Katherine’s First Miscarriage and False Diagnosis of a Twin Pregnancy

Katherine’s first pregnancy ended in the stillbirth of a daughter, and the reassurance that she had survived as one of twins prolonged the court’s expectation of an heir. The mistaken diagnosis shaped the months that followed: while Henry VIII and his household anticipated another birth, Katherine endured uncertainty, sought a private second opinion, and ultimately recognized that the pregnancy had not continued.

Background and expectations

On 24 June 1509, Katherine was crowned Queen of England beside Henry VIII. Anointed with holy oil and given the sceptre and ivory wand, she understood the ceremony as the fulfillment of a destiny she had long claimed. Her position as queen was also bound to the prospect of children. In the months that followed, Henry spoke of future news and hoped that a campaign against France might bring victory while Katherine gave him a son.

The queen’s medical care reflected the restrictions attached to her status. When Henry sent his physician to her, he could not examine her: the queen’s body was considered untouchable by anyone but the king. He asked questions at a distance and advised her against raw fruit and vegetables, despite her longing for the produce and dishes she had eaten in Spain. When Katherine gave the date of her last menstrual course as a guide to the pregnancy, he dismissed it; she, by contrast, recalled Moorish doctors using an abacus to estimate a birth. The exchange established a gap between the medical knowledge Katherine remembered and the authority exercised by the English physician who would later pronounce on her pregnancy.

The loss in January 1510

At Westminster Palace in January 1510, Katherine awoke in pain and found that she was bleeding. María de Salinas, who shared her room, summoned the queen’s ladies and midwives. By the time they arrived, Katherine believed that the child could not be saved. After a long day, she gave birth to a stillborn girl.

Her grief was sharpened by the hopes attached to the child. She had expected to bear a son for Arthur, Prince of Wales, and initially took some bleak comfort in the fact that the baby was a girl. That thought gave way to the memory that Arthur had wanted a daughter first, one they would call Mary. The loss therefore carried both the immediate sorrow of a stillbirth and the weight of promises she felt unable to fulfill.

Katherine could not bring herself to tell Henry VIII or write to her father. In her private reckoning, she had failed England, her husband, and Spain, and most painfully, Arthur. She withdrew from the anxious court and from women who offered accounts of their own stillbirths and recoveries. Her response kept the event largely private even as its dynastic implications made it a matter of concern to those around her.

The false assurance of a surviving twin

The king’s physician went from the queen’s apartments to Henry VIII with what he called good news: although Katherine had lost one child, he believed she was still carrying another. He based his confidence on her firm abdomen and the fact that the bleeding had stopped. Henry VIII, who had been repeatedly turned away while Katherine was in labor, received the claim as a reprieve and interpreted it as a sign of divine favor.

The physician’s judgment quickly became the court’s working assumption. In spring, he remained confident, while the midwives did not contradict him. Yet, as Katherine later understood, they had not independently confirmed a continuing pregnancy. They had been summoned to assist with a delivery; the claim that a twin survived came from the king’s physician. This distinction mattered: the court’s optimism rested on one doctor’s assessment, not on agreement among those attending the queen.

Henry VIII planned a tournament at Greenwich for after the expected birth and spoke confidently about the coming child. He was cautioned not to predict that it would be a boy, but said that he would love the baby as their firstborn whether it was a prince or princess. Katherine, meanwhile, concealed the poor opinion she had heard from a Moorish doctor and continued through the spring as though the pregnancy would proceed. She drew on her faith and sense of destiny rather than allowing herself to challenge the expectation on which the household had settled.

Doubt and the diagnosis overturned

Katherine spent March waiting for labor to begin. The midwives asked whether she felt pain or the baby moving; she did not understand what they meant by the baby quickening. They responded with reassurance that a quiet baby was strong and resting. Katherine tried not to revisit the warning from the Moorish doctor, but April passed without the expected birth. Her abdomen grew smaller, and she began bleeding monthly again, as she had since losing the girl.

She confronted the midwives with those facts. They could not explain them and redirected her to the king’s physician, whose original assertion they had never themselves made. The confidence of the earlier diagnosis had therefore given way to uncertainty: the signs Katherine observed did not match the pregnancy the court continued to expect. She quietly asked María de Salinas to find out whether the Moorish physician was still in London or when he might return, and not to reveal who had requested him.

The hidden consultation at Richmond Palace exposed another consequence of the queen’s position. Katherine allowed the physician into her private rooms because she believed she needed knowledge that could help her conceive and carry a child, but royal rules prevented him from examining her. He explained that he could offer only an opinion based on what he could see, rather than a conclusion grounded in examination. Katherine did not disclose his visit or his unfavorable assessment to Henry VIII or to Lady Margaret Pole. Instead, she continued the presumed pregnancy amid the English physician’s confidence and the household’s expectation.

Aftermath and significance

Once the false pregnancy became undeniable, Katherine asked to see the Moorish doctor again. In a later consultation, he considered the possibility of another conception and told her that the earlier pregnancy showed that both she and her husband could conceive a child. Katherine had been so overwhelmed by the loss that she had not considered this as evidence of fertility. His advice was practical: strengthen her body through riding before conception, then use a litter; walk, swim if possible, eat moderately, and avoid drinking much small ale. He also advised attention to the timing of conception in relation to her monthly course. These recommendations offered a different framework from the dismissive advice she had earlier received about food and reproductive timing.

The episode made Katherine’s body a site where private experience and public succession could not be separated. Her grief belonged to her, but the survival of a child was treated as a question for the king, his physician, and the court. Her inability to be examined restricted what the doctors could know, while the authority of a confident diagnosis allowed expectation to outrun evidence. The continuing monthly bleeding eventually overturned that expectation, but only after Katherine had spent months bearing it in silence. The loss and the false assurance thus established a recurring pressure in her story: the queen was expected to produce an heir, yet the knowledge and control of her own reproductive condition remained constrained by rank, medical convention, and dynastic need.