The historian and professor Garrett Mattingly (1900-1962) was a student of 16th-century Europe who wrote the novel-like histories Catherine of Aragon and The Armada.

Born on May 6, 1900, in Washington, D.C., Garrett Mattingly was the son of Ida Garrett and Leonard Mattingly, a civil servant and industrialist. Young Mattingly attended elementary school in Washington until 1913, when his family moved to Kalamazoo, Michigan. Here he enrolled as a student at the local public high school and graduated in 1918.

After graduation he enlisted in the Army and served with the 43d Infantry Division until 1919. In that year he entered Harvard University, where he majored in 16th-century literature and history and from which he received all three of his degrees: a B.A. in 1923, an M.A. in 1926, and a Ph.D. in 1935. At Harvard he studied European diplomatic history under the direction of the distinguished historian of 16th-and 17th-century Spain, Roger Bigelow Merriman, who, Mattingly once said, "taught me whatever I know of my craft." Mattingly was an outstanding student who published an article on Shakespeare, was elected to Phi Beta Kappa, and, in 1922, while still an undergraduate, received a Sheldon Travelling Fellowship which enabled him to spend a year studying in France and Italy. Even at this stage of his life Mattingly's interests were eclectic—in addition to his historical studies he wrote poetry, began a novel, and served as a stringer for several French and Italian newspapers.