Katherine of Aragon, queen consort of King Henry VIII

Person

Katherine of Aragon, queen consort of King Henry VIII

• Catalina

• Catherine

1485-1536

Katherine of Aragon was Queen Consort of England from June 1509 until May 1533 as the first wife of King Henry VIII. She was previously Princess of Wales as the wife of Henry's elder brother, Arthur.
She was born Catalina in Alcalá de Henares, Spain on 16 December 1485. She was the youngest daughter of Ferdinand of Aragon (1452–1516) and Isabella of Castile (1451–1504).
Along with her older sisters, she received an education fitting for one who was intended for marriage with foreign rulers. In addition to her acquisition of the domestic arts, Catalina's skill in Latin, and knowledge of classical and vernacular literature, brought her the admiration of the Spanish humanist Juan Luis Vives and of Erasmus of Rotterdam.
The notion of a marriage between Catalina and the heir to the English throne Prince Arthur (born 19 September 1486), seems to have originated when the princess was only two. In 1487 ambassadors were sent to England to negotiate the marriage. The negotiations were protracted and complicated by events and alliances in Europe and also by the fact that both Arthur and Catalina were children. The marriage was formalised in a treaty agreed at Medina in 1489, where it was agreed that it should be deferred until the two children came of age. A proxy marriage ceremony took place in 1499 and it was then solemnized in London in 1501. Arthur died, still aged only fifteen, on 2 April 1502.
After Arthur’s death, Katherine was quickly betrothed to Arthur's younger brother Henry (later Henry VIII) and a formal treaty to this effect was concluded in June 1503, but again it was necessary for Henry to be of a suitable age before the marriage could take place so they were not married until 1509. The first years of her marriage saw Katherine's hold on her husband, and her political influence, at their height. She was frequently pregnant but suffered a long series of miscarriages and stillbirths. In 1511 she gave birth to Prince Henry (known as the 'New Year's Prince') but he only lived for a few weeks before dying of unknown causes. In February 1516 she did have a child who lived – the princess Mary - who later became Mary I (Mary Tudor).
Katherine had already been fluent in French and Latin when she arrived in England, and she now became proficient in English. She defended the interests of Queens' College, Cambridge, and interceded with Henry to protect Lady Margaret Beaufort's benefaction to St John's College. She provided exhibitions for poor scholars and supported lectureships at both Oxford and Cambridge. She may have been involved in trying to persuade Erasmus to prolong his stay in England beyond 1514, and was habitually praised by him; he dedicated his Christiani matrimonii institutio (1526) to her.
The first moves in the procedure to annul Katherine's marriage took place in 1527. The specific problem was not merely that Henry and Katherine were related in the first degree of affinity, but that sexual relations with a brother's wife were among those specifically forbidden in the Bible (Leviticus).
On 22 June Henry demanded formal separation. Katherine contended that her marriage to Arthur had never been consummated, that her marriage to Henry was therefore valid in the sight of God and man, and, moreover, that Henry knew this. She stuck to this unalterably thereafter. The case went on for many years. Following the announcement in February 1531 that Henry was 'Supreme Head' of the English church 'as far as the law of Christ allowed', Pope Clement offered Henry a compromise to allow a trial to take place. The council saw Katherine in May 1531, but she refused any compromise and spiritedly defended both the papal supremacy and her marriage.
On 11 July 1531 Henry and Katherine saw each other for the last time. The queen and her daughter were also separated. Katherine was ordered to The More in Hertfordshire, and Mary remained at Windsor. Mother and daughter never met again.
In 1532 the death of Archbishop Warham opened the way to a settlement. On 8 May Thomas Cranmer, the new archbishop of Canterbury, summoned Katherine to his court at Dunstable but she refused to appear. On 23 May Cranmer pronounced her marriage null, finding that her marriage to Arthur had been consummated, and that no dispensation could remove an impediment resulting from divine law.
On 23 March 1534 Rome at last pronounced on Katherine's marriage, decisively in her favour, but too late to influence events in England. In May 1534 she was removed to a secure house at Kimbolton, in Huntingdonshire. She died there on 7 January 1536. Katherine was buried at Peterborough Abbey on 29 January 1536. No monument was ever erected.

C. S. L. Davies and John Edwards, The Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, 2004, updated 2011: https://www.oxforddnb.com/view/10.1093/ref:odnb/9780198614128.001.0001/odnb-9780198614128-e-4891?rskey=br2yKD&result=1