Catharine of Aragon,

Catharine of Aragon, Queen of England, the first wife of Henry VIII., and fourth daughter of Ferdinand and Isabella, king and queen of Castile and Aragon, was born December 1485. She occupies a prominent place in English history, not for what she herself was, but for what she was the occasion of—the Reformation. Married on 14th November 1501, when scarcely sixteen, to Arthur (1486-1502), Prince of Wales, son of Henry VII., she was left a widow on 2d April, and on 25th June was betrothed to her brother-in-law Henry, as yet a boy of only eleven years old. The pope's dispensation enabling such near relatives to marry was obtained in 1504, and the marriage took place in June 1509, seven weeks after Henry's accession to the crown as Henry VIII. Between 1510 and 1518 she bore him five children, one only of whom, the Princess Mary, survived; but, though Henry was very far from being a model husband, and though he had conceived a passion for Anne Boleyn (q.v.) as early as 1522, he appears to have treated Queen Catharine with all due respect, until 1527. He now expressed doubts as to the legality of his marriage, and set about obtaining a divorce, which, all other means failing, was at length pronounced by Cranmer in May 1533 (see HENRY VIII.). Queen Catharine, who had offered a dignified passive resistance to all the proceedings, did not quit the kingdom, but took up her residence first at Amphill, in Bedfordshire, and afterwards at Kimbolton Castle, Huntingdonshire, where she led an austere religious life until, on 7th January 1536, she died, by poison said rumour, but most likely of cancer of the heart. Queen Catharine's personal character was unimpeachable, and her disposition gentle. See Froude's monograph (1891).