tudorqueen6

Two Queens: Two Great women.

Katherine of Aragon -first Queen Consort of Henry VIII and mother to England’s first Queen Regnant. Katherine Parr, last Queen Consort and first Queen of Ireland who largely influenced England’s most famous Queen, Glorianna.

Both of these women have gone down in history as old, prude, ugly, stubborn (in KOA’s case) and zealous, nursemaid (in KP’s case). But they were more than that and two great biographers, in their respective biographies of her, explore these myths. Porter lays out Katherine Parr’s great lineage. Out of all of Henry’s English wives, she was the one with more royal blood and her family was well connected. Her mother, lady Maud Parr nee Green served under Queen Katherine as a lady in waiting, and Katherine Parr as her brother (William) received a great education in astronomy, mathematics, languages and in herbal medicine. David Starkey suggests that Katherine Parr did not become interested in Protestantism until she became Henry’s Queen and she began to form a friendship with Thomas Cranmer. This sounds about right, but it is not entirely true Katherine likely became interested in Protestantism earlier, during her second husband’s (Lord Latimer) days. By the time she became Henry’s Queen, she was well rooted in the many currents of Protestantism and did her best to promote it and her court became a refuge for like-minded thinkers. After she became a royal widow, she published her second and last book “Lamentations of a Sinner” which greatly influenced the English reformation.

Katherine Parr was a strong influence on her youngest royal stepchildren, Edward and Elizabeth. Through her, Elizabeth learned about queenship, and the power  a woman could wield in a man’s world.

Katherine of Aragon on the other hand was of the opposite band but no less smarter. As it’s stated, Katherine Parr’s mother served under her, and the Parrs stayed loyal to the old Queen during her husband’s marriage to Anne Boleyn. This was never forgotten by her daughter, Mary Tudor, who formed a strong friendship with Katherine Parr. Katherine of Aragon in her prime was beautiful. The epitome of beauty, she emulated all the virtues that were acceptable for women to emulate. Red hair,  blue eyes and fair skin. She and Henry were equals during the first years of their marriage. As Fox and Mattingly (and recently Licence) put it, both the King and Queen were a power couple every other royal couple could envy. Thomas More praised the Queen more than she did the new King and his praise was not too overrated since Katherine wasn’t just any royal bride. She was the daughter of two of the most powerful people in Christendom, Isabella and Ferdinand of Castile and Aragon. Her mother had died in 1504 and that had left her in a precarious position as her father in law no longer saw her as a desirable bride for his remaining son, Henry, and eh started to look elsewhere. During this time she became her father’s ambassador and that helped her position, for a while. She had to rely on her wits and her ambition. Getting closer to Henry, convincing him through indirect means (through her smile, their friendship, listening to his complaints, showing herself more affable than his father) that she was the only bride for him. And it worked. When all hope was lost and everyone wanted Henry to take another bride, the new King claimed he would not because his father had told him to honor his promise to marry the Spanish Infanta. This sounds romantic but it is untrue; many historians believe that the old King did not want his son to marry his brother’s widow and in fact he was leaning more to a Habsburg marriage or even a French one. Henry however, like his grandfather Edward IV, showed himself the chivalric hero ‘rescuing’ his fair maiden. As we have seen, Katherine was no fair maiden, she was no victim, and she was no passive bystander. She knew how to play the political game. She had been trained for it. She had seen her parents in their greatest moments. Katherine and her sisters enjoyed an education equal to that of their brother (as Katherine Parr did). They were not educated as royal princesses, but as royal princes. In addition to domestic arts, they were taught languages, poetry, music, art, dance and canon and secular law, and most important of all: rhetoric. The most important subject of the liberal arts where truths could be mixed with lies and one of Katherine’s greatest weapons. But perhaps Katherine’s greatest weapon was her advocacy of scholars and religious reformers. While she was Catholic, she hated corrupt priests and abhorred dishonest ones. Her mother had done bher best controlling Castile, forcing the Church to stay out of state affairs unless the Queen asked for their assistance. Katherine wanted the same in England.However, England was not Spain and she knew it so her powers here were limited. Juan Luis Vives dedicated his most famous book (Education of Christian Princes) to her and called her not just an example for women, but for all royalty. Kathrine of Aragon also made education fashionable for women. Margaret Beaufort, her husband’s

grandmother was a great influence in England during her lifetime. She founded and re-founded universities and helped students who couldn’t go to university, to enroll in these. Bishop Fisher (who later became one of Katherine’s strongest defender) spoke very highly of her. Indeed, Margaret might just have set the basis for her granddaughter-in-law. But Katherine went a step further, participating in masques, enjoying the secret, surprise parties that Henry threw for her, bursting into her chambers disguised as Robin Hood or some other legendary hero and Katherine being the great hostess, played along and did role play herself. She sponsored artists and poets, and after her husband’s defense of their church, Katherine did her own and she earned a similar title of “Defendress of the Faith”. Her scholarship inspired other women, she and Henry created a court of merriment and scholars, surrounded by the best of the best.

 Both women were astounding in their own right, they were two of the most educated women in their lifetimes and the only ones to be appointed Regents.

There are many personal luxury articles the Queen left as a legacy, not only silks, fabrics, and brocades but also perfume sprays, iron and silver braziers, and perfumes; it seems the Queen used them a great deal: civet oil, musk, amber, balsam - large and smaller censers, jars of civet oil. Their value was estimated at 105 ducats. These perfumes, especially, civet oil, were very expensive. Antonio de la Torre didn’t overlook this detail and informed shrewdly: <<The famous Retablo executed by Juan de Flanders, with its 47 panels, got only 205 ducats at the auction; to be more precise, the best-paid panels didn’t beat the price of one ounce of civet oil.>> Out of perfumes, we can distinguish <<scent waters>>, for instance, orange or lime blossom. The feminine prevalence in the Queen’s family can’t be forgotten; the infantas must have shared their mother’s passion for cosmetics.

- Tarsicio de Azcona, Isabel la Católica. Vida y reinado

Isabel possessed civet cats and many bottles, even jugs, of civet oil, a base for strong perfume; but what she did with it and why remains a mystery. It was thought an aphrodisaic; it was also valuable, her supply of it like money in the bank.

- Peggy K. Liss, Isabel the Queen: Life and Times

Smell was another major concern. The court’s perfumadores made sure it was as sweetly scented as possible. Again, the Moorish influence was evident. Their bottles and jars contained rose-water, amber, musk, balsam, scented clays and woods and the scent of orange or lemon blossom. The court also kept a civet cat. The perfumadores extracted a sticky, white, acrid-smelling musk-like substance from the apocrine gland by its anus.

Catherine of Aragon in every episode of The Tudors (2/?)

 CATHERINE OF ARAGON AND MARGARET TUDOR

In June 1513, as soon as her husband set sail for the English port of Calais, from where he was finally to launch his campaign against the French, Catherine of Aragon was to rule in his place or, rather, in his name. Henry VIII had appointed Catherine queen regent, governor and captain general in his absence, little knowing the redoubtable Catherine would oversee the defeat of an enemy of perhaps greater danger to the English throne than was France. The threat came from Scotland, whose King James IV felt more loyalty to the “Auld Alliance” with France than he did to England —despite the fact James’ wife, Margaret Tudor, was Henry’s older sister. The French queen, Anne of Brittany, sent James IV her glove and turquoise ring and asked him to be her champion. The Scottish King decided to invade England. While Catherine remained childless, Margaret Tudor and her infant son James were first in line to the English throne. 

Whilst the army was gathering, the King and Queen of Scotland were at Linlithgow. A pregnant Margaret, apparently racked by nightmarish visions of her husband falling off a precipice or her losing an eye, was said to have begged him not to invade England. He supposedly treated her warning as the stuff of dreams. ‘It is no dream that ye are to fight a mighty people,’ she said, according to the story as it was told more than a century later. Margaret knew those people well, and many of her childhood friends were on the other side. ‘What a folly, what a blindness is it to make this war yours and to quench the fire in your neighbour’s house of France to kindle and burn up your own in Scotland,’ she warned.

Should the letters of the queen of France – a woman twice married (the first half in adultery, the last almost incest) whom ye did never nor shall ever see – prove more powerful with you than the cries of your little son and mine, than the tears, complaints [and] curses of the orphans and widows which ye are to make?

This version of the story, which may well be apocryphal, suggests that if the two sisters-in-law had been left to sort it out there might not have been any bloodshed. ‘If ye will go suffer me to accompany you,’ Margaret begged him.  

It may be my countrymen prove more kind towards me than they will to you, and for my sake yield unto peace. I hear the queen my sister [Catherine] will be with the army in her husband’s absence; if we shall meet, who knows what God by our means may bring to pass.

Catherine and Margaret never had the chance to talk sisterly peace in the dramatic fashion imagined later. Having parted from Margaret Tudor, James crossed the border into Northumberland on 24th August at the head of the greatest army ever gathered in Scotland. Early in September Catherine rode to north with a body of troops variously described as ‘a great power’ or a ‘numerous force’. If Surrey found the Scots too strong for him, he could fall back on this support. If he fought and was beaten, the Scots would still find a powerful army between them and the south. But Queen Catherine’s army did not need to go into combat. Surrey and his men defeated the Scots at Flodden Field. The King of Scotland were killed in the battlefield. The news was brought to Margaret at Linlithgow, the fairy-tale palace James had beautified for her. Margaret was left a widow at the age of 23. 

The island of Great Britain was, temporarily and for the first time, in the hands of two women. Catherine governed England as regent for her husband. It was her task to administer the victory. The newly widowed Margaret ruled in Scotland as protector for her one-year-old son, James V. The infant king had been crowned shortly after his father’s death at what, because of the tears shed for the dead left behind at Flodden, became known as the ‘Mourning Coronation’.

In England, Catherine worked loyally to forward her husband’s plans. Scotland had taken a stunning blow, and there was always a party in Henry’s council, a party with strong backing in the country, which felt that Scotland would be a conquest easier and more valuable than France. This seemed a time to push the northern war home, and make an end of the Scottish menace for ever. But Catherine realized that England could not afford two simultaneous campaigns of conquest. Promptly on the news of Flodden she began to disband the reserve army, and to arrange to decrease Surrey’s. 

Nor was Catherine as hard-hearted in victory as her initial jubilation might have indicated. She sent a message to Margaret, offering her consolation for a husband killed by her own soldiers. ‘The queen of England, for the love she bears the queen of Scots, would gladly send a servant to comfort her,’ it said. Soon one of those forthright friars of whom Catherine was so fond, Friar Langley, was on his way. Catherine continued to oversee negotiations for a truce with the Scots. Neither woman felt much like prolonging their war. The letters exchanged between the two queens looked to a permanent peace.

Catherine’s prompt steps to end the Scottish danger as much as her courage in opposing it showed her complete fitness for the hard task Henry had left in her hands. Henry returned home from France in late October, after taking Tournai, and rode hard to Richmond to see Catherine. There the victorious husband and wife were reunited and, ‘there was such a loving meeting as everyone rejoiced’. Margaret had hoped to build on Catherine’s letter of sympathy, and asked her sister-in-law to put her in her brother’s remembrance, ‘that his kindness may be known to our lieges and realm’.  But as Henry took charge of the follow up to Flodden, Scotland’s agony continued. His captains were ordered to strike again and again north of the border, burning corn and destroying villages. It was February 1514 before he decided they had been punished enough and a treaty was signed.  

  Sources:

Giles Tremlett,  CATHERINE OF ARAGON Henry’s Spanish Queen

Garrett Mattingly, Catherine Of Aragon

https://tudortimes.co.uk/people/margaret-tudor-life-story/flodden-and-its-aftermath

https://tudortimes.co.uk/guest-articles/margaret-tudor-and-the-battle-of-flodden/the-final-victory

“Thomas and Alice had a comfortable relationship that suited them both. She managed his household, cared for his children, and sought to save his life when he was imprisoned. Margaret was a highly educated woman, following her father’s wishes , but she and her sisters also learned from Alice the modest and appropriate behavior expected of a gentlewoman and the domestic skills required of a wife and mother. Alice was not a shrew; she obeyed her husband, as her society expected, quite unlike the anonymous women in A Dialogue of Comfort. Thomas’s biographers and editors should praise her rather than demean her role as his wife . Young and beautiful she was not, but she was a kind, dutiful, pious woman with deep affection for Thomas, who lived comfortably with her until his imprisonment and death.” 

Catherine of Aragon in every episode :

To all these dreadful temptations or adjurations the Queen replied openly and courageously, that as she knew assuredly she was the King’s true wife, she would never call herself otherwise than Queen, or answer to any other name, to any person in the world; and that this course must not be attributed to arrogance or vainglory, for she would be much more proud to be called the daughter of her father and mother than to be the greatest queen in the world, if she could not conscientiously use the title.

(x)

I went to war for this. I lost a child to stop the Scots laying waste to England. We have been in this fight together, Henry. Do not throw it in my face and make my sacrifice for nothing. 

            So you admit it? You lost the child because you tried to be a man.

Fashion from Isabel TVE vs. paintings of fashion from the late 15th century: 

1. Master of the Retable of the Reyes Católicos, The Marriage at Cana, 1496-97

Juan Luis Vives wrote on the 25th January 1524 that “At times I was able to have some philosophical talks with the Queen, one of the purest and most Christian souls I have ever seen […] we came to talk about adversity and prosperity in this life. The Queen said “If I could chose between the two, I would prefer an equal share of both, neither complete adversity nor total success. And If I had to choose between extreme sorrow and extreme well-being, I think I would prefer the former to the latter, for people in disgrace need only some consolation while those who are too successful frequently lose their minds.”

In May 1516, Margaret Tudor  was escorted by Sir Thomas Parr into London, where she was brought to Baynard’s Castle, Catherine’s London palace. Margaret would use Baynard’s Castle as her primary residence while in London, staying there with her own household, which included a number of Scots who had served her while she was queen consort. Margaret entered London riding on a white palfrey given to her by Catherine, and this gift of a horse was commensurate with other gifts Catherine gave to royal women, such as her gift to Queen Claude of France of two palfreys at the Field of Cloth of Gold. Additionally, the palfrey was prominently displayed as Margaret entered the city and the gift would have been seen by many observers, including the ambassadors who would report it to the rest of courtly Europe, establishing Catherine’s fama as a hostess. As queen, sister-in-law, and lady of Baynard’s Castle, Catherine was Margaret’s hostess on both a ceremonial and mundane level while she was in England. 

For the next year, Margaret was a guest at Henry’s court. During this period, Catherine welcomed Margaret to England as her sister-in-law and hostess, incorporating her sister queen into the hospitality of the court and fulfilling her duties as hostess. Because Catherine and Margaret were integral to the entertainment of visiting ambassadors or foreign noble guests, their chambers became spaces for impromptu or private social gatherings that featured music and dancing by the queen’s minstrels and her ladies. In October 1516 the Venetian ambassador Sebastiano Giustiniani visited Henry’s court and stayed for dinner. After dinner he was sent for by Henry, whom he found in Catherine’s chamber with Margaret, listening to music and dancing with her ladies. Even an informal entertainment at court required the presence of ladies, and the sight of two queens together would have impressed upon the ambassador the strength and connections of Henry’s Tudor dynasty.  

Margaret’s visit to the English court ended in May 1517, when she returned to Scotland after lengthy negotiations with the regency government there. She was evidently sad to leave her brother’s court, as one member of her escort reported back to Cardinal Wolsey: “Her grace considereth now the honor of England, and the poverty and wretchedness of Scotland, which she did not affore, but in her opinion esteemed Scotland equal with England.” She may have exchanged parting gifts at the English court. A Book of Hours, originally a gift to Margaret from her father Henry VII, was given by Margaret to someone she considered a sister, which could be either Catherine or Mary Tudor. Considering the role Catherine played in hosting Margaret and the time they spent together while Margaret was in England, it is entirely possible that Catherine was the recipient. Like the palfrey given to Margaret upon her entry, the gift of a Book of Hours to Catherine (or Mary) would have been a material reminder of their relationship and Margaret’s visit. It would have acknowledged Margaret’s own role as guest and Catherine’s as hostess.