If you haven’t read last week’s episode, I recommend doing that to get up to speed because today I’m just jumping in. We left Henry, having annulled his first marriage and his second marriage, plus chopping off Anne Boleyn’s head for good measure.

Jane Seymour, Wife #3

It took Henry only one day after Anne’s death to get himself engaged to Jane Seymour, and only ten days after that to get up a wedding, and only four days after that for her to be proclaimed queen. No one can say Henry didn’t have good executive function. When he wanted to get things done, things got done.

Jane herself was definitely a choice made on the rebound. She was not particularly educated, not witty, not glamorous, not musical, not argumentative, not challenging in any way. The exact opposite of Anne Boleyn. Henry called her of “loving inclination and reverend conformity” (Gristwood, 194).

This makes her automatically less interesting to most modern people, which I think is a trifle unfair because Jane did manage a miracle. I’m not talking about the birth of her son. I’m talking about her work with Mary, Henry’s daughter through Catherine of Aragon, wife #1. Relations had been tense with Mary, as you can imagine.

Jane wanted be a peacemaker, and she managed it. Mary was welcomed back to the family. It is true that she had to sign that her parents’ marriage was invalid, and she was a bastard. (That’s a technical term, there.) But still, this was improvement (Gristwood, 195).

The other time Jane dared to express an opinion, it was about granting pardons for some protestors. Henry, ever the charmer, told her to remember what happened to the last queen who meddled in public affairs. That would probably be enough to shut me down, and it worked on Jane too.

Anyway, she didn’t have time to do much more because in October 1537, she gave birth to what Henry wanted more than anything: a legitimate son. Two weeks after that, she was dead of complications.

Jane gets a lot of press as the wife Henry truly loved, which I think is nonsense. To the extent that he was capable of love, I believe he had loved Catherine of Aragon, and I will also believe he had loved Anne Boleyn. It’s just that his love was deeply flawed, as he himself was deeply flawed. I’m not sure he had time to love Jane. If he chose to be buried next to her, it was because she gave him the son that was the purpose of all of these marriages. That and she didn’t live long enough to disappoint him.

Anne of Cleves, Wife #4

An heir was a beautiful thing, but far from sufficient. Henry knew only too well how fragile one son’s life was. Hadn’t he been the second son himself? A spare was needed and for that he needed a wife.

Marriage #4 marks the one and only time that Henry behaved like a normal monarch, by which I mean that he sent negotiators to foreign courts to seek a politically advantageous alliance via a bride he had never met.

He did try to meet them. When various French brides were suggested, he said they should all come to Calais and he could go too, to pick out the one he liked best. Nowadays it sounds reasonable to want to meet your fiancée before committing yourself, but this was not how things were done, and the French negotiator asked acidly whether Henry intended to try all these women in bed before making his decision?

Thomas Cromwell, the advisor who had brought down Anne Boleyn, then turned Henry’s head toward the Lutheran princes of Germany as allies and Anne of Cleves as a bride. Henry hadn’t met her, but he did send his court painter to make her Tinder profile portrait first. This was the acceptable way to check out a potential bride’s looks. Henry’s envoys still managed to offend the locals by criticizing their fashions. They said that you could hardly see the girl for all the clothes.

But that was smoothed over, and the profile pic looked okay and by all reports, her nonvisual description was much like Jane Seymour’s: not particularly educated, not particularly glamorous, but gentle, and good.

The wedding was on, and Anne and her entourage came to England. Henry was excited, so he decided to surprise her by coming to meet her on her journey. Not as himself, which would have been boring, but in a courtly disguise, straight from chivalric love stories. His stated purpose was to “nourish love” (Fraser, 305). He burst in on her, pretending to be there to deliver a present from the king.

According to the grand courtly love tradition, Anne was supposed to see through the disguise. How, after all, could a mere disguise conceal the glory and majesty of a king, God’s anointed representative on earth?

Unfortunately, Anne was just an ordinary woman, not a character in a romance. She completely failed to notice all that glory and majesty. She gave some brief courteous remarks and showed no further interest in the messenger.

Honestly, it is hard to see how she could have done more. Besides the disguise, there was also the fact that she only spoke German. Nevertheless, Henry was crushed. Love remained unnourished, and he left without giving her the present. He was already looking for a way out of this marriage. Since it was diplomatically arranged, that was awkward. The Holy Roman Empire wouldn’t have liked any backsliding, and he did marry her on January 6, 1540.

But things did not get better. Henry didn’t manage to consummate the marriage. He said he found her “loathsome” (Gristwood, 205). It was definitely not his fault—nothing was ever his fault. So it must have been her being so ugly that was the problem, right?

Historians love to debate just how ugly Anne of Cleves was. Her portrait is not ugly (see above). But then again, maybe the portrait is not accurate.

No matter whose fault it was, clearly no son was coming out of this alliance. Also, Henry had cooled on the idea of a German alliance, and by now he was a pro at getting an annulment.

It has been suggested that possibly all this loathsome nonconsummation stuff was made up after the fact as an excuse for an annulment Henry wanted for political reasons. However, that is not the majority view among the sources I read. It is true that the statements about the wedding night were not recorded in January, but why would you expect them to be? A king like Henry would hardly want to publish his impotence to the world. It might raise worrying doubts about him. In the case of Anne Boleyn, it can be shown that the accusations about her were contradictory and flatly didn’t fit the known facts. But in the case of Anne of Cleves, the testimonies of various people were remarkably similar and do fit the known facts of Henry’s behavior for the next few months (Fraser, 311; Gristwood, 206).

On June 24th, Anne was sent away from court. In early July she was told that Henry was concerned about a possible pre-contract she may have had with another man before the marriage. Pre-contracts were legally binding, so maybe their marriage wasn’t legal after all. This had been mentioned before and resolved, but now Henry was concerned again, and we know how super concerned Henry was about the legality of his marriages. Especially when he was looking for an out.

By mid-July, Anne was no longer married and no longer queen. She had done nothing whatsoever to fight this, which was wise. She had no arguments that would have held up, and she knew perfectly well how badly it could go if you argued against Henry.

In the end Anne of Cleves got the best bargain of all the six wives. Not only did she live, but she was rewarded for going quietly: she got a palace, a castle, several other properties, and an honored place at court where she was referred to as “the King’s Beloved Sister.” It was not what she had been promised. It was hugely embarrassing. She didn’t get to live as queen, and she never got to go home to her own family either. I don’t envy her. But it was a whole lot better than what the other wives got. She outlived Henry by ten years.

If Henry managed to be reasonably gracious to Anne (other than calling her loathsome), he was less so to the man who had promoted that match in the first place. Thomas Cromwell had said Anne would be a good choice, and he was wrong. So off with his head. The exact charges didn’t mention Anne. But then again, they didn’t need to. He knew what his real offense was, and he didn’t get a trial. The ghost of Anne Boleyn may have felt that justice was well served.

Catherine Howard, Wife #5

On the very same day that Cromwell lost his head, Henry married Catherine Howard.

Catherine was young, but her birth date is obscure. Henry probably wasn’t that fussed about her exact age, but it matters to modern listeners because we have clear ideas about the age of consent. Catherine most definitely was not a virgin bride, and if modern laws had been in place, that meant she was a victim of child abuse, not the one at fault, and her lovers should be in jail.

But it wasn’t modern times, and the laws were different. So what it meant was that Catherine was badly brought up, badly chaperoned, and badly behaved. Lots of people knew that. It’s just that Henry wasn’t one of them.

Catherine took as her personal motto Non autre volonté que le sienne, which means “no other will than his” (Weir). This would prove to be a singularly unfortunate choice. Henry imagined himself to be in newlywedded bliss while a young gentleman named Thomas Culpeper grew overly fond of the new bride. She had several meetings with him. They both later swore that they had no more than touched hands. Culpeper also said they fully intended to move on to touching a lot more than that.

As a teenager of probably no more than seventeen (Weir) and a wife of just over a year, Catherine was hauled in for questioning. Tearfully she admitted to the pre-marital sex, and the more recent private meetings with Culpeper, though she denied adultery with him.

Nevertheless, Henry was stunned. So stunned that it took him two months to get Catherine beheaded, rather than the two weeks he had spent doing the same to Anne Boleyn.

Henry is also recorded to have shown real grief at Catherine’s downfall, more so than at the loss of any of his four previous wives (Gristwood, 214). The question is why. And again, I think the comparison with Anne Boleyn is telling. Last week I mentioned that Anne was almost certainly innocent but what is unclear is whether Henry himself believed the adultery charges.

My unprovable suggestion is that somewhere deep down, he knew they were false. With Catherine Howard, it was different. At least some of her misbehavior was true, and that is why it hurt him more. His own self-image was probably the same as it had been back when he had caught Catherine of Aragon’s heart: he was young, handsome, charming, athletic, and rich. Exactly what young girls dream about.

Catherine Howard’s behavior forced him to confront the fact that he wasn’t that man anymore: he was aging, overweight, cantankerous, murderously vindictive, and he had open sores on his leg that would not heal and smelled bad.

A young girl had preferred Thomas Culpeper.

So Henry’s grief was real enough. But it was grief for himself, not for her. That’s my psychoanalysis anyway. Other interpretations are possible.

Another problem was that this marriage was so new, and Henry was so surprised by the outcome that he had yet to pick out his next victim wife.

Catherine Parr, Wife #6

Another man might have given up on the dream of matrimony at this point, but not Henry. Interestingly, another person who hadn’t given up was Anne of Cleves. She was still around, and she made herself available, but Henry didn’t follow up on it (Weir).

His sixth wife was his third one named Catherine. Catherine Parr was another choice made on the rebound because she was nothing like Catherine Howard.

At age 30, she was quite mature by Tudor standards. Plus, she had already been widowed twice over. Her own personal tragedy was that she had ideas about a third husband, and Henry wasn’t her choice. She wanted to marry Thomas Seymour, brother of Jane Seymour.

But when a king proposes, how do you say no? Especially when you’ve got plenty of evidence to suggest that crossing him would be perilous to your health? So they were married in a quiet ceremony on July 12, 1543.

At age 30, it was technically within the realm of possibility that Catherine might give Henry the son he still desperately wanted, but even he, with his enormous capacity for self-delusion, could see that a legitimate spare for the throne was a goal that grew more remote with every passing day.

That is probably why Catherine Parr was so successful in her attempts to heal this very troubled family. The youngest child was Edward, and he was also the heir. He was Jane Seymour’s son, but he loved Catherine so much he called her “dear mother.”

Just older than him was Elizabeth, daughter of Anne Boleyn, and she was pleased too. Catherine noticed that Elizabeth loved learning, and she took care to ensure that she had good tutors dedicated just to her.

The oldest was Mary, daughter of Catherine of Aragon. At only four years younger than her new stepmother, you can see that might have been awkward, but relationships progressed there too.

In 1544, when a new succession act passed, it said Edward was the heir (no surprise). If he died without children, the throne would go to Henry and Catherine Parr’s children. If there were no such children, the throne would go to Mary, illegitimate though she still legally was. If Mary too should die without heirs, then it would go to Elizabeth, illegitimate though she still legally was.

It was vindication, sort of. It was also desperation. It was the act of a king who could see the writing on the wall and knew he was leaving his country in a precarious position.

As it happens, Henry being Henry might have made it even more precarious. Catherine Parr was very interested in religious reform. You might think that Henry was in favor of religious reform, but at this point in his life, he really wasn’t. At this stage, he was condemning both Catholics and Protestants because what he wanted was for the fuss to settle down (Weir).

Catherine Parr read religious reform books and shared them with her women. She even wrote and published her own book of Prayers and Meditations, which incidentally was the first book written by a woman under own name in English. Henry was annoyed because politically it made his life complicated.

Annoying Henry was not a safe thing to do. He planned to seize Catherine’s book and send his wife to the Tower because in his experience that’s definitely the way you manage misbehaving wives. But it turns out that he was the one who got managed. Catherine came in to plead for herself. (Not argue, just plead.) She swore that Henry was her only anchor, that she had no opinions of her own, and that her only interest in theological debate was to distract his burdened mind from the pain of his leg.

It was maybe not a proud feminist moment, but it was an eminently practical one. And it worked. Henry’s ego was soothed, and when the guards came to arrest her as ordered, Henry swore at them, not at her.

Just take a moment to imagine a world where Catherine Parr had been hotheaded instead of realistic. It might have been seven wives.

But she was realistic, and she was still living when Henry died on January 28, 1547, which is why in the nursery rhyme divorced, beheaded, died, divorced, beheaded, survived, she is the wife who survived.

For a limited time, she also thrived. At least she proved that Henry wasn’t the only one who could get things done in a hurry. Within five months, she married Thomas Seymour as originally planned, and they did it secretly. By the time anyone could ask whether such haste was in good taste, it was too late.

She also went right ahead and published another book on religious reform. It was fully Protestant in a way Henry never had been, including the doctrine of salvation through faith alone.

Sadly, Catherine didn’t get to enjoy a Henry-free life for long. At the age of 35, she became pregnant for the first time. She had … a daughter. Catherine died of complications five days later.

Henry’s Legacy

We have now made it through six wives of Henry VIII, and the most striking thing about them is how very, very different they all are.

For historians, politicians, and the religious, Henry’s biggest impact is that he made England Protestant. But he didn’t do that because of religious principles. He sort of sidled into it accidentally by way of trying to fix his family problems (and consistently he really just made them worse). It’s likely that a whole lot of subsequent history would have been radically different if Catherine of Aragon had been able to bear a living son. Or if Henry had been able to cope with the idea of leaving the throne to his daughter, Mary.

For everyone more interested in pop culture than religious history, Henry is primarily remembered as the man who had six wives and killed two of them. For a man who thought so well of himself and his own accomplishments, I’ve got to imagine that legacy really, really irks him.

We have now had three episodes in a row, so next week is a bye week for this series, according to my new schedule. However, there will be a bonus episode available on Patreon, and please do watch for the next regular episode on a different kind of woman: Deborah Read, the wife of Benjamin Franklin.

Selected Sources

Fraser, Antonia. The Wives of Henry VIII. Vintage, 30 Apr. 2014.

Gristwood, Sarah. The Tudors in Love. St. Martin’s Press, 13 Dec. 2022.

Guy, John, and Julia Fox. Hunting the Falcon. HarperCollins, 24 Oct. 2023.

Tremlett, Giles. Catherine of Aragon: Henry’s Spanish Queen : A Biography. London, Faber And Faber, 2011.

Weir, Alison. The Six Wives of Henry VIII. Open Road + Grove/Atlantic, 1 Dec. 2007.

Wooding, Lucy. Tudor England. Yale University Press, 11 Oct. 2022.