Quick Histories | How long were Katherine of Aragon and Henry VIII really married?

Hi, hello, welcome, this is Crick Histories, I'm Louise Crick, and today we're going to be looking at everyone's favourite 16th century ginger tyrant, Henry VIII. Or rather, we're going to be looking at his first wife, Catherine of Aragon, and some lesser known nuggets about her. Starting with the fact that she was married to Henry for twice as long as he was married to his next five wives combined. So yeah, let's check it out. The marriage of Catherine of Aragon and Henry VIII lasted more than twice as long as his marriage to his next five wives put together. So we all know about Henry VIII, big ginger bloke, king, Tudor, 16th century, famously had six wives, and we all know the divorced, beheaded, died, divorced, beheaded, survived. We sort of always concentrate on the fact that he divorced Catherine of Aragon to marry Anne Boleyn. We always forget he was actually with Catherine of Aragon for 24 years, and the next five wives combined he was only married to for about 10 years. Catherine and Henry married in 1509 and didn't divorce until 1533. Yes, this was after six or seven years of Henry struggling to divorce Catherine in court cases and Anne Boleyn and essentially changing the religion of the country to divorce her, sort of. We're not here to talk about the Reformation, don't want to talk about that today, not in the mood. We're here to talk about Catherine because she's often just sidelined or just she's the one that was divorced and we move on and we talk about Anne Boleyn, but she was married to him for 24 years so there's a lot of history there as well. Like, for example, a lot of people don't realise that she actually first came to England in 1501 to marry Henry VIII's younger, older brother, sorry, Arthur. Catherine would have been, I think she was about 15 years old, and she came over to England as part of an arranged marriage and married Prince Arthur who was the heir of England at the time. However, unfortunately then Arthur passed away about five months into their marriage, so that sort of ruined those plans. Fun, slightly weird, awkward fact, at a big ceremony, the wedding ceremony they had in St Paul's, she was actually walked down the aisle by a 10-year-old Prince Henry who was the future Henry VIII and her future actual husband. Following the death of Arthur, Catherine had a rough sort of seven or eight years where first she was betrothed to Henry and then she wasn't and there was lots of bickering about her dowry. Then in 1509 this all changed very quickly. Henry VII died, Henry became Henry VIII, and he immediately wanted to marry Catherine of Aragon so they got married and were coronated all in the same year. When they got married Catherine would have been about 23 and Henry was about 17 years old so she was like a little bit older than him and there's evidence that he really admired her and rated her opinion and her leadership skills. One of the most important things that's often quoted is that in 1513 Henry was off doing his pastime which was having wars, mainly with the French, and he left Catherine, he appointed her as governor of the realm which basically meant that she was in charge while he was away. Under her leadership the English went and fought the Scottish at the Battle of Flodden. The English trounced Scotland and the battle actually resulted in the death of James IV and Catherine sent his bloodied coat to Henry as a nice little prize, little war prize, as you do. Then three years later Mary was born who became Mary I. So this is where, not a myth exactly, but another sort of unknown factor comes in. We know that Catherine and Henry had one child and it was a daughter, darn it, but they actually had six other pregnancies but they unfortunately all ended badly. One of those included, I think they'd only been married for a year when she gave birth to a son and Henry VIII put on this huge pageant and parade, however the baby died after about a month or two. One of the reasons I like Catherine and I think history remembers her well is the fact that during the great matter, as Henry called it, which was when he was essentially trying to divorce Catherine, Catherine never gave in, she never, she could have easily said yes you know what it's fine I'll go quietly and you can have the divorce it's all good, but she stuck by her guns, stuck by her guns, is that the saying? She always claimed that their marriage was valid and kind of made a bit of a fool of him publicly. In May 1533 Henry got what he wanted and managed to have a divorce from Catherine, well his marriage to her was declared invalid and he'd already actually married Anne a few months before. What's ridiculous is that after all of this, this painful divorce procedure, he actually was only ever married to Anne Boleyn for about three years and then he beheaded her. Let's just not get started on Henry VIII, he's just a bit Henry VIII-y isn't he really? Now I know the Tudors, they're a huge bit of history, somewhat oversaturated to be honest, there's many other bits of British history or history generally that we could look at but I've always just had a soft spot for the Tudors and I think it's because they've got such great queens, like they're just chock full of great queens, like an episode of Rupaul's Drag Race All-Stars and what makes it even better is that Henry VIII was just trying so hard to have a son and in fact the Tudor era is remembered for its great queens. Kind of all starts with Catherine of Aragon is a very strong queen who was able to rule in almost in her own right. If I was ever in a fight and I could call on anyone from history, maybe not anyone from history, that would probably be like Genghis Khan, I'd have him on my side but Catherine of Aragon wouldn't be a bad person to have on your side in a fight I think. Right there we go, there's some nuggets of information about Catherine of Aragon, I hope maybe you have learned something new about her. Thank you for watching, if you like this video give it a like and a thumbs up and if you're watching this on YouTube please subscribe, that would be great, just click the little subscribe button, just click it like that on your mouse and if you really like this fact feel free to buy me a coffee, I set up a Ko-fi page, I think that's how you say it, that would be greatly appreciated and yeah let me know in the comments below what era you would like me to discuss, if you've got any good history facts yourself let me know, I'd love to hear them otherwise I'm off to have breakfast honestly, I'm filming this quite early. History fact!