for once in
his life, was liberal with his money. He implored his daughter to make no
unpleasantness or complaint, and to raise no question that might obstruct
her marriage. The ambassador, Fuensalida, was warned that if the bickering
between himself and the Princess, or between the confessor and the
household, was allowed to interfere with the match, disgrace and ruin
should be his lot, and Katharine was admonished that she must be civil to
Fuensalida, and to the Italian banker who was to pay the balance of her
dowry. The King of Aragon need have had no anxiety. Young Henry and his
councillors were as eager for the popular marriage as he was, and dreaded
the idea of disgorging the 100,000 crowns dowry already paid and the
English settlements upon Katharine. On the 6th May, accordingly, three
days before the body of Henry VII. was borne in gloomy pomp to its last
resting-place at Westminster, Katharine wrote to her delighted father that
her marriage with Henry was finally settled.

CHAPTER III

1509-1527

KATHARINE THE QUEEN--A POLITICAL MARRIAGE AND A PERSONAL DIVORCE

"Long live King Henry VIII.!" cried Garter King of Arms in French as the
great officers of state broke their staves of office and cast them into
the open grave of the first Tudor king. Through England, like the blast of
a trumpet, the cry was echoed from the hearts of a whole people, full of
hope that the niggardliness and suspicion which for years had stood
between the sovereign and his people were at last banished. The young
king, expansive and hearty in manner, handsome and strong as a pagan god
in person, was well calculated to captivate the love of the crowd. His
prodigious personal vanity, which led him to delight in sumptuous raiment
and gorgeous shows; the state and ceremony with which he surrounded
himself and his skill in manly exercises, were all points in his favour
with a pleasure-yearning populace which had been squeezed of its substance
without seeing any return for it: whilst his ardent admiration for the
learning which had during his lifetime become the fashion made grave
scholars lose their judgment and write like flattering slaves about the
youth of eighteen who now became unquestioned King of England and master
of his father's hoarded treasures.

As we shall see in the course of this history, Henry was but a whited
sepulchre. Young, light-hearted, with every one about him praising him as
a paragon, and his smallest whim i