" " 336

_From a portrait by a German artist in St. John's
College, Oxford. Photographed by the Clarendon
Press, and reproduced by the kind permission of
the President of St. John's College._

KATHARINE HOWARD " " 384

_From a portrait by an unknown artist in the National
Portrait Gallery._

KATHARINE PARR " " 400

_From a painting in the collection of the_ EARL OF
ASHBURNHAM. _Reproduced by the kind permission of
the owner._

HENRY VIII " " 432

_From a portrait by_ HOLBEIN _in the possession of
the Earl of Warwick. Reproduced by the kind permission
of the owner._

THE WIVES OF HENRY THE EIGHTH

CHAPTER I

1488-1501

INTRODUCTORY--WHY KATHARINE CAME TO ENGLAND--POLITICAL MATRIMONY

The history of modern Europe takes its start from an event which must have
appeared insignificant to a generation that had witnessed the violent end
of the English dominion in France, had been dinned by the clash of the
Wars of the Roses, and watched with breathless fear the savage hosts of
Islam striking at the heart of Christendom over the still smoking ruins of
the Byzantine Empire.

Late one night, in the beginning of October 1469, a cavalcade of men in
the guise of traders halted beneath the walls of the ancient city of Burgo
de Osma in Old Castile. They had travelled for many days by little-used
paths through the mountains of Soria from the Aragonese frontier town of
Tarrazona; and, impatient to gain the safe shelter of the fortress of
Osma, they banged at the gates demanding admittance. The country was in
anarchy. Leagues of churchmen and nobles warred against each other and
preyed upon society at large. An impotent king, deposed with ignominy by
one faction, had been as ignominiously set up again by another, and royal
pretenders to the succession were the puppets of rival parties whose
object was to monopolise for themselves all the fruits of royalty, whilst
the monarch fed upon the husks. So when the new-comers called peremptorily
for admittance within the gates of Osma, the guards upon the city walls,
taking them for enemies or freebooters, greeted them with a shower of
missiles from the catapults. One murderous stone whizzed within a few
inches of the head