the quarrel between the Dukes of Bedford and Gloucester in the same year, and accompanied her child in grand procession to St. Paul's before the opening of parliament in 1425. Soon afterwards rumours were spread that Catherine was concerned in a no very reputable liaison. Owen Tudor, a poor Welsh gentleman and an esquire of the body attached to her late husband at her son's household, had obtained complete control over her, and the nature of their relationship was soon obvious. In 1428 the Duke of Gloucester induced the parliament to pass a law prohibiting any person marrying the queen-dowager without the consent of the king and his council, but at the time Catherine and Owen Tudor were reported to be already married. Catherine lived in obscurity for many years, but in 1436 Tudor was sent to Newgate and his wife retired to Bermondsey Abbey, where she died on 3 Jan. 1437. Her body lay in state at St. Katharine's Chapel, by the Tower of London, on 18 Feb. 1437, was then taken to St. Paul's Cathedral, and was buried in the Lady Chapel in Westminster Abbey. Henry VI erected an altar-tomb with an inscription describing her as his father's widow, and making no reference to her alleged marriage with Owen Tudor.
By Tudor Catherine had a daughter, Tacina, wife of Reginald, seventh lord Grey de Wilton, and three sons. Edmund, the eldest son, created by his half-brother Henry VI Earl of Richmond in 1452, married Margaret Beaufort, and was by her the father of Henry VII. The second son, Jasper, became Earl of Pembroke, and the third, Owen, a monk of Westminster. Catherine's grandson, Henry VII, replaced the tomb originally erected to her memory by another monument on which her marriage with Owen Tudor was duly inscribed. When Henry VII pulled down the Lady Chapel at Westminster, the corpse loosely wrapped in lead was placed by Henry V's tomb, where it remained till in 1778 it was placed under the Villiers monument . In Pepys's time the body was publicly exhibited (Diary. 23 Feb. 1667-8). Pepys kissed the face on his birthday. In 1878 the body was reburied in the chantry of Henry V.
[Miss Strickland's Lives of the Queens of England, vol. iii.; Monstrelet's Chronicle; Waurin's Recueil des Chroniques, vol. iii. (Rolls Ser.); Capgrave's Chronicle (Rolls Ser.); Stanley's Westminster Abbry, 133-4.]
CATHERINE of Arragon (1485–1536), first queen of Henry VIII, daughter of Ferdinand and Isabella of Spain, was born at Alcala de Henares on 15 or 16 Dec. 1485. She was the youngest of a family of one son and four daughters, and at her birth her parents had already done much to consolidate their united kingdoms by victories over the Moors. Henry VII of England, who had obtained possession by conquest of an insecure throne in the very year she was born, naturally sought the alliance of sovereigns whose affairs seemed so prosperous, and his eldest son Arthur, born in September 1486, could hardly have been much more than a year old when he was proposed by his father as a future husband for their youngest daughter. They sent commissioners to England to negotiate as early as 1488. A return embassy sent by Henry VII to Spain met with a magnificent reception at Medina del Campo; but for many years nothing was positively concluded, as it was Ferdinand's object to bind the king of England to make war in his behalf against France without incurring any corresponding obligation himself. In truth, Ferdinand was not well enough assured of the stability of Henry's throne to be willing to commit himself irrevocably.
Catherine was in her fifth year when her sister Isabel was betrothed at Seville to Don Alfonso of Portugal on 18 April 1490. She and her other sisters, Juana and Mary, were present at the ceremony (Bernaldez, i. 279, 280; Mariana, ed. 1780, ii. 587).
In 1492, when the Moors were driven out of Granada, she entered the city with her parents, and it became her home. From Granada came the device of the pomegranate so well known afterwards in England in connection with her. Her education, especially in Latin, was personally superintended by her mother, and in later years Erasmus bore witness to her scholarship. All difficulties as to the match with Arthur had been finally cleared away in 1500, when the bridegroom had completed his fourteenth year. She left Granada on 21 May 1501, and embarked at Corunna on 17 Aug. After many delays from contrary winds she reached Plymouth on 2 Oct.
Great preparations had been made for her reception. Lord Broke, steward of the king's household, was despatched into the west to provide for her retinue; and afterwards the Earl of Surrey and the Duchess of Norfolk were sent to attend her. The king himself on 4 Nov. removed from Richmond to go and meet her, but, owing to bad weather and doubtless equally bad roads, he was compelled the first night to find a lodging at Chertsey. Next day his son, Prince Arthur, met him at Easthampstead, and proceeded in his father's company to meet his bride. The
