In August 1504, the Spanish Ambassador to London, Hernan, duque de Estrada, wrote to Ferdinand and Isabella that Henry VII was devoted to his son: ‘Certainly there could be no better school in the world than the society of such a father as Henry VII. He is so wise and attentive to everything; nothing escapes his attention.’ He added that the King had told him, ‘I keep the prince with me because I wish to improve him.’22
This attention must have stifled the young Prince Henry, however. The Spanish Envoy, Gutiérrez Gómez de Fuensalida, wrote in 1508 that Henry was kept under supervision as if he were a girl. He could only go out by one door into the park, and then only with companions selected by his father (young men such as Charles Brandon and Edward neville). no one could approach or speak to him without permission. He slept in a room that connected only with his father’s. He never spoke in public except to answer his father’s questions; he never attended any council meetings or audiences with ambassadors or deputations. Fuensalida was supposed to talk to the Prince about his marriage to Catherine of Aragon, but he was not allowed to see him without his father being present, let alone talk to him in private. At Richmond, Henry spent most days in the tiltyard, sometimes watched by his father.
The Prince had his own suite of apartments in Westminster Palace, reached through those of the King. He had footmen, a gentleman usher, a groom of the privy chamber, tutors, minstrels and players. Here at least he might occasionally be alone with his friends. During the evening entertainments, lords and ladies gathered together to hear stories and sing songs about romance and courtly love, to flirt (and more). In courtly love, ideally one should be in love with someone unattainable, preferably above you socially. Henry had few places to turn for this kind of ‘belle dame’ – and so he focused his attention on Catherine.
In August 1504, the King went on progress with Prince Henry, Princess Mary and the Dowager Princess Catherine. Henry and Catherine spent time together riding, hunting and talking. It is impossible to know what they talked about, whether he felt sorry for her, alone in a strange country, unsure of her future, at the mercy of his father’s whims. Perhaps they fell in love; perhaps they found company in a shared misery of powerless subjection. Catherine had a lot to be worried about. Her mother was dead, and there was now open conflict between her father and his son-in-law and daughter, Philip the Handsome and Joanna. Both parties sought to use Catherine to gain King Henry’s support.
In October 1505, Henry sent a letter to Pope Julius II. The letter complained that Catherine had taken to fasting, prayer, abstinence and pilgrimage; and that this might affect her health and particularly her ability to have children later. The Pope wrote back, giving the Prince, as her betrothed husband, permission to order her to stop, ‘We … grant you permission to restrain the aforesaid Catherine, your wife, and to compel her not to observe without your permission any vows or purposes of prayer, fasts, abstinences or pilgrimages ...’23
Poor Catherine began to look less and less like a future queen of England. Louis XII of France offered Margaret of Angoulême, the Dauphin’s sister, as a future wife for the Prince. Philip the Handsome offered his daughter Eleanor but Henry VII held up the Prince’s marriage for political reasons. This had a major effect on Henry – his later marriages, except one, were for personal desire rather than for political advantage. When Henry fell in love, he wished to form an immediate relationship; any suggestion that he couldn’t or shouldn’t took him back to the time of his subjection under the orders of his father and would be ruthlessly denied.
Henry VII set about cutting down the size of Catherine’s establishment while she languished in political limbo. In December 1505 Catherine was invited to Court for Christmas. The King then closed her household at Durham House and told her that henceforward she would live at Westminster with a handful of servants (five ladies, a master of the hall, treasurer and physician), completely at his financial mercy. She was given a small suite of rooms as far away from Prince Henry as possible; he only saw her at church and when she was invited to join formal occasions. Her father, Ferdinand, sent her occasional gifts, but he expected her to use her tenuous position at court to work on his behalf.
It is sometimes amazing how badly parents can misjudge their children. The King had promised Henry that he would marry Catherine, then told him, no. Catherine was still there at Court; not only regal, young and lovely, but also living in fear and poverty because of his father. The situation could not fail to arouse in Prince Henry every emotion from sexual interest and a chivalric desire to rescue her, to an impotent pity that he could not do so, and a resultant despising of his father and hatred of his own powerless situation.
Despite his confined existence at his father’s Court, Henry was developing into a remarkable young man. By the time he was 16, Henry was described as extremely handsome, over six foot tall and well muscled. However, the King still treated his son and heir like a child, refusing him a separate household and doling out pocket money to him. These humiliations would never be forgotten; King Henry VIII would never allow anyone, by his estimation, to demean or belittle him in any way.
In 1508, aged 17, Henry began appearing in tourneys and jousts himself. He was magnificent and the people loved him, courtiers and commoners alike. He was not praised merely because he was the King’s son; it would have been almost impossible for him to survive in the jousting field unscathed if he had not had the strength, skill and judgement to do well. He truly was a remarkable athlete.
There were no reported rumours about any sexual liaisons before Prince Henry’s marriage; however, he was a healthy, handsome young man and Westminster was a big palace; Henry VII could not have watched his son all the time. When Henry VIII was married to Anne Boleyn, there was a vicious and certainly unfounded rumour that he had had affairs with Anne, her sister Mary, and their mother, Elizabeth Boleyn, who had been one of his own mother’s ladies! Henry’s response was, ‘never with the mother’, although if she had been one of those ladies, young and lovely, it had at least been a viable possibility.24
In the last years of his reign Henry VII suffered from ill health, as did his aging mother. The Prince must have chafed under their control. In March 1508 the second half of Catherine’s dowry arrived in England and there was no reason now why the marriage should not take place within a few months, as previously agreed. However, in 1509, as Henry became ill, plans for the Prince’s marriage were proceeding, but with little mention of Catherine. The two foremost contenders were Margaret of Angoulême and Catherine’s niece, Eleanor.
In April 1508 the King finally realised that Ferdinand had no intention of allowing him to marry Joanna and that the negotiations carried out through Catherine (all based on her father’s lies) had been designed to gain advantage for her own marriage. Catherine suffered as a result; she was excluded from the May festivities in 1508. Her accommodation was moved at Easter to rooms over the stables. Her food was sometimes inedible and was enlivened only by occasional gifts from her friends. Her clothes were threadbare, her servants’ worse, and she was forced to sell the plate and jewels that had originally formed part of her dowry as a means to survive.
This enabled Henry VII to now hold up the marriage on the grounds that Catherine’s jewels and plate had been used or sold, and so their equivalent in coin must be provided to complete the dowry. He still thought he could force Ferdinand into letting him marry Joanna, and he wanted the marriage between Philip and Joanna’s son, Charles, and his daughter, Mary, ratified; he was also enthusiastic about Henry marrying Charles’s sister, Eleanor.
Despite all the talk of marriage, Henry VII ended his life without female company. His mother was a virtual recluse at the end, his eldest daughter was in Scotland, and his son’s fiancée was living in poverty, ignored and shunned. Only his youngest daughter brought pleasure into his life – Princess Mary was a darling.
In 1509 Henry VII’s health began to fail and he was too ill to attend the Easter services. Before his death, Henry VII’s councillors, William Warham (Archbishop of Canterbury), John Fisher (Bishop of Rochester) and Richard Fox (Bishop of Winchester), asked him for his last wishes. They reported to Fuensalida that Henry VII had stated that he wanted his son to be free to choose a wife for himself. The