In September 1509, John Stile, now in Henry VIII’s service, sent a long dispatch from Valladolid, meticulously written in cipher, bringing the king up to date on Spanish events and diplomacy. Among the nuggets he imparted was a reference to Katherine’s sister. Rumors had reached Stile of Juana’s pitiful state and odd behavior. She had no more “wisdom” than that of a “young child” and was “very feeble,” he reported sorrowfully. Sometimes she refused to eat or drink for two or three days at a time and, the horrified man continued, would not countenance hearing Mass for eight days, “minding it not, but as a child having no order.” Stile heard that Ferdinand was so worried that he visited her every two months.
Naturally Ferdinand was worried on a personal level. But there was an added dimension: should Juana die, her thrones would pass to her nine-year-old son, Charles. The boy’s other grandfather, Emperor Maximilian, Ferdinand’s equal in mendacity and duplicity, might then seize the opportunity constantly to interfere in Castile on the pretext of protecting his grandson’s rights until the boy reached an age to govern on his own. Ferdinand needed his daughter alive. In fact, Juana’s behavior, if indeed it was as Stile reported, was entirely true to form. Tantrums, self-starvation, and even what appeared to be religious indifference were all stratagems she had tried throughout the years to get her own way. If her aim was to leave Tordesillas, perhaps in order to accompany Philip’s corpse to Granada, it did not work. Having persuaded her to go there so that she would be completely under his control, her father was determined that there she would remain; his concern for her welfare went only so far.
Yet Ferdinand at least ensured that her surroundings were not uncomfortable. Isolated among the hills, some miles from the nearest important towns, the castle was certainly secure, but it had always been a favorite retreat for the queens of Castile and had a certain rugged beauty. Juana’s main chamber overlooked the river, and she was surrounded by many of her treasured possessions, including several sets of tapestries that she had once given to her mother and that were returned to her when Isabella died. During his short life, Philip had keenly supported the tapestry makers’ art, going so far as to take his royal tapissier, Pieter van Aelst, to Spain with him in 1506; and, like Isabella, Juana had always appreciated the intricate craftsmanship and artistic skill that produced these glowing works of art.
Among those tapestries that we know she took with her to Tordesillas was a magnificent four-piece set that still survives, the Veneration of the Virgin, sometimes called “the golden hangings” because of the cloth of gold and gilded thread used in its construction. The tranquillity of the Virgin, the delicacy of the angels’ feathered wings, the vibrancy of the colors, and the shimmering threads combine to make the set a visual delight. Another tapestry that graced the castle walls for Juana was one of which Isabella had been particularly fond, depicting the Mass of Saint Gregory, a Mass at which it was said Christ Himself appeared. Juana may not have wanted to hear services as frequently as her devout attendants might have wished, but simply gazing at these wonderful, inspirational hangings would surely bring her closer to her God. It is also highly possible that while in the Netherlands she may have begun to practice the contemplative spirituality then fashionable with some of the aristocratic women of her acquaintance, such as Philip’s step-grandmother, Margaret of York. If so, such inner piety could bring her strength, peace, and consolation during the long days at Tordesillas.
She had another consolation in her daughter, Catalina, who was allowed to stay with her. Of her other children, Charles, Eleanor, Isabella, and Maria were growing up in Burgundy, while Ferdinand had taken his namesake, Prince Ferdinand, into his own keeping. Ever a dynast and now with time on her hands, Juana therefore lavished all her care upon little Catalina, the only one of her children in whose upbringing she could play much part, and whom she came to love with a fierce intensity.
Juana’s situation was the last thing on Henry VIII’s mind. He barely knew her. Her brief appearance at Windsor following the storms of 1506 went unnoticed; he probably never even saw her because she spent her time with his sister, Mary, and with Katherine. In any case, he had been much more impressed by Juana’s glamorous husband, who jousted and played sports and was every inch the sort of prince he fancied becoming himself; he would not have given Juana a second thought. And in 1509 he was still euphoric about being king. Queenship had brought nothing but disaster to Juana, kingship nothing but delight to Henry.
Like her husband, Katherine was wrapped up with the pleasures and the responsibilities of her new position. She had not seen Juana since the afternoon they had spent together three years earlier. Clearly, she had not then thought her sister deranged, and she had chosen to write to her as though Juana was perfectly sane when Henry VII was considering her as a bride, but she trusted her father. Neither she nor any of Juana’s other relatives had any reason to doubt his word that Philip’s death had distressed her so much that she had become unbalanced to the point that she was incapable of governing and needed seclusion and rest in the hope that her mental state might improve. After all, as Katherine herself had once witnessed, her eldest sister had also buckled under the pressure of premature widowhood.
So, oblivious of her father’s perfidy, Katherine could attend to her duties with a clear conscience. And she had much to do. In addition to her public role, which her mother’s training enabled her to fulfil to perfection, she had lands to administer and a household to organize. During these first months of her marriage, Katherine was learning how to be a queen.
Her marriage brought her lands, known as her dower or her jointure, from which she would draw rents, profits from such things as mills and mines and the “draggyng of mussels,” and various administrative fees paid by her many tenants. She had forests and she had castles—one of them Fotheringhay, a strong fortress in a remote Northamptonshire village that one day would be suggested as a possible home for herself and was to achieve notoriety in 1587 when Mary, Queen of Scots, Henry’s great-niece, was beheaded in its great hall. The total revenues from Katherine’s landholdings were used toward much of the cost of running her household as queen, but they were also intended to keep her in style should Henry predecease her. Henry, who exuded youthful vigor and energy, looked extremely unlikely to do so, but, as Margaret Beaufort had so tellingly warned in the preamble to her will, “ev’re creatur here lyving is mortall, and the tyme and place of deth to ev’re creatur uncerteyn.” It was merely provident to be prepared, and a land settlement was the norm in noble as well as in royal families.
Katherine’s dower was extensive, with tenancies in most of the counties across the country. The rents on some properties were enormous. Almost £103 annually (more than five times the yearly wage of one of Katherine’s ladies) came from a farm in Bristol, £20 from one in Bedford. A few amounts due were modest by comparison: a mere 108 shillings and 4 pence (between five and six pounds) was charged for some farms in Buckinghamshire. Some lands involved religious institutions, such as the £40 payable by the abbey of Bury St. Edmunds “for the custody of the abbey and its temporalities”; others were linked to key nobles such as the £500 for which the heirs of Michael de la Pole, Earl of Suffolk, were liable. Most queens ended up with at least £4,000 annually from their lands. Katherine was no exception, for the value of the “lands assigned by the King to the Queen’s grace for her jointure” totaled £4,129 and a couple of shillings.
She was also given two residences, Baynard’s Castle in London and one at Havering, Essex, about twenty miles farther east. Ironically, Baynard’s Castle, which had been rebuilt by Henry VII, had a special place in Katherine’s history, for it was here that Henry VII and Queen Elizabeth had stayed when Katherine had married Arthur, and one of the craftsmen whom Henry had paid to modernize the building was the goldsmith Sir John Shaa, the lord mayor of London, who had played such a prominent part in those marriage festivities. With its Thames-side setting, its turrets, its towers, and its beautiful gardens, it looked like a fairy-tale palace that had sprung magically from the pages of a medieval romance. And Katherine had her own barge, fitted with soft cushioned seats and decorated with her own heraldic arms and badges, so she could approach her new property from the river and mount the steps that ran from the water’s edge to the palace itself. As for its associations with Arthur, Katherine was too pragmatic, and too religious, to allow herself to indulge in nostalgia. Havering, essentially a stone-built, sprawling medieval dwelling, was far less imposing, stolid in comparison to the beauty of Baynard’s Castle, but Katherine still valued it as a useful retreat. And it was at Havering that Katherine once happily entertained her new husband at a sumptuous banquet.
Taking everything, from lands to houses to woods to farms to fines to rents, Katherine was ostensibly a wealthy woman. But as with so many things in her life, there was a catch: the demands upon her purse were colossal, and they began with maintaining her household. Among Henry VII’s funeral records, which are safely stored in the National Archives, there is a list of thirty-two members of Katherine’s staff entitled to special mourning cloth; if we look at a similar list of names, this time connected with her coronation, there are more than five times that number. Simply paying her employees’ salaries, providing food for some of them, clothes for others, and buying household items, would eat deep into her £4,000. Then Katherine found herself faced with giving alms to the poor, making offerings in church or when she went on pilgrimage, sorting out the expenses of her stables, her kitchens, her bargemen, paying for medicines and potions, and presenting gifts at New Year and perhaps at christenings, as well as keeping Baynard’s Castle and Havering in a good state of repair. And she needed specialist embroiderers, silk workers, tailors, skinners, shoemakers, goldsmiths, many artisans whose names we still know. As queen, Katherine had to find the money for a myriad of purposes, and it was not always easy, so a bequest of items like jewels and furs valued at over £200 from Margaret Beaufort was particularly welcome. She remembered that her deceased mother-in-law, Queen Elizabeth, had sometimes been so stretched that she had been forced to ask her husband, Henry VII, for a temporary loan. He had obliged, but, true to type, only after she had pledged her personal plate as security.
Fortunately, Henry VIII, in love with life, marriage, and his queen, was ever happy to give presents, often of sumptuous fabrics and clothes, to his “beloved wife.” Conscious that a king’s power and importance were revealed by his appearance and surroundings, he made sure he looked stunning, with his velvets, his cloth of gold, his silks, his satins, his jewels all on display. Even Margaret Beaufort, austere though she had been, had always dressed with care and had spectacles made of gold. Almost all of her gowns had been black, but they were hardly the rough habits of a nun. Made of rich materials, they were worn over scarlet petticoats and were usually lined or edged with fur; in any case, true black was not only fashionable, it was very expensive to achieve. Katherine too liked black, but she also loved purple and crimson, and she enjoyed wearing the most costly of cloth. Like her mother before her, she never underestimated the propaganda effect of a dazzling, regal appearance. Over the years, her wardrobe became filled with gowns made of cloth of gold, of cloth of silver, of tissue (silk cloth interwoven with threads of silver or gold), of velvet, of damask, and of satin, many of the materials ordered for her by her doting husband.
But her time was not spent just in trying on clothes and choosing jewels. Katherine had to learn about the practical side of queenship, for her lands and her household had to be properly administered. Again, the names of many of those who served her, men whom Katherine met frequently, have come down to us. Her lord chamberlain, whose task it was to make sure that her household operated efficiently, was originally the Earl of Ormond, a relative of the up-and-coming Thomas Boleyn. By 1512, William Blount, Lord Mountjoy, a loyal supporter of the Tudor dynasty, a patron of Erasmus, and a friend of Thomas More, had taken over. Katherine came to know Mountjoy very well; not only was he with her for about twenty years, he courted and married Agnes de Vanegas, one of Katherine’s ladies who had stayed loyally at her mistress’s side throughout the lean years of the queen’s widowhood. Then there was Katherine’s almoner, Richard Bekynsall, a Cambridge connection of Bishop John Fisher and, like him, linked to Margaret Beaufort, for Bekynsall had also served as almoner to that formidable but charitable woman who had left legacies to fund Christ’s College and to found St. John’s.
It was the job of Katherine’s secretary to act as the receiver of her revenues and the surveyor of her lands. There was much to be done, and after all those years of comparative penury, Katherine took a keen interest in the sources of her income and in overseeing what went on in her estates. Since medieval times, queens had been equipped with a Queen’s Council to deal with all of this and to sort out problems that could not be dealt with via the various manorial courts that functioned locally. Any major issues were referred to Katherine’s own Queen’s Council, and she sometimes presided over its meetings herself. One case, that of Richard Staverton, would later worry her so much that she reported him to Henry’s councillors. Staverton, Thomas More’s brother-in-law, very much the “family’s black sheep,” had so terrorized his niece that she had agreed to hand over her lands in Berkshire to him and promised not to marry without his permission. If she did so, she vowed to pay him £300 in compensation. Katherine, who happened to be the lord of the manor of Bray where the unfortunate woman’s lands were situated, heard about the case when Staverton, daring to consider himself the wronged party, not only sued his niece when she disobeyed him and married anyway, but went on to try to take over her lands when she died. Katherine was having none of it.
With so much going on, and with so much to learn, Katherine had little time to think about her sister. Even Katherine’s surroundings were new to her. English royal residences comprised both public rooms, which she could share with Henry, and private ones for each of them individually. The major public areas were the great hall, largely the preserve of menials and minor officials, and the watching chamber, which was occupied by guards and ushers who kept an eye on who was coming and going, as well as pages who made sure that the rooms were just as their royal masters expected them to be, with space enough for household staff to eat and, in some cases, sleep.
The king and queen had their own presence chambers, in which there was a cloth of estate above the throne to mark royal prominence, one of Katherine’s being of “crimson cloth of tissue, embroidered with the arms of England and Spain.” These were grand public rooms where both king and queen could dine in state, where ambassadors could be granted audience, and where public ceremonies such as the giving and receiving of gifts at New Year took place. Lists of what Katherine was given and what she gave are still extant, showing just how seriously she took this part of her duties, and also how frugal she could be: sometimes she did as many do today with Christmas presents, passing unwanted gifts on to others. Thus when the Earl of Devonshire gave her a “gold pomander, enamelled with the passion of Christ,” which for some reason was not to her taste, Katherine ceremonially handed it on to Lady Fitzwilliam. And Henry’s sister, Princess Mary, found herself the possessor of a diamond ring set with rubies, an unwanted present originally given to Katherine by the Bishop of Carlisle. Henry VII was not the only one who liked to save money.
Beyond each of their presence chambers lay Henry and Katherine’s privy chambers, the private suites where king and queen could unwind with favored attendants, for only the chosen few were allowed to walk through the gallery that separated the presence chamber from these inner sanctums. In these early years, while her apartments may have lacked the loud, boisterous banter of her husband’s male preserve, Katherine’s privy chamber was a pleasant, restful place to be, a place for gentle enjoyment and lighthearted chatter.
Behind these closed doors, where she was not on display, we catch glimpses of the woman behind the stiff, familiar portraits. Here, divested of her queenly garments, she could don a nightgown, a loose, informal robe worn during the day, not at night, and just relax. It was here that she would sit companionably with her female attendants. Sometimes, her mother’s emphasis on housewifery never forgotten, she stitched shirts for her husband, or embroidered altar cloths and vestments, for she was an excellent needlewoman; at Coughton Court in Warwickshire there are elaborate church vestments said to be her work. She could happily spend a few hours reading, for she never lost her thirst for learning. Erasmus, the internationally renowned scholar, was to say in 1513 that she had “sought to attach him to her as teacher.” With her ladies around her, she could listen to music, for she had her own musicians, or while away the time playing chess using one of the ivory chess sets she owned, or perhaps laugh at the antics of her fool. Here too, when not dining privately with the king or at his side for a state banquet, she ate the meals prepared specially for her by the staff of her own privy kitchen, headed by her master cook.
Among those Katherine most trusted, and who had right of entry to her privy apartments, were stalwarts such as Maria de Salinas, Agnes de Vanegas, or Margaret Pole, ladies such as Elizabeth Boleyn, Sir Thomas’s wife, and Buckingham’s sisters, Elizabeth and Anne. Then there were her many gentlewomen, who, as the years passed, included Anne Boleyn’s sister, Mary Boleyn, who married William Carey, a favorite of the king’s; Anne herself; Jane Parker, who was to marry Mary and Anne’s only brother, George Boleyn; and Jane Seymour, who arrived at court fresh from her family’s country seat of Wolf Hall. One woman whom Katherine never envisaged reintstating was Francesca de Caceres. By deserting Katherine to marry her banker, Francisco de Grimaldi, Francesca had made a permanent enemy of her former mistress. She had, said the queen, “cast herself away.” Therefore, when Francesca, now widowed, sought to enter the service of another royal lady, perhaps that of Katherine’s sister, Queen Maria of Portugal, or Margaret of the Netherlands, Katherine put down her tiny, expensively shod foot. While “for very pity” Francesca should be helped to return to Spain, the queen thought she was too “perilous a woman” to enter royal service again. Katherine’s charitable instincts might force her to make sure her former attendant reached home safely, but she saw no need to go further. She certainly would not help her to find a new position. Indeed, the only safe place for the treacherous Francesca, Katherine thundered, was in a nunnery. As other historians have pointed out, once Katherine deemed herself betrayed, the offender was unlikely ever to be forgiven.
Alessandro Geraldini, her former tutor, who had accompanied her to England when she had come as Arthur’s betrothed, certainly felt the full force of Katherine’s implacable wrath. Owing to Margaret of Burgundy’s influence, Geraldini had subsequently been appointed as Bishop of San Domingo, but when he needed another benefice, Katherine spurned him. Pope Leo X asked her to help the man. Margaret wrote to her saying that it was “reasonable” for Katherine to “do something” for him. But, as Geraldini himself said, the queen was “now angry” with him. She was indeed, for she bitterly remembered that it had been he who had hinted to de Puebla all those years ago that her marriage to Arthur had been consummated. Her anger remained forever unabated: Geraldini would have to look elsewhere for assistance.
One visitor whom she always welcomed, though, and for whom she would do anything, was her husband. Sometimes they would dine together in her presence chamber or, more intimately, in one of the other, smaller rooms contained within her suite. And, since they did not routinely share a bedchamber, when the young and lusty king desired her, which he often did, they would retire to her bedroom to make love. For Katherine, as for Henry, the birth of a child was paramount. With six healthy children living, including her two sons, the heir and the spare, Juana had fulfilled her duty to perfection; so, as her ever-filling nursery proved, had Katherine’s sister, Maria. There seemed to be no reason why Katherine, blessed with a young, devoted, and energetic spouse, would not emulate her siblings.
And, in November 1509, just five months after Henry had made her his wife, the king wrote to Ferdinand to tell him the joyous news. Katherine, wrote an ecstatic Henry, was pregnant, “and the child in her womb is alive.” Ferdinand, equally thrilled, wrote to her immediately. Her pregnancy, he said, was “a great blessing.” Yet, perhaps recollecting that his eldest daughter, Isabella, had died shortly after her son, Prince Miguel, was born, the king prayed that God would “give her [Katherine] a good delivery,” and went on to beg her to take great care of herself. “With the first child,” Ferdinand pronounced knowledgeably, “it is requisite for women to take more care of themselves than is necessary in subsequent pregnancies.”
As the child grew, Henry made his plans, issuing orders for materials for his wife’s lying-in chamber and “for the use of our nursery, God willing.” Katherine would be able to rest in a chair “covered with crimson tissue of cloth of gold,” the baby’s crib was to be lined with crimson cloth of gold too, and there would be mounds of pillows, sheets, swaddling bands. Surely God would be “willing”; Katherine would gaze down at her child’s face and Henry would have the son he deserved. Nothing could go wrong. Could it?