Belloc in the Morning: Mourning Two Queens

Just a reminder that Anna Mitchell and I will talk about Belloc's views of Catherine of Aragon and Anne Boleyn as Characters of the Reformation this morning. Listen live here a little after 6:45 a.m. Central/7:45 a.m. Eastern.

Here are Belloc's comments on Catherine of Aragon's death:

She did not long survive the tragedies which had been imposed upon her, and which she had borne with such steadfast courage. She died in January, 1536, too early to see the fall and disgrace of her rival, Anne Boleyn; and almost her last act was a letter still full of passionate love written to the King, who had not allowed her so much as to see him for now more than six years. It was then she wrote the famous phrase, "The desire of my eyes is to see you again." But the man had damned himself. 

They buried her in Peterborough Cathedral, not putting over her one of those great and splendid tombs of die Re- naissance, such as all her high kindred had throughout the West, but a plain slab of black stone on which there was not even an inscription till modern times. One may meditate with some profit on that simple and ignominious piece of masonry, the poor tomb of so good a woman who stood at the origin of such great and disastrous things.

It was widely believed, and on good authority, that her rival had caused her to be poisoned. It is equally probable, perhaps more probable, that she died a natural death; for we know from the autopsy that there was a small growth upon her heart which may have been cancerous. 

She died, as her daughter Mary was to die many years later, hearing Mass, the Mass that was said in her sick- room. She made the responses and received Holy Communion. And it is memorable, and typical of her Spanish rigidity and orthodoxy as well as of her training in Catholic things, that when her Chaplain and Confessor offered to say Mass for her before the Canonical hours lest she should die without it, she bade him, wait until the regular time had come — and she lived on the few hours sufficient to enjoy the fruits of her patience.  

(Image credit: the Queen's tomb in Peterborough Cathedral)

And Belloc discusses the issues of Anne Boleyn's guilt:

On Friday, May 19, 1536, she was beheaded with a sword within the precincts of the Tower of London, by the headsman from Calais, specially brought over for the execution. Was she guilty of the misconduct ascribed to her? It is one of the most fiercely debated points in English history. Standing as she does at the origins of the Reformation, the favourers of that movement have been hot in her defence. On the other hand, those who desire to exculpate Henry as much as they can exculpate that detestable character, like to believe her guilty, while for the defenders of the old Religion nothing was too bad to be put down to Anne. 

The accusations, especially that of incest, seem so monstrous that their very enormity is an argument in her favour. On the other hand, she was certainly unscrupulous in affairs of this kind, and she seems to have been quite unbalanced in the last year or two of her life. Some who have medical experience in these matters maintain that she suffered from a particular irresponsibility, which makes the charges credible enough. I have myself always inclined to accept them. But many good students of the period with whom I have discussed the matter are divided, and some urge the strong argument that the two gentlemen concerned did not confess, while the musician, who did, confessed only under threat of torture. Anyhow, they were all put to death as well as herself. 

Catherine had died before her. Henry's marriage with Jane Seymour which took place immediately after Anne's death was therefore quite legitimate in the eyes of the Church, and quite probably there would have been a re- conciliation with Rome had it not been for Thomas Cromwell's having already launched the policy of confiscating church property, beginning with the monasteries, a policy which created a vested interest of great power against re-union.  

(Image credit: St. Peter ad Vincula within the Tower of London (used under a CC BY-SA 4.0 license from Wikipedia Commons).

How coincidental that both were buried in churches connected to the name Peter, since the See of Peter, the Papacy was the crucial Court affecting their marriages to Henry VIII!

Remembering Katherine of Aragon at Peterborough Cathedral

Katherine of Aragon died on January 7, 1536. Peterborough Cathedral hosts its annual Katherine of Aragon Festival at the end of January. Festival events include a Catholic Mass (I must say this is the only religious service Queen Katherine would recognize!), tours of the cathedral, and two lectures:

Character and Conscience: a Dynasty of Catholic Queens: The Katharine of Aragon Festival Lecture 2017 will be given by historian, author and broadcaster Dr Suzannah Lipscomb.

Katharine of Aragon was both daughter and mother to important queens-regnant, yet there is often too much focus on the biological functions of her role as queen-consort. This talk aims to re-evaluate Katharine instead as a spirited woman of integrity and faith, and to examine her in the context of the legacy of her mother, Isabella I of Spain, and to her daughter, Mary I of England.

and

Katharine and her Ambassadors: A talk by historian and author Lauren Mackay, at Peterborough Museum

Perceptions of Henry's first queen are often influenced by his Great Matter, but Katharine of Aragon’s relationships with her ambassadors, recorded in their numerous reports, reveal the true Katharine - her wit, vulnerability, and passionate nature. This talk will explore the Tudor queen through the eyes of these ambassadors – men whose reports are often overlooked, but who offer insights into lesser known elements of her character.

In my short stack of books to review is Amy License's Catherine of Aragon: An Intimate Life of Henry VIII's True Wife from Amberley Publishing:

Catherine of Aragon continues to fascinate readers 500 years after she became Henry VIII's first queen. Her life was one of passion and determination, of suffering and hope, but ultimately it is a tragic love story, as circumstances conspired against her. Having lost her first husband, Henry's elder brother Prince Arthur, she endured years of ill health and penury, to make a dazzling second match in Henry VIII. There is no doubt that she was Henry's true love, compatible with him in every respect and, for years, she presided over a majestic court as the personification of his ideal woman. However, Catherine’s body failed her in an age when fertility meant life or death. When it became clear that she could no longer bear children, the king’s attention turned elsewhere, and his once chivalric devotion became resentment. Catherine’s final years were spent in lonely isolation but she never gave up her vision: she was devoted to her faith, her husband and to England, to the extent that she was prepared to be martyred for them. One of the most remarkable women of the Tudor era, Catherine’s legendary focus may have contributed to the dissolution of the way of life she typified.

It seems that both of the scholars speaking later this month at Peterborough are following License's lead: think of Katherine/Catherine of Aragon as something more than a woman who failed to bear a son who survived infancy:

Catherine is principally remembered in the twenty-first century as the wife that Henry divorced. This is misleading, as it casts her in the role of a victim, a poor tragic woman who failed to produce a son and was set aside for a younger model. Yet Catherine was so much more than this. She was a humanist queen, a figure of erudition, with a Spanish inheritance of learning, crusading and exploring. She was perhaps even more educated and intelligent than Henry himself, who was eulogised across Europe in his early reign as a perfect model of scholarly kingship. Erasmus certainly believed her to be more than the king’s match. She was a warrior, a crusader, a scholar and a patron, the daughter of the most famous marriage in the early modern world, coming from the largest, most evolving empire, in the name of which her parents had fought cultural and religious campaigns against heresy. She had been her father’s ambassador, her husband’s adviser and her country’s regent at the time when England won its greatest victory over the Scots. She was the figurehead of worship, a role model of piety, an archetype of beauty, the symbol of an Anglo-Spanish union that reconnected two branches of the ancient Lancastrian bloodline. Catherine was all this. Yet she is remembered today for the one thing she did not do: bear a son that survived to adulthood.

May she rest in the peace of Christ. May her soul, and all the souls of the faithful departed, rest in peace.

Coincidentally: Katherine of Aragon's Grave

When two stories about Katherine of Aragon's grave at Peterborough Cathedral appear in my in-box, I just can't ignore the coincidence:

K.V. Turley writes about a journey to visit her grave and pray for her in Crisis Magazine, beginning with the circumstances of her death, including Henry VIII's refusal to let the Princess Mary see her mother one last time:

By December 1535, she lay dying. Banished from the Royal Court, she was at Kimbolton Castle with a few faithful attendants. As the end drew near, the king continued to refuse her pleas that she might see their daughter, Mary. Suffering was all this queen was to know, and, indeed, had known for many years; those final few years were to prove bitter fare indeed for Katherine. She had watched a younger woman, Anne Boleyn, bewitch her husband and then covet Katherine’s royal title. Nevertheless, not for a moment did Katherine countenance divorce, nor would she have any part in the theological games Henry played in his attempt to salve a guilty conscience. Throughout it all, she saw his predicament not as a constitutional one but as a moral one.

This was no ordinary woman. It is sometimes forgotten that Katherine was the daughter of King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella of Spain. Like her mother, she was Catholic first, a monarch second, understanding her life and vocation in that order. Her faith was to be no pragmatic political piety; under her royal robes she wore the garb of the Third Order of St. Francis. Each day her religious devotions took many hours; a rosary was never far from her hands. Even in the forlorn days of exile from Henry’s court, she prayed earnestly for her husband.

At the English Historical Fiction Authors blog, Linda Fetterley Root describes the graves of the first three of Henry VIII's wives, starting with Katherine's:

On the morning of her death, Henry VIII’s discarded wife dictated two letters, one to her kinsman The Holy Roman Emperor, and the other, to the husband who had put her aside. It is not the scornful lament to which she was entitled and which the king deserved. In it, she wishes him well and requests Henry to extend benevolence toward their daughter and generosity to her servants. But it ends as the last letter written by a lover: 'Lastly, I make this vow. That mine eyes desire you above all things.’

When the king heard of her death, he donned clothes of celebratory yellow and frolicked the night away. He was not dancing with his wife, Queen Anne, for whom he had all but moved mountains to marry. He had already tired of her.

And thus, the daughter of the legendary lovers Ferdinand and Isabella was taken to the nearby Abbey of Peterborough and interred in the choir aisle to the north of the altar, with no more pomp than due a Dowager Princess of Wales, the title to which she had been demoted. She was put to rest as Arthur’s wife, not Henry’s. Katharine died on January 2, 1536, and was buried 22 days later. A mere three months after that, on May 2, Queen Anne Boleyn was arrested, and 17 days later, she was dead. Four months and a week after Katharine's death, Lady Jane Seymour was Queen of England.[ii]

In his excellent biography Catherine of Aragon, written in 1941, Garrett Mattingly remarked that few of the hopes the Queen still held when she died had been realized.[iii] However, her burial site at Peterborough may well have been an incidental beneficiary of her death. During the Dissolution of the Monasteries, achieved by a legislative scheme orchestrated by Henry VIII between 1536 and 1541, Peterborough Abbey Church was confiscated but spared. By royal edict, Henry granted Letters Patent to Peterborough making it a Cathedral and named the former abbot as its bishop.[iv] Thus, Peterborough was appropriately Anglicanized. Some historians think it was spared because it housed the remains of a royal who had once been considered Queen of England. It is just as likely that Henry saw it as a potential source of revenue for the Crown.

May she rest in the Peace of Christ.

Image Credit: Released by author into Public Domain.

Katherine of Aragon, Queen of England, RIP

Katherine of Aragon died on January 7, 1536 at Kimbolton Castle. Her last wishes for her resting place could not be fulfilled, according to this blog, quoting her friend and supporter Eustace Chapuys, ambassador of her nephew, the Holy Roman Emperor Charles V:

On these points Cromwell replied to one of my servants, that as to the burial, it could not be done where she had desired, for there remained no convent of Observants in England; but as to the rest, everything would be done as regards the Princess and the servants as honourably and magnificently as I could demand. Next day I sent my man to the Court to Cromwell, to ascertain the whole will of the King on the subject. [...] At the end he spoke to him more coolly than he had done the day before, adding the condition that the King wished first to see what the robes and furs were like, and that if the Princess wished to have what had been given her she must first show herself obedient to her father, and that I ought to urge her to be so.
[...]

As to the burial, the King said the same as Cromwell, that the bequest of her robes to the Church was superfluous, considering the great abundance of ecclesiastical vestments in England, and that although the Queen's will was not accomplished in this respect, something would be done in the abbey where she should be interred that would be more notable and worthy of her memory; that the abbey intended for her was one of the most honorable in all England. It is 17 miles from where she lived, and is called Pittesbery (Peterborough). As to the servants, it concerned nobody so much as himself to requife their services, as he had appointed them to her service. As to the Princess, it depended only on herself that she should have not merely all that her mother left her, but all that she could ask, provided she would be an obedient daughter.

Henry VIII further ordered that her funeral would honor her as the dowager Princess of Wales, thus denying again that she had ever been his wife or the queen (even though she had been mostly certainly crowned and anointed).

More about her death here.

Peterborough Cathedral will host its annual Katherine of Aragon festival at the end of January, featuring a performance of Monteverdi's Vespers of 1610. Sadly, no Catholic Mass will be offered this year, unlike at past festivals.

Katherine of Aragon and Peterborough Cathedral

In the months before the death of Katherine of Aragon on January 7, 1536, both she and Mary her daughter had been very ill. They were both feeling the pressure of Henry VIII's anger and frustration with them because they were not cooperating with him. Cromwell told Mary that the very fact that she and Katherine of Aragon were alive was detrimental to Henry's relationships to foreign princes. She and Katherine were warned constantly against using the titles Princess or Queen for one another--the Princess Elizabeth and Queen Anne Boleyn owned those titles.

News of the executions of both John Fisher and Thomas More in June and July 1535 led mother and daughter to write to the Holy Father and the Holy Roman Emperor respectively, imploring them to do something about the religious changes Henry was making.

When Mary became so ill that Henry sent his own physician to care for her, Katherine begged him to send Mary to her, so she could care for her daughter--after all, they shared some of the same symptoms, sorrow and heartache. Henry refused.

When it became clear that Katherine was also very ill, perhaps near death, Katherine again begged him to let her see Mary one last time. Again, Henry refused.

Katherine died after speaking with Eustace Chapuys, Charles V's ambassador and delivering a heartfelt letter of love to her estranged husband. Henry and Anne responded by at first rejoicing at her death, wearing yellow, dining and dancing. He was relieved that the threat of war was lessened with her death.

Mary was not told of her mother's death until four days had passed. Katherine was buried in Peterborough Cathedral with a service befitting a Dowager Princess of Wales. Henry did not allow Mary to attend the funeral Mass either. Her tomb was upgraded with the marker "Katherine Queen of England" during the reign of George V.

May she rest in peace.

Peterborough Cathedral is planning its annual Katherine of Aragon Festival, to be held at the end of this month--more information here.

I have a set of Peterborough Cathedral bookends and I hope to see the Cathedral in person some day--if God wills!

Mary, Queen of Scots Re-burial

From Once I Was A Clever Boy comes this detail about Mary's exhumation from Peterborough Cathedral and re-burial in Westminster Abbey:

In 1603 Queen Mary's son, now King James I of England, sent Garter King of Arms with a pall decorated with Mary's arms to place on her tomb. A new tomb for her in Westminster Abbey was commissioned in 1606 from Cornelius Cure and, following his death the next year completed by his son William. 

Finally on October 11th 1612 came exhumation from Peterborough. A modern plaque and the Royal and national flags of Scotland today mark the site of the grave. Queen Mary's remains were taken for reburial at Westminster in the south aisle of King Henry VII's Chapel, opposite Queen Elizabeth I. who lies in the north one. Queen Mary I had planned to rebury her mother Queen Katherine at Westminster and provided for a joint tomb in her will in 1558, but that plan was never carried out. Queen Elizabeth I did nothing to recover the body of her own mother from its ignominious grave in the Tower of London. King James may have had no personal memory of his mother - they were seperated when he was only a few months old, but in death he honoured her, and perhaps by burying her at Westminster implied not merely that she had given him his title to the English throne, but that she was herself its rightful occupant.

The Death of Katherine of Aragon

In the months before the death of Katherine of Aragon on January 7, 1536, both she and Mary her daughter had been very ill. They were both feeling the pressure of Henry VIII's anger and frustration with them because they were not cooperating with him. Cromwell told Mary that the very fact that she and Katherine of Aragon were alive was detrimental to Henry's relationships to foreign princes. She and Katherine were warned constantly against using the titles Princess or Queen for one another--the Princess Elizabeth and Queen Anne Boleyn owned those titles.

News of the executions of both John Fisher and Thomas More in June and July 1535 led mother and daughter to write to the Holy Father and the Holy Roman Emperor respectively, imploring them to do something about the religious changes Henry was making.

When Mary became so ill that Henry sent his own physician to care for her, Katherine begged him to send Mary to her, so she could care for her daughter--after all, they shared some of the same symptoms, sorrow and heartache. Henry refused.

When it became clear that Katherine was also very ill, perhaps near death, Katherine again begged him to let her see Mary one last time. Again, Henry refused.

Katherine died after speaking with Eustace Chapuys, Charles V's ambassador and delivering a heartfelt letter of love to her estranged husband. Henry and Anne responded by at first rejoicing at her death, wearing yellow, dining and dancing. He was relieved that the threat of war was lessened with her death.

Mary was not told of her mother's death until four days had passed. Katherine was buried in Peterborough Cathedral with a service befitting a Dowager Princess of Wales. Henry did not allow Mary to attend the funeral Mass either. Her tomb was upgraded with the marker "Katherine Queen of England" during the reign of George V.

May she rest in peace.

Peterborough Cathedral is planning its annual Katherine of Aragon Festival, to be held at the end of this month--more information here.