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with a dowry of 300,000 crowns and an annual income of 30,000. In addition, Prince Henry was to marry Eleanor, the daughter of Philip and Joanna, and Princess Mary was to marry their eldest son Charles, who was heir to Spain through his mother and to the Holy Roman Empire through his father.
    Neither side seems to have pushed the marriage; Margaret herself was opposed to the union. Late in 1506, however, circumstances changed. Philip the Handsome died suddenly on 25 September, and Henry immediately approached Ferdinand, asking for the hand of his newly widowed daughter, Joanna; she had had six children with Philip – Charles, Ferdinand, Eleanor, Isabella, Mary and Katherine – which boded well for new princes and princesses of England.
    On 15 January 1506, Philip the Handsome and Joanna had been stranded in England by a storm when their ship was damaged; Philip was on his way to Spain to attack Ferdinand, who was refusing to give up control of Castile to Joanna, as rightful heir. Prince Henry was sent to Winchester to meet Philip who had landed at Melcombe Regis, near Weymouth, Dorset. Joanna had stopped at Wolverton Manor, Dorset, as she was suffering from a bout of illness.
    Philip and the young Henry took to each other immediately and were able to talk in French. Philip the Handsome was everything the Prince thought a king should be – handsome, religious, brave, aggressive in war, fond of wine, women (he enjoyed a string of casual sexual encounters) and song. Henry VII met the pair just outside Windsor the following day. During the month of the visit, Henry and Philip were constantly in one another’s company. The King spent extravagantly to impress Philip and everything was sumptuous and exuberant. On 10 February Joanna joined the party at Windsor.
    On leaving England Philip and Joanna went on to Spain. There they formulated a truce with Ferdinand who withdrew from Castile; however, when Philip died, on 25 September 1506, the cause was rumoured to be poison, administered on the orders of Ferdinand. Henry was devastated by the news of Philip’s death. The loss of someone he admired raised an interesting mention of his mother’s death and the effect that it had on the boy. He wrote to Erasmus on 17 January 1507:
    ‘The news of the death of the King of Castile, my wholly and entirely and best-loved brother, I had reluctantly received very long before your letter … For never, since the death of my dearest mother, hath there come to me more hateful intelligence … because it seemed to tear open again the wound to which time had brought insensibility.’ 17
    When Henry VII had met Joanna during this visit to England, albeit for a few days, he had expressed romantic feelings for her: ‘If when she was in England I had acted as I secretly wished, I would by every means have prevented her leaving my court. But I was prevented by my Council.’ 18 He told the Spanish Ambassador that he believed her to be unhappy rather than mad. He said Philip the Handsome’s unfaithfulness obviously upset her. He, on the other hand, would love and cherish her.
    Joanna appears to have suffered some kind of nervous debilitation. Her symptoms were depression (partly brought on by her husband’s public infidelities) and a habit of forthright speech. The symptoms might indicate manic depression. Despite this, in England at least, the marriage was considered seriously. Dr Roderigo Gondesalvi de Puebla, the Spanish Ambassador in London from 1487, wrote to Ferdinand: ‘… the English seem little to mind her insanity, especially since I have assured them that the derangement of her mind would not prevent her from bearing children.’ 19
    Ferdinand kept Henry VII dangling, right up until his death in 1509. In March 1507, Ferdinand wrote to his daughter Catherine, whom he was using as a go-between:
    ‘She [Catherine] must tell the king that it is not yet known whether Queen Juana [ Joanna] be inclined to marry again, but if the said Queen