ed from the pressure of immediate
danger Henry held warily back from a close connexion with the Spanish
realms which might have involved him in continental wars. It was not till
1501 that the marriage-treaty was really carried out. The Low Countries
had now passed to the son of Mary of Burgundy by her husband Maximilian,
the Austrian Archduke Philip. The Yorkist sympathies of the Duchess
Margaret were shared by Philip, and Flanders had till now been the
starting-point of the pretenders who had threatened Henry's crown. But
Philip's marriage with Juana, the daughter of Ferdinand and Isabel, bound
him to the cause of Spain, and it was to secure his throne by winning
Philip's alliance, as well as to gain in the friendship of the Low
Countries a fresh check upon French attack, that Henry yielded to
Ferdinand's renewed demand for the union of Arthur and Catharine. The
match was made in blood. Henry's own temper was merciful and even
generous; he punished rebellion for the most part by fines rather than
bloodshed, and he had been content to imprison or degrade his rivals. But
the Spanish ruthlessness would see no living claimant left to endanger
Catharine's throne, and Perkin Warbeck and the Earl of Warwick were put to
death on a charge of conspiracy before the landing of the bride.

Catharine however was widow almost as soon as wife, for only three months
after his wedding Arthur sickened and died. But a contest with France for
Southern Italy, which Ferdinand claimed as king of Aragon, now made the
friendship of England more precious than ever to the Spanish sovereigns;
and Isabel pressed for her daughter's union with the king's second son,
Henry, whom his brother's death left heir to the throne. In his anxiety to
avoid a breach with Spain the king suffered Henry to be betrothed to
Catharine, and threw the burthen of decision on Rome. A dispensation was
necessary, and the case was of course the more difficult if the first
marriage had been completed. The pleadings were put in, though both Julius
the Second and Henry were in no haste for a decision. But the victories of
Spain in Southern Italy enabled Isabel to put fresh pressure on the Pope,
and on a denial being given of the consummation of the earlier marriage
Julius was brought to sign a bull legitimating, even in case of such a
consummation, the later one. Henry however still shrank from any real
union. His aim was neither to complete the marriage, which would have
aliena