On this day in Tudor history, 6th November 1501, Catherine of Aragon, daughter of Ferdinand II of Aragon and Isabella I of Castile, met her betrothed, Arthur, Prince of Wales, eldest son of King Henry VII, at Dogmersfield in Hampshire.
The couple were actually already married by proxy, but had never met, and Catherine had only just arrived in England.
Find out more about the lead-up to Catherine of Aragon and Arthur Tudor’s meeting on 6th November 1501, including Catherine’s journey from Spain to England, how their meeting went and what happened next, in this talk…
Also on this day in Tudor history, Sunday 6th November 1541, Catherine Howard, Henry VIII’s fifth wife, was abandoned by her husband the king at Hampton Court Palace.
She would never see him again. On the same day, Queen Catherine was visited by a delegation of king’s council members and informed of allegations made against her.
What exactly happened on this day in 1541 and what has this to do with Hampton Court Palace’s ‘Haunted Gallery’?
Find out in this video…
Catherine’s calmness could initially be due to the fact that she thought that the king and his advisers, could well take it as evil slander against her by the anti catholic faction at court, her uncle was Earl marshal and the leader of the powerful Howard family, of which the queen was a member, therefore could it just be a chance to poison the kings mind against her? Yet she herself knew she had been lovers with Francis Dereham whilst in her grandmother’s house, and she had behaved improperly with her music master, the fact that she had not been queen then was neither here nor now, her earlier behaviour deemed her unsuitable to be queen, and Henry V111 himself always deemed virtue in a woman as the greatest prize of all, that he had mistresses when young was his prerogative as king, all kings had mistresses, but his queen had to be pure, he dined nearby as Catherine sat in her apartments thoughts racing through her mind, but Henry himself must also have been plagued by uneasy thoughts, this was his fifth venture into matrimony and he had been very happy, he had felt young for the first time in years, he had even lost some weight, he had earlier given thanks to god for granting him such a precious jewel of womanhood, he wanted this marriage to last and hoped she would give him a son, then with a little note left in the chapel his world had come crashing down, he did not want to believe it, but he had had to order an investigation, the ones who had dared to slander his queen must be brought to justice, but the more probing that was done it appeared that the scandal attaching itself to Catherine had roots in truth, and both king and queen felt their world one crumbling down around them.