Catherine of Aragon

A daughter of the joint monarchs of Spain, Catherine of Aragon was the first wife of Henry VIII and queen of England for over twenty years. She was born in December 1485 at Alcalá de Henares, the youngest child of Ferdinand II of Aragon and Isabella I of Castile of the house of Trastámara. Her marriage was the keystone of the alliance between Spain and Tudor England negotiated under Henry VII: in November 1501 she married Arthur, Prince of Wales, the king's heir, but Arthur died the following spring, leaving her a widow at sixteen.

Catherine remained in England in reduced circumstances for seven years while her remarriage to Arthur's younger brother was negotiated, a union that required a papal dispensation because of her previous marriage. Shortly after his accession in 1509, Henry VIII married her, and she was crowned alongside him. In 1513, while the king campaigned in France, she served as regent of England during the war with Scotland that ended in the English victory at Flodden. She was a patron of scholars and was widely respected for her piety and learning.

Of her six pregnancies, only one child survived infancy: Mary, born in 1516, who would later reign as Mary I. The absence of a living son led Henry, from 1527, to seek an annulment on the ground that marriage to his brother's widow was unlawful. Catherine insisted that her first marriage had never been consummated and that her marriage to Henry was valid, and she appealed to Rome, where her nephew, the emperor Charles V, held strong influence. The case remained undecided for years until Henry broke with the papacy; Thomas Cranmer pronounced the marriage null in May 1533, after the king had already wed Anne Boleyn.

Stripped of her title and styled Dowager Princess of Wales, Catherine refused to accept the judgment or to acknowledge the royal supremacy, and she was separated from her daughter and moved between increasingly remote residences. She died at Kimbolton Castle on 7 January 1536 and was buried in Peterborough Abbey, now Peterborough Cathedral. Her daughter Mary restored Catholic worship in England during her own reign two decades later.