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| Canterbury Cathedral, the center of the Anglican Communion |
So here is where
left this story. The year 1527. Henry is 36 years old. Katherine is 42. It has been nine years since she has become
pregnant and further offspring are most unlikely. There is one legitimate child to succeed
Henry on the throne, but that child is a daughter, the Princess Mary. The one time previous that a woman ruled England
was a disaster—a time of civil war as male relatives contested the throne. England has just gone through a long dynastic
struggle and there are male claimants to the throne that Henry has been able to
hold in check, but would Mary be able to do so?
What can Henry do to guarantee the stability of the Tudor dynasty?
Henry knows that
he is capable of producing a male heir.
Katherine has borne three sons, but they all died in infancy? Is God punishing Henry for something? Is there something wrong about his marriage
to Katherine for which he is being punished?
Moreover Henry
has an illegitimate son who is alive and healthy—Henry FitzRoy, Duke of
Richmond and Somerset, the son of Bessie Blount, the one mistress whom Henry
had publically acknowledged as royal mistress.
Could he succeed to the throne despite his illegitimacy?
Henry seriously
considered naming his illegitimate son to be his heir but Katherine would have
none of it. Katherine’s proud Spanish
blood would not tolerate the idea that a Princess, granddaughter of Ferdinand
and Isabella, the Catholic Kings and greatest European monarchs of their day,
would be supplanted by a bastard, even a King’s bastard. Moreover, it is unlikely that the nobility of
England would have accepted the boy. In
the end, the matter would have been mute.
Henry FitzRoy died before his father, reaching only 17 years of age. But in 1527 Henry, of course, did not know
that.
But was God
punishing Henry for something? Katherine
had been married to Henry’s brother, Arthur, but had been widowed after five
months. Katherine, and her chaperone,
had claimed that the marriage was never consummated. That may or may not have been the case. Deuteronomy, chapter 25, commands that if a
man should die childless, his brother must marry the widow and raise up
children to his brother’s memory. On the
other hand, the Book of Leviticus prohibits such a marriage. There is a dilemma here. Catholic Canon Law prohibited the marriage of
siblings-in-law but would give a dispensation when petitioned for it,
particularly when the first marriage had not been consummated. The Canon Lawyers claimed that when the
marriage had not been consummated such a marriage was precisely what
Deuteronomy required in terms of raising up children to the deceased brother’s
memory. Henry had always believed that
Katherine’s marriage to Arthur had not been consummated, but now he was having
doubts. Maybe God was punishing him for
a forbidden marriage by depriving him of male heirs. After all, three young princes had died in
infancy.
Henry began to
see a way out of his dilemma. Maybe his
marriage to Katherine could be annulled and he could still produce an heir with a new wife.
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