Do you want even more shocking and scandalous history? Like why the Ancient Greek statues had such small manhoods? Or what went on behind closed doors in the Georgian era? We'll sign up to History Hit where you can see me discover the scandalous side of history as well as hundreds of hours of original documentaries plus new releases every week, covering everything from prehistoric Scotland to the Treaty of Versailles. Sign up to join me in locations around the world and explore the past. Just visit historyhit.com/subscribe Hello my lovely Patwixers, it's me, Kate Lister. Welcome back to Patwix, the Sheets, where we rip the knickers off history for your entertainment. But before we do, I have to tell you, this is an old podcast book about other adults, about adults, about adults, things, an adult who are a cover of a range of such a huge penitle table. I think you've got the message by now, right? Otherwise why else would you be here? Right, let's get on with it. It's 1529 and we have snuck into the back of a trial going on in London, where the crown and the church are battling it out to see if none other than Henry VIII's marriage to Catherine of Arrogon is valid in the eyes of the Catholic church. It's all very dramatic, I'm telling you. Although it has also been pretty lengthy and tedious if I'm completely honest, but it has just reached an explosive moment where Catherine has knelt in front of about "twat of the king" and "swore down" that she came to England a virgin, and she remained a virgin until she was married to him and that she's been faithful for the whole of their 20-year marriage. Go on, Catherine. And then she stormed out of the court, total mic drop herment. He can't help but feel a bit sorry for Catherine. All right, you feel a lot sorry for Catherine. I mean, God almighty. Imagine being shunned like that just for Henry's side piece, "Anne Ballin of God." But this is a breakup for the ages. And not just for Henry and Catherine, but for everybody else as well. Everyone was still living in the wreckage of this particular breakup. It did things to England, it did things to the church, it did things to Rome. It was just an absolute atom bomb of a breakup. So of course, we are going to talk about it in our little mini-series for history's worst breakups. Hello and welcome back to Betwixta Sheets, the history of sex scandal in society with me, Kate Lister. A bad breakup is a writer passage, isn't it? It would be, isn't it? Is anyone actually out there listening to this who ended up with the very first person that they fell in love with ever and has never, ever, ever had their heart broken? Maybe there's one. Maybe there's a couple of them. Oh, drop us an email. Let us know. But for 99.999% of us, you're going to have your heart broken. You're going to go through a shitty breakup at some point. And while the rest of the Western world spends February pushing cuddly toy cupids and ideas of love at you, I thought what better time to explore history's worst breakups? And why not start with the one that many consider to be the mother of all bad breakups? Henry VIII and Catherine of Arrigan. I mean, yeah, all right, your breakup might have been a little bit messy, but did it cause the dissolution of the Catholic Church in this country and piss off the Pope? No, it did not. Well, I mean, if it did, fair enough, but I haven't heard about it. And join in me today is the always magnificent author and historian, Gareth Russell. And he is going to help us get into the weeds of this horrendously bad breakup. Are you ready to stamp all over Henry's con piece? Oh no, I am. Let's do it. Hello and welcome back to the Twix. The sheet is only Gareth Russell. How are you doing? I'm very good. I am preparing hopefully to eat. I would say we're just before Christmas and we're filming this. So I'm hoping to eat 18 to 20,000 calories a day than the next two to three weeks. So I'm preparing mentally for that. So I'm grit. The last time I saw you, I think it was your book on King James, the first subtitled, "How Gay Was King James?" That's not true. It wasn't so tight. Yeah, very. But how? Kinsey level, Kinsey level. Super. That was just being published. How did all that go? That went really well. It was really lovely. And actually kind of the joy about James is that because he was King in three kingdoms and I was doing stuff in Northern Ireland, Scotland, England and Wales as well. He sort of has very different reputations as she moved through them. So it meant that every talk was different and you tweaked it depending where you were and you sort of forced a little bit more in certain lovers, etc. But yeah, I've loved doing it. And actually, I think it probably was so far in my favourite book to write, which I mean, Queen Mum set in place in James first. And it was, I loved it. So getting to talk about all that, and it was really nice. Well, we're back again to talk about another Royal. This is the first episode, a lot of many series we're doing called "History's Worst Breakups". Sure. And we did think for a while, do we have to do Henry again? Because like, it's, but you can't not. Yeah, someone's like, let's do like the worst, I don't know, holidays in history. You're like, let's leave out the Titanic. Like I get it. It's me. It would be weird not to mention it. So we're going to get you on because, well, because I love talking to you. And also because you always have fantastically interesting takes on these things. So we've got to talk about Henry VIII and Catherine of Arrogon because not only was it spectacularly ugly just on a personal level, but we're still living with the ramifications of this breakup today, right? Totally. And I think, I mean, obviously he has two terrible breakups of wives two and five. But what's interesting with the breakup with white number one with Catherine of Arrogon is that it takes down a lot of their mutual friends as well. It kind of just, there's not, it's not an easy breakup on the wider circle. So yeah, and I think those victims are the first people who live with the consequences and still today. I mean, you know, anywhere England, Wales, or Ireland that Henry ruled over the consequences of what happened between him and Catherine are still being felt. So something that is often forgotten in this particular story is that in the beginning when Henry met Catherine and Catherine met Henry, they seem to have really quite fancy each other and loved each other. Yeah, they definitely fancy each other. I mean, I think, and I think, yeah, as much as he was capable of love, I think we'll get to that. You know, I think to quote the current King, like whatever love means, I think Henry could sort of grapple with it. But, you know, he was really good looking. She was five years older, considered very beautiful sort of this petite, blonde, very elegant, and charismatic, I think as well. I'm very clever, which I think later in his eyes, counts against her. There's some, I think, rose-tinting that we do with early on their marriage. It's like when your friends break up and they were so happy, everything was perfect. You're like, actually, no, I'm, were they, do you remember that party? Yeah, because I remember. That's good point. There's always one friend, but they're wine in the corner. He's like, no, they weren't. What are you talking about? I was getting re-entered. Henry, answer them in the middle. That's two a.m. Come on. This is why no one comes to you for advice, dude. (laughing) So, yeah, I mean, he definitely, I think, felt very strongly for her and vice versa. But, some of the evidence that's ruled out, like him, juicing as Sir Loyal Heart. He, there's a big juice where he dresses as Sir Loyal Heart and he wears Catherine's colors. It's usually trotted out as what a grand gesture this was for her. But what's never mentioned is that he was one of six and they all were given names like that and they all had to wear a lady of the court's colors so he picked his wife. So, it's not quite as romantic and he does, I mean, it seems like he cheats in her within a year. But, it is early modern arranged marriages. Let's set the bar low and definitely for the first, like, let's say, five, six, seven years. It's a pretty happy marriage. What is particularly weird about this one? It gets very weird later on is that she was married to his brother, first of all. Yes, yep. That is a very odd situation. Even amongst royalty, that's got to be addressed. Can you give us a sort of the low down on what was happening there? And I'm really interested to know your opinion on what was happening or not happening there. Yeah, that's a great question. I think that, yeah, it is very weird. Even by the standards of the early 16th century and within arranged marriages and royalty, it's unusual enough that there's serious pushback. They have to apply to the Pope for dispensation. And there are what's often forgotten is that some of the people who litter will become massive fans of Catherine as queen are the people preaching against it. So, you have the Archbishop of Canterbury actually preach a sermon saying, this is, this is incest, not biological incest, but within the canon law of the church. This is, and there's a lot made later of dead Arthur, Henry's, brother and Catherine do the deed in their six month marriage or didn't they? And sometimes I get, like, I've been at Q&A and we were like, what happened as it wasn't there? So, we just don't know, it's just this great big. No. And it is really crucial because they weren't married for that long. What did he die of? What did he just. So, there's different, again, he dies, that he dies.
he's still in his mid teens when he dies. And there's different theories. So one of them is tuberculosis, another is cancer. There is a third theory that kind of I think has legs, which is that where they were when he died, and Arthur and Catherine, excuse me, the plague is rampant and she catches it and nearly dies and he does die. So I wonder, is there something else that the plague usher's on or is it the sweat that ticks him out? So I have this, I mean, this is really speculative, but I, Catherine really clings later to nothing we did not consummate it, but there does seem to be fairly widespread conclusions in the English court when our father-in-law's alive that it was consummate it. And I kind of wonder, is it an element of Arthur thinks, like what is sex? If this is your first time doing it, you're not very sexually experienced, you know nothing about it. Does something happen that Arthur thinks is a conscious consummation and then later when Catherine is fully married and she knows what sex actually is. So it could be that, but ultimately we just, was Catherine lying with someone else lying, we don't know, but certainly initially, that's not really the big issue. It becomes the issue later, but the issue for a lot of very pious people is, you know, if you look at the way they even refer to in-laws at the time, it's quite rare to say in-law. It's very rare. They don't say step sister, they don't say in-law, they just say your sister, your father, your mother, they use the terms of biological intimacy once you marry into your family. And so for some people, like the Archbishop of Counter-Bree, this is essentially Henry marrying his sister. - Yeah. - And that's why the Pope needs to get involved and does issue the dispensation. And it will all come back to this. It will all come back to two very contested verses in the Bible and whether or not the marriage with Arthur and Catherine was consummated and therefore did it or did it not count as a full marriage. - So Arthur, dead and gone, God rest his wee bum, only a little teenage or a little RIP, very sorry about that and all that. Why do you think then Henry wanted to marry Catherine? Because he was super eligible at this point. He was tall, he's sporty, he's a fucking king. But women must have just been flinging their bloomers at him. - Why Catherine? - So I mean, there is another one in the running actually. His father, well, there's a version that's put out which is that on his deathbed, his father, Henry the seventh, feels bad for not arranging the marriage as promised for Arthur's widow and asks Henry the epitome to do the right thing and marry her. And dubious about that, it seems a bit like James, the first saying, "Oh Elizabeth said me on her deathbed to succeed her, deathbed, "testimonials are always pretty dicey." It's like when someone starts telling you what was wrong with their ex right after a breakup, you're like this chronologically suspect. - Yeah. - His father at one point had considered marrying him to Archstuch as Eleanor of Austria and I sometimes, I think there are two things. Possibly I think Henry really wanted a wife. He might have been horny, he might have really wanted to, otherwise I think actually he really just wanted Camelot needed a queen. And also, I think it's sometimes the most obvious thing, which is the obvious he knew her and I have to assume he felt very strongly for her. He does have from all of his life this abhorrence of marrying somebody hasn't seen. - Oh, that's interesting, yeah, better the devil you know. - Yeah, I think so. I mean, one of the things that goes so spectacularly wrong with his fourth marriage, but he hadn't seen Eleanor or he knew Catherine, he'd known her for, I think at this stage about seven years. - She's right there. - Yeah, exactly, she's right there. So it kind of ticks all the boxes. And also she, she has comported herself with a great deal of dignity during the seven years of her widowhood, her father and her father and law had both kind of abandoned her. And she represents a great alliance in Europe. Now, the implosion of that alliance will be one of the things that weakens her position and her husband's side, but in 1509, she is golden, personally and politically for him, I think. - I can understand that. And she's been in sort of like a weird political limbo because she marries Arthur, Arthur dies and then all of a sudden Henry the seventh dies. And then very quickly Henry, oh my god, now it's Henry the eighth. And she's kind of left in this like political limbo of like, well, I was the king's wife and now I'm not, what's going on here? - And actually when, you know, she's still being referred to as the larger princess of wheels, which she is, but no one's paying her any money. I mean, there's always a sick as well, when people will say like Catherine was in poverty and you're like, she was in gentile, like, let's be a, yeah, she wasn't using the food bank. - So like, she had to sell some of her golden plate to play her servant's wages on a flat, not poverty. That's embarrassing for her. And I'm sure, you know, emotionally quite distressing, but there was a choice to cut down the staff numbers or keep the gold plate. Those are not choices anyone would be out. But she is certainly very unhappy. She also, I think, Jiles Tramlett, who's written a good biography of her about 10 years ago. There's indicators that she mentally does not cope very well and that she might have had something that we would now recognize as an eating disorder. So she's not eating. She's fasting quite obsessively from a religious perspective to the point that one that the Pope does have to write to her and tell her it ease off. - Wow. - Okay. - Yeah. When the Pope says you're being a bit too much, it you probably have-- - Yeah, that's a warning sign. That one, isn't it? If he even needs saying like, you're a bit extreme now to be honest. - Yeah, it's like, this was years ago. I remember being out sort of for Christmas drinks with friends and I made it who was like sort of quite the rugby boy turned one of her for other friends and that's quite a lot you've had to drink. I was like, he said that. I was like, find a sponsor and get out. Catherine feels things very, very strongly. There's never kind of a five on her emotional scale. And so there's very good evidence that actually she finds those seven years immensely difficult to deal with. And she in particular finds being ambiguous status is something that she does not handle very well. She likes to know her place in the world which is understandable. - That is understandable. So it gets when Henry became king and went, actually, oh, Maria, that must have just been music to her ears. - 100%. In terms of passionate love letters between them, they don't exist. Although you could argue maybe they didn't need to be because they didn't stand that much time apart. I think she feels very strongly for him. They knew each other. She wouldn't have seen that much of him in the countdown to the wedding. So I think there, when his father was still alive, I think she definitely felt for him, certainly. And I don't think she was lying when she said that she looked back on those days as we were 15 and I up until about 1514 as we were the happiest of her life. - Oh, bless her. - Oh, that kind of sweet. So they get married and when they do get married, is the public with them or is there this sense of like, oh, God, did your brother behave? Or is that kind of God? - They seem to be with them. - Okay. - It's concerned among some of the church hierarchies. They're like, - Hate is gonna hate. - Yeah, exactly. They were like, we, and then I think what's interesting, this is so speculative from my part, but it's the slightly older generation that are like, ah, and I wonder is that them being like, you're too young to remember this, but Richard III, Elizabeth Woodville, Edward IV, if there's any room for ambiguity in a wedding, like, however, like, for elementary it is, someone will find it. - Okay. - So maybe that's a thorn prick from the Wars of the Roses that's causing part of it that they want this to be watertight. But the public do like her, particularly in London, with Catherine's story, you'll hear things like, she was beloved by the people of England like they didn't know who she was. They knew her name. - It doesn't sound like us to live a Spanish queen. - Well, also, I mean, that doesn't sound like something we'd do. - No, but I think the other thing is, it's so hard for us today with how the monarchy functions to imagine not knowing what they look like. - Yeah, yeah. - We'll spot, like, there's, you know, clips of Elizabeth the second and her mum, like, getting really excited at the races and joking with each other. Like, that creates a certain sense of knowledge. There aren't even standardized portraits of the queen being sent out in 1509. So, if you're in Wales or if you're in the North, if you are not in an area where she and Henry are regularly visiting, they are a name in a prayer book. - Yeah, they're gonna mean nothing to you. Are they really? - No, no, no, no. - To be completely honest. - Exactly. They might mean as much as an angel does, which is that you respect them, and you don't see them, and they don't have any impact that you can see day to day. And Henry and Catherine don't go North. They stay very much in the South. I would always say, "Trim it to she's very popular in London." - Yeah, that's fair. That's fair. So I often think about that. If you were just a regular, just a farmer, just in the Yorkshire area, just how much of this stuff did you even know was going on? Were you even aware of quite frankly? - No, when you're one day in 1533, you'll go to church and it'll be Queen Anne, not Queen Catherine. And you'll think, "Well, there must be a good reason for it." - Yeah, and it's nothing to do with me. That's probably what you think. I'll be back with Garret after the short break. (upbeat music) (upbeat music) - So they get married. She must have been relieved. The public in London seemed to be broadly like, "Yeah, Henry seems to be. "
delighted, but as you say, I think a real key to understanding Henry's character as much as I can figure it out, is that he was raised on tales of chivalry and romance and King Arthur's table, and you alluded to earlier that he wanted a queen for his camelot. Yes, I mean, he very much, I mean, there's even theories later on with Ann Bolin being accused with Henry Norris that this is him trying to create Gwynnevere and Lumslot. I mean, it's. Yeah. And then the sword is used. Anyway, there is a kind of Arthurian obsession there. And it's widespread. It's not just him, but he very much has this idea of himself as a neo-Arthurian K. And it initially helps Catherine, and then I think undermines her. So Henry is incredibly enthusiastic, but not overly experienced, which is, you know, King but dim. And her Catherine's father, if his lips are moving, he's probably lying. And so he says to Henry, you know, they're going to do the alliance that she represents. They're going to invade France and the Habsburg Emperor, Maximilian, also quite keen on the old duplicity. They're all going to invade France together. They will back one another and they will meet in Paris and Henry the 8 will be able to finish what Henry the 5th started and take back the Plantagenet Empire for himself. Ferdinand and Maximilian have no intention of doing this. The idea of marching the Spanish armies, the length of France's nonsense, all they want to do is rob France a bit where Henry thinks he's going to get the house. And they use the English to distract the French for long enough for them to get what they want and then they abandon Henry. And that is about 1513, 1514, so four to five years into the marriage. And that's the first time that you see Catherine's position start to wobble because the alliance that she represents has actually humiliated her husband on the international stage. Ah, okay. Because Henry went rushing in. As all young men, young and an inexperienced man have done all throughout history when it comes to warfare, which is that this is Jolly Japs. We're all going to go and be heroes. We'll save the day. Everyone keeps their promises and everybody's on-rubble. Yeah, nonsense. And I think that there's some suggestion that should Catherine not have warned him, you can't trust my father. But I think it is worth remembering that she hadn't seen her father in a dozen years or so and hope springs eternal in some children that maybe it's time. They'll not be a colossal dick. But you know, that's what Ferdinand was. And you learn these things. I think, yes, sorry, go ahead. You're absolutely right. So the Spanish, they've kind of shafted Henry. Yeah. We're not keeping their promises, which to a young naive who Ray Henry must have been like, but they promised and then all Henry. How'd you say you'd be there? I was there. I was there. We're all supposed to be honorable. Oh, Henry Henry Henry Henry. So it's gone a bit wobbly. Yeah. Okay. We've got any records of the time of how that impacted Henry. Well, initially she is in a doubly tricky situation because when he invades France during this war, she is left in control of the government in England as regent. And France has a very long standing alliance with Scotland, so King James IV invades England from the north to sort of help the French. And to date, James IV's army is still the largest foreign army to invade English soil. It's massive. And Catherine sends one of the hordes, they are at the age of the Arle of Surrey north with an army to defeat James IV. And he does. He obliterates the Scottish army. And it's an enormous victory. James IV is killed. There's pretty much not a family in the Scottish aristocracy. It's not bereaved. It's in a from an English perspective, a bloody but thorough victory. And there are two things. One, I think, relevant at the time, the other later that this shows about Catherine. The first is she seems to be in her levers a little bit aware that her victory over Scotland has actually been more militarily impressive than her husband's campaign in France. And she seems a bit worried that this might rub salt in the wound so she's trying to talk it down. The second thing is that it reveals a side of Catherine's personality that never gets any attention, which is ruthless and not that and actually unnecessarily unpleasant. So sometimes, I know you're not supposed to compare this to why, so we should stop. But it does sometimes seem as if there's a standard of Catherine of Argonne that just isn't applied to the rest of them. So you'll hear people saying, you know, Ambulin was really mean to her stepdaughter. And you're like, granted, she's not winning step mommy of the year. But do we think that was as bad as Catherine wanting to use her dead Scottish brother-in-law's corpse as a victory pinata? Because I think there are questions here. So when James IV is killed, despite the fact he's married to Henry's sister Catherine wants to have him essentially taxi-darmied and sent us a present to Henry in France. Asa, Talla, here's what I made earlier. And people when I have said this actually was an extremely unpleasant thing for how to do, people will say it was just the standard at the time. No, it wasn't because according to Catherine's own letters to Henry, she had to be talked out of it by some of the men who'd gone north and killed them. So when you have the hard saying, do you know what, this actually seems like backrat-crazy. And maybe we just bury the corpse, mom. Some people just aren't good at sending gifts, though. Are they? So it's just, it's a skill. It's a skill. It's a skill. What's all? It's unique. So handmade. It's handmade. And it has a really long shelf life. You will get it's for life, not just for Christmas, you know. Oh my God, because you've imagined Henry does some posts. Just for you. It's just awesome. You've got a nice thing actually. Customs have a couple of questions about this one. So she and she- What a bad bitch. Fuck it up. Yeah, well, and she jokes in her letters, she admits that her contemporaries like hardened warriors in England have to talk her out of it. And she says our English men's hearts would not suffer this. So she, as a compromise, she lets them give James the fourth body a Christian burial, that she keeps his slashed blood-stained jacket that he died in. And she sends that as a gift to Henry. And she says you can see what a good housewife I am in saving us money because you can use this instead of new military banners. Yeah, that's men. So it's that's that's that's out there, isn't it? That's ruthless. Yeah. Let him be better. Like let again, it's also not super Christian. Like let him be buried. And again, when you have like people who survived the wars, the roses going, God, that seems a bit harsh. [laughs] Even it's like, it's like when Duff McKiegan was thrown out of guns and roses for being too much. It's like that is- [laughs] That's something else I- [laughs] Exactly. So I think it does reveal the issue of her brother-in-laws taxidermine corpse does reveal two things. This is that she is aware that her husband is prickly, yeah, but what has happened. The second is that there is a streak in Catherine that is mad as a bag of counts. I would say like there's just, there is definitely, there's a ruthlessness in Catherine. I don't think that's a lot of attention. When do we start to see wobbles in the marriage? I mean, if the taxidermine body of your brother-in-law arriving by FedEx wouldn't do it, is Henry having lots of the first? One of the things I found quite surprising about him is that he's not quite the wetching, hawing womanizer that often- Yeah. that you often think he is. There's very few names that survive. There's definitely indicators that it starts quite early and allegedly he tries to or does boink the jook of Buckingham's sister. This is the affair that Catherine objects to quite early on and tries to have the lady banished from court. She's actually backed by the jook of Buckingham who thinks this is an insult to the family's honor of what Henry has tried to do. Yeah, but Henry retellates by dismissing one of Catherine's ladies and women as a sort of warning shot over the body and Catherine does not do it again. Yeah, there's a long standing tradition that he has an affair with Mary Bellyn. I am slightly on the fence about if that actually happened. Interesting. We had Estelle Peronc on a couple of episodes ago and that was her take. Yeah. She's not convinced. She's not convinced either. I'm not convinced either because I made a slightly- I do- I had to talk to Estelle actually, because I am not convinced either. You could team up on this one. Yeah, absolutely. Like, let's go to Bunk. You want the debrief. Yeah. So it's just that the evidence is so, so slender when you actually look at it, you're talking like three lines. And I did make the snippy comment in my book on James the first and said like on the basis of three lines, Mary Bellyn has accepted his Henry's mistress, but on the pages of dozens of erotic paragraphs, we still have to say they might just have been friends with James and his beefy lovers. So Mary Bellyn's a question mark, I think, but there is pretty decent evidence that Elizabeth Blunt who bears his bastard son is not the only one. Okay. That there are- I don't think he's quite the wensher that we think, but I think there is recreational wenshing with names that haven't survived. One of the slightly trickier parts of this is that there are two very conflicting pieces of evidence about Catherine's response to this. One is not so much to her credit and one is. So the one that's not so much to her credit is that Catherine's often priors for looking the other way when Henry sort of came sniffing.
around her ladies and women for lovers. But the flip side of that is that she essentially left these young women completely defenseless and prioritized making her own life easier than maybe sending them away from court, getting them married, like she, the less pleasant side of that is actually she's kind of leaving these young women defenseless. The second part, however, there's a long tradition that contradicts this. It could preserve a pretty accurate oral tradition. We don't know, but I'll throw it out there in Catherine's defense, which is that for a long time, there has been a suggestion that she actually backed Ann Bolin leaving court when Henry started sniffing around her and Ann was quite uncomfortable and wanted to go and the black to Heaver and Catherine let her. So is it possible that that is a preserving and accurate oral tradition? And because it sort of turns up not that long after and does it then indicate that actually she might have been that subtle with other young women beforehand and us saying that she didn't help them is just that she was very good at covering her tracks and theirs. So there definitely are affairs. I tend to think Catherine probably, I don't think she was sort of abandoning them, but there's no, we don't know one way or the other. Certainly after the Duke of Buckingham sister, she's not publicly rocking the boat anymore whether she's subtly steering it another way who knows. So Ann enter stage rights Ann Bolin and I guess what I'm just guessing here, but I suppose maybe Catherine looks at her in thought, she'll come and go like all the others that she's in a situation that it's slightly embarrassing, but what are you gonna do? I've got a crown, you know, crack on. I wonder how bad she started to realize that this is more than that. I think initially we sort of forget Ann has brought back from France to marry her Irish cousin James Butler and sort of resolve an erledum dispute between the two sides of the family. So as far as Catherine is concerned, Ann will be blank and you miss her because the plan is for her to become the next contest of Ormond and she'll start dividing her time between Ireland and England. That obviously doesn't happen. And if it's true that asked Catherine's permission to leave court which she actually would have had to do and Catherine gave her permission, maybe Catherine's also under the impression Ann is not that keen. And I believe Ann wasn't at the start. I think if you go to Heaver today, it's not even uneasy, it's like go through those roads, it's a long drive. She wasn't retreating somewhere to make him more coy, she wasn't a clairvoyant, she actually was leaving and she knew that Henry wouldn't be able to follow her and that letters would take a day or two to get through. So I think initially both Catherine and Ann think that this is the whim of the moment. And then bits, you know, Ann Bollin is one of those people in history, Eleanor of Aquatains, another one that just has, you can't, you don't know what it was, but it's the unquantifiable part of charm or charisma. It's something that they had. - And Henry talks. - Kids call it. - Yeah, she has the res. And I think for Henry, it becomes an obsession. And I've never really, I mean, I have to respect all different historical opinions. I do throw up a little bit of my own mouth when people call Henry and Ann a love affair. I'm like, it's history's most elegant red flag, but let's be clear, that's what it is. Please, obsessed with her. - It's restraining our territory, really, isn't it? - A hundred percent. And it's, you know, she is ambitious and it's not true that the great families of the aristocracy welcome discarded royal mistresses into their weddings. They don't, they do not want to marry them. So if her previous sitters have been the future are a love orment in Ireland and the future are a love of Northumberland in England, she can kiss goodbye to being a contest or more if this happens. So Henry's really playing Russian rel out with her future and we don't know at what point he goes over completely and proposes marriage to her. She does seem to hesitate. - All the white things like this. - Yeah, it's like, yeah, it's a big risk. - This was, like, you know, now we talk about divorce and every day thing and even royal divorces, they're like all right, then crack on with it. But like the idea at this point that the king is going to divorce his wife and marry somebody else. Like that is, it's, you know, it's like Brexit, but you know, turned up to a million, it's, it's deranged. - It's just something that no one ever expects coming at a sea coming and I think also there are memories of Elizabeth Woodville, Edward Henry's grandmother and how tricky her position had been because she was English and it offended the other great families. I think Anne is very aware that there will be odds stacked against her, but we sometimes make Anne a very modern woman and I think we have to put her back into how religious the time was. God has picked her and this is so improbable that actually you must see the hand of God in these things. And it's interesting that she becomes fascinated by the biblical story of Esther and in the Bible Esther is a noble-hearted woman born within the empire. She's Jewish, but she's born within the remit of the empire and the king in the Bible divorces his first wife, Vashdi, in order to marry Esther and that's God's will. So I think Anne is very much kind of starting to see herself in this providentialist mindset and there is a Venetian diplomat who knows her. He says she is completely convinced that this is God's will. So you have two women going in being actually essentially flung into battle against each other by Henry the 8th, but they both believe that their victory is the will of God. I mean, I just try and think like what on earth must Catherine have been thinking at this point? She does not go quietly though, we'd have to give her that. She is not like, I mean, we're talking like fingernails being left in the door frames here. She is not. I would have packed this in a long time ago personally. I think I would have. - I'd have asked leaves myself. - Yeah, right. Give me a castle, give me a loaded jewelry and you just privileged irrelevance. Bring it up. - Darling, you do the paperwork and I'll see you at us God. Like I will be doing nothing. For the rest of my life, I will be maybe one week. I'll be learning how to cook next. We're working at my posture. I will be doing nothing. - Yeah, I'll just commit myself to getting gold and British airways or something. - I'll be fine. - That's the thing we have to factor into this though, that you and I really wouldn't care much about, but she did. Is this is humiliation on a global stage? - Yes. - This is like the king is gonna try and divorce you. I don't know how many kings have even divorced before this point around the world. Like this, so he's gonna experiment on you now. And he's gonna divorce you for some bitch ass lady in waiting who, you know, has got some French tricks up a sleeve and also there's the religion thing. So she genuinely thinks that she's upsetting God. - Yes, she, both of them, I think once you start to factor in and I think the longer it goes on for both Catherine and Anne, there is obviously the Christian, particularly at the time, that the teaching, that suffering and enduring is something that is a test of faith and a test, they both, the longer this drags on it, drags on for seven years. - Oh, it's awful. - Both of them start to really see that they are being tested and that that is what they must hold the fear. And so for Catherine, so initially Henry, I'll blame Henry for this in a different way because he approaches the Vatican. And the annulment argument he has is one that the Pope is almost guaranteed to find tricky, which is that Henry says, "It was never within the remit of the Vatican to provide a dispensation for me to marry my brother's widow." And for the Pope, that's sort of you're asking him to, first of all, cancel a previous Pope's dispensation. - Don't like tricky. - They don't like doing that. And also you're asking him to permanently curtail the power of his own office. And are there other marriages of less famous people that have been granted the same dispensation and will therefore become invalid the length and breadth of Europe because of this argument? - And people in fallibility. - Yeah, the whole, the whole, the whole-- - I mean God was wrong. - Yeah, it means that the interpretation of scripture, and also by this point Protestantism has started. So the Vatican's interpretation of scripture are something that is a guideline, but not an absolute, is something that Protestantism is pushing hard against. So they don't want to yield an inch on their scriptural analysis at all. And then you have the fact that Catherine's nephew is the Habsburg Emperor Charles V, who controls much of Italy. And so Catherine, basically he moves his army into Rome and the Pope is even less inclined to offend the Emperor by divorcing his aunt. But initially there is an option that Catherine could have taken. And they're going to offer an annulment, but they're going to offer it with something that's, by this point, established Christian tradition, which is the good faith clause, which is the marriage will be declared to have been, uh, chronically, religiously invalid. But you and the people involved that didn't know that at the time, so any children born from it will remain legitimate. - Some good, small print there, and there. - Wow. - Yeah, exactly. she has
by the time the start she has an 11 year old daughter princess Mary and this deal would have allowed Mary. Yeah. Mary would have stayed in the line of succession and she would have stayed legitimate. Had Catherine taken the deal and Catherine says no, they tried to encourage her to do what Louis XI's first wife had done and go into a convent in Catherine's room. Dirt again I think possibly because she thinks she doesn't have a vocation and it would be spiritually dishonest. There is a lot of criticism from some scholars of Catherine not taking that early deal partly because of what it condemned her daughter to and there's some pretty questionable advice the Catherine will later give Mary which is essentially I that she would rather see Mary's head on the block than negotiate on this. So you're saying a whiff of that James the fourth corpse rithlessness again and I don't understand why she didn't know but like the last two years when I was working at the university I was chair of the lecturers union and you'd see it all the time somebody had been fucked over by the system badly and they were being treated badly and because they knew that they were right and they knew that they were being treated badly they wanted to take it to the absolute end to degree they were going to go to court and no amount of you saying I think you should take the deal on the table I know that you're right but this isn't the way the system works right would convince them to do it because they knew that they were right and just too often you saw that fall because the power blocks that are in place are always going to be rigged against them. See that's where I think that to me is what happens with Catherine and I can I can understand particularly some people who look at the social and psychological toll it takes in her daughter I get that but I can't help but feel that this is just someone who is justified in feeling that she is being screwed over and this isn't fair and also again this is what Henry will do with his second wife and his fourth wife which is that he will gynecologically humiliate them it's always sex life with them and so it's not enough for Henry to say listen the marriage contravened Leviticus in the Old Testament he goes after this barchet claim that the verse in Leviticus that says you should not marry your brother's widow and if you do you will be childless that it actually means sunless which now you have people who are criticized the marriage at the start coming to defend it and say that's not what it means. I never liked her anyway. Yeah and exactly like do you know what actually we got you here it doesn't mean it doesn't mean sunless and also they did have a sun he died after six weeks he was baptized so the church considers him a fully living communicant member of the church so even if it had meant sunless it doesn't apply and also as pretty much every Christian who knows the Bible will tell you the Levitical laws don't apply after the ministry of Christ he says they're done which is why Christians aren't kosher like that's there's just there's that's you know so from a sort of exegentical perspective Henry's argument is insane there are there so few people willing to bat for him on this and he then goes further and he insists that Catherine must have been lying and that because the marriage between her and Arthur had been fully consummated it's a full marriage and that's why the marriage has been cursed and so essentially what Henry is doing is he is raking up the multiple miscarriages she's had and saying they were her fault for lying he's also playing sort of cotton pierced with a book that is you know it's not is at the center of the faith that she is very devoted to so as both devout Christian and honorable woman he is firing at the very core of her belief he makes it apart from that brief window with the early deal and the good faith clause he makes it impossible for her to climb dying without essentially yes humiliating herself in her entire life to to everyone she owes I'll be back with Gareth after this short break we get to this he's going to break with the church that he's actually going to undo the very faith that she believes in the fabric of society this has gone way beyond just a personal thing now there's no way she's going to back down after that there's just it's not going to happen she'll go to the wall with it yes there are some this is really sort of mid 20th century but very hard the hard-lying Catholic historians who did criticize her and said that the minute it became clear that he was being he was being swayed by Protestant sympathizers she should have martyred herself for the cause and accepted that the church is greater than any one story which again I can understand that I think if you're looking at the long history of how many Catholics would end up dying because of this in the 1530s I get I get it but from a Christian perspective you're not really supposed to start lying because the world has rotten around you you're supposed to die for the truth if it's forced upon you and also she believes in her and she must have believed in her very soul that she was right and that will that will take you to it like she's not going to concede that that she wasn't to write I thought until the pope rules against her which he will not do she's not going to back down and there's also an element where you start to see the suffering weaves itself into her in a way there's there's I haven't I've only seen bits of it online but there's a German musical about CC Franz Jose's wife Elizabeth and the narrator is death and she's with waltzes with death the whole way through and it becomes a companion it's all about how I actually quite danger how suffering is quite dangerous because it can become your your companion and it's suffering dealt like humiliation becomes Catherine's companion she can't the longer goes on the harder it is to back down from for on every level and she starts to see careers being destroyed because of this and to her I think to be honest fair enough it's her husband's fault and the devil has got to him one way or the other and she look there is there's still an element of the of claiming poverty as she had after her first widowhood where actually it's just a slightly smaller palace and a reduced entourage it's not poverty but she is lonely and she is humiliated and she's heartbroken and I say all of those things to sort of build her up a bit because lonely humiliated and heartbroken is usually when people's strength starts to give way at Catherine's doesn't she is we often talk away Ann Bolin holding the course for seven years and she does she's tough as nails to but so's Catherine so she sees the ship as sinking and thinks sort of as it's captain well I'm going to go down with it then that's what that's what will happen and that is what happens I mean she I would have tapped out a long time ago but it's one of those things of like it becomes like this moral arms race and the more extreme it gets the more there is to lose the less likely she's going to let go of this but obviously it does we know the way that it goes Henry rips the the church part found founds his own marie's ambolin and what happens to Catherine after all that because like she never accepts it does she she never squares herself with this or attempts to go look all right can I have my castle back or anything like that no she um she still signs herself Catherine the queen there's there's some really interesting evidence that I think gets a relic that actually Ann Bolin who's the new queen sort of hoped that Catherine would give in and that she really wants Mary to and that Ann is prepared to offer Mary a me like I'm very good deal to do it I'm actually more than she and see more will offer but Mary just cut at this point count it like Catherine can't accept it understandably and then later Ann starts to get very angry and that's sort of the more famous stuff about her actively loathing Catherine and actually at this stage 4 Ann Catherine it's a zero some game between the two of them which is which is really sad does it just go a bit miss Havisham doesn't yeah there is so there's there's I think the emotional peaks and troughs I talked about earlier they're still there and this is you know there's quite a bit of paranoia they're sort of barricading ourselves in a room at one point that she refuses to speak to servants who won't address her as queen oh Catherine and obviously if they won't get paid if they do that they might actually be arrested if they do that so they have to if she is legally reclatch she's still a member of the royal family Henry has reclassified her as his brother's widow the dodge or princess of will so technically speaking she is the second highest ranking woman in the kingdom after queen Ann but she and and there are there were in fairness compared to like 99.9% of the population a very generous alliance set aside but it's a gold tinge to mediation in order to get this to have full access to it she'll have to yield an inch and she won't so her circle shrinks because these servants can't participate it's all very very sad and she dies of cancer in January 1536 shortly after her 50th birthday she's not allowed any access to her door her because of it and it's an immensely sad end for a very dignified woman and sometimes I sort of feel like
I may be overstaring Catherine's faults, but it's partly deliberate because I think, you know, mess make up the man kind of thing. And I think it's really sad that Catherine has sort of just been stripped of all her color and made quite bland. And actually, yes, some of the stuff she did was to put it out the questionable, particularly early in her career. But also, I think she was immensely courageous and the level of backbone she had to have to wage the war for her right was tremendous. I think she was a truly remarkable woman. I think Anne-Belin was too. I think it's just the man in the middle was about as remarkable as skimmed milk to be totally honest. I tend to think Catherine of Oregon and Anne-Belin could have made really great queens of England if they'd been married to different men. And so I think that's the tragedy of it. And also, of course, in both their cases and even more so in Catherine's, there is the physical toll the childbearing had taken on them. There's a lot to admire or at least be an awe off with Catherine of Oregon, absolutely. As a final question, then, as this is a mini series about history's post-breakups, there's no doubt that there's got to be up there. But what do you think the impact the fallout of this breakup has been? Not just on the emotions of those involved, which was colossal, but on a global, not global political scale. Yeah. So if let's say the Pope had given in or Catherine had given in, Anne-Belin probably would have become queen of England in about 1528, 1529. She would have had four extra years of child bearing. Even if she had only had Elizabeth, Elizabeth would have been regarded as completely legitimate by the Catholic world and would have raised her a Catholic. There's no question in my mind now. I would have done it. And that she was iffy on the Vatican, but she really would have accepted the Pope's ruling, obviously. England would have stayed Catholic. I think the impact of their not being the American of Scots aspect of things, the tensions with Europe, the Spanish Armada, the whole shape of English foreign policy in the centuries to come would have been completely different. Wow. It's almost incalculable the impact it has because the impact of Protestantism on English and then later British history is colossal. So I don't think this is this much of a stretch, but barring maybe another royal converting down the line, there probably wouldn't have been years and centuries of sectarian bitterness in Ireland because it wouldn't have been religiously disliked. Like it, the dominoes that fall from it are huge. And I obviously think this could have happened that we couldn't foresee, but it's the most important breakup in British history by a country mile puts everyone else's breakups in the in the shade. Really? If you listen to this and you think you've had a bad breakup, like come on, come on. Yeah, there once be a, yeah, no one's like listen. Did it result in people being burnt at the stake? No, no. Did it some high, did an English king and a Spanish queen somehow end up causing Ireland 300 years of difficulty? No, no, you're used and you're just didn't do that, guys. So until until you could come back to me with that sit down, it's just it's small change quite frankly. Absolutely. Otherwise, would I do love about what we've established is that you and I would have sold out instantly. Yeah, completely weak willed and greedy. Just like, yeah, just us dressed head to toe in our matching arm and turning up to your hampton court Christmas and being like, we're fine. We're fine. We're fine. We're so sad. We're so sad. We're sad. We miss him. We miss him. But also how I show you my new emeralds. Garad, do you have been so much fun to talk to? You always are. If people want to know more about you and your work, where can they find you? Instagram, underscore, uh, garrathrustle and then my website garrathrustle.co.uk. Well, you come back and talk to us some more about histories naughty people. Anytime. I love it. Thank you for listening and thank you so much to garrath for joining me. And if you like what you heard, don't forget to like, review and follow along whatever it is you get your podcasts. Coming up, we have got an episode on the truth about the Bronte sisters and the second installment of this little mini series on histories worst breakups where we are looking at, boom, boom, boom, Lord Byron and Lady Caroline Lamb. And if you want us to explore a subject or perhaps you just wanted to say hello, then you can email us at
[email protected]. This podcast was edited by Tim Aftel and produced by Stuart Beckwith. The senior producer was Freddie Chick. Join me again by Twix the Sheets, the history of Sex, Scandal and Society, a podcast by history hit. This podcast contains music from Epidemic Sound.
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