The Tudors (Part 6): The Last Three Wives of Henry VIII (with Anna Morris)
Artie Mead: ‘Hi, everyone. So welcome back to the History Buff and the History Buff series on the Tudors. The Tudors are the real Game of Thrones. Again with me, Artie, your resident History Buff, and recurring History Buff, Anna.’
Anna Morris: ‘Hello, everybody. Welcome back.’
Artie Mead: ‘We’re actually back for the sixth episode of this series, and this is actually going to be the last episode for a while. I’m going to go on a much-needed break because I have been doing a lot of episodes basically since I got back from travelling, and so I’m ready for a bit of a break. But also because I am about to start a History Master’s, that is going to require a little bit of my attention. Basically, in this episode, we’re going to discuss the last three wives of Henry VIII. So that is Anne of Cleves, Catherine Howard, and Catherine Parr. So maybe, without further ado, should we get into it? Or do you have anything you want to say beforehand?’
Anna Morris: ‘So I think the last three wives of Henry VIII, it was all, it was a different focus. Definitely more on the, you know, looking to see what political gain could be achieved, which was different from the first three wives.’
Artie Mead: ‘I don’t think there was as much passion involved.’
Anna Morris: No, I mean, especially as when we got to the fourth, so Anne of Cleves. It’s the first time Henry hadn’t seen or met his bride before getting married. And I think that was, this is an anomaly in his—this one and maybe the wedding of his marriage to Catherine Parr is a bit of an anomaly because you see the focus or his motivation changing. You know, it’s a different, it’s a political marriage with Anne of Cleves. You know, they’re very much under international threat, which we’ll get into later. With Catherine Parr, the new focus is on setting up his dynasty or the next steps for when he is gone. So his focus is: who can look after my son, who can maintain my legacy, who’s in the best position to, you know, create or maintain what I see as the future for the Tudor crown.
Artie Mead: Yeah, and it’s important to also mention here that by this point, Henry is becoming, I mean, he’s not becoming, at the start of this, when we’re going to be talking about, he’s not that old, although I guess maybe in Tudor times, it was old. So I guess before we get started, obviously Henry’s later years, let’s call it that, his later years, were marked by increasing instability, both physically and politically. And yeah, his reign, as you mentioned, became characterised by sort of personal ambition, political manoeuvring, and obsessions with securing the dynasty for his son Edward. Towards the end of his marriage with Anne Boleyn, he injured himself in a jousting accident, and that definitely had quite an effect on him. And then of course, after the death of his third wife, Jane Seymour, which really devastated him, Henry’s health deteriorated, and he started—that is when he really started gaining quite a lot of weight.
Anna Morris: Yeah, and that’s when we—that’s kind of the image we associate with Henry VIII, this huge man, you know, this kind of tyrant. He suffered very bad gout, said he had syphilis. I mean, he was in really poor shape and very unattractive. I think it’s fair to say.
Artie Mead: And it’s a shame because ambassadors always used to comment on how beautiful he was when he was younger, and it’s just a shame to see how far that deteriorated as he got older. He, you know, became, as you said, quite tyrannical. And also another health problem he had is that when he had his jousting accident, it buggered up his leg, and it was ulcered, and which kind of flared up here and there for the rest of his life, and was a source of like really a lot of—
Anna Morris: Real discomfort.
Artie Mead: Real discomfort. And he had to lock himself away because he was so kind of ashamed of what it did to his image as a king.
Anna Morris: It also made him so angry.
Artie Mead: Yeah, his temper was like—
Anna Morris: I would not have liked to have been at court.
Artie Mead: I would not have liked to have been there either. But yeah, I mean, I guess his marriage in this period reflect his quest for stability and, you know, securing it for his male heir, but also his declining emotional and physical state.
Anna Morris: Yeah. And also, so if we think about domestic changes, obviously, after the break with Rome, I think it was in 1938, where—
Artie Mead: 19? You mean 15.
Anna Morris: Sorry.
Artie Mead: Yeah, but I also saw that. I did it in the last episode. I did this, and I didn’t. I said 1935 or something, and neither of us noticed, and it’s out there.
Anna Morris: Yeah, 400 years prior to 1938. So in 1538, Henry was officially excommunicated, and the Pope actually, you know, put out kind of a, you know, I wouldn’t say a warrant for his arrest, but it actually encouraged Catholic countries to invade and kind of said that war against England is very honourable at this point.
Artie Mead: Especially after the dissolution of the monasteries.
Anna Morris: Well, yeah, in that whole period, Henry starts from 1538 dissolving the larger monasteries as well. You had various Acts still to follow. The 39, there was the Second Act for the Dissolution. And—
Artie Mead: Which was completed in 1541, I believe. And so, obviously, it filled his coffers, but it made a lot of enemies in the Catholic states.
Anna Morris: Yeah, so he’s—if we set the international scene of the late 1530s, you have, you know, the undoing of essentially a thousand years of Catholicism in England.
Artie Mead: Yeah, when against, like, basically the established order.
Anna Morris: Yeah.
Artie Mead: That’s what’s crazy about it.
Anna Morris: It’s pretty crazy. And it made Henry obviously vastly unpopular on a European level. Now, the problem we also had is, typically, I think Henry was kind of saved by the fact that France and Spain were constantly at war with each other. And they were natural enemies. The problem is, in 1539, they actually vowed to make peace and declared that they are no longer foes, and their foes are their foes, which kind of translates to, “Your enemy is my enemy”.
Artie Mead: Yeah. The enemy of my—the enemy of my friend is my enemy.
Anna Morris: Yeah, the enemy of my friend is my enemy. So you then had two hugely powerful Catholic nations, empires, turn against—unite.
Artie Mead: So he got no friends. Got no friends. He got no friends.
Anna Morris: Billy No Mates.
Artie Mead: Yeah, exactly. Henry No Mates in the corner.
Anna Morris: Henry No Mates.
Artie Mead: So yeah, I mean, that’s, I guess, a very good setting of the scene. And then also you had all this context, because obviously, not in Spain’s good books, because previous wives, when we did the first three wives, so Catherine of Aragon, said she was divorced after failing to provide a male heir, which obviously then led to the break with Rome. But by the way, her marriage to Henry was by far the longest. By far. 24 years. Then Anne Boleyn, which lasted for three years, and she was executed on charges of adultery, incest, and treason, which were, historians largely agree, falsified charges. And, you know, her downfall really demonstrated the dangers of falling out of favour and I think really kind of—actually, the later wives really kind of traumatised them and made them realise what Henry could be capable of. And then he had the third one, Jane Seymour, who did provide Henry with his much-desired male heir, but then died just after giving birth. So that obviously then, yeah, as I said, really deeply affected Henry. So yeah, now onto the last three wives. So, we have Anne of Cleves, the fourth. Anne of Cleves was a German noblewoman whose marriage to Henry VIII was arranged for political reasons. However, Henry eventually didn’t like her, let’s say, found her unattractive.
Anna Morris: I think “eventually” is pushing it. He gave it about a day.
Artie Mead: Yeah, pretty much. The marriage was annulled after just six months. That was a bit of a fail. So then Catherine Howard, who’s the fifth wife, she was very young and vivacious. She and Henry married in 1540, but she was, let’s just say, a little too young and foolish, and she was executed for adultery in 1542, being accused of having affairs during their marriage, but we’ll get into that. The sixth wife, Catherine Parr, a twice-widowed noblewoman who married Henry in 1543, and she was the one who survived.
Anna Morris: As mentioned before, you had, I think Henry maybe got away with, there wasn’t much focus on Henry because, at this time, you had, in the Holy Roman Empire, also a lot of unrest, obviously with the beginning of the Protestant Reformation. The different states were not unified. But I think one of the problems was, in April 1539, you had the Treaty of Frankfurt, which was actually signed by Charles V, the Holy Roman Emperor, on behalf of the Empire’s Roman Catholic states, and the Lutheran theologian Philip Melanchthon, on behalf of the Schmalkaldic League. So you had the Holy Roman Empire is now on a 15-month truce, so Charles V can look elsewhere. Also, peace is made between Charles V and Francis I of France, which means, as part of that, Francis I would no longer sign any kind of alliance with England. You also had France renew its Auld Alliance with Scotland.
Artie Mead: Auld spelt A-U-L-D.
Anna Morris: Exactly. So they are natural kind of allies against England. So England at this point is very isolated.
Artie Mead: Yeah, Billy No Mates.
Anna Morris: Billy No Mates. It’s a very stressful situation for Henry to be in. He’s vastly unpopular. They do have money coming in, so he has something to offer, and he begins to look for a political match. At this point, he also does want a second son. So this is kind of on the back burner—
Artie Mead: The spare.
Anna Morris: The spare. And it takes him to the Lowlands.
Artie Mead: Yeah, well, to the—
Anna Morris: So the Lowlands is the German—
Artie Mead: To German principalities. So it’s important to remember that, obviously, back then, Germany, as it exists today as a unified German-speaking nation, did not exist. It was different, independent German-speaking states and principalities. And so, yeah, this takes him, leads him to the Dukedom of Cleves. This is actually another state, tiny, pretty insignificant state, but one that which crucially had also broken with Rome.
Anna Morris: Yep. So this is the thing, Henry kind of hoped to strengthen his position by allying himself with other countries that also challenged the Pope’s authority. The great task of being a royal matchmaker obviously falls down to Thomas Cromwell, the chief minister, who eventually sets his sights upon Anne of Cleves. And actually, at the time, there was also the option of her sister as well, I think Amelia.
Artie Mead: Yeah, yeah, that’s right. And also, by the way, it’s important to remember in English, we say Anne, but in German, it would be pronounced Anna.
Anna Morris: Yeah.
Artie Mead: Yeah. Like you. Yeah, exactly. Except you are also Anna in English.
Anna Morris: Anna.
Artie Mead: Anna Boleyn
Anna Morris: Ich bin Anna Von Boleyn.
Artie Mead: Yes, we should. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Anna Morris: Not to be confused with Anne Boleyn.
Artie Mead: Yeah.
Anna Morris: It was definitely. So Anne’s brother-in-law, led a united German Protestant Form, or like a League, to bring the German Protestant states together. So you had a country with similar religious and political outlooks as England at the time, which made complete sense for them to come together. And cue Hans Holbein, who was a very famous painter at the time who does all the royal portraits.
Artie Mead: Yeah, and who did the really famous one of Henry pushing out his chest and with the bulging codpiece.
Anna Morris: The iconic one.
Artie Mead: The iconic one, yeah. He also did some other ones as well.
Anna Morris: He did quite a lot. I mean, every single royal at that point was painted by Hans Holbein. He was actually the resident painter in the English court.
Artie Mead: Yeah, the royal painter.
Anna Morris: The royal painter. And Henry didn’t want to rely on just his—
Artie Mead: His ambassadors.
Anna Morris: Ambassadors.
Artie Mead: I think also, at this point, he was really ill and couldn’t go himself to Cleves. Yeah, and you’re right, he didn’t trust his ambassadors, so commissioned Hans Holbein.
Anna Morris: Hans Holbein.
Artie Mead: Oh no, Thomas Cromwell commissioned Hans Holbein to go and paint a picture of the daughter of the Duke of Cleves for Henry. Now, Anna, or Anne, was born in 1515, and she was the daughter of the then Duke of Cleves, John III. Now, it’s important to say her father was actually a modest reformer, but her mother was a strict Catholic. So it actually shows that she grew up in a very religiously tolerant household, which is, I think, was probably very unusual for the time. Obviously, Henry’s interest is, as you say, because it was for political purposes, intended to forge an alliance with the German Protestant states and against the Catholic powers.
Anna Morris: It definitely would have worked. I mean, it did make complete sense. So Holbein is actually sent to paint an image of Anne and also Amelia’s portraits. And this is because—
Artie Mead: Her sister.
Anna Morris: So Anne is 23 years old, and she had actually been engaged to the Duke of Lorraine since she was like 11. Nothing came of this match, and her family assured, because Anne is engaged at the time to the Duke of Lorraine, she has been for about 12 years, Holbein also painted a picture of Amelia, who was brought into the negotiations, but they settle on Anne. Well, Henry actually looked at both portraits and decided to pick Anne. If you want to go and see it, the portrait is at the Louvre.
Artie Mead: Oh, okay.
Anna Morris: We’ll do a little filter of that.
Artie Mead: The original?
Anna Morris: Yeah
Artie Mead: Wow. Okay. Yeah, we should do that.
Anna Morris: She was, I think, in the portrait, she was dressed at the time in the very popular fashions of Cleves, very rich red and gold fabrics. You know, there’s an ornate headdress and fine jewels and everything. Some historians actually say there was so much emphasis on what she was wearing that it kind of overshadowed how she looked.
Artie Mead: Yes, because she’s wearing that very—like lots of kind of a goldy.
Anna Morris: It’s hard to look bad in that outfit.
Artie Mead: Yeah.
Anna Morris: She looked very regal.
Artie Mead: Regal, yeah.
Anna Morris: And kind of radiating power. And if you think of all of Henry’s wives, Catherine of Aragon and Anne of Cleves are the ones who actually come from noble households who were actually—
Artie Mead: The rest were all social climbers.
Anna Morris: Exactly. So, from that perspective, she was also from a background very much up to the challenge of being a queen. She is regal, she has royal blood, and Anne comes to England because Henry selects her. And she is pretty apprehensive because—
Artie Mead: She also doesn’t speak English.
Anna Morris: Doesn’t speak English. And she is the fourth wife. I mean, I’d be terrified going into that.
Artie Mead: I would because it was probably quite well known what happened to Anne Boleyn and all of that kind of stuff.
Anna Morris: Yeah, so if I’ve got, “divorced, beheaded, died,” she’s like—
Artie Mead: She’s like, “Oh my God, am I going to be another beheaded?” But no. So she comes over to England. She doesn’t speak English. She doesn’t speak any other common language with Henry. Doesn’t speak French. Doesn’t speak Latin. So she only actally really speaks German. When she arrives in England, she travels on a Roman road, something called Sittingbourne, on the 30th of December 1539, and then to Rochester the following day, so on the 31st. She was then expected to meet her future husband, the King, at Greenwich.
The thing is, Henry, I think he thought, “I’m going to surprise her. I’m going to kind of show her what the English court is like”.
Anna Morris: Are you going to refer to the game they play?
Artie Mead: Yeah, when he flounces in. He flounces in a disguise.
Anna Morris: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Apparently, it was quite a traditional thing to do.
Artie Mead: No, it is, because in England, it was believed that your true love, even if you were in a disguise—
Anna Morris: They would recognise you.
Artie Mead: That your true love would recognise you. Isn’t that something out of a fairy tale?
Anna Morris: I mean, it’s such a weird test. “Let me just disguise myself, and they will sense that it’s me.”
Artie Mead: I know. This poor German noblewoman, who obviously has no idea, who doesn’t speak English, who has no idea about English traditions. And so, Henry entered Anne’s chamber with five companions, completely disguised, embraced her, and brazenly kissed her, giving her also a New Year’s gift. So this was on New Year’s Eve. Now, Anne, at this point, is just standing at the window and watching a bear fight in the courtyard. She was really shocked and she just kind of was very cool, obviously, didn’t recognise him.
Anna Morris: One account even says that she pushed him away. There’s like a few accounts. One’s like, “She ignored him, she pushed him away, she was shocked, she was frozen, she turned back to the bear fight”.
Artie Mead: I mean, I think it’s because she thought it was just some commoner coming in and being annoying. So she was obviously a bit like, “Ugh, get off me, commoner”. Henry was absolutely humiliated by this.
Anna Morris: This is like the biggest insult ever.
Artie Mead: Yeah, so he leaves and then he decides, “Right, I’m going to show that bitch”. So he changes into a robe, out of his disguise, into a robe of purple, so royal purple, goes back, and Anne is obviously really embarrassed, apologises, and they dine that evening. Henry is reported to have been very disappointed with her looks. I think to be honest, the fact that she humiliated him probably had a big part to do with that.
Anna Morris: We know he has a massive ego.
Artie Mead: A massive ego. Yeah, he was very disappointed by her looks, saying she looked nothing like her portrait, and called her, “The Flanders mare”. I think they did share a bed, but Henry never consummated the marriage. Poor Anne, I think she had no idea what sex was.
Anna Morris: I don’t think she knew what was going on, to be honest.
Artie Mead: She did or she didn’t?
Anna Morris: She didn’t.
Artie Mead: Because Henry would get into bed with her, kiss her hand, “Goodnight, darling,” and then just turn away. And she was like, “Oh, okay, that was sex?”
Anna Morris: What?
Artie Mead: Apparently, I’ve read accounts saying that. And apparently it was only when she talking to her ladies-in-waiting, that her ladies-in-waiting were just thinking, “Oh my god. Poor thing”. Poor thing. Actually poor thing.
Anna Morris: Yeah, literally. So after their first meeting, Henry doesn’t want to marry her. He hoped they could use the fact that she’d been engaged to the Duke of Lorraine as a excuse to prevent the match.
Artie Mead: To annul it.
Anna Morris: No, no, no, just to not go through it. But Anne’s advisors and the Cleves household insisted that she was free to marry, and obviously they didn’t want to lose the political alliance. They were in too deep at this point, and Henry had no choice but to go through with the marriage.
Artie Mead: Yes. He goes through with it.
Anna Morris: He goes through with it. So, on the 6th of January, they are married at Greenwich Palace. Her wedding ring was inscribed with her personal motto, which translates to, “God send me and keep me well,” which I think is quite accurate to probably how she was feeling.
Artie Mead: Yeah, I know. I do feel sorry for her because I think she realised Henry was not into her. She tried to make herself attractive to him, and obviously, this didn’t work. They marry, and Henry is furious with his chief minister, Cromwell, because he was the one who arranged the match. He blames that all on Cromwell. Honestly, as soon as they were married, Henry started looking for an annulment, because by February, he had also started courting a young woman called Catherine Howard, but we’re going to come onto her. This search for annulment is ultimately what brings down Thomas Cromwell.
Anna Morris: Yeah, I mean, Henry apparently said to Cromwell, obviously after the wedding night, he apparently told Cromwell that, “I liked her well—” I liked her before, not well, “And now I like her much worse”. So yeah, they never consummated the marriage, and Cromwell now has a new mission, and that is to annul the marriage, which is definitely an easier feat given it wasn’t consummated very clearly.
Artie Mead: And also now that Henry is the supreme head of the English Church.
Anna Morris: Exactly. He could do what he wants. Also, an annulment is different from a divorce.
Artie Mead: Oh yes, it’s as if the marriage didn’t exist.
Anna Morris: It declares that a marriage was never valid or binding.
Artie Mead: Right.
Anna Morris: So from that point on actually, this is the interesting part, she had a really good life after the marriage was annulled. Apparently, I mean, there is a lot of letters to and from Henry and Anne, she became known as his, “dear sister”.
Artie Mead: Yes.
Anna Morris: They actually became really good friends. Anne of Cleves, I think, got away with—
Artie Mead: Pretty lightly.
Anna Morris: She did really well out of this because she then gets a really good settlement.
Artie Mead: She gets to live at Richmond Palace.
Anna Morris: And she was obviously very calm about the whole annulment, I think.
Artie Mead: Which, by the way, the marriage was annulled after just six months in July 1540, on the grounds of non-consummation, and because of Anne’s pre-contract. That’s what they used as a reason to annul.
Anna Morris: It’s quite good because Carl Host was a diplomat and he, obviously, for Anne it turned out really well because I think she was absolutely terrified for her position and for her life when she realized something’s wrong here.
Artie Mead: She thought she was headed for the chopping block.
Anna Morris: I mean you would, wouldn’t you?
Artie Mead: Yeah, yeah.
Anna Morris: But it then turned out that Anne stayed very calm, which is actually the opposite of what Catherine of Aragon did. She kicked up this huge fuss. I mean rightly so, Catherine Aragon, 20 years, you know.
Artie Mead: You’re so right. She dealt with him in the right way.
Anna Morris: She stayed calm, she kept her very private thoughts to herself. She accepted the annulment without a fight, which means she could take a step back. And it was—
Artie Mead: The right way to deal with Henry.
Anna Morris: The right way to deal with Henry. Just step out and don’t risk your life trying to cling on to the queen.
Artie Mead: Yes, despite the annulment, you know, Anne was treated with respect, given that, yeah, as you said, the title, “The king’s beloved sister,” and received a very generous settlement from Henry. She was actually given the choice to go back to Cleves but she decided not to because she got given quite a lot of land in England. And she decided she kind of liked England and by this point she had learned English. And, yeah, had a very comfortable life and she outlived Henry and remained on very good terms with his children as well.
Anna Morris: The peace between France and Spain. you know, it didn’t last very long, which definitely helped because it took the pressure off. I mean it took some of the fear away of immediate invasion and a religious war backed by pretty much the whole of Europe.
Artie Mead: Oh, okay, so it took the pressure off Henry to keep the marriage.
Anna Morris: To keep the marriage because he wasn’t as desperate for international backup, so to speak. The king was so grateful to Anne’s cooperation, and he so desperately wanted to obviously avoid conflict with her family as well, that he presented his former queen with a generous settlement. He granted her actually the official title, “The king’s sister”. Yeah, like you mentioned, she got vast amounts of land, including Richmond Palace and later Anne Belyn’s Hever castle.
Artie Mead: Wow.
Anna Morris: If I was Anna, the ghost of the other Anna’s like wondering—
Artie Mead: I know. She did really well there.
Anna Morris: She did really well. I think she got an annual income of 500 pounds, which was just insane at that time.
Artie Mead: Insane at that time, yeah.
Anna Morris: And Anne accepted with Henry’s encouragement, she then wrote to her family saying, “Don’t worry this has turned out for the best, I’m good”.
Artie Mead: Yeah, she would then outlive Henry and died on the 16th of July 1557. Historians think from cancer. And obviously at that point Mary I, Henry’s eldest daughter, was on the throne and she actually gave her a monarch’s burial at Westminster Abbey, so that actually showed how much her children liked her.
Anna Morris: And also she did amazing to get through unscathed the downfall of Cromwell. Because Cromwell was executed the same day that Henry VIII married Catherine Howard.
Artie Mead: Which was on?
Anna Morris: 28th July 1540. So to come through that completely unscathed, surviving that crisis, that’s—
Artie Mead: Yeah, Cromwell basically took it.
Anna Morris: She’s smarter than a—did it have a big impact? What do you think?
Artie Mead: About whether?
Anna Morris: The impact of, I mean Anne of Cleves on Henry VIII. I think it added to his, again, you’ve seen the latter half of all his last wives, an increase in paranoia, in insecurity. I think that’s what it did, and he then tried to counteract that with remaining very close to Anne.
Artie Mead: Yes, and I think that was because he, by this point, had maybe felt that he had been, he could, he suddenly felt his scruples and he quite liked keeping one of them closed. I think it has a lot to do with the fact that Anne was just so accommodating of his wishes. I think that had a lot to do with it. I think, had she kicked up a fuss, she probably would have gone to the chopping block. But yeah, ultimately, you know, she smashed it and she, you know, outlived him and lived a very comfortable life. So you know, I think she was definitely one of the queens who did the best out of Henry VIII. Now onto the fifth wife, so Catherine Howard. Now, as I said, they started courting in February 1541, so just a month after Henry married Anne of Cleves.
Anna Morris: She is the first cousin of Anne Boleyn, obviously the scandalous second wife of Henry VIII.
Artie Mead: Born in 1524.
Anna Morris: She’s also second cousin to his third wife, Jane Seymour. She comes from the powerful Howard family, albeit a kind of junior branch with little fortune.
Artie Mead: Yes.
Anna Morris: Her father, Edmund Howard, was actually—
Artie Mead: A big gambler.
Anna Morris: He was a big gambler and it was, I can’t remember the position he had at court, but interestingly, there’s an account of him telling Wolsey he, I mean, he actually went into hiding because he had so much debt, and he told Wolsey that he can’t leave his hiding because he will be, you know, arrested as soon as he leaves. But then his job in court was finances. So yeah, yeah, he, it was, yeah, a little bit, controversial.
Artie Mead: So Catherine was born in 1524 and, yeah, the daughter of Edmund Howard and Joyce Culpeper. So yeah, cousin to Anne Boleyn, and she was young, beautiful, vivacious.
Anna Morris: So she actually had quite a sad upbringing. So she actually grew up with her grand stepmother, the Dowager Countess of Norfolk, who actually took in quite a few young women, and she was said to have shared, you know, dormitory with several others. She was probably the most noble within this dormitory and there was definitely a lot of, although she had a good education, living in these kind of conditions in this dormitory, it bred a form of rebellion. She might have been as young as 12 when she actually started having her first kind of sexual encounters. Now she was pretty promiscuous. Having said that, you know, there are accounts, was she? Was it sexual abuse? I don’t think it was sexual abuse, but just because something’s not abusive doesn’t mean it isn’t highly inappropriate. So she had relations with Henry Mannix. She had relations with Francis Dereham, and Francis Dereham particularly was, you know, played a part later in her downfall, caused massive, massive problems for her the whole way through her life. There was no doubt, that you know, she had full-blown sexual relations with with both of them, but obviously she was very young. She wasn’t a dormitory of all girls, there was very much a, there was like a new era of silliness in those young women. So she didn’t have this kind of strict upbringing because she was never, I mean, basically she lost her mother very young. Her father, you know, the Dowager Duchess definitely failed to guard Catherine’s honour. Let’s put it like that.
Artie Mead: And so, you know, she is quite promiscuous from a young age and, you know, she goes to court and, as I said, she was young, beautiful and a vivacious courtier, caught Henry’s eye. They basically start courting February 1541. The reason why Henry becomes quite infatuated with her, spoils her rotten, gives her loads of gifts, is because he believes that Catherine’s youth revitalized him. And she was very young. She was 17 at this point. So yeah, I think he was very, because by this point Henry was, you know, getting older.
Anna Morris: He was 30 years older than her.
Artie Mead: Yeah, exactly, and so he, you know, felt that her youth really revitalized him and I think he liked being around it.
Anna Morris: She had an appealing personality at times.
Artie Mead: Yeah, she was very accommodating.
Anna Morris: Quite well, I mean it was quite different to how she ran her household, but she was also, I mean, very inexperienced. She was actually quite junior in Anna Cleave’s household and then suddenly she’s the head of the household. So she was, I mean, different accounts, she was said to be obnoxious, quite, quite angry. She’s very dismissive. She rules her household with with kind of fear, but what she does well is she’s good at delegating tasks, because obviously she’s no idea of—so the queen at that time is head of her household and, you know, really should have an overview of, you know, where the land, the money from the land is coming from. She delegates this to all kind of gentlemen within the court who are used to have been doing this for like four queens up until now, so she doesn’t try and get involved in that, which I suppose is quite a good thing. She can be very unkind to her servants and very dismissive. She did have an appealing personality for Henry. She loved to dance, she loved music. She seems to have been popular with members of the Dowager Duchess’s household and she does bring Henry VIII in for sure. She knows what she’s doing because she is sexually experienced.
Artie Mead: Yeah, because the narrative is that she was a stupid young girl and I think she did actually have some, you know, she—
Anna Morris: As much as you can at 18, when you’ve just grown up in like a posh orphanage.
Artie Mead: Yes, exactly. So had quite a closed off childhood. Yeah, Catherine, you know, held influence at court and favored by Henry. Yeah, who saw her also as a symbol of his virility. You know him saying, “Oh look, I can still get this”. You know, young bride, at this age.
Anna Morris: Such as flex.
Artie Mead: Yeah, such a flex. However, accusations of infidelity surfaced in 1541, leading to a scandal which shocked the court. And this is because you had some people who, because it’s important to remember at that time that the court was split between religious conservatives who wanted to go back to the old ways of Roman Catholicism and then reformists, it was people who were trying to get their faction in power, and so these accusations surfaced, and Catherine was actually arrested. And it’s reported, apparently, that when she was arrested on these charges, Henry was walking by in the gallery in Hampton court Palace, Henry was walking by and she was being arrested by captors, and she managed to break free of them and she ran screaming after Henry, begging for mercy. And that’s actually where this, I think it’s a myth, ghost of her at Hampton Court is meant to exist today. Apparently, her running screaming down the gallery begging Henry for mercy.
Anna Morris: She’d also fallen in love with Thomas Culpepper at the time. He was a very distant cousin of hers. He was a member of the privy chamber.
Artie Mead: But did you know why? It’s because Henry had shut himself away a lot because of his leg. He didn’t want his young wife to see him like this, so he shut himself away, refused to see her, and so you can kind of understand why her eyes started to wander. You know, she was this young woman, at the height of her, you know, virility. You can sort of understand why she wanted some company, some male company.
Anna Morris: I mean, of course, I think that, I think it was also the job was, I mean, big job being queen and dealing with horrible Henry, who’s really ugly at this point and, you know, in a lot of pain and, you know, tyrannical and quite sporadic as well. I think he was also so mortified by, I mean he was so, she embarrassed him. Being young and then cheating on him is a huge embarrassment to a king. And especially to someone who is now, you know, got ulcers all up and down his legs and he’s kind of oozing a bit.
Artie Mead: Yeah, so basically really offends his honour, his ego, which you don’t want to do to Henry VIII, as I hope you have learned from what we’ve talked about.
Anna Morris: On the scaffold, she said, “I die a queen, but I would rather die the wife of Thomas Culpeper”.
Artie Mead: Oh, scandalo. Scandalo.
Anna Morris: So she openly admitted it. And also it didn’t help that there were always rumours circulating because obviously her affair with like quite early on with Francis Dereham, they actually referred to each other as husband and wife. And then it was Catherine who called it off because it was kind of going way too fast and he then left to go to Ireland, but then kept coming back and wanted to work in her household, and he was a constant kind of circling threat. So I think it would have definitely come out at some point. Interestingly, Catherine Howard as a queen, she appeared pretty gracious. She was an interesting stepmother. She didn’t get along very well with Mary I, I think partly because she was older. Sorry, Mary I was older than her. So to have a younger stepmother is a bit weird. Even in those days. Her relationship with Elizabeth was better, I think because they were family. And obviously I know she gifted jewels to Elizabeth, but also she had quite a good relationship with Edward. So I think from that, I mean, you could see what—
Artie Mead: From a stepmother perspective.
Anna Morris: From a stepmother perspective, she kind of won favor with the next king. Yeah, Mary, very difficult, obviously.
Artie Mead: No, but I think I would also find that a bit weird. Yeah, but she was executed on the 13th of February 1542, alongside several of her alleged lovers, and she was, yeah, she was just 19. And which is, yeah, pretty crazy, to be honest. This time Henry did not give her the kind of one last favor of having her executed with the sword. She was executed with an axe, and it’s reported that the night before her execution, she asked for the block to be brought to her so she could practice laying her head on the block with grace.
Anna Morris: I mean arguably in this case, I don’t, I mean, this is justified. Anne Boleyn, obviously, there was no hot evidence. But apparently, Catherine had this affair with Thomas Culpeper. And even when Catherine went on, you know, journeys around England with Henry VIII, they actually brought Thomas Culpeper with him because he was a gentleman of the king’s privy chamber.
Artie Mead: Oh, really?
Anna Morris: So, you know, she’s on tour with Henry, shagging Culpeper.
Artie Mead: Yeah, yeah, I know. Crazy.
Anna Morris: So, you know, it was, there was, you know, very big, there was evidence against her. There was a letter Culpeper wrote.
Artie Mead: And also I think one of her ladies-in-waiting also spilled the tea. So yeah, anyway, all ended tragically for poor old Catherine. Well, poor young Catherine. Her betrayal of Henry, it kind of reinforced his view of women as treacherous and untrustworthy.
Anna Morris: I mean it completely led to his paranoia.
Artie Mead: Yeah, and he became more repressive and tried to exert more control over his court and was less tolerant of dissent and stuff.
Anna Morris: In a wider, from a wider perspective, the news of Catherine’s affair was brought to Henry VIII by Cranmer. And Cranmer was the Archbishop at the time, but he was definitely pushing constantly to further distance from the old ways of Catholicism. Because obviously Henry maintained that Henry was a Catholic in belief, and Henry definitely wanted to put a bit of a stop to the changes happening on the ground at that point. You know, whether it was the interior of churches, Cranmer believed in a very simple form of worship. From English bibles and stripping the churches from all of the gold and having candles. Even something as simple as having a candle in a church. And you did have these two factions of core. Like you said, Artie, and Cranmer used the kind of the task of breaking the news to Henry to completely slash the conservative faction. And this obviously gave more power to the reformists.
Artie Mead: And that sets the stage perfectly for the sixth and final wife, enter Catherine Parr, the survivor. So she was born in 1512. So she’s an older woman. Well, I mean, by today’s standards, not that old, but back then this was an older, more mature woman. And she had actually been twice widowed already. She was very well educated, a very pious woman with very strong Protestant sympathies, and she had, you know, a background in managing households and her experience made her very suitable, a very suitable wife for Henry. And I think this is what attracted him to her, the fact that after his experience with Catherine Howard the young, silly Catherine Howard, I think he was very much attracted to her. She was in her early thirties—
Anna Morris: A maturity I think.
Artie Mead: This maturity and, you know, a woman who was also very intelligent. She was very intelligent, she knew how to have a conversation. And yeah, they married in July 1543, and I bet, I guess you could really say her role with Henry was companion and caretaker. That’s what I would kind of label her as, because by this point Henry is getting quite old and really quite infirm.
Anna Morris: Yeah, I mean, I would argue that Catherine Parr was up there with one of the most influential wives of Henry, partly because, you know, she was, she did influence the Third Succession Act, which restored daughters Mary and Elizabeth to the line of succession. She did act regent while Henry was in a military campaign in France in 1544 because Henry, in his later years, he again became obsessed with this idea of regaining military victory, re-establishing his image, trying to relive the footsteps of Henry V and the Battle of Agincourt, and this taking over of France. He actually did team up, so to speak, with Spain. As with all of Henry’s international battles, he was, for lack of a better word, snaked by Charles V, who would kind of say, “Yeah, let’s go on this military campaign, let’s do it,” and then make peace with France behind Henry’s back, leaving Henry, you know—
Artie Mead: High and dry.
Anna Morris: High and dry. But you know, was it a success? Henry seized Bologna. It was quite irrelevant, but it was obviously a huge PR win for Henry.
Artie Mead: It was for his ego, really.
Anna Morris: It was for his ego.
Artie Mead: Everything really was for his ego, to be honest.
Anna Morris: Exactly.
Artie Mead: Everything he did, came back to his ego.
Anna Morris: Stroked the ego.
Artie Mead: Stroked the ego, exactly.
Anna Morris: But Catherine is doing pretty well in she became regent. She got on very well with all his children.
Artie Mead: Yes, no, and she played a key role in reconciling Henry with his daughters, Mary and Elizabeth, and helping to, as you said, restore them to the line of succession. So I think that was—
Anna Morris: She did a, she actually spent—she had a big play in the education of Elizabeth and—
Artie Mead: And it’s probably why Elizabeth became Protestant.
Anna Morris: Yeah, she had a really big impact, for sure. And, I mean, I think it’s which Elizabeth movie is it with, you can actually see, I mean, Elizabeth grew up in Catherine Parr’s household.
Artie Mead: Well, like also Jane Grey, as well.
Anna Morris: Yeah, exactly, your fave.
Artie Mead: My fave. The thing about Catherine, though, is that she was quite, a bit like Anne Boleyn, she was quite mouthy. She liked to argue. She liked to argue about religion. She was very, very set in her Protestant ways as a Protestant reformer. And, you know, yeah, as you said, had significant influence on the religious education of Henry’s children. At that point, Edward and Elizabeth, not Mary. Mary was fully grown by this point. And you know, she actually often argued with Henry about religious matters and actually narrowly avoided being executed.
Anna Morris: Really narrowly avoided.
Artie Mead: Yeah, after being accused of heresy.
Anna Morris: Because obviously, again, Henry VIII was more leaning towards, you know, the old Catholic ways.
Artie Mead: But just not Roman Catholic.
Anna Morris: Roman Catholic. What happens then, you have the conservative faction at court. You know the anti-Protestant officials rising against Catherine Parr, and actually in 1547, there was a warrant for her arrest.
Artie Mead: Yes, exactly, and you know because it was of her sort of—
Anna Morris: Sorry, in spring of 1546. But the king and her then reconciled.
Artie Mead: Yes, and you know why? It’s because of her quick wit in appeasing Henry. She knew how to appease Henry. She knew exactly which buttons to press.
Anna Morris: Maybe because she’s an experienced wife?
Artie Mead: Yes, yeah, exactly. And also after seeing Henry go through five wives, I’m sure she was like, “Okay, right, I can’t do that, can’t do that”. But she still did manage to get herself almost executed. So that was a close shave. So yeah, and she does ultimately survive. You know, Henry eventually dies in 1547 and she would go on to marry Thomas Seymour, but the marriage was quite troubled for reasons that we’ll talk about when we talk about Elizabeth first. But she would then go on to die in childbirth and childbirth in 1548, which obviously ended her life on a bit of a tragic note, but she ultimately survived the tumultuous reign of Henry.
Anna Morris: Her funeral was the first protestant funeral to be held in English.
Artie Mead: Really?
Anna Morris: In England, Scotland, and Wales.
Artie Mead: God, that’s crazy. Okay, I didn’t know that. And so yeah, Henry dies in 1547. By this point, he is, you know, very old, very ill, could barely move. That ends his very dramatic, very scandalous 36 year reign, which included six wives. Those last three wives are the ones we just talked about. So let’s just sort of quickly summarize them. So Anne of Cleves, diplomatic tool, ended up actually doing pretty well out of the marriage. Catherine Howard, symbol of youthful passion.
Anna Morris: Which the irony is, he married her, like you said, because she made him feel young.
Artie Mead: Yes.
Anna Morris: But that crashed and burned.
Artie Mead: Crashed and burned.
Anna Morris: Just like Henry’s youth.
Artie Mead: And then Catherine Parr was really the opposite of that.
Anna Morris: Dressed as lamb for him.
Artie Mead: But she had a stabilizing influence and I think they—
Anna Morris: Catherine Parr is the most influential.
Artie Mead: They ultimately ended up having a very good respect for one another. I think she was probably the woman who Henry—actually no, maybe Catherine of Aragon was, but no, they had a good respect for each other. All of these marriages end up having an impact on Henry and the Tudor court, and also on the Tudor dynasty as a whole. These marriages influenced the upbringing and future reigns of Henry’s children, particularly in shaping the religious landscape of England. And, yeah, the instability and drama of Henry’s later marriages contributed to the volatile nature of the Tudor succession ultimately illustrated the complexities of Henry VIII’s character, his insecurities, his ruthlessness and his longing for stability.
Anna Morris: Yeah, I think as well, Henry’s sporadicness just goes to show how his mental health was also in pieces. Because obviously he filled his coffers with the dissolution of the monasteries. He then blew all of this on—
Artie Mead: The war in France.
Anna Morris: His second war in France, which actually come his death. England is bankrupt. He has, I mean, he has one son. Yes, okay, that’s okay. He’s married with six times. He’s isolated himself from the rest of Europe. He has no international glory, even though you know. Alsace-Lorraine, Boulogne, these are all kind of examples of international military victory. Did they mean anything in the grand scheme of things? No, but you enter now a very what’s called as the mid-Tudor crisis the next few years, which we will be dissecting in later episodes.
Artie Mead: Later episodes, which I’m very much looking forward to getting into, but first I need a break.
Anna Morris: Okay.
Artie Mead: Do you?
Anna Morris: Yeah, yeah.
Artie Mead: I mean, to be honest, to be honest, me more because I’ve been also doing other episodes, but Anna and I do have some fun things that we’re going to be creating for you guys, so do keep a lookout for that. But for now, I’m going to be taking a break from the podcast in general, but also, of course, from the Tudors, the Tudor series. So, yeah, anyway, guys, I hope you enjoyed that episode.
Anna Morris: If you have any questions.
Artie Mead: Yeah, leave them in the comments below.
Anna Morris: Free to ask.
Artie Mead: Yeah, those marriages, they were marked by political, personal and religious drama and they helped shape the end of his reign and the future of the Tudor density, which we will carry on after a break. And so, yeah, we’ll be looking forward to getting into all of that stuff. You know, Mary I, Jane Grey, Elizabeth I, and all of that. All of that stuff.
Anna Morris: We’ve only just started. So plenty of Tudors to go.
Artie Mead: Plenty of Tudors. So okay, guys. Well, thank you so much for listening and, yeah, we—
Anna Morris: See you soon.
Artie Mead: See you soon. See you after the break. Okay. Bye everyone.