the course of the autumn of 1506, Katharine mentioned, in a brief note, the state of her health to her sovereign and sister, Joanna queen of Castile.'

"MOST HIGH And powerful LADY,

"Since I wrote the other day to your highness from here, I have had more attacks of fever; but they have left me as you desire, so that, thanks to God, I am somewhat better now, and in better spirits. It appears to me that it is right to let your highness know, whose life, and the royal estate of your highness, our Lord prosper.

"From the humble servant of your highness, who kisses your hands,

"THE PRINCESS OF WALES."

:

Endorsed, To the Queen my lady, from the lady Princess of Wales, 17th of October, 1506. At the date of this letter, Joanna was a widow she had lost her husband the preceding month. The news had evidently not reached the sick-room of Katharine of Arragon when she wrote this bulletin to her queen, who was then in an unconscious state, labouring under that long delirium brought on by her grief for the loss of Philip.

The widowhood of her sister Joanna now added another en tanglement to the perplexed situation of Katharine of Arragon at the court of her father-in-law. At the time of the Spanish visit to Windsor, Henry VII. had treated for his second marriage with Philip's sister, the celebrated Margaret of Austria, widow of the duke of Savoy. For reasons best known to himself, Henry dropped all pursuit of that marriage after he had seen Joanna of Castile. Hall, the English contemporary historian, declares that the vexatious detention of Philip in England on his important voyage to Spain had broken his heart, and caused his early death; the explanation of which is, that Philip was in declining health, not amended by detention during the severest part of an English winter. The mysterious protest which Henry VII. obliged his son to make, apparently the day after his fifteenth birthday, against the betrothment he had previously contracted with Katharine, either must have been connected with his own intention to become the second spouse of queen Joanna, or it must have been a positive act of

1 Wood's Letters of Royal and Illustrious Ladies. By mistake, this letter is supposed to be addressed to Germaine de Foix, second queen of Ferdinand of rragon; but that lady was never queen of Castile.

insanity. It is dated, it is true, a few weeks before Joanna's widowhood; but are we certain that the date was the same as the execution of the instrument? The archives of England to this day show that Henry VII. had previously contrived to further his own purposes by tampering with documents. The protest itself was literally conducted in a hole-and-corner manner, being executed by bishop Fox, the wily minister of Henry VII., and a few officials, in an unfrequented room at the basement of Shene-palace. The boy-prince who signed it probably knew not at the time what the ceremonial meant, or, as he fancied himself in love with Katharine, he would never have kept the secret—and secret the transaction remained until many years afterwards, when it astounded the English public. It was, indeed, very needful to conceal it from king Ferdinand's spies, or he would not have paid the instalments of his daughter's dower, neither to Henry VII. nor Henry VIII.

The measure, mysterious as it is, must have been prompted by some scheme of selfishness on the part of Henry VII., or he would never have thrown such a mischievous stigma on the legitimacy of the heirs of his only son, while the struggle regarding the legitimacy of the children of Edward IV. was fresh in memory. As for prince Henry marrying his brother's widow if his father married her sister, no person who has the capacity to note the under currents of history could deem, for a moment, that Henry VII. believed that such outrages would be permitted on public decorum. He knew that archbishop Warham had objected in council to prince Henry's marriage with Katharine as it was, and if the confusion of alliances and descents became more complicated, neither archbishop Warham nor the English people would have been long quiet on the subject. Henry VII.'s evident intention was, to obtain the hand of the queen-regnant of Castile, and the remainder of

1 Some entry in the Parliamentary rolls, relative to the connexion of his grandmother Katherine of Valois and his grandfather Owen Tudor, he found it convenient to destroy. At the cancelled pages, all the dates of the membranes have been altered by a clumsy forgery, still apparent to the ken of the historical antiquary. This information was communicated to the author by the late lamented sir Harris Nicolas.

2 This intelligence is gathered from one of archbishop Warham's conversations cardinal Wolsey, which took place at the time of Katharine's divorce.

Katharine's portion. He then meant to break her marriage with his son Henry, playing off the protest by which the boy was made to renounce it,-urging, withal, the disgust of the English people, and the objections of Warham. Neither Katharine nor her fortune would have been returned; he would have kept the money as personal assets due to his deceased son Arthur, pleading that the lady was to spend her income as Arthur's widow in England, according to the custom of dowagers on royal desmenes in this country. It was not easy, by any species of finesse, to induce Ferdinand of Arragon (impoverished as he was by the death of his queen and partner) to pay the whole of his daughter Katharine's portion, at the risk of her being treated merely as Arthur's widow; but the English monarch, with deliberate ruthlessness, pursued the plan he had already commenced, as described in her letters, of subjecting the poor young princess in his power to every personal deprivation short of actual starvation, in order that her complaints to her surviving parent might prevail on him to remit the remainder of her portion, to obviate the plea that she could have no income from her settlement till the payments were completed.

The unfortunate queen of Castile had scarcely permitted her beloved husband's body to be buried, before the king of England commenced his wooing by embassy. It was in vain king Ferdinand sent word that his daughter Joanna was fearfully insane, and not fit to be married; Henry protested that he knew the lady, and was convinced that her illness was out temporary. Meantime, Henry prince of Wales began to give his astute sire some trouble in traversing his fine-drawn schemes. Suspecting that he was to be deprived of Katharine, young Henry's boyish will was immediately set on obtaining her; so that Henry VII. debarred them from meeting, lest they should form a clandestine union.' It must have been truly provoking for the princess to be treated as if she wished to steal a marriage, which she had designated to her father as distasteful and unsuitable.

1 Lingard, vol. v. p. 333.

Yet the lapse of years produced change in Katharine's mind regarding her marriage with young Henry: he was attached to her, and the difference between their years seemed to vanish as he attained his majestic stature, while his mind assumed the cultivated tone produced by a learned education. In 1507 Katharine allowed to her father that the marriage with the prince of Wales was better for her than the miserable state of dependance and poverty with which her fatherin-law had afflicted her. Katharine was totally unconscious that most of her letters to Spain were intercepted by Henry VII., and never reached the hands of her sire: such must have been the case, since she continually complains that her father never replies to the points she urgently pressed on his attention. Some of her letters were translated for the information of her persecutor, and of course her remarks and complaints raised against her infinite ill-will in his cold heart. Two letters in particular were calculated to displease him. One written for his inspection, and by his desire, warmly recommending his suit to her father for the hand of her "ladyqueen and sister, Joanna of Castile," of whose woful state Katharine betrays no consciousness, either in this letter or in the private one written at the same time. The news had reached Katharine, in July 1407, that her father had resolved on a journey to Castile, in order to induce the states there to pay the remainder of her dowry, which they stopped after the demise of the two persons so nearly connected with her happiness, being her husband Arthur, and her mother queen Isabel. The sanguine spirits of youth immediately raised in the heart of Katharine lively hopes that all her troubles would be at an end when the payments of her portion were fulfilled. "So much," she writes to her father, "did the cyphers of your highness avail here, that I have by them passed three or four days in such spirits as are unearthly; and they were much needed at the time they came, for not two days before the king [Henry VII.] had said to me that the journey of your highness was postponed, according to

1 Wood's Letters of Royal and Illustrious Ladies.

report.' I felt it was said to do me fresh displeasure, so that, on all accounts, the letters of your highness were necessary to me at the conjuncture at which they arrived. I gave the credence of your highness to the king of England my lord, and he had shown to him clearly that which came in cypher. He rejoiced so much to see them, that, as I tell your highness, he told me of his great satisfaction thereupon; and he commanded me, that I should write on his part to your highness, the pleasure he had of the good-will your highness by this showed.'" Without following the tedium of Henry VII.'s formal message to Ferdinand of Arragon, which Katharine transmits literally, with all its tautology, it suffices to say that its tenour was, that if on king Ferdinand's arrival in Castile all was found consonant to that which he desires, (being his marriage to the queen Joanna,) he will forthwith send ambassadors with power to treat. Katharine was likewise charged by her father-in-law to transmit to her sire the jealous displeasure he felt at a recent report that the queen of Castile, her sister, was about to marry the count de Foix, through the interest of the king of France. De Foix being a peer of France, and, moreover, nearly related to Ferdinand's young queen, Germaine de Foix, inspired the ancient suitor with great alarms, for queen Germaine, having a young wife's influence with her husband, would naturally avail herself of it to advance her own family. On this point, however, the astute king of England kept silence, as it was no part of his policy to exasperate the queen of Arragon. But his orders to Katharine were, to say to her "that the French match for queen Joanna would be a great inconvenience for him, for the queen herself, and for her sons; for that with Frenchmen entering into the kingdom, there could be no security for Castile, . . . . . and many other things," adds Katharine, "about this which I do not say, because they are more to his purpose than to that of your highness."

Thus Katharine, placed between these two diplomatists, had no choice left but to deceive one or the other. Henry VII.

Charles V. and his brother Ferdinand, then infants.