PLACE NAME
Catherine of Aragon (December 16, 1485 – January 7, 1536) was Queen of England from June 1509 until May 1533 as the first wife of King Henry VIII. The fiercely intelligent, thoughtful and popular Catherine was the daughter of Isabella I of Castile and Ferdinand II of Aragon. Following her first short-lived marriage to Arthur, Prince of Wales, heir apparent to the English throne, she served as ambassador – the first female ambassador in Europe – of the Aragonese Crown to England in 1507. She then married her deceased husband’s brother, the recently crowned Henry VIII. The couple had one daughter, later to become Mary I, but the lack of a male heir infuriated her husband. By 1525 Henry had fallen for Anne Boleyn and sought to have his marriage annulled marking the start of the English reformation. The adjoining Seymour Drive is named after Henry VIII’s third wife, Jane Seymour, who served as Queen of England from 1536 to 1537 following the execution of Anne Boleyn.
