Page:Cassell's Illustrated History of England vol 2.djvu/121

A.D. 1501] ladies and gentlemen of the Court, who, at the end of a mile, kissed her, and returned. Here the Earl of Kent, the Lords Strange, Hastings, and Willoughhy, escorted her as far as York. She rode on a palfrey, attended by four footmen; and on approaching any town, she alighted, and rode in a magnificent litter through the place. A company of actors and numbers of minstrels attended to divert her and her friends on the way. At York she was received by the mayor, corporation, and people with great honour, and the Earls of Northumberland and Surrey conveyed her thence to Lamberton kirk, where they met the Scottish deputation of nobles, who proceeded on the way to Edinburgh with her. James repeatedly visited his bride on her journey, and on the 7th of August she made her entry into Edinburgh, James riding before her on her palfrey. The marriage ceremony was performed on the 8th by the Archbishop of Glasgow, and the English nobles took their leave and returned home. In this marriage treaty, Henry, not forgetting the past, took care that there should be a clause binding both monarchs not to harbour or receive the revolted subjects one of the other.

Simultaneously had been proceeding the negotiations with the Spanish Court for the marriage betwixt Henry's eldest son, Arthur, and Catherine, the daughter of Ferdinand, King of Castile and Arragon. The negotiations for this marriage had commenced so early as 1492, the very year in which Christopher Columbus, under the patronage of Ferdinand and Isabella, discovered the New World. In 1496 a further step was taken; and Ferdinand then promised to give the princess a portion of 200,000 crowns, and Henry engaged that his son should endow her with one-third of his present income, and the same of the income of the crown, if he should live to be king. It was stipulated that so soon as Prince Arthur reached his twelfth year, a dispensation should be obtained to empower him to make the contract; and, accordingly, the marriage was performed by proxy, the Spanish ambassador assuming this part, in the chapel of the prince's manor of Bewdley.

These two children, who were at this period, the one ten, and the other eleven years of age, were educated in the highest possible degree by their respective parents: and at the time of their actual marriage, in 1501, when Arthur was fifteen, and Catherine nearly sixteen, they were perhaps the two most learned persons in the two kingdoms of Spain and England of their years. Arthur had been educated in the castle of Ludlow under the most accomplished masters, and was well read in Greek and Latin authors. The mother of Catherine, the celebrated Isabella, who was not only one of the ablest monarchs, but the most learned woman of the age, had herself superintended her education, assisted by the most eminent professors. Catherine, whose real name was Catalina—Catherine being unknown in Spain, except in Latin writings—read and wrote Latin in her very childhood. She had attended her parents in their conquest of Granada, and had made her home in the magnificent Alhambra and the Generaiffe. It was from these memories that she introduced the pomegranate (pomagranada) into the ornaments of Tudor architecture.

On the 2nd of October this truly illustrious princess landed at Plymouth, after a stormy and difficult passage from Corunna. Child as she was of their Most Catholic Majesties, and a rigid Catholic herself, little could anyone have predicted that her arrival in England was destined to overturn the Romish Church there, and to introduce Protestantism with all its consequences. She appears to have remained at Plymouth some weeks, whither Lord Broke proceeded by command of the king to "purvey and provide" for her. The Duchess of Norfolk and the Earl of Surrey were also sent to attend upon her, and the nobility and gentry of the country round Plymouth hastened to pay their homage, and everything was done to refresh her after her voyage. The king set out on the 4th of November from Shene to meet her, and was joined by the prince at East Hampstead, who had come from Ludlow.

As the king and prince approached Dogmersfield they learned that the princess had arrived there some hours before them, but they were met by a cavalcade of solemn Spanish grandees, who had come forward to inform them that, according to Spanish custom, neither the king nor prince could be introduced to the princess till they met at the altar. Ceremonious as Henry was himself, according to the frank notions of his subjects., this excess of formality was too much for him. He summoned around him on the open field such members of his privy council as were in his train, and asked them, "What they thought of it?" They replied, "That the Spanish infanta was now in His Majesty's own dominions, where he, and not the King of Spain, was master, and that he might look at the princess if he liked." On this Henry rode forward to Dogmersfield, and, presenting himself at Catherine's lodgings, demanded to be admitted to her presence. This peremptory conduct threw the whole of the Spanish embassage into the most terrible confusion. The prothonotary of Spain, an archbishop, a bishop, and a host of dignitaries, assured him that such a thing was impossible, for "the lady infanta had retired to her chamber." Not at all disturbed by this intelligence, Henry coolly assured them that "if she were even in her bed, he meant to see and speak with her, for that was his mind, and the whole intent of his coming."

Spanish etiquette being obliged by English bluffness to give way, the king was admitted to her third chamber, and there, though neither of them could speak a syllable of any common tongue, they made signs of much joy on seeing one another. Soon after arrived the prince, and was also admitted, and the two betrothed lovers managed to talk, as they had long corresponded, in Latin. They were then betrothed anew; and after a pleasant evening—during which the princess, who seems quickly to have thrown off her Spanish stiffness, entertained them with some of her country dances, and the prince, not to be behindhand with his bride, danced an English dance with Lady Guildford, the governess of his sister—they set forward the next day for London. At Kingston-on-Thames Catherine was met by the Duke of Buckingham, and a train of 400 noblemen, gentlemen, and clergy, and conducted to Kennington, whence, on the 17th of November, she was conducted by a great concourse of lords and ladies into the city to the bishop's palace, where she was to remain till the nuptials. On this occasion the Duke of York, afterwards her second husband and Henry VIII., rode on her right hand, and the Pope's legate on her left.