Wives of Henry VIII

• 1. Introduction

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  The wives of Henry VIII share a fate summarized by British schoolchildren in a six-word rhyme: divorced, beheaded, died, divorced, beheaded, survived. It is catchy, it is memorable, and as historians now point out, it gets most of the legal facts wrong. Henry VIII never actually divorced any of his wives. Three of his marriages were annulled, meaning the Church of England declared those unions had never truly taken place at all. That distinction mattered enormously at the time, shaping the fate of two queens, the succession of three monarchs, and the entire religious settlement of England. Between 1509 and his death in 1547, Henry married six women. His first marriage alone lasted nearly twenty-four years. The five that followed lasted just over ten years combined. Across those relationships, two women were beheaded, one died shortly after childbirth, one outlived them all, and one survived to become the most married queen in English history. The questions worth asking are not simply who these women were, but how each shaped the world around her, and how the world around her shaped what happened next.

• 2. Catherine of Aragon

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  Catherine of Aragon was born on the 16th of December 1485, the daughter of the Catholic Monarchs of Spain. She arrived in England not as Henry's bride but as his brother Arthur's, and the two were married before Arthur died of sweating sickness in 1502. She was a year older than Arthur had been, and six years older than the boy who would become her second husband. When Henry came to the throne in 1509 at age seventeen, Catherine was twenty-three, and a papal dispensation already existed to allow the marriage.

  The early years brought repeated grief in the childbed. A girl was stillborn after Catherine's first pregnancy. A son, Henry, Duke of Cornwall, was born in 1511 but died within two months. A stillborn boy followed in 1513, then another who died within hours in 1515. Finally, at age thirty, Catherine bore a healthy daughter, Mary, in 1516. Her reported words at the time carry a quiet hope: "We are both young. If it was a daughter this time, by the Grace of God the sons will follow."

  No son who survived to adulthood ever followed. By the late 1520s Catherine was in her mid-forties, and Henry had grown desperate for a legitimate male heir. He turned to the Old Testament, specifically Leviticus Chapter 20 Verse 21, to argue that marrying a brother's widow was forbidden by scripture, and that the marriage had therefore been void from the start. The Pope refused to act on this argument. Henry did not wait. He separated from Catherine in 1531 and ordered Thomas Cranmer, the Archbishop of Canterbury, to convene a court. On the 23rd of May 1533, Cranmer ruled the marriage null and void.

  Catherine was sent away and did not see Henry or their daughter Mary again before her death at age fifty, in isolation, on the 7th of January 1536. The annulment was posthumously reversed during the reign of her daughter Mary I, restoring Catherine's status as Henry's lawful wife and rightful queen consort. William Shakespeare, in the play Henry VIII, gave her the title "The queen of earthly queens."

• 3. Anne Boleyn

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  Anne Boleyn was the daughter of Sir Thomas Boleyn and Elizabeth Howard, daughter of Thomas Howard, the 2nd Duke of Norfolk. She had been educated in Europe by Margaret of Austria and spent several years in France as a lady-in-waiting to Queen Claude. When she returned to England, she entered the court of Catherine of Aragon, where her sister Mary had already been the king's mistress.

  Anne refused to follow her sister's path. She declined to become Henry's mistress entirely. He wrote her love letters, including one in which he admired her "pretty duckies," and his pursuit of her became, in the source's words, "the one absorbing object of the King's desires." The Pope, Clement VII, was unlikely to grant an annulment from Catherine, so Henry began to break the power of the Catholic Church in England. Cardinal Wolsey was dismissed from public office. Thomas Cranmer, the Boleyn family's chaplain, was appointed Archbishop of Canterbury. Henry and Anne held a secret wedding on the 14th of November 1532; he was forty-one and she was in her mid-twenties. A second, official ceremony followed in London on the 25th of January 1533.

  Anne was crowned Queen consort of England on the 1st of June 1533, and gave birth to a daughter, Elizabeth, on the 7th of September that year. By 1536 she had suffered several miscarriages without producing a male heir, and Henry had lost patience. Thomas Cromwell, once Anne's ally, devised a plot against her. She was accused of sexual relations with her brother George Boleyn and several other men; the evidence was described at the time and since as unconvincing. Her marriage to Henry was annulled on the 17th of May 1536. Two days later, on the 19th of May, she was beheaded at the Tower of London.

  After her daughter Elizabeth came to the throne in 1558, Anne was venerated as a martyr of the English Reformation, a status reinforced largely through the works of John Foxe. Modern historians note that portrayals of Anne as a dangerous seductress owe more to Victorian morality and twentieth-century cultural anxieties than to anything in the contemporary record.

• 4. Jane Seymour and the Heir

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  Jane Seymour had served both of her predecessors at court. She was maid-of-honour to Catherine of Aragon from 1532, then a lady-in-waiting to Anne Boleyn. She was the daughter of Sir John Seymour, a knight, and Margery Wentworth, and was probably born at Wulfhall in Wiltshire. The source describes her as of lower birth than most of Henry's wives, able to read and write only a little, but skilled in needlework and household management.

  In January 1536, as Anne Boleyn's position was deteriorating, Henry turned his attention to Jane. When Anne was arrested for treason in May 1536, Jane was quickly moved into royal apartments. She married Henry on the 30th of May 1536 at the Palace of Whitehall, eleven days after Anne Boleyn's execution. He was forty-four; Jane was twenty-eight. As queen, she was known for her peaceful nature, and she managed to repair the strained relationship between Henry and his daughter Mary.

  Almost a year and a half into the marriage, Jane gave birth to a male heir, Edward. She died twelve days later, on the 24th of October 1537, from postpartum complications. She was the only one of Henry's wives to receive a royal burial. When Henry died in 1547, he chose to be buried beside her in St George's Chapel, Windsor Castle. Whether that decision was sentimental, a political signal intended to reinforce the legitimacy of young Edward, or some combination of both, the source notes remains unclear.

• 5. Anne of Cleves

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  Anne of Cleves was a German princess, born on approximately the 22nd of September 1515. Her marriage to Henry lasted just six months, from the 6th of January 1540 to the 9th of July, making her queen consort of England for the shortest reign of any of his wives. Henry may have called her "A Flanders mare," and that label has persisted.

  The match was arranged diplomatically in 1539 by Henry's chief minister Thomas Cromwell, as an alliance between England and Cleves. The painter Hans Holbein the Younger was sent to produce a portrait for Henry to evaluate. Anne's brother, however, required that both Anne and her sister Amalia wear veils while being painted, which prevented Holbein from capturing their faces directly. Henry approved the portrait and requested Anne be sent to him. When she arrived in person, he was disappointed. She did not look like her portrait.

  Anne did not contest the annulment, supporting the grounds that the marriage had not been consummated. She was rewarded generously: a settlement that included Hever Castle, the former Boleyn family home, and the title "The King's Beloved Sister." She became a lifelong friend to Henry and his children. She was approximately the same age as his eldest surviving daughter Mary. She outlived Henry and all five of the other wives, dying at Chelsea Old Manor on the 16th of July 1557, most likely from cancer. She was buried in Westminster Abbey on the 3rd of August.

• 6. Catherine Howard

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  Catherine Howard was the daughter of Lord Edmund Howard and Joyce Culpeper, and a first cousin to Anne Boleyn. She had grown up in the household of her step-grandmother, Agnes Howard, Duchess of Norfolk. Her uncle, Thomas Howard, the 3rd Duke of Norfolk, was a prominent figure at Henry's court, and it was he who secured her a place in the household of Anne of Cleves in 1540. Catherine caught Henry's interest there.

  She married Henry on the 28th of July 1540 at Oatlands Palace in Surrey, just nineteen days after the annulment of the Cleves marriage. He was forty-nine; she was still a teenager, estimated at roughly sixteen to eighteen years old. On the 1st of November 1541, Henry was informed of her alleged adultery with Thomas Culpeper, a distant cousin; Henry Mannox, who had given her music lessons while she lived with her step-grandmother; and Francis Dereham, the Duchess's secretary, with whom she had apparently had a relationship before her marriage. Catherine was stripped of her title in November 1541 and beheaded on the 13th of February 1542 at the Tower of London on grounds of treason.

• 7. Catherine Parr

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  Catherine Parr was born around July or August 1512, the daughter of Sir Thomas Parr of Kendal and his wife Maud Green. She was, through a chain of descent traced through John of Gaunt, Henry's third cousin once removed on one line and fourth cousin once removed on another. She had been widowed twice before Henry married her on the 12th of July 1543. He was her third husband.

  Catherine is noted in the source for a specific legislative achievement. She worked to secure the passage of the Third Succession Act, which restored both Mary and Elizabeth to the line of succession despite the fact that earlier annulments had made them legally illegitimate. At the time the act passed, Catherine was thirty-one, Mary was twenty-seven, Elizabeth was ten, and Henry was fifty-two. Henry trusted Catherine enough to name her regent of England while he went to war in France, with instructions that she would serve in that capacity until nine-year-old Edward came of age should Henry die abroad.

  When Henry did die in January 1547, Edward Seymour, the 1st Duke of Somerset, stepped into the regency role through the Regency Council rather than through Catherine. After Henry's death, Catherine married Thomas Seymour, the brother of Henry's third wife Jane. She had one child by Seymour, a daughter named Mary Seymour, but died shortly after childbirth at age thirty-five or thirty-six, on the 5th of September 1548. Thomas Seymour was executed for treason in 1549. Catherine Parr holds a particular distinction in the source: she was the most married queen of England, with four husbands in total. She is buried at Sudeley Castle in the town of Winchcombe.

• 8. Memory, Myth, and Legacy

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  The mnemonic taught to English-speaking students for centuries runs: "Divorced, beheaded, died; divorced, beheaded, survived." It is catchy. It is also legally imprecise in most of its clauses. Catherine of Aragon's marriage was annulled, not divorced. Anne Boleyn's marriage was annulled two days before her execution, not after. Anne of Cleves also received an annulment rather than a divorce. The historian's correction would read: "Annulled, annulled, died; annulled, beheaded, survived."

  A separate mnemonic for the order of the wives uses their surnames in popular culture: "Arrogant Boys Seem Clever, Howard Particularly," standing in for Aragon, Boleyn, Seymour, Cleves, Howard, Parr. The rhymes serve memory but flatten complexity. Modern historians note that each generation has reinterpreted the wives as victims, saints, seductresses, or feminist icons depending on contemporary values, and that Victorian morality and twentieth-century cultural anxieties shaped many of the more dramatic portrayals.

  Three of the wives left children who became monarchs: Catherine of Aragon was the mother of Mary I, Anne Boleyn was the mother of Elizabeth I, and Jane Seymour was the mother of Edward VI. Catherine Howard and Anne Boleyn were first cousins. Jane Seymour was second cousin to both of them. Several of the wives served in the household of a predecessor: Boleyn served Catherine of Aragon, Seymour served both Aragon and Boleyn, and Howard served Anne of Cleves.

  The pop-rock musical Six, written by Toby Marlow and Lucy Moss, opened in Edinburgh in 2017 and moved to the West End in January 2019. Its North American premiere was at the Chicago Shakespeare Theater in May 2019, followed by Broadway in March 2020. Its tagline, "Divorced. Beheaded. LIVE in concert!", deliberately echoes the schoolroom rhyme. The show's central argument is that the wives deserve to tell their own stories, not merely be remembered by how their marriages ended. David Starkey, the English historian, offered a characterization of Henry as a husband that captures something the rhymes cannot: in the beginning of his marriages, Henry was, by Starkey's account, "a very good husband," addressing some of his wives as "sweetheart" and providing generous settlements of land and jewels. The same man had two of those wives beheaded.