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 Catherine Austria, who had been proclaimed king and queen of Castiie. They had embarked in January to take possession of their new kingdom, but had been driven by storms upon the coast of England, and Henry had shown them much politic hospitality at Windsor. Later in the year Catherine fell ill of a fever, and Henry gave up to her use for the time a house at Fulham, which he had intended for an embassy expected from Philip after his arrival in Castile. At this time she seems to have been very miserable. She was aware that her marriage depended upon a heartless game of diplomacy, into which she was drawn herself by her own necessities. For Henry VII having made in 1507 an offer for the hand of her sister Juana, the widowed Queen of Castile (though he must have known her to be a maniac), with the view of taking the government of that kingdom out of Ferdinand's hands, Catherine affected to favour his suit, and wrote to Ferdinand in behalf of her father-in-law, advising him at least to temporise until her own marriage with the Prince of Wales could take effect. Other matches had been talked of for the prince, and Catherine was in serious dread of being abandoned altogether. She was then living in the same house with the Prince of Wales at Richmond, but was permitted to see less of him than before, and in one letter she complains that for four months she had not seen him at all.

Her misery arose from an unpleasant state of relations between King Henry and her father. Subtle and unscrupulous as Ferdinand was in the game of diplomacy, he had found a match in Henry VII, who had not only forced him at last to send to England the second instalment of Catherine's marriage portion, but declined even then to allow the marriage to take effect except upon new conditions by no means agreeable to Ferdinand, so that the latter, checkmated in his aims, wished his ambassador as a last resource to insist on Catherine being sent back to Spain. Henry had arranged a marriage of his daughter Mary with Charles, prince of Castile, which made him very independent of Ferdinand's friendship, and Catherine met with a neglect which almost drove her to despair. But relief was at hand, for just at this time Henry VII died. Her affianced bridegroom, now Henry VIII, apparently desired the union. His council, for the most part, approved the match, and on 11 June 1509, seven weeks after his accession, though he was only eighteen, the marriage was duly celebrated. On the 24th of the same month she was crowned along with him in Westminster Abbey.

There is no reason to doubt that for some years after their marriage Henry felt real affection for her, and she was a thoroughly devoted wife. 'The king, my lord, adores her, and her highness him,' was the opinion of Catherine's confessor in 1510. Ferdinand seems to have relied partly on her influence over him in procuring a league against France; and for two or three years, whether from natural impulse or from policy, Henry was a very firm ally of his father-in-law. Catherine's happiness would have been unalloyed but for some petty annoyances to which recent writers have attached altogether undue importance; but even these belonged much more to the time when she was princess than to her married life. She had a Spanish confessor who, perhaps, was rather young for such a function, and may have been a little indiscreet. The Spanish ambassador thought so, but there is no evidence that even he entertained the strange suspicions that it has pleased some persons in our day to attribute to him. Catherine had been used for years as a political agent by her father, and being a really devout woman, it was natural that she should take frequent counsel with her confessor. It was equally natural that the ambassador, under the circumstances, should find the confessor to be a nuisance, that he should write to Ferdinand to complain of him, and that Catherine should stand firmly by him.

The first three years of Henry's reign went by in feasts and pageants; but then began a succession of cruel disappointments. On 31 Jan. 1510 Catherine was prematurely delivered of a stillborn daughter. On 1 Jan. 1511 she gave birth to a son, who was christened Henry, declared prince of Wales, and had a household assigned him, but died on 22 Feb. following. In 1513 she had another son, who soon died, and in November 1514 she had again a premature delivery. At last, on 18 Feb. 1516, there came one child that lived—the Princess Mary; and in November 1518 another daughter was born, who must have died early. In the interval between the second and third confinements Henry had gone to war with France, greatly at the instigation of his father-in-law. In 1513 he invaded France in person, and James IV invaded England and was killed at Flodden on 9 Sept. 1513. Before crossing the Channel the king had appointed Catherine regent in his absence. She threw herself heartily into the business of arraying a force to oppose the Scotch. 'I am horribly busy,' she wrote, 'making standards, banners, and badges.' She harangued the troops sent forward to the north. The king, too, sent