Catherine of Braganza

“ Within her brain, fertile in evil, was conceived the massacre of St. Bartholomew—to exceed the horrors of the Sicilian Vespers under John of Procida—the plan of which she discussed years before the event with Philip II. and his minister, the Duke of Alva, whom she met at Bayonne, when she visited there her daughter, Elizabeth of Spain. Catherine was true to no party and faithful to no creed. During her long government she cajoled alike Catholics and Protestants. She balanced Guise against Coligni, and Condé against Navarre, as suited her immediate purpose. ”

“ The whole truth cannot be conveyed in letters. I would, therefore, have you despatch one of your own people to inform him of everything, and to supplicate him on the part of the Queen my mother, and myself for the honour of God and for other respects to attend to and provide for us. In so acting he will accomplish a service most agreeable to Almighty God. Nor will he win less fame and glory to himself than he has achieved in the conquest of Tunis or in all his African expedition.” [347]
Catherine simultaneously addressed herself to the [Pg 356] Pope in a letter equally characteristic. ”

“ She consulted Chapuys on the answer which she was to give should such a command be sent. He advised her to be resolute but cautious. She must ask to be left in peace to pray for her mother's soul; she must say that she was a poor orphan, without experience or knowledge; the King must allow her time to consider. He himself despatched a courier to the Regent of the Netherlands with plans for her escape out of England. The Pope, he said, must issue his Bull without a day's delay, and in it, for the sake of Catherine's honour, it must be stated that she died queen. ”

“ If she was queen, Elizabeth was a bastard, and her insistance upon her title was an invitation to civil war. She was not standing alone. The Princess Mary, on her father’s marriage with Anne, had written him a letter, which he had praised as greatly to her credit; but either Anne’s insolence or her mother’s persuasion had taken her back to Catherine’s side. Her conduct may and does deserve the highest moral admiration; but the fidelity of the child to her mother was the assertion of a right to be next in succession to the crown. ”

“ This royal personage was Catherine of Aragon, daughter of Ferdinand and Isabella of Spain, wife of Henry VIII., and queen of England.
The king himself was hurriedly pacing to and fro in the apartment, with contracted brow, a deeply troubled expression gleaming from his dark eyes and obscuring, with a shade of gloomy fierceness, the naturally fine features of his face. The ordinary grace of his carriage had disappeared; his step was hurried and irregular; and every movement denoted a man laboring under some violent excitement. ”

“ If her father would not consent to recognise formally her claim on the succession, that too might be left in suspense till the King's death; and Charles was willing to undertake that, as long as Henry lived, no action was to be taken against him, and none permitted to be taken on the part of any one, not even of the Pope, to punish him for his treatment of Catherine—not though her end had been hastened, as some suspected, by sinister means. A marriage could be arranged for Mary between the King and the Emperor ”

“ CHAPTER VII. CATHARINE OF BRAGANZA, QUEEN OF CHARLES II., KING OF GREAT BRITAIN AND IRELAND. (A.D. 1638-1705.) It was on St. Catharine's day that this princess was born, in the year 1638, and it was in honor of that saint that she was named. When she came into the world, Portugal was under the rule of Spain, and had been so for sixty years, not because the Portuguese were contented with the despotic laws that governed them, but because they did not feel strong enough to fight for liberty. ”

“ Catherine, in ceasing to be queen, might be held to have recovered her rights as a foreigner. But she had remained in England by her own wish, and at the desire of the Emperor, to assist in fighting out the battle. Mary was undoubtedly a subject, and Catherine and she had both intimated that if the oath was demanded of them they would not take it. The Peers and Bishops were called together to consider the matter, and, as Catherine was a Spanish Princess, Chapuys was invited to attend. ”

“ Royal persons who receive from birth and station remarkable favours of fortune occasionally have to submit to inconveniences attaching to their rank; and, when the occasion rises, they generally meet with little ceremony. At the outset the utmost efforts had been made to spare Catherine's feelings. Both the King and the Pope desired to avoid a judgment on the validity of her marriage. An heir to the crown was needed, and from her there was no hope of further issue. If at the beginning she had been found incapable of bearing a child, the marriage would have been dissolved of itself. ”

“ He added that the present Parliament had been called at the request of the nation for the restraint of the clergy. They were so hated throughout the realm, both by nobles and people, that, but for his protection, they would be utterly destroyed. He should wait to take action till February, to see whether the Pope would meanwhile change his conduct towards him. [9]
Norfolk, to whom the Nuncio went next, gave him no comfort; he said that, "though Queen Catherine was a good woman, her coming to England had been the curse of the country;" ”

“ The death of her mother when Catherine was about sixteen years of age brought upon her domestic responsibilities that lasted until her father's second marriage, two years later. Her education was received in the seminary at Litchfield. She was betrothed to Prof. Fisher, of Yale, who was lost with the “Albion” off the coast of Ireland, while on a voyage to Europe, and she never married. Her brother, Henry Ward Beecher, says the shock was so great that it nearly destroyed her religious faith, and her only consolation was in a life of earnest activity. ”

“ The Spanish Council, in recommending the course which the Emperor had taken, had foreseen the dispiritment which it might produce among the Queen's friends, and the injury to the Holy See by the disregard of a sentence which Charles had himself insisted on. The treaty made no progress. The sacrifice appeared to be fruitless, and Catherine appealed to Charles once more in her old tone. She would be wanting in her duty to herself, she said, and she would offend God, if she did not seek the help of those who alone could give her effectual assistance. ”

“ The outer world, and even the persons principally concerned, were taken entirely by surprise. For the two years during which it had been under consideration the secret had been successfully preserved. Not a hint had reached Catherine herself, and even when the match had been lighted by the Bishop of Tarbes the full meaning of it does not seem to have occurred to her. Mendoza, on his arrival in England, had found her disturbed; she was irritated at the position which had been given to the Duke of Richmond; she was angry, of course, at the French alliance ”

“ Had Anne Boleyn produced the Prince so much talked of all would then have been easy. He would not then be preferring a younger daughter to an elder. Both would yield to a brother with whom all England would be satisfied, and Mary would cease to have claims which the Emperor would feel bound to advocate. The whole nation were longing for a prince; but the male heir, for which the King had plunged into such a sea of troubles, was still withheld. He had interpreted the deaths of the sons whom Catherine had borne him into a judgment of Heaven upon his first marriage ”

“ The Bill, therefore, passed at last with little opposition. Cranmer’s judgment was confirmed as against the Pope’s. The marriage with Catherine was declared null, the marriage with Anne valid, and Anne’s children the lawful heirs of the crown. The Act alone was not enough. The disclosures brought to light in the affair of the Nun of Kent, the disaffection then revealed, and the rank of the persons implicated in it, necessitated further precautions. Any doubt which might have existed on the extent and character of the conspiracy is removed for ever by the Spanish Ambassador’s letters. ”

“ Catherine hated Mary Stuart, his young Queen, whose only fault was to have exaggerated in herself all the frailties together with all the physical perfections of a woman; and dreadful words had been whispered with bated breath about the Queen Mother. An Italian, deprived of all power while her husband lived, insulted by a proud and beautiful favourite, yet knowing herself well fitted for command, she had brought up her children with ideas of respect and submission to her will they were never able to throw off. ”

“ A beautiful widow of six-and-twenty, holding one rich principality in her own right, and a second still more valuable, as regent for a son only nine years of age, was infallibly a mark for all the princely fortune-hunters, and ambitious intriguers throughout Italy. Every degree and mode of interference from marriage to murder was likely to be brought to bear by greedy nobles and unprincipled brother sovereigns against one of the weaker sex so circumstanced. But Catherine hardly deserves to be described by such a phrase. ”

“ The King, Norfolk said, could not plead at Rome, which was garrisoned by a Spanish army, and the Pope would do the Emperor's bidding if it was to dance in the streets in a clown's coat; the Queen objected to a trial in England; but could not a neutral place be found with impartial judges? Might not the Cardinal of Liége be trusted, and the Bishop of Tarbes?
The blunt and honest Norfolk was an indifferent successor to the dexterous Cardinal. To wish that Catherine and Anne Boleyn were both dead was a natural, but not a valuable, aspiration. ”

“ Marguerite was the daughter of the famous Catherine de Médicis, and was given in marriage by her scheming mother to Henry of Navarre, whose ascendant Bourbon star threatened to eclipse (as afterwards it did) the waning house of Valois. Catherine had four sons, three of whom successively mounted the throne of France, but all were childless. Although the king of the petty state of Navarre was a Protestant, and Catherine was the most fanatical of Catholics, she made this marriage a pretext for welding the two houses ”

“ He had already persuaded the King to allow the Princess to move nearer to Kimbolton, where her mother's physician could have charge of her. He sent thanks to Charles in the King's name for his interference with the Holy Office. He left nothing undone to soften the friction and prepare for a reconciliation. Catherine and Mary he perceived to be the only obstacle to a return to active friendship. If the broken health of one, and the acute illness of the other, should have a fatal termination, as a politician he could not but feel that it would be an obstacle happily removed. ”

“ But no such judgment would be necessary if Catherine could be induced to enter "lax religion," to take vows of chastity which, at her age and under her conditions of health, would be a mere form. The Pope could then allow Henry to take another wife without offence to any one. The legitimacy of the Princess would not be touched, and the King undertook that the succession should be settled upon her if he had no male heir. ”

“ And for the next—a man who is shrewdly suspected of being a papist, while he is attached by gravest vows to the Church of England, must needs hold heaven’s rewards and hell’s torments lightly.”
“But Queen Catherine, sir—does not she favour you? My aunt says she is a good woman.”
“Yes, a good woman, and the nearest approach to a cypher to be found at Hampton Court or Whitehall. Young Lord Rochester has written a poem upon ‘Nothing.’ He might have taken Queen Catherine’s name as a synonym. She is nothing; she counts for nothing. Her love can benefit nobody ”

“ The adventurous flight to Gravesend had to be abandoned, and he decided that Mary must remain quiet. In protecting Catherine while alive he had so far behaved like a gentleman and a man of honour. He was her nearest relation, and it was impossible for him to allow her to be pushed aside without an effort to prevent it. But as a statesman he had felt throughout that a wrong to his relation, or even a wrong to the Holy See, in the degraded condition of the Papacy, was no sufficient cause for adding to the confusions of Christendom. ”

“ On the 16th of June the King and Queen were cited to appear in court. Catherine was unprepared. She had been assured by the Emperor that her cause should not be tried in England. She called on Campeggio to explain. Campeggio answered that the Pope, having deputed two Legates for the process, could not revoke their commission without grave consideration. He exhorted her to pray God to enlighten her to take some good advice, considering the times. ”

“ In the prime of his life he found himself fastened to a woman eight years older than himself; the children whom she had borne to him all dead, except one daughter; his wife past the age when she could hope to be again a mother; the kingdom with the certainty of civil war before it should the King die without a male heir. In hereditary monarchies, where the sovereign is the centre of the State, the interests of the nation have to be considered in the arrangements of his family. Henry had been married irregularly to Catherine to strengthen the alliance between England and Spain. ”

“ One of the saints whose martyrdom the Bohemian writers have specially celebrated is St. Catherine. A long legend on this subject, which formed part of the Rosenberg Library, [8] was discovered at Stockholm, and has since been transported to Brünn. A more concise account of St. Catherine's martyrdom is preserved in the Church of St. Jacob at Brünn. Both legends have been published.
According to the longer legend, Catherine, daughter of Kost, King of Cyprus, declared that she would wed no one but Jesus Christ. She therefore refuses to marry the son of the heathen Emperor Maxentius. ”