No Go At Ludlow

Ludlow Castle, Shropshire

Ludlow Castle An hour’s drive to the southwest of St Bartholomew’s Church near the border with Wales is Ludlow Castle. It peaked my interest because Benedicta de Ludlow (1392-1451) is my 16th great grandmother and I assumed there was a connection between her family and the Castle. I know the Ludlows didn’t build it, the Norman castle builder Walter de Lacey did around 1075. Ludlow was the administrative centre for the region and one of a string of castles built along the welsh border to counter incursions by the indomidable Welsh. The name Ludlow was attached to the castle before 1138. It derives from Old English and means ‘a place on a hill (low) by loud (lud) waters.’ Thus, it seems, ‘de Ludlow’ is a reference to the place where Benedicta’s family lived, which may or may not have been the castle.

No matter. It turns out that a generation or so later, in 1501, another rellie did move into Ludlow castle with his new bride — 16 year old Arthur Tudor, Prince of Wales, Earl of Chester and Duke of Cornwall (to rest the mind, allow me to point out that all four of those gentlemen were Arthur), eldest son of King Henry VII and heir apparent. His bride was Catherine of Aragon, a Spanish princess. It was a marriage arranged by King Henry and the King of Spain to cement the alliance between their nations. These two were the power couple of the day.

Those were tumultuous years. England had been devastated economically and socially by the Hundred Years War (1337-1453). A mere two years after that war ended, civil war broke out in England between the House of Lancaster and the House of York, rival factions of the long-ruling House of Plantagenet. That messy business, called the Wars of the Roses (Lancastrians were associated with the red rose, Yorkists with the white rose) carried on for 32 years, ending in 1487. Enter King Henry VII, a Lancastrian (they got the last whack) who came up with the brilliant idea to marry Elizabeth of York, effectively joining the two houses and securing domestic peace.

Then Henry upped the ante and arranged for his eldest son Arthur to marry Catherine of Aragon and secure an Anglo-Spanish alliance against France. Things were looking up. With Spain and Britain on the same side, the risk of French aggression would be considerably reduced. Peace meant Henry might even be able to stash a few gold ducets for a rainy day. Hopefully he did, for it wasn’t long before it rained.

Arthur and Catherine set up housekeeping in Ludlow Castle but six months later Arthur died. The cause of death was either not known or not revealed. Either way, Arthur, a healthy, strapping young man was suddenly dead. That put Henry in a bit of a pickle with the King of Spain who was counting on the alliance. Understandably, Britain and the rest of Europe were, by that time, sick to death (pardon the phrase) of blood, guts and rolling heads.

Peace was in the air but marriages were needed to to serve as glue. Henry, resourceful soul that he was, quickly realized he had a groom in reserve — his other son Henry. King Henry made the necessary arrangements for Catherine to switch horses. Her marriage to Arthur was annulled on the basis of failure to consummate. Catherine swore up and down (pardon the phrase) that in the six months she lived with handsome, tall, affable, well-built Arthur, they never had sex. It seemed reasonable. Every one of Henry’s courtiers nodded and agreed, as did the King of Spain. And Catherine lived to see another day, which, as it would later turn out, was more than two other wives of Henry VIII got to do. What she couldn’t have known is that in front of her lay a lifetime of uphill sledding with an obese, brute of a man whom, shall we say, lacked the graces of a Spanish monarch but possessed the cunning of a jackal.

The cause of young Arthur’s death was never uncovered. However, I have my suspicions.