King Louis is mainly concerned with holding his advances in Italy, a
nd has told his commanders merely to watch the English rather than engage with them. (Catherine receives daily despatches from Henry.) There has only been one skirmish so far, which ended in a spirited English chase after fleeing French cavalry. It sounds as if the whole campaign is, by Henry’s standards, thoroughly enjoyable. All of us here are far more concerned with Scotland.

  Margaret’s last letter to her sister Mary spoke of continuing nightmares. She dreamed of the high cliff again, but, horrifyingly, she saw James fall to his death – and the diamonds in her jewel box had all turned to pearls, the emblems of widowhood. I never knew this was the meaning of pearls. We sewed so many of them into Catherine’s veil for her first wedding to Arthur – and she was indeed a widow within a few months.

  4th September 1513

  Catherine’s instincts were right. James has declared war on England. Everyone here is appalled, but Catherine is filled with energy and excitement. Her new troops are arriving by the hour, some of them from as far away as Wales and Cornwall, and she plans to ride with them herself for at least part of the way. I tried to tell her she should not do this. She carries a royal child within her, and strenuous days on the road could have a disastrous result. Both of us know that Isabella had several miscarriages because of taking part in warlike expeditions – but perhaps Catherine feels she can do no less. Michel would shake his head wearily. Madness, madness. I miss him so much.

  8th September 1513

  Catherine has set off for Buckingham at the head of her army. Wolsey’s spies in the north reported that a group of wild Highlanders from the north of Scotland have already launched an attack, not waiting for King James, but they were quickly repulsed. James has gone to Linlithgow to say goodbye to Margaret.

  12th September 1513

  I can hardly bring myself to write about what has happened. I am shaken and sick at the thought of it, and glad in a way that this is almost the last page of my diary. I shall never keep another. Were it not for a kind of loyalty to Catherine, I would like to leave this court and live with Michel and our children as ordinary people do, knowing nothing of the great games of kings.

  The Scottish army is utterly destroyed, and James is dead. Surrey met them in the Cheviot hills, at a place called Flodden. The Scots were tired from long marching, Wolsey’s rider reports, and they had run short of food and ale. James made the mistake of ordering them to move the guns further up the ridge to a better position, but Surrey had plenty of time to deploy his troops, almost surrounding the Scots.

  In three hours of fighting, 10,000 Scottish soldiers were killed. Ten thousand. There can hardly be an able-bodied man left in the country. The officers and nobility, too, were mown down, and at last James himself fell.

  Catherine is still on her way to Buckingham, but her army will not be needed. This war, at least, is finished.

  23rd September 1513

  Catherine’s expedition cost her dearly. On the night after her return, she lost the baby she had been expecting. Poor little future child – such an innocent casualty of war, and so deliberately put at risk, it seems to me. Catherine herself looks white-faced and exhausted, but she gave herself no rest after the miscarriage, and it has not stopped her from the grim business in which she is still taking part.

  When she heard of James’s death she ordered his body to be brought to London. I was with her when the captain of the travel-weary men came to report that this had been done. She went out with him, and bade me follow. I could not look at the wrapped and already stinking burden they carried, but she seemed exultant. The body must be taken to Henry in France, she said, that he might see for himself that the Scots had been vanquished.

  An uneasy glance ran between the men, and their captain begged Catherine to excuse them from such a task. She looked at him with contempt, and turned on her heel.

  Upstairs, she unwrapped the bundle of soiled clothing which the captain had given her, and held up a surcoat, gold-embroidered with the lion of Scotland. It was soaked with blood and slashed almost to ribbons. The captain had explained apologetically that after the battle the English troops had plundered the dead men who lay everywhere, stripping them of clothes and valuables. The body of the Scottish king, too, had been stripped, but the captain had managed to retrieve his coat. And as I watched her, sickened, Catherine smiled. “If I cannot send his dead enemy’s body, Harry shall at least have his coat,” she said. And in the afternoon of that same day, she despatched it to France.

  28th September 1513

  Michel is home, thank God, laughing about what he calls “Harry’s summer circus”. The real war was Catherine’s, and it is Flodden that makes Europe’s kings look with new respect at English fighting power.

  Catherine spoke to me today of Margaret, whose child will be born with no father. Her little son, only eighteen months old, has been crowned James V of Scotland, but Margaret herself will rule as best she can over a country made derelict by the loss of its men. “I have sent people to comfort her,” Catherine said. All her exultation had gone, and she looked drained of energy, her grey eyes shadowed with tiredness and distress. “Between us, Margaret and I must agree to keep the peace,” she went on. “I am disbanding my army.”

  Her voice quavered a little, and she suddenly turned to me and wept. We were both aware that James, her brother-in-law, lies in the chapel here at Richmond, washed and embalmed and decently shrouded. The mute dignity of his dead presence makes it pitifully clear what Margaret has lost and what thousands of women have lost – 1,500 of them in England as well as the countless multitude in Scotland.

  Catherine and I stood close, with our arms about each other as we have not done in many years. I knew she must be aware of the thickness of my body that is the coming baby, and ached with pity for her though I could say nothing about her own loss. After a few minutes she parted herself from me gently and wiped her eyes, then managed to smile. “Dear Eva,” she said. “I hope the future will be kind to you.”

  With all my heart, I wish the same for Catherine. Proud, reckless, careful Catherine, my friend, my queen. May God guard her in what is to come.

  Historical note

  Catherine of Aragon and Henry were married just before Henry was crowned King of England in 1509. Their marriage lasted for nearly 20 years, and it seems that it was a happy one, at least at the beginning, even though the reasons for it were political and not romantic. After he married Catherine, Henry is reported to have said, “If I were still free, I would still choose her for wife above all others.”

  The marriage of Henry’s sister Margaret to the Scottish king James IV had also taken place for political reasons: Scotland had a history of alliance with England’s greatest enemy, France, and the marriage came a year after a peace treaty between Scotland and England. But not long after Henry VIII came to the throne, James tried to break the peace with England, despite being married to Henry’s sister. While Henry was away in France, Catherine was left in charge of the country and it was under her rule that the English army beat the Scots at the Battle of Flodden. The victorious Catherine really did send the blood-stained coat of the dead James IV to Henry, as Eva reports in her diary. Later, in 1542, Henry’s English army was to defeat the army of Henry’s own nephew – Margaret’s son, James V of Scotland. In 1514, Henry’s younger sister Mary was married to Louis XII of France, another political royal marriage.

  Catherine gave birth to five children, but only one of them survived for more than a few weeks – a girl, Mary, not the hoped-for boy who could continue the Tudor line. By the time Catherine was in her thirties she was no longer able to have children and Henry wanted an end to the marriage. In 1527 he began to try and arrange a divorce, which proved extremely difficult and took six years to achieve. Before Henry could marry Catherine, back in 1509, he had needed special permission from the Pope, as head of the Catholic Church, because Catherine was his brother’s widow. Now, Henry argued that the marriage should never have take
n place and could be “annulled” – declared invalid. The Pope wouldn’t give his permission – it would have meant going against the previous Pope’s authority (who had allowed Catherine and Henry to marry in the first place), and secondly he needed to keep the peace with the powerful Emperor Charles V, who was Catherine of Aragon’s nephew and who held most of Europe. Finally, Henry made himself head of the Church in England, and got his divorce without permission from the Pope. These must have been sad and humiliating years for Catherine: Henry went so far as to imprison their daughter, Mary, when she protested against the divorce. Henry’s actions not only affected Catherine but the whole country – breaking away from the Pope’s authority meant that Henry would go on to reform the Church in England, taking away land, wealth and power from the monasteries, and England would eventually become a Protestant country.

  Catherine had been a popular queen with the people of England, but Henry’s next wife, Anne Boleyn, was not. He married Anne in 1533 and she had a child the same year – another daughter, Elizabeth, which did not please Henry, who refused to go to the christening.

  Catherine died in 1536 – there were rumours that she was poisoned, some said by Anne Boleyn, but there’s no evidence to suggest that this was true. Henry showed no grief at her death.