Tag Archives: Catherine of Aragon

Catherine of Aragon – queen of England

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catherineofaragon_1769901iHistory might have been very different had the baby boy born on New Year’s Day 1511 survived beyond the first perilous months of infancy. Starkey records that two hundred and seven pounds of gunpowder were used to celebrate the child’s birth.

 

Little Prince Henry, Duke of Cornwall lived for fifty-two days. He was buried at the end of February. Catherine although she became pregnant readily enough either miscarried or produced infants who died: seven in all. Sir Loyalheart still wore lover’s knots on his jousting armour but the much needed heir had yet to make an appearance.   By 1514 the first rumours of a possible divorce were bandied about but in 1516 Princess Mary was born and there was renewed optimism.

 

In the meantime Henry went to war with the French and Katherine became regent of England and Wales. It was she who was in charge of England when the Earl of Surrey fought and won the Battle of Flodden. Meanwhile Henry’s father-in-law let him down with regard to France. Ferdinand signed a peace deal with the French having inveigled Henry into a war against them. It cannot have helped his daughter’s marital relations. Ultimately Henry would marry his youngest sister to King Louis XII of France. Spain went from being an ally to an enemy. Later Henry would propose that his daughter Mary, should marry to cement a French alliance when all Catherine wanted was for her daughter to marry her nephew, Charles, the son of Juana and Philip.

 

Charles V was a disappointment to his aunt. Catherine worked carefully after Princess Mary’s proxy marriage to the French dauphin in 1518 to bring her own plans about. He visited England and in 1523 launched an invasion of France along with the English but he failed to fulfil his side of the deal. Then Charles won the Battle of Pavia against the French and dropped the English because he no longer needed them. He deserted his aunt as well.

 

There had been other changes over the years. Henry came to rely on Wolsey during his time in France in 1513. He didn’t turn to Catherine so readily for advice when he returned to England. In 1515 Wolsey became Lord Chancellor. He would remain at the heart of Henry’s government until his fall in 1529.

 

If Catherine was finding life difficult with Henry and with shifting European politics she gave no sign of it. In fact she became increasingly popular with her English subjects. There had been riots in May 1517 and Catherine had interceded on behalf of the condemned apprentices.

 

Catherine’s last known pregnancy occurred in 1518. By 1523 her good looks had faded and she’d become somewhat on the fat side. Francis I of France described her as “old and deformed.” Then, to add injury to insult, in 1525 Henry unveiled a son. Henry Fitzroy was Henry’s son with Bessie Blount and he was six years old. Catherine was not amused. The row was tremendous. If only she’d realised it, things were about to get worse.   In 1525 Henry stopped sleeping, it would appear, with Catherine. He may also have put his current mistress Mary Boleyn to one side.

 

In May 1527 the King’s Great Matter was discussed. Henry wanted to be rid of his Spanish wife. He wanted a divorce. He claimed that he was concerned for his immortal soul.  He should never have married his brother’s wife. He felt that his childlessness- because clearly girls didn’t count- was a consequence of his sin. He also wanted to marry Anne Boleyn who’d refused to become his mistress.

 

Poor Catherine had lost her looks, her fertility, her political influence and now she was going to lose her husband.

 

 

Catherine of Aragon – penniless princess to queen consort.

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catherine of aragonAs Catherine of Aragon settled into Durham House after Arthur’s death in April 1502 her parents were already sending an envoy to England with plans for her future. Hernan Estrada was to demand Catherine and her dowry back immediately and at the same time to suggest ten-year-old Henry as a possible husband.

Following Elizabeth of York’s death in childbirth, Henry VII suggested himself as a husband. Isabella was not amused.  She sent a letter instructing her daughter to pack her bags and be ready to board the first available Spanish ship that dropped anchor.  Intentionally or not this had the effect of concentrating Henry and Ferdinand’s minds.   On 23 June 1503, Catherine was betrothed to Prince Henry and a dispensation was sent for. Julius II duly obliged and even managed to skirt around the thorny issue of whether Catherine was still a maiden or not by wording the dispensation to suggest that the marriage had ‘perhaps’ been consummated in Tremlett’s words.

henry8unknown3By 1504 Catherine was often ill.  It has been suggested that she may have been anorexic. This may have been one of the reasons she had difficulty producing children.  Henry VII was so concerned about Catherine that he wrote to the pope.  Julius II duly obliged by writing to Catherine commanding that she ate more. To find out more about Tremlett’s research into Catherine’s eating disorder and her time as a penniless princess double click on the image of Catherine to open a new window.

Meanwhile Henry VII and Ferdinand argued about money and Catherine was left, short of funds, in Durham House and from there she found herself moved to Richmond.  She still didn’t speak English and she was still surrounded by her Spanish ladies in waiting.  Then in 1507 the engagement to the young Prince Henry, pictured right, was off because Ferdinand hadn’t sent the dowry money.

It was at that point that Catherine made history for the first time.  In 1507 she became the Spanish ambassador.  In the meantime Catherine’s sister Juana had been bereaved by the death of her husband.  Henry, having met Juana, when Philip and she were stranded in England due to bad weather decided he would like to marry Juana.  It helped that she was queen of Castille and it probably also helped that Ferdinand did not want the match. Aside from the first six or so months of her time in England, Catherine’s experience had not been a good one. She is even said to have contemplated joining religious orders. Then on 21 April 1509 Henry VII died and the stalemate shattered.

The penniless princess who’d learned how to send secret letters, argue her cause and dissimulate to her own father as well as her father-in-law married seventeen-year-old Henry on 11 June 1509. There was a six year age gap between husband and wife but at tho stage it wasn’t particularly noticeable. Catherine, it turned out, knew how to nurse a grudge.  She sent Spanish diplomats and servants home with a flea in their ears and got on with being queen of England in a court where pageantry, feasting and jousting were now de rigeur.  Henry even turned up in Catherine’s private rooms disguised as Robin Hood.  Catherine, unlike some of Henry’s later wives, had the good sense to feign surprise and delight.

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By November Catherine was pregnant and Henry was caught canoodling with Anne, Lady Hastings the sister of the Duke of Buckingham.  They were exposed by Anne’s sister Elizabeth who was a favourite of Catherine’s.  Anne was carted off to a nunnery; Elizabeth was banned from court and Henry found himself in his wife’s bad books.  Caroz, the Spanish ambassador, described her as ‘vexed.’  In January 1510 Catherine miscarried.  The fairytale was over and the business of providing an heir began the sorry tale that would culminate in Henry divorcing his Spanish princess.

Tremlett, Giles. (2010) Catherine of Aragon: Henry’s Spanish Queen. London: Faber and Faber

Catherine of Aragon and Prince Arthur

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catherine of aragonYesterday I was so busy trying to make sure there were no errors I managed to suggest that Catherine was born in 1489.  She was of course born in 1485.

By the time she was thirteen she was living at the Alhambra and it was from here that she exchanged letters with Arthur.  He, writing from Ludlow in 1499, described their letters as a “sweet remembrance.” Tremlett reveals that Henry VII and Elizabeth of York were just as excited by this exchange of letters.  Of course, given that the writers were thirteen at the time and that they were written in Latin it may be assumed that tutors were involved and so was the game of courtly love.

In the meantime Roderigo De Puebla, the Spanish ambassador, was keeping the Spanish court informed of events in England.  De Puebla complained that the English changed their minds rather often and that the water wasn’t safe to drink.

On 27 September 1501 Catherine set sail for England, crossed the Bay of Biscay, got caught in a storm off Brittany and arrived in Plymouth on October 2nd 1501.  News of her arrival had come before her as it is noted in the margin of Margaret Beaufort’s Book of Hours.  In total the journey across Spain from the Alhambra to England had taken four months.  It would be another month before Catherine reached Hampshire and on November 6th she arrived at Dogmersfield where she met her prospective father-in-law and husband which ran counter to Spanish custom – there was, of course, a language difficulty.

On November 12 1501 Catherine entered London accompanied by the ten-year-old Duke of York, Prince Henry, a papal legate and an entourage composed of both nationalities.  Tremlett and Penn describe the pageant, the gifts and the politics.  Two days later she was married at St Paul’s Cathedral.  The wedding dress which was white caused some comment and then it was on to business.  First an announcement was made as to the size of Catherine’s dowry and then it was over to the eighteen bishops and abbots. John Fisher revealed that Margaret Beaufort cried rather a lot and rather oddly to modern eyes that the newly married Catherine was led from the cathedral not by her husband but by her brother-in-law, Prince Henry.

There then followed a ritual involving the earl of Oxford testing the bed of state, on both sides, to make sure it had been made properly and a sprinkling of Holy Water from the assembled bishops.  The following morning Arthur announced that being married was thirsty work and in so doing unleashed centuries of speculation that an inspection of the bed sheets, another traditional pastime, should have confirmed…but in this instance didn’t.  In any event the couple were young.  They had their whole lives ahead of them.

By late December Catherine and Arthur were in Ludlow on the Welsh borders…very different from the Alhambra. We know that Catherine formed a friendship with Margaret Pole the daughter of the Duke of Clarence and sister of the Earl of Warwick executed to facilitate the wedding of Catherine and Arthur. What we don’t know is how close Arthur and Catherine were as husband and wife.  Once again Tremlett provides both sides of the later argument. Catherine insisted that Arthur came to her room on only seven occasions whilst a member of his own household suggested that the pair were frequently together.  We do know that Arthur was smitten when he first met his bride and by all accounts Arthur, though shorter than his petite bride, was a kind and well educated young man.

 

Tudor,Arthur02.jpgAnd then sweating sickness arrived or possibly tuberculosis.  In any event on April 2nd 1502, approximately six months after her marriage Catherine found herself widowed at the age of sixteen. Arthur’s heart was buried in Ludlow whilst the rest of him was interred in Worcester Cathedral. Elizabeth of York, who got on well with Catherine, sent a litter to fetch her daughter-in-law back to London.

Double click on the image of Prince Arthur to open up a post by The Freelance History Writer about Prince Arthur and more about his marriage to Catherine of Aragon.

 

Thomas Penn’s book is about Henry VII and called Winter King.  See the bibliography for more details of his work and also of Tremlett’s.

 

Catherine of Aragon- childhood and marriage

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catherine11In the same year that Henry Tudor won the Battle of Bosworth, Isabella of Castille gave birth to a baby girl- Catalina.  It had been a difficult year for the baby’s parents; there was a war against Spain’s last remaining Moorish kingdom, an outbreak of plague and the problem that the girl’s mother Isabella of Castille insisted on reigning as a sovereign power rather than the docile little wife that Ferdinand of Aragon might have preferred (not that it stopped the couple being  passionate about one another or Isabella being very jealous when her spouse strayed). Catalina was the last of five children of whom all but one were girls.  Isabella was thirty-four years old that Christmas in 1485 when the girl who would be known as Catherine of Aragon was born.  Tremlett notes that our understanding of Catalina’s childhood comes from her mother’s account books.

The picture is thought to be Catherine aged eleven.  Double click on the image to open a new page and find out more.

Three years later the English arrived at the town of Medina del Campo in Castille. Tremlett describes the pageantry through the eyes of the two English ambassadors who’d been sent to strike a deal between the joint Spanish monarchs and their own sovereign Henry VII of England. This was, in fact, the return visit.  The Spanish had already been to London to inspect the infant Prince Arthur.

The two countries were in the midst of negotiating a trade treaty.  When Henry Tudor became Henry VII he confirmed the existing trading arrangements with Spain.  Now, in 1489, Henry wanted more favourable trading arrangements for English merchants especially as his Navigation Acts which insisted that English ships be used to import foreign goods had resulted in a kind of stalemate with the Spanish insisting something similar for themselves. Following the treaty both countries were able to use whatever vessels they wanted to move their goods around and the rates of taxation were set favourably as well.

The two countries also wanted to arrive at terms that would enable their mutual benefit against the French. Broadly speaking if either country went to war with the French the other country would immediately become involved in the conflict.  Henry was involved with the protection of Brittany at this time.  It would have to be said that the treaty wasn’t particularly effective in terms of Henry’s aims agains the French.  Ultimately the French got their hands on Brittany and  it was partly because the ink was hardly dry on the Treaty of Medina del Campo when Ferdinand made peace with the French in July of the same year.  To be fair he was trying to win a war against the Moors at the time.

All English treaties at this time included the clause that the co-signatory wouldn’t harbour English rebels or Yorkist pretenders to the throne.  This would become important in 1499 when the Spanish refused to send Catalina to England until all potential Yorkist kings had been dealt with: the executions of the Earl of Warwick and Perkin Warbeck was a price that Henry was prepared to pay.

Because this was an important treaty it really needed to be sealed by a royal marriage.  Henry was keen on a marriage between his son and one of Isabella and Ferdinand’s four daughters because it demonstrated that he wasn’t a usurper on a wobbly throne any more.  A marriage to Spain would mean that he was a safe European player.

The treaty also covered Catalina’s dowry.  She was to have 200,000 crowns paid in instalments – and Henry Tudor liked the sound of coins clinking in his treasury almost as much as he liked being recognised as a European monarch. Little could Catherine or her father have realised that the dowry would cause so many problems in Catherine’s future.

The treaty was signed on the 27th March 1489.

Of Catalina or Catherine  (Usually a C but a K is also used and the Royal Palace at Hampton Court must know what it’s talking about) as she would become when she arrived in England we know relatively little as a child other than from the account books and from scenes that were carefully staged by the Spanish royal family such as Medina del Campo when she was shown off for the benefit of visiting dignitaries.  Tremlett records that the royal children had tutors from Italy and dancing teachers from Portugal; that Catherine learned to ride when she was six, that she was expected to learn how to sew and that Isabella kept a very decorous court so that Catherine’s childhood was not only sumptuous but cloistered.

We also know that the family was constantly on the move as Ferdinand and Isabella strove to bring unity and order to their country which until recently had been many kingdoms ruled by many races and creeds.  The place that Catherine called home was probably Alhambra where she lived from 1499 to 1501 when she set sail for England.

Tremlett, Giles. (2010) Catherine of Aragon: Henry’s Spanish Queen. London: Faber and Faber

Anne Boleyn – ‘Most Happy’

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anneboleyn emblemIt was 1514 when the first rumour of a possible annulment in Henry VIII’s marriage to Catherine of Aragon drew breath. In 1516 a princess was born and for a time there was hope but by 1525 Catherine was beyond the age of childbearing and Henry ceased to cohabit with his wife.  He’d been involved romantically with several of Catherine’s maids by that time and had been dallying with Mary Boleyn since 1522.  In 1526 Henry found himself falling in love with Mary’s sister Anne.  The following year he proposed and started proceedings to remove Catherine from the picture.  She didn’t go without a fight. Of course there was  also the small matter of getting rid of all of Catherine of Aragon’s pomegranate symbols from buildings, furniture etc and replacing it with Anne’s emblem and initials.

Anne’s emblem when she became queen in 1533 after a secret marriage ceremony before Henry’s marriage to Catherine had been formally annulled was the white falcon.  The white falcon was part of the crest of the Earls of Ormonde from whom Thomas Boleyn, Anne’s father, claimed descent via his mother.  Piers Butler was forced to hand over the title to Henry in 1528 and, in turn, he graciously awarded it to his future father-in-law in 1529.

This particular white falcon is alighting onto a barren tree stump, incidentally a Plantagenet badge, which is sprouting a crop of roses – hardly complicated imagery.  The old queen had failed to produce a male heir; Anne carrying all before her was going to produce a Tudor sprig.  The arrival of another princess, this time called Elizabeth, in September 1533 must have come as a blow.

The crown and the sceptre are doing the job you might suppose them to do.  They are reminding everyone who cares to look that God, rather than Henry VIII, has made Anne queen of England.

As well as the falcon Anne also used the leopard which derived from the coat of arms of Thomas of Brotherton who was a son of Edward I and the First Earl of Norfolk – and yes, Anne claimed descent from him  as her mother was Elizabeth Howard, daughter of the Duke of Norfolk.  Clearly Anne was keen to identify her royal connections.  Having supplanted bona fide Spanish royalty she went to some lengths to demonstrate the rather thin trickle of Plantagenet blood flowing through her veins.

On her marriage Anne chose as her motto “Most happy.” Before then she’d had the words, in Latin, “Grumble all you like, this is how it’s going to be.”  You’ve got to admire the woman’s panache but you can see how she might have irritated the great and the good with her abrasive sense of humour.  She is also purported to have had a third motto meaning, “Always the same.” This was the one that Elizabeth I chose to use.

How happy Anne remained is a moot point given that there were rumours of Henry VIII’s attention wandering less than a year into his second marriage.  Hart mentions his six month affair with Anne’s cousin in 1535. By this time Anne was proving a disappointment.  As well as meddling in political and religious affairs she miscarried two or possibly three babies. There then followed a miscarriage of a boy on 29th January 1536- the same day as Catherine of Aragon’s funeral.

That same year as the monasteries were dissolved and the machinery of Catholicism demolished to furnish Henry’s bank account and ego,  Anne found herself arrested and carted off to the Tower where she was duly executed on the colourful, not to mention highly dubious charges, of treason, adultery and incest on the 19th May with a sword rather than an axe. Having made the famous comment about a small neck she also beseeched , “Jesu save my Sovereign and master the King, the most goodliest, and gentlest Prince that is, and long to reign over you.”

Eleven days later Henry, that “goodliest” monarch, wed wife number three and all those master masons, carpenters and glaziers found themselves removing the letter A and replacing them with a J.

Catherine of Aragon – humble and loyal

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catherine of aragon emblemEach of Henry VIII’s wives chose their own motto and emblem. Anne Boleyn’s motto was ‘Most Happy.” After that Henry’s queens must have chosen their motto with rather a lot of care and not a little dread.

 

Catherine of Aragon was Henry VIII’s first wife. They married in 1509 with Henry honouring a promise to marry his brother’s widow.  Catherine had become a penniless princess after Prince Arthur’s death in 1502 whilst her father-in-law and father argued about her dowry and whether she would marry Prince Henry or Henry VII or be sent home.  The death of Henry VII enabled seventeen-year-old Henry to rescue his princess.  Thomas More’s collection of poems celebrating the marriage of the royal couple, the so-called Coronation Suite, is liberally decorated with intertwined Tudor roses and pomegranates. The Museum of London houses a badge showing a pomegranate and a Tudor rose combined. Other examples of a rose morphing into a pomegranate have been found elsewhere and help demonstrate the popularity of the marriage between Henry and Catherine. Click on the image at the start of the post to open up a new window. For a while they were a fairy tale couple.

pomegranate and tudor rose

 

Catherine’s motto was ‘humble and loyal’ and her emblem was a crowned pomegranate. The pomegranate, originally the heraldic symbol for the city of Granada, represents life, fertility and marriage. The representation of marriage comes from the Greek myth featuring Hades and Persephone. Persophone was kidnapped by Hades and while she was in the Underworld she ate six pomegranate seeds. Persophone, as a consequence of eating the seeds and a ruling by Zeus, was required to spend six months of the year with Hades. The pomegranate came, somewhat ironically in Katherine’s case, to represent the insolubility of marriage. Clearly Katherine’s spouse had other ideas given that in May 1533 having failed to acquire a papal annulment he simply severed the insoluble tie by declaring himself to be head of the Church in England and divorcing himself from his wife of twenty-four years in order to marry Anne Boleyn who was a little bit pregnant.  It had taken eight years for Henry to get what he wanted but ultimately Catherine, despite her stubbornness and determination, was removed and exiled to Kimbolton Castle where she would die in 1536 little mourned by Henry but revered by her subjects, by her friends and enemies alike – Thomas Cromwell, the agent of her fall, admired her immensely for her intellect and powers of argument.

During that all that time Catherine had indeed been humble and loyal.  She’d done everything required of a queen from hand stitching Henry’s shirts, making blackwork popular and giving it its alternate name of Spanishwork, to being regent in his absence.  Whilst Henry VIII was off on a jolly in France pretending to have a war in 1513 it was Catherine who oversaw the victory at Flodden which also saw the death of her brother-in-law James IV of Scotland.

In the Bible the pomegranate represents fertility and abundance. Sadly for Katherine the arrival of heirs produced one tragedy after another. One baby boy lived a month before dying. In 1516 the Princess Mary was born but the passage of time and one pregnancy after another was taking its toll on the queen in both her looks and outlook on life. The one thing that was required of a queen was to produce a male heir.  Always pious, she turned increasingly to prayer for comfort bringing us to the final meaning of the pomegranate. In medieval art pomegranates are linked to resurrection and eternal life.   Henry also turned to the Bible, for an explanation rather than consolation.  He reasoned that he had sinned in taking his brother’s widow as his wife.

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Katherine’s daughter Mary took her mother’s pomegranate emblem for her own. The British Library houses a book of Mary’s depicting the pomegranate on its cover.

 

 

 

 

Frances Brandon

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frances-tombFrances Grey nee Brandon is another ‘not quite Tudor princess.’ She was the elder daughter of Henry VIII’s sister Mary Tudor the Dowager Queen of France and her second husband Charles Brandon, Duke of Suffolk- based on modern rules she would not be defined as a princess but her nearness to the crown at a time when there was a shortage of Tudor heirs created tragedy for her three daughters.

Frances was born at Hatfield on July 16, 1517. Interestingly, like her cousins there was some legal wrangling as to her legitimacy. Charles had been married to Margaret Neville before marrying Mary – unfortunately Margaret was still very much alive at the time. Charles had to get the marriage annulled on grounds of consanguinity by which time Frances had arrived so his legal paperwork had to declare her legitimate.

 

Mary Tudor was close to her sister-in-law Catherine of Aragon so inevitably Frances spent time with her cousin the Princess Mary meaning that the arrival of Anne Boleyn made family gatherings a tad tricky.

 

In 1533, Frances married Henry Grey, Marquis of Dorset. He was the great-grandson of Elizabeth Woodville through her first marriage. Soon after the marriage Frances’ mother died. By 1551, Frances’ half brother was dead and Henry Grey became Duke of Suffolk. Frances was also third in line for the throne, the Tudor lack of males making her more important than she might otherwise have been. By the time she was nineteen she’d already lost a daughter and more importantly, in the minds of folk wanting male Tudors, a son. In 1537 another daughter, Lady Jane Grey, was born. Roger Ascham, her one time tutor, recorded Jane’s views of Frances’ parenting strategy –

 

“For when I am in presence either of father or mother; whether I speak, keep silence, sit, stand, or go, eat, drink, be merry, or sad, be sewing, playing, dancing, or doing any thing else; I must do it, as it were, in such weight, measure, and number, even so perfectly, as God made the world; or else I am so sharply taunted, so cruelly threatened, yea presently sometimes with pinches, nips, and bobs, and other ways (which I will not name for the honour I bear them) so without measure misordered, that I think myself in hell, till time come that I must go to Mr Elmer; who teacheth me so gently, so pleasantly, with such fair allurements to learning, that I think all the time nothing whiles I am with him…”

 

No wonder then that numerous writers have suggested that the greys were disappointed that Jane was not a boy – although expectations of learning amongst the Tudor children was undoubtedly high.

 

Unlike Eleanor Brandon who seems to have been unambitious, perhaps because of her poor health Frances appears to have been much more determined to shin up the Tudor powerlist. When Henry VIII died in 1547 they handed Jane over to Thomas Seymour as a ward in the hope that he might arrange a match with her cousin the new king Edward VI.

 

But by 1553 it was clear that Edward was dying. Jane leapfrogged over her cousins Mary and Elizabeth bypassing Henry VIII’s will when Edward named her his heir. She was married off to Guildford Dudley. Novels suggest that Frances beat Jane in order to ensure compliance but there are no historical sources to support this.

 

Frances’s husband Henry Grey was executed on February 23, 1554 for his part in Wyatt’s rebellion against Mary- he outlived his daughter by ten days. His involvement in the rebellion cost Jane her life.

 

Frances went on to marry her Master of Horse, rather suggesting she wasn’t as ambitious as all that the following month. By marrying Adrian Stokes she lowered her rank so significantly that William Camden believed that she distanced herself and her surviving children far enough from the throne to make them less of a threat. Leanda de Lisle’s book about the Grey sisters reveals that Katherine and Mary remained at risk because of their closeness to the throne but that during Mary’s reign they were welcome at court, as indeed was their mother Frances.

 

Frances’ health deteriorated in part from late pregnancies- she gave birth to a daughter who died the same day – had she visited Henry Grey in the Tower after his arrest there might have been some doubt as to whether or not Adrian Stokes was the father. And there were also two sons who died in infancy. Frances died in the Charterhouse at Sheen in 21 November 1559. She was given the burial of a princess in Westminster Abbey and was described as such by the heralds at the funeral demonstrating that the term princess was a moveable feast during the Tudor period.

 

Lady Eleanor Brandon

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Brandon,Eleonor01The Act of Settlement in 1701 ensured a Protestant succession upon the deaths of King William III (That’s the William in William and Mary) and his niece Princess Anne who would become the last Stuart monarch dying in 1714. Since then, the title of princess has been clearly designated. The daughter of a monarch is a princess. The daughter of a prince is a princess. The daughter of a princess on the other hand is not a princess unless her father is one of the above.

 

Before the advent of the Hanoverians the title was less regularly used and it was not always clear how diluted royal blood was deemed to have become. Mary Tudor was undoubtedly a princess being the daughter of King Henry VII of England. She was also the Dowager-Queen of France having been married off for political reasons to the elderly Louis XII of France who expired three months after the wedding – the moral here being don’t marry a bride more than thirty years your junior… perhaps. However, although Mary was known throughout her life as ‘The French Queen,’  and whilst her daughters Francis and Eleanor were important in terms of the Tudor dynasty they were not, by Hanoverian standards princesses because their father was neither a prince nor a king.

 

After Louis XII died Mary batted off a number of suitors and married the man she’d fallen in love with whilst she was a princess back at home in England. Charles Brandon was the Duke of Suffolk. His father had been Henry VII’s standard-bearer at the Battle of Bosworth. Following the death of his father at Bosworth Charles was raised at court. He was a favourite of young Henry and was described in one letter as a ‘second king.’ Even so the pair of star struck lovers had enough common sense to undergo a private ceremony in France before returning home and then to get Cardinal Wolsey to break the news to Henry VIII that his sister, whom he had promised could marry whosoever she wished, was married to Brandon. He was not amused. The pair ended up giving the grasping Henry all her dowry and plate as well as agreeing to pay £1000 each year for the next twenty-four years.

 

Eleanor was their second daughter and at that time was so unimportant that her birth was not recorded accurately – so sometime between 1518 and 1521. In 1533 she was contracted to marry, Henry Clifford, First Earl of Cumberland who was also a second cousin through the maternal line. An account is given in that same year of Eleanor and her sister Frances as mourners at their mother’s funeral.

 

The marriage between Eleanor and Henry Clifford, like most noble matches was about land and power.  The pair, who spent much of their married life at Brougham Castle, seem to have been genuinely fond of one another – she refers to him as “dear heart” in her letters. As for Henry Clifford, he celebrated his marriage into the Tudor family by extending Skipton Castle with the addition of a tower and a gallery.  After all, its not everyday you marry into royalty.

 

In 1536, Eleanor acted as chief mourner at Catherine of Aragon’s funeral, as her cousin the Princess Mary was refused permission to attend because of her intransigence in the matter of her personal beliefs and her determination to uphold her mother’s wishes. It suggests that Eleanor was as close as her mother had been to Catherine of Aragon. This is confirmed by the circumstantial evidence that she does not seem to have had any role in the households of any of Henry’s queens apart from Katherine Parr – perhaps it was the northern link.

 

Alternatively it may be that Eleanor was not in robust health. We know that she bore three children – two of whom, Henry and Charles, died young. There are letters from her father, her husband and one from her which contain information about her own poor health:

Dear heart,
After my most hearty commendations, this shall be to certify you that since your departure from me I have been very sick and at this present my water is very red, whereby I suppose I have the jaundice and the ague both, for I have none abide [no appetite for] meat and I have such pains in my side and towards my back as I had at Brougham, where it began with me first. Wherefore I desire you to help me to a physician and that this bearer my bring him with him, for now in the beginning I trust I may have good remedy, and the longer it is delayed, the worse it will be. Also my sister Powys Anne Brandon is come to me and very desirous to see you, which I trust shall be the sooner at this time, and thus Jesus send us both health.

At my lodge at Carlton, the 14th of February.
And, dear heart, I pray you send for Dr Stephens, for he knoweth best my complexion for such causes.
By your assured loving wife, Eleanor Cumberland

 

 

In the same year that Catherine of Aragon died Eleanor was staying in Bolton Priory with her infant son, when the Pilgrimage of Grace erupted around her.  Skipton Castle was besieged and the pilgrims threatened to use Eleanor as a hostage. To ensure that Henry Clifford did what they wanted of him – the message, according to Stickland, was that if Clifford failed to comply  with the pilgrims demands then Eleanor would be handed over to ‘ruffians.’ Being a Victorian lady writer Agnes Strickland passes over the terror of that particular fate.  Fortunately for Eleanor there was a knight errant at hand. Robert Aske, leader of the Pilgrimage of grace, had a brother called Christopher. It was he who offered Eleanor protection.   Along with the Vicar of Skipton he escorted Eleanor and her son through the camp and across the moor to safety under cover of darkness.

 

The religious uncertainites of the period seem to have haunted Eleanor once more at a later stage of her life when she was mentioned as having a connection to Anne Askew. Fortunately for Eleanor it would appear that Anne approached her but nothing came of it.

 

Henry VIII died in 1547 as did Eleanor who passed away whilst residing in Brougham Castle. She was buried in Holy Trinity Church, Skipton. It is interesting the at the wording of Eleanor’s epitaph gives her the title “Grace” – a reminder, perhaps, that to her family and to her people she was a princess.  Henry Clifford was, apparently, bereft for months afterwards to the point that his household thought that he had died and set about laying him out.  He recovered sufficiently to remarry. Henry VIII, as might be expected of a man who turned his kingdom upside down, wrote a will which identified the order in which his children would inherit the throne. If they did not survive he identified the children of Lady Frances Grey, Countess of Dorset and then those of Lady Eleanor, Countess of Cumberland to follow after him- bypassing the children of his other sister , Margaret Tudor, completely. It was perhaps fortunate that Eleanor did not live long enough to know the fate that befell her niece Lady Jane Grey or the difficulties that her only surviving child, Margaret, would face as a result of their Tudor blood and Henry VIII’s will.

The last abbot

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Glastonbury AbbeyGlastonbury Abbey was the richest abbey in Somerset. Pilgrims came to see the graves of King Arthur and Guinevere and to hear the story of the Holy Grail, Joseph of Arimathea and the Glastonbury thorn. So, the Abbot of Glastonbury, Richard Whiting, didn’t initially have anything to fear when Cromwell started the process of dissolving the minor monasteries. Gradually the reformation gathered pace and the elderly abbot must have prayed for guidance.  In 1537 monks, implicated in the Pilgrimage of Grace, were executed – amongst their number the Abbots of Sawley, Jervaulx and of Fountains.

Two years later on 15 November 1539 the last abbot of Glastonbury Abbey, an old man in his seventies, followed his brothers when he lost his life on Tor Hill following two trials and having spent some time in the Tower of London.

 

Richard Whiting had been a young man when the Tudors came to power.  He’d been a student in Cambridge at the time of the Battle of Bosworth and was ordained at the beginning of the sixteenth century. Wolsey nominated him when the position of abbot fell vacant noting his upright character. John Leland, Whiting’s friend, described him as “truly upright”.

His life might have passed peacefully had it not been for Henry VIII’s desire for a son and his determination to divorce Catherine of Aragon. Unlike Sir Thomas More, Whiting signed the 1534 Act of Supremacy along with the monks of Glastonbury. The following year Cromwell sent his commissioners around every monastic house in the country. The Valor Ecclesiasticus was an inventory of monastic wealth as well as a monastic fault-finding tour. At Glastonbury the monks were kept upon the straight and narrow by their abbot – the commissioner Richard Layton found nothing to fault (he apologised to Cromwell for his error in a later letter.)

 

In 1539 the act was passed suppressing all the remaining monasteries in the country by then Glastonbury was the last remaining abbey in Somerset.  The National Archives houses a positive flurry of letters sent from the abbot and his supporters to Cromwell.  Ink, paper, fair words – none of them mattered a jot.  Cromwell had plans for Glastonbury.   The commissioners returned. They found a copy of the life of Thomas Becket and a book in support of Catherine of Aragon in the abbot’s quarters. It was enough to send him to the Tower.

 

While the elderly abbot languished in a dungeon, Cromwell’s men got to work. They uncovered financial irregularities and further evidence of Whiting’s treasonable opinions – which have conveniently been lost in the following centuries. Letters to Cromwell quoted in the Victoria County History of Somerset reported that three hundred pounds of cash was uncovered along with a gold chalice and parcels of plate which the “we think he ought to make his hand by this untruth to his King’s Majesty.” Their discovery would see the abbey’s treasurer share his abbot’s fate.

Whiting was tried in London, on evidence that was never made public, and found guilty. Then he was shipped back to Wells where he was tried for a second time in the Palace of the Bishop of Bath and Wells. His judges included men who had, in former times, written on his behalf to Cromwell. It was a show trial with a catalogue of people coming forward to testify against him. The abbot was not permitted to defend himself or question his accusers.

 

It was a show execution as well. The elderly man, nearly eighty by some reckoning, was forced to walk barefoot from Wells to Glastonbury – a distance of some seven miles. He was then tied to a hurdle and dragged through the town, by the gateway of his abbey and up onto the tor where a gibbet awaited him and two other of his brothers. They each faced a traitor’s death. Whiting’s head ended on a spike looking out over his own gateway.