Betwixt The Sheets: The History of Sex, Scandal & Society - Sex & Scandal in Catherine of Aragon's Court

Episode Date: October 8, 2024

When Henry VIII wanted a divorce from Catherine of Aragon, he needed to prove that she was not a virgin when they wed. One woman was key to proving this: Catalina of Motril, Catherine's enslaved servant who was always present in the royal bedroom. Before the divorce, though, what was Catalina's experience like in the heart of the Tudor court? What would it have been like for her, as a person of colour in Tudor England? And did Henry's lawyers ever track her down? Joining Kate today is historian and author Lauren Johnson, to help us get to know Catalina's remarkable story better. This episode was edited and produced by Stuart Beckwith. The senior producer was Charlotte Long.Enjoy unlimited access to award-winning original documentaries that are released weekly and AD-FREE podcasts. Sign here for up to 50% for 3 months using code BETWIXTYou can take part in our listener survey here.Betwixt the Sheets: History of Sex, Scandal & Society is a History Hit podcast. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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Sign up to join me in locations around the world and explore the past. Just visit historyhit.com forward slash subscribe. Hello, my lovely betwixters. It's me, Kate Lister. I am back once more with your fair do's warning. Kate, what's the fair do's warning? Well, that is the warning that we have to give at the top of each show to make sure that everybody knows

that this is an adult podcast spoken by dolls to other adults, bad, adultery things, and an adultery way covering a range for adult subjects, and you should be an adult too. And now, fair do's, we have warned you. So if you happen to get offended, well, that's on you, quite frankly. Right, on with the show. It's the morning after the wedding of Catherine of Aragon and Prince Arthur. Yep, that's Henry VIII's older brother, and I have managed to sneak into the royal bedchamber.

Don't worry, the newlyweds have just gone for a walk. Well, at least I think that's where they've gone. Did they have brunch and tudor periods? That's probably where they'll be. But here in the boudoir, Catherine's servant, Catalina of Matril, is changing the bedsheet. A moment that will become hugely important in years to come, when Catherine's future husband, a certain Henry VIII, is attempting to divorce her. But what important evidence will Catalina be able to provide?

And will anybody believe her anyway because she was a woman of colour at the heart of the Tudor court? Well, I don't know about you, but I need to know more. What do you look for a man? Oh, money, of course. You're supposed to rise when an adult speaks to you. I make perfect copies of whatever my boss needs by just turning it up and pushing the funny. Yes, social courtesy does make a difference. Goodness, my beautiful time.

Goodness had nothing to do with it, there is. Hello, and welcome back to Betwixt the Sheets, the history of sex scandal in society. With me, Kate Lester. The Tudor Court was a wild place at the best of times. I mean, the merciless power struggles made succession look like Sesame Street. But at the heart of it, there were some fairly fascinating people, and today we're looking at one of them,

Catalina of Matril, who had arrived in England from Spain, as the slave of Catherine of Aragon. And it's here that she was a witness to a significant moment that threatened to destabilise an entire Tudor dynasty. What was this woman's story? What were hers and others' experience like as a person of colour in Tudor England, let alone in the Tudor court? And what became of her?

Joining me today is historian and author Lauren Johnson to help us get to know Catalina a bit better. If you'd like to explore other stories from the period, then why not check out our sister podcast, not just the Tudors. But without further ado, I am ready to do this if you are. Hello and welcome to Betwixt the Sheets. It's only Lauren Johnson. How are you doing? I'm very well, thank you. It's slightly weary. I feel like as soon as September comes. Oh, God, I know. And it's gone so fast. Yeah.

Whenever this goes out, it probably won't even be September, but it's currently currently, September the 25th and I'm sure that it just started a moment ago and now we're definitely in autumn. Yeah, I want the heating on. It's that point in the year, yeah. But we're here to talk about somebody that wouldn't have had central heating and probably when they arrived in Britain was going, what the hell is this all about? And this is somebody I'd never heard of before. So Catalina of Matril, somebody that you've researched and you've written the Oxford Dictionary of National biography, you've written her entry in it. Who the hell was Catalina of Matril? Well, that is the big question that I was trying to answer. Yeah, a friend of mine who is a theatre maker, producer,

was really interested in telling Catalina's story. I mean, about 10 years ago now, she came across this reference to someone called Catalina who worked in Catherine of Arrigan's household. She was like, this is a brilliant story, like so rich with drama, but what was she doing? So she asked me to do some research into her. And like so many working class women, effectively, of this era, like, it's just sifting away all of these layers to try and find like the tiniest kernels of information. And in Catalina's case, that's compounded because she's described in documents that are in the National Archives as being Catalina wants the queen's slave, the queen in this case being Catherine of Aragon, Henry the 8th's first queen, which means probably having been enslaved in the

In Spain, Catalina isn't even her real name because many enslaved women were given the names of whoever owned them legally at that point in time. And as Catherine of Aragon's name in Spanish is Catalina, it's even possible that she was named for Catherine of Aragon and that they were quite close contemporaries. So, yeah, she's this fascinating little, like, puzzle in history. And yet, what's so intriguing about her is that she holds potentially the answer to one of, like, those questions that still endures after centuries, which is, did Catherine of Aragon have sex with her first husband? Because Catalina made her bed. But before we get to that bit, and that is,

that's a hell of a point in history to have been present at. So she was an enslaved woman, probably. We don't even know what her real name was. Did she come from Spain with Catherine of Aragon? Do we know anything about her background at all? We know little bits and pieces. So Most of the information about her comes from 1531, so like literal decades after she arrived in England. And in fact, by that point she had returned to her hometown. And this is like one of those tiny little golden nuggets is that one of the documents mentions that she went back to her hometown, which was Montreal in Granada. And Granada, in the time of Catherine of Arrigan's parents, was a Muslim Emirate.

It was a place that was completely under Muslim rule. And during the course of Catherine Varaghan's lifetime and probably Catalina's as well, Granada was conquered. In Spain, they call it the Reconquista, as if it hadn't been in Muslim control for literally hundreds and hundreds of years. And during that process, I think it's quite likely that Catalina was enslaved, that she had been born Muslim but was brought into the royal court by Catherine Varigan's parents, like I say, potentially renamed their back. She was baptized probably, and that therefore she went from complete culture shock, really, from a Muslim family potentially and certainly homeland into a Spanish, heavily Catholic country. And then she has yet another total transition because in 1501, Catherine of Aragon takes this great big entourage of members of the Spanish Royal Court to England to marry the heir to the Tudor dynasty. So like huge tumultuous changes in Catalina's life. So when we think of the slave trade,

we tend to think of the transatlantic slave trade of people being enslaved from Africa and bought over to Europe. But that's not what happened here. No, not at all. It's one of those really interesting bits of history, I think. Like I grew up in Bristol, and I would say the transatlantic slave trade is very present in kind of consciousness there. But it is definitely like an 18th century.

idea of it, where it's this huge sort of booming industry that enormous numbers of people were invested in one way or another. And actually, in the early 1500s, that's not the case at all. Most of the people who we encounter in Tudor Records, who are in some way of African or North African origin, tend to have come via Spain or Portugal, as Catalina did. And when they come into England, they are effectively freed from any form of enslavement, because the English law code just doesn't have a system in place to deal with them. Interestingly, it has a system to kind of enslave English people because there's still bondage and serfdom and things, but they don't have that system yet for international arrivals.

So there's even a case in, I think it's 1490 under Henry the 7th, of a person who arrives in England enslaved by the Portuguese, returns to Portugal and actually has his case for being free upheld in Portugal because he had been in England in the meantime. And from Catalina's later life, it seems that's probably what happened to her as well, is that she arrives in England having been enslaved and by the process of just being in the country, she is freed. So Britain wasn't practicing slavery-ish. We still had serfdom and we were still doing some pretty nasty stuff.

But the rest of Europe was? Oh, yeah, it's a bit complicated. Spain was. Spain was. Portugal definitely was. They introduced slavery, I think, in the 1440s. And yes, Spain evidently was. because we find a lot of people are enslaved as a result of the conquest of Granada.

A lot of people who were Muslim become enslaved during that period. There's also, I mean, there's lots of people who were enslaved as a result of piracy. There's a case of someone who was from Malaga nearby in Granada, who was literally like walking a coastal path

and was captured by Barbary pirates and enslaved. And that was it. That was the end of his freedom. So like, it's just, you know, might is right. basically. If you can enslave a person, you will. And of course, like, in this era, still in England also there's, like, sexual bondage and things. There's people being taken into sex work against their will. So, like, you know, theoretically, there's this whole notion, like the

air of England was too pure for a slave to breathe. That kind of thing gets repeated a lot. And actually, there's a huge amount of stuff, I think, happening behind closed doors. It's just that, fortunately, for someone in Catalina's position, she is able to kind of use these legal loopholes to enable herself to have a degree of freedom. Well, well done Catalina. So she at some point enters the service of Catherine of Arrigan while she's still in Spain. Yes. How do, just in case anybody is unfamiliar with this particular story, because we think Catherine of Arrigan, we think Henry VIII, but he was in first choice. So what happened to bring Catherine of Aragon and Catalina over to Britain?

When Catherine of Aragon was literally a baby, she had her marriage. arranged with Arthur, who was then the Prince of Wales, the heir to the Tudor dynasty, so the son of Elizabeth of York and Henry the 7th, the first Tudor King. And this dragged on for years and years and years. It's like the linchpin of English diplomatic policy for absolutely ages. And finally in 1501, when Arthur and Catherine are in their mid-teens, Catherine arrives in England with a great big retinue of Spanish attendance, which definitely includes two enslaved women or girls who are in the records.

They are esclavas. So they are female enslaved people. One of whom I would argue is probably Catalina, even though she isn't named. And I think probably that Catherine is doing this as a kind of, well, Catherine's parents, really, a kind of imperialist thing. Like, look English people. Look at all of the lands that we own represented by these different peoples. And Catalina of Matrilla is probably one of those because the conquest of. of Granada was such a huge deal for Christian Europe at this time.

And she is probably made to parade through the streets of London in November 50.01. So flipping freezing time of year in sandals, potentially in Grenadden, sort of cultural clothing because there's these slightly weird descriptions made by Thomas Moore, as in famous Thomas Moore of, you know, later defying Henry VIII fame in which he describes and apologies. These are not my words. these are Thomas Moore's word, but he describes barefoot pygmy Ethiopians walking through the streets with Catherine and Ethiopian. Yeah, I know, right. Ethiopian at this time is literally just anyone of colour virtually. So quite possibly Catalina is this. And he describes them as looking like escapees from hell, which to me, I was like, that's a really weird way to describe someone. Wow. I think probably he's just like if you look at images of Grenadden clothing at this time, especially for women.

It involves loads and loads of layers of like linen or cotton potentially later and it almost looks a little bit like images of winding sheets in English churches. You know, those pictures of people coming out of their graves, like leaving their winding sheets behind them with their shrouds. So I wonder if, you know, he's trying to be clever by saying this. Maybe, maybe. I mean, you kind of forget that it would have been a very, very unusual sight for someone just in England, but they might not have even seen people from Spain before.

Like the culture shock would have been quite profound for them. But it's kind of interesting to ponder on exactly what did he see there that made him say they look like escapees from hell. That's quite a statement, isn't it? Yeah. And Catherine, like also it should be said, and her leading ladies in waiting who are very high-born women are also dressed very peculiarly according to English perceptions at the time.

They're wearing like farthing gales, so a great big hooped skirt. Catherine is described as wearing a hat like a cardinal. So almost a bit like a sombrero, I think, with great big tassels. And again, it's all part of her saying, this is my Spanish culture. And then, of course, she gets absorbed into the English court. But there's a really big thing at this time of exoticising foreign peoples by their clothing.

And I think we tend to assume in the 21st century, we're like, well, it will be obvious if someone is from a different country because they will look visibly different in some way. And by that we imagine skin color, in the 1500s, someone would look visibly different because they're wearing totally different clothes. So there's, especially in London, there's a huge community from other countries,

but they're mainly from other parts of northern Europe. But they would have been distinctive because they would be wearing different clothing. They would have different ways of interacting with each other. So I think whilst people from Africa and North Africa would be less familiar to English people at this time, actually having what were called strangers, by which they mean just people who are foreign in the country, was not that unusual. How unusual was racial diversity? Because this is a very interesting point amongst historians and sort of the wider public at the moment.

And whenever you've got a historical drama on TV and there's a person of colour turns up, there is inevitably people on social media going, oh my God, that's not true. Blah, la, everyone's gone. But that isn't true. We have been not. as racially diverse as we are now, but we've certainly been racially diverse since at least the Roman period. But what are we talking about in the Tudor period here? How racially diverse would somewhere like London be? London pretty enormously, I think. London more than anywhere else. Apart from Southampton, weirdly. Lots of people in Southampton of African descent. I think it would still have been noteworthy. I think the widest degree of population would still be effectively white, but like I say, that did not mean that they were native English,

or Scottish or Welsh or Irish. You know, they could well have been European. I find it really maddening personally because we have this notion in history that like, we always want stories of kings and queens. And it's like, well, a king and a queen is the least representative person you could choose to make a story about. And yet, I think Miranda Kaufman's research into like Tudor Early Stewart period found literal hundreds of people of colour, people who could verifiably be identified as people

of colour or of African descent. So that's literally hundreds of times more representative than having a king or queen. And yet we're not like, oh, well, see, they've got Henry and the Eighths again. That's woke gone mad. People would have seen persons of colour in this period of history. They would have seen people with different identities. It's just that the records are very difficult to kind of trace because people weren't always, although they were sometimes, they weren't always writing, you know, Maria, black

to make life much simpler for people later trying to do statistics. Do we have any kind of a sense of what it would be like being a person of colour in Cheetah London? It's difficult to pick these things apart, isn't it? Because what did racism look like? Was there racism? Or were they sort of treated more as a novelty? Or what was going on about that time? Yeah, it's so difficult, isn't it?

Because undoubtedly Britain was xenophobic. England was formidably xenophobic. Like, any time there's some sort of economic downturn, And they're like, right, attack the Flemish. Let's go and burn down their houses in London. And of course, this is a country that has hundreds of years before expelled the entire Jewish population. Also the Italians in the 15th century, they get quite a lot of bad attention.

Anyone who is sort of economically perceived as threatening in the industry of the country gets attacked at some point or other. And the English are literally famed throughout Europe as being people who love themselves and their country so much. There's some European commentator in this time period who says the big thing about the English is that when they meet someone foreign and they like them, they say, oh, it's a shame they're not English.

And that's the whole attitude. So xenophobia, absolutely. Racism is much more difficult to pin down. And like in terms of how people of colour themselves felt or perceived this, it's so difficult because I'm not aware in this early 16th century period of any direct writing by them So you're kind of picking through to sort of try and understand that mentality.

Yeah. So it's really challenging. I suspect based on what Thomas Moore is writing, these formidably offensive comments. That wasn't great, was it? That probably racism was just a kind of, you know, the fact that people are described as blackermores or Ethiopes or Africans, like regardless of where they might actually be from,

suggests there's a real lack of interest in engaging with people's heritage. It is literally just, are you English? No, well then. That's it. That's the end of it. We're just going to hate anybody and everybody, really, that isn't English, quite frankly. So, Catalina, she's an enslaved woman, but can you give me any sort of a sense of what would her duties be as someone that was, I suppose, bonded to Catherine of Avargan? Because she wasn't like a lady in waiting because they were quite posh. So what was her job? What would she be doing? So we know that in England, we're not sure about in Spain, but in England, but in England, England, certainly, Catalina is responsible for making Catherine's bed and attending, and this is the really intriguing bit for me, attending to other secret services of the Queen's Chamber.

Oh, hello. I know. And you're like, what are the secret services? So there's been all sorts of suggestions. Is it perfuming things? Is it making things smell delicious? Is it literally, I'm trying to think now, what else would I want done in my bedroom? Could it be a menstruation thing?

It could be, yeah, potentially. So dealing with... That might be something they'd describe a secret. Yes. Yeah. Certainly a male clerk might well do so. Secret. It doesn't happen.

Secret. What I presume is it's lots of bodily things, probably, that she's attending to. That sounds like a bodily thing, doesn't it? Yeah. It's a secret thing. And also, of course, the Queen's sheets, her literal bedding, are very sensitive because from the Queen's sheets, you can tell, for instance, has she had? had any kind of sexual activity. Yes, menstruation, absolutely, and that becomes relevant in

terms of trying to work out if someone's pregnant because their periods will stop. Was she a virgin, Catherine of Aragon, when she got married either time? So there's lots of things that could be told from the sheets, certainly. And definitely from somebody that seems to have quite very close and personal access to Queen Catherine, close enough for it to be described as secret. That is someone with a lot of information, isn't it? Yeah, well, there's even a reference, again, in 1531 this is. So when the Spanish authorities are trying to find Catalina to get her to testify about her knowledge,

she's described as being very well informed about. I bet she was. Yeah. I'll be back with Lauren and Catalina after this short break. So Catherine of Aragon comes over with her huge retinue. She marries Prince Arthur, and we kind of always forget that we almost had a King Arthur, but it was not to be.

Why is this controversial? So they get married and then can you just describe to me what happens? Yes, somewhat. And therein lies the challenge. They get married. There's loads of ceremony around this, including the bedding and, you know, getting Catherine ready for bed and getting Arthur ready for bed. And then a really weird thing happens in the historical record where as far as we can tell,

the English records are all like, and they definitely had sex and Arthur was delighted about it and he was peacocking around the place, having a drink saying, ooh, it's thirsty work being a husband. And then the Spanish court records are all like, no, they didn't. It's really sad. We think Arthur might have something wrong with him. So they are actually married for November through till April, however many months that is.

Like five months, enough time to have had sex, quite frankly. Like it's not just a wedding night thing. They could well have done it. And they go away to Ludlow, which is where Arthur is based as Prince of Wales, and they're living there in their own little separate home. So it does, yeah, you presume that probably they had some sort of sexual relationship. But many months later, Arthur dies, firstly, which excuse me for saying that quite so bluntly. Yes, very unexpectedly.

Arthur dies and completely throws all of Tudor of planning and Catherine's future life. and the life of all of her household into complete disarray and uncertainty. You just get sick, doesn't he, and just keels over? Yeah, literally that, it seems to be. And no one expected this, no one was ready for it. It's a complete tragedy for the Tudor family and for Catherine. But from a completely political perspective,

then the question is what will happen to Catherine? At first, it seems quite straightforward. She will remarry Arthur's younger brother, who is, I think, five or six years younger than Catherine herself, who is Prince Henry. But then all sorts of financial things come into the mix. And even at this point, so even in like 1502, some people are saying, I'm not sure the Bible lets you marry your brother's widow.

Bit icky. I know, aren't you related now, spiritually? So there is some debate about it at that point. That goes on for years and years and years. Catherine lives a very sort of unpleasant life in many ways, in which she just is steadily running out of money and dealing with feuding courtiers who kind of just want to go back to Spain. really, many of them.

Catalina is definitely still in her household during this period, probably to be honest, because she's quite cheap, because she is one of the lower members of the household. And when finally in 1509, Henry the 7th dies, then Henry Tudor, Prince Henry, becomes King Henry VIII at 17 years old. And he immediately marries Catherine of Aragon, so clearly he wanted to. And at this point, again, we know that Catalina is a witness to this union too, because because there's this slightly weirdly phrased thing in the records of like, she was present when the king and queen were united as one,

which when the Victorian editors of the letters and papers were writing this up, they were like, that means when they were married. And you're like, I don't think it does. I think it means something a little bit more specific than that. Yeah, so Catalina, again, a witness, again making the bed, again attending to secret services of the Queen's Chamber. And now the big question is, was Catherine a Virgin? when she came to this marriage.

Had she actually had sex with Arthur before. If she had, did that mean that her marriage to Henry was illegitimate? And that doesn't really matter for a really long time until Henry VIII wants to divorce her and then it becomes like the crucial question of European politics. Because that's what he's kind of pinning this on, isn't it? Is Henry, when he wants to get out of it because he wants to knob and Berlin and get married to her,

but the Pope says, no, you cannot get divorced. So now he has to try and find a technicality as to why his marriage was null and void from the beginning. And if he can prove that Catherine wasn't a virgin, that she had had sex with his brother, then he's got biblical grounds to say, well, we should never have got married in the first place. So now this is a really big deal.

Yeah, exactly. It can't be a true marriage, her marriage to Arthur, if it was not consummated. So Henry... Do you think that it was consummated? Like five months of two teenagers, newlyweds being shacked up together and nothing happened? I totally think it was consummated,

but I have a theory for why the Spanish didn't think it was consummated because there's this kind of Christo-classical idea in medicine at this time that in order to consummate a marriage, in order to procreate and produce a child, both man and woman have to emit seed, which is like the grossest... The seed theory. It's like the grossest way of expressing.

effectively that each of them needs to orgasm. That's what it's really saying. Female orgasm being quite a complicated thing in the medieval period. Not really understood, let's be honest. And for, I think there's a fairly obvious way in which, like, teenage boy perceives, yes, we've definitely had sex because I orgasmed. I'm pretty sure she enjoyed it too. So yeah, definitely married. And then on the other hand, Catherine's saying, no, I didn't.

It wasn't a real marriage. So I think it's that. I think it's like their mutual lack of sort of sexual understanding and experience meant that you get these totally different, like polar opposite ideas in the Spanish court of Catherine and the English course of Arthur as to what had happened. Wow. What's the evidence for this?

Why do you, that's an intriguing theory. Why do you think that? I can totally see a teenage king going, yeah, I rocked a world, it was amazing. Just because it's so bizarre to me that you get such completely different interpretations based on who you're talking to, that the Spanish court seemed to genuinely all be like, no, no, it didn't happen. And the English court have a completely different perspective. And there's people who were around at the time in 50-0-1 onwards,

who were sort of somewhat witnesses to this, but they're witnesses after the fact, who, again, just like decades later, they're still saying, no, this is definitely what I was told. So it doesn't seem like there's a kind of political, pressure being put on them necessarily by Henry the 8th, I mean. I genuinely think there's just two totally different interpretations of what sex meant. And you can also imagine, like, they're communicating in Latin, Arthur and Catherine. Like, how do you say, you know, how was it for you

in Latin? Like, I don't know. I've been researching orgasms of late. So this is fascinating. And there was an understanding that the woman orgasm does an aid to conception. Yeah. Because from Greek theory, women were just kind of crap versions of men. And if men orgasmed to have a baby, then clearly women must be doing something similar. So that could be very, very

interesting. Do we have any documents or evidence from when they were actually married about were they happy? Were they like giddy and giggly and touchy-feely with each other? Or were they kind of weird with each other? Not loads. That's the other frustrating thing. Like we've got sort of two main sources for

the time that they get married and they're both quite official records. And Arthur comes across as very sort of respectful. And there's also some letters they write each other before they're married in which they clearly, you know, seem to be very keen. The fact that they want both of them to go to Lublo together is to me suggestive that they liked each other because actually Arthur's parents were quite keen on them being separated in those early days, partly because there was, you know, this kind of health aspect to it that like you don't want to be just having sex all the time and weaken your constitution. And if, like, correct me if I'm wrong about this, but I think there's this kind of weird idea that male semen is precious.

And so, like, if you're wasting it, then, you know, it's, it's as damaging as being bled somehow. Yeah. Sex and moderation, please. Yeah. And clearly Henry the Sevenths was like, I'm not sure he's going to moderate himself. So I don't think Catherine should go with him. And she and Arthur both say, we know we want to stay together. We want to be together. Loret, there's just no way. There is just no way that two horny teenagers were together for six months, especially knowing that you are responsible for the lineage of the future. Your whole thing is this. Go and shag the king and have a baby.

Like, that's the whole deal. There's just no way that that didn't happen. Yeah, I totally agree. I absolutely think that they were, like, having sex. I also think it would have been possible for Catherine to create a kind of world view. Yeah, exactly, in which technically they hadn't because, well, She didn't get pregnant. So conception hadn't occurred.

So why hadn't conception occurred? Well, maybe it was never really proper sex. So no. So then it wasn't consummated. I can totally see that. And of course, this is like a point in history when they have so little control women. You know, you get all of these instances. Catherine of Aragon in the 15th century, there's Margaret of Vonjou as well,

where they're like trying to get pregnant by endless religious fasting. So like the worst thing you could possibly do for conceiving a child. But it's the only power they have is like, what do I put in my body? Well, it has to be, you know, I have to put a penis in. But apart from that, everything else is under my control. So, like, it totally makes sense to me that she would be sort of retro rationalising. I'll be back with Lauren and Catalina after this short break. Do you think, and I'll just throw this out here, because I might have done this, right?

So you've got married to Arthur, you definitely had sex. But now you've got married to the King. And this thing comes up that if you did have sex with him, then you're going to get divorced and be chucked out and you're not going to be the queen anymore. Could it just be a bare-faced lie? I think it could be. She'd just be going, just be going, nope, no, we didn't. It was weird, but like we just don't, that didn't happen. I think it could be. I also think there is just, there's something really, like, steely in Catherine. Like, she's a child of the 15th century, and I really think 15th century people were built a bit differently. Like, they were flinty individuals

compared slightly to 16th century people in my mind. And I think that, I know, it's like weird. Everyone changed in 1,500. It's very strange. But I do think there was some core to her that was like, well, I'm not wrong. She's also deeply religious, like in a way that a heathen like me can't really fathom. So when she is saying, I swear before God that I was a clean maid or whatever it is, that is of real consequence to her. So maybe it wasn't a bareface.

Like maybe it was a technicality. Yeah, yeah. I think whatever she said, she believed. I just don't necessarily think that what she believed in her, what, 40s? God, I'm so bad at maths. I'm sorry. Whatever she believed in 1531 is not necessarily what happened 30 years earlier. Yeah.

Yeah, okay. I agree. Yeah, like this is why what you really want is you want to interview the person who is changing the bedding so you can be like, you know, you know, what was there, you tell us. And do they? So where's she gone? at this point. Imagine that. Imagine like having to go back to Spain and then being dragged all the way back to Britain just to talk about someone's laundry. But like what, how does she get dragged

back into this madness? Well, what's fascinating is she doesn't really get dragged back in. Her name does. She is sought extensively by various different Spanish authorities. But as far as I've been able to find out so far, she doesn't ever testify. So what we know, and we can reconstruct this from the kind of trail of the investigators who are trying to find them. her is at some point, and again, don't know when, at some point she leaves Catherine of Aragon's service and Catalina goes to northern Spain where she meets a crossbow maker called Oviedo. Nice. Yep, as you do.

They get married. They moved to Malaga, so perhaps Oviedo also had Granadan heritage or origins. In Malaga, they have two children. Then Oviedo dies. And in 1531, Catalina and her two children have moved back to where she originally came from in Montreal. And like, that is it. That is where the trail goes dead. We just don't know what happened. Like, we know that effectively she must have been free because she marries. She has children who are completely free. We know that she is being sought after extensively by like church authorities as well

because the church are the ones who make the decisions about, you know, stuff to do with marriage and divorce and things. But yeah, like she just disappears. And my big question is like, did she die? Did she actively try to stay away from this? I would. I would. I would. Yeah, totally. Like, somebody gave you a heads up of like, right, you've got your freedom. You're actually making quite a nice life here. But you're about to get dragged into this absolute shit show. And maybe she liked Catherine.

Like we don't, you know, I know that she's enslaved and that was really shit. But like, imagine being dragged back to, like, have to testify. And like, the fate of the Queen of England is going to rely on what you have to say. That's pressure. Yeah. And the fate of the church as well, ultimately, which. Oh, my God. Presuming that Catalina had been.

you know, Christianised and brought into the Catholic religion. She might well have had very firm opinions about the religion of that country, because Catherine of Aragon certainly did. So yeah, I think if I were her, I would have chosen as far as possible to, like, hide and stay out of the way of any investigation. I would not want to be dragged into it. God, yes. Were there any other servants?

Like, why is Catalina being singled out? Because Tudor bedrooms were not private affairs. I know that Catalina, it sounds like she was more intimate than most servants, but there would have been others. Yeah, yeah, there were. And lots of them are brought into the courts and asked questions. It's just that obviously they are saying things like, well, Catherine told me, blah, blah, blah, blah. Or Arthur said, blah, blah, blah, blah. The big difference, I think, with Catalina is that she is one of the only people who would have had physical evidence, basically. She would have seen, you know, is there blood on the sheets?

Is there something else on the sheets? like she is the person who is handling that stuff, as it were. And so she, it's like the smoking gun, basically. But we don't know what happened to her. She just very, very wisely just fell off the map. Yeah, at the moment, we don't know. It is possible. And I have this like, or somewhere in like Simancas,

there must be a little document somewhere hidden away or misfiled that maybe says what happened to her. They totally did it by Catalina. Yeah. C.M. My real name is blah, blah, blah. But at the minute, we don't know. So what happens to Catherine of Aragon then? Because the humiliation that gets heaped on Catherine of Aragon is really quite something that she has to be dragged before court. Yeah, and their child and the way that she is misstreated, like the way Mary is mistreated, the way that then later Elizabeth is mistreated. Like you have a man who murders his wife and we're all like, ho ho, ho, funny ginger chap.

What's a hilarious individual. What a jolly carry-on. let's have him at a banquet. That'll be enjoyable for everyone, won't it? He can joke about how you'll be his next wife and he'll kill the next. Ha ha ha. I don't get it. I don't. I hope that Catherine did Shag Arthur. Yeah. I hope that she did. Me too. I hope that she had a wail of a time. I hope so, because she had a really crappy rest of the time, didn't she? Like, she has seven years of misery before she gets remarried. And then she has a few years of happiness. She's like consistently, I think, traumatized by trying to conceive and by the loss of children. And then at the point

when she is demonstrably no longer able to have a child, Henry mistreats her. It's just hideous. He's a hateful human. Agreed. You're going to get no argument for me on that score. But as a final question, I mean, as a historian that's researched this woman,

it must be very frustrating that the trail just sort of vanishes. And there's this person that actually had the answers and could have given us the questions and she's just vanished. but what do you think that Catalina's life in the Tudor court, like her very presence, does that change how we think of Tudor England? Or does it kind of reinforce something for you? Because it just, it seems amazing to me that she was there and had such close proximity. But what's your take on that? I'd say what's her legacy? But she just vanishes. Yeah, I find it kind of delicious that she just disappears, I have to say. I think it is nice. I'm like, good. I'm kind of glad there's that lingering mystery. obviously it would be nice to have some things answered.

But I think like we saw in the case of Richard the third being found, it doesn't actually answer anything, does it? People still are debating loads of things around him. Yeah, unless she literally did write a little document where she says, yes, Catherine of Aragon definitely consummated her marriage. She was lying later, which I think is unlikely. It was just crap set. Yeah, exactly.

Yeah, I find it really intriguing. And I think with Catalina and with like more and more research that is being done around this era about the many different people who were in the country. For me, I think it just opens up the world because I think we kind of forget, like we still have this island mentality when it comes to Britain. We still think of it being, like you were saying with adaptations in period dramas and things. We're still like, no, they were white. Well, it's like, okay, if you want to actually represent a completely period accurate call,

what you need is a court full of really weird pale people with red hair. We haven't seen that, have we? but like, you know, suddenly having one person of colour in the background of a scene is a problem. I don't really get it. I think Catalina's presence proves the importance of people of colour throughout our history. The fact that she is at court at the same time as John Blank, the black trumpeter as well. Like, it's not just one person who's there. There's other instances of people throughout the whole country.

Some of them have African descent. Many of them of various Northern European or Italian descent. And that's not even dealing with the New World, which of which have. of course, like literally arrives in the midst of the Tudor period, like the fact that we find a whole we, the people of Europe, find a whole new continent with people living in it, some of whom are visiting Henry the 7th court and Henry the 8th court, like, this is a world. We are not just an island. We are a people who have always been connected to the wider world and we need to keep recognizing that. And any examples that we find of people who keep demonstrating that are a positive

to me. Absolutely. Lauren, you have been fascinating to talk to, and it's a real head scratcher that one, isn't it? They didn't, they did, they didn't. But if anybody wants to follow you in your work, where can they find you? Not physically.

They can not do that. You know, don't do that. You can come and meet me a book signing and talk to me when you've bought something from me. Give me money. You can find me at History underscore Lauren, various social medias, and Lauren dashjohnson.com.

Thank you so much for coming to talk to me, I've thoroughly enjoyed my stuff. Thank you for having me. And it's so good to get Catalina's story out. So thank you for giving me the chance to talk more about her. Thank you for listening and thank you so much to Lauren for joining me. And if you like what you heard, please don't forget to like review and follow along whatever it is that you get your podcasts. If you'd like us to explore a subject or perhaps you just wanted to say hello, then you can email us at betwixt at history hit.com. And if you're eager for more Tudor histories, then have a listen to our sister podcast, not just the Tudors, for more tales from this time.

We have got episodes on everything from the medieval nun who wrote about orgasming to a limited series on the witch trials all come in your way. This podcast was edited and produced by Stuart Beckworth. The senior producer was Charlotte Long. Join me again betwixt the sheets, The History of Sex, Scandal and Society, a podcast by History Hit. This podcast contains music from Epidemic Sound.