Spain and England had a history of poor diplomatic relations, and it was common in the Fifteenth Century for members of a royal family to marry off a daughter or son to a child from another royal family, to establish an alliance between those two countries. Catherine of Aragon was the youngest child of King Ferdinand of Aragon and Queen Isabella of Castille, who almost immediately began looking for a political match for her. When she was three years old, she was engaged to Arthur, the son of Henry VII of England. Arthur was not even quite two at the time.

When Catherine was almost sixteen, in 1501, she made the journey to England. When she and Arthur were married on November 14, 1501, in old St. Paul’s Cathedral, London. Catherine was escorted by Arthur’s younger brother, Henry. Following the ceremony, the young couple moved to Ludlow Castle on the Welsh border. Less than six months later Arthur died, possibly of the “sweating sickness”. Historians speculate that the history of England would have changed drastically if Arthur had lived a year longer.

Catherine was now a widow and still young enough to marry again, so on June 25, 1503, she was formally engaged to the king’s second son, Henry, now Prince of Wales. The marriage, however, didn’t take place during Henry VII’s lifetime. Henry made use of the presence of the unmarried princess in England to extort new conditions, and especially to secure the marriage of his daughter Marry to the archduke Charles V. By 1505, when Henry was old enough to wed, Henry VII wasn’t as keen on a Spanish alliance, and young Henry was forced to reject the engagement.

Catherine’s future was uncertain for the next four years. When Henry VII died in 1509, on one of the new young king’s actions was to marry Catherine. She was finally crowned Queen of England in a joint coronation ceremony with her husband Henry VIII on June 24, 1509.

Catherine enjoyed a few years of married happiness; Henry showed that he could be an affectionate husband, and the alliance with Ferdinand was maintained against France. During Henry’s invasion of France in 1513, she was made regent; and showed great enthusiasm in preparing for the Scottish expedition, by riding north to put herself at the head of the troops, when the victory of Flodden Field ended the battle.

A year after the Flodden Field victory an affectionate meeting took place between the couple. Ferdinand’s treachery, however, in making a treaty with France, stirred up Henry’s wrath, and his angry accusations fell upon Catherine, who took the opportunity in 1520, during the visit of her nephew Charles V to England, to urge the policy of gaining his alliance, rather than that of France. After that, Catherine accompanied the king to France, the celebrated visit to the Field of the Cloth of Gold, but in 1522, war was declared against France and the emperor again welcomed to England.

Shortly thereafter, Catherine found herself pregnant. This first child was a stillborn daughter born prematurely in January, 1510. This disappointment was soon followed by another pregnancy. Prince Henry was born on January 1, 1511 and was christened on the 5th. There were great celebrations for the birth of the young prince, but they were halted by the baby’s death after fifty-two days of life. Catherine then had a miscarriage, followed by a short-lived son. In February 1516, she gave birth to a daughter named Mary. Henry took the disappointment in stride. When a Venetian ambassador ventured to commiserate with him over the baby’s sex, he replied cheerfully, “The Queen and I are both young, and if it is a girl this time, by God’s grace boys will follow.” The King showed no sign that he was seriously concerned about his lack of sons. There were probably two more pregnancies, the last recorded in 1518.

What Catherine thought, no historians can rightly say, but, as time passed, and no boys, indeed, no living children, followed, she began to devote more and more time and thought to the upbringing and education of her daughter. The idea that girls could and should be given the opportunity to benefit from the kind of academic training, normally reserved for boys, was of comparatively recent origin, being a product of the Renaissance. Sir Thomas More, a lawyer, was the first Englishman seriously to experiment with the unique idea that girls should be educated too. With memories of her own mother, who had fought her way to the throne, ruled an unstable country with effectiveness, expelled the last of the Arab rulers from Spain and still found time to bring up a family of five, Catherine naturally saw that the English queen could too.

Henry was growing frustrated by his lack of a male heir, but he remained a devoted husband. He had at least two mistresses that we know of: Bessie Blount and Mary Boleyn. By 1526, though, he had begun to separate from Catherine because he had fallen in love with one of her ladies (and sister of one of his mistresses), Anne Boleyn.

Two more dissimilar women than these two deadly enemies can hardly be imagined. In 1527, Catherine was in her forty-second year. As a girl she had been pretty, small and well made, with a clear pink and white skin and auburn-colored hair. Now her once slender figure was thickened from child-bearing, and her lovely hair had darkened to a muddy brown, but visiting ambassadors still remarked on the excellence of her complexion. A short and fat little woman with a soft, sweet voice which had never lost its trace of foreign accent, she faced the enemy shielded by an absolute inward assertion of right and truth, and her own unbreakable will.

By the time Henry’s interest in Anne became common knowledge, Catherine was forty-two years old and no longer able to conceive. Henry’s main goal now was to get a male heir, which his wife was not able to provide, so Henry began to look at the texts of Leviticus which says that if a man takes his brother’s wife, they shall be childless. Even though he had one living child, that the child was a girl meant it didn’t count in Henry’s mind. The King began to petition the Pope for an annulment.

Catherine was kept in the dark about Henry’s plans for their annulment. When the news got to Catherine, she was extremely upset. She was also at a great disadvantage since the court that would decide the case was far from impartial, so Catherine appealed directly to the Pope, who she felt would listen to her case, since her nephew was Charles V, the Holy Roman Emperor.

Henry’s supporters accused Catherine of spiritual superiority, of prejudice. She was one of those uncomfortable people who would literally rather die than compromise over a moral issue, but to have succumbed would have meant admitting to the world that she had lived all her married life in incestuous adultery, that she had been no more than the “king’s harlot”, the Princess, her daughter, worth no more than any man’s casually forgotten child; it would have meant seeing another woman occupying her place. The shyest of wives might well have jibbed at such self-sacrifice; for one of Catherine’s background and temperament it was unthinkable, but what had started as a simple defense of her marriage became infinitely greater. As time went by and the struggle for the divorce unfolded, the Queen began to realize that she was fighting, not merely for her own and her daughter’s natural rights, but for her husband’s soul and the soul’s of all his people against the forces of darkness which seemed, to Catherine, to be come to life in the dark-eyed person of Mistress Anne Boleyn.

In Henry’s favor, the unlucky imprisonment at this time of Clement VII at the hands of Charles V, Catherine’s nephew, obliged the pope to pursue a policy of delay and hesitation. Nor was the immorality of Henry’s own character the primary cause of the project of divorce. The real occasion was the king’s desire for a male heir; but, however clear this may be, the injustice done to Catherine was no less cruel and real.

Rumors, probably then unfounded, of an intended divorce had been abroad as early as 1524. In 1526, and perhaps earlier, Wolsey had been making tentative inquiries at Rome on the subject. In May 1527, a secret suit was begun before the cardinal who, as a legate, summoned the king to defend himself from the charge of cohabitation with his brother’s wife; but these proceedings were dropped. On June 22nd Henry informed Catherine that they had been living in mortal sin and must separate.

In October 1528, the pope issued a secret payment to Cardinal Campeggio and Wolsey to try the cause in England, and bound himself not to repeal the case to Rome, confirming his promise by a secret payment which, however, was destroyed by Campeggio; but the trial was a sham: Campeggio was forbidden to speak judgment without further mention to Rome, and was instructed to create delays, the pope assuring Charles V, at the same time, that the case should be ultimately repealed to Rome.

The object of all the assemblies was now to persuade Catherine to enter a convent and relieve them of further embarrassment. While Henry’s representatives were encouraged at Rome in believing that he might make another marriage, Henry himself gave Catherine assurances that no other union would be contemplated in her lifetime; but Catherine, with courage and dignity, held fast to her rights, demanded a proper trial, and appealed, not only to the lies of the special consideration, but also to the validity of her marriage. Henry declared all of it a forgery. In addition, tried unsuccessfully to procure a declaration of its falsity from the pope.

The queen appeared before the court on June 21, 1529, for the purpose of denying its jurisdiction. On June 21st both Henry and Catherine presented themselves before the tribunal, when the queen threw herself at Henry’s feet and appealed for the last time to his sense of honor, recalling her own virtue. Henry replied with kindness, showing that her wish for repealing the cause to Rome was unreasonable in view of the dominant influence that was exercised by Charles V on the pope. Catherine persisted in making an appeal to Rome, and then withdrew. After her departure Henry, according to Cavendish, Wolsey’s biographer, praised her virtues to the court.

"She is, my lords, as true, as obedient, as conformable a wife as I could in my fantasy wish or desire. She hath all the virtues and qualities that ought to be in a woman of her dignity or in any other of baser estate”

On her refusal to return, her plea was overruled. Finally in July, 1529, the case was according to her wish, and, as a result of the treaty of Barcelona and the pope’s complete surrender to Charles V, revoked by the pope to Rome, a momentous act, which decided Henry’s future attitude. Pope Clement issued a brief forbidding Henry to make a second marriage, and ordering the compensation of Catherine to her rights until the cause was decided, while at the same time he professed to the French ambassador, the bishop of Tarbes, his pleasure, should the marriage with Anne Boleyn have already been made, if only it were not by his authority.

In August, 1531, Catherine was ordered to live at the Moor in Hertfordshire, and at the same time separated from the princess Mary, who was taken to Richmond. In October she again received a delegation of privy councilor, and again refused to withdraw the case from Rome. In 1532, she sent the king a gold cup as a New Year’s gift, which he later returned, and she was forbidden to hold any communication with him. Alone and helpless in confronting Henry’s absolute power, her cause found champions and sympathizers among the people. On August 23rd Henry declared openly the invalidity of his and Catherine’s marriage. On August 10th the king forbade Catherine’s name as queen. But Catherine refused determinedly to yield the title for that of Princess Dowager. Not long after that she was removed to Buckden in Huntingdonshire. Here Catherine’s household was considerably reduced, and she found herself a prisoner in her own house.

In July she refused to give the cloth that she had used on her children at their baptism for Anne Boleyn’s child, Elizabeth. When Catherine did this, every person in the household was dismissed and she herself reduced to the position. The attempt in November to incriminate the queen in connection with Elizabeth Barton failed. She passed her life now in religious devotions, taking strict precautions against being poisoned. On March 23, 1534 the pope pronounced her marriage valid, but by this time England had thrown off the pope’s jurisdiction, the parliament had transferred Catherine’s jointure to Anne Boleyn, and the verdict had no effect on Catherine’s fortunes.

She refused to swear to the new act of succession, which declared her marriage null and Anne’s infant the heir to the throne, and soon afterwards she was removed to Kimbolton, where she was well-treated. On May 21st she was visited by the archbishop of York and Tunstall, bishop of Durham, who threatened her with death if she persisted in her refusal, but only succeeded in confirming her decision. She was kept in seclusion, and separated from Mary and from all outside communications, and in December 1535 her health gave way, her death taking place on January 8, 1536. Historians speculate that the cause of Catherine’s death was cancer.

Before her death she dictated a last letter to Henry expressing her forgiveness, begging his good offices for Mary, and concluding with the astounding assurance “I vow that mine eyes desire you above all things.” The king himself affected no sorrow at her death, and thanked God there was now no fear of war. When Henry heard of her death, he celebrated at a banquet in bright yellow from head to toes.

Everything that we know of Queen Catherine is to her credit; she was loyal and injured wife, an affectionate friend and mother, and a faithful subject of her adopted country. In the exercise of the strictest piety according to the practices of the Roman church, she found, in the days of her misfortune, her only consolation.