Fatal Rivalry by George Goodwin

Author:George Goodwin
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
Published: 2013-02-08T05:00:00+00:00

16

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1513 – Katherine, Regent and Governess of England

By Letters Patent of 6 June 1513, Henry made Katherine of Aragon’s position clear before the invasion fleet left Dover for France on 30 June.1 The Queen was declared: ‘Katherine, Queen Consort. To be Regent and Governess of England, Wales, and Ireland, during the King’s absence in his expedition against France’.2 She was given complete military authority with the appropriate executive and monetary powers. She could ‘issue commissions of muster and array’; ‘appoint sheriffs’; employ the signet ‘to warrant the Chancellor to use the Great Seal’ and ‘issue warrants under her sign manual to John Heron,3 treasurer of the King’s chamber, for payment of such sums as she may require’. In addition, in everything bar the appointment of bishops, Katherine was to have the same control over church appointments as Henry himself. She was to be aided by a small council led by the Lord Chancellor, Archbishop Warham, and by the Treasurer of the Household, Sir Thomas Lovell. They were there to advise her, but Henry made it clear that her word was to be taken as his own.

Katherine was the one whom Henry ultimately trusted to provide additional supplies for the war in France and – as guardian of the realm – to defend England against a Scottish invasion. It spoke of the closeness of their relationship and was a recognition that Katherine’s loyalties were to Henry and to England. She may not yet have produced the male heir which she herself, her King and her country craved, but she was given an extraordinary amount of power for a Queen Consort. It would be Katherine, rather than Henry, who would be James’s strategic rival in 1513.

The previous November, the well-connected Venetian merchant Lorenzo Pasquaglio described Henry as a ‘King bent on war’, united with his Queen who ‘wills it’ against a Council ‘averse to it’.4 With her Regency, she was now an active partner as well as a supporter of her husband.

In April 1513, Ferdinand had signed his truce with France and thus let down Henry for a third time, sparking Katherine’s comment in a letter of 26 July to Wolsey in France that she trusted to God that Henry, with Emperor Maximilian, would have ‘as great a victory as any Prince in the world; and this I pray God send him without need of any other Prince’5 – namely her father. Though now disappointed by Ferdinand’s diplomatic vacillations and deceits, Katherine could take inspiration from the role that he and, more particularly, her mother had played during her childhood. Ferdinand and Isabella had been companions in arms as much as joint rulers of Spain and, when it came to their wars, Isabella had taken the leading part. Isabella’s own kingdom of Castile was larger and historically more powerful than Ferdinand’s Aragon, but she had needed to display military prowess as well as political cunning to inherit and then secure it. It was only after she had control of her own future that Isabella linked her kingdom to Ferdinand’s.

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