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It is a bye-week for the regular podcast, but this is a bonus from the newsletter On This Day in Women’s History. If you sign up for it on Patreon or on Substack, every Monday you will get a small story about what historical women did on that day. If today were Monday, it might say something like this:
On June 11, 1509, a young, rich, handsome, and extremely eligible king married a very lucky princess. Her name was Catherine, and she came from Spain. His name was King Henry VIII of England.
This wedding in 1509 was Henry’s first. (No one, least of all his blushing bride, yet guessed how many weddings he had in his future.) Catherine was more experienced, for she had already been married. A daughter of Queen Isabella and King Ferdinand, she first came to England eight years earlier at the age of 15 to cement an Anglo-Spanish alliance by marrying Henry’s older brother Arthur, the crown prince. Everyone was delighted with her at the time. A certain Thomas More said, “she thrilled the hearts of everyone” (Guy, 8).
The wedding took place, and all seemed well for five months until Arthur died, causes much disputed.
The succession problem was reasonably straightforward to fix. There was a one-month wait to make sure Catherine wasn’t pregnant, and she wasn’t. So Henry, formerly known as “the spare” became “the heir,” which is exactly what a spare is for.
The problem of what to do with Catherine was less straightforward. She was still young, still pretty, presumably still capable of thrilling the hearts of everyone, and also (presumably) more than capable of producing the next heir.
One possibility was for her to simply go home and be bartered off again in whatever direction seemed most advantageous to Spain. But there was a strong possibility that the new direction was still in England, where there was (once again) a crown prince in need of a wife. This was complicated by the fact that Spain still owed England half of her dowry. (Parents failing to fully pay the dowry was an age-old tactic, and one that caused untold heartache to millions of women the world over. It wasn’t their fault if their birth families wouldn’t pay up, but they were the ones who took the brunt of their new families’ frustration.)
Catherine was a teenager in a strange land, with no clear role anymore. Henry VII was in no hurry to let her go home while that dowry remained unpaid. And Spain still wanted an English ally. So Catherine hung around helplessly in limbo while she was alternately told that she’d marry Henry (six years her junior) and also that she wouldn’t marry him. The idea of marrying the aging and widowed Henry VII was also floated, but fortunately, Catherine dodged that bullet, thanks to her mother Queen Isabella. Then Isabella died and that left Catherine caught between her father and her father-in-law, neither of whom had her best interests at heart.
Besides the political alliance and the age issues, there was the Bible to consider. Leviticus 20:21 says “And if a man shall take his brother’s wife, it is an unclean thing: he hath uncovered his brother’s nakedness; they shall be childless.”
But all you really need to get around that is a dispensation from the pope, and then no worries. The dispensation would be easier to get if the marriage was unconsummated, so for the first (but not the last) time, the exact nature of Catherine’s sexual relations became a matter of public debate.
She said there had been no sexual relations, which was not unheard of for a young, inhibited couple in a marriage arranged by their parents (see episode 2.5 on Catherine the Great and 12.9 on Marie Antoinette for other examples). But others swore that Arthur had led them to believe otherwise. And it wasn’t just the pope who needed convincing. Because if the marriage had been consummated, then Spain owed England the rest of Catherine’s dowry. And if it hadn’t, then England owed Spain the return of the first part of her dowry, plus Catherine herself. The bickering went on. For years.
In the end, the papal dispensation was granted, and it included a clause that would come back to haunt Catherine. It said her marriage with Arthur was “perhaps” consummated. In other words, the pope really didn’t care.
But Catherine would come to care. She would very much care.
Even with the papal dispensation, there was still the money to consider, and ultimately Catherine was saved by a knight in shining armor. Literally.
Henry VIII succeeded his father when he was just shy of his 18ᵗʰ birthday. He was young, handsome, charming, musical, good on the jousting field. He was everything a Renaissance prince should be. He had ideas of his own, and he wanted Catherine.
In a world used to cynically organized marriages between royals who had never met each other, Henry chose for himself. He chose a woman he knew, and he gave every appearance of loving her. It was very romantic, and if he had stopped here, the modern world would admire him.
As you probably know, he didn’t stop there.
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