Catherine of Aragon

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Jatkuvasti 16, joita on tullut muuta jatkuvasti 8, joita on tullut kuulut ota kärkää ja pannipalusertainoaviilijoissa. Ja puhutaan kärkää, joita on jatkuvasti 23 ja pannipalusiikaiset, joita on tullut kuulut ota kärkää. Mitä katsotaan kärkää, Aganzala Vrasku Oberengä, Läksvän globelo, Medi-Ivelun, Early Modern History, The University of Bristol, Maria Haywood, Professor of Early Modern History, The University of Southampton, and Lucy Wooden, Langford, Prof. and Tutor in History at Lincoln College, University of Oxford, and Professor of Early Modern History, at Oxford. Lucy, "I've said she was born to greatness, who were Catherine's parents, why do we use the word greatness?" Well, she had two very formidable parents, and we remember Ferdinand and Isabella as the monarchs who laid the foundation for a united Spain, who went some way to ensuring that Spain would eventually become, if you like, the early modern superpower. So Ferdinand is a king of arrogant, and in many ways, the lesser partner in this partnership. I mean, we always talk about Ferdinand and Isabella, at least we do in English textbooks, but really Isabella was, in many ways, the more important member of that duo. And Isabella and Ferdinand married when they were teenagers, and although they have this reputation for later greatness, they really had to fight to establish themselves on their respective terms, particularly Isabella, literally had to fight to establish herself as Queen of Castile. I mean, literally go to war. She literally had to go to war. She is the half-sister of the previous King of Castile, but he does have a daughter, so there's a civil war if you like, between war of succession. But they come to rule co-equal, and very successfully. What was the example that her mother, Isabella, set for Catherine? Isabella was the most extraordinary, sort of resilient female ruler. Sometimes people are surprised to find how many women were running countries in the early modern period, but Isabella is, in many ways, a sort of prime example. I mean, I've said already that she fought for the throne. She fought as well to reconquer Grenada. She took her children with her, but she's a military campaigner, who somewhere. I mean, sorry to be so literal, but that means she got an arm and together, she led it, and she herself, and she did the back. Yes, she got an horse. She rallied the troops. And she took her children with her. I mean, she managed to unite this kingdom, win back Grenada somewhere in there. She has seven children, five of whom survived adulthood. And she's also. She's not justified, she's a reformer. She is very pious. She backs reform of the church in various ways. She patronises education. You actually have a couple of women academics at Spanish universities in this period, which I think is fascinating. One of them was her Latin teacher. She was a bit ashamed that she hadn't learned Latin herself until she was an adult. But her Latin teacher then went on to teach her four daughters. Gonzalo, why, at the age of three, was she engaged with equally youthful other children? It was quite common for all your families to be children of that age. But three is also a little bit early. But it wasn't that atypical. I think the fact that England's Spain are seeking an alliance at this point in 1489. We know that Henry VII came to the throne after the Battle of Bosworth, so there's been a contested succession crisis in England throughout the Wars of the Roses, etc. And as Lucy was saying, "This has been the same for Castile. There's been a civil war." So the two dynasties in a way are relatively. I mean, the Ferdinand Isabelle synestys have been around for longer, but it still has been in a position of weakness. And I think that's one of the reasons why they're trying to strengthen both monarchies. The other great reason they have for this patrothal is a common enemy, France. France is the traditional enemy of the English and it's also the enemy of especially Ferdinand, because Ferdinand has interests in Naples and Sicilian's Northern Italy, which the French have as well. And so Ferdinand and Isabelle create this very ambitious and very powerful set of marriage alliances for all their children. And the one with England is the last of them. So they marry two of the daughters of two Portugal, two of the son and another one of the daughters with the Hampstburg Empire, which comes with Burgundy and Flunders as well, and finally Catherine and Arthur. So it's a politics of trying to not just bolster their own dynasty and their own kingdoms, but also isolating France. I mentioned Catherine's education. What was that? Lucy mentioned already the Latin tutor. Isabelle had always been very conscious that she had received quite a deficient education for princess, and she is a great patron of humanists at court. And Catherine is brought up from a very early age, like her four siblings, with some of the most advanced humanist education that you could find in Europe. Her tutor is an Italian humanist called Alessandro Gerardini. She learns law, she learns history, she learns arithmetic, she learns languages as well. So apart from her native Castilian, she can speak French, she can speak Latin, taught by Beatriz Calindo, she can speak a little bit of Greek, and of course eventually she would learn English as well, but that's further ahead in the future. Thank you, Maria. What impression did Catherine make in London when she arrived age 15 for her buddy to Arthur? She made a great impression on the public, and the court and the royal household. She came with a really, a retinue that was going to be very magnificent and splendid. She has sort of a formal procession into the city. She's greeted with pageants. This allows Henry and the city of London to present messages to her about what her perspective role might be like. But also to show off the wealth of the city, the prestige of the tutors, and her Spanish retinue around her, or also very keen to sort of present the magnificence and the might of Ferdinand and Isabella and Spain. I was just wondering quite a bit of this was to do with Spanish fashions, taking Londoners by the throat perhaps, and it's not necessarily, what were they? Yes, so Spanish fashions would have looked very different, especially women's fashions, to English eyes. We have some really interesting descriptions of her appearance from the receipt of the Lady Catherine. The things that they particularly highlight are the way that her hair is dressed and the hood that she is wearing. But more importantly, they focus on the gown or the the the saia that she's wearing. They notice it has rubick sleeves. It's heavily pleated. It's very opulently decorated, but most importantly, it has this big skirt that is held out. They refer to it as being held out with sort of essentially bands of cane. This is referring to the farthing gale, and this would have looked very unusual. English women's skirts would not held out in this way. Did you get a big reception from the London crowd? Yes. They were very excited to see her. You know, she represents that excitement about the prospect of an alliance between the tutors and between Ferdinand and Isabella. There's the excitement of a royal marriage, the sort of the continuity of the tutors. And also someone really different and exotic and exciting coming to London. Lucy, Lucy Wooding. She was suspended only five months ago, Arthur, before he died. Yes, we don't know very much because he was sent off as Prince of Wales. He was sent with his court, his household, to Ludlow. There was some debate as to whether she was old enough to go with him as his wife at that point. ittersはنيä antaa eläistä, joka lorsque tuolta on t coyntely 00:04 their children married quite young, or at least patrols quite young, they then have to be very, very careful that they don't jeopardize their childbearing potential by allowing them to begin marital relations when they're still quite immature. So there was a school of thought that said they shouldn't actually live together yet, but in the end, she did go with him. And quite what happened during their time together was of course then raked over mercilessly 20 something years later. And it is so much contested later on that it's very hard to know whose account we should trust. Catherine herself said that she shared a bed with Arthur all of seven nights in total, and that she was a maiden when she came to Henry VIII later on. There was a school of thought that said they had become more intimate than that. Yeah, it's very, very hard to tell. And of course it became such an important question later on that it's hard to know whose account to trust. Who do you trust? I think I trust Catherine. I think Catherine was a deeply religious woman. And I don't think she would have purged herself even to save her queen ship. Thank you. Gonzalo, what changed for Catherine when she was widowed? I can't. Just a few months after the wedding, she becomes a widow. She is 16. And it's the beginning of an awful period of her life. The first thing is that she's not pregnant. She's not pregnant. She claims because of the marriage that's never been consummated. So she's in some sort of limbo because she's the princess, the dowager, princess of Wales, but she has no actual function. Her mother is a beller from the beginning wants her back as soon as possible. Even if there's going to be a marriage with Prince Henry, with Arthur's brother, she wants her daughter back. And that marriage can be arranged later on when Henry grows. But there's an issue that emerges very early on about the dowry. Henry VII and Ferdinand are at loggerheads because the Henry VII needs that the dowry has to be paid in full, even if the marriage with Prince Henry that they are planning takes place. Ferdinand says that because a marriage has not been consummated, that Catherine can take control over her dowry. And Henry VII keeps his daughter in law, Catherine, in London. But she keeps complaining increasingly about a lack of proper clothing and that she doesn't have enough money to pay her servants, that her servants are all going back to Spain because she cannot afford them. And she continues to claim that Henry VII is mean, that he is treating her horribly, and not as befits an infantile of Spain and dowager, princess of Wales. She also hates very clearly the Spanish ambassador, Buerbola, she accuses him constantly of being just trying to take advantage of the situation in co-hosts with the King of England. And she is very vocal about all of this. And we see a Catherine that emerges, it is very self assertive. She bombards her father with letters telling him how he's not treating her like a father should treat his daughter. And she becomes very, very outspoken to the point that Ferdinand names her officially his ambassador in England. So one of the first, if not the first, official female ambassadors in European history. Maria, can I turn to you? What was she like to her life like when she was drifting as it were between a dead tutor and a very live tutor? We see her very much as we've heard in a degree of financial difficulty. One of the consequences of this tussle between Henry VII and Ferdinand over the dowry is that she's not entitled to dowirites. So she has a relatively limited income. Henry VII seeks to try and control where she lives as well and by bringing her back to court, he doesn't have to provide her with property. So if we come back to the sort of markers of status, she doesn't have money directly that she can use to create a position for herself. She is caught within her ex-father in laws orbit. She very much focuses on her religion, her piety becomes very important for her. There are quite a lot of anxieties that she takes, her religious observant too far. That sense of fasting and contemplation and prayer and the was concerned over the impact that that would have on her health, in particular her future fertility. And alongside that, we see her in those letters that we've heard about already complaining about the things that she doesn't have, that she should have that would help present her as an infant who's been as a previous daughter-in-law of Henry VII. In particular, she comments about the lack of linen to make underclothing key garments that any woman would have required. She is saying she doesn't have. She also is talking about having to sell her jewellery in order to be able to provide fabric to buy new gowns because Henry VII is keeping her very short of clothing. And while she may well have been using up the true so in essence that she brought with her, she ends up in the position where she has to fund her own appearance. And that's when she then comments that she's bought velvet for gowns, it's black. Other than that, she only has brocade dresses. So there's clearly an implication that she doesn't have the right wardrobe to reflect her status and that she's having to sell fun this. Lucy, why did Catherine marry Henry VII? In a rather surprising development, as soon as he becomes king, he's absolutely determined to marry her. And as to why she wanted to marry him, I suspect there's a political reason and a personal reason. We can of course only guess really at the personal reason. But she seems to have been very fond of him. And they seem to have had for the first, at least for the first 10 years of their marriage, a very warm and affectionate relationship. She had known him for some years. She'd known him since she first arrived in England. So I think they felt warmly towards one another. But politically, of course, she had a job to do. Her job was to secure the alliance that her parents had designed for her and to become queen of England. I mean, Henry at this point is still a teenager, exuberant, very athletic, very physically impressive, as he himself points out to ambassadors. He doesn't wait to be told. He tells them how beautiful he is. She is, of course, six years older. And so maybe she was also a reassuring presence. And the Tudor dynasty is young and raw and not wholly established yet on the European stage. So I think the fact that Catherine came with the grammar and sophistication and general prestige of her Spanish background, I think would also have been a reassurance to this young king. Yes, how did he feel about her? He seems to have a daughter. And he went beyond the usual kind of courtly conventions to demonstrate how much he loved her, famously when he jousts. And kings weren't necessarily supposed to joust. It was very risky business, but he's full of Shradda Fevera. And he is jousting, wearing her colors, wearing her favors, which is not the courtly love convention at all. You're not supposed to have your wife as the object of your affections. But no, for him, he is delighted to lay all his triumphs at her feet. And they make a very sweet couple actually in the early years, the way they have sort of reported us, dining together, dancing together. Henry loves to dress up. So he loves to have court masks where he comes in elaborately disguised and then throws off his disguise and everyone says, "Goodness. I would never have guessed." I mean, obviously everybody knew, but they play along. He loves to come to the queen and her ladies in disguise. And then there's a great unmasking. And she seems to respond with warmth and affection and appreciation. And it goes very well to begin with. Thank you. Gonzalo, how did Catherine conduct herself as queen? I think this seems to be this general view of her as maybe being the devout boring wife in a way. And I think that she is very, very far from that. She's also politically active, which is a very important aspect of her queenship. She keeps very strongly attached to the Spanish alliance. So she is very much an agent of Spain in England, which Henry at the beginning welcomes. And he's very happy to let himself be guided by ferdinand. He thinks very highly of Catherine's political experience. She's a great patron of humanists like the Spanish Juan Luis Vibes, but also painters, Hans Holbein, Sessana Horanbao. So she is a certain active patronage. And Henry trusts her so much that he even names her governor and captain general of England at one point in 1513. That year, 1513 is a really good indication of how much he trusts her when he goes off to France. And of course, the campaign in France is what he's been dreaming of ever since he became king. And he's had frustrations in the way. And so finally, he rides off to glory. But he trusts her to keep everything running at home. And of course, ironically almost, she is in charge at the time of the Battle of Flodden, which was arguably the most impressive, the victory over the Scottish army. The army which actually won the battle was led by Thomas Howard, Earl of Surrey. But there was a relief army, and she was leading it. Yeah, I think it's a very important moment in Catherine's life because she is advised to stay at the Tower of London and she decides that she's going to move to Warwick and that's where she starts organizing buying armors, buying supplies for the armies, sending them up north and making the decision, even though she's heavily pregnant, that if it comes to it she will go up north and that's when the news of the defeat of the of the Scots and that's when James the Fourth is the King of Scots is killed and she sends back to Henry his bloody coat but in the letter when she's sending the coat to in her letter to Henry, she also says that she would have liked to have sent him the body of the King of Scots itself but she says something like our Englishman's heart wouldn't suffer it. Yeah and she makes a joke about that because she's previously written to him saying that she and her ladies are very busy sewing banners for the campaign and so on and now she sends him the King of Scots' coat to the banner. It's an interesting sort of mixture of very feminine and domesticated themes and a very very martial. Olen Shannon Maldonado, the director of the Artisan, has been working on the work of the young and the most famous artist. Validian Shopify, when she was working in the art department, was able to help the artist. Mine mostly seemed akin to boredom news to this food. What way of giving a feast camp displays that seat and space for the Parasiten south of Vienna were found on the dashboards. We already moved on to a lunchköping game with the Horse Company, "H Clyde". Now we understand that choice-class must feel safe and sound! elevate the course of jednakition, warmly. Yes! What? Amazing performance. Firstly music. Maria, can you tell us how did she eat all this but with Scotland that's on? Maintain her Spanish identity. She did that in several ways. Partly she did it through her choices of clothing. I mentioned early on when she arrived. She was very much dressed in the Spanish style, but soon after she predominantly adopted English style of dress for women. But on occasion, she would continue to dress in the Spanish style, so for instance when she meets with Charles V, Holy Roman Emperor, equally at the field of cloth of gold, she presents and really pushes forward the Spanish agenda by actively dressing in this way when she's surrounded by the French court. So she's the sort of one beacon for Spanish interest in that event. Do you know English not think of Parasite as an agent for Spain in some way? I think in some ways they did, but potentially they might expect her to do so. She is a representative of the royal Spanish family and also the other benefits of trade with Spain. In particular, the wool trade, the wine trade, there are some real benefits. Sometimes this alliance between England and Spain can be seen to have happened in a vacuum, but it doesn't. England and Castile have had very good international relations for a very long time. It's trade, but it's also dynastic relations. The royal families of England and Spain have been intermarrying since the 13th century. Catherine is named after her great grandmother, Catherine of Lancaster, granddaughter of Edward III. So they are two countries that are very much linked. I think though Catherine begins very much as the representative of Spain, and then I think she gets a little wary because her father behaves so badly. Ferdinand is a very wily operator. I think he takes advantage of the young King Henry and his enthusiasm. There's a bit of a debacle in 1512 when an army is sent ostensibly. They're going to make more on the French together. Well, what Ferdinand actually does is leave the English army sort of stewing, distracting the French long enough for him to conquer the kingdom of Navarre, which he's had his eye on for a while. And then just to sort of add insult to injury, he says to Henry, well, you know, your troops mutinate and went home. And I think, although Catherine can't really take sides with one against the other, I think she over time does become more sympathetic to her husband and wary of her father. On that grounds, Lucy, she rebuffed Henry's attempts to end their long and arguably successful marriage. Why was that? We often refer to this as the divorce and for ease of preference, you know, that's fine. But of course, it wasn't a divorce. It was an annulment that he was seeking. So I think if he had come to her-- Well, because they haven't produced a son. They have produced Princess Mary, born in 1516. That's the only healthy child of the union who survives to adulthood. I think from Catherine's point of view, that was fine. You know, she comes from a long tradition of feisty women who have no problem with wielding authority. But from an English point of view, there has yet to be a queen rednut. The memory of the Wars of the Roses is very strong. You don't want any kind of question over the succession. So Henry is perturbed by this lack of a male heir. This is also the point at which Catherine, being that much older than him, becomes a little bit more of an issue. So there's a rather unkind comment by one of the Venetian envoys when she's about 30, saying, well, she's more ugly than not, or words to that effect. And he begins to have doubts about the religious viability of their match, because she had been married to his brother before that. But I think if he had come to her and said, "I want a divorce. I need to have a son." Maybe she could have been persuaded. You know, it was not unusual. It was not without precedent for a queen or circumstances to quietly retire to an annery. But he came and said, "Our marriage never existed. You have never been my wife. All those pregnancies, those children were illegitimate." I mean, it's an appalling thing that he said to her. And not unsurprisingly, she fought back. I agree that Henry's approach was not the best. I do think that having had a living child with Catherine's sense of royal dignity and she disrespected the continuation of her parents' project. She embodied it, her daughter embodied it. I think, especially with amblin in between, I think she would have been very, very reluctant to grant anything. And she was offered at points. You can retire and Mary will still be considered princess. She won't be made, she has given that option. But she never takes it, does she? I don't think she, I don't think it was very seriously meant. I mean, he claims in 1531 that he hasn't slept with her for seven years. So that would take us back to 1524. And there's a very significant moment in 1525, when Princess Mary is sent off as Princess of Wales, you know, with her curtains on. But his illegitimate son, Henry Fitzroy, is made Duke of Richmond. Now, Duke is a royal title, really. And the choice of Richmond is even more telling, because that was the title which Henry VII had before he came to the throne. So I think it's fairly clear in 1525 already that he is grooming his illegitimate son, potentially, to take over. Can we talk a bit more about Mary and Maria? One of Catherine's roles had been to prepare her daughter, Mary, to rule how she'd done this. Several key ways. So she plays an influential role, not the only influential role, but she plays a key role in her daughter's education. As we've heard, she had a very good education herself, as had her mother, and she really can see the value of education for all royal children, but especially for daughters that are in need for that. And it would then prepare her daughter for a similar career as she was having herself, as either as a royal bride and hopefully queen. And we see that in particular in terms of the humanist education, so she works with Hwanda Vives, as we've heard. He writes a particular book, a sort of a handbook on how to be a royal princess, and this includes guidance on education, also her religious life, her political life. So she prepares her that way, sort of intellectually and in terms of her education. But equally, I think she prepares her very much as a role model. She provides Mary. You know, Mary will look back on her mother as someone who really protected what was important, Catherine's interest in sustaining a Spanish heritage. That's something she shares and gives to Mary. You know, that Mary is seen as the Spanish tutor following on from her mother, and she looks to that Spanish marriage, while others might have guided her against Philip. So I think, you know, her mother is inspiring to her in that way. She succeeds in that answer with Mary, doesn't she? Yes, absolutely. She can look back at her mother's absolute determination, and I think you can see that same determination in Mary. I think it's interesting. I mean, Catherine could have commanded education for her daughter from almost anyone in northern Europe, or in Europe more generally, in fact. She's quite good friends with Erasmus. Erasmus writes a treatise on marriage, which she dedicates to Catherine. But it's the Spanish humanist that she chooses to draw up a plan of education. And I think that's significant. And one touch, if you look at the portraits of Mary the first, later on, She nearly always is depicted wearing the towel cross that was her mother's. And Berlin is on the scene now. Yes. Could you develop that for the listeners? And offers Henry the prospect of a younger woman, the prospect of children that he's hopeful for. And a male Arabable. An Amela Arabubble. Also she brings the prospect of a closer relationship with France. She had some of her upbringing was within the French royal context. So it would be a shift in the sort of political dynamic and the geographic dynamic. And later as things progress, then also there's the whole question of her patronage, her interests and the question of her religion. Yes. Henry does like to cast this a little bit in terms of he's he's had some kind of religious revelation. He has discovered the Bible, the book of Leviticus says you must not marry your brother's wife. Do you turn on him? He says the opposite. Unhelpfully, yes, do you turn on him? He doesn't say the opposite. But funnily enough, he does pay quite so much attention to that. And it's very much cast as I have suddenly realised this. Now we know that that was actually raised as a possible objection back in 1509 when they first got married, because Ferdinand writes in some alarm saying, "Don't know, of course this is fine, the Pope has said it's fine." So the idea that the book of Leviticus might pose a problem, it's not new, but around 1527, 1528, Henry is giving it a new spin, I think. And I think that to add to that the dispensation, and this is something that is raised both before the marriage between Catherine and Henry takes place, but also at the time of the divorce. The dispensation was double binding if you like, because it dispensed them to be able to marry, even though she had been married to Arthur previously, whether or not the marriage had been consummated. So what for Henry becomes this big issue, and all the investigations and all the witnesses that I call to talk about the night after Catherine and Arthur's wedding and what happened afterwards, from Catherine's point of view, aside from her feelings as a queen and us a woman, for her it doesn't matter because the Pope dispends this marriage, whether it had been consummated or not. Maria. Catherine's response to the situation is really interesting, it really shows that fight and determination and that intellectual interest that we've heard about from the others. You know, she engages with some of the best intellects in England and in Europe, just indeed as Henry does, but she's mustering her evidence in support of the case that we've just been hearing about, you know, that debate over which verse in the Bible should be the one that you are listening to. And you know, Catherine gets some of the greatest intellectual minds very much supporting her corner, producing publications, asserting her case, her rights. So it is a really interesting sort of intellectual tussle and she proves herself Henry's equal absolutely in that. Yeah, I think, I mean, this is a very complicated period and I think the problem is that there's basically three different debates going on at this point. There's the question of papal authority. Does the Pope have the power to dispense in this kind of thing? So, you know, a lot of the canon lawyers are sort of wrangling over that. Henry is meanwhile, you know, he's on a bit of a mission from God. So, you know, he feels that there's a religious answer to this, and one in which his authority, which he believes very strongly, is God given. And Henry always, you know, fancied himself as having quite a special relationship with God. So, you know, I think he feels that he's being called to take a stand and to assert his authority. And I think for Catherine, although she does, as you quite rightly say, have connections to these very impressive intellectuals, I think on a more human level, for her, there's also this argument that I have been your wife for 20 years, I have had all these children. How can you possibly say I'm not your wife? So, these three things all get sort of into woven. This is where Mary comes in, actually. Sometimes people think why did Catherine fight so hard? And obviously she's a woman fighting for her own dignity and her own place as queen. But I think probably the thing that motivated her more than anything else was her need to protect her daughter and her need to defend her daughter's right to the throne, because it was scandalous that it should be taken away from her like this. So, yeah, I think she fought to the end for the sake of her daughter. Yeah, I totally agree with that. And I think that that's the main motivation she has, as you say, because from her perspective, she has given Henry success. She hasn't failed at her job. She's done her job. And Mary is alive, so Henry has an air. So, despite all this conversations around people, authority and the dispensation of whether Catherine consummated her marriage with Arthur or not, I believe that there is a point when Henry asks the Pope for a dispensation to marry Amber Lin, because he has left with her sister, which is. Yeah, the irony. Yeah, exactly. the irony of this. So, he's had an affair with Mary Billin. And so, he asks the Pope, just in case, just in case it doesn't have to go to the full extremity of breaking with the Pope. He says, "Well, can I have a dispensation to marry someone who I am related to in the first degree, whether by legitimate or illegitimate means?" Which is so obviously speaking to his situation with Amber Lin. So, it's fine that he's slept with the sister, but not that Catherine was married to the brother. Was there a sense of which he was banished? It's sort of the summer of 1531 that I think is the watershed moment. And up to that point, there has been a rather kind of uneasy coexistence with her still presiding at Quarters Queen, but Amber Lin also very much part of the picture. There's even a story that they played cards together, but I think that's apocryphal. Amber Lin was very independent person, wasn't she? She took sides, which were not necessary. Those that the king wanted her to take. Yes, she too. I mean, he does seem to be drawn, at least initially, to very impressive, strong-minded women. And so, yeah, and Amber Lin was very annoyed about something. At one point, she finds out that Catherine is still making the king's shirts for him, and she's really high-rate about this. And there's also a point where he has a bit of a dispute with Catherine, and she's supposed to have said, "Well, you know, whenever you argue with the Queen, I mean, I'm paraphrasing, but whenever you argue with the Queen, she has the upper hand." So, there's two quite powerful women here fighting over this slightly unpredictable man. But in the summer of 1531, that's the point where he doesn't see Catherine again. And more, perhaps even more poignantly, where Catherine never sees Mary again. Well, John. And one of the first things that Queen Mary does when she comes to the throne in her first parliament is to get Parliament to approve that her parents' marriage had been valid from the beginning in agreement with the people ruling. So, she gets back at that, and that law is never repealed by Elizabeth or subsequently. So, you know, historically, that marriage, according to Parliament, and according to the Pope, according to the Church of England, it's a different story, perhaps, but that marriage had been valid. And I think a very touching aspect of that relationship and how much Mary saw Catherine as her model is that when Mary dies in her will, she asks to be buried with her mother in Westminster Abbey, which we know never happened, but that was her dying wish, to be re-un. because Elizabeth wouldn't fund it. So, Catherine stayed in Peterborough and Mary was buried in Westminster. Lucy, do what extended Catherine come to terms with her new reality in life? I am not sure she ever did. She insisted on being addressed as Queen, not as Princess Dauroge, which was the title Henry had forced upon her. She tries not to get her servants into trouble for this, by living quite a discreet life. She's sort of sent from one manor house to another in rather remote bits of England, where she won't command too much popular support. But I think right till the end, she went on hoping, when Mary, her daughter was ill in 1534, 1535, she asks to be allowed to nurse her daughter. Well, I think Henry, that by this point, is feeling very vindictive towards both of them, and he does not allow this. But no, I think to the end, she preserved her state as Queen. "Consolo, would bearing give this treatment on Catherine, how one relations with Spain?" It had a big bearing, because it creates a broad relationship initially. Once it is clear that Henry the Athe wants to get rid of Catherine, there is a cooling of relations between Chasifith and Henry the Athe. And that sort of an easy relationship remains as long as Catherine is alive, because Catherine is, as we heard earlier, garnering all this support from Theologians across Spain, but also other parts of Europe. Chasifith is also from a theological point of view trying to help her gather this support for her marriage. But he does put that at her disposal, but he never quite commits to invading England, or breaking fully with Henry the Athe. So that breaking never quite comes. And when Catherine dies, especially a few months later when Ambulin is executed, that's relationship starts to be mended as well. But I think going back to this very strong relationship that existed between England and Castile, but also Flanders, which was part of Chasaphith's territories, that remains very strong throughout both the reigns of Henry VIII and Chasaph V to the point of the 1543-1546, so ten years after Catherine's death, Chasaphith and Henry VIII signed two mutual treaties of mutual defence that will be enforced and to well into, well, when Elizabeth broke war with Spain. So that relationship is very important. What do you think about the letter just before her death that she wrote to Henry? It's a very moving letter. She writes with love, she writes with affection, she tells him, but that's pose a hint of steel in her tone to take care of his soul and not let the care of his body get in the way of the care of his soul, which is a very sort of delicate illusion to Ambulin she would have seen as the concubine, and that's what the Imperial Ambassador tends to go her. She asks him to sort of take care of their daughter, and then there's this really heart-breaking closing sentence where she says something like lastly, my eyes desire above all to see you. You know, it's astonishing that her last recorded expression should be of love for this man who had treated her and her child so appallingly, but nonetheless it seems like there was something there, and I don't know unless you think. No, no, I agree, and I think that that's part of her her sense of duty. She's still the queen, she's still he is the king, so she's still as a wife, she's still obedient to him. She has only been disobedient in things that weren't against God from her point of view, so she can. I think she's separating those two things, isn't she? But yeah, I've always thought. And that some people have said that maybe it's not Catherine's that letter, but every time I've read it I think, but if it's not it definitely sounds like her. Thank you again to the own number here. Nowadays Catherine's chiefly remembered as the first of the six wives of Henry VIII. What do you think about that? First and arguably most important, she is married to Henry for the longest indeed. The length of their marriage is the equivalent of Anson, of his marriages to the other five put together, so in terms of just the longevity of their marriage hugely significant, as we've heard during the course of that time she's regent. Catherine Par is also a region, but in terms of the significance of the timing, that's hugely important. She is the only of the queens who is of royal blood born to be queen, and she fulfills that role really well, and I think she sets the model for what the expectations are for those wives that come after her, and they are the ones that get past the jewels, the clothes, and everything else from her, and they get passed from queen to queen, but she is, she's the first, I think she sets the model. Well, thank you very much. Thanks to Lucy Wooding, Maria Hayward and Gonzalo Velasco Berenger. Next week it's a great Irish writer Oliver Goldsmith, author of She's Troops to Conquer, the Picker of Wakefield and the deserted village. Thank you, listening. And the in-art time podcast gets some extra time now with a few minutes of bonus material from Melbourne and his guests. Lucy, what did you not get time to say you'd like to say? This is perhaps a little bit tangential. I thought Henry VII came out of that a bit badly, and I always feel a little bit protective towards Henry VII because he gets this terrible, terrible reputation, which is largely constructed by his rather uncairying son after he's dead. And yes, I know he didn't treat Catherine well. To be fair to him, the whole Castilian and Arganese alliance had rather fallen apart when Isabella of Castile dies, and it's looking like Catherine briefly is not nearly as much of a catch as she promised to be. And of course Ferdinand is mean. Ferdinand is very mean. He doesn't support his daughter properly. Really, he should have been sending her money, but he's not going to do that. So he passes the back onto Henry, and then Henry ends up looking bad. But yeah, I think it's maybe a little bit more complicated there than we made out. Yes, we've seen it from Catherine's size, I guess. And I think she found it very hard to blame her father, but she does blame her father because she does write very strongly worded letters to tell him you're not treating me like a father, she'd treat his daughter, and especially a daughter of Spain. So she just tell him off, but I think she concentrates all that fury and frustration on Henry VII and the Spanish ambassador, Puebla, as the ones who are the ones causing him his fortunes, whereas her father is just equally to blame for them. And I think where she's complaining about the shortage of clothes. Henry VII, as you say, he sometimes has the bad reputation there as being not necessarily the sort of flamboyant dresser that he's that his son is. But actually he spends quite a lot on his own clothes and appearance, and he really appreciates the value of it. So, you know, he could have interceded, and he didn't have to provide Catherine with a huge amount, I think, to maybe offset some of the complaints that she was making in that respect. So I'm always struck too by that. There's a moment in March of 1509, where she almost seems to have lost her courage just for a brief moment because having stuck to her task, I know she was going to marry Prince Henry, she was going to fulfill the job she'd been sent to do. In March of 159, she writes home and says, "I'll come home, I'll enter the religious life." You know, a month later, Henry VII is dead, and suddenly she's on her way to being queen of England, but that extraordinary reversal just at the last minute, I think, has always struck me. Why was that reversal, do you think? I think it had just been such a long, long time. Of waiting and, you know, trying so hard. I mean, that time when, as a teenager, she is empowered to act as the Spanish ambassador. She's given a cipher, she's got to somehow work all of this out herself, and she sends off these letters in cipher. She doesn't trust herself to have got it right, so she sends off an ordinary version of the letter as well. But, you know, he had really, really asked a lot of her, and yeah, I think, you know, even the bravest soul occasionally quails. Yes, and I think that those years we really see her fight, and I think that we really, we can really understand how politically apt she was, because she will send the letter that she has, so the king of England, Henry VII, asks for a letter that she's going to write to her father about her marriage, I think the marriage with her sister, Hwana. So, she sends to her father a letter saying, "This is the letter that I showed the king, but this is the letter that I'm writing to you with my actual advice, and I don't think you should allow your daughter, Hwana, my sister, to marry the king of England." So, she does play that game really well, and I think something that those letters of that time really show as well is contrary to the perception of Catherine as a sort of dour-boring woman is that she had a sarcastic sense of humour, and it comes very clearly when she, as I've mentioned before, she hates the Spanish ambassador, but she, after several letters in which she's referred to him as inefficient and incapable and a liar, at one point, she encounters him and she writes to her father, "Your ambassador was there, efficient as ever." So, you know, and then there's a lady that she, an English lady that she dislikes, and there's a couple of letters where she mentions how poorly she dresses, but then in another letter she says, "Oh yeah, lady, come remember, Hwana, but lady whatever was there, impeccably dressed as usual, as usual." So, we see that she's not, you know, she has that sort of sarcastic sense of humour which tells us a bit more about how she was as a woman. I think it says something important, doesn't it, about what women were capable of doing in this period. You know, we talk about this as a time when there was a patriarchal system, and it's rather suggest that women had a raw end of the deal, and often they did, as Catherine's own example, shows as her poor sister, Hwana, who is shut up for 50 years in a palace in Spain and declared mad, well, it's not entirely clear that she was, but she needed to be, you know, out of the way. So, terrible things happen to these women, and yet at the same time, they are capable of so much, sort of political intervention and initiative and patronage. Yeah, and at the field of cross of gold, I mean, you see. Can you do the field of the cross of gold? Can you tell me this is what that is? Sorry, the field of the cross of gold was a kind of extraordinary international summit in 1520, when most of the English court decamped to Northern France for this great encounter with the King of France and his court, and sort of makeshift city was constructed, so tents were put up made of cross of gold, and it was very, very elaborate. There's a fabulous painting which shows you all the. the glories on display, including of course the wine fountains, which are always a very popular feature of any celebration at this point. And it's meant to herald lasting peace between these two ancient enemies. I mean, in fact, the peace lasts an uneasy 30 months, so I think it's something like that. But it is an extraordinary encounter, and there's a tension between Francis King of France and Henry VIII. There's a wrestling match begun in a very sort of bluff and good humid way, which goes a bit wrong until the Queen's intervene. A bit wrong means Henry gets defeated. Well, he gets thrown, yes, and it could have gone a little bit sort of, it could have got even more awkward. And the Queen's are very good at sort of smoothing things over, and there's also a lovely moment when they're hearing mass together, and they go to kiss the Pax Board. And that was something which was supposed to happen in order of sort of hierarchical status, and they're here at two Queen's. So they both hesitate, they both try and give precedence to the other one, and then they laugh and just kiss one another, which is a very sweet moment and also a very clever diplomatic moment at the same time. I think one of the really interesting visual sources from the rain is the woodcut celebrating their joint coronation. And they're essentially, you know, Henry and Catherine are essentially equal, aren't they? They're essentially the same size. They have the same people around them, they have the rose and the pomegranate above them. And if we look at the description, the order of the coronation, we know that she has sort of slightly less regalia, a slightly shorter service, a slightly smaller contracted version of the sort of the robes that are required. But if you look at that image, she is very much sort of presented as Henry's equal. The pomegranate always seems so sad. It was the symbol of Grenada, wasn't it? It's a Grenada apple or whatever. And we know that six-year-old Catherine was there at the ceremonial conquest of Grenada. She witnessed it, this description of the whole family there. And so she took the pomegranate as her symbol. But of course the pomegranate is meant as a symbol of fertility. And that's the thing that didn't precisely work out as it was intended. But it is re-adopted by Mary, which again there's another sadness in that symbol there, because obviously Mary and Philip didn't have children. But Mary adopts it first as so queen. And then when she marries Philip, the pomegranate stays. Sometimes it is placed in portraits of them. It is placed above in Kings Bench records. It's placed above Philip as back to that Spanish alliance. And I think that's the thing that perhaps Catherine would most want to be remembered for. She raised England's first queen regnant. And that's, you know. She's a producer of Simon. In our time with Melvin Bragg is produced by Simon Tilletson and it's a BBC studio's audio production. Hello, Greg Jenner here. I am the host of your Dead To Me from BBC Radio 4. We are the comedy show that takes history seriously and then laughs at it. And we're back for a brand new series, series 9. We're covering all sorts of things from Aristotle to the legends of King Arthur, to the history of coffee, to the reign of Catherine of Adichy of France. We are looking at the art and craft movement and the life of Sir Jonah truth. And how Cuneiform writing systems work in the Bronze Age. Loads of different stuff. It's a fantastic series. It's funny. We get great historians. We get great comedians. So if you want to listen to your Dead To Me, listen first on BBC Sounds. I'm the host of your Dead To Me, the BBC comedy show that takes history seriously. Every episode I pair up a top historian with a fantastic comedian and we have a lovely funny, fascinating chat about a different subject from world history. And in this new series we're beginning with an epic voyage through the story of Homer, the Iliad and the Odyssey. And that's with Kyle Smith-Bino joining us. And then we'll be learning about Francis Goulton and the racist, discredited pseudoscience of Eugenics with Desiree Birch. We'll meet many medieval saints in their bone boxes with Rachel Parris. So if that sounds like your sort of thing, listen to your Dead To Me wherever you get your podcast. Thank you. Bye!