Catherine of Aragon (10 page)

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, and 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 taken 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.

Famously, Henry was married to six different wives, but none of them – apart from Catherine of Aragon – lasted for more than a few years. Anne Boleyn was executed in 1536, accused of treason. Henry married Jane Seymour in the same year, who did provide him with the son he longed for but died soon after giving birth. His next three marriages, to Anne of Cleves, Catherine Howard and Catherine Parr, didn't produce any more children.

After his death in 1547, Henry's only son, Edward, became king at the age of nine, but died six years later. This meant that Mary, Catherine of Aragon's daughter with Henry, became queen. During her short reign she became known as Bloody Mary: she was fiercely Catholic, unlike her Protestant younger brother, and executed hundreds of Protestant “heretics”. She died of influenza in 1558, leaving the throne to her half-sister Elizabeth (a Protestant), who would reign for 45 years before dying childless, the last of the Tudors.

Timeline of Tudor England

1485
Henry Tudor defeats Richard III at the Battle of Bosworth, and becomes Henry VII, the first Tudor king of England.

1486
Prince Arthur is born.

1491
Prince Henry (later Henry VIII) is born.

1501
Arthur marries Catherine of Aragon.

1502
Arthur dies.

1509
Henry VII dies. Prince Henry marries Catherine of Aragon and is crowned King Henry VIII.

1513
War with France and Scotland. James IV of Scotland dies at the Battle of Flodden Field.

1516
Catherine of Aragon has a daughter, Mary (later Queen Mary I).

1527
Henry starts his divorce from Catherine of Aragon.

1533
Henry marries Anne Boleyn. They have a daughter, Elizabeth (later Queen Elizabeth I).

1536
Anne Boleyn is beheaded. Henry marries Jane Seymour. Catherine of Aragon dies.

1536–9
The Reformation of the Church in England.

1537
Jane Seymour has a son, Edward (later Edward VI). She dies after the birth.

1540
Henry marries Anne of Cleves but they are divorced the same year. Henry marries Catherine Howard.

1542
Catherine Howard is beheaded.

1543
Henry marries Catherine Parr.

1547
Henry VIII dies. His only son becomes Edward VI of England.

1553
Edward VI dies. Catherine of Aragon's daughter, Mary, becomes Queen.

1554
Mary marries Philip of Spain.

1558
Mary dies. Elizabeth I becomes Queen of England.

1603
Elizabeth I, the last of the Tudor monarchs, dies.

Picture acknowledgments

Portrait of a woman, possibly Catherine of Aragon (1503/4), Michiel Sittow (1469–1525), Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna/Bridgeman Art Library

Portrait of Henry VIII (c. 1525–30) English School (16th century) Philip Mould Historical Portraits Ltd, London/Bridgeman Art Library

Arthur, Prince of Wales, Mary Evans Picture Library

A banquet in the Presence Chamber, Hampton Court, Joseph Nash,
The Mansions of England in the Olden Time,
Mary Evans Picture Library

Windsor Castle,
Gentleman's Magazine,
Mary Evans Picture Library

Picnic during a royal hunt, from Turbervile's
The Noble Art of Venerie or Hunting
, Mary Evans Picture Library

Jester in cap and bells, A Kohl, Mary Evans Picture Library