Six Wives by David Starkey Page B

beauty.
        Happily, we can see what Arthur saw thanks to a recently reidentified portrait of Catherine in her early teens. She is simply dressed, in a sort of smock, with her hair parted, pulled back and braided into a short, netted plait, and she holds a red rose, the badge of the Lancastrian ancestry she shared with Arthur. She is a country girl, fresh and charming.
        Was Arthur's failure to seize her in his arms then the result – as many writers have darkly hinted – of a lack of manhood? Hardly. Instead it was a straightforward question of etiquette. After all, there had been enough to-do about Arthur's merely seeing Catherine. For him to have embraced her and danced with her would have been – even in more relaxed England – a step too far, even an insult.

13. Hubris

    A fter Dogmersfield, Catherine and Henry VII and Arthur went their separate ways. The King returned to Windsor and Richmond; Catherine continued her journey towards the capital. En route, there was another meeting, this time with the Duke of Buckingham. Buckingham was the richest noble in England, with a pedigree that made the Howards and even the Tudors seem upstarts. Neither he nor the Tudors ever forgot the fact. His pride was to be his undoing. But for Catherine, used to the grandees of Spain, it seems to have been a bond of affinity. And they came to have enemies in common.
        Finally, she was brought to Lambeth, to await her entry into London. There she would be shown to the English people and married to Arthur. For Catherine, it would be the fulfilment of her destiny; for her fatherin-law, Henry VII, it was the achievement of his fondest ambition. Nothing was too good or too costly for the celebrations: he would make the streets of London run with wine, and gold would pour out of his carefully managed coffers. 1
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    News of the scale of the preparations reached Spain and, just before Catherine's departure, Isabella wrote to Henry. 'I am told', she said, 'that the King . . . has ordered great preparations to be made, and that much money will be spent upon her reception and her wedding.' She was, of course, flattered and pleased at the attention shown to her daughter. Nevertheless, she continued, it would be more in accordance with her feelings if the expenses were moderate. She did not wish that her daughter should be the cause of any loss to England, either in money or in any other respect. 'On the contrary, we desire that she should be the source of all kinds of happiness.' Let Henry, therefore, be more niggardly with his money but lavish with his affection. 'The substantial part of the festival', she enthused, 'should be his love.'
        This was Isabella at her gushing, sentimental worst. Subsequent events, however, were to make her words seem prophetic – as though the Queen of Spain, Cassandra-like, had uttered a warning of the nemesis that follows hubris. But at the time, Cassandra-like again, she was ignored. 2
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    Preparations for Catherine's wedding had begun at least two years previously, in 1499, when it was thought that she would soon be arriving in England. Henry VII appointed a group of commissioners, consisting of councillors and officers of the royal household, to plan and organise the event. But he was a hands-on King and he was certainly consulted on all of the commissioners' big decisions and many of their smaller ones as well. The commissioners' starting point was The Royal Book , with its collection of precedents for everything from christenings to funerals. But the rules it prescribed for weddings were of the vaguest. This was a challenge; it was also a chance to create something new in both scale and content. The commissioners (and Henry) seized the opportunity with both hands.
        The key decision would be location. By the late fifteenth century, most important royal events consisted of four elements: an entrée or procession, the actual ceremony, the creation of Knights of the Bath,