Re-roofing the hall at Corpus Christi College earlier this year has concentrated attention on Oxford’s connections with Catherine of Aragon (1485-1536). The work has brought into sharp focus the remarkable frieze, high up under the rafters, which contains the unfortunate Queen’s heraldic device: a pomegranate (‘Granada’ in Spanish) and the date 1516.

The date is remarkable because the college was not officially opened until March 1517. But Catherine’s connections with the college go back way beyond its foundation. Its founder Richard Foxe (1447-1528) negotiated her marriage contract with Arthur, Prince of Wales, elder brother of Henry VIII. She was first married to him (by proxy) in Burgos when she was 11 in March 1497 — though she had known for as long as she could remember that it was her destiny to marry the prince of a cold place called Gales.

Then she was married to him again, in person this time and at St Paul’s Cathedral, when she was 15 — exactly 510 years ago this week, on November 14 1501. Prince Arthur swaggered out of the bed chamber the next morning demanding beer; but whether or not the marriage — which lasted until Arthur’s death on April 2 the following year — was ever consummated is unknown; the none-too-delicate subject later featured prominently in Henry VIII’s unsuccessful applications to the Pope to have his own marriage to her annulled .

The Earl of Oxford, who as the Great Chamberlain of England was the only person outside her circle of Spanish ladies to be allowed to see her that morning, reported that the atmosphere was sombre. It probably got more sombre, too, after the princess, used as she was to the warmth of her native Granada, was sent off to live out the winter months of her short marriage at cold, old Ludlow Castle in the Welsh Marches.

Be that as it may, in happier days when she was married to Henry — and before he started clamouring for a divorce in order to marry Anne Boleyn — she used often to visit Corpus Christi when Henry was hunting at the Royal Palace in Woodstock. And she presented the college with its greatest treasure: the gilt Pomegranate Cup, made about 1515.

Catherine was something of an intellectual, following in the footsteps of her husband’s grandmother, Margaret of Beaufort, and concerning herself in the affairs of both Oxford and Cambridge. She was particularly interested in the education of girls and consulted Juan Luis Vives (1493-1540), the Valencia-born Doctor of Law at Oxford University, about the education of her daughter, Princess Mary. Vives resided at Corpus when in England and dedicated his book on women’s education to her.

Catherine must have heard something of Oxford even before she arrived in England, for Richard Mayhew, the second President of Magdalen College, was one of the embassy sent to fetch her from Spain to be Arthur’s bride. Even today, 16th-century tapestries adorn the President’s Lodging, depicting the betrothal of Catherine and Arthur.

Probably she loved the place. Certainly, when the Bishop of Lincoln (in whose diocese Oxford then lay) reported that a certain former Oxford student and son of an Ipswich butcher, Thomas Wolsey, was founding Cardinal College (now Christ Church), she was anxious to see the foundation. In 1525, she did so. She visited the shrine of the eighth-century saint Frideswide in what is now Christ Church Cathedral. She also visited the Holy Well at Binsey, where Frideswide is reputed to have summoned forth the water. Then Wolsey accompanied her to Corpus where she presented the Pomegranate Cup, before going on to dine at Merton.

What would she have thought of plans to allow elder daughters to succeed to the throne ahead of younger males? Probably not a lot, though she was enlightened and educated — indeed, the perfect wife for a king — she would have accepted the received wisdom of the time: that not producing a male heir was somehow her fault.