After the wedding celebrations of Katherine of Aragon to Arthur, Prince of Wales, the teenage couple was ‘put to bed’ in keeping with the Tudor custom. What happened that night would later become an issue of great controversy. In this post we explore whether Katherine’s claim that the marriage was never consummated stands up to scrutiny.
As a trusting kind of person, I’m always inclined to give people the benefit of the doubt. Given that Katherine of Aragon went to her death insisting that when she entered her second marriage to King Henry VIII, she did so as a virgin despite the fact she had briefly been married to his brother, I’ve always tended to believed her.
Of course, given that this (intensely personal) issue was at the heart of her husband claiming a legitimate case to divorce her, perhaps Katherine had little choice but to insist on her pre-marital purity. Certainly a good batch of historians seem to think so.
So I decided to #DigALittleDeeper and I have to confess that – with all the usual caveats around how we can never truly know – I’m still inclined to side with Katherine, although it’s something I’d like to discuss in more depth in the future. To start with, I’m not satisfied that the arguments against her really stack up. Let’s explore.
- There was an assumption , upon her first husband Arthur’s death, that the marriage was consummated – This is based on the fact that they waited a few months before declaring the future Henry VIII, ‘Prince of Wales’ on the basis that Katherine might be pregnant. Similarly, when going through the process of arranging Katherine’s second marriage, her mother was keen to ensure that the Pope granted dispensation for the marriage regardless of the whether the first union had been consummated.
These arguments are sensible enough, but in reality no one probably asked Katherine much about the wedding night. Her mother, Queen Isabella of Castile, wasn’t keen for this clause because she suspected that her daughter had been enjoying the fruits of young love; it was a sensible precaution by a wise and worldly woman who wanted to protect her daughter and the alliance with England, from any future attempts to undermine her second marriage. The fact that even with it, this is exactly what happened, demonstrates what incredible foresight the infamous Queen of Castile must have possessed.
- Prince Arthur seemed to think there had been intimacy – Friends of the 15 year old groom were later to tell of the young prince’s claims the morning after the wedding that marriage was ‘thirsty work’ and that he had spent the night in the ‘midst of Spain.’ There is no reason to think that these friends of Arthur’s were lying, but you really don’t need to be a historian to deduce that this is likely to have been youthful bragging; you just need to have been, or to have ever met, a teenage boy.
- Katherine had a motive to lie – Yes, she did. David Starkey very cleverly argues that given her upbringing in the court of her parents, the Spanish Kings, she was more than aware of the real politick of the Royal marriage market and would have done all she could to advance her country by becoming Queen of England. I have a great deal of time for this argument. However, Alison Weir argues that she would never have continued this lie to her death bed. Given Katherine’s clear devotion to her faith and the fact she would have wanted to meet her maker with a clear conscience, we must conclude that this is the superior argument. What’s more, Katherine seemed rather confident in challenging Henry, that he knew full well that she came to him as a maid. Without wanting to be graphic, if this is true then there would have been ways the King might have noticed it at the time; a daring challenge for her to make if she didn’t know it to be true.
There are other arguments too. When Katherine did declare that her first marriage had been unconsummated, people believed it. Sex in teenage marriages was often not encouraged as it was thought to be dangerous. We know Margaret Beaufort, based on her own bitter experience, intervened to try and protect her granddaughter from teenage intercourse. Could she have done the same for her granddaughter in law (this last point is a bit far-fetched but has given me a great idea for a #WildCard)?
As I said, we can never know. Fundamentally, for me, it comes down to who do you trust more out of Katherine and Henry? Both had reason to lie, but if Henry really did believe his wife did not come to him a virgin, then he was fundamentally unbothered by it for over a decade of his marriage. The change of heart only occurred when he became desperate for both a son and another woman. The rest of Henry’s reign also shows us how he was very comfortable with either lying to others or, more likely, deceiving himself about the true facts of a situation when it suited him to do so. Katherine however, would gain an almost saintly reputation, going to her death bed declaring that Henry was the only man to ever know her.
For me, the jury has come in on this issue and it has declared, at least for now, for Katherine of Aragon.
I agree with your conclusion. Henry certainly lied when it served his cause. I have often wondered if perhaps wounded pride kept Katherine from admitting to lying; however her story never wavered, not even at death. There is always the possibility that she lied so much about that night that she began to believe the lies. After all, she clung to her title of rightful Queen long after the reality of it. But nothing in her writings and the chronicles suggest a delusional disposition. She was a woman wronged and refused to give up the fight to regain what was hers.
I do think that a virtuous woman can absolutely convinced herself that she is still a virgin when she is not
when her whole being in life depends on it. I bought a book in England of Tudor letters from various of the Tudor characters. 4 years after being a widow Katherine still wasn’t speaking English was desperate to have a Spanish Confessor she wrote her father. Why she needed a confessor I don’t know because apparently she was confined to poverty and didn’t leave her home much. She begged her father for money for food mostly for her staff and so she can have some clothes because her clothes were in tatters. No one was playing ball with her then and she seemed to be pretty desperate in a letter she wrote her father so I do believe she had plenty of motive to start believing she was a virgin to make sure she could marry Henry or whomever. Henry had rebuked their engagement by command and was engaged to another princess until that princess father died and that was the end of that so he was now back with Katherine as a potential and I believe she would have done anything to ensure her getting married and out of that Bleak situation she was in
She was probably pretty traumatized and the mind can do a lot of things when you’re traumatized no matter how virtuous you are in the future
To put into context, on the one hand Katherine was no stranger to political shenanigans. She was the daughter of two powerful monarchs. She suffered immensely at the hands of Henry vii and was used as a pawn after Arthur’s death so she was undoubtedly desperate to improve her lot. However, her undoubted piousness would have superseded any desire to lie to improve her position as she would have damned her soul by going against the bible’s teachings such was the importance of religion in her time. Also, she became pregnant very quickly after marrying Henry so there is little reason to doubt that she would have become pregnant with Arthur’s child had they actually consummated their marriage.
I think these are really good points and I agree.
Ultimately only two people truly know what happened…
I tend to believe that she was not a virgin when she came to Henry.
All the purity in the world goes out the wimdow of the chess match of royalty and even in desperation to hold to title and position, something hugely at play in that time period.
I believe Katherine was a virgin and did not lie. She would have condemned herself to hell saying she was a virgin
when she married Henry. Henry was a tyrant proving it over and over again just because he wanted a male son. If only he had known that the male determines
the sex of the child. He was cruel to Katherine and his two children when they had done nothing to deserve!
I feel strongly that She was not a virgin when she married Henry viii as she had more than one night to get to “know” Arthur! Also if you are as passionate as Katherine was about her religion as well as her royal status – which will she use to get her the acknowledgment she so desperately sought? Lying whilst clutching her catholic prayer book right up to her death would not necessarily mean she entered her second marriage a virgin! Also Arthur had plenty of time to get more than a little acquainted with the “give and take” proclivities of the royal bed.
Katherine was a virgin. No devout young Catholic woman then nor even today could or would lie to a priest, the pope, or even to an emissary of the Vatican. It does not happen. She was a God-fearing, she would not have lied.
Furthermore, she requested a Spanish-speaking confessor. There are such differences in the English language from the Spanish, not only in translation, but in the spirit of meanings, that a young, pious Catholic woman such as Katharine would have felt the spiritual need to be heard in her own tongue, even if her sins were venial. This request does not prove her guilty, it proves her an innocent.
Catherine wasn’t a virgin but convinced herself she was. Easily the simplest & most likely explanation.
Exactly, I agree.
Plus they lived together at Ludlow Castle 3 or 4 months before Arthur passed. He definitely had plenty of time or at least opportunities to “visit” Katherine. His own groom testified to this fact. Why wasn’t Henry officially named Prince of Wales right after Arthur death? Because the wait was ongoing to see if Katherine was with child? Really? Doesn’t sound like she was a virgin to me either.
The marriage treaty between Catherine and Henry assumed consummation with Arthur had taken place. But frankly, no one may have asked Catherine. If anything this makes it even less likely that she was lying in 1529. By claiming the first marriage had been unconsummated, she risked invalidating her marriage to Henry on a technicality. The dispensation the Pope had granted assumed consummation.