Catherine, daughter of Ferdinand and Isabella of Spain, had come to England in 1501 to marry Henry's elder brother Arthur, who died months later. For seven years she lived in uncertainty while her father and Henry VII argued over her dowry. A papal dispensation permitted the new match. The couple was crowned together weeks later. Their marriage lasted 24 years; Henry's attempt to annul it, claiming it had been forbidden by scripture, led to England's break with the Roman Catholic Church.
Catherine was five years older than Henry and had been betrothed to him since 1503, soon after Arthur's death, but the arrangement repeatedly stalled over money and diplomacy. Henry VII died on April 21, 1509, and his son quickly decided to marry her, later claiming it had been his father's dying wish.
The wedding on June 11 took place in a quiet ceremony at the Church of the Observant Friars, next to the royal palace at Greenwich. Two weeks later, on Midsummer Day, the couple were crowned together at Westminster Abbey. Contemporaries described the young king as handsome and athletic, and in the early years of the marriage Catherine was a trusted partner, serving as regent while he fought in France in 1513.
They had at least six children, but only one, the future Mary I, survived infancy. By the 1520s Henry, desperate for a male heir and infatuated with Anne Boleyn, argued that marrying his brother's widow had broken a biblical law. When the pope refused an annulment, Henry broke with Rome. Catherine never accepted the annulment and died in 1536.
Key people: Henry VIII, Catherine of Aragon, Arthur, Prince of Wales