the wealth of his own noble person, the comfort of his realm and of her and how [her mother-in-law, Lady Margaret] had never no more children but him only.
God had lent them yet a fair, goodly and towardly29 young prince [Henry] and two fair princesses and over that, God is where He was.
Elizabeth pointed out: ‘We both [are] young enough’ to have more children. She then retired to her own chamber and ‘natural and motherly remembrance of that great loss smote her so sorrowful to the heart that those that were about her [sent] for the king to comfort her’.30
Henry, Duke of York, was now the unexpected and untrained heir-apparent to the throne of England. In just over 1,000 days, Death had cruelly snatched two of the three Tudor princes.
A day of mourning was declared on the Friday following, with a general procession through the streets of London and a solemn dirge and requiem for Arthur’s soul was sung in every city church. In St Paul’s Cathedral, the mayor and aldermen attended a special Mass, dressed in black.
Meanwhile in Ludlow, Katherine was lying ill – the cause of her ailment is not known, but her confinement to her bed does lend some weight to the theory of some kind of prevalent epidemic.31 Arthur’s body had been embalmed and placed in a coffin covered with a black cloth. It remained in his presence chamber until the afternoon of 23 April – St George’s Day – watched over day and night by the poor people who had received the royal alms on Maundy Thursday.32 Then the corpse was carried in slow stages to Worcester for burial in the Benedictine abbey there (now the cathedral).33 It was not an easy or comfortable journey:
On St Mark’s Day [25 April] the procession went from Ludlow church to Bewdley Chapel [Worcestershire] . It was the foulest cold, windy and rainy day and the worst way [road] that I have seen …
In some places the car [carriage, with the prince’s coffin] stuck so fast in the mud that yokes [teams] of oxen were taken to draw it out, so ill was the way …
reported the escorting herald.34
The funeral cost the large sum of £892 2s 1/2d, of which nearly forty per cent was for the cost of supplying black cloth for the mourners – probably enough for about five hundred and fifty individuals.35 The chief mourner was Thomas Howard, Earl of Surrey, the Lord Treasurer of England, wearing a mourning hood over his head. Amongst the seven other official mourners was George Talbot, Fourth Earl of Shrewsbury. Maurice St John, who had worried that the joys of sex had sapped Arthur’s energy, was one of the bearers of the canopy held over the coffin. A Purbeck marble tomb-chest was subsequently erected within a chantry chapel to the south of the high altar of the church.36
In London everyone at court was fitted with mourning outfits even though they were not attending the prince’s obsequies at Worcester. ‘Mr Geoffrey’, Prince Henry’s chaplain, was given 4.5 yards (4.1 m) of black cloth to make his mourning suit, as was John Skelton, also described as his chaplain. Ten of his yeomen and grooms were allowed three yards (2.7 m) of cloth each.37
In Spain, Ferdinand and Isabella’s response to the news was prosaic. They immediately authorised their ambassador in London to reclaim the first instalment of Katherine’s dowry, to insist that Henry VII hand over the lands and property that came with their daughter’s marriage and to ‘beg the King of England to send Princess Katherine to Spain in the best manner and in the shortest time possible’. Hours later, with an eye perhaps on the main chance, further instructions were sent to London ‘to conclude with Henry, in their names … a marriage between our daughter and his son, Henry Prince of Wales’.38
It was only two days later that they sent a letter containing any semblance of regret to de Puebla:
We have read with profound sorrow the news of the death of Prince Arthur. The will of God must be obeyed. We have heard that the Princess of Wales is suffering. She must be removed, without loss of time from the unhealthy place where she is now.39
Happily, after recovering from her sickness, she was removed safely to the Archbishop of Canterbury’s palace at Croydon, Surrey – Elizabeth of York kindly providing a horse-drawn litter covered with black velvet and cloth for her bereaved daughter-in-law’s slow-paced transportation. 40
Katherine arrived there in late May and on the 25th of that month, Elizabeth of York sent Edmond Calverd, one of the pages of her chamber, to see her.41 Almost certainly his was a delicate mission. He probably carried letters from the queen discreetly enquiring whether her daughter-in-law now found herself pregnant by her dead son. Her answer would have been: ‘No.’ That information was vital to the formalities of succession to the English crown: Henry could not be declared Prince of Wales until it was positively established that there was no heir in the offing from the union of Arthur and Katherine of Aragon.
Therefore on 22 June, ‘Henry Prince of Wales’ was granted the sinecure post of Keeper and Chief Justice of the Forest of Galtres, north of the city of York.42 The following October he succeeded Arthur as Duke of Cornwall.
After New Year 1503, the second grievous blow befell Henry VII.
As her words of comfort to the stricken king had prophesied, Elizabeth became pregnant again a few months after Arthur’s death. With two daughters living, the king and queen had hoped desperately for a second boy to firmly secure the line of Tudor succession. Elizabeth had dreaded a difficult birth with Edmund in February 1499, but in the end his was easy. There were concerns now about her latest confinement as she had been ill throughout much of her pregnancy. The queen was rowed downriver in her barge from Westminster to take possession of her apartments on the upper floor of the White Tower, within the Tower of London, on 26 January 1503 – in good time before her expected confinement.43 A monk from the Augustinian abbey at Bruton in Somerset had already been paid 6s 8d for bringing her a holy relic to bolster her during the birth.44 This was ‘Our Lady’s Girdle’ in red silk, piously supposed to be the very belt that encircled the Virgin Mary’s stomach before the birth of Christ. It was believed to provide spiritual comfort during labour and divine assistance against miscarriage.45 In addition, she had paid 3s 4d to a retainer who went on a pilgrimage to the shrine of Our Lady of Willesden in north-west Middlesex to seek the Mother of God’s especial blessing on her behalf.
Henry was both optimistic and confident about the prospects of a new heir, emotions born out of his long-standing addiction to prognostications by those he superstitiously believed could see into the future. On New Year’s Day, his Milanese astrologer William Parron, who had been employed by the king since 1498,46 had presented him with a book that boldly predicted that Henry VII would go on to father many lusty sons and that the queen would live on until she was eighty or ninety.47 Parron presented a second copy to Prince Henry, dedicated to the new heir, which contained prophecies that had been drawn up based on the date and time of his nativity.48
During the night of 2 February, the queen ‘travailed suddenly of a child’ but with the assistance of her midwife, Alice Massy, safely gave birth to a daughter, christened Katherine (perhaps named after her daughter-in-law), in St Peter ad Vincula, the parish church within the Tower, the following Saturday.49
A few days later Elizabeth fell ill, possibly of a puerperal fever arising from an infection picked up during the birth. Her condition rapidly worsened until her life hung in the balance. One of her attendants, James Nattres, was dispatched to Kent to collect urgently the physician Dr Halesworth to treat her. He travelled night and day. The queen’s accounts record payments for his hire of a boat at the Tower to sail the twenty-five miles (39.3 km) down the River Thames to Gravesend in Kent (which cost 3s 4d) and the procurement of horses and guides to take him to and from Halesworth’s home.50
The tides would have been a major factor affecting the timing of this frantic journey, but whether the good doctor arrived quickly or not became a matter of little consequence. The ministrations of her midwife (afterwards paid £10 for her services)51 were to no avail. Early on the morning of Saturday 11 February 1503, Elizabeth died. It was her thirty-sevent
h birthday. The next day, twelve yards (10.97 m) of flannel were purchased for the baby’s use.52 A few days later the baby was also dead.
Henry VII had lost his gentle, blonde and fair-skinned wife of eighteen years, and of the eight children she had borne him, only three now survived – Margaret, Mary and Prince Henry.53 She had lived true to the doctrine laid down by her personal motto: ‘Humble and reverent’. The royal couple had enjoyed a happy and affectionate marriage, free of quarrels over politics or even over the frequent meddling by the king’s dominant mother.54 When Henry VII was told of her death he ‘privily departed to a solitary place and would no man should resort to him’. Her passing was ‘as heavy and dolorous to the king’s highness as had been seen or heard of’, commented one observer.55
Solemn Masses and requiems for her soul were ordered to be said in all the churches of the realm – six hundred and thirty-six Masses were said in London alone – and after lying in state at the Tower, her body was taken in procession, via Charing Cross, to Westminster Abbey where it was buried. Above the coffin was an effigy of the dead queen, wearing her rich robes of estate and a crown upon its head, with hair ‘about her shoulders, her sceptre in her right hand and her fingers well garnished with rings of gold and precious stones’.56 Richard Fitzjames, Bishop of London, preached on a text from the Old Testament Book of Job: ‘Have pity upon me, my friends, for the hand of God hath touched me.’57 The queen was dearly loved by her husband’s hard-pressed subjects, and a watching herald declared: ‘He spoke these words in the name of England and the lovers and friends … of that virtuous queen.’58
Thomas More wrote a resonant poem shortly after her death, A Rueful Lamentation of the Death of Queen Elizabeth, which has her addressing the living from her grave. In his sonorous words, she regrets not seeing the completion of Henry VII’s magnificent new chapel under construction at Westminster:
Where are our castles now, where are our towers?
Goodly Richmond’s son, art thou gone from me?
At Westminster, that costly work of yours
My own dear lord now shall I never see.
Almighty God vouchsafe to grant that Ye
For you and your children well me edify
My palace builded is and now here I lie.
More has the queen ruefully bemoaning the false prophecies of the court astrologer, William Parron:
Yet was I late promised otherwise
This year to live in wealth and delice [joy].
Lo! Whereto comes your blandishing promise
O false astrology and devinatrice [divination]
Of God’s secrets making yourself so wise?
How true is for this year your prophecy
The year yet lasts and lo! Here I lie.
No surprise then that Parron fled the court and England immediately after the queen’s death.59 The poem also has Elizabeth urging her husband to provide love for their surviving children, and makes this farewell to Prince Henry, now almost twelve years old:
Adieu lord Henry my loving son so dear
Our Lord increase your honour and estate.60
Having lived very separate existences for so much of their young lives, Arthur’s death may not have impinged too much upon young Henry’s emotions, other than surprise or shock at the sudden dramatic change in his status within the royal household.
His mother’s death was another matter. She had taught him to read and write, and most of his formative years had been spent very close to her at Eltham. Much later, in an elegant letter written in Latin to Erasmus in 1507, Henry wrote of his thoughts at the death of the King of Castile, but recalled his great grief at the loss of Elizabeth of York:
For never, since the death of my dearest mother has there come to me more hateful intelligence.
Your letter … seemed to tear open again the wound to which time had brought insensibility.61
Although Henry did not attend her funeral, he was kitted out with a mourning suit of black cloth, furred with lambskin, with a riding gown in the same material and a cloak bordered by black velvet. Twelve pairs of hose and twelve pairs of shoes and gloves were also provided.62
Aside from fulfilling the established formalities of mourning a lost queen and mother, the all-important Tudor dynasty had to be safeguarded. One week after his mother’s death, on 18 February, Henry was created Prince of Wales, and Earl of Chester and Flintshire. And he was approaching the age when it would be imperative to choose a wife for a future King of England. Two years earlier, in 1501, Henry VII had made cautious enquiries about the prospects of marrying off his second son to Eleanor, the daughter of Philip, Duke of Burgundy, who was also the niece of Katherine of Aragon, whom Arthur was then about to wed.63
This idea was abandoned on Arthur’s death as the Spanish suggestion of a re-match between Henry and Katherine looked diplomatically more inviting. But the present wearer of the crown also had ideas to remarry in the hope of siring more sons. He may have been deranged by the death of his beloved wife, but two months afterwards, he briefly considered marrying his eighteen-year-old widowed daughter-in-law.
Some scholars have questioned whether Henry VII was truly serious in this choice of potential bride64 but Queen Isabella of Spain was incandescent at the scandalous suggestion:
This would be a very evil thing – one never before seen and the mere mention of which offends our ears.
We would not for anything in the world that it should take place.
She instructed her ambassador in London: ‘If anything be said to you about it, speak of it as a thing not to be endured. You must likewise say very decidedly that on no account would we allow it, or even hear it mentioned.’ She repeated her demand for the return of Katherine to Spain:
Now the Queen of England is dead, in whose society … the Princess might honourably have remained as with a mother and the king being the man he is … it would not be right that the Princess should stay in England.65
In the face of such parental opposition, Henry VII speedily dropped any lustful claim on Katherine, and the marriage treaty of Henry, Prince of Wales, and the Spanish princess was signed on 23 June 1503,66 with a formal betrothal two days later at the London mansion of Edmund Audley, Bishop of Salisbury, off Fleet Street, on the western edge of the city.67 Katherine discarded her mourning black to appear at the ceremony dressed in a virginal white dress.
The new Prince of Wales’ reaction to the prospect of marrying his brother’s widow can only be guessed at. He hardly knew her – having seen her only during the brief few weeks between personally escorting the princess during her official welcome to London on 12 November 1501 and the couple’s departure to freezing Ludlow Castle the following January. Having lived in Arthur’s shadow for so long, Henry may have been more than a little piqued at now having to wed his hand-me-down wife after already being given much of his brother’s wardrobe. Doubtless, in the taciturn way of royal fathers, Henry VII pointed out that his son had little or no choice in the matter. It was only much later that his patriotic duty for England burgeoned into true love.
As far as Katherine was concerned, the betrothal probably came as a respite in her uncertain life: it had her parents’ blessing and was a happy harbinger of the future in an alien existence in a foreign land, amid a host of strangers with unfamiliar customs and language.
There were still some obstacles to jump before Katherine’s marriage to Henry could go ahead, which was planned to take place before the prince’s fourteenth birthday in June 1505. Whether or not Arthur had consummated his marriage with Katherine, she was still Henry’s sister-in-law – and this unnatural relationship, or affinity, had to be legally swept aside by a special dispensation from Pope Alexander VI. Ferdinand of Spain wrote to his ambassador in Rome:
In the clause of the treaty which mentions the dispensation of the Pope, it is stated that the Princess Katherine consummated her marriage with Prince Arthur.68 The fact, however, is that although they were wedded, Prince Arthur and the Princess �
� never consummated the marriage.
It is well known in England that the Princess is still a virgin.
But as the English are much disposed to cavill [quibble], it has seemed to be more prudent to provide for the case as though the marriage had been consummated and the dispensation of the Pope must be in perfect keeping with the said clause of the treaty.
The right of succession depends on the undoubted legitimacy of the marriage.69
It was a complicated process, even more thorny than the English and Spanish sovereigns feared, mainly because the Pope unexpectedly and inconveniently died in the Vatican. Alexander VI, one of the most corrupt of those who ever wore the papal triple tiara, expired on 18 August, aged seventy-two, after days of suffering convulsive fevers and intestinal bleeding, probably as a result of poisoning. Not for nothing was he a member of the notorious Borgia family. His last words were a plaintive, ‘Wait a minute,’ as if he was frantically fending off the hand of Death, and his passing triggered an unseemly scramble to secure the papal treasure. The frail and gout-ridden Cardinal Francesco Piccolomini of Siena was then consecrated as Pius III on 8 October 1503. He only lasted twenty-six days on the throne of St Peter before dying – supposedly from the effects of a leg ulcer, but in reality probably from poison. Finally, Cardinal Giuliano della Rovere was elected by a near-unanimous vote of the conclave of cardinals on 31 October to become Julius II.
Young Henry: The Rise of Henry VIII Page 8