Her mother’s death was a bitter personal blow for Catherine. Coincidentally, on the very day Isabella died, Catherine had written to her, anxiously enquiring about her health. ‘She had’, she said, ‘no other hope or comfort than that which comes from knowing that her father and mother are well.’1
But, by a cruel irony, Isabella’s death also devalued Catherine’s worth in the royal marriage market. This is because the union of Castile and Aragon, on which the power of Spain depended, was a purely personal one: it was created by Isabella’s marriage to Ferdinand and (at least in theory) it was dissolved by her death. Catherine, the daughter of the Catholic Kings, was one of the great catches of Europe; Catherine, the daughter of the widowed Ferdinand, King once more only of the insignificant realm of Aragon, was a paltry prize. Was Ferdinand an ally worth bothering with? Was Catherine a daughter-in-law worth having? These were the questions Henry VII now pondered. Catherine reaped the bitter harvest. She quarrelled with Dona Elvira, and she grew up. She plumbed depths for which her pampered upbringing had done nothing to prepare her. And finally, and with reason, she despaired.
Before news of Isabella’s death reached England, Catherine marked the Christmas festivities with an extended visit to Court. This experience of the English Court en fête seems, for the first time, to have awakened feelings of independence. She became aware of the contrast between the relative freedom given to an English Princess, like her sister-in-law, Mary, and the purdah-like seclusion imposed on her as a Spanish Infanta. And with the awareness came resentment. But it was quickly curbed. Invoking Henry VII’s authority as well as Ferdinand’s, De Puebla moved decisively to shore up Dona Elvira’s control over both Catherine and her forever-quarrelling servants. De Puebla was playing his usual double game. The more strictly Dona Elvira’s discipline was enforced, the more intolerable it would become and the more likely Catherine was to throw it over. But, equally clearly, De Puebla, like Henry VII, took the view that Catherine, for the time being, was not yet fit to manage her own affairs.2
As it happened, Catherine’s final rebellion against Dona Elvira was not long delayed. And this time, De Puebla played the part of her liberator. For all of them–the Princess, the duenna and the ambassador–were caught up in the great sea-change that followed Isabella’s death.
As usual, family connexions and loyalties were the key to events and behaviour. Dona Elvira’s brother was Don Juan Manuel, the Spanish ambassador in the Netherlands. He was a Castilian and, while Isabella lived, was one of the outstanding diplomatists of the new Spain. But, like many other Castilians, he saw Isabella’s death as an opportunity to free his native land from the rule of the Aragonese Ferdinand. For Don Juan and his ilk, Ferdinand was doubly offensive, since he was both oppressive and a foreigner. He was now also vulnerable. For Isabella’s heir was not Ferdinand, but the Catholic Kings’ eldest surviving daughter, Juana, wife of Philip, surnamed the Fair. Philip was already Archduke of Austria through his father and Duke of Burgundy through his mother. Now he claimed to be King of Castile, Leon and Granada through his wife. If Philip could make good his claims, Spain would be fragmented and Ferdinand marginalised. Don Juan deployed all his considerable talents as an intriguer to achieve this aim.3
Juana was besotted with her husband and was putty in his hands. Don Juan’s hope was that Catherine would prove equally malleable to Dona Elvira’s will. France already supported Philip’s immediate claim to the Castilian succession; Don Juan’s aim was to get Henry VII’s backing as well. With England on his side, the encirclement of Ferdinand would be complete. Henry VII was sympathetic and in April 1505 he lent Philip £108,000 ‘for his next voyage unto Spain’. This was an immense sum (over five times the first instalment of Catherine’s marriage portion, for example). All that remained to finalise Henry VII’s investment, Don Juan felt, was to engineer a meeting between the English King and the King-Archduke, as Philip now styled himself.4
Here Catherine came in. Through Dona Elvira, Don Juan knew that Catherine, wretched after her mother’s death, was desperately anxious to see her sister, Juana, who was so tantalisingly near in the Netherlands. Why not get Catherine to write to Henry VII to suggest a meeting? At such a meeting, Catherine and Juana could exchange sweet family nothings, while Henry VII and Philip plotted the downfall of the sisters’ father, Ferdinand of Aragon. Formal proposals were put to Catherine to suggest a meeting and, under the promptings of both Dona Elvira and her own heart, she eagerly agreed and on the spot wrote a letter to Henry VII ‘in the most affectionate and loving terms’.5
By pure coincidence, De Puebla was at Durham House as the plot unfolded. He, in contrast to Dona Elvira and her brother, had remained loyal to Ferdinand–and was determined to foil the scheme, which, as it happened, was developing under his nose. His first thought was to get Dona Elvira to promise to deliver the letter only through him as the accredited ambassador. Once in his hands, of course, Catherine’s letter would have disappeared. Dona Elvira understood this very well and immediately despatched the letter by De Esquivel, the Master of the Hall.
De Puebla was informed. He abandoned his dinner uneaten and rushed back to see Catherine. Relations between them were poor and, despite all De Puebla’s efforts on her behalf, Catherine regarded him with suspicion, even contempt. She, despite her surname ‘of Aragon’, was Castilian to the core and was imbued with the Castilian values of militant Catholicism. Central to these was a mistrust of converted Jews like De Puebla. De Puebla’s sister had been seized by the Inquisition, and Catherine dealt with De Puebla with distaste.
Desperation gave him ‘courage’. More importantly, it inspired him to hit on the single value that they shared: loyalty to Ferdinand. First swearing Catherine to secrecy (especially against Dona Elvira), he told her the whole position as he saw it. ‘The interview was the work of Don Juan Manuel and Dona Elvira’. They ‘intended to do injury to her royal father and to the Queen her sister [Juana] by means of it’. Nothing else would have made Catherine listen to him. And nothing else would have made her take De Puebla’s side against Dona Elvira. But, with his appeal to her family loyalty, Catherine was his. She ‘has an excellent heart’, he reported to Ferdinand, ‘and loves her father more than herself ’. She immediately did what De Puebla recommended and wrote Henry VII a letter disowning her first communication as having been procured under false pretences.6
Catherine, however, was less successful in obeying De Puebla’s other injunction to keep the matter secret. Concealing her true feelings was never her strong point (though some indeed would think it a virtue). Dona Elvira had betrayed her trust and still worse (did she not ‘love her father more than herself ’?) had betrayed her father as well. In the face of such double treachery, she could not remain silent. There was a furious quarrel and Dona Elvira took refuge with her brother in the Netherlands under pretext of seeking treatment for her failing sight. Years later, De Esquivel remembered the ‘horrible hour’ when the duenna left. De Esquivel, too, as Elvira’s instrument in carrying the first letter to Court, had shared in Catherine’s displeasure and had been suffered to see her only three times in twenty-four months.7
Catherine’s involvement in the affairs of the King-Archduke had yet to reach its miserable climax. In September 1505, Henry VII made Philip another substantial loan (of £30,000), and in January 1506, Philip and Juana set sail to claim their Spanish kingdoms. The armada made a triumphal progress up the Channel, with guns shooting and minstrels playing. But then it was struck with terrible storms. Each of the royal couple behaved characteristically in the face of drowning. Philip showed a cool physical courage. Juana sat with her arms entwined round Philip’s legs, determined not to be separated from him even in death. Refusal to let go of a husband was a trait that Catherine was to share with her sister.
But the couple did not drown. Instead, separated from the rest of the fleet, they were driven ashore at Melcombe Regis in the lee of the Isle of Portland. The Aragonese party in Philip’s entourage urged him immediately to set sail again for Spain. But Philip knew that he was effectively Henry VII’s prisoner and, putting a brave face on things as he had done during the storm, he sent his secretary to the English King to suggest a meeting. The interview that De Puebla and Catherine had done so much to prevent was to take place nevertheless.8
Philip reached Windsor on 31 January. Catherine arrived shortly after. The King-Archduke and the English King were lodged in intercommunicating suites and competed in elaborate courtesies. Then sessions of hard negotiation alternated with entertainment. The entertainments ranged from the savagery of horse-baiting to the almost Victorian domesticity of the Sunday afternoon soirée presented by Catherine and her sister-in-law, Princess Mary. First Catherine and one of her ladies, both in Spanish dress, danced, and then Mary and one of her English attendants. The atmosphere turned suddenly sour when Catherine asked Philip, who was engrossed in conversation with Henry VII, to dance. At first he refused, courteously enough. But when Catherine persisted, he replied brusquely that he was a mariner, ‘and yet you would cause me to dance’.9
This curious exchange has never been properly explained. It all goes back, of course, to Don Juan Manuel’s plot and its debacle. Philip knew from Dona Elvira of Catherine’s uncompromising support for Ferdinand, her father and his rival. Since De Puebla’s revelations, all Catherine’s wits had been devoted to preventing both Philip’s voyage to Spain and his meeting with the King of England. Now Philip’s rudeness, and the words in which he chose to express it, told her that he neither forgave nor forgot. ‘I am a mariner,’ he said, reminding her that she had tried to stop his voyage. ‘And yet you would cause me to dance,’ he continued, rubbing salt in the wound. Catherine had tried to prevent his meeting with Henry VII: why should he interrupt his confidential conversation with the King to dance with her, of all people? Mary offered Catherine sisterly comfort by going to sit with her on the edge of the carpet under the canopy of the cloth of estate.
Juana had travelled separately and more slowly and did not reach Windsor till Tuesday, 10 February. Juana is known to history as ‘The Mad’. At this stage, as her behaviour during the storm shows, it would be fairer to call her neurotic. Fearful perhaps of embarrassments, the English royal family received her privately: not at the public entrance to the King’s apartments, but at the privy or backstairs which gave on to the park. There she was greeted by Henry VII, her sister-in-law Princess Mary and her sister Catherine. The three ladies seem to have spent the day together. The following day Catherine and Mary went to Richmond. There they were joined by the King, who was anxious to show off his new palace to his royal visitors, just as he had done to Catherine in the aftermath of her wedding to Arthur. But Juana never saw the marvels of Richmond. Instead, Philip packed her off to the coast, while he enjoyed the continued hospitality of his royal host.10
In a later letter to Juana, Catherine recalled her joy at meeting the sister she had last seen ten years previously–and ‘the distress which filled my heart, a few hours afterwards, on account of your hasty and sudden departure’. An older generation of historians blamed Henry VII for the cruelty of the separation. Instead, it is clear that the responsibility rests with Philip. He had snubbed Catherine a few days previously. Now he showed that he feared the influence she might have over her pliable sister. What if she recalled Juana to her filial duty to Ferdinand, as De Puebla had done so successfully with Catherine herself? What then of Philip’s castles in Spain? Much safer to keep the sisters apart. Philip succeeded, and Catherine never saw Juana again.11
All this was bad enough. But the malign consequences of Isabella’s death now threatened Catherine with a worse separation still–from Prince Henry, the second husband to whom she was espoused and yet not married.