Lesson II: Arthur, Margaret, and Mary
Henry VII and Elizabeth of York had seven children, four of whom survived to adulthood. We'll cover the (in)famous Henry VIII in Lesson Three, but first let's look at his siblings.
Arthur was the eldest child, born in 1486. He seems to have been a serious child, very aware of his importance and his responsibilities. As was traditional, he was given his own household from a young age. He also received an excellent education. His paternal grandmother, Lady Margaret Beaufort, was highly intelligent, a trait that many of the Tudors would inherit. She was also a great believer in education (and a very formidable woman!) and saw to it that all her grandchildren had the best possible tutors. The standard lessons included grammar, philosophy, arithmetic, literature, geometry, music, and languages such as Greek, Italian, and Spanish. Latin was especially important as it was the language of diplomacy at the time. And both boys and girls were expected to do well in all their lessons. Lady Margaret wouldn't have had it any other way.
Arthur's tutor thought he would have made a fine classical scholar, but as a king he would not have had time for such pursuits. By the age of two, his parents had arranged with King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella (the same Queen Isabella who financed Christopher Columbus' voyage in 1492), the rulers of Spain, that Arthur should marry their youngest daughter, Katherine of Aragon, who was a year older. As a Spanish princess, she was called an infanta.
After exchanging letters for some time, Arthur and Katherine finally met when they were 15 and 16, respectively. Just ten days after this, they were married. This sounds rather strange to us, but it was quite usual back then, and according to the customs of Castile, her mother's kingdom, Katherine would normally not have met her bridegroom until the wedding day!
The marriage was not to last long, however. Arthur died suddenly about five months after the ceremony, probably of a disease known as the sweating sickness. Whatever the cause, his death was unexpected and left Katherine's future very much in doubt.
Margaret was born in 1489, the oldest daughter. She was a talented musician with a love of fine clothes, taught from an early age to behave as a queen. Since the match between Arthur and Katherine of Aragon, England had become a more important country, and her parents fully intended to marry Margaret to a king. Their choice was James IV of Scotland, and their hope was to unite the two countries--under the banner of England, of course.
Sadly, only one of their children survived infancy, the future James V. Margaret had many other problems to face as well. During her time as Queen, war broke out briefly between England and Scotland, leaving her caught in the middle. The terrible Battle of Flodden Field killed most of the Scottish nobility and was a great victory for the English and her brother, but Margaret was left widowed with her seventeen month old son as King of Scotland.
After this, all she wanted was peace between her native country and her adopted home. She remarried twice, both times not for the better, as her husbands were more interested in her money than in her. While trying to get a divorce from her second husband, the Earl of Angus, he arrived unexpectedly with about a hundred men at the castle where she was staying with her son. Suspecting that he meant to kidnap the young king, she ordered a warning shot fired from one of the cannons and shocked all of Europe. Considering that the Earl later did kidnap the king, though, Margaret wasn't just being paranoid!
After great effort, she managed to get her divorce, over her brother's objections. (As you may know, however, Henry was soon to change his mind completely on the subject of divorce.) She died in October 1541, though she would have been glad to know that her great-grandson, James VI, would eventually become James I of England as well, thus finally gaining the peace she had worked for.
Mary, the youngest child to live to adulthood, was born in 1496 and was considered both beautiful and charming. Only thirteen when her father died, it was left to her brother Henry to find a suitable husband for her. Her looks and cheerful disposition made her much sought after as a bride among the kings and princes of Europe. When she was 18, Henry VIII betrothed her to Louis XII of France -- who was 52! Mary was not very happy with this arrangement, unsurprisingly. Either at her pleading, or because he felt sorry for her, her brother promised that if she outlived her husband, her next marriage could be for love.
Less than three months after the wedding Louis did in fact die, and Mary took a drastic step. Before her wedding, she had become very fond of Charles Brandon, Duke of Suffolk, one of her brother's closest friends. He was so trusted, in fact, that Henry sent him to bring Mary back to England after she was widowed. But Mary had heard rumors that her brother would marry her to the Holy Roman Emperor, and she panicked. When Brandon arrived, she pleaded with him to marry her at once, and he could not resist. "Sir, I never saw a woman so weep," he later wrote to Henry.
It sounds a little like a fairy tale, but it doesn't quite have a happy ending. Despite the fact that he was very fond of Mary -- he had named his royal flagship, the Mary Rose, after her -- Henry was furious for a time. Even once he was calmer he still expected compensation for the loss of a royal bride that might have brought a good deal of money and connections. It was a capital offense for anyone in the nobility to marry without permission from their sovereign. Worse, there was also some doubt over whether or not Brandon was legally free to marry. He had signed a contract to marry another woman, and such contracts were usually considered as binding as a marriage ceremony. It took several years to sort out all the legal questions.
Mary had managed to smuggle out one of the valuable jewels the King of France had given her -- one that she had been expected to return -- and she gave this jewel to Henry to help soothe his anger. Even so, the young couple was ordered to pay a fine of £2,000 per year until £24,000 had been paid (in a time when most people had £20 or less per year to live on), and they struggled to manage, mostly living very quietly, away from court. They had four children, two of whom died young; though their granddaughter, Jane, will later become important. Mary died in 1533, just 37 years old, while her husband was away on business for the King.
