Catherine of Aragon

Garrett Mattingly, in Catherine of Aragon, aims to create a more complex and significant portrait of Catherine and her life than previously drawn by others:

[I]t was borne in upon me that the Queen Catherine

. . . was a different person, more cultured and thoughtful, more forceful and decisive, than the one I had read about elsewhere. . . . (i).

Catherine has been portrayed as a woman whose significance was measured almost entirely by her relationship with men, with Henry, with the Pope, with the need of others for her to bear a son, or as a rival to Ann Boleyn for Henry's affections. She is often seen as a person who had little to contribute aside from child-bearing, aside from her marriage, aside from her role as symbolic leader.

Mattingly seeks to correct what he sees as these misconceptions about Catherine:

[A]s I followed the history of the Spanish embassy in England, I began to realize that the key to its activities, and to much of what went on in England for a third of a century, lay in the personality and the decisions of this queen. . . . Surely, Catherine's decisions influenced English history--and therefore the history of the whole world--as vitally, and as unexpectedly, as the decisions of her husband, Henry VIII (i).

Even for those who have underestimated the significance of Catherine's impact on history, her life remains fascinating from beginning to end.

The book is organized in three sections: the first is the period from her birth in 1485

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years. However, when his father Henry VII died in 1509, the new young king--Henry VIII--married Catherine. As a result, she was Queen of England. Whatever his feelings for her, he wanted a son as heir. The next few years saw Catherine pregnant a number of times, suffering stillbirths and children who died very young. The only surviving child was a female, which led her husband to have their marriage annulled so that he could marry his lover Anne Boleyn, although this legal, political and personal battle between Catherine and Henry lasted six years, demonstrating the power she had gathered as she matured. She was fighting not only for her own rights and future but for those of her daughter as well. Anne's pregnancy forced Henry to bypass the Pope in the conflict and accept the power of the Archbishop of Canterbury, who ended the marriage. Although Catherine was forced to give up the title of Queen, she refused to refer to herself as the Princess Dowager of Wales, the title supplied by Henry. Nevertheless, Henry separated Catherine from her daughter and she was forced to leave court. She lived the last years of her life in less than noble surroundings, responded by becoming more religious, and died in 1536. This summary demonstr

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