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been consummated was ignored; a papal dispensation was issued that allowed Henry to have children with his brother’s widow, regardless of her state of virginity. Strictly speaking, this second marriage was against church law if Arthur and Catherine had had sex, and Arthur’s insistence that they had would later give Henry his grounds for divorce. The Catholic Church, basing its judgement on Holy Scripture, forbade a man to marry his brother’s widow if they had had a sexual relationship. At the time, political expediency overrode Church law and the Pope absolved all parties from any sin.
    Catherine maintained that she and Arthur had never consummated their marriage. Catherine was extremely pious and it is unlikely that she lied about something as serious as this, even with a papal dispensation. Had she not been a virgin when she married Henry she would, in her own eyes, have been guilty of a mortal sin. Catherine’s later strength of conviction at the breakdown of her marriage to Henry VIII seems hard to imagine if she had known in her heart of hearts that her marriage to Arthur had been consummated. Catherine would not compromise as far as her religion was concerned and she would never tell a serious lie.
    For the young Henry the change from Duke of York to Prince of Wales must have been an exciting one. He stepped into his brother’s shoes, presumably with a mixture of sadness and delight. He took on many of his brother’s officers of the Court. Skelton, however, lost his place as Henry’s tutor. It may have been because his writing was getting more scurrilous (for example, the Bouge of Court , which painted the court as corrupt and self-seeking) and vulgar (‘Womanhood, Wanton, Ye Want’), or because he had an arrogant, quarrelsome nature. In 1504, he was appointed rector of Diss, Norfolk, with a stipend and pension from the King. William Hone became Henry’s new tutor. Unlike the colourful Skelton, little is known about the worthy, dull Hone.
    Still ruled by his tutors, the young Prince slept, ate, studied, worshipped and played games; he signed documents, but never attended meetings. He also now learned Italian, Spanish, medicine, astronomy, geometry and arithmetic. When Lord Mountjoy was in England, they read history together and worked on Henry’s Latin. Henry shared his lessons, in part, with his sisters, Margaret and Mary. He also shared lessons with the pages, who were his companions and personal servants. These included Charles Brandon, his best friend; John St John, his grandmother’s great-nephew; Edward Neville (so physically like Henry that they were sometimes mistaken for each other); and Henry Courtenay, son of Elizabeth of York’s sister. 12
    Just after Arthur’s death, Henry suffered another bereavement. Elizabeth of York died on 11 February 1503, after giving birth to a baby daughter, Catherine, who also died a few days later. Elizabeth was just 38 years old. Shortly after her death, Elizabeth’s children were taken to see her laid out in her robes of state. They knelt and prayed by her bed. Henry was just 12 years old, and was the King’s only son and heir. What thoughts went through the boy’s head as he gazed at the dead face of his beloved mother can only be imagined. To Henry, Elizabeth was a mixture of reality and myth – woman, queen and goddess – a child’s ideal of female perfection. The impact of her loss and that last farewell in the darkened room with candles flickering made a lasting impression on the young Prince.
    The Court became far more serious and much less fun with the deaths of Arthur and Elizabeth. It has been suggested that Prince Henry and Queen Elizabeth had been particularly close, forming an alliance as they were both ‘powerless when compared with the King and Lady Margaret Beaufort.’ 13 Henry had already suffered the loss of his siblings Elizabeth, Edmund and Arthur, and now he had also lost baby Catherine and his idolised mother. He grew to fear