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coronation. And there were those which ensured the continuance of the royal line. This is why incidents in the Queen's reproductive cycle figured so heavily: the conception, her confinement, her delivery, the baptism of her child, and her churching, when, some forty days after giving birth, she was freed from the pollution of childbed. And the beginning of all these, naturally, was her marriage. 11
        Here The Royal Book offered a choice. 'Also it must be understood whether the King will be married privily or openly.' But, in offering this choice, it took for granted that the Queen (assumed to be a foreign princess) would have had a grand reception when she set foot on English soil, and that her marriage would be followed almost immediately by her coronation. How this worked out in practice is best seen in the sequence of ceremonies for Margaret of Anjou when she came to England in 1443 to be Queen of Henry VI. She was formally received at Southampton on 10 April; married quietly at nearby Titchfield Abbey on 22 April; and then, a month later, was crowned at Westminster on 30 May. And the coronation was of the most magnificent: it was preceded by a triumphal procession from the Tower to Westminster, with verses for the pageants written by the Lancastrian laureate John Lydgate, and it was followed by three days of jousts. 12
        So for Margaret, a quiet wedding was a private interlude in the otherwise highly public complex of ceremonies which acknowledged her as Queen. Such, clearly, was the intention of the author of The Royal Book . Henry VIII followed it only in the case of his first two Queens, Catherine of Aragon and Anne Boleyn, who were indeed publicly and gloriously crowned soon after their rather hole-in-the-corner weddings. But Henry's other Queens were never crowned – though there was an intention to crown Jane Seymour which was put off, it was claimed, because of plague. There were acknowledgement ceremonies of sorts. But they were improvised and consisted in showing the Queen off to the Court (which could be controlled) rather than to the people (who were unpredictable). 13
        The lack of publicity of Henry's marriages does therefore make a point. Henry's marriages had more public, political consequences than those of any other sovereign. England threw off her ancient religion and destroyed old values and old, beloved ways of life, all for the sake of women – Henry's women. But, despite this, Henry refused to see his marriages as other than private acts. They were entered into for his personal satisfaction. And, if they failed to satisfy him, he broke them.
        But this does not mean that Henry took marriage frivolously. Rather, he took it too seriously. In this one respect, at least, his attitude was curiously modern. Like us, he expected marriage to make him happy, rather than merely content, which is the most that sensible people hope for. Therefore, like us, when marriage made him unhappy, he wanted out. The result nowadays is a soaring divorce rate and a crisis of marriage. The result then was that Henry suffered from these same problems on a personal basis.
        And he did suffer. So did his kingdom, his Church and his children. But those who suffered most of all were the Six Wives who became the Queens of Henry VIII.

PART ONE

    Queen Catherine of Aragon

1. Parents: a power couple

    C atherine of Aragon, the first wife of Henry VIII, was born on 16 December 1485. Her mother, the warrior-queen Isabella of Castile, had spent most of her pregnancy on campaign against the Moors (as the still-independent Islamic inhabitants of the southern part of Spain were known), rather than in ladylike retirement. Only after her capture of Ronda did she withdraw from the front, first to Cordoba and then to Alacala de Henares to the north-east of Madrid, where the child was born. The baby was named after Catherine, her mother's English grandmother, who was the daughter of John of Gaunt, Duke