The Six Wives of Henry VIII

Henry VIII is one of the most fascinating and controversial monarchs in English history, due in great part to the fact that he was married six times, more than any other monarch before or since[i]. The six women that he was married to are, likewise, captivating in their own right and quite dissimilar from each other. Alison Weir describes Catherine of Aragon as a staunch but misguided woman of principle; Anne Boleyn an ambitious adventuress with a penchant for vengeance; Jane Seymour a strong willed matriarch in the making; Anne of Cleves a good-humored woman who jumped at the chance of independence; Katherine Howard an empty-headed wanton; and Katherine Parr a godly matron who was nevertheless all too human when it came to a handsome rogue[ii]. Though some of the marriages were longer than others, each was controversial in some form and helped to shift England's ties away from the Catholic Church to that of the Church of England, Henry's own creation.

Catherine of Aragon, Henry's first wife, was born December 15-16, 1485 in Spain[iii]. The youngest child of Ferdinand of Aragon and Isabella of Castile, or, as the Pope designated them, "the Catholic Kings", Catherine was raised in strict Catholicism, a religion she would follow throughout her life[iv]. In 1487, as was customarily done with royal children at the time, she was betrothed to Arthur, Prince of Wales, the oldest son of Henry VII of England. As Henry's claim to the throne was quite tenuous, he needed an alliance with a strong nation like Spain in order to fend off usurpers, have protection from foreign invaders such as France, and start setting the scene for England to finally become a major player in world affairs. The 1497 Treaty of Medina del Campo ultimately sealed the deal and Catherine's fate[v]. After many proxy marriages and further negotiations, Catherine finally traveled to London in 1501 and she and Arthur were married on November 14.

Catherine and Arthur's marriage would prove to be short lived. Within five months, he was dead. Though their marriage was short lived, its ramifications would last for decades, as Catherine insisted that she was still a virgin. Alison Weir writes that though Arthur bragged about "feeling lusty" and that he had been "in Spain" on his wedding night, these were likely the "self conscious boasts of a boy who had failed in his duty and wanted no one to guess it"[vi]. Henry VII was not to be deterred, however. He wanted to keep Catherine' sizeable dowry and the precedence an alliance between England and Spain would bring, so he promptly began negotiations for a marriage between Catherine and his second son, Henry, the new Prince of Wales, who was then ten years old. Because she had been married to his brother, this required a papal dispensation, with Catherine swearing repeatedly that her first marriage had remained unconsummated[vii].

After his father's death, the newly crowned Henry VIII and Catherine were married in 1509. By all accounts the two were happy, with Henry appearing in jousts as "Sir Loyal Heart", Catherine's champion[viii]. However, by 1525, Catherine had undergone multiple pregnancies, including miscarriages and stillborn births and had only one daughter, Mary, to show for it[ix]. Henry needed a male heir and had begun looking elsewhere for female companionship, ultimately finding love with a woman named Anne Boleyn. He had begun to believe that his lack of a male heir was punishment for marrying his brother's widow and decided to petition the Pope for an annulment[x]. Catherine, however, refused to accept this as not only was she still adamant that her first marriage had been unconsummated, but annulling her second marriage would render her daughter Mary illegitimate. Therefore, she appealed to her nephew, Charles V, the Holy Roman Emperor, who had taken Pope Clement VII virtually hostage and refused to let him grant the annulment[xi]. For years, the King sent advisors such as Cardinal Wolsey to Rome to try to persuade the Pope, but he refused. Finally, on February 6, 1531, Henry VIII stood before Parliament and declared that from then on, he was the supreme head of the newly created Church of England, a body which remained Catholic, but had no papal authority[xii]. Catherine remained a staunch Catholic and refused to accept Henry's authority, so she appealed to Rome. Before the Catholic Church could come to a formal conclusion, however, Henry declared his marriage to Catherine invalid and married Anne Boleyn (who was already expecting their first child) in a secret ceremony on January 25, 1533[xiii]. Catherine was banished from court, forbidden to contact her daughter, stripped of her title of queen, and given the new title Princess Dowager of Wales, benefiting her status as Prince Arthur's widow[xiv].

Henry's second marriage was every bit as rocky as the last few years of his first. Anne Boleyn's birth year has been assigned to anywhere from 1501 to 1507[xv]. Some characteristics of her that are for certain, however, were her dark brown hair, the mole on her neck, and a tiny second nail on one of her fingers, which her enemies later labeled an extra finger, a sign of witchcraft[xvi]. She was the younger daughter of Thomas Boleyn and his wife Elizabeth, who was the daughter of the Duke of Norfolk. Thanks to her father's connections, she became a lady in waiting to Archduchess Margaret of Austria from 1513 to 1514 and France's Queen Mary (the sister of Henry VIII) and her successor Queen Claude from 1514 to 1521[xvii]. Upon her return to England, she joined the household of Queen Catherine as her lady in waiting, where her French manners, dress, and behavior made her a favorite at Court[xviii]. It was there that she first met Henry VIII, whose current mistress was Anne's sister, Mary[xix].

Anne soon became engaged to Henry Percy, the future Duke of Northumberland. However, Cardinal Wolsey, when hearing news of this, informed the King because not only was Percy already engaged, but the King's permission was necessary for all aristocratic marriages and it had not been sought in this case. The engagement was broken and Anne began a hatred of Wolsey that continued until his death[xx]. The King soon began making advances toward Anne himself and even offered her the position of his mistress, but she, surprisingly, refused him. She had seen how easily her sister had been discarded by him and she also wanted to keep her virginity, telling Henry "I would rather lose my life than my honesty, which will be the greatest and best part of the dowry I shall have to bring my husband"[xxi].

Henry was enraptured. Anne refused to sleep with him u
nless he married her, which was seemingly impossible. He sent her expensive gifts and wrote her love letters, but she knew that in order to retain his affections and possibly become queen, she must remain aloof[xxii]. They would do this for the next several years. As he grew increasingly more frustrated with his lack of a male heir by Catherine, the prospect of an annulment and subsequent marriage to Anne no longer looked so remote[xxiii].

When Henry finally did divorce Catherine after distancing himself from Rome and creating the Church of England, this freed him to marry Anne. Though the church Henry created would, decades later, eventually become Protestant, it was not so during his lifetime. Though Anne had some sympathy for those who advocated church was reform and was herself erroneously referred to as Lutheran, she, too remained Catholic[xxiv].

Anne was pregnant when she and Henry were married and in late 1533, she gave birth to a daughter, Elizabeth. Henry was so disappointed that he did not attend the christening[xxv]. Anne, however, bonded with her child immediately and expressed a desire to breastfeed her herself, which Henry forbade, queens did not do such things[xxvi]. Though she loved her own daughter, Anne was not as kind to Catherine's daughter Mary, her stepdaughter. She forced the girl to become a maid of honor to her younger sister and in 1534, Parliament, at Henry's request, passed the First Succession Act, which named Elizabeth as the true heir to the throne and made Mary illegitimate[xxvii].

Coincidentally, that same month, the Pope issued a proclamation that Henry and Catherine's marriage remained valid. Though Catherine expected to be summoned back to court, Henry declared once again that the Church of Rome had no authority over English affairs[xxviii]. When Catherine of Aragon died in January 1536, Henry and Anne mourned her passing by dressing head to toe in yellow (the Spanish color of mourning) and held a magnificent court ball[xxix].

Anne, however, had still not fulfilled Henry's wish for a son and by some accounts he had begun to tire of her[xxx]. In late 1534 she was pregnant with her second child, which resulted in a miscarriage and a few months later she believed she was pregnant again, but this turned out to be a false alarm[xxxi]. According to the Catholic Church, her marriage to Henry was invalid and Catherine's death, should he wish to reunite with them, meant that he was free to marry again. Her last miscarriage occurred in January 1536, shortly after Catherine's death, and by February, Henry had already made up his mind to get rid of her. Not only could he get married again, relations between Spain and France were strained and getting rid of Anne could help secure an alliance with Spain, Catherine's home country[xxxii].

Finally, it was decided that Anne should be accused of adultery, which for a queen is tantamount to treason. This charge would not only make her more disliked than she already was for usurping the beloved Catherine's position, but it would also make Henry more sympathetic. Even more importantly, because Anne was so flirtatious, it was a charge that would easily be believed[xxxiii]. Several men, including Anne's own brother George, were arrested, possibly tortured, and accused of sleeping with the queen. Anne, thus, was charged with incest, adultery, and treason[xxxiv]. Some of her accusers confessed to their crimes, but most likely under duress of torture and in the hopes of being allowed to live. All were found guilty and sentenced to death. At her own trial , her face was said to be expressionless, even when she was accused of poisoning Catherine and trying to poison her daughter Mary. Anne was found guilty and sentenced to death[xxxv]. Archbishop Thomas Cranmer soon declared her marriage to Henry to be invalid, which Antonia Fraser notes that "if Anne Boleyn had never been properly married to the King, she could hardly have committed adultery as his wife"[xxxvi]. She was executed on May 19, 1536[xxxvii]. After that day, Henry would never utter her name again[xxxviii].

Henry married Jane Seymour ten days after Anne's execution[xxxix]. She was born in 1508 and had previously been a maid of honor to both Catherine of Aragon and Anne Boleyn, the former whose religion she had in common[xl]. In many ways she was the opposite of Anne. She was light while Anne was dark and, most importantly, while Anne was passionate and argumentative, Jane was calm and passive[xli]. However, despite her historical reputation, Jane was not all sweetness and light. Anne was aware when she and Henry began sleeping together, as he began lavishing extravagant gifts on her. One of those gifts, a locket containing Henry's portrait, Jane gleefully opened and shut in front of her mistress. Anne ripped the necklace from Jane's neck so violently that she cut her own finger[xlii].

One of Jane's biggest contributions as Queen was to help to heal the rift between Henry and his daughter Mary. While she apparently showed little interest in Elizabeth, whom the Second Act of Succession had excluded from the line of succession, Jane had had a great deal of affection for Catherine of Aragon and wanted to do right by her daughter[xliii]. Her only other notable contribution as Queen was to give Henry, finally, the son he desired. Prince Edward was born October 12, 1537[xliv]. Ten days later, Jane "departed this life, lying in childbed, about 2 of the clock in the morning, when she had reigned as the King's wife, being never crowned, on year and a quarter"[xlv]. Losing a wife who he had no wish to be rid of was a new experience for Henry.

Though plans for a fourth marriage were already being made soon after Jane's death, Henry waited nearly three years before marrying again. His advisors were pressuring him for a more politically advantageous match, such as his marriage to Catherine of Aragon, and finally it was decided that he would marry one of the sisters of the German Duke of Cleves who was a supporter of the Protestant Reformation[xlvi]. He sent his court painter Hans Holbein to paint portraits of both Anne and Amelia. Henry found the portrait of Anne much to his liking and made a formal proposal of marriage. Her brother, the Duke, consented, but only if he did not have to pay a dowry, claiming both poverty and the belief that "any woman marrying Henry VIII would only know insecurity and unhappiness"[xlvii].

Anne of Cleves was born in Dusseldorf in 1515. Though she had been chosen for marriage in part because of her Protestant connections, she had actually been raised Catholic, under the influence of her mother, who, as Antonia Fraser notes, "was no Isabella of Castile...concerning the education of women"[xlviii]. Though he was fond enough of her portrait, Henry was not as impressed with Anne herself. After seeing her for the first time, he declared "I like her not"[xlix]. Despite this, he honored his agreement and the two were married. The marriage remained unconsummated, however, as the two simply spent their wedding night playing cards[l]. Their marriage lasted from January to July 1540, as Anne wisely put up no fight when Henry declared his wish to have the marriage annulled[li]. Instead of the life in miserable exile Catherine of Aragon had when she refused to have her marriage annulled, Anne would receive an annual income, three homes, and the status of being the King's honorary sister. She would also be the longest lived of Henry's wives, dying in 1557[lii].

Part of Henry's insistence on annulling his marriage so quickly is that he had already found the woman who would become his fifth wife. Katherine Howard, who was born between 1520 and 1525, was a first cousin of Anne Boleyn and both had inherited the same flirtatious nature[liii]. She was raised by her step-grandmother, the Dowager Duchess of Norfolk, who allowed her guardian to run wild. However Henry referred to her as his "rose without a thorn[liv]. Despite their age difference of more than twenty years (Katherine was younger than Henry's daughter Mary) the two were married in July 1540[lv].

Right away, Alison Weir notes, Katherine revealed herself as "a frivolous, empty-headed girl who cared for little else but dancing and pretty clothes"[lvi]. Early in her marriage she renewed her relationships with Thomas Culpepper and Francis Dereham, men with whom she had been sexually involved while living with her step-grandmother[lvii]. An informer told Henry about the affair. At first, he refused to believe it, but finally he saw reason. Katherine's lovers were tried and executed. She, too, was found guilty and on February 11, 1542, Katherine met the same fate as her cousin Anne Boleyn[lviii].

By the time Henry married for the sixth and last time he was overweight, consumed by syphilis, and was no longer looking for a sexual companion. Instead, he just wanted a nursemaid for himself and a kind stepmother for his children[lix]. In Katherine Parr, he found such a woman. She was born around 1513 and by the time she married Henry in 1543, she had already been widowed twice[lx]. Though raised a Catholic, she became increasingly interested in "the new faith" and ultimately converted to Protestantism, making her England's first Protestant Queen[lxi]. She was kind to Henry and even kinder to his children. She helped to bring about a closer relationship between the King and his three children, uniting the entire family for the first time on Christmas 1543. Her efforts succeeded enough that in 1544 Henry passed the Third Act of Succession, which brought Mary and Elizabeth back into the succession once more[lxii]. When Henry died in 1547 he could rest easy knowing that his family, despite its differences in religion, had been reunited. Katherine, after Henry's death, would marry for a fourth time. In 1547, she married her stepson Edward VI's uncle, Thomas Seymour, and brought her stepdaughter Elizabeth to live with them. However, she died in childbirth the next year[lxiii].
In conclusion, the six wives of Henry VIII were six incredibly different women. Alternately described as "the Betrayed Wife, the Temptress, the Good Woman, the Ugly Sister, the Bad Girl, and the Mother Figure"[lxiv], each, in her own way, helped to shape the culture and religion of England and contributed to making their shared husband one of the most notorious monarchs in world history. Their ultimate legacy can be seen as mothering or being stepmothers to Henry's children, the next three successive monarchs who would rule England for nearly sixty years after their father's death. It is perhaps ironic, then, that these three, Edward VI, Mary I, and Elizabeth I, who saw these women divorced, beheaded, die, and survive, would go on to parent no children of their own.

[i] David Williamson, Debrett's Kings and Queens of Britain (Topfield: Salem House, 1986), 107.

[ii] Alison Weir, The Six Wives of Henry VIII (New York: Ballentine, 1991), 3

[iii] Williamson, 111. Weir, The Six Wives of Henry VIII, 19. Antonia Fraser, The Wives of Henry VIII (New York: Knopf, 1992), 9.

[iv] Ibid., 9.

[v] Ibid., 17. Weir, The Six Wives of Henry VIII, 16-17.

[vi] Ibid., 34.

[vii] Fraser, 37. Weir, The Six Wives of Henry VIII, 39. Williamson, 112.

[viii] Weir, The Six Wives of Henry VIII, 95. Williamson, 112. Jasper Ridley, Henry VIII: The Politics of Tyranny (New York: Viking Penguin, 1984), 48.

[ix] Williamson, 120. Alison Weir, The Children of Henry VIII (New York: Ballentine, 1991), 2.Weir, The Six Wives of Henry VIII, 120. Fraser, 69.

[x] Carolly Erickson, Royal Panoply: Brief Lives of the English Monarchs (New York: St.Martin's, 2003), 156. Williamson, 121.

[xi] Ibid., 121. Erickson, Royal Panoply Brief Lives of the English Monarchs, 156. Marie Louise Bruce, Anne Boleyn (New York: Warner, 1972) 80.

[xii] Weir, The Six Wives of Henry VIII, 221. Fraser, 177.

[xiii] Weir, The Six Wives of Henry VIII, 241. Fraser, 187. Ridley, 214.

[xiv] Weir, The Six Wives of Henry VIII, 243. Fraser, 195-197. Williamson, 121.

[xv] Ibid., 121. Fraser, 115. Weir, The Six Wives of Henry VIII, 147. Bruce, 11. Carolly Erickson, Mistress Anne: The Exceptional Life of Anne Boleyn (New York: Summit, 1984), 261.

[xvi] Bruce, 11. Williamson, 122.

[xvii] Ibid., 122. Weir, The Six Wives of Henry VIII, 155.

[xviii] Ibid., 155.

[xix] Ibid., 155. Bruce, 41.

[xx] Weir, The Six Wives of Henry VIII, 157. Fraser, 125.

[xxi] Weir, The Six Wives of Henry VIII, 160.

[xxii] Ibid., 161-164. Fraser 128-129. Bruce, 58.

[xxiii] Ibid., 80. Erickson, Mistress Anne: The Exceptional Life of Anne Boleyn, 105.

[xxiv] Weir, The Six Wives of Henry VIII, 144. Fraser, 1.

[xxv] Williamson, 122. Weir, The Six Wives of Henry VIII, 258. Weir, The Children of Henry VIII, 6.

[xxvi] Weir, The Six Wives of Henry VIII, 260.

[xxvii] Ibid., 264. Fraser, 202.

[xxviii] Weir, The Six Wives of Henry VIII, 267.

[xxix] Ibid., 299. Fraser, 230. Erickson, Mistress Anne: The Exceptional Life of Anne Boleyn, 240.

[xxx] Weir, The Six Wives of Henry VIII, 261. Bruce, 254.

[xxxi] Weir, The Six Wives of Henry VIII, 271-272. Fraser, 219.

[xxxii] Weir, The Six Wives of Henry VIII.

[xxxiii] Ibid., 309. Fraser, 242.

[xxxiv] Weir, The Six Wives of Henry VIII, 311-313. Fraser, 242.

[xxxv] Weir, The Six Wives of Henry VIII, 324-326. Fraser, 243.

[xxxvi] Fraser, 254.

[xxxvii] Ibid., 255.

[xxxviii] Weir, The Six Wives of Henry VIII.

[xxxix] Williamson, 123.

[xl] Ibid., 122-123.

[xli] Weir, The Six Wives of Henry VIII, 290-291.

[xlii] Ibid., 307.

[xliii] Ibid., 305. Williamson, 123.

[xliv] Ibid., 123. Weir, The Six Wives of Henry VIII, 367.

[xlv] Elizabeth Longford, ed. The Oxford Book of Royal Anecdotes (Oxford: Oxford, 1989), 214.

[xlvi] Williamson, 123.

[xlvii] Weir, The Six Wives of Henry VIII, 386-388. Ridley, 333.

[xlviii] Fraser, 298.

[xlix] Ibid., 305.

[l] Ibid., 311-312. Williamson, 124.

[li] Williamson, 124. Weir, The Six Wives of Henry VIII, 422.

[lii] Ibid., 422. Williamson, 123.

[liii] Ibid., 124. Weir, The Six Wives of Henry VIII, 413.

[liv] Ibid., 415.

[lv] Williamson, 124.

[lvi] Weir, The Six Wives of Henry VIII, 434.

[lvii] Fraser, 340.

[lviii] Williamson, 125.

[lix] Ibid., 125. Anthony Martiennsen, Queen Katherine Parr (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1973), 153.

[lx] Ibid., 16. Williamson, 125.

[lxi] Ibid., 125. Weir, The Six Wives of Henry VIII, 496. Fraser, 1.

[lxii] Weir, The Six Wives of Henry VIII, 502. Williamson, 126.

[lxiii] Ibid., 125.

[lxiv] Fraser, 1.

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