whereby she became related to Henry, Prince of Wales, in the first degree of affinity and because her marriage with Prince Arthur was solemnised according to the rites of the Catholic Church
and afterwards consummated
.
As agreed, both the English and the Spanish approached Rome for the necessary permission. Henry VII's overtures were straightforward. But Ferdinand muddied the waters by putting his own gloss on the case as outlined in the treaty. The treaty, he told his ambassador in Rome, asserted that the marriage had been consummated. The truth, Ferdinand wrote, was the opposite. He even claimed that 'it is well known in England that the Princess is still a virgin'. But, to satisfy the English, who are 'much disposed to cavil', 'it has seemed to be more prudent to provide for the case as though the marriage had been consummated'.
10
Ferdinand's argument is a
non sequitur
. If it was 'well known in England that the Princess is still a virgin', why should it have satisfied English doubts to declare that she was not? No wonder that Rome seems to have been confused about the facts of the case and hesitated accordingly.
Henry VII knew nothing about Ferdinand's manoeuvres and was therefore in the dark about the reason for the consequent delays. Soon he was fearing the worst. Did Rome, like some of his leading councillors and bishops, such as Archbishop Warham of Canterbury and Bishop Fox of Winchester, oppose the marriage as a matter of principle? Pope Julius II tried to reassure him. He admitted that he had 'somewhat delayed to dispense with the obstacles to the marriage'. But he insisted that he had acted from the best of motives, taking his time 'only from the wish to consider the case more maturely'. The letter was intended to still the English King's doubts. But it had the contrary effect of heightening them. The Pope had told Henry VII that he would hear from him by Robert Sherbourne, Dean of the Chapel Royal, who had been on Embassy in Rome. But Sherbourne began his journey home without the dispensation. The English King despaired.
11
He need not have worried – or at least, worried too much. Julius had agreed to the dispensation. But, as was frequent Papal practice with difficult decisions, he had not released the document. He would probably have continued to sit on it but for the circumstances of Isabella's poor health. Finally, as a compassionate gesture, he sent her the Brief in the autumn of 1504. Ferdinand wrote to Henry VII on 24 November to announce its arrival.
12
It was a document which had been much pondered and on which much hung. Yet it contained an extraordinary error of dating. Following the normal practice of the Papal chancery, it was dated in two ways: by the year of grace and by the year of the pontiff 's reign. But the two contradicted each other: the year of grace dating was 'the 7th of the calends of January of the year of our Lord's Incarnation 1503'—that is, in the Roman calendar, 26 December 1502; whereas 'the first year of our pontificate' of the recently elected Pope Julius II only began on 1 November 1503. It was the sort of error which had invalidated many a lesser document.
13
The Brief also contained one clause that outraged Isabella. For it stated, as a matter of fact, that Catherine's first marriage to Arthur had been consummated. But Dona Elvira had sworn the contrary! In response, no doubt, to Isabella's protests, the final, authoritative version of the dispensation, which took the form of a Bull, or Papal letters patent sealed with lead, took a very different line. Like all the best redrafting, it achieved the desired result with extraordinary economy – indeed, by the insertion of only a single word.
The Pope, the Bull began, had been informed that Catherine had 'contracted a marriage with Arthur, Prince of Wales and that this marriage had,
perhaps
, been consummated'. The word translated as 'perhaps' is
forsan
. Its root is
fors
('chance' or 'luck') and its usual meaning is indeed 'perhaps' or 'perchance'. In this usage,
forsan
expresses a strong doubt about the marriage having been consummated. But
forsan
is sometimes used to state a fact, just as in English we say 'something chanced or fortuned', when we mean 'something happened'. In which case the meaning becomes the opposite: 'this marriage happens to have been consummated'.
Was the ambiguity accidental, like the error of dating in the Brief? Or was it deliberate? In any case, it contrived to square the circle. By means of the single weasel word
forsan
the dispensation managed to contain both the English
and
the Spanish version of what had happened (or not) between Catherine and Arthur. Resolving the ambiguity, Julius might have decided, was a matter for another day and, or so perhaps he hoped, for another Pope. So it proved.
Such subtleties were by then beyond Isabella, who was on her deathbed by the time the Brief arrived. Two days later she was dead. Her death, as Ferdinand wrote to Henry VII, was 'the deepest grief that could happen to us in this world'. He had lost 'the best and most excellent wife'. Catherine had lost her mother. A new world of uncertainty had opened.
14
19. Hardtimes
H
er mother's death was a bitter personal blow for Catherine. Coincidentally, on the very day Isabella died, Catherine had written to her, anxiously enquiring about her health. 'She had', she said, 'no other hope or comfort than that which comes from knowing that her father and mother are well.'
1
But, by a cruel irony, Isabella's death also devalued Catherine's worth in the royal marriage market. This is because the union of Castile and Aragon, on which the power of Spain depended, was a purely personal one: it was created by Isabella's marriage to Ferdinand and (at least in theory) it was dissolved by her death. Catherine, the daughter of the Catholic Kings, was one of the great catches of Europe; Catherine, the daughter of the widowed Ferdinand, King once more only of the insignificant realm of Aragon, was a paltry prize. Was Ferdinand an ally worth bothering with? Was Catherine a daughter-in-law worth having? These were the questions Henry VII now pondered. Catherine reaped the bitter harvest. She quarrelled with Dona Elvira, and she grew up. She plumbed depths for which her pampered upbringing had done nothing to prepare her. And finally, and with reason, she despaired.
* * *
Before news of Isabella's death reached England, Catherine marked the Christmas festivities with an extended visit to Court. This experience of the English Court
en fête
seems, for the first time, to have awakened feelings of independence. She became aware of the contrast between the relative freedom given to an English Princess, like her sister-in-law, Mary, and the purdah-like seclusion imposed on her as a Spanish Infanta. And with the awareness came resentment. But it was quickly curbed. Invoking Henry VII's authority as well as Ferdinand's, De Puebla moved decisively to shore up Dona Elvira's control over both Catherine and her forever-quarrelling servants. De Puebla was playing his usual double game. The more strictly Dona Elvira's discipline was enforced, the more intolerable it would become and the more likely Catherine was to throw it over. But, equally clearly, De Puebla, like Henry VII, took the view that Catherine, for the time being, was not yet fit to manage her own affairs.
2
As it happened, Catherine's final rebellion against Dona Elvira was not long delayed. And this time, De Puebla played the part of her liberator. For all of them – the Princess, the duenna and the ambassador – were caught up in the great sea-change that followed Isabella's death.
* * *
As usual, family connexions and loyalties were the key to events and behaviour. Dona Elvira's brother was Don Juan Manuel, the Spanish ambassador in the Netherlands. He was a Castilian and, while Isabella lived, was one of the outstanding diplomatists of the new Spain. But, like many other Castilians, he saw Isabella's death as an opportunity to free his native land from the rule of the Aragonese Ferdinand. For Don Juan and his ilk, Ferdinand was doubly offensive, since he was both oppressive and a foreigner. He was now also vulnerable. For Isabella's heir was not Ferdinand, but the Catholic Kings' eldest surviving daughter, Juana, wife of Philip, surnamed the Fair. Philip was already Archduke of Austria through his father and Duke of Burgundy through his mother. Now he claimed to be King of Castile, Leon and Granada through his wife. If Philip could make good his claims, Spain would be fragmented and Ferdinand marginalised. Don Juan deployed all his considerable talents as an intriguer to achieve this aim.
3
Juana was besotted with her husband and was putty in his hands. Don Juan's hope was that Catherine would prove equally malleable to Dona Elvira's will. France already supported Philip's immediate claim to the Castilian succession; Don Juan's aim was to get Henry VII's backing as well. With England on his side, the encirclement of Ferdinand would be complete. Henry VII was sympathetic and in April 1505 he lent Philip £108,000 'for his next voyage unto Spain'. This was an immense sum (over five times the first instalment of Catherine's marriage portion, for example). All that remained to finalise Henry VII's investment, Don Juan felt, was to engineer a meeting between the English King and the KingArchduke, as Philip now styled himself.
4
Here Catherine came in. Through Dona Elvira, Don Juan knew that Catherine, wretched after her mother's death, was desperately anxious to see her sister, Juana, who was so tantalisingly near in the Netherlands. Why not get Catherine to write to Henry VII to suggest a meeting? At such a meeting, Catherine and Juana could exchange sweet family nothings, while Henry VII and Philip plotted the downfall of the sisters' father, Ferdinand of Aragon. Formal proposals were put to Catherine to suggest a meeting and, under the promptings of both Dona Elvira and her own heart, she eagerly agreed and on the spot wrote a letter to Henry VII 'in the most affectionate and loving terms'.
5
By pure coincidence, De Puebla was at Durham House as the plot unfolded. He, in contrast to Dona Elvira and her brother, had remained loyal to Ferdinand – and was determined to foil the scheme, which, as it happened, was developing under his nose. His first thought was to get Dona Elvira to promise to deliver the letter only through him as the accredited ambassador. Once in his hands, of course, Catherine's letter would have disappeared. Dona Elvira understood this very well and immediately despatched the letter by De Esquivel, the Master of the Hall.
De Puebla was informed. He abandoned his dinner uneaten and rushed back to see Catherine. Relations between them were poor and, despite all De Puebla's efforts on her behalf, Catherine regarded him with suspicion, even contempt. She, despite her surname 'of Aragon', was Castilian to the core and was imbued with the Castilian values of militant Catholicism. Central to these was a mistrust of converted Jews like De Puebla. De Puebla's sister had been seized by the Inquisition, and Catherine dealt with De Puebla with distaste.
Desperation gave him 'courage'. More importantly, it inspired him to hit on the single value that they shared: loyalty to Ferdinand. First swearing Catherine to secrecy (especially against Dona Elvira), he told her the whole position as he saw it. 'The interview was the work of Don Juan Manuel and Dona Elvira'. They 'intended to do injury to her royal father and to the Queen her sister [Juana] by means of it'. Nothing else would have made Catherine listen to him. And nothing else would have made her take De Puebla's side against Dona Elvira. But, with his appeal to her family loyalty, Catherine was his. She 'has an excellent heart', he reported to Ferdinand, 'and loves her father more than herself'. She immediately did what De Puebla recommended and wrote Henry VII a letter disowning her first communication as having been procured under false pretences.
6
Catherine, however, was less successful in obeying De Puebla's other injunction to keep the matter secret. Concealing her true feelings was never her strong point (though some indeed would think it a virtue). Dona Elvira had betrayed her trust and still worse (did she not 'love her father more than herself '?) had betrayed her father as well. In the face of such double treachery, she could not remain silent. There was a furious quarrel and Dona Elvira took refuge with her brother in the Netherlands under pretext of seeking treatment for her failing sight. Years later, De Esquivel remembered the 'horrible hour' when the duenna left. De Esquivel, too, as Elvira's instrument in carrying the first letter to Court, had shared in Catherine's displeasure and had been suffered to see her only three times in twenty-four months.
7
Catherine's involvement in the affairs of the King-Archduke had yet to reach its miserable climax. In September 1505, Henry VII made Philip another substantial loan (of £30,000), and in January 1506, Philip and Juana set sail to claim their Spanish kingdoms. The armada made a triumphal progress up the Channel, with guns shooting and minstrels playing. But then it was struck with terrible storms. Each of the royal couple behaved characteristically in the face of drowning. Philip showed a cool physical courage. Juana sat with her arms entwined round Philip's legs, determined not to be separated from him even in death. Refusal to let go of a husband was a trait that Catherine was to share with her sister.
But the couple did not drown. Instead, separated from the rest of the fleet, they were driven ashore at Melcombe Regis in the lee of the Isle of Portland. The Aragonese party in Philip's entourage urged him immediately to set sail again for Spain. But Philip knew that he was effectively Henry VII's prisoner and, putting a brave face on things as he had done during the storm, he sent his secretary to the English King to suggest a meeting. The interview that De Puebla and Catherine had done so much to prevent was to take place nevertheless.
8