Tudor Marriage: Scandal - Henry VIII

Henry VIII is a man well-known for breaking any and all barriers surrounding marriage. When one is king, it is possible to create new rules to suit one’s purpose, and no one understood this better than the second Henry Tudor. He is one of the reasons that the Tudor dynasty continues to captivate people to this day. The scandal of all those wives is magnetic in its drama and unprecedented rebellion against the Catholic Church.

Henry surmounted barriers to marry and then rid himself of his succession of six wives. The Anglican Church thrives to this day due to Henry’s inability to allow anyone to have any authority over him. Rome had provided him with the dispensation he desired in order to clear the way for his first marriage, but when they would not give him the annulment that he wanted twenty years later, the Church of England was born.

Divorce, as we know it today, did not exist at Henry’s time. A couple might have their marriage annulled, but that dissolved the union as if it never existed. Children were bastardized and any betrothal contract agreements over division of property were void. Couples might separate in cases of adultery or abuse, but they were still married according to ecclesiastical law and could not remarry. Clearly this would not work in Henry’s case.

The Family of Henry VIII and
Allegory of the Tudor Succession

Claiming sinful consanguinity, Henry set Katherine aside by annulling their twenty year marriage, but he had issues to deal with before he could marry Anne Boleyn. She had been betrothed to Henry Percy, she was far below the king’s status, and those who did not support Henry’s annulment believed him to still be married to Katherine. The king handily set this all aside by founding his own church to back up everything he decided to do.

Splitting the Church of England from Rome allowed Henry to not only marry where he wished, but it brought his empty coffers the riches of the offerings that had once gone to the Pope. With the Dissolution of the Monasteries, he was able to enrich himself and reward others by plundering ancient religious houses.

It did not take long for Henry to tire of Anne, her high-strung demeanor had been tempting compared to the matronly Katherine but was wearying in a wife. More importantly, she had not provided him with the male heir he needed. A more dastardly path was taken to rid himself of his second wife.

Anne was not offered the opportunity to retire to a convent as Katherine had been. With no patience remaining for another long battle for single status, Henry’s most devoted men, Bishop Cranmer and Baron Cromwell, made it their priority to take care of the Boleyn problem.

They could have pointed to the long ignored precontract, but that would not satiate Henry’s desire to be rid of Anne immediately and for good. Therefore, a plot was hatched to accuse Anne of adultery, a treasonous offense for a queen since it put the succession of the crown into question. One of the men accused was Anne’s own brother, George. Whatever one thinks of Anne Boleyn, and she is a controversial character to this day, she and the five men who died with her did not deserve their fate.

With Anne dispatched by a Frenchman’s sword, Henry was free to marry again, and he did so only ten days later. Jane Seymour was probably the least troublesome of Henry’s wives, and that is likely the reason she was chosen. Calm and submissive where Anne had been fiery and tempestuous, Jane came to the crown with little protest.

Had she survived, the story of Henry’s scandals might have been much shorter, but poor Jane died less than two years after becoming queen. To her credit, she did so after providing the long awaited male heir.

Henry was content to wait a few years before marrying again, though one boy in the cradle was a risky foundation for the succession. He did not consider his two girls worthy of his crown, and he himself was only king because his older brother had predeceased him. Henry knew he needed more sons.

His break from the Catholic Church had fanned the flames of reformation in England, and there were some who were eager for Henry to make even more changes in how the English worshiped. They pressed the suit of Anne of Cleves, a German Lutheran princess. After unsuccessfully pursuing a couple of other ladies, including Christina of Denmark who famously quipped, “If I had two heads, I would happily put one at the disposal of the King of England,” Henry accepted Anne.

It seems that as soon as Henry laid eyes upon Anne of Cleves, he was disappointed in her. For her own part, she submitted to his desire to annul their marriage after six months. Lack of consummation of the union was given as grounds for dissolving their union. Anne went on to live “as the king’s sister” in England for the rest of her life, but Henry went on looking for love.

His fifth wife was one to be pitied for her youth and inability to navigate the murky waters she had been tossed into. Katherine Howard was a sensuous cousin of Anne Boleyn, and maybe the aging Henry believed that she would be able to arouse him in a way that Anne of Cleves had not. While she is more likely guilty of the adultery charge that led to her death as a traitor, it is difficult to feel less sympathetic toward her than Henry’s previously executed spouse.

Single again, Henry looked once more for a woman who might give him a second son. With his health problems making it necessary for Henry to frequently be carried about in a large chair to save him from the painful task of walking, his mortality was undeniable. A third Katherine was selected to be Henry’s sixth and final bride.

Katherine Parr was a widow in her early thirties. She had not borne any children, which makes her a somewhat unusual choice for the king who was obsessed with the idea of bearing sons. However, her first husband had been very young when he died and her second very old, so Henry might have believed that Katherine would be fruitful enough if given the right seed.

There was no particular barrier to marrying Katherine Parr. She was a widow and her lack of status was something that Henry had habitually ignored in his choice of wives. While it had been a scandal for his grandfather, Edward IV, to marry one of his own subjects, Henry had made the practice commonplace. He had also normalized annulment and divorce, practices that were rarely performed before Henry made such extensive use of them. Katherine was in love with Thomas Seymour, but she knew her duty and accepted the king’s proposal.

Katherine was clever and devout. While she failed to provide Henry with another son, he trusted her enough to make her regent when he attempted to make war on France. Had she borne him a child, she may have enjoyed that position again when Henry died while Prince Edward was only nine years old. Instead, Edward VI was surrounded by a council of men who fought for eminence and Katherine was free to marry Thomas Seymour, as had always been her will.


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Additional Reading:

De Lisle, Leanda. Tudor: Passion. Manipulation. Murder. The Story of England’s Most Notorious Royal Family. New York: PublicAffairs, 2013.