España Britannia E-Book

Alistair Ward

• Herausgeber: Shepherd Walwyn Publishers
• Kategorie: Geisteswissenschaft
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 447

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2012

Beschreibung

This historical analysis of the political and religious relationship of Britain and Spain, from 12th-century dynastic alliances to the Spanish support of the English-American invasion of Iraq, asserts that there have been many significant links between the two countries over the past 800 years. While England and Spain were rivals in the New World, British and Spanish troops fought side by side for causes of mutual concern during the Peninsular War, Spanish Civil War, and World War II. This bittersweet relationship has been fundamental to Continental politics and the position of each country in the international realm.

Leseprobe

© Alistair Ward 2004

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form without the written permission of the publisher, Shepheard-Walwyn (Publishers) Ltd

First published in 2004 by

Shepheard-Walwyn (Publishers) Ltd

Suite 604, The Chandlery

50 Westminster Bridge Road

London SE1 7QY

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data

A catalogue record of this book is available from the British Library

ISBN 0 85683 224 3

Typeset by Alacrity,

Banwell Castle, Weston-super-Mare

Printed through Print Solutions, Wallington, Surrey

Contents

Acknowledgments

Preface

Map of Spain

1 The Eleanor Crosses

2 Man in Black

3 Catherine - England’s Beloved Spanish Queen

4 Bloody Mary

5 Pirates

6 Philip’s Annus Horibilis

7 After the Armada - Cornwall and Cadiz

8 The War of the Spanish Succession

9 The Pillar of Hercules

10 Minorca

11 London’s Plaza Mayor

12 Sharpe’s War

13 The British Legion

14 King Juan Carlos I’s Grandmother

15 The Sell-Out of the Century

Epilogue

Principal Sources

Index of Spanish Place Names

For Susie, Isabella and Amelia

Acknowledgements

MY THANKS are due to the late Chris Thornycroft for providing me with a first-hand account of what is was like to fight with the International Brigade during the Spanish Civil War, and helping me understand the reasons behind British non-intervention.

I must thank Bill Carnaby for kindly reading my manuscript and correcting me on a number of points.

I am also grateful to Andrew Goodwin for accompanying me on three rewarding tours of the battlefields of the Peninsular War.

Finally I wish, especially, to thank my wife Susie for her loving support.

Preface

IN SEPTEMBER 1992, I travelled to the Spanish Basque country to take up an English teaching post at the Inlingua Idiomas language academy in Irún. One day the director of the academy mentioned that the Duke of Wellington had once passed through the area. I had always been very interested in history so was intrigued to find out more.

I had heard of a book called A Guards Officer in the Peninsula and asked my sister, who worked in London at the time, to buy it and send it out to me. The book, edited by Ian Fletcher, contains the letters of John Rous who, as a sixteen-year-old in 1812, had travelled to the peninsula to join Wellington’s army, then busy trying to push Napoleon’s army back into France. What fascinated me most was that five of the letters were written from a camp or lodgings near Irún. I decided that the next time I was in England I would go into Foyles in Charing Cross Road to see if there was anything else to read on the subject. When I got there, it was a beautiful sight. There was a whole bookcase crammed with books on the Peninsular War. I picked out four including Julian Paget’s Wellington’s Peninsular War which was destined to become my most-thumbed book.

After a year in Irún I moved to another Inlingua academy in Murcia, in the south-east of the country but in December 1994 felt the time had come to return home. I had thoroughly enjoyed my two years and three months in Spain. I had travelled about quite a lot and knew I would be back every year to see more of that fascinating and enchanting land.

Because I missed Spain, all my reading was now related to the country. There are a huge number of great books on the subject, from autobiographical travel books like As I Walked Out One Midsummer’s Morning by Laurie Lee to contemporary studies like The New Spaniards by John Hooper. However, I was most interested in reading about those events in history that involved both Britain and Spain. At first I thought such shared moments in history could be counted on the fingers of one hand – the Peninsular War, Catherine of Aragon, the Armada, pirates and Gibraltar – but, as I read on, other major events and personalities were added to the list until there were fifteen.

I started taking notes which, eight years on, have expanded into España Britannia. I hope that after reading this book you will enjoy your visits to Spain even more. I hope also that you will feel the urge to leave the beaten track and view the more remote parts of that beautiful country travelled by so many other Britons in such wildly different circumstances so many years ago.

CHAPTER 1

The Eleanor Crosses

Ride a cock horse to Banbury Cross

To see a fine lady upon a white horse,

With rings on her fingers and bells on her toes,

She shall have music wherever she goes.

Traditional nursery rhyme

IN CENTRAL LONDON, only yards from the great square with the Spanish name, are a hotel, a station and a road that bear the name of Charing Cross. An imaginative reconstruction of the original thirteenth-century cross stands in the hotel and station forecourt. The original was the final of twelve crosses marking the night stops of the funeral cortège that carried the body of Queen Eleanor, the Spanish wife of Edward I, from Harby in Nottinghamshire to Westminster in 1290. The others were set up at Lincoln, Grantham, Stamford, Geddington, Hardingstone, Stony Stratford, Woburn, Dunstable, St Albans, Waltham and Cheapside. In time such crosses came to be seen as symbols marking the centres of villages and market towns, and places never visited by the cortège sprouted them. One of these, Banbury, is immortalised in the old nursery rhyme. The cross at Sledmere in Yorkshire was built only in 1895, then converted to a war memorial in 1919. Of the originals, only three remain: at Geddington (the best example), Hardingstone and Waltham.

So who was this Spanish queen whose loss was so mourned that her warrior husband strove to ensure she would never be forgotten?

Eleanor was born in northern Spain in 1244 to King Ferdinand III of Castile and Joan of Ponthieu. Her father was a great crusader who united Castile and León and accelerated the pace of reconquest from the Moors. Soon after her birth she would have been taken south as her father moved his base to Andalusia. When he died in 1252, he was succeeded by Eleanor’s half-brother Alfonso X. It would have been expedient for Eleanor to marry the English Edward, eldest son of Henry III. The English king’s lands in Gascony were adjacent to Castile so marriage would secure the borders for both parties. It would also deal with her brother’s spurious claim to that part of Aquitaine. The claim was based on the supposition that the English sovereign Henry II had pledged Gascony to Alfonso VIII of Castile as part of the deal that took Henry’s daughter Eleanor to Castile as queen in 1170.

The marriage negotiations included an Anglo-Castilian treaty by which the kings of Castile and England became allies against all enemies. Edward was to be knighted and would assist in the Castilian struggle to reduce Navarre. Interestingly, for a time when the reconquest was not yet complete, Henry also agreed to assist Alfonso in an invasion of North Africa.

In October 1254 Prince Edward arrived in Burgos for the wedding. The venue was the monastery of Las Huelgas de Burgos, founded by Alfonso VIII of Castile and Eleanor of England in 1187 as their future mausoleum. The ceremony most likely took place on 1 November. The groom was fifteen, his bride just ten. Later that month they travelled to Gascony where they spent a year before journeying to England the following October. It was an arranged marriage between two very young people from vastly different backgrounds but it was to last for thirty-six years and produce more children than the union of any other king and queen of England before or since.

During the next ten years, Henry III’s inept rule provoked the barons to take government into their own hands. For a time Edward supported the rebels, led by Simon de Montfort, Earl of Leicester. Later he turned to support his father and was captured during the royal defeat at the Battle of Lewes in 1264, after which Eleanor fled to France. Edward escaped a year later to lead royalist forces back to victory at the Battle of Evesham in August 1265 and Eleanor returned to join her husband, who became effective ruler.

Edward was the archetypal medieval king. His tall and powerful physique gave him an advantage in tournaments in that age of chivalry. He hunted stag, practised falconry, patronised minstrels and heralds and played chess. But no knight’s record was complete without a crusade. And so it was that, in August 1270, Eleanor left with her husband on the long and dangerous journey to the Holy Land. The Fifth Crusade did little to help the fortunes of Jerusalem. One of its few legacies was a tale that was long recounted as proof of Eleanor’s selfless devotion to her husband. The story goes that, whilst in his chamber at Acre, Edward was visited by a Moslem who attacked him with a poisoned dagger. Edward fought back and killed the would-be assassin before Eleanor dutifully sucked the deadly poison from his wound. It is a nice story but unlikely to be true: it first appears in a work written by an Italian Dominican friar no less than a century and a half later. That he was from an order that Eleanor supported suggests ulterior motives for embellishing a less remarkable account of what actually happened.

Eleanor and Edward left the Holy Land in September 1272. In Sicily they received the dramatic news that they were king and queen, Henry III having passed away. England was stable enough for them not to rush home. Eleanor had good reason not to travel on: she was pregnant with her eighth child.

One of the frustrations of medieval history is the difficulty of establishing facts. How many children did Eleanor actually have? Most likely fourteen, but we have only twelve names – four boys, called John, Henry, Alfonso and Edward, and eight girls, Katherine, Joan (two), Eleanor, Margaret, Bernagaria, Mary and Elizabeth. It is possible that there were more. The tragedy is that only six lived to adulthood.

Four of Eleanor’s children had already died when she gave birth to a boy in Aquitaine in November 1273. She invited her brother Alfonso X to the baptism in Bayonne. Amazingly for a child second in line to the English throne, he was given a very foreign name – Alfonso, after his godfather and uncle. When the baby’s elder brother died the following year, he became first in line until his own untimely death at the age of ten. Eleanor must have suffered a great deal, both physically, during years of pregnancy and childbirth, and mentally, having to cope with the illness and death of so many of her children. It appears that she mourned Alfonso the most, decreeing that, when she died, his heart should be buried with her own.

Queen Eleanor and King Edward I arrived at Dover on 2 August 1274. Seventeen days later they were crowned in Westminster Abbey. Queen Eleanor was a sophisticated cosmopolitan woman who coped well with the cultural shock of thirteenth-century England. She owned and commissioned literary works and was very interested in education. She enjoyed embroidery and weaving, and kept dogs. Notably, she did not bring in Castilian relatives and hangers-on, but she did introduce carpets to England in 1255 and, apparently, the first merino sheep. There are also records of her purchasing olive oil, pomegranates, figs, oranges and lemons, either from abroad or directly from Castilian ships calling at English ports. She was obviously supportive of her husband but the notion that she had a calming influence on him is probably untrue. Like so many others, Eleanor had a reputation in death that differed considerably from that in life. As Edward’s wife, many people in England denounced her as a foreign-born land-grabber who caused her husband to rule harshly. Such a view would have been aggravated by her not speaking English, if that was indeed the case. She and her husband both had French mothers, and French was spoken at court. Unless you planned to speak to peasants and tradesmen, there was no point in learning English.

Financial arrangements at the time did not allow the queen to have all her expenses covered by the king. Instead, Edward encouraged Eleanor to augment her own income through the acquisition of land. The stewards she employed to act for her in this earned her much criticism as they went about their work with some ruthlessness. One of her methods was to take over debts to Jews, who were struggling due to arbitrary Crown taxes, then charge the same exorbitant interest rates whilst enjoying the protection of her position. Her stewards were quick to seize manors and other assets if there was any default on payment – it was the manors they really wanted. Knights who had borrowed money for the crusade were incensed to lose their property by such underhand methods. Most of her acquisitions, however, did not involve the Jews. Anyone with land, whether financially burdened or not, feared that their property could fall under the greedy gaze of her stewards, who would thus concoct some way of obtaining it. After she had acquired the land, her ruthlessness fell on the tenants. The Archbishop of Canterbury, John Pecham, was sufficiently outraged by her behaviour to warn her that she was committing mortal sin. Her husband’s desire to give her a reputation not enjoyed in life might be one of the reasons why Edward arranged for three magnificent tombs, twelve beautiful crosses and a funeral procession and ceremony of unprecedented splendour.

In 1290 Edward expelled the Jews, a move that enabled him to raise substantial revenue in taxes from subjects who no longer had financial obligations to the departed moneylenders. Late that year, Queen Eleanor was on her way to the Scottish border when she was taken gravely ill. The forty-six-year-old queen died in Richard de Weston’s house at Harby, Nottinghamshire on 28 November. Her body needed three tombs as her intestines were to be buried at Lincoln Cathedral, her heart with that of her beloved son Alfonso at the London Dominican church and the rest of her in Westminster Abbey. The ceremony in the abbey on 17 December set a standard that would make the great building the focus of splendid regal ceremony through time to the coronation of Queen Elizabeth II, the funeral of Diana, Princess of Wales, and beyond. Besides the desire to give his wife a positive legend, and the ruling Plantaganets some excellent propaganda, Edward’s devotions on his wife’s death still owed much to the fact that he loved her deeply. In his own words she was a woman ‘whom living we dearly cherished, and whom dead we cannot cease to love’.

Edward I went on to rule for seventeen more years. He married again and had four more children. During his thirty-three-year reign he strengthened the Crown and Parliament against the feudal nobility and oversaw great progress in administration and legal reform. After eight years of campaigning he succeeded in subduing Wales, his son Edward becoming the first Prince of Wales. He attempted to do the same to Scotland but, although he executed William Wallace and confiscated the Stone of Scone, the ‘Hammer of the Scots’, as he became known, never succeeded. He died on his way to put down a rebellion by Robert the Bruce.

Five hundred and seventy years after Eleanor’s death, another great and powerful monarch was to be deeply saddened by the loss of her beloved spouse. After Queen Victoria’s husband Prince Albert died in 1861, the leading architect of the Gothic revival, Sir George Gilbert Scott, sought inspiration for a lavish memorial to the prince consort. His design was a magnificent sculpted granite structure with a splendid gilded statue. His inspiration was the Eleanor cross.

CHAPTER 2

Man in Black

Because in his deeds in Spain he restored the true king to his throne after his defeat, overthrowing the tyrant and making the kings of Navarre and Majorca almost his subjects, his great power and qualities were such that the Lord could have said to him, as to David, ‘I have made thy name great among the names of the great ones of the earth.’

Thomas Brinton, Bishop of Rochester, 1376

PEDRO I, KING OF CASTILE and León between 1350 and 1369, was also known as Pedro El Cruel. You may be disappointed to learn that, despite this label, he was probably not cruel at all. To right the misnomer, the tag of his spiteful enemies, and call attention to the firm execution of justice during his reign, some subsequent historians have called him Pedro El Justiciero (the just or righteous). During his reign his bastard half-brother Enrique de Trastamare was desperate to get his hands on the throne. Enrique was supported by Pedro IV of Aragon who, to confuse things, has also been called Pedro El Cruel. He really did deserve the tag for the extreme malice he displayed to anyone challenging his authority. Enrique bought Pedro IV’s support with a promise of one-sixth of Castile but Pedro I of Castile and León inflicted a number of defeats on his namesake and threatened to overrun his kingdom. Luckily for the Aragonese king, France was an ally. The French king Charles V and the Pope joined forces to pay for an army of French mercenaries to invade Castile and put Enrique on the throne. Most of the mercenaries, with no war to fight, had been passing the time ravaging France, so Charles V was pleased to see them employed elsewhere. Early in March 1366 they marched into Castile. Among their number were three English captains, Sir Hugh Calveley, Sir Thomas Dagworth and William Elmham, who had ignored King Edward III’s command forbidding Englishmen to attack Castilian subjects. By the end of March Enrique had what he wanted. He had been crowned in Burgos, King of Castile and León.

How could Pedro I hope to succeed against an army backed by France? The only way he could hope to retrieve his kingdom now was by finding external support himself. But where from? He did not have to think too hard. In Europe there lived a celebrated knight who had led his men against French armies with vastly superior numbers, and won! He was the quintessence of chivalry, a man who delighted in extravagant tournaments, falconry, hunting, fine clothes and jewels. Pedro would contact him and ask him for help. He would call in Edward, the Black Prince.

The Black Prince

KING EDWARD III’S eldest son, Edward, was born at the royal palace in Woodstock on 15 June 1330. Like his father, the young Edward showed little interest in books and learning. He wanted to be a knight. By 1336 he had attended his first tournament and by 1338 he was the proud owner of a full set of armour and a tent. With so many Edwards in the family at the time, it is good that he came to be known by another name, on account of the colour of his armour.

There was going to be plenty of opportunity to use his knightly skills. When he was just six, England and France embarked on what would come to be known as the Hundred Years’ War. The trouble went back to 1066, when William the Conqueror won the Battle of Hastings. Although he became King William I of England, he was still the Duke of Normandy and a vassal of the French king. When the English king Henry II married Eleanor, Duchess of Aquitaine, another huge part of France, that bordering the Pyrenees and the Bay of Biscay in the south-west, came under the jurisdiction of the English monarch, but it was still under the ultimate authority of the King of France. The arrangement did not work well. Residents of English areas with a grievance would cause friction by going over the heads of their English masters to the authorities in Paris. Also, regardless of royal inheritances, the French monarchs wanted the English out. Meanwhile the French caused trouble in Edward’s back yard, supporting the Scots in their war with England. French antagonism of the English also extended to the disruption of her highly profitable foreign wool trade.

Edward III had a strategy that went beyond denying that he was a vassal of the French king – he claimed the French throne for himself. When Charles IV of France died in 1328, there had been no male heir. Charles’s cousin, Philip of Valois, had ascended the throne but Edward, a nephew of Charles, could argue that he was the rightful heir.

From the age of twelve, Edward, Prince of Wales, accompanied his father on campaigns abroad. When just sixteen he distinguished himself in the thick of the fighting at the Battle of Crécy. The battle, fought on 26 August 1346, was the culmination of a six-week rampage through northern France by ten thousand men bent on pillage and destruction. For his part in the spectacular victory, the prince was awarded three ostrich plumes and the motto ich dien (I serve), still used by the Prince of Wales today. King Edward followed up this success with the taking of Calais, whose gates opened to the English on Saturday 4 August 1347. The port was to remain English for two hundred years.

The following year, the Black Death came to Europe. One of the first English victims was the prince’s fourteen-year-old sister. After the victory at Crécy, Edward III had concluded a marriage alliance with Alfonso IV of Castile: his second daughter Joan was to marry Alfonso’s eldest son Pedro. However, the young bride-to-be died of the plague at Bordeaux in 1348, en route for Spain, and the Castilians promptly ended their alliance with the English and allied with the French. They assembled a large naval force to raid the English coast and prey on boats sailing to and from England’s possessions in France. In the summer of 1350 they attacked the Gascon wine fleet as it headed for England. Ten ships were lost. The Spanish, under Admiral Carlos de la Cerda, then felt they had done enough and prepared to return home while the weather was still favourable. Meanwhile King Edward and the prince prepared to put to sea from Winchelsea in East Sussex to confront them. On 29 August around fifty English ships sailed out to meet the forty-seven Spanish vessels. As the ships closed, the English archers unleashed their deadly shower of steel-pointed arrows. The English boats crashed into the much larger Spanish ships and grappled them: the soldiers stormed aboard for the bitter and brutal fight to the death on the decks. It was a good evening’s work for Edward’s army: they captured half of the Spanish fleet. However, it was not decisive. There were concerns over what the ships that got away would do when they passed the coast of Aquitaine on the way home.

The prince returned to the maintenance of his authority in Aquitaine. In 1356 he commanded the English forces at the Battle of Poitiers. It was his finest hour. His six to eight thousand men were outnumbered two to one by the French, but he had his archers. His men first occupied defensive positions in the vineyards and above the sunken lanes but, once the longbowmen had turned the sky black, the English knights and men at arms went on the attack. A bloody struggle ensued. Eventually the French fell back without their King John, who gave himself up in a field beside the River Miosson, well aware that the prince would demand an enormous ransom for his freedom.

In the years before he lost his kingdom Pedro I of Castile and León had considered how England might be used to counter French support for his enemies. As a result, an Anglo-Castilian alliance was signed at St Paul’s Cathedral in June 1362, England agreeing to go to Pedro’s aid in the event of Castile being invaded. In July 1366 Pedro journeyed to Capbreton in Aquitaine to ask the Black Prince to honour this commitment. The task could not have been easier. With Aquitaine sharing a border with Castile, the last thing Prince Edward wanted was the heightened security risk of a pro-French monarch on the Castillian throne. But the Black Prince did not come cheap. He demanded a vast sum of money and the Basque province of Vizcaya, including the port of Bilbao. Pedro agreed. He knew he was promising too much but he wanted Castile back at any price.

The year 1367 started well for the prince when, on 6 January, his wife Joan gave birth to their second son at Bordeaux. The infant, who would one day be king, was christened Richard. One of his godfathers, who was visiting the prince at the time, was Jaime IV, the claimant to the kingdom of Mallorca.

On 14 February the prince’s army departed from Saint-Jean-Pieddu-Port on the Aquitaine side of the Pyrenees and climbed towards the Pass of Roncesvalles, which leads into Navarre. Pedro I had already bought King John of Navarre’s support by promising him land and money. By the end of the month the eight-thousand-strong force was at King John’s capital, Pamplona. The army marched on, west towards Vitoria in the province of Alava, a place where 446 years later the army of Wellington would also seek battle. Over the years the provincial borders within countries change. Alava is now part of the autonomous community of Euskadi – the Basque Country – but then it was part of Castile. The first Castilian town that the prince’s army came to was Salvatierra. After a short fight it opened its gates.

After six days of rest the army marched the twenty miles to Vitoria where Enrique’s army was also heading. The prince and his army were poised to attack but Enrique was not going to give them the pleasure of a pitched battle yet. His horsemen attacked the prince’s foragers by day and English encampments by night. They plunged swords into sleeping men and captured the bemused and rudely awakened. The terrain favoured such guerrilla tactics and was poor for forage so the prince decided to lead his men south-east, back into Navarre. There they turned and took a south-westerly route back to Castile, which they entered at Logroño on 1 April. Today, Logrono’s prosperity comes from the Rioja wine trade; six and a half centuries ago it was also important as a crossing place of the Ebro, where Navarre bordered Castile, and as a town on the Camino de Santiago, which a number of the prince’s men would previously have trodden. Fifteen miles further west, on the far bank of the Rio Najerilla, Enrique waited in the town of Nájera. On Friday 2 April the prince advanced along the Camino de Santiago to Navarette while Enrique left the town and crossed the bridge to camp in the open fields where he would do battle.

The prince used the cover of darkness to move north-east of the enemy so that, on the morning of 3 April, Enrique was forced into emergency manoeuvres to meet the onslaught. Edward’s very mixed force of English and Castilian knights, Navarese, Majorcan and Gascon troops, and of course English archers, moved against an equally mixed force which included the best Castilian troops and, of course, the French. As the English vanguard under John of Gaunt went in, a deadly cloud of arrows flew over their heads into Enrique’s ranks. A bitter hand-to-hand struggle ensued in which men yelled, lances pierced, swords slashed, horses whinnied and the mutilated screamed. The prince reacted to Enrique’s men forcing him back by ordering his two flanks forward. Enrique’s flanks did not have the stomach for the fight; they withdrew, leaving all the prince’s men to concentrate on the Castilian troops, who buckled under such pressure. Many of Enrique’s men were slaughtered or captured as they fled back towards Nájera. Great numbers perished, drowned in the river, cut down in the struggle at the bridge and slaughtered in the carnage that descended on the town. Enrique himself got away, leaving five to six thousand dead and two thousand prisoners. That night, the prince celebrated in the great comfort of Enrique’s camp.

The following Wednesday, 7 April, Pedro regained Burgos and his throne in the city where the most famous Catillian nobleman, El Cid, was entombed. The prince stayed at the monastery of Las Huelgas. The job done, he wished to collect his payment and get out. But he had only to look around him, at the poverty of the place, to realise he would be lucky to get what he wanted. The new and vulnerable government was in no position to demand its subjects hand over huge amounts of cash to the Prince of Wales, or that the Basque province of Vizcaya switch allegiance. The prince himself was winning no friends as his hungry men captured and damaged communities in search of provisions. As Pedro travelled through Castile, in a genuine but futile effort to gather the payment, the prince’s army moved on to Valladolid and then to Medina del Campo, one of the foremost market towns of Europe, before heading back towards Navarre via Soria. The prince fell very ill with a type of dysentery; it was probably this which prompted him to head home in late August. He was reunited with his wife Joan and eldest son Edward in Bordeaux early in September.

The expedition had achieved its principle objective, but at great cost to the Black Prince who now had to deal with an unpaid army and a disgruntled Aquitaine public unwilling to finance his debts through higher taxes. He struggled to keep control as Charles V aggravated the situation all he could. In 1370 Edward destroyed the city of Limoges, which had risen against him. With his illness returning in ever worsening bouts he decided to return to England.

Enrique did not abandon his desire to rule Castile. Supported by Charles V, he returned with more French troops and, less than two years after the rout at Nájera, defeated Pedro at Montiel. The prince’s slim hope that Pedro would settle his account evaporated when Enrique de Trastamare personally put his half-brother to the sword.

The Black Prince never fully recovered his health after his Spanish adventure, and died at Westminster in 1376. He was buried alongside his favourite saint, Thomas Beckett, in Canterbury Cathedral. His father was a king and his son Richard (II) was a king. Never attaining the throne probably did not trouble him as it did Don Juan de Bourbon, the present Spanish king’s father. His great territorial responsibilities and prowess in battle meant that the people of western Europe saw him as a king in all but title.

CHAPTER 3

Catherine

England’s Beloved Spanish Queen

And if a man shall take his brother’s wife, it is an unclean thing: he hath uncovered his brother’s nakedness; they shall be childless.

Leviticus 20:21

Spain 1492

FOR OVER HALF a millennium the Spanish have marvelled at how incredible a year 1492 was. No sooner had Christian Spain wrested back its old Iberian world from the Moors than Christopher Columbus appeared at Court with dreams of a new American world awaiting exploitation.

The last Moorish king of Granada retreated from the splendid Alhambra as his mother scolded him for weeping like a woman over that which he had not defended like a man. His sorrow was in sharp contrast to the joy of King Ferdinand of Aragon and Queen Isabella of Castile that January day as they rode through the gates of that beautiful city with their five children. The youngest was six-year-old Catherine. Fair-skinned, with auburn hair and blue-grey eyes, she was not destined to spend her adult days in the warm Iberian sun, but far north in a land more accustomed to damp, fog and short winter days. The daughter of Spain’s greatest royal couple would marry a notorious English king. The magnificent splendour of her origins would make her later treatment and her humble end all the more pitiful.

Queen Isabella’s fourth daughter Catherine was born at Alcalá de Henares on 16 December 1485. The fact that Isabella’s mother was Catherine of Lancaster probably accounted for the fairness of them all; it also meant that they could count Alfred the Great and Henry II among their ancestors. Being the child of great and powerful rulers had its advantages, but it also meant your parents could use you as a pawn. Hardly out of childhood, you might be placed at some foreign 14 court, chosen not for your own happiness but for the political benefits it would bring your family.

England 1499

KING HENRY VII looked to Europe for suitable alliances for his sons Arthur, Prince of Wales, and Henry, Duke of York. They needed to be carefully chosen as Henry still felt vulnerable at home. He had won his crown years earlier at Bosworth Field, defeating Richard of York, but there were still adversaries at large whom he saw as a threat to his position.

After negotiations in which the Spanish envoy rejected Henry’s demands for a greater dowry, it being seen as sufficient that Ferdinand and Isabella condescended to send their daughter to a lesser court, the marriage of England’s Prince Arthur and Spain’s Princess Catherine was arranged. On Whit Sunday 1499 the two thirteen-year-olds were married by proxy at Bewdley Manor in Worcestershire. Two years later Henry VII prepared for Catherine’s arrival. He instructed that all the ladies-in-waiting from Spain should be beautiful. The English ambassador clarified this for Queen Isabella’s benefit: their beauty would ensure that they attracted English husbands and remained in England as company for her daughter. Delayed by tempestuous seas, Catherine and her retinue finally arrived at Plymouth on 2 October 1501. A delighted Prince Arthur set eyes on his Spanish princess for the first time at the Bishop of Bath’s Palace in Dogmersfield.

It was a match that pleased the people of England, not least the merchants who anticipated good trading opportunities offered by peace with powerful Spain. King Ferdinand looked forward to enjoying new support on the European stage, while Henry VII would consolidate his position at home and raise his profile abroad. On Sunday 14 November 1501 the atmosphere in London was one of joy and optimism. The royal wedding spun its magic and moved everyone to a sense of joy as they filled the streets to see the characters of this Tudor fairy tale. After the Archbishop of Cantebury had married the two the festivities began, but as the knights fought to unseat each other the newly-wed Arthur struggled to keep up with the pace.

That night fifteen-year-old Arthur and sixteen-year-old Catherine were publicly bedded down. Exactly what happened next was to be become the subject of intense public speculation. Some were to argue strongly that the couple simply fell asleep and that the marriage was not consummated in the next five months. These same people would later insist that there was no way Arthur could have lain so long with his beautiful princess without touching her.

On 2 April 1502 the fairy tale came to an abrupt end. Arthur, Prince of Wales, fell victim to the plague which had taken hold in the country around the couple’s home at Ludlow Castle. The grief-stricken Princess Catherine, still only sixteen and married for just five months, was a widow. She mourned her husband, so tragically deprived of a bright, exciting future, and lamented that she was now alone in a land which, until then, had proudly looked on her as a future queen. The value of Ferdinand’s pawn, carefully moved to the Tudor court, had been nullified by Arthur’s dying breath.

Ferdinand and Isabella were shocked by the news but it did not take them long to decide what they should do. Still valuing a strong alliance with England – they were fighting the French at the time – they decided their daughter should marry Arthur’s younger brother Henry, Duke of York. Henry was very different from his brother. He expended great energy in riding, playing tennis and dancing; he also displayed a sharp intellect and a keen talent for languages and music. There were potential obstacles, however. The Pope might not permit it, it being against the rules of the Church for a man to take his brother’s wife. Even if the Pope were to allow the union, the people might not accept his dispensation if they believed a judgement on such a matter to be beyond his authority. The chances of re-establishing the alliance between Spain and England would therefore rest on the conviction that Catherine was still a virgin.

When Henry VII’s wife, the beautiful and popular Queen Elizabeth, died a week after giving birth in February 1503, he thought about marrying Catherine himself. But Isabella preferred her daughter to take a husband with a long life ahead of him; she did not want Spanish influence prematurely curtailed yet again. Henry, who had been in no hurry to agree a marriage treaty for his son, finally did so in June 1503, persuaded by his reluctance to return Catherine’s dowry of a hundred thousand crowns. The matter of the papal dispensation was taken care of by the dying Isabella, who cunningly published it against the Pope’s instructions. Catherine’s life was now back on track. No longer the abandoned princess or the unfortunate expense Henry VII had been reluctant to maintain, she was back where she had left off, in Ludlow, a future queen of England.

Whilst Queen Isabella had striven to secure the betrothal of her daughter before her life came to a close, her very death set off a train of events which meant that, for the second time, Catherine was to find herself alone. With Isabella’s death, Castile passed to her weak daughter Juana. Juana’s husband was Philip, son of the Flemish-based Holy Roman Emperor Maximillian. Under Maximillian’s influence the Anglo-Spanish trade treaty which supported the livelihoods of so many English sailors and merchants, was cancelled. The Spanish action angered England. Prince Henry reacted by reconsidering his future marriage to a daughter of the offending nation. Citing concerns that an illegitimate marriage might undermine his future authority, and that, in any case, he had not been an adult when it was agreed, he asked that the treaty be invalidated. On 27 June 1505 the Privy Council did just that and Catherine’s dreams faded once more.

King Philip and Castile’s Queen Juana had not planned to visit England in January 1506 but in those days of sail an unpredictable wind could change an itinerary. Catherine’s sister Juana and her husband had just left the Netherlands for Spain when the elements conspired to divert them to England’s shores. Catherine’s short family reunion at Windsor was marred by her observation that all was not well with her unhappy sister. Despite the diversion of the visit, things were equally unsatisfactory for Catherine. She was destitute. She had no income from Ferdinand and none from Henry.

After the visitors returned to Spain Ferdinand cunningly regained Castile by the mysterious death of Philip and imprisonment of Juana. Once more he had reason and time enough to think of Catherine. He made her his ambassadress.

Despite Prince Henry’s rejection of Catherine, the two continued to frequent the same society. She had a great affection for the vivacious, handsome prince and Henry had a lot of time for his bother’s widow. His father, less happy with the relationship, put a stop to it. While saddening Henry and Catherine, the ban probably did the long-term prospects of the relationship a power of good.

Henry VII was still casting about for a new wife. His thoughts turned to Juana, his unexpected visitor in January 1506. He remembered Catherine’s sister’s beauty, and the fact that Castile was hers. The new ambassadress communicated Henry’s interest but Ferdinand would have nothing of it, insisting his daughter Juana was mad and unfit to remarry.

On 22 April 1509 Henry VII died at Richmond. His death was to have as great an effect on the fortunes of Catherine as the death of her first husband. But this time the effect was positive. Prince Henry and Catherine had started seeing each other again as King Henry grew weaker. The prince told her of his love for her and his wish that she should be his queen. The lonely princess, forced to scratch out an existence on no income, treated so poorly by so many around her, saw the tables turn dramatically.

Henry and Catherine were married in secret on 11 June 1509. On Midsummer’s Day in St Pauls Cathedral, Catherine, dressed in virginal white satin and gold, was crowned queen alongside her new husband, King Henry VIII. The people rejoiced for the handsome couple. She had won their hearts the day she first arrived in the land. He also was well loved. Tall, strong, intelligent and sociable, he was the archetypal king. The loving couple had to wait only until the autumn for more good news: Catherine was pregnant. Henry particularly wanted a son to guarantee his succession; Catherine just wanted a healthy child to end suspicions that her alliance with Henry was illegitimate and would be punished by infertility. This view was not widely held but it bubbled beneath the surface until finally proved groundless.

On 31 January 1510 Catherine gave birth to a girl. Sadly, she was dead. The queen soon became pregnant again, but at a time when she needed Henry’s support she discovered his attentions had wandered to a mistress, Lady Fitzwater. He was furious that she had found out, and the stress caused her to miscarry. The triple agonies of 1510 looked as if they could all be part of a bad dream when, on New Year’s Day 1511, the king and queen had their prayers answered: they were blessed with the arrival of a boy. On 22 February, to his parents’ utter despair, the baby died.

The root of the queen’s problems, which would cloud the years, was her terrible misfortune in not providing Henry with a male heir. Henry’s frustration on the domestic front was compounded by his failure on the world stage which, unfortunately for Catherine, was due largely to her father, King Ferdinand. Ferdinand never stopped to consider the embarrassment he caused his daughter as he repeatedly double-crossed her ambitious but naive husband. When Henry realised the Spanish king’s duplicity he did not have to look far for another Spaniard to scold and berate.

On 7 June 1512 ten thousand English soldiers landed at the coastal town of Hondarribia, close to the French border in the Spanish Basque country. Ferdinand had promised to help Henry in a conquest of Guienne in south-west France but the Spanish troops never arrived as they were busy trying to add Navarre to Ferdinand’s possessions. Indiscipline and illness afflicted the English army, which attacked villages before heading home with two thousand fewer than had arrived.

The following summer Henry made Catherine his regent and took an invasion force to France. While he was away Scotland’s James IV raised a huge army. Catherine, a true daughter of Isabella, the victorious warrior queen of Castile, sent off an army which defeated the Scots in a hard-fought battle at Flodden Hill. Henry returned home exulting over the victory and his wife’s handling of the affair. Then the old ghost reappeared. The couple’s happiness was overturned by the birth of another dead son.

Henry proceeded with his plans to take part of France, with Ferdinand’s help. However the Spanish king kept stalling. When pushed he said he needed more time, then soldiers, then money. Those surrounding Henry grew suspicious of Ferdinand’s inactivity, a tide of opinion Catherine fought against as she strove to assure her husband that her father would keep to his promises. When the truth came out, Ferdinand’s envoy Don Luis Caroz had to escape from the mob in the streets but there was no escape for the queen. While maintaining that an Anglo-Spanish alliance stood strong and that its fruit would be an imminent attack on France, Ferdinand had been negotiating with the enemy for marriage alliances and even a joint attack on some of Henry’s possessions. Catherine bore the brunt of Henry’s anger and finally realised that her faith in her father’s integrity had been misplaced. He was a manipulative and dishonest man of great ambition. It would not pay her to defend him in future. It was clear he had never taken her well-being into account when blithely humiliating her inexperienced husband. Catherine’s swing of loyalty angered Don Luis Caroz.

After making peace with France, Henry and his wife escorted his sister Princess Mary to Dover from where she departed for the land whose king she was to marry. Amongst her retinue was fourteen-year-old Anne Boleyn.

Already distressed by the loss of so many infants and the treacherous behaviour of her father, Catherine was further saddened by the continued adultery of her husband. Whilst another pregnancy offered the queen some hope, she had to tolerate Henry’s well-known visits to Bessie Blount in Newhall, in Essex. She desperately hoped for a healthy child to draw Henry back to her. All the prayers the deeply devout queen could offer were to come to nothing. She was delivered of another boy who lived for only a short time. The old gossip about her being unable to bear a child because of the illegitimacy of her marriage surfaced again.

Perhaps it was because Catherine had suffered rejection and abandonment that she had so much time for the poor and dispossessed of England. At this time the country’s wool trade was prospering to the great detriment of the production of food. Enclosed plots for the rearing of sheep took over common land previously cultivated, depriving families of their only means of feeding themselves. Catherine was touched by their predicament and tried to help, contributing to charities and even passing on her art of lace-making. The people held her in great affection and dearly wished that she could produce the baby she so longed for and deserved. Theirs and Catherine’s prayers were finally answered when on 18 February 1516 the gossips were muted and the succession strengthened by the birth of a healthy living child, Princess Mary.

Meanwhile, homelessness, unemployment and poverty were spreading. Amongst all the strife an ugly mob congregated and chose its scapegoat. On May Day 1517 foreigners and their businesses were attacked in a violent orgy of xenophobic rage. The authorities acted firmly, ordering hangings and imprisonment for members of the mob. Catherine, who had waited so long for a child, stepped in on behalf of the desparate mothers who were about to lose theirs. As they gratefully welomed her intervention, it was not lost on them that her compassion was never compromised by the fact that many of the victims had been of her own Spanish race.

The royal couple continued to try for more children. Catherine was the daughter of a strong, powerful and successful queen, so in her eyes the birth of their daughter Mary had guaranteed the succession. Henry’s country, however, had never witnessed the successful reign of a queen; for him the birth of a son was still vital. On 18 November 1518, child number six, a girl, was born. A few hours later she was dead. The sorrow and despair of both parents mounted. It was tempered for Henry, but deepened for Catherine, seven months later when the king’s mistress gave birth to a healthy boy. If God had not allowed her to bear Henry’s son because she had been married to his brother, where was the justice in Henry’s harlot being delivered of a healthy son? Catherine now suffered daily reminders of her failures as Henry Fitzroy was brought to court.

When Catherine had first arrived in England, her political status had been very high. She was the daughter of a powerful and respected king and queen. As Ferdinand’s deeds lowered the prestige of Spain in the eyes of the English, increasingly Catherine’s status came to depend on her personal standing in England. Then in 1519 the importance of her family connections increased when her nephew Charles was elected Holy Roman Emperor. Ruling a large area of central northern Europe along with Spain and its possessions, there was not a ruler who commanded more territory in the world. In late May he met Henry at Dover Castle, going on to Cantebury to meet the queen.

With Bessie Blount married off and banished, Henry’s attentions moved to the daughter of his first mistress, now one of the queen’s ladies-in-waiting. Her name was Mary Boleyn. At the time her sister Anne occupied a similar post at the French court.

In 1521 the French king sent an army south and seized Hondarribia and Navarre, which had the effect of driving Spain and England together. Henry’s right-hand man, Cardinal Thomas Wolsey, sailed for the Continent, where he agreed that England would declare war on France. This was no ordinary alliance based on a future military commitment. It stood out from similar agreements in that it was bound by the understanding that King Henry and Queen Catherine’s daughter Mary would marry powerful Charles when she came of age. Furthermore, should Henry not have a son, then the eldest male child of Charles and Mary would one day be King of England. Queen Catherine, who had been so disappointed when her daughter had earlier been betrothed to the Dauphin of France, could not have hoped for a better partner for Mary. A united England and Spain would be pushing together instead of against each other. Charles visited England again to plan the action against France and to celebrate his betrothal to Mary.

During recent years the pace of progress in the arts, sciences and other disciplines had started to quicken. There was a sea change in European thought, some of which would manifest itself in local reassessments of religious values. The queen supported the ‘new learning’, contributing to the founding of St Paul’s School and the Royal College of Physicians. She wanted to make sure that her daughter would be ready to rule wisely and that her education would reflect the progress of the time as well as her cosmopolitan background. Catherine and the Spanish scholar Juan Luis Vives put together an impressive programme. The young Mary was joined in her classes by the fortunate children of other noblemen. Catherine contributed to a fast stream of advanced education for some of the most important players of the Elizabethan age. Although Henry adored his daughter Mary, unlike Catherine he did not regard her as his heir to be prepared in all disciplines for her great responsibilities ahead.

The alliance with Charles was too good to be true; it was not long before it showed signs of cracking. Henry had invested troops and money in Continental gains but only Charles had seemed to reap the benefits. The situation reminded many of the fruitless support given to the treacherous Ferdinand. Suspicion grew into short-sighted over-reaction as Wolsey expelled Charles’s ambassador for reporting back on the Cardinal’s negotiations for peace with France. The cutting of diplomatic ties disregarded the bigger picture, which included the marriage treaty. Wolsey’s foolish action had been backed by Henry, but it incensed Catherine; it was soon to prove costly.

After scoring a terrific victory over the French King Francis at Pavia, Charles needed to liaise with Henry as he wanted money to pay his troops. Communication would have served Henry well as he was keen to have part of defeated France. However nothing was straightforward: Henry was having trouble raising money and Charles was now drawn into a marriage with Isabella of Portugal, whose dowry was nearly three times that of Mary. The lack of a communication channel crippled England’s ambitions but suited Charles: he could delay settling his financial debts to England, he would not have to cooperate in making her uncomfortably powerful by procuring vast areas of France, and he could go ahead and collect the large dowry that marriage to Isabella brought. If Henry later protested, Charles could claim he had needed to pay his army, and because his ambassador had been expelled from England he had unfortunately needed to seek a solution elsewhere. When an English delegation went to Spain, Charles demanded a loan, Mary’s dowry, and that the young princess be sent to him. Even if Henry and Catherine had been able to satisfy the first two demands, the third was out of the question and Charles knew it. Henry had been outplayed again.

And again Catherine was to pay the price for the way her family had treated her husband. She and Henry ceased to live together as man and wife, so gone was the chance of her giving him a son. Although Catherine had provided an heir, it was clear that Henry was keeping his options open: he granted various titles to his illegitimate son Henry Fitzroy. The queen’s life now entered a new phase: she would have to fight not only to defend her daughter’s right to the succession, but also her position as queen.

When two of Catherine’s ladies-in-waiting were sent away by Wolsey for refusing his demands to spy on her, Catherine was glad to accept Anne Boleyn as a replacement, even though her elder sister was the king’s current mistress. She was upset when Anne moved on again, after her ill-fated romance with Lord Henry Percy.

The King’s Great Matter

HENRY ENCOUNTERED ANNE