The Six Wives of Henry VIII | Catherine of Aragon

The six wives of Henry VIII is a pretty popular subject. I mean, the story has everything; love, sex, murder and a man who got so fat he had to be winched up and down stairs.

But if you’re not familiar with the six ladies who had the misfortune to call Henry VIII their husband, I’m going to be doing weekly summaries about the ladies' lives

. This week it’s the sister-in-law of Margaret of Austria (last weeks post), Catherine of Aragon, Henry’s first wife.

What a lot of people don’t realise is that Catherine was married to Henry for longer than the other fives wives were combined. For 24 years Catherine stood by Henry’s side and did everything that was expected of a 16th Century Queen everything, that is, except bear a living son. Which, ultimately, was her downfall.

Catherine was born in 1485, the daughter of the joint monarchs of Spain, Isabella of Castile and Ferdinand of Aragon. Her mother was a Queen in her own right, which was a pretty big deal at the time, and she made sure that all her children had a good education, including her daughters.

Catherine was shipped over to England at 16 to marry Henry’s older brother, Prince Arthur. But, unfortunately for Arthur, he bit the dust less than a year into his marriage and long before he could become King. This meant Catherine was a widow and Henry was now heir to the throne.

The obvious thing to do would have been to marry Catherine to the future Henry VIII, but Henry’s Dad (also a Henry, Henry VII) and Catherine’s Dad, King Ferdinand, were both notoriously stingy and couldn’t come to an agreement on Catherine’s dowry*. When Dad Henry died and young Henry VIII became king, he decided Catherine was hot stuff and he wanted to marry her straight away.

Catherine made a great Queen, she was well educated, popular and religious. She was so trusted by Henry that when he was getting in wars overseas he let her rule in his place. One time when Henry was at war over in Europe she got involved in a bit of warring herself. The Scots were invading in the north and she raised an army to defeat them. Catherine won and wanted to send the dead body of the Scottish king to Henry, but the English wouldn’t let her, would’ve been a very romantic gift.

They were married, more-or-less happily for a long time. It might have been for even longer if Catherine had given birth to a son. But throughout their marriage, Catherine had multiple miscarriages and only managed to have one surviving child, a daughter called Mary (later Queen Mary I).

This was not great news as Henry believed, wrongly, that a woman couldn’t rule a country. There had never really been an English queen rule in her own right before and he couldn’t see it happening anytime soon. Catherine was older than Henry too, and while that had never seemed to matter before, it did now she was getting past childbearing age and Henry was still relatively young.

So with only one daughter and a menopausal wife, Henry’s eyes went wandering and they met Anne Boleyn. It was hardly the first time that Henry cheated on his wife, a King was considered unusual if he DIDN’T have mistresses. Usually, Catherine just put up with it, at the end of the day she was still Queen. But Anne Boleyn was different. She was smart, sassy and refused to sleep with Henry unless they were married. This drove Henry wild, and so decided to get a divorce from Catherine. But back then, divorce was not a thing. To separate from a spouse you had to get an annulment, a something that said your marriage was never valid in the first place.

He tried to get an annulment from the Pope saying that his and Catherine’s ‘childlessness’ (apparently daughters didn’t count) was because he married his brother’s widow. There was a tiny bit in the Bible that said this was a sin and so Henry said he believed God was punishing him. Catherine and the Catholic church weren’t having any of it. She protested she’d never even slept with Arthur so it didn’t really count. As hard as Henry pushed to get divorced, the Catholic Church and the Pope wouldn’t budge. So he decided to ditch the Pope, make himself the head of the church in England, grant himself a divorce and marry Anne.

All in all, the divorce proceedings took about seven years and Catherine fought through all of it. She was degraded, humiliated and separated from her daughter. All this mistreatment took its toll on Catherine, three years after the divorce she was dead. Modern historians agree she probably died due to cancer, but at the time it was said she died of a broken heart. It was a pretty sad ending for a woman who’d always been a dutiful wife. But, as we’ll find, none of Henry VIII’s wives really had very happy endings.

* A dowry is an amount of property or money given by a bride’s family to her husband on their marriage. It’s basically like ‘thanks for taking a daughter off our hands here's a $1000’ sort of thing, pretty sexist.