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Between Kings and Emperors: Catherine of Aragon as Counsellor and Mediator

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Queenship and Counsel in Early Modern Europe

Part of the book series: Queenship and Power ((QAP))

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Abstract

Catherine of Aragon is often seen as loyal to her Spanish dynasty at all costs, but that loyalty has been over-emphasized by historians focused on the divorce conflict of the 1520s and 1530s. During most of her career as queen, she successfully negotiated her loyalties to both her marital and natal dynasties. Catherine was intimately involved in Anglo-Spanish diplomacy before she married Henry VIII, becoming her father Ferdinand’s accredited ambassador to the English court in 1507. When she became queen of England in 1509, Catherine continued to support the Anglo-Spanish alliance, but she did not blindly advocate for Spanish diplomatic objectives. Catherine used a traditional queenly mode of influence—mediation—to preserve the English and Spanish alliance her marriage had cemented.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    J.S. Brewer, J. Gairdner, and R. H. Brodie, eds., Letters and Papers, Foreign and Domestic, of the Reign of Henry VIII, 1509–1547 (London: Longman, Green, Longman, & Roberts, 1862), 3.1:721, PDF e-book. Hereafter abbreviated LP; calendar entries have been cited for accessibility and ease of reference. Whenever possible, I have consulted original English manuscripts. Portions of this essay were read at “Kings and Queens 5: Dynastic Loyalties” in Greenville, SC, 8–9 April 2016.

  2. 2.

    For more on Louise of Savoy’s considerable diplomatic career, see Chap. 6. Throughout this chapter, I will be referring to Catherine’s natal family allegiances as Spain or Spanish, although this is slightly inaccurate. Strictly speaking, Catherine’s natal dynasty was the Trastámaras, and her parents were the first joint rulers of the newly united Spanish kingdoms. This dynasty was replaced by the Habsburgs when Catherine’s father Ferdinand died in 1516, leaving as his heir his grandson (and Catherine’s nephew), Charles of Habsburg. For the latter part of Catherine’s reign, her nephew (usually known as Emperor Charles V) was the head of her dynasty, and it would be more accurate to speak of her relations with Charles as Imperial. However, to avoid confusion, I will continue to refer to Catherine’s allegiances as Spanish, which more accurately reflects her own sense of dynasty than “Habsburg” or “Imperial”.

  3. 3.

    LP, 3.1:721.

  4. 4.

    LP, 3.1:728.

  5. 5.

    John Carmi Parsons, “Mothers, Daughters, Marriage, Power: Some Plantagenet Evidence, 1150–1500,” in Medieval Queenship, ed. John Carmi Parsons (Stroud, UK: Sutton, 1998), 69.

  6. 6.

    See also Chap. 4 for additional associations between queens consort and the Virgin Mary.

  7. 7.

    Queenly association with the Virgin Mary developed alongside Christo-centric kingship in the fifteenth century, Joanna L. Laynesmith, The Last Medieval Queens: English Queenship, 1445–1503 (New York: Oxford University Press, 2004), 30–4; Janet L. Nelson, “Medieval Queenship,” in Women in Medieval Western European Culture, ed. Linda Elizabeth Mitchell (New York: Garland, 1999), 180; Queenly intercession is usually discussed in relation to formal, public requests for mercy by queens, see Lois L. Huneycutt, “Intercession and the High-Medieval Queen: The Esther Topos,” in Power of the Weak: Studies on Medieval Women, ed. Jennifer Carpenter and Sally-Beth Maclean (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1995), 126–46; John Carmi Parsons, “The Queen’s Intercession in Thirteenth-Century England,” in Power of the Weak: Studies on Medieval Women, ed. Jennifer Carpenter and Sally-Beth Maclean (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1995), 147–77.

  8. 8.

    Margaret Howell, “Royal Women of England and France in the Mid-Thirteenth Century: A Gendered Perspective,” in England and Europe in the Reign of Henry III (1216–1272), ed. Bjorn K.U. Weiler and Ifor W. Rowlands (Aldershot, UK: Ashgate, 2002), 172.

  9. 9.

    Sharon Farmer, “Persuasive Voices: Clerical Images of Medieval Wives,” Speculum 61, no. 3 (July 1, 1986): 517–18, https://doi.org/10.2307/2851594; Laynesmith, Last Medieval Queens, 243.

  10. 10.

    Timothy Hampton, Fictions of Embassy: Literature and Diplomacy in Early Modern Europe (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2009), 7–8.

  11. 11.

    Daniela Frigo, “Prudence and Experience: Ambassadors and Political Culture in Early Modern Italy,” Journal of Medieval and Early Modern Studies 38, no. 1 (Winter 2008): 25, https://doi.org/10.1215/10829636-2007-017; see also Chap. 6.

  12. 12.

    John M. Currin, “‘Pro Expensis Ambassatorum’: Diplomacy and Financial Administration in the Reign of Henry VII,” The English Historical Review 108, no. 428 (1993): 591.

  13. 13.

    Andrea Thomas, “‘Dragonis Baith and Dowis Ay in Double Forme’: Women at the Court of James V, 1513–1542,” in Women in Scotland c.1100–c.1750, ed. Elizabeth Ewan and Maureen M. Meikle (East Linton, UK: Tuckwell, 1999), 90.

  14. 14.

    G.A. Bergenroth, ed., et al. Calendar of Letters, Despatches and State Papers Relating to the Negotiations Between England and Spain Preserved in the Archives of Simancas and Elsewhere (London: Longman, Green, Longman, and Roberts, 1862–1954), 1:210, PDF e-book. Hereafter abbreviated CSP Spanish; Parsons, “Mothers, Daughters, Marriage, Power,” 63–6.

  15. 15.

    Karen L. Nelson, “Negotiating Exile: Henrietta Maria, Elizabeth of Bohemia, and the Court of Charles I,” in “High and Mighty Queens” of Early Modern England: Realities and Representations, ed. Carole Levin, Jo Eldridge Carney, and Debra Barrett-Graves (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2003), 62–5; Caroline Hibbard, “Translating Royalty: Henrietta Maria and the Transition from Princess to Queen,” The Court Historian 5, no. 1 (2000): 23.

  16. 16.

    Nelson, “Negotiating Exile,” 68–71.

  17. 17.

    Giles Tremlett, Catherine of Aragon: The Spanish Queen of Henry VIII (New York: Walker & Company, 2010).

  18. 18.

    CSP Spanish, 2:201.

  19. 19.

    LP, 3.1: 728.

  20. 20.

    New diplomatic history has begun to include cultural exchanges, court ceremony and elite ritual into the study of diplomacy, thus demonstrating that professionalization and centralization did not subsume other forms of diplomatic engagement, see John Watkins, “Toward a New Diplomatic History of Medieval and Early Modern Europe,” Journal of Medieval and Early Modern Studies 38, no. 1 (Winter 2008): 7–8, https://doi.org/10.1215/10829636-2007-016; Tracey A. Sowerby, “‘A Memorial and a Pledge of Faith’: Portraiture and Early Modern Diplomatic Culture,” The English Historical Review 129, no. 537 (April 1, 2014): 296–331, https://doi.org/10.1093/ehr/ceu070; Robyn Adams and Rosanna Cox, eds., Diplomacy and Early Modern Culture (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2011); Catherine Fletcher, Diplomacy in Renaissance Rome: The Rise of the Resident Ambassador (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2015); for the traditional account of early modern diplomatic history, see Garrett Mattingly, Renaissance Diplomacy (Baltimore: Penguin Books, 1964).

  21. 21.

    Olwen Hufton, “Reflections on the Role of Women in the Early Modern Court,” The Court Historian 5, no. 1 (2000): 1–14, https://doi.org/10.1179/cou.2000.5.1.001; Caroline Hibbard, “The Role of a Queen Consort: The Household and Court of Henrietta Maria, 1625–1642,” in Princes, Patronage, and the Nobility: The Court at the Beginning of the Modern Age, c.1450–1650, ed. Ronald G. Asch and Adolf M. Birke (New York: Oxford University Press, 1991), 393–414; Lorraine Attreed, “Gender, Patronage, and Diplomacy in the Early Career of Margaret of Austria (1480–1530),” Mediterranean Studies 20, no. 1 (2012): 3–27, https://doi.org/10.1353/mds.2012.0004; Susan Doran, Monarchy and Matrimony: The Courtships of Elizabeth I (New York: Routledge, 1996); Natalie Mears, “Love-Making and Diplomacy: Elizabeth I and the Anjou Marriage Negotiations, c. 1578–1582,” History 86, no. 284 (October 2001): 442.

  22. 22.

    For more on the varied ways elite women engaged in diplomacy and counsel, see Chaps. 2, 4, and 6.

  23. 23.

    Laynesmith, Last Medieval Queens, 243.

  24. 24.

    For more on the informal role of women at court and the opportunities it afforded them, see Hufton, “The Role of Women in the Early Modern Court.”

  25. 25.

    Glenn Richardson, “‘Most Highly to Be Regarded’: The Privy Chamber of Henry VIII and Anglo-French Relations, 1515–1520,” The Court Historian 4, no. 2 (August 1, 1999): 119–40, https://doi.org/10.1179/cou.1999.4.2.002; Catherine Fletcher, “‘Furnished with Gentlemen’: The Ambassador’s House in Sixteenth-Century Italy,” Renaissance Studies 24, no. 4 (September 2010): 518–35, https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1477-4658.2009.00618.x.

  26. 26.

    Catherine’s mother’s death caused upheaval in the Iberian kingdoms, as Catherine’s sister Juana and Juana’s husband Philip of Burgundy became the new monarchs of Castile, greatly reducing her father Ferdinand’s (who remained king of Aragon) influence and material resources. With Isabel’s death, Henry VII looked to an alliance with the new rulers of Castile, not with Ferdinand, and the match with Catherine lost its appeal. Henry’s new alliance and repeated arguments over Catherine’s dowry delayed Catherine’s second marriage.

  27. 27.

    CSP Spanish, 1:526.

  28. 28.

    CSP Spanish, 1:551.

  29. 29.

    CSP Spanish, 1:576.

  30. 30.

    CSP Spanish, Supplement to vols. 1 and 2: 100–1.

  31. 31.

    This was an issue English ambassadors abroad faced as well, see Fletcher, Diplomacy, 54.

  32. 32.

    CSP Spanish, Supplement to vols. 1 and 2: 17; Catherine’s advice and opinion of de Puebla was by no means accurate or unbiased, for she seems to have blamed de Puebla for many problems outside of his control and shared a snobbish distain for the non-noble converso with other Spanish diplomats, see Garrett Mattingly, “The Reputation of Doctor De Puebla,” The English Historical Review 55, no. 217 (1940): 27–46.

  33. 33.

    CSP Spanish, Supplement to vols. 1 and 2: 17.

  34. 34.

    For further discussion of royal partners working together, see Chap. 2.

  35. 35.

    Mary Anne Everett Green, ed., Letters of Royal and Illustrious Ladies of Great Britain, from the Commencement of the Twelfth Century to the Close of the Reign of Queen Mary, vol. 1 (London: H. Colburn, 1846), 159, http://hdl.handle.net/2027/hvd.32044010186450.

  36. 36.

    Murphy notes that the young nobles of Henry’s court encouraged the king to attack the French, but he does not consider Catherine’s influence, Neil Murphy, “Henry VIII’s First Invasion of France: The Gascon Expedition of 1512,” The English Historical Review 130, no. 542 (February 1, 2015): 25–6, https://doi.org/10.1093/ehr/ceu367.

  37. 37.

    CSP Spanish, 2:50, 52.

  38. 38.

    CSP Venetian, 2:211, 87.

  39. 39.

    Murphy, “Henry VIII’s First Invasion of France,” 46–8.

  40. 40.

    LP, 1.1:1286.

  41. 41.

    CSP Spanish, 2:72, 76.

  42. 42.

    LP, 1.1:1356, cited in Murphy, “Henry VIII’s First Invasion of France,” 46.

  43. 43.

    CSP Venetian 2:505; Chap. 4.

  44. 44.

    CSP Venetian 2:503.

  45. 45.

    CSP Venetian 2:503.

  46. 46.

    CSP Spanish, 2:238.

  47. 47.

    Catherine was not the only royal daughter to tire of her father’s inconstancy. Margaret of Austria, regent of the Netherlands, favoured a stable truce with France over her father’s constant demands for war, and even negotiated the 1508 Treaty of Cambrai to cement peace between France, Aragon and her father, see Attreed, “Gender, Patronage, and Diplomacy,” 14. For more on Margaret of Austria’s diplomatic career, see Chap. 6.

  48. 48.

    Charles V held numerous titles across Europe, becoming king of Spain and its territories in 1516, and Archduke of Austria and Holy Roman Emperor in 1519. In Spain he was known as Carlos I, and he became Charles V when elected Holy Roman Emperor in 1519. To lessen confusion, I will refer to him exclusively as Charles V, despite the slight inaccuracy.

  49. 49.

    CSP Spanish, Supp. 2: 185.

  50. 50.

    CSP Spanish, Supp. 2: 325.

  51. 51.

    CSP Spanish, Supplement to vols. 1 and 2: 100.

  52. 52.

    CSP Spanish, 2:238.

  53. 53.

    Christine de Pizan, The Treasure of the City of Ladies, trans. Sarah Lawson, rev. ed. (New York: Penguin Books, 2003), 40–1; Laynesmith, Last Medieval Queens, 246; Sharon D. Michalove, “Equal in Opportunity? The Education of Aristocratic Women, 1450–1550,” in Women’s Education in Early Modern Europe: A History, 1500–1800, ed. Barbara J. Whitehead (New York: Garland Publishing, 1999), 53, 58; Barbara J. Harris, English Aristocratic Women 1450–1550: Marriage and Family, Property and Careers (New York: Oxford University Press, 2002), 234. Catherine’s successors would continue to combine entertaining with politics, see Chap. 11.

  54. 54.

    Catherine Fletcher notes that the wives of male ambassadors at the court of Rome may have acted as hostesses, but that we need more research on the role of women in diplomacy and ambassadors’ households, for more on the importance of news-gathering for queens consort, see “Ambassador’s House,” 534; Jill Bepler, “Dynastic Positioning and Political Newsgathering: Hedwig Eleonora of Schleswig-Gottorf, Queen of Sweden, and Her Correspondence,” in Queens Consort, Cultural Transfer and European Politics, C. 1500–1800, ed. Helen Watanabe-O’Kelly and Adam Morton (New York: Routledge, 2017), 132–52.

  55. 55.

    For the importance of news-gathering for resident ambassadors, see Fletcher, Diplomacy, 45–8.

  56. 56.

    Sebastiano Giustiniani, Four Years at the Court of Henry VIII, ed. Rawdon Brown (London: Smith, Elder, 1854), 2:97, PDF e-book.

  57. 57.

    Rawdon Brown, ed., Calendar of State Papers and Manuscripts Relating to English Affairs: existing in the Archives and collections of Venice, and in other libraries of Northern Italy (London: Longman, 1864), 2:918, PDF e-book. Hereafter abbreviated CSP Venetian. Giustiniani, Four Years, 2:98.

  58. 58.

    Diplomats were accustomed to reading acts of hospitality as political messages, see Fletcher, “Ambassador’s House,” 523, 528.

  59. 59.

    LP, 3.2: 1537.

  60. 60.

    Richardson, “Privy Chamber of Henry VIII,” 130–1.

  61. 61.

    Janette Dillon, Performance and Spectacle in Hall’s Chronicle (London: Society for Theatre Research, 2002), 68.

  62. 62.

    Sowerby, “Portraiture and Early Modern Diplomatic Culture,” 315.

  63. 63.

    CSP Venetian, 2:653.

  64. 64.

    Fletcher, Diplomacy, 148.

  65. 65.

    CSP Spanish, 2:238.

  66. 66.

    CSP Spanish, 2:231.

  67. 67.

    LP, 3.1:190.

  68. 68.

    For an account of the meetings, see CSP Venetian, 3:50.

  69. 69.

    Catherine Richardson, “Introduction,” in Clothing Culture, 1350–1650, ed. Catherine Richardson (Aldershot, UK: Ashgate, 2004), 20–1; Roze Hentschell, “A Question of Nation: Foreign Clothes on the English Subjects,” in Clothing Culture, 1350–1650, ed. Catherine Richardson (Aldershot, UK: Ashgate, 2004), 49–50.

  70. 70.

    CSP Venetian, 3:50; Maria Hayward, Dress at the Court of King Henry VIII: The Wardrobe Book of the Wardrobe of the Robes Prepared by James Worsley in December 1516; Edited from MS Harley 2284, and His Inventory Prepared on 17 January 1521, Edited from Harley MS 4217, Both in the British Library (Leeds, UK: Maney Publishing, 2007), 227; Catherine was descended from Edward III through his son John of Gaunt, whose daughter Catherine married Henry III of Castile in 1388. Catherine of Lancaster and Henry III were Catherine’s great-grandparents.

  71. 71.

    Maria Hayward, “Spanish Princess or Queen of England? The Image, Identity, and Influence of Catherine of Aragon at the Courts of Henry VII and Henry VIII,” in Spanish Fashion at the Courts of Early Modern Europe, ed. José Luis Colomer and Amalia Descalzo, Confluencias (Madrid: Centro de Estudios Europa Hispánica, 2014), 24.

  72. 72.

    Glenn Richardson, The Field of Cloth of Gold (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2014), 10.

  73. 73.

    The National Archives, Kew, E315/242/3, fols 26–29. Hereafter abbreviated TNA.

  74. 74.

    LP, 3.1:852; TNA, E315/242/3, 22v, 23r.

  75. 75.

    Isabel’s emblem was used extensively in Spain as her symbol and in conjunction with her husband Ferdinand’s symbol of the yoke, see Barbara S. Weissberger, “Tanto Monta: The Catholic Monarchs’ Nuptial Fiction and the Power of Isabel I of Castile,” in The Rule of Women in Early Modern Europe, ed. Anne J. Cruz and Mihoko Suzuki (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2009), 43–63.

  76. 76.

    CSP Venetian, 3:85; see also Hayward, Dress, 227; Catherine had worn Spanish dress in the past for political purposes, such as during Maying festivities witnessed by the Spanish ambassador, LP 2.1:411.

  77. 77.

    Hayward, “Spanish Princess,” 30; for more on Spanish hairstyles for women, see Janet Cox-Rearick, “Power-Dressing at the Courts of Cosimo de’ Medici and François I: The ‘Moda Alla Spagnola’ of Spanish Consorts Eléonore d’Autriche and Eleonora Di Toledo,” Artibus et Historiae 30, no. 60 (2009): 40, 47; Ruth Matilda Anderson, “Spanish Dress Worn by a Queen of France,” Gazette Des Beaux Arts 98 (1981): 215–22.

  78. 78.

    Hayward, Dress, 171.

  79. 79.

    There are three existing account books from Catherine’s Wardrobe of the Robes, which date from approximately 1515–1520: TNA, E101/418/6; TNA, 315/242/3; John Rylands Library, University of Manchester, Manchester, Latin MS 239.

  80. 80.

    JRL Latin MS 239, 15v.

  81. 81.

    The British Library, London, MS Harley 2284, 29r; without a Spanish tailor in England, most of Catherine’s gowns would have been made in the English style, see Hayward, “Spanish Princess,” 25.

  82. 82.

    The long-standing association between Catherine and Spanish fashion was not lost on her husband, and during the divorce crisis, Henry declared that he hated the Spanish style of dress, even when worn by other women, LP, 5:1187, 521.

  83. 83.

    Richardson, The Field of Cloth of Gold, 189.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Oakland, CA, USA

    Michelle L. Beer

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  1. Michelle L. Beer
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  1. University College London, London, United Kingdom

    Helen Matheson-Pollock

  2. University of Sussex, Brighton, United Kingdom

    Joanne Paul

  3. Swansea University, Swansea, United Kingdom

    Catherine Fletcher

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Beer, M.L. (2018). Between Kings and Emperors: Catherine of Aragon as Counsellor and Mediator. In: Matheson-Pollock, H., Paul, J., Fletcher, C. (eds) Queenship and Counsel in Early Modern Europe. Queenship and Power. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-76974-5_3

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-76974-5_3

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