Arthur, Prince of Wales - Question of Consummation

Question of Consummation

Immense controversy surrounds the question of whether or not Arthur and Catherine consummated their brief marriage, for the subsequent history of England and even of British Christianity was strongly influenced by the issue. Modern readers may think it likely that a teenaged couple sharing a bed and legally married to each other would also engage in sexual intercourse, particularly since Catherine and Arthur understood the production of heirs as a pressing and essential duty.

Catherine's dueña Doña Elvira Manuel said that the marriage was not consummated, though some historians argue that Doña Elvira was never close to the girl, whom she would later betray. Yet Arthur himself, before the wedding night, had stated that he was feeling very 'lusty and amorous', and Anthony Willoughby, one of his attendants claimed that on the following morning he had called for a cup of ale, saying "for I have been this night in the midst of Spain". Later the Prince also said, "Masters, it is a good pastime to have a wife." Nevertheless, Arthur's ribaldry could have been bluster to cover up a failure to consummate the marriage.

Some find it difficult to believe that the fervently devout Catherine, who insisted that her marriage to Arthur had never been consummated, would lie. Others point to Catherine's difficult situation after Arthur's death and argue that she did lie.

The first time Catherine publicly claimed that her marriage to Arthur had not been consummated was when Henry sought the annulment; the subject had not been mentioned earlier, and it is possible that Catherine lied to protect her reputation, her marriage to Henry, and the rights of her daughter, Mary. To say otherwise would have been an admission of fornication as well as a condemnation of Princess Mary to illegitimacy. Catherine claimed that she and Arthur had shared a bed for only seven days.

What Henry really wanted was a son, since he had historical reasons to believe that England would not accept a female monarch. During his marriage to her, Catherine had given birth to several living children, but only Mary survived infancy. Henry realised with the passing years that the ageing Catherine was unlikely to produce a son and heir, and he was having notorious affairs with sisters Mary Boleyn and Anne Boleyn. His annulment from Catherine and his marriage to Anne were predicated on his claim that he and Catherine had produced no living son because he had disobeyed a Scriptural injunction and married his brother's widow – which Catherine would have been, had Arthur and she consummated their marriage.

During the annulment hearing, Henry VIII looked at the Hebrew version of Leviticus 20:21, which states that it is unclean for a man to take his brother's wife and that, if a man did, the union would be childless. He decided to use Leviticus as the basis of his annulment argument, against the advice of Cardinal Wolsey.

This dispute, and Henry's inability to obtain papal dissolution of his marriage, would come to be a major cause of the English Reformation. Whatever the truth of the matter, whether Henry had found Catherine to be a virgin on their wedding night has never been recorded. However, when he was trying to annul his marriage to Catherine, he ordered bloodstained bedsheets, supposedly from his brother's marriage night as proof of the consummation. How or why these sheets should have been preserved for so many years, and how their authenticity could have been proved, was not explained.