advise Catherine, recommended the national policy of taking no side in the contest, by the enforcement of toleration, of civil reform, and of justice to all parties, to raiss the Government above the region of controversy, and prevent civil war. Catherine took the advice in so far as to avoid siding decidedly with either party, but her character, and the habits of policy to which she had been accustomed, rendered her incapable of any noble aim. She had only one virtue, and that was her zeal for the interests of her children, especially of her favourite third son, the duke of Anjou. Like so many of the Italians of that time, who were almost destitute of a moral sense, she looked upon statesmanship in particular as a career in which finesse, lying, and assassination were the most admirable, because the most effective weapons. By habit a Catholic, but above all things fond of power, she was determined to prevent the Protestants from getting the upper hand, and almost equally resolved not to allow them to be utterly crushed, in order to use them as a counterpoise to the Guises. Thus she is, more than any one else, responsible for the thirty years of civil war that was thenceforward to devastate France. For a time her plan succeeded well enough. At the battle of Dreux (1562) the Huguenots were defeated by the duke of Guise ; and at the siege of Orleans, the duke himself, now her most formidable rival, fell by the hands of an assassin. She had undoubtedly become the most important personage in France, but rage and suspicion so possessed men s minds, that she could no longer control the opposing parties, and one civil war followed another to the end of her life. But it is with the massacre of Bartholomew (2ith August 1572) that her name will be especially associated in history. While the affection of the young king for Coligny inspired him with groundless confidence, Catherine decoyed the Protestant leaders to Paris by the prospect of a marriage between Henry of Navarre and her daughter Marguerite. Anxious for her own influence over Charles IX., and true to her favourite plan of perpetuating the feud between the Huguenot leaders and the House of Guise, she wrought upon the king s mind till he consented to the death of Coligny, while the unprincipled hate of the Guises and the fanaticism of the mob did the rest. In short, Catherine supplied all the preliminary conditions of the massacre, and then let loose the infuriated passions that were to con summate it. After the death of Charles in 1574, and the succession of Anjou under the name of Henry III., Catherine pursued her old policy ; but as her influence is lost in that of her son, it is unnecessary to dwell upon it. She died in 1589, a short time before the assassination of Henry,
and the consequent extinction of the House of Valois.(See Martin s Histoire de France, vol. ix. ; Michelet ; Ranke s Geschichte Frankreichs, vol. i.)
CATHERINE of Aragon (1435-1536), the first queen of Henry VIIL, and the youngest child of Ferdinand and Isabella of Spain, was born the 15th December 1435, while her mother was on her way to Toledo from the Spanish army, then engaged in the conquest of Granada. The first four years of her life were passed in the camp before Granada ; after the taking of the city it became the capital and the residence of the court. Here, then, Catherine spent her youth, carefully educated by her mother, herself a woman of no common learning and ability, during a period of marvellous prosperity for Spain, while the Moors were being finally conquered, America was discovered, and the Spanish chivalry was in its very bloom. In 1501, being requested in marriage by Henry VII. for his eldest son Arthur, Catherine embarked at Coruna, landed at Ply mouth the 2d October, and, with the usual pageantry, was united to Arthur the month following. Their marriage was of no long duration ; in the April of next year Arthur died. His widow, however, continued to reside in England, as proposals were made and accepted for her betrothal to Henry, second son of Henry VII., now heir-presumptive to the throne. Catherine, already eighteen, was disinclined to an engagement with a boy of thirteen; nevertheless the ceremony of betrothal took place in 1503. The mar riage did not take place till 1509, after the accession of Henry to the throne, a dispensation from the Pope having been procured. The early years of the marriage were happy enough. Henry was a handsome, affable, and jovial king, fond of magnificent display, covetous of distinction in the tilting ground, and ambitious of popularity. His wife had the good sense to humour him in his favourite diversions, while she herself lived a dignified self-denying life of almost conventual strictness, conscientious in the perform ance of her religious duties, devoted to her husband, kind to her friends, charitable to her enemies, and careful of the interests of her adopted country. In the year of Flodden (1513) she was regent of the kingdom during the absence of Henry in France, and performed the duties of that office with great courage and ability. But the repeated loss of children cast a gloom over those years. Three sons died almost as soon as they were born ; Mary, a sickly child, born in 1516, was the only survivor.
It was not till 1527 that Henry s scruples as to the vali dity of his marriage with Catherine became public, though there can be no doubt his affections had been alienated from her long before. It was anticipated by Henry and Clement that the conventual habits of Catherine would have rendered it easy for her to retire from the throne, and spend the rest of her life in a monastery. But they were mistaken; however submissive she might be to her husband in everything else, and however. ready to act charitably towards the minor irregularities of his conduct, she was resolved not to allow any doubt to be cast upon the legality of their marriage or the title to the throne of her daughter Mary, nor to surrender any of her rights as queen. This the Papal legate, Campeggio, soon found out on his arrival in England in 1528. After long hesitation, and much tortuoua diplomatic manoeuvring on the side of the Pope, a court, consisting of the legates Campeggio and Wolsey, was at last constituted, 28th May 1529, at Black- friars, to hear the case of the royal parties. Catherine appeared only to protest against the legality of the court; and then after a solemn address to the king for justice, appealed to the Pope, and withdrew. Notwithstanding the proceedings for the divorce, and the fact that Henry had brought Anne Boleyn to live in the palace, Catherine and he were not quite separated till the beginning of 1531, when, finding he could not prevail upon her to. withdraw her appeal to the Pope, or in any way to give up her passive resistance, he commanded her to retire from Windsor. After that she never saw him again, nor her daughter Mary. Her residence was often changed ; but it was principally at Ampthill. At length an open declara tion of the Pope against Henry obliged the monarch to solve the difficulty by the assertion of the royal supremacy (1531). In a court held at Dunstable, Cranmer, recently appointed archbishop of Canterbury, pronounced the marriage of Henry and Catherine null and void (1533). Naturally, Catherine, though still as charitably disposed as ever towards Henry, treated this and all other attempts to deprive her of her rights with resolute contempt. Her health, which had begun to fail long before the divorce was agitated, now completely gave way. After writing a letter of forgiveness and of gentle admonition to her husband, and taking all the care she could of her faithful attendants, she died at Kimbolton Castle the 7th January 1536. (See Miss Strickland s Queens of England, vol. iv. ; Froude, vol. i.; Lingard, vol. v.)
