Free The House of Tudor by Alison Plowden Page A

daughter of the Catholic Kings of Spain - Ferdinand of Aragon and Isabella of Castile - had begun as long ago as the spring of 1488, when Arthur was eighteen months old and the Spanish princess Catherine was two and a bit. Ferdinand wanted an English alliance to secure his rear while he pursued a vendetta with France over the disputed territories of Italy - the Franco-Spanish power struggle was to dominate the international scene for more than half a century. Henry wanted friends abroad and a prestigious foreign bride for his son. Neither Henry nor Ferdinand wanted to pay more than he had to and being both, as Francis Bacon later wrote, ‘princes of great policy and profound judgement, I they) stood a great time looking upon another’s fortunes, how they would go’. But eventually, after a good deal of hard bargaining on both sides, satisfactory terms were hammered out and the marriage treaty was concluded in October 1496.
    It had been agreed that the princess should come to England as soon as Arthur was fourteen, but at the last moment there were more delays and it was May 1501 before Catherine left the palace at Granada on the first stage of her long journey north, the end of September before she finally sailed from the port of Laredo on the Basque coast. It was not the best time of year to embark on a voyage across the Bay of Biscay, and the fleet ran into a succession of violent squalls which carried away spars and rigging and wrenched masts out of their sockets. The princess’s soaked and seasick retinue huddled miserably below decks convinced that their last hour had come. It seemed the worst possible omen for the future. But after five hideous days the Spaniards limped into the shelter of Plymouth Sound and anchored safely off the Hoe on the afternoon of 2 October. The bruised and exhausted passengers were able to get into dry clothes. The sun came out and everybody cheered up.
    King Henry had originally intended to welcome his new daughter when she arrived at Lambeth on the southern outskirts of London, but early in November he suddenly became impatient and decided after all to go out and meet her. He left his smart new Thames-side residence at Richmond with a large company, stopping at the Berkshire village of Easthampstead to pick up Prince Arthur, who was coming south from Ludlow. Father and son then travelled on together.
    News of their approach started something of a flutter in the Spanish dovecote, and before the two parties could converge an emissary arrived in the person of Don Pedro de Ayala, papal protonotary and Bishop of the Canaries. Don Pedro had the rather tricky assignment of explaining to the King of England that, according to Spanish etiquette, the princess could not receive her future father-in-law and could on no account be seen by her future husband until the marriage ceremony itself Henry was not pleased to be instructed in his own kingdom by a parcel of foreigners and, turning his horse into a convenient field, he called an impromptu council meeting. After solemnly debating the point, the lords spiritual and temporal in his train gave it as their considered opinion that since the princess of Spain was now in England she had become the King’s subject, and he had a perfect right to see her whenever he chose.
    The King wasted no more time. Leaving Arthur to follow at a more decorous pace, he spurred on towards Dogmersfield, the small Hampshire village which Catherine and her entourage had reached a couple of hours earlier. When he arrived, at about half-past two in the afternoon, he was told that the princess was resting and could see no one - Catherine’s duenna, the formidable Doña Elvira Manuel, was not giving in without a struggle. But Henry Tudor meant to be master in his own house. He had come to see the princess, he said bluntly, and he was going to see her even if she was in her bed. So the princess of Spain gave the King of England ‘an honourable meeting in her third chamber’