Henry VII.

was equally averse from the consummation of the match.

Now that he was scheming with Charles's other grandfather, the Emperor Maximilian, to wrest the government of Castile from Ferdinand's grasp, the alliance of the King of Aragon had lost its attraction, and it was possible that the Prince of Wales might find elsewhere a more desirable bride.

Henry's marriage with Catherine was to have been accomplished when he completed the age of fourteen; but on the eve of his fifteenth birthday he made a solemn protestation that the contract was null and void, and that he would not carry out his engagements.[62] This protest left him free to consider other proposals, and enhanced his value as a negotiable asset.

More than once negotiations were started for marrying him to Marguerite de Valois, sister of the Duke of Angouleme, afterwards famous as Francis I.;[63] and in the last months of his father's reign, the Prince of Wales was giving audience to ambassadors from Maximilian, who came to suggest matrimonial alliances between the prince and a daughter of Duke Albert of Bavaria, and between Henry VII.