When Arthur and Katherine set off for Ludlow a few weeks after their spectacular wedding in St. Paul’s, both seemed in good health and with a glowing future before them. Katherine’s first glimpse of Ludlow was not very different from the one that greets visitors now. Overlooking the steep hills and deep valleys of the Welsh borders, the town is still dominated by its castle, albeit now in ruins, and by the church of St. Lawrence, where there is a Victorian stained-glass window depicting a youthful and handsome Prince Arthur, the Arthur that Katherine knew. The narrow, winding streets and the market square in front of the fortress are much as she would have seen them.
But there the comparisons stop. Today a quiet, peaceful place, the stone-walled Ludlow of Katherine’s day was a thriving market town with an economy based largely on the woolen trade, and the center of English government for Wales. Lawyers jostled with merchants in the crowded alleyways, drawn by the legal cases heard when the Council of the Marches met in session. Farmers and tradesmen did brisk business in the marketplace. And amid the busy townsfolk were keen, and highly talented, Welsh poets hoping to find wealthy patrons among the throng that surrounded their prince and his princess, people to whom they could dedicate their intricate, lyrically beautiful verses. To the Welsh, Arthur was one of their own. After all, his great-grandfather, Owen Tudor, had been Welsh through and through, and many of those who had fought so ferociously for Arthur’s father at Bosworth Field came from proud Welsh stock. Much was hoped for from Katherine’s husband.
The castle itself was formidable. Originally built in the Norman era, around the eleventh century, it had undergone many changes depending on the politics of the time and the fortunes of its owners. And it had been crucial in the history of the Tudor family: once it had offered shelter to Queen Elizabeth’s father, Edward IV, during the turbulence of the Wars of the Roses; and it was from here that the queen’s young brother, Edward, had set off on his fateful journey to London upon his accession, a journey that was to end in the young boy’s death in the Tower of London.
Now it was the turn of Henry’s son and daughter-in-law to take up residence. In the depths of winter, Katherine and Arthur rode through the imposing main gatehouse of the castle into the huge open area known as the outer bailey, comprising almost four acres. Today the area is simply laid to grass; then it was a hub of people, activity, and noise, for it was the working heart of the fortress. As the royal entourage made its way to the main citadel, it passed by stables housing whinnying horses, the fires of the blacksmiths, outbuildings where the castle servants and garrisons could sleep and eat, storerooms filled to the brim with supplies.
The inner bailey, the oldest part of the castle, was where the main living quarters were situated. In the northeastern part of the complex, protected by yet another thick limestone wall, the inner bailey was entered via a small gatehouse next to the ancient Norman keep. Arthur’s private apartments were on the extreme left of a long connected range of buildings, which included the great hall. Arthur’s suite of rooms, which are still known as “Prince Arthur’s Chamber,”were on the second floor and could be reached by a staircase from the first-floor rooms or through a private entrance in the great hall. The apartments were L-shaped, with one wall flanking the great hall and the other facing the bailey. In the corner were stairs leading to a tower room with unparalleled views of the rivers Corve and Teme and the undulating countryside of the borders, views reminiscent of the slopes and mountains visible from the battlements of Granada.
The sources do not tell us how long it took the couple to travel the 160 or so miles from London to Ludlow, nor the exact date on which they arrived, but they probably reached the castle in the middle of January 1502. By then, the bare trees would have been hung with frost, the wind biting and the weather piercingly cold, so the fire burning in the wide fireplace on the eastern side of Arthur’s rooms was no doubt very welcome. What is striking is just how small these rooms actually are. Although the complete range of buildings, of which they were part, is an impressive edifice containing a large great hall, its individual chambers are cozy and intimate. Arthur’s are about fourteen paces by sixteen paces for the entire floor space, with another ten or so for the tower room.
If Katherine hoped that time and proximity to her husband would bring about the consummation of their marriage, the arrangements at Ludlow could not have been bettered. And if the later depositions in court of the prince’s gentleman, William Thomas, are to be believed, she and Arthur probably did spend some nights together in those small, private castle rooms. Thomas, who went with his master and Katherine to Ludlow, then deposed that “they of his knowledge continued together as man and wife, prince and princess of Wales by the space of 5 months or therebouts as well in London and therebouts as in Ludlow in the marches of Wales.” The couple were “together in household until the death of the said Prince Arthur,” he said, an assertion he made “of his knowledge.” Moreover, he remembered conducting Arthur “in his nightgown unto the princess’s bedchamber … whereupon he [Arthur] entered and there continued all night.” Thomas then “received him at the said doors” in the morning. But, as after the wedding night in London, only Katherine and Arthur really could have known what went on between them before Thomas returned to escort Arthur back to his own rooms to prepare him for the business of the day.
As Prince and Princess of Wales, and the future rulers of England, Arthur and Katherine were accompanied by a full entourage. In the prince’s case, he needed both his privy chamber gentlemen and political advisers. One of the most important political appointments was that of Sir Richard Pole, who, as lord chamberlain, controlled much of what happened in the prince’s household and who, because of his previous and extensive experience in Welsh affairs, played his part in the overall administration of the principality.
Henry VII completely trusted Sir Richard, to whom he was even slightly related, as Pole’s mother was a half-sister of Margaret Beaufort. Within a month of the battle of Bosworth, he had selected Pole as an esquire of the body, a key attendant, and given him various strategic offices in Wales. As the years passed and Sir Richard continued to prove his worth and gain yet more offices, the king appointed him to Arthur’s service; it was in fact Sir Richard who had officiated at a proxy marriage between Arthur and Katherine in 1499. When the prince and princess arrived at Ludlow, Sir Richard was with them.
So, probably, was Sir Richard’s wife, Margaret. Married to Sir Richard when she was fourteen and he was twenty-eight, Margaret had royal blood. And that blood was very royal indeed, for she was Elizabeth of York’s first cousin. The queen’s father, Edward IV, had had two brothers. The youngest, Richard, usurped the throne on Edward’s death, becoming Richard III; the other was George, Duke of Clarence. By the time Henry VII defeated Richard at Bosworth, George was already dead, but he had left two children. One was Margaret Pole. The other was her brother, the Earl of Warwick, who many felt had a better claim to the throne than Henry himself. Taking no chances, Henry imprisoned the boy immediately after Bosworth and executed him just before Katherine set sail from Spain, a move that undoubtedly put at rest the minds of Ferdinand and Isabella, if causing uneasiness to Katherine when she heard about it. Unwilling to imprison Margaret, Henry had done the next best thing and married her off to one of his closest allies; as such, she was given a place at court as one of Katherine’s ladies. And while we have no direct proof that Margaret accompanied her new mistress in the winter of 1502, it is very likely that she did. If so, it was surely during those months at Ludlow that a friendship was formed which would last for the rest of the two women’s lives.
But Margaret was not Katherine’s only attendant, for most members of the princess’s existing household went with her on that long journey from London. Among them were her chaplain, Alessandro Geraldini, and Doña Elvira, no doubt zealous as ever and keeping a very close watch over her charge. If anyone other than the young couple themselves was aware of the true state of Katherine’s marriage, it was Doña Elvira. In Ludlow as in London, very little escaped her.
Certainly for a few brief months all seemed well. The castle was in a constant state of activity. For Arthur, there were council meetings; he was ruling, so the chronicler tells us, with “moost and rightuous ordre and wisdam … uppholdyng and defendyng the pore” and “repressyng malice.” He was certainly busy every time he went to Wales: many documents with his seal fixed firmly are extant. For Katherine, there was time to sit peacefully with her ladies, sewing, chatting, laughing. At night, the great hall sprang into life as servants brought dishes to the table, courtiers discussed the day’s events over the steaming plates of food and goblets of wine, minstrels played softly in the background. There were prayers and services on Sundays and holy days, most likely within the tiny chapel of St. Mary Magdalene with its round nave and rectangular chancel and its corbels carved in the shape of heads. Perhaps there was hunting as winter began to give way to spring. We cannot know, as no record of all the day-to-day happenings has survived.
What we do know is that this brief, almost idyllic period of calm ended abruptly when Arthur was stricken with a “moost petifull disease and sikeness,” and on April 2, 1502, within a week of falling ill, he died. Katherine, not yet seventeen and barely accustomed to being a wife, had to adjust to sudden widowhood, all the promises voiced in those wedding pageants proved meaningless by this stark reminder of the fragility of life and the awesome power of death.
Just what it was that carried off the young boy so brutally is unknown. Chances are that it was the “sweating sickness,” a virulent influenza-type virus which could kill even the strongest within a day; certainly there was a sickness of some sort prevalent in the area at the time. There is also a suggestion that Arthur succumbed to testicular cancer—which is certainly possible since the chronicler describes his illness as “dryven in the singuler partise of him inward”—or maybe it was tuberculosis. We can never be sure.
When the prince died, the machinery of the state swung into action. While the embalmers began their grisly tasks, Sir Richard Pole dispatched messengers to London. They rode with desperate speed, reaching Greenwich in just over two days. As Katherine herself would one day discover, there is no easy way to tell parents that their child is dead, or for them in turn to put aside their grief and accept the will of God. But Henry and Elizabeth were no ordinary parents. Like Ferdinand and Isabella in similar circumstances, their concern was also for their dynasty. Elizabeth did her utmost to comfort her husband, reminding him that the succession was secure as they had another son as well as two daughters. Besides which, she said, they were both young enough to have other children of their own. In the privacy of her own apartments, however, the usually stalwart Elizabeth gave way to her “great losse,” becoming so distraught that the king rushed to console her.
The news of Arthur’s tragic end aroused genuine sadness, even anguish, beyond his immediate family circle. His very name had conjured up hopes of future glories rooted in a long-lost legendary time of heroism, chivalry, self-sacrifice, duty, and romantic love: the sordid and bloody infighting of the Wars of the Roses would be superseded by the just rule of this young, well-educated man and his pretty bride. Now that was not to be.
Nowhere was the sorrow deeper than in Arthur’s own principality, where so many had seen in him the resurgence of their own heroes, the rebirth of their own history. And because Wales was a land of poetry and song, Welsh poets expressed their despair in their own unique fashion. One particular ode, by Rhys Nanmor, a man who had composed a poem of praise to Henry VII in happier times, sums up this feeling of unfulfilled dreams and lost promise with heartrending beauty. The poem, in its original Welsh, is still extant. Within its 126 lines, which conform to stringent rules of meter, rhyme, and syllable length, its author describes the effects the death of Arthur, his “coronetted leader,” had on the lands and peoples of Wales:
The proud steeds of the beautiful warriors will no more tread the land,
Nor will flocks of birds fly,
They will not sound their call in the hills, wild and sane,
Throughout, the land cannot but lament.
No more a kind bud, where the English traverse,
Nor an heir for an island as long as they desire,
Arthur, of the golden wound, will they cherish, Arthur,
Arthur of the azure sword they buried …
The tears that flowed, said the poet, were “a tide of water, spoiling the whole island.”
But tears flowing as well they may have been, Henry VII had a son to bury. It was not then the custom for the royal family to attend the funerals of even their closest relatives, so Henry entrusted the arrangements to Arthur’s gentlemen and council. The noble selected by his king to be chief mourner was the Earl of Surrey, a man who had loyally fought for Richard III at Bosworth but who had earned Henry’s forgiveness and his confidence as the years had passed. Together with the Earls of Kent and Shrewsbury and the Bishops of Lincoln, Salisbury, and Chester, Surrey rode as fast as his horses could take him for the elaborate obsequies. And they were indeed elaborate. With his internal organs carefully removed and the cavities filled with spices and herbs, Arthur’s body lay in state for three weeks in the great hall at Ludlow, his casket covered in cloth of gold, tapers burning day and night, a group of poor men praying continually at its side. Then, on Saturday, April 23, with holy banners raised at each corner, the coffin was taken in procession into the parish church of St. Lawrence, a stone’s throw from the castle, for the first of several services. Everywhere was black: the official mourners wore black, the paupers who accompanied the prince wore black, the prince’s household wore black, black cloth hung in the choir where the body lay. And there Arthur remained over the weekend, as the bishops intoned the dirges and the Masses so necessary for the repose of his soul. The comfort of the living was not neglected, however: every day, the bishops and the principal lords went up to the castle for dinner, a meal then served around noon.
The king decided not to bring his son’s body back to London. Instead he ordered that Arthur should be buried in Worcester Cathedral, the abbey church of an ancient Benedictine monastic foundation situated in the prosperous market town on the River Severn. Therefore, on Monday, April 25, the prince’s funeral cortège wound its way through the twisting streets of Ludlow to begin the final journey. His coffin, covered in black cloth of gold, rested on a hearse draped in black velvet and drawn by six horses with black trappings. Black-clad mourners and torchbearers walked or rode beside the hearse through the driving rain (the chronicler tells us that he had never seen such bad weather). The aim was to reach Worcester, about thirty miles from Ludlow, via the little town of Bewdley. Sited at more or less a halfway point along the journey, Bewdley was the perfect place for everyone to rest while last-minute preparations were made in Worcester itself. Even the fourteen or so miles to Bewdley were difficult; sometimes oxen had to be used to drag the hearse along the muddy roads, and the thick black overmantle thoughtfully provided to protect the hearse and its precious cargo from the elements proved very useful.
For the people of Worcester, Arthur’s funeral was something to remember for the rest of their days. Following precise instructions given them by members of the prince’s household who had ridden on ahead, the city officials made sure all was ready. When the procession reached the outskirts of Worcester, waiting friars censed the body, fresh torches were lit, and Arthur’s mourners walked two by two through the silent streets, which were lined on both sides by the city dignitaries and other “honest men.” Once all were in the great church itself, the various services could begin again. The chronicles describe the events in minute detail, but for us, as for them, two incidents sum up the poignancy of a life lost at such a tender age. The first is when Lord Garrard, acting as the prince’s man-at-arms, rode Arthur’s own horse into the choir as an offering to the abbey. Those who did not weep at the sight of the magnificent beast bereft of its owner, wrote the chronicler, had a “herd hert.” But the second incident is perhaps yet more moving, particularly as it remains a custom at some royal funerals today: key figures in Arthur’s household, such as Sir William Uvedale and Sir Richard Croft, broke their staves of office over their own heads and then threw them into the grave where the body now lay. They no longer needed them: with their master dead, his household was no more.
So, with the last echoes of the services fading away, and the mourners leaving the church, Arthur was left in the care of the monks. His tomb, and the chantry chapel built around it, still stands. Just south of the high altar and close to the sepulchre of the medieval King John, the tomb is grand and impressive. On the tracery around it are intricate carvings of Tudor roses, of Katherine’s beloved Spanish pomegranates, of his own Prince of Wales feathers—nothing was too splendid for a sixteen-year-old boy of whom so much had been expected.
While all of the pageantry ran its course, Katherine lay in her bedchamber at Ludlow cared for tenderly by her ladies, for she too was ill, perhaps suffering from the same disease that might have killed Arthur. Ferdinand and Isabella were so concerned that they wrote to their ambassador, Dr. de Puebla, expressing their “profound sorrow” at hearing of their son-in-law’s death and demanding that he arrange for Katherine to be moved “without loss of time, from the unhealthy place where she now is.” No doubt the Catholic Monarchs were genuinely anxious for Katherine, but they were also looking to salvage their alliance with England. They had, after all, been in exactly the same situation once before when their eldest daughter, Isabella, had been widowed so very soon after her marriage to Prince Afonso, the heir to the Portuguese throne. And just as had happened then, when Princess Isabella had married King Manuel, thus saving the Portuguese link, there was a possible way forward: Henry had a second son, Prince Henry, who was as yet unmarried.
Katherine, very much a dutiful daughter of Spain, would be guided by her parents. Then too, as a dutiful daughter of the Catholic Church, she accepted that she must overcome her natural sadness for her young husband, regarding his death as the will of God. Suffering was an inevitable part of normal life; so she had been taught, and so many of her mother’s paintings had emphasized. Supported by her faith and with a naturally strong personality, sixteen-year-old Katherine coped well with her loss. Aside from the one lapse shortly after her wedding when she had allowed her temper to surface and Henry had wisely distracted her with a visit to his library, Katherine’s behavior in her adopted country had been exemplary. From early childhood she had known that she was to marry in England and become its queen. This was what the Catholic Monarchs wanted because it was in Spanish interests; it was her destiny. The London pageants had confirmed it. So if her first attempt had failed because Divine Providence willed it, then that same Divine Providence would ensure that her second would succeed.