Catherine Of Aragon To King Henry VIII

Catherine of Aragon (1485 - 1536)

First Consort of Henry VIII (1509-33) and mother of Mary I, Catherine was a Spanish princess (daughter of Ferdinand and Isabella of Spain), married first to Henry's brother Prince Arthur (1501) to cement an alliance against France. Arthur died shortly afterwards, and she married his brother Henry months after his coronation. She bore six children (three sons) but all died except Mary.

As wife to Henry the VIII she suffered the indignity of witnessing his infidelities and was under enormous pressure to produce a male heir. Their marriage unsuprisingly soured. In need of a son and now hostile to Spain as an ally, Henry announced his wish to get divorced in 1527. Catherine refused to give in to Henry, remaining loyal to her faith and attracting much popular sympathy. She claimed her marriage to Arthur had been unconsummated, thus undermining Henry's theological arguments in favour of the divorce.

But Henry was determined to marry his favourite, Anne Boleyn, and did so secretly in 1533. After the separation and divorce announced a few months later by Archbishop Cranmer, Catherine spent her remaining years in constant fear of being poisoned and she refused to accept the divorce and her new title of 'Princess Dowager'. In 1536 she died at Kimbolton House; she was in considerable pain due to cancer and had been denied access to her only daughter.

Though King Henry VIII divorced her in 1533, Catherine remained devoted to Henry until her death in 1536, as this letter shows.

1535

My Lord and Dear Husband,

I commend me unto you. The hour of my death draweth fast on, and my case being such, the tender love I owe you forceth me, with a few words, to put you in remembrance of the health and safeguard of your soul, which you ought to prefer before all worldly matters, and before the care and tendering of your own body, for the which you have cast me into many miseries and yourself into many cares.

For my part I do pardon you all, yea, I do wish and devoutly pray God that He will also pardon you.

For the rest I commend unto you Mary, our daughter, beseeching you to be a good father unto her, as I heretofore desired. I entreat you also, on behalf of my maids, to give them marriage-portions, which is not much, they being but three. For all my other servants, I solicit a year's pay more than their due, lest they should be unprovided for.

Lastly, do I vow, that mine eyes desire you above all things.