The papal dispensation arrived in time to solace Isabella on her
death-bed in November, 1504; but that event once more involved in
doubt the prospects of the marriage. The crown of Castile passed from
Isabella to her daughter Juana; the government of the kingdom was
claimed by Ferdinand and by Juana's husband, Philip of Burgundy. On
their way from the Netherlands to claim their inheritance, Philip and
Juana were driven on English shores. Henry VII. treated them with all
possible courtesy, and made Philip a Knight of the Garter, while
Philip repaid the compliment by investing Prince Henry with the Order
of the Golden Fleece.[61] But advantage was taken of Philip's plight
to extort from him the surrender of the Earl of Suffolk, styled the
White Rose, and a commercial treaty with the Netherlands, which the
Flemings named the Malus Intercursus. Three months after his arrival
in Castile, Philip died, and Henry began to fish in the troubled
waters for a share in his dominions. Two marriage schemes occurred to
him; he might win the hand of Philip's sister Margaret, now Regent of
the Netherlands, and with her hand the control of those provinces; or
he might marry Juana and claim in her right to administer Castile. On
the acquisition of Castile he set his mind. If he could not gain (p. 028)
it by marriage with Juana, he thought he could do so by marrying
her son and heir, the infant Charles, to his daughter Mary. Whichever
means he took to further his design, it would naturally irritate
Ferdinand and make him less anxious for the completion of the marriage
between Catherine and Prince Henry. Henry VII. was equally averse from
the consummation of the match. Now that he was scheming with Charles's
other grandfather, the Emperor Maximilian, to wrest the government of
Castile from Ferdinand's grasp, the alliance of the King of Aragon had
lost its attraction, and it was possible that the Prince of Wales
might find elsewhere a more desirable bride. Henry's marriage with
Catherine was to have been accomplished when he completed the age of
fourteen; but on the eve of his fifteenth birthday he made a solemn
protestation that the contract was null and void, and that he would
not carry out his engagements.[62] This protest left him free to
consider other proposals, and enhanced his value as a negotiable
asset. More than once negotiations were started for marrying him to
Marguerite de Valois, sister of the Duke of Angouleme, afterwards
famous as Francis I.;[63] and in the last months of his father's
reign, the Prince of Wales was giving audience to ambassadors from
Maximilian, who came to suggest matrimonial alliances between the
prince and a daughter of Duke Albert of Bavaria, and between Henry
VII. and the Lady Margaret of Savoy, Regent of the Netherlands.[64]
Meanwhile, Ferdinand, threatened on all sides, first came to terms (p. 029)
with France; he married a French princess, Germaine de Foix, abandoned
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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