Catharine of Aragon (1485 - 1536)

Catherine of Aragon (1485-1536), first wife of King Henry VIII.  ©

Catherine was born near Madrid in December 1485. She was the daughter of King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella, whose marriage had united Spain. She was given a good education and remained a devout Catholic throughout her life. In 1501, Catherine was married to Prince Arthur, the eldest son of King Henry VII of England. Arthur died shortly afterwards. Catherine stayed on in England and in June 1509 she married Arthur's brother Henry, who had recently become King Henry VIII. She bore him six children, including three sons, but all died except one daughter, Mary, born in 1516.

Catherine was under enormous pressure to produce a male heir and her marriage to Henry unsurprisingly soured. Desperate for a son and now hostile to Spain, in 1527 Henry asked the Pope for an annulment of his marriage. He claimed that his marriage was cursed as it was against biblical teaching to marry a sister-in-law, although a papal dispensation had been given at the time of their wedding. Catherine refused to give in to Henry, claiming her marriage to Arthur had been unconsummated. She attracted much popular sympathy. The Pope refused, unwilling to admit the papal dispensation had been wrong but also at the time a virtual prisoner of Catherine's nephew, the Emperor Charles V, who opposed the annulment.

But Henry was determined to marry his favourite, Anne Boleyn, and did so secretly in 1533. He then passed the Act of Supremacy, declaring that he was the head of the English church. Catherine continued to reject the divorce and her new title of Princess Dowager. She was forced to live in much reduced conditions and denied access to her daughter. Catherine died on 7 January 1536 at Kimbolton House in Cambridgeshire. She was buried in Peterborough Abbey.