The ladies could hear carousing in the distance, excitement and nerves drawing closer until the two were indistinguishable. Inside the chamber, Princess Catherine of Aragon was as ready for her wedding night as they could make her. The room itself had taken several hours to prepare – quite why is unclear – and now the freshly made bed stood in its candlelit centre like a solemn symbol of duty, a threat and promise alike. The room was full of ladies-in-waiting, from Jane Vaux, Lady Guildford, one of Queen Elizabeth of York’s attendants, to teenager María de Salinas, raised in the Castilian royal household and sent with the princess to England. Women were at the heart of this, the most significant of national events, as they were for every intimate occasion at court.
The chamber door opened to reveal Prince Arthur, who had been carried bodily from the hall by a host of raucous young men of dubious sobriety. The wedding breakfast, hosted by the Bishop of London in his palace next to St Paul’s Cathedral, had lasted all afternoon and most of the evening. While the ladies had been readying the princess, the men had continued to roister. Now, both Catherine and Arthur were placed together in the bed and blessed by bishops. Spiced wine was passed around – though whether the male members of the party really needed any more alcohol was questionable – and then the ladies and gentlemen retired to their own chambers, leaving the royal couple to their duty.1
It had been a long day, and an even longer road to this wedding. When it had first been planned twelve years ago in 1489, Jane Vaux had not been long married herself. Her husband was Sir Richard Guildford, one of Henry VII’s most trusted advisors. But Jane’s own court pedigree was substantial without him. She had been raised and educated in the household of the king’s mother, the formidably intelligent Lady Margaret Beaufort, and had served Queen Elizabeth of York before becoming Lady Governess to the latter’s two daughters, Princesses Margaret and Mary.2 Now, at almost forty years of age, she knew Henry VII’s court, its personnel and its ceremonies intimately. Small wonder that she had been chosen to go to Plymouth with other noblewomen to meet Princess Catherine and escort her to London.
This damp, muddy, autumnal progress through the lush green English countryside was the first opportunity for the princess and her household to begin to learn how things were done here, how to follow the small unwritten social rules of a new court and avoid faux pas, all things that ladies-in-waiting were supposed to teach a new queen or princess. Cultural differences were already apparent. The food, particularly, would take some getting used to; there was more meat here and less fruit, especially citrus, and the spices were different. Even their clothes marked them out. The Spanish wore the verdugado, a hooped skirt like an early farthingale, and platform shoes called chapines, to lift them clear of street dirt. Jane, in her more closely fitted gowns and flat-heeled shoes, would have found them strange.3 Language was a more immediate issue. None of Princess Catherine’s women could speak English, and neither Jane nor any of her colleagues could speak Spanish, but there were workarounds, and this might have been why Jane was there. As the daughter of a French lady-in-waiting, Jane could speak French and Latin as well as English.4 Queen Isabella of Castile’s court was more of a hothouse for learned women than almost anywhere in Europe, and so the Spanish were not behindhand with languages. The queen had famously struggled hard to learn Latin as an adult, and she provided tutors not only for her daughters but for all the ladies-in-waiting.5 The English had not welcomed a foreign princess for a royal marriage for over fifty years, and, helped by this mixture of languages, they did so now in style, with local nobility and dignitaries on hand to escort her ceremonially everywhere she went.
On the way to London, Jane would have met María de Salinas, one of Princess Catherine’s young Castilian attendants. Around sixteen years old, the same age as the princess, María could speak to Jane in Latin, and probably French as well. Not much is known in English scholarship about María or any of her Spanish colleagues. Even María’s parentage is routinely mistaken, but Spanish sources reveal that she had been steeped in the tradition of royal service since birth just as much as Jane.6 María’s father, Juan de Salinas, had been secretary and chamberlain to Catherine of Aragon’s older sister Isabel, Queen of Portugal, and her mother, Inés de Albornoz, one of her most senior ladies-in-waiting. When her father died in 1495, María and two of her sisters had moved into the royal household with their mother, serving first Queen Isabel of Portugal, then her short-lived son Prince Miguel, and finally Queen Isabella of Castile.7 The family were not titled, but they were certainly professional courtiers of considerable standing, trusted by the Castilian royal family, and so María’s social status was as good as that of most of the women in service at the English court, and her education arguably better.
While Princess Catherine had known since childhood that she would one day cross the sea to England and probably never return, María hadn’t had nearly as long to ready herself materially or emotionally for the journey. A list of the household was first made in October 1500, a mere seven months before departure, and there were only fourteen women listed by name, though most of these would have had their own female servants to swell the ranks. María, listed as ‘the daughter of Inés de Albornoz’, was placed near the bottom in a position akin to what would later be called the ‘maids of honour’ in England, young, adolescent women at court to finish their education and make a good marriage.8 Perhaps María was excited at the prospect of foreign travel, or perhaps not – the evidence doesn’t say – but in either case her sojourn in England was not likely to last forever. Most foreign ladies-in-waiting returned home eventually.
As an unmarried woman, María might not yet have known the details of what her mistress would undergo in the bedchamber deep in the Bishop of London’s palace, but she knew how important it was to the futures of both countries. Nobody braved the Bay of Biscay so close to winter unless for a good reason. Driven back once by bad weather, their ships had taken five wet, freezing, nightmarish days to cross the sea amid ‘great hugeness of storm and tempest’.9 María was used to travelling – the Spanish court routinely covered far more ground in its peregrinations between palaces than the English court did – but she had never attempted it in an English autumn before. Their progress from Plymouth was not slow, but it was not as fast as King Henry VII liked. He waylaid them at Dogmersfield in Hampshire: he would see the princess, he insisted, even if she was in bed. This went against Spanish protocol, but since they weren’t in Spain any more there was nothing to be done. The prince and princess were introduced and spent an awkward, but pleasant, afternoon together. That evening, someone called for music, and the ladies came to life: it was not yet appropriate for the couple to dance together, even if they had known the same dances, and so Jane partnered the young prince while a Spanish lady – perhaps María – danced with the princess.10
Lying in bed in the bishop’s palace, María could still smell London. It was inescapable. Even before travellers entered the city walls they were engulfed by the stench of rotting meat, sewage and all manner of dangerously disgusting things dumped into ditches, back streets and the river. The flat, sprawling metropolis was twice the size of most of the cities that María knew, and the dampness of the air made the stink all the worse.11 The city authorities had tried to clean up the main thoroughfares for the princess’s entry. The unevenly paved streets had been laid with gravel and sand, and barriers were erected to keep the common people – and perhaps the city’s free-roaming pigs – away from the procession.12 The many liveried servants, attending their gorgeously apparelled superiors, did distract the eye, and the cold November light made gold embroidery and polished weapons glint. María and the other Spanish women wore their black lace dresses, their hair loose, but were quite literally outshone by the English ladies decked out in shimmering cloth of gold. They rode in pairs, one English lady to each Spanish, but side-saddle in England was the opposite way round to that in Spain and so it looked as though the ladies were deliberately facing away from one another, back to back against the press of the crowd.13
Amid the sea of faces was a young lawyer, eagle-eyed and sharp-tongued. Writing afterwards to a friend, he compiled a deeply unflattering list of the Spanish entourage: ‘hunchbacked, tattered, barefooted, Ethiopian, pygmies’, remarks that at least partly referred to those of African or Arab origin in the princess’s household.14 Slavery existed formally in Spain in a way that wasn’t yet the case in England. María had grown up with enslaved people; her family owned several. The household list made for Princess Catherine in 1500 included ‘two slaves to wait upon the maids of honour’.15 Their inclusion in the princess’s retinue was most likely considered by the Spanish monarchs to be an advertisement of Spanish military achievements. That the marriage between Catherine and Arthur was a means of enlarging the black population in England was probably not something that had been foreseen by contemporaries, and the young lawyer’s attitude was, alas, a forerunner of widespread racism.
The wedding itself might have been an anticlimax after the overwhelming sounds and sights of the entry into the city and its welcoming pageants, but the crowds at St Paul’s were just as vast. A platform had been erected for the prince and princess so that everyone might see them exchange their vows. María and the others were dressed in the Spanish fashion, with farthingales over their skirts and wide, pleated sleeves that soon became all the rage in England.16 Walking slowly two by two along the raised walkway behind the princess’s white satin train, they could see only a wall of faces in every direction. Ten-year-old Prince Henry, escorting his sister-in-law, was dressed in silver with gold roses, and – characteristically – he glittered nearly as much as the ostentatious display of jewel-encrusted gold plate that surrounded the high altar. The vows were exchanged during the customary matrimonial mass, and then as minstrels played joyful music everybody of significance processed back to the Bishop of London’s palace for the feast.17
It had been a tiring day, and many of the princess’s attendants must have been glad to retire to their own beds and leave her alone with Arthur. At least, we assume that they were left alone. Ladies-in-waiting were chaperones as much as confidantes, and there’s some evidence to suggest that under previous monarchs a royal servant may have stayed in the bedchamber while the king and queen lay together, presumably to ensure that marital relations were indeed taking place.18 Jane would have known about this; her own mother may even have performed this service in her capacity as one of Queen Margaret of Anjou’s closest ladies. So far as the record shows, nobody did this for Catherine and Arthur. That consummation occurred was – at the time – taken on trust.
María may have known better. Jane, Lady Guildford would much later testify that she had been there that night, had left the couple in bed together and returned in the morning to find them there still; but she did not have access to Princess Catherine’s chambers over the next few days.19 The mood there was sombre. Prince Arthur might have left the room boasting about his night ‘in the midst of Spain’, but the women did not share his confidence.20 Francisca de Cáceres, another of María’s colleagues with whom the princess was close, told the rest of the women derisively that Arthur hadn’t been able to perform. For the whole day, Catherine remained in her chamber with her Spanish attendants, granting access to nobody.21
This wasn’t necessarily an immediate disaster. Both were young. English ladies at court spoke significantly to one another about the five or so nights that the pair did spend together.22 After the majority of the Spanish party returned home on 29 November there was more serious discussion. Prince Arthur must return to Ludlow Castle on the Welsh border, to act as an extension of the Crown there as Prince of Wales. Should Catherine and her women go with him? Or should she stay in London?
There was disagreement even within her own household. The people in charge – mayordomo, or Lord Steward, and the camarera mayor, head lady of the bedchamber – were a married couple: Don Pedro Manrique and his stern, proud wife, Doña Elvira Manuel. She relished her position of power and did not think she would be able to hold onto it if the princess’s household merged with the prince’s. In company with King Henry VII, she also did not think too much sex was good for adolescent boys. María, as a much more junior member of Catherine’s establishment, would not have been asked for her opinion, but the prospect of travelling to Wales was probably not one that appealed. In the event, the princess herself convinced the king that separation would be cruel.23 Regardless of Doña Elvira’s frowns, they were sent together to Ludlow Castle. María and the other Spaniards went too; Jane, Lady Guildford remained with the royal household in London. Some English women, though, did join the princess’s establishment. Margaret Plantagenet, Countess of Salisbury, long-faced with sharp black eyes, a wry smile and a royal pedigree to rival the Tudors’, was the wife of the prince’s Lord Chamberlain, and so it made sense for her to join the household.
If England had seemed cold and damp thus far, this was nothing compared with a winter on the Welsh Borders. The castle was set on a hill overlooking the town. The walls were thick, the apartments made as cosy as possible in the innermost part of the castle, but even so it must have felt very isolated; unsurprisingly, Princess Catherine and Countess Margaret became close friends over long winter evenings spent in front of the fire. What María made of Ludlow is not recorded, but for Queen Isabella of Castile it was ‘that unhealthy place’, and so it proved.24 In March 1502 sickness struck, and it struck with unusual virulence. Both the prince and princess were taken ill, but anxiety soon turned to tragedy: Prince Arthur weakened and died within only a few days. So many others were still ill that his funeral at Worcester Cathedral in early April 1502 was poorly attended.25 Princess Catherine, weak, convalescent and heartbroken, was eventually fetched back to London in a litter sent by her solicitous mother-in-law, the equally heartbroken Queen Elizabeth of York.26
What now? To be a widow at sixteen was a harsh fate, but María, almost the same age and fresh from a Ludlow winter, must have wondered whether this might not be a blessing in disguise. Royal widows did not usually remain in their marital country. They were sent home, that their parents might direct their dynastic duty in a new direction. If that happened, Princess Catherine’s Spanish ladies would return home too. Soon, perhaps, she would see Castile again.
It was not to be. In December 1504, María de Salinas was still in England, still with the now-dowager Princess Catherine, still under the dictatorial household management of the unbending Doña Elvira Manuel, and terrible news had just arrived: Queen Isabella of Castile was dead.
Those in England already felt abandoned by the Spanish monarchs, and now it could only get worse. After Prince Arthur’s death, Princess Catherine had been installed at Durham House in London. Doña Elvira had put the household into full Spanish mourning and kept them largely isolated from the royal court. Both the English and Spanish monarchs had been keen to hold onto their alliance in order to keep France at arm’s length. By July 1503 Catherine was betrothed to Prince Henry, now heir to the throne at twelve years old, and the marriage was due to take place on 28 June 1505, the day that Henry would turn fourteen, which meant that María and the others could not go home yet.27 But things were not secure. Catherine’s dowry for her marriage to Arthur had not been fully paid by her father King Ferdinand of Aragon, and so King Henry refused to allow her access to her jointure, the income set aside to support her in the event of her widowhood. Who, then, should pay for her household in England? As María would write home a little later, ‘the king our lord says that the king here has to provide it; the king here says that the king our lord has to provide it. So in this way we stop.’28
‘Stop’ they had. The £100 that King Henry allowed them per month did not go far for a princess who had obligations of patronage and magnificence to consider as well as feeding, clothing and paying her staff; Queen Elizabeth of York had three times as much to spend.29 Under such difficult conditions the household became quarrelsome. Doña Elvira Manuel ruled the establishment with a rod of iron and a hefty streak of self-interested interference. Her husband, though nominally also in charge, was evidently not a man of comparable force. Not surprisingly, the other Spaniards resented this, and resented the Spanish monarchs’ continued insistence that everybody must do as Doña Elvira ordered.30 Princess Catherine – still only a teenager – was unable to control them. In the summer of 1504 she had even asked her father-in-law King Henry to intervene, which he wisely forbore to do.31
Though Doña Elvira was trusted by the Spanish monarchs, she had her own agenda, and it wasn’t the same as theirs. It’s easy to think of a foreign princess’s household as divorced from politics back home, as though the geographical separation were mental and emotional as well as physical. This was emphatically not the case. Doña Elvira came from a family with strong links to Philip, Duke of Burgundy, who was married to Catherine of Aragon’s elder sister Juana. With Queen Isabella’s death, Juana would now inherit the crown of Castile. Queen Isabella had stipulated that King Ferdinand of Aragon should rule as governor on Juana’s behalf, because of her ‘fragile’ state of mind. Duke Philip, naturally, wanted to use her as a puppet and rule in her stead. Between 1504 and 1506, therefore, Castile became the centre of a power struggle between Duke Philip and King Ferdinand.
Doña Elvira was well aware of this. Her brother, Juan Manuel, was Duke Philip’s advisor on Castilian matters.32 This put her in a difficult position. She did not want to lose her influence in England, or at the Spanish court, and must have feared that this would happen if King Ferdinand remained in power in Castile; if her brother’s activities on behalf of Duke Philip were known, she herself would no longer be trusted. For her own and her family’s sake, therefore, Duke Philip must win. Elvira now began encouraging her mistress, Princess Catherine, to support Duke Philip against her own father King Ferdinand. Catherine – young, impressionable and very much under the older woman’s thumb – soon became extraordinarily pro-Burgundian.33 Encouraged by Doña Elvira, in August 1505 she proposed a meeting between Henry VII and Duke Philip.34 Doña Elvira and her brother knew that if such a meeting took place an alliance would likely be concluded. Catherine, in an unusual display of density, apparently did not realise that this would be to the detriment of her father and by extension to herself. For if King Ferdinand no longer controlled Castile, Catherine’s own inheritance would be lessened and her value on the marriage market would plummet: why should King Henry VII uphold her betrothal to Prince Henry under those circumstances?
Others were quicker than Catherine. Spanish ambassador Dr Roderigo González de la Puebla was appalled. He tried everything to prevent the princess sending a message to Henry VII about the proposed meeting, but to no avail. He then confronted Doña Elvira. In the face of his wrath at the potential ruin of years of his work shoring up the alliance between Henry and Ferdinand, she promised to prevent the princess from sending the message; but, away from him, immediately broke her word. Puebla felt that he was left with no choice. Tears streaming down his face, he went to the princess and told her everything. Horrified, she wrote a letter to King Henry at his dictation, and he ordered his messenger to overtake hers. Wary of Doña Elvira, Puebla then warned Catherine to continue to appear eager for the meeting, lest news to the contrary reach Duke Philip. He wrote to King Ferdinand with the whole story, asking the king not to trust the advice of Doña Elvira.35
King Ferdinand was already well aware of the Manuels’ duplicity, as he saw it. He had written to Henry VII back in June 1505 warning him not to confide anything to Elvira, because she could not be trusted: her brother Juan was a traitor to both of them.36 Doña Elvira has been labelled a villain, as so many women of strong character are. But the surviving sources give us only others’ impressions and not her own voice. She was also a victim of the complex loyalties facing ladies-in-waiting. Elvira was not acting in Spain’s interests or in Princess Catherine’s interests, but in a world where women’s interests rarely counted for much, one can hardly blame her for trying to capitalise on the connections that she had elsewhere in her life. She wasn’t seeking to change the course of diplomacy for its own sake, but for her own and her family’s gain, and in that she was no different from any other courtier.
By early December 1505, Doña Elvira’s departure from Princess Catherine’s service was in train, though who arranged this is unclear. Catherine herself was given an excuse: Elvira told her that she needed to go to Flanders in order to see an eye specialist to save her sight, which was failing. As Catherine said, ‘if she were blind she could not serve me’, and so acquiesced to her leaving.37 Later she returned to Castile with her husband, but there’s no evidence that she ever served in a royal household again. Some ladies-in-waiting proved themselves too dangerous – too intelligent, and too influential – to be allowed near the centre of politics.
María de Salinas was desperate. ‘I am the loneliest person in the world without him,’ she wrote to her brother-in-law. ‘He’s one of the most honest people I have ever seen in my life… I had no other pastime but to see him come every day with stories of the English to tell us, and he’s so measured and so sincere that he made me laugh with pleasure.’38 It sounds like a love affair, but it wasn’t romantic love that made her write this way. The man she referred to was a letter bearer, most probably a merchant or low-ranking courtier come from Castile to England on business, bringing letters from home to María and the other Spaniards marooned in Princess Catherine’s household. It is a pity that we don’t know his name. That his mere presence brought such joy paints a correspondingly sad picture: María and the other ladies-in-waiting were so bored and so lonely that even a humble messenger was a bright spot in their lives.
It was 1507, and things had only got worse. Though the death of Philip, Duke of Burgundy at the end of 1506 had unexpectedly placed Castile back into the hands of King Ferdinand of Aragon, he was so preoccupied with his new wife Germaine de Foix and with holding onto his Italian territories that he had no time or inclination to spare for his daughter in England and he remained utterly blasé about settling his debts with King Henry VII. Princess Catherine’s dowry remained unpaid, she remained unmarried, and King Henry had stopped paying for all but the most basic food and lodging for her household, knowing that the louder she complained to King Ferdinand the more likely it was that the dowry would be paid.39 In 1505 she wrote in desperation that she was forced to borrow money or starve. The next year she was ‘in the greatest anguish, her people ready to ask alms, and herself all but naked’.40 It’s sometimes thought that she was exaggerating for effect, to bounce her father into a response, the more so since these are years in which we are relatively archivally ‘blind’ in England where the princess’s household is concerned. There are no surviving financial accounts for her establishment, and those for the king’s yield only sparse information. We are usually forced to rely on the princess’s own letters.
Yet she was not the only one to pick up a pen. Most of the Spaniards probably wrote home, but unlike most – so far as we currently know – some of María de Salinas’ letters have survived, tucked away amid other family papers in Spain.41 Unused by English-speaking historians, and underused by Spanish scholars, they reveal María to us as a vibrant, straight-talking, astute young woman. They also give us a new lens through which to see these otherwise shadowy years. María is usually described as the epitome of the loyal lady-in-waiting, at her mistress’s side through thick and thin. That might have been true later, but it wasn’t true in 1507. María was desperate to leave.
Most of her letters were written to her brother-in-law Ochoa de Landa, who was treasurer in the household of Catherine’s older sister Juana, Queen of Castile.42 They weren’t formal petitions but frank, engaging epistles, full of in-jokes, snide remarks and even an occasional upbraid, all written in her own round, somewhat sprawling hand. María’s letters show that the princess was not the only one who was suffering, and she was not exaggerating. In July 1507 María explained that ‘since we have come to this land we have never been paid for our living, in which I think you would marvel at the way we support ourselves’.43 The princess herself was repeatedly and vocally concerned about the plight of her ladies-in-waiting. In 1505 she asked her father to pay María de Salazar, because she was unable to, and noted that six of her women had served her devotedly without any remuneration.44 In 1507 she again pleaded with Ferdinand for money for them, explaining that by now she had only five women in her service and that ‘they have never received the smallest sum of money since they were in England [… I] cannot think of them without pangs of conscience’.45
Their increasingly tattered clothing was at odds with the glory of their surroundings. In response to Princess Catherine’s plea for money, King Henry had reduced her household and moved them into his newly built palace of Richmond, both part of and yet separate from the rest of the royal court.46 María had seen Richmond before; the court had celebrated there in the days after the wedding of the prince and princess in 1501. It was a triumph of modern architecture and the pride of the king’s heart. Built in white stone, the skyline of the new lodging range was a mass of endless towers, each topped with a dome and gaily decorated weathervane. The Tudor rose, Beaufort portcullis and Henry’s red dragons and greyhound badges were in evidence everywhere that the eyes might rest. Inside were costly tapestries, curtains, cushions and carpets, the furniture the best that craftmanship could offer or money buy.47 María and her colleagues could walk in the gardens, or under the covered galleries that encircled them if it rained. They could play cards – though probably not for money, given their straitened circumstances – sing, dance and sew. Needlework was a comfort. It was calm, peaceful, familiar and it brought them together. They could gossip, or pray, or read aloud as they worked intricate ‘Spanish blackstitch’ patterns onto collars and cuffs.48
But for María and the other Spanish women, Richmond must have felt like a gilded cage. Their household was kept in comparative isolation even from others living in the palace, and there was little to do but wait for the tides of fortune to turn.49 Not surprisingly, she was desperate to return home. She reminded her brother-in-law Ochoa repeatedly that she had no intention of remaining in England after her mistress’s marriage, and declared that ‘this is not a land to stop [in] unless necessary’.50 She was so unhappy that she could not bear to contemplate the glory of going home in case it did not come true: ‘I want my departure so much that I cannot receive it except as a mockery.’51
Part of her desperation was homesickness. Most of María’s letters contain complaints that her relatives did not write frequently enough and that she didn’t receive family news in a timely fashion. Sometimes she gave her sharp tongue free rein, writing with biting sarcasm that her brother Juan had done no more for her than if he were dead.52 On another occasion she wrote of her joy at hearing news of their youngest brother Alonso, and about her sister Inés’ betrothal, but was annoyed that Juan hadn’t bothered to tell her these things himself, exclaiming ‘I find on my own account that I am the most loving of you all.’53 Though she berated them from time to time, it’s clear that María’s family network was close and strong. She remained in individual contact with her older brother Juan, brother-in-law Ochoa and sisters Isabel and Inés, was eager for information about their youngest brother Alonso, asked her nun sister Teresa to pray for her, and regularly sent her good wishes to their grandmother. In the face of English intransigence she held fast to her Spanish identity, insisting that ‘I am as Spanish as the first day I came to this land’, even though Ochoa teased her about adopting English customs: ‘I say it because you always send me to make you kiss my mouth.’54 Though nowadays the English are usually thought reserved and not particularly tactile, this wasn’t the case in the sixteenth century, when commentators from other European countries were both horrified and amused by the English propensity for kissing; Dutch philosopher Erasmus wrote that ‘When you go anywhere on a visit, the girls kiss you. They kiss you when you arrive. They kiss you when you go away. They kiss you when you return. Once you have tasted how soft and fragrant those lips are, you could spend your life there.’55
María must have devoured letters from home. Her own make it clear that there was not much affection to be found in the English court. Though they spent every day in one another’s company, she and the princess were not especially close. She mentioned Catherine frequently, but it was usually in somewhat hopeless relation to her marriage to Prince Henry: it will be after Easter, before Christmas, ‘the princess is not yet married, nor do we know when’.56 María did occasionally mention some of the girls who served with her, but not in overtly positive terms. She had tried to stay in touch with María de Rojas, for instance, who had gone home to marry in 1506, but was annoyed that she’d received no reply to her letters.57
Perhaps she’d hoped for advice. There was only one way for María to get out of England and return home: marriage. In Spain, ladies-in-waiting received a dowry from their royal mistress when they married. For many, including María, it was the reason they went into service in the first place.58 Princess Catherine, unable even to feed and clothe her household adequately, was consumed with anxiety over this. Ordinarily she could have expected marriages to occur between her women and the English nobility, for this was one way in which women acted as peace-weavers, strengthening alliances between countries. Back in 1504 it had looked as though María de Rojas would go down this path, having attracted the young and extremely wealthy heir to the earldom of Derby, and both she and Catherine were pleased because it would allow Rojas to continue to serve at court.59 This, alas, had been stymied by the interfering Doña Elvira, who had wanted Rojas to marry her own son.60 The dismissal of Elvira and her family had meant that this did not happen either, and finally Rojas’ family arranged a Spanish marriage for her in 1506.61 The rest of the princess’s women were reliant on the goodwill of King Ferdinand, and on their own families.
Therein lay María de Salinas’ problem. For a while there was talk of a match with a man from a wealthy Castilian merchant family.62 But arranging marriages was a complex business even when all parties were in the same country. The family member who should have dealt with this for her was her oldest brother Juan, who since the death of their mother and uncle in 1503 had been the nominal head of the family. Unfortunately, he was either subject to continual bad luck where his sisters’ marriages were concerned, or he simply wasn’t very good at this. María wrote scathingly of his inaction, asking her sister to make sure that nobody furthered the negotiations ‘until they write of his person and what he has’, because the honour of the family was at stake – apparently she did not trust Juan to guard it properly.63 She was absolutely clear that it was no good marrying somebody who was not suitably well off and of good birth, and this was not María being mercenary: her future standard of living and social status would depend upon those of her husband.
María tried sarcasm on her brother: ‘Pray God for those well married, whoever they have for husbands.’64 She badgered the rest of her family for information. She even asked the interfering Manuels, Doña Elvira and her husband, for help, and Juan apparently protested, probably because the Manuels had come back to Spain in such disfavour with King Ferdinand. María reassured him that she knew what she was doing and implied that in fact she had no choice, since Juan himself told her so little about what was going on. Impatient, she effectively told her brother what to do, revealing expert knowledge of Spanish officials and patronage ties despite her absence: ‘And if for this, my lord, you have need of help, we think that they will help you, and since Juan López is so much your lord, and this is by way of discharge, you should put it in his hands.’65 López, in charge of the king’s payments, could indeed expedite any warrant for remuneration.
When her sister Isabel was married to Ochoa de Landa in May 1506, María took immediate advantage of having another adult male in the family. Soon she was writing frankly to him, telling him all of her doubts and worries about her marriage, her future and her brother’s uselessness. In 1507 she begged him to be blunt with her, suspecting that those involved now thought the match unsuitable but didn’t dare to tell her.66 He may have done so; the one-sided nature of the surviving correspondence means that we can only infer his replies from María’s own. The wealthy merchant was mentioned no more.
By the end of 1507, María was in greater despair than ever. This was a difficult year all round. Princess Catherine’s marriage to Prince Henry at first looked plausible: King Ferdinand was once more in nominal control of Castile, which meant access to funds for her dowry, but then less so; he remained in Naples until June 1507 and couldn’t meet the original deadline, asking for a delay in payment.67 King Henry VII betrothed his youngest daughter Mary to Ferdinand’s nephew and heir to Castile, the future Charles V; what use for the marriage between Catherine and Henry now? And yet he refused to cancel it entirely. The princess’s spirits and circumstances fluctuated accordingly. María was undoubtedly affected by the tense atmosphere and frustrated by the lack of progress on her own marriage. In a letter filled with despair, she told Ochoa defiantly that she would either return to Spain with the proper honour or not at all, no matter what her brother Juan did or did not arrange: ‘Do what you will, for I will choose what is best for me, and with this I console myself.’68