De Puebla was involved from the very beginning. He had been sent as ambassador to England in response to Henry VII’s original overtures, and had helped negotiate the treaty of Medina del Campo in 1489, which first committed the parties to the marriage. Six years later he returned to England as resident ambassador and brought England and Spain, who had drifted apart in the interim, together once more to renew the treaty.
Thereafter, De Puebla had been indefatigable in bringing it to fruition. He sweated blood in line-by-line negotiations about the terms – especially the financial terms – sometimes with Henry VII’s councillors, often with the king himself. He performed with a rather ridiculous enthusiasm in the proxy weddings by which he sought to make the marriage contract unbreakable by even the most ingenious canon lawyer. And he spilled real blood too, when under his steady pressure Henry VII decided to smooth the way to Catherine’s arrival in England by executing the two most obvious threats to the Tudor throne: the pretender, Perkin Warbeck, who had been gaoled in the Tower since his surrender in October 1497, and the earl of Warwick, son of the duke of Clarence, who for the last sixteen years had been imprisoned by both Richard III and Henry VII.
The two birds were killed with one stone. Warbeck and Warwick were accused of plotting a joint escape from the Tower, and were tried and condemned in November 1499. Warbeck was hanged on 23 November and Warwick beheaded on the twenty-eighth.
In January 1500, De Puebla wrote exultantly home: following the executions, he crowed, ‘there does not remain a drop of doubtful Royal blood; the only Royal blood being the true blood of the king, the queen, and, above all, of the prince of Wales’.8 Henry does not even get a look-in.
* * *
But still there were delays – this time on De Puebla’s own side. Ferdinand and Isabella were distracted by a major Islamic uprising, which took several months to put down. Still worse, there was a rebellion in Isabella’s own heart: having seen so many of her children and grandchildren die, sacrificed in similar dynastic marriages, she was understandably reluctant to let go of her last unmarried daughter.
But by the late spring of 1501 the excuses had run out. On 21 May Catherine made her final farewells to her parents in Granada and began her journey to her new kingdom. First she had to cross the torrid plains and mountains of Spain, then to brave the storms and treacherous currents of the Bay of Biscay and the Channel. It was August before she arrived at the coast. There was another delay while she went on pilgrimage to the shrine of Santiago de Compostella, and it was not till the seventeenth that she set sail. Three weeks later she was back in Spain, driven ashore by terrifying storms. In desperation, Henry VII sent one of his best captains to escort her to England. This time it was the Channel which nearly shipwrecked the fleet. It was supposed to land at Southampton; instead, battered and storm-tossed, it put in at Plymouth, the first available major harbour, 150 miles to the west.
‘This day [2 October]’, Lady Margaret Beaufort noted in the calendar of her book of hours, ‘my lady princess landed.’9
It took Catherine another month, travelling at most ten or twelve miles a day and with frequent halts, to reach the environs of London. Everything about the journey – what route she should take, where she should stay, what she should travel in and who should meet and accompany her – had been worked out in advance in the minutest detail. But by the time she reached Dogmersfield near Fleet in Hampshire, Henry VII could contain his impatience no longer. Who was the woman to whom he had pledged the hope of his dynasty? What did she look like? He would interrupt Catherine’s carefully prepared itinerary and find out with his son Arthur.
Catherine sent word that the meeting was impossible, since Spanish custom and her father’s commands meant that she must not show herself to Arthur or his family till her wedding morn. Henry VII, invoking his authority as king and paterfamilias, overruled her, and threaten to confront her in bed if necessary.
Catherine yielded with good grace. First she met the king alone, and then together with the prince. As usual, a recording herald was present. But he says nothing about what either party thought of the other.
A week later, on Friday, 12 November, Catherine met Henry, who escorted her throughout her grand entrée into the city of London. It was the first encounter of two people who between them would change history.
Once again, a herald was present; once again he was silent about their thoughts.
But another observer used the decent obscurity of Latin to express himself very freely. This was Thomas More, whose genius for friendship was already ripening his acquaintance with Henry into something deeper. ‘Catherine,’ he wrote to another friend, the schoolmaster John Holt, ‘lately made her entrée into London amid a tremendous ovation; never, to my knowledge, has there been such a reception.’ ‘But,’ More exclaims, ‘the Spanish escort – good heavens! – what a sight! If you had seen it, I am afraid you would have burst with laughter; they were so ludicrous. Except for three, or at the most four, of them, they were just too much to look at: hunchback, undersized, barefoot Pygmies from Ethiopia. If you had been there, you would have thought they were refugees from hell.’
Then, suddenly, More’s mood changes as he contemplates Catherine herself: ‘Ah, but the lady!’ he sighs, ‘take my word for it, she thrilled the hearts of everyone: she possesses all those qualities that make for beauty in a very charming young girl. Everywhere she receives the highest of praises; but even that is inadequate.’10
More’s judgment of Catherine, at least, never wavered.
The wedding was held two days later, on Sunday, 14 November in old St Paul’s Cathedral. Isabella had already remonstrated with Henry VII about the excessive scale of the celebrations. In vain. For the king was determined to extract the maximum advantage from the marriage alliance between the Tudors and the most powerful dynasty in Europe.
And that required, in the first place, that as many people as possible should be able to see the ceremony. Hence the choice of St Paul’s, which was the largest building in what was by far England’s biggest and most populous city. And hence too the decision to take a leaf out of The Ryalle Book and copy the arrangements for the christenings of Henry and his siblings. As for these, a tall, many-tiered circular platform was built in the centre of the nave, on which the marriage itself would take place. But how to get the couple there, through the crowded church? The solution was to build a walkway at head-height the entire 450-foot length of the nave: from the west doors to the marriage platform, and again from the marriage platform to the steps of the choir screen.
This idea was inspired: the ceremony now became a series of sweeping processional movements, each accompanied by carefully cued musicians placed high up in the vaults to exploit the vast reverberations of the building.
The star of the processions was of course the bride, Catherine of Aragon. But accompanying her every move was Henry. He escorted her on her entry into the church: from the bishop’s palace, where she had been staying, across St Paul’s churchyard, through the west doors and along the elevated walkway to the wedding platform. Then, after the wedding, he led the other dignitaries to hear mass with the bridal couple in the choir. Finally, after the mass, as Arthur went privately to the bishop’s palace to greet Catherine at the threshold of the bridal chamber, Henry walked back with her along the whole length of the walkway, from the altar steps to the west doors, out into the churchyard and into the palace.
There were cheers, fanfares and a sea of ten thousand upturned faces, all looking, it must have seemed, at him.
Henry’s role as escort ceased only at the door of the bridal chamber. Beyond was not a fit place for a ten-year-old boy. But no one, curiously, was to be more concerned about what happened within. Or, depending on whom you believe, did not happen. The following morning Arthur boasted that it had been hot work spending the night in Spain. This does not leave much to the imagination. Catherine, on the other hand, was to swear on her immortal soul that she remained as much a virgin as when sh
e left her mother’s womb.
But that was later, much later. At the time, the fact of intercourse was simply taken for granted: ‘and thus,’ the recording herald wrote in his florid prose, ‘these worthy persons concluded and consummate the effect and complement of the sacrament of matrimony.’11
After a day’s rest the royal party went in state by water to Westminster for a further round of jousting, revelling and feasting. This started on Thursday, 18 November and continued for a week. Once again Henry had a starring role – or rather made one for himself.
On the Friday night the king put on an entertainment in Westminster Hall. The walls were bright with tapestry, and a vast cupboard seven shelves high groaned with gold and silver-gilt plate. After the entertainment was over, the dancing began. Arthur led out Lady Cecily, Elizabeth of York’s eldest sister; then Catherine and one of her ladies, both in Spanish costume, performed; and finally it was the turn of Henry to dance with his elder sister Margaret. He led her out by the hand and they executed their two allotted dances, which were ‘bass’ or slow steps.
But now Henry stepped out of the script. Finding that his heavy clothes got in the way of his fun, he ‘suddenly cast off his gown’ – which had been obtained at such expense – and ‘danced in his jacket’ with his sister. His parents looked on proudly and indulgently.
Henry was learning early that he could break the rules.
His example of uninhibited dancing was also infectious, and the poor folk who crowded into the hall had a field day snapping up the ‘plates, spangles, roses and other conceits of silver and over gilt which fell from their garments both of lords and ladies and gentlemen whilst they leapt and danced’.12
On Friday, 26 November the court travelled to Richmond, as the rebuilt Sheen was now known, by water.
It was like a scene from a northern Venice. The gaily dressed throng embarked at the ‘bridge’ or landing stage at Westminster Palace. This was ‘made of timber, beset with goodly posts, with lions and dragons, and other figures and beasts and figures empainted, carven and gilt, set upon their heights and tops’. In front of it, a water-borne procession of some sixty ‘right goodly covered, painted and beseen’ barges formed up in order on the river. Among the flotilla, ‘the duke of York’s’ barge stood out – though Henry himself, as part of his father’s immediate suite, was not in it. Instead, he travelled with the king in the royal barge, leaving his own to bring his servants and attendants. When he arrived at Richmond he also found that he had his own suite of specially built rooms, alongside those of his father, mother, grandmother and elder brother and sister-in-law.13
At Richmond the round of entertainment continued, with hunting in the park and tours of the lavishly rebuilt palace, conducted by the king himself. But there was also serious business to be done.
The issue was the status of Arthur and Catherine’s marriage. Should they continue to reside at court, each in their own separate suite? Or should they take up residence at Arthur’s princely capital of Ludlow, there to live as man and wife? The former had been the original intention. But that had been based on the assumption that they would be marrying when Arthur was barely fourteen. In the event, the delays in Catherine’s departure from Spain meant that he was a good year older.
And that, it was decided after some soul-searching, was quite old enough to begin proper married life. So to Ludlow they went, leaving Richmond a few days before Christmas and spending the feast itself at Woodstock.
Henry never saw his brother again.
Notes - CHAPTER 8: WEDDINGS
1. J. G. Nichols, The Chronicle of Calais, CS old series 35 (1846), 3–4, 49–51.
2. W. Busch, England under the Tudors: I Henry VII (1895), 363–4, rejects the idea that the visit to Calais was provoked by the sweating sickness on the ground that the disease did not break out till the summer.
3. Busch, Henry VII, 167.
4. Great Chronicle, 294.
5. TNA: E 1011415/3, fos. 25, 28, 29v.
6. CSP Sp. I, 282.
7. CSP Sp. I, 280.
8. CSP Sp. I, 213.
9. Beaufort Hours, 279.
10. E. F. Rogers, ed., Thomas More: Selected Letters (New Haven and London, 1961), 2–3.
11. AR II, 292.
12. AR II, 301–2; Great Chronicle, 315.
13. AR II, 311–12.
9
THE LAST PRETENDER
DE PUEBLA HAD SPOKEN TOO SOON when he gloated in January 1500 that not ‘a drop of doubtful Royal blood’ remained in England.1 Warbeck and Warwick might indeed be dead, but within two years another pretender had arisen to replace them: Edmund de la Pole, earl of Suffolk.
Just as Henry’s childhood had been overshadowed by Warbeck, so his youth was to be equally affected by Suffolk. Suffolk indeed probably touched him more keenly: Perkin was an impostor and a puppet; but Suffolk was the real Yorkist thing. As son of John de la Pole, second duke of Suffolk, and Elizabeth Plantagenet, sister of Henry’s maternal grandfather, Edward IV, Suffolk descended – unimpeachably – from the main Yorkist line. His royal blood meant that he was one of Henry’s closest living relations, and a familiar figure at his parents’ court. Henry had even been conceived under Duke John’s roof, at his palatial house at Ewelme in Oxfordshire, where Henry’s parents had spent a long, lazy month in the late autumn of 1490.
But what probably made the most impression on Henry was the fact that Suffolk was the star jouster of the English court. As such, he had played a prominent part in the tournaments to celebrate Henry’s own creation as duke of York. He was the first of the four ‘noblemen and … gentlemen’ of the king’s court who had issued the challenge for the joust; he had worn Henry’s own colours of tawney and blue; and on the second day of the tournament he had been awarded the prize of ‘a ring of gold with a diamond’.
Even more characteristic was Suffolk’s performance on the third and final day in the tourney, or sword-fight on horseback, when his encounter with Sir Edward Burgh had all the excitement of a heavyweight boxing match. First ‘the earl gave such a stroke’ to his opponent that he almost knocked his sword ‘out of his hand and bruised his gauntlet’. Burgh tried to change his sword to his bridle hand, but lost control of his horse during the manoeuvre. The horse turned away from Suffolk, and many thought that Burgh’s hand had been ‘stonied’ or paralysed. But then Burgh regained both his hold on his sword and control of his horse, and hit Suffolk ‘a light stroke’ over the head. This unexpected, insolent tap enraged Suffolk, and ‘the earl would furiously go against’ his opponent until they were forcibly separated.2
Henry, we can imagine, watched enthralled.
Nor was Suffolk’s brawling temperament confined to the tilt-yard. According to Polydore Vergil, he was ‘bold, impetuous and readily roused to anger’. This, it should be said in Suffolk’s defence, was a pretty typical disposition for a young nobleman, especially one as highly born as he – which is why he was so popular among members of his own order.3
Nevertheless, his character was singularly unsuited to the awkward circumstances in which he and his family found themselves. We have already seen something of these. Suffolk’s eldest brother John, earl of Lincoln, had played a leading part in the first Yorkist rebellion against Henry VII in 1487, when he was killed at the battle of Stoke and attainted as a traitor. But the full consequences were only visited on the remainder of the family after the death of Duke John in 1492. Duke John had settled much of his property on Lincoln as his eldest son in his own lifetime. Lincoln’s attainder meant that this was forfeit to the crown. Which meant in turn that when Suffolk inherited as the next surviving brother, the reduced family estate was not sufficient to maintain a dukedom.
Instead, when Suffolk came of age the following year, Henry VII imposed a compromise: Suffolk agreed to accept the lesser title of earl; in return he was allowed to reclaim some of Lincoln’s estates, though subject to a fine of £5,000, payable in yearly instalments of £200.
The compromise was ch
aracteristically harsh but fair. It was also very similar in spirit to the settlement imposed on Surrey after the Howards’ near-disastrous error in supporting Richard III. Surrey, with his coldly ambitious temperament, accepted the arrangement and used it to rebuild his fortunes. At first it seemed as though Earl Edmund would follow the same route, and for the next five years he was a prominent figure at court, in the lists and on the battlefield. He was also particularly close to his first cousin, Henry’s mother, Elizabeth of York.
But, as we have seen, he had inherited more than his fair share of the Plantagenet temper. For such a personality the compact of 1493, with its double blow to his prestige and his purse, rankled deeply. And it was his temper which brought things to a head. He committed a murder, and was indicted in the court of King’s Bench for the crime. The matter was smoothed over. But not Suffolk’s ruffled feelings. In July 1499 he decamped first to Guisnes, one of the flanking fortresses of Calais, and thence to St Omer, in the Netherlands. There, like so many Yorkist agitators before him, he hoped to get help from his aunt, the Dowager Duchess Margaret.
The appeal for Burgundian assistance was ominous. But a combination of diplomatic pressure on the Archduke Philip and fair words from a high-level delegation, led by Suffolk’s friend Sir Richard Guildford, secured his return. Once again there was both stick and carrot: Suffolk was fined another £1,000, but he was also restored to favour and the heart of the royal family. On 5 May 1500, when the court was at Canterbury en route to the Calais meeting with the Archduke Philip, Suffolk witnessed the final ratification of the treaty for the marriage of Catherine of Aragon and Henry’s elder brother Arthur, and he joined Henry’s parents at the Calais meeting itself.
Indeed, in his role as star jouster, he was destined to play a key part in it. The forthcoming marriage of Arthur and Catherine would set the seal on the arrival of the Tudors as one of the premier dynasties of Europe, and Henry’s father was determined to celebrate it in style. At the heart of the celebrations was to be a tournament, which was planned as an international event of a type that had not been seen in England since the days of Edward IV.
Henry Page 12