Six Wives (17 page)
Authors: David Starkey
To compare this ban on jousting with the real deprivations inflicted on Catherine may seem far-fetched. But teenagers, like Henry, have little sense of proportion. He felt hard done by, just as Catherine was hard done by indeed. And the two had the same oppressor in Henry VII. Whether he knew it or not, the King was forging a common bond between his son and his son's wife-perhaps-to-be.
* * *
In the spring of 1507, however, Catherine was aware only that Prince Henry was so near and yet so far. Still worse, she suddenly realised that he might slip through her fingers entirely. She had always believed, as her father had taught her, that her marriage was a thing 'which God alone can undo'. Now her father-in-law made it brutally clear that more earthly considerations could intervene. The English King, Catherine reported to Ferdinand, 'has told her very positively that he no longer regards himself and the Prince of Wales as bound by the marriage treaty, because the marriage portion has not been paid'. Incredulous, Catherine asked De Puebla if Henry VII was indeed 'entitled by law to renounce her marriage' in the event of non-payment. De Puebla confirmed that he
was. Still disbelieving, Catherine appealed to her confessor. If the marriage was conditional, he replied, 'and the conditions [were] not fulfilled by one party, the other should renounce the whole treaty'. The final authority had spoken and the verdict was damning.
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In her panic, Catherine wrote the second letter of the day to her father, warning him that her 'marriage will come to nothing if the marriage portion be not punctually paid on the day fixed'. She also sought for a scapegoat. The real culprits, equally if differently guilty, were her father and her father-in-law. But the sixteenth-century proprieties required unjudgemental submission from a child to a parent. Catherine was nothing if not conventional. Unable, therefore, consciously to think ill of Henry VII and Ferdinand, she turned instead on the nearest object, De Puebla, and poured out the vials of her wrath on him.
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He was spineless, dishonest and far too close to Henry VII, she told her father. He was also of the wrong rank and (though the words were unspoken) of the wrong race. Let her father send a real man and real Spaniard as ambassador, 'who will dare to speak an honest word at the right time', and all would be well. Her preference was for De Ayala, who had been in England at the time of her marriage and had tried to prevent her fatal journey to Ludlow. And if not De Ayala, then Gutier Gomez de Fuensalida, Knight Commander of Membrilla, would be the next-best thing.
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Catherine, did she but know it, was nominating her own nemesis.
21. Hope and despair
T
he twenty-two-year-old Catherine was indeed growing up almost as fast as Henry. He was becoming a man in the tilt yard; she was learning to be a woman in the no less brutal school of hard knocks of Anglo-Spanish relations. There is a new worldliness in her letters. She even ventures confidently into unfemale spheres, like diplomacy itself. 'It cannot be doubted', she writes to her father
à propos
of the unspeakable De Puebla, 'that nothing contributes more towards the prosperity or adverse fortune of kingdoms than the sufficiency or incompetence of ambassadors.' Her interest was practical as well as theoretical. She had, she wrote to Ferdinand's all-powerful Secretary, Almazan, 'deciphered the last despatches without any assistance'. Now she 'wishes she were able to write in cipher' herself. Could she have the keys?
1
he twenty-two-year-old Catherine was indeed growing up almost as fast as Henry. He was becoming a man in the tilt yard; she was learning to be a woman in the no less brutal school of hard knocks of Anglo-Spanish relations. There is a new worldliness in her letters. She even ventures confidently into unfemale spheres, like diplomacy itself. 'It cannot be doubted', she writes to her father
à propos
of the unspeakable De Puebla, 'that nothing contributes more towards the prosperity or adverse fortune of kingdoms than the sufficiency or incompetence of ambassadors.' Her interest was practical as well as theoretical. She had, she wrote to Ferdinand's all-powerful Secretary, Almazan, 'deciphered the last despatches without any assistance'. Now she 'wishes she were able to write in cipher' herself. Could she have the keys?
1
* * *
Ferdinand had heard this easy authority once before from a woman. It was from his wife, Isabella. He responded in the same way. Picking up a hint from Henry VII, who had told him that he 'liked to hear [his news] from her [Catherine] better than from any other person', he decided that, in the interim before a new ambassador could be sent to England from Spain, Catherine herself should act as his envoy. She was sent credentials in form to present to Henry VII while De Puebla was instructed to share all communications with her. It would be difficult to imagine more uneasy bedfellows.
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Catherine, starved of purposeful activity as well as affection, threw herself into the new task. She presented her credentials to Henry VII. She started to write in cipher (braving, as she said, the laughter of Almazan and her father). And, above all, she learned the black arts of diplomatic deceit and double-cross.
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There was ample scope for these in her principal mission. This was to negotiate another dynastic marriage between England and Spain. The groom was to be her father-in-law, Henry VII, and the bride Catherine's own sister, Juana. The English King had been a widower since the death of Elizabeth of York in 1503, while Juana had been widowed three years later in 1506, when the King-Archduke Philip had died shortly after arriving in Spain to take possession of his wife's kingdoms. Juana was the beauty of the family and Henry VII, always susceptible to feminine charms, had been much smitten by her when he had briefly seen her at Windsor en route to Spain. That she was mad, or at least mentally unstable, counted for little. That she was young enough to be Henry VII's daughter counted for less. Nor was Catherine herself squeamish or scrupulous. Instead, she saw such a marriage simply as a device which could redress the balance of diplomatic forces between England and Spain. At the moment, these were wholly in Henry VII's favour. Ferdinand was eager for Catherine's marriage to Prince Henry; Henry VII was indifferent if not hostile. If, however, Henry VII wanted, or could be made to want, to marry Juana, then an obvious
quid pro quo
suggested itself.
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quid pro quo
suggested itself.
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Catherine, forced for so long to play a merely passive role, rejoiced in this opportunity to turn the tables. 'I bait [Henry VII] with this [the marriage with Dona Juana],' she proudly told her father. Miraculously, her own treatment improved, which she pretended to take at face value. She even pretended to be happy with De Puebla's conduct of affairs:
I dissimulate with him [her letter to Ferdinand continued] and praise all that he does. I even tell him that I am very well treated by the King, and that I am very well contented; and I say everything that I think may be useful for me with the King, because, in fact, De Puebla is the adviser of the King and I would not dare to say anything to him, except what I should wish the King to know.
Now there is nothing very reprehensible in this: 'dissimulation' is the practice of diplomats and politicians throughout the ages. But equally there is nothing very virtuous, either. To protect her own marriage, it seems, Catherine would lie with the worst. Not for nothing was she Ferdinand's daughter.
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* * *
Michaelmas 1507 came round and Ferdinand postponed the payment of Catherine's marriage portion for yet another six months. But by this time Ferdinand was back in the saddle. Fully in control in Spain, he could once more devote thought and resources to his daughter in England. The result was that on 22 February 1508 there arrived in London bills of exchange for the payment of the second instalment of Catherine's marriage portion. Ferdinand had also heeded his daughter's other suggestions. As she had begged, the bills were brought by a new ambassador. Ferdinand had even appointed one of Catherine's recommendations for the post, Fuensalida, the Knight Commander of Membrilla.
Fuensalida ran into immediate difficulties with that old bone of contention, the exact status of Catherine's trousseau. The Spanish insisted that it count towards the second instalment; the English refused. Despite his protests at Henry VII's covetousness and bad faith, Ferdinand conceded this point and in September drafts for the remaining 35,000 crowns were despatched. All should now have been plain sailing. But two other issues now threatened to shipwreck Catherine's marriage once and for all.
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The first was yet another dynastic alliance. With the death of the King-Archduke Philip and the incapacity of his widow, Juana the Mad, the heir of Castile was Charles, the eldest son of Philip and Juana and the grandson and eventual heir of Ferdinand and Isabella. Charles had been left behind in the Netherlands at the time of his parents' ill-fated voyage to Spain, and his aunt (and Catherine's sometime sister-in-law), the Archduchess Margaret acted as Regent on his behalf. But the real power in young Charles's life was his other grandfather, the brilliant but erratic Emperor Maximilian.
Henry VII and Maximilian now made common cause. Henry wanted another glorious marriage alliance for the House of Tudor; Maximilian, who was always strapped for cash despite his array of gaudy titles, wanted (as he bluntly wrote to the Archduchess Margaret) 'to get a good sum out of the King of England'. And both wanted to get at Ferdinand. The result was an agreement to marry Charles, aged eight, to Henry VII's second daughter, Mary, aged twelve. Ferdinand, whose kingdoms would supply the better half of young Charles's inheritance, was naturally put out. He ordered Fuensalida neither to agree to the marriage nor to do anything to countenance it. But nor, on the other hand, was he to veto it outright.
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All this put Catherine in a quandary. Mary's proxy wedding to Charles was fixed for December 1508. As usual, a magnificent ceremony was planned, in which Catherine was expected to play a leading role. For, despite the slights and insults, she remained, as Prince Henry's asyet-publicly-unrepudiated wife, the second-ranking woman of the English Court after Lady Margaret Beaufort, the King's mother. She was also on terms of close personal friendship with Mary herself. Nevertheless, Fuensalida, interpreting Ferdinand's instructions with his accustomed over-zealousness, forbade Catherine to take part. Catherine was torn. Normally she was all obedience to her father. But following his supposed orders in this instance would imperil her rank at the English Court, which she had fought so hard to maintain. It would put at risk one of her few friendships in England. It would even, Catherine could tell herself, contradict her father's over-riding wish that she should 'be an English woman'. As was proper in such a dilemma, conscientious Catherine consulted her confessor. His advice was clear-cut: she should take part. It was of course the advice Catherine wished to hear and she promptly followed it. She was Mary's principal attendant at the wedding ceremony in the cloth of gold-hung Presence Chamber at Richmond Palace; she dined with her in state afterwards and sat with her at the celebratory jousts. For the first time in her life, Catherine's adoptive nationality had triumphed over her native Spanishness.
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Fuensalida, who was Spanish to his backbone, was not best pleased. What made Catherine's treachery (as he saw it) worse was the fact that she had chosen to convey her decision to him via her confessor. This was to add insult to injury. For her confessor was a typical turbulent priest: he was young, footloose, attractive to women and fancy-free. His name was Fray Diego Fernandez. He was a Spanish Franciscan Observant, such as Catherine had asked her father to provide two years previously. But he was far from an official appointment. He seems to have made his own way to England (perhaps hearing of Catherine's call for members of his Order to come hither to wake up the Faith from its native torpor). He taught himself the language. And by spring 1507 he had become Catherine's confessor. Soon he had established a hold over her that exceeded even Dona Elvira's authority at its zenith. It was also a more ambiguous power. Dona Elvira had exercised the quasi-maternal control of a forceful woman over an immature girl. Fray Diego, on the other hand, was a man who had an attractive young woman kneeling adoringly at his feet. That she knelt to him as a priest was, Fuensalida felt, beside the point. Moreover, he had heard dark rumours that their relationship went beyond the merely confessional.
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Fray Diego was, in short, a bad influence on Catherine who must be removed. Fuensalida found ready allies in Catherine's Household. Catherine's Household had always been divided. But now the division lay between Catherine and the rest. Her male servants had, of course, long abandoned any hope of an English future. Some had managed to return to Spain and the remainder were anxious to do so. Similar doubts now infected the rump of five ladies-in-waiting who still attended on Catherine at Court. They had served her loyally. But they had also seen their looks begin to fade, their fine dresses wear out and the English suitors, who at first had eagerly sought their hands, withdraw as Catherine's star set. Now, they decided, they had had enough. Only one person sustained Catherine's sense of her English destiny: Fray Diego.
Leader of the opposition among Catherine's women was Francesca de Carceres. She visited Fuensalida in his lodgings in the house of Grimaldi, the Genoese banker who was handling the bills of exchange for Catherine's marriage portion. She told Fuensalida all the gossip about Fray Diego. And she caught the eye of Grimaldi himself. Catherine learned of her disloyalty and denounced her furiously. Francesca took refuge in Grimaldi's house and, deciding that a bird in the hand was worth two in the bush, accepted his offer of marriage.
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Fuensalida's disastrous intervention in Catherine's domestic affairs was enough in itself to lead to a breach between them. Still worse was his mishandling of the final stages of the negotiations for her marriage. Catherine herself had called for an ambassador who would call a spade a spade. Fuensalida prided himself on his ability to name it a bloody shovel, though he would not have used so crude a phrase. While he was ambassador in the Netherlands he had written 'these people are only docile when they're treated roughly'. Now he proceeded to apply the same maxim in England. At first, Catherine applauded the slap of firmness. But soon she understood its malign consequences. Fuensalida's relations broke down, first with the Council, and then with the King who flatly refused to see him. Not even the offer to pay the marriage portion in full assuaged English feelings. Instead, the difficulties about the trousseau were multiplied and molehills ingeniously transformed into mountains. Soon, Fuensalida persuaded himself, the mountains would fall and bury him and Catherine alike. He decided that the English, emboldened by Mary's proposed Burgundian marriage, had resolved to make war on Spain. His only thought was to get the marriage portion and Catherine herself out of the country before the storm broke.
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