(Cover image – © Unknown Artist – The National Portrait Gallery)
Despite six long years of waiting and a great deal of fighting on Catherine of Aragon’s side, Lady Anne Boleyn married King Henry VIII in a secretive wedding on 25th of January in 1533, but it wasn’t made public until Easter of that year, when her pregnancy couldn’t be hidden any longer. On 23rd of May 1533, the King had Thomas Cranmer, Archbishop of Canterbury, declare his marriage to Catherine of Aragon as null and void. All of this was followed by a pompous coronation for Anne in June of that same year, with a proud Anne Boleyn showing everyone that she had finally made it after almost a decade of highs and lows along with Henry VIII. Yet, in spite of all of this, Catherine remained calling herself Queen.
Catherine, who a year earlier had been told to abandon The More (formerly owned by Cardinal Wolsey), was asked to move to the palace at Bishop’s Hatfield in Hertfordshire. Then to relocate herself in the less comfortable Enfield, just before being instructed to leave for Ampthill (far from London and from her husband), all in efforts of getting her to surrender and bow down to Henry’s wishes. She was also separated from her daughter Mary and her best friend and servant, Maria de Salinas, who had accompanied her all the way from their native Spain. Moreover, a few of her supporters (like Thomas Abell and John Forrest) had been sent to the Tower for defending her publicly. Still, she refused to cooperate and called herself the Queen of England, angering Henry more.
On 9th of April, 1533 (exactly 430 years ago today), just before Anne’s coronation and introduction at court, the Dukes of Norfolk and Suffolk paid Catherine a visit in Ampthill to inform her about Henry and Anne’s wedding, and that due to the fact that the king couldn’t have two spouses (even if his marriage to Catherine had now been declared void which she refused to believe), she was now going to be referred to as Princess dowager of Wales, in relation to her first marriage to Henry’s brother, the late Prince Arthur of Wales. This was another step for Henry in his quest to convince everyone that the union between his brother and Catherine had been consummated and therefore, his own marriage to her was invalid.
Catherine was offered more generous living conditions if she submitted to the king’s will but once again she refused, even though she’s said to have reacted with her usual graceful manners.
Few days later, on Saturday 12th, Anne was presented as Queen at court, attending mass in state robes and adorned with beautiful jewels. On the 28th of May, more than a month later, Archbishop Cranmer declared Catherine’s marriage to Henry VIII invalid, and that his and Anne’s was totally lawful. This led to Catherine being handed the annulment papers on 3rd of July, which finally triggered her anger. She snapped and proclaimed that she wouldn’t accept any other resolution that wasn’t from the Pope in Rome.
There was another try in December, when the Duke of Suffolk (let’s remember he’s King Henry’s best friend and Mary Tudor’s second husband) was sent again along with a delegation with the clear goal of making her recoil. He repeated that she couldn’t be called or treated as Queen and that she was bound to move once again; this time to Somersham. Catherine, tired and rightfully infuriated, claimed that she wouldn’t conform to the Dowager Princess title nor would she ever go to Somersham. She highlighted those fiery statements by slamming the door on the dumbstruck Duke’s face, leaving him begging her to listen to reason, outside. Suffolk proceeded to question everyone in the household, and I suppose he must have been dumbfounded when all of them refused to treat her as the Dowager Princess of Wales and remarked that Catherine was their rightful Queen.
The next step was to spend five days emptying her house of furniture and servants to force her to move out. All the while Suffolk kept trying to talk with her, but to no avail. It’s said that she even told him that the only way she would leave would be if they broke the door down (knowing that Suffolk wouldn’t dare to do that in case of future backlash).
Left speechless and not knowing how to operate nor what to do, he wrote King Henry VIII a letter explaining what had occurred and asking for guidance. Worth noting that, in his quite desperate state, he even went as far as to suggest that they would only be able to move Catherine out of that house if they tied her up in ropes. Henry’s answer reached Suffolk on 31st of December, telling him to return to court and let Catherine be for the moment.
Despite all this crazy madness, Catherine still wrote about her feelings towards her strained husband saying: “the great love that hath been betwixt him and me ere thus... the which love in me is as faithful and true to him, as ever it was”.
I don’t know if she still felt that love on 23rd of March 1534 when a new Act of Succession was passed. This declared Elizabeth (Anne and Henry’s six months old daughter who would someday become Gloriana) as rightful heir to the English throne and left Mary (Catherine and Henry’s 18 year-old daughter that would go down in history as Bloody Mary) as a mere bastard. Funny detail: this was the precise moment when Rome passed a sentence in favor of Catherine, which must have felt reassuring after those long years of struggle, even though it undoubtedly came a bit too much too late.
Nonetheless, a proclamation was issued soon after that made calling Catherine Queen a treasonous act. To make matters even worse, Henry VIII made everyone swear an oath in order to recognize said Act and demonstrate faithfulness to the crown and to Anne Boleyn. The ones who refused would be punished with death and their belongings and possessions would end up within royal hands. Furthermore, Catherine was sent to Kimbolton castle, which would become her last home. There she was visited by Archbishops Lee and Tunstall in another attempt to bring her to her knees. They read her all the articles against the validity of her matrimony to Henry VIII while she adamantly denied each one of them.
Thus, Catherine confined herself in her chambers and became more frail each passing day. She kept her ground and maintained her pious ways, finding comfort in her Christian faith and in hearing mass.
By December 1535 it was clear to all that she was nearing the end of her life, not being able to sleep nor eat. Eustace Chapuys, former Spanish ambassador and a supporter of Catherine’s cause, got to spend four days with her (after being denied doing so not long ago) and thought she might recover after all, expressing that Catherine appeared “very cheerful”.
Maybe it was due to the fact that she got the chance to see her old friend Maria Salinas once more, who snuck in with help of the servants to pay her a visit. The truth is that doesn’t really matter whatever Eustace thought when he left her side, because Catherine dictated one last letter to Henry that said:
My most dear lord, King and husband,
The hour of my death now drawing on, the tender love I ouge [owe] thou forceth me, my case being such, to commend myselv to thou, and to put thou in remembrance with a few words of the healthe and safeguard of thine allm [soul] which thou ougte to preferce before all worldley matters, and before the care and pampering of thy body, for the which thoust have cast me into many calamities and thineselv into many troubles. For my part, I pardon thou everything, and I desire to devoutly pray God that He will pardon thou also. For the rest, I commend unto thou our doughtere Mary, beseeching thou to be a good father unto her, as I have heretofore desired. I entreat thou also, on behalve of my maides, to give them marriage portions, which is not much, they being but three. For all mine other servants I solicit the wages due them, and a year more, lest they be unprovided for. Lastly, I makest this vouge [vow], that mine eyes desire thou aboufe all things.
Clearly (and sadly) she knew her time on earth was running out. But she wasn’t leaving bowing down and, to top it off, she signed:
Katharine the Quene
Maria de Salinas held Katherine as she made her way to the unknown on Friday 7th of January 1536, shortly before Anne Boleyn herself was bound to lose her savior and initiate her own downfall.
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