later, on or about her thirty-eighth birthday, and the infant princess ‘tarried but a small season after her mother’.
There was general and sincere mourning for the Queen who had always been popular. ‘She was a woman of such a character’, says Polydore Vergil, ‘that it would be hard to judge whether she displayed more of majesty and dignity in her life than wisdom and moderation.’ Everyone who knew her seems to agree that she was beautiful, noble, gentle and wise - a loving wife and mother, a dutiful daughter and a generous and affectionate sister. After allowing for the usual excesses of post mortem panegyric, a picture emerges of a placid, sweet-tempered, warmhearted woman, conventionally pious and naturally indolent, content to let others take the lead. Some foreign observers hinted that the Queen was deliberately kept in the background by her mother-in-law and resented the older woman’s dominating influence. Very possibly Elizabeth found the constant, busy presence of Margaret Beaufort something of a trial but she seems to have been willing enough to let ‘my lady the King’s mother’ take over such tedious chores as drawing up rules of court etiquette and keeping an eye on the servants. As for her relationship with her husband, we know little enough about the private life of the first Tudor king and his consort but there is really no evidence to support the contention, first put forward by Francis Bacon, that Henry treated her with cold indifference. On the contrary, such evidence as does exist indicates that theirs was a good marriage, based on mutual tenderness and respect.
Elizabeth was given an elaborate and expensive funeral. On 22 February the coffin, resting on an open chariot draped with black velvet and followed by the officers of the household and representatives of the peerage, the judiciary and the church, was drawn by six horses through streets lined with torch-bearers to Westminster. Next day the Queen was buried in the Abbey, her sister Katherine Courtenay officiating as chief mourner. The King was not present. He had ‘departed to a solitary place to pass his sorrow, and would no man should resort to him but those whom he had appointed.’
The fact that Henry began almost immediately to think of re-marriage need in no way detract from the sincerity of his grief. He was intensely conscious that the future of the dynasty, of everything he had worked and struggled for, everything he had built up over the past twenty years hung on the life of an eleven-year-old boy. Personal feelings set aside, it was the King’s clear duty to his house and to his people to take another wife and beget more sons while there was still time.
Henry’s first choice, which so horrified his nineteenth-century biographers, fell on his daughter-in-law Catherine of Aragon. By contemporary standards, though, there was nothing particularly shocking about this idea and, from Henry’s point of view, it had a good deal to recommend it. Catherine was seventeen now, fully old enough for childbearing; she was ready at hand and no protracted negotiations would be necessary. It is true that her parents rejected the proposal indignantly, but they are more likely to have been motivated by political than by moral considerations. The Spanish monarchs were interested in providing for the next generation. They had no intention of wasting a young and nubile princess on a man old enough to be her grandfather. Henry, perhaps fortunately for his reputation, did not press the point and when Ferdinand offered his niece, the widowed Queen of Naples, as a more suitable candidate for the position of Queen of England, the King at once despatched an embassy with instructions to inspect the lady and report in detail on her physical and financial potentialities. Among a long list of items, the envoys were to notice whether or not she painted her face, ‘to mark her breasts and paps, whether they be big or small’, and, if possible, get
There was general and sincere mourning for the Queen who had always been popular. ‘She was a woman of such a character’, says Polydore Vergil, ‘that it would be hard to judge whether she displayed more of majesty and dignity in her life than wisdom and moderation.’ Everyone who knew her seems to agree that she was beautiful, noble, gentle and wise - a loving wife and mother, a dutiful daughter and a generous and affectionate sister. After allowing for the usual excesses of post mortem panegyric, a picture emerges of a placid, sweet-tempered, warmhearted woman, conventionally pious and naturally indolent, content to let others take the lead. Some foreign observers hinted that the Queen was deliberately kept in the background by her mother-in-law and resented the older woman’s dominating influence. Very possibly Elizabeth found the constant, busy presence of Margaret Beaufort something of a trial but she seems to have been willing enough to let ‘my lady the King’s mother’ take over such tedious chores as drawing up rules of court etiquette and keeping an eye on the servants. As for her relationship with her husband, we know little enough about the private life of the first Tudor king and his consort but there is really no evidence to support the contention, first put forward by Francis Bacon, that Henry treated her with cold indifference. On the contrary, such evidence as does exist indicates that theirs was a good marriage, based on mutual tenderness and respect.
Elizabeth was given an elaborate and expensive funeral. On 22 February the coffin, resting on an open chariot draped with black velvet and followed by the officers of the household and representatives of the peerage, the judiciary and the church, was drawn by six horses through streets lined with torch-bearers to Westminster. Next day the Queen was buried in the Abbey, her sister Katherine Courtenay officiating as chief mourner. The King was not present. He had ‘departed to a solitary place to pass his sorrow, and would no man should resort to him but those whom he had appointed.’
The fact that Henry began almost immediately to think of re-marriage need in no way detract from the sincerity of his grief. He was intensely conscious that the future of the dynasty, of everything he had worked and struggled for, everything he had built up over the past twenty years hung on the life of an eleven-year-old boy. Personal feelings set aside, it was the King’s clear duty to his house and to his people to take another wife and beget more sons while there was still time.
Henry’s first choice, which so horrified his nineteenth-century biographers, fell on his daughter-in-law Catherine of Aragon. By contemporary standards, though, there was nothing particularly shocking about this idea and, from Henry’s point of view, it had a good deal to recommend it. Catherine was seventeen now, fully old enough for childbearing; she was ready at hand and no protracted negotiations would be necessary. It is true that her parents rejected the proposal indignantly, but they are more likely to have been motivated by political than by moral considerations. The Spanish monarchs were interested in providing for the next generation. They had no intention of wasting a young and nubile princess on a man old enough to be her grandfather. Henry, perhaps fortunately for his reputation, did not press the point and when Ferdinand offered his niece, the widowed Queen of Naples, as a more suitable candidate for the position of Queen of England, the King at once despatched an embassy with instructions to inspect the lady and report in detail on her physical and financial potentialities. Among a long list of items, the envoys were to notice whether or not she painted her face, ‘to mark her breasts and paps, whether they be big or small’, and, if possible, get
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