Useful Notes / Henry VIII

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'E's 'Enery the Eighth, 'e his!

Henry VIII (28 June 1491 -– 28 January 1547) of The House of Tudor. The man with six wives. Every Brit (and Anglophile elsewhere) can remember what happened to them — "divorced, beheaded, died, divorced, beheaded, survived". Actually the "spare" to his elder brother Arthur, he ended up in line to the throne after Arthur unexpectedly died young of an illness — marrying his brother's widow, Catherine of Aragon, the first 'Spanish' Princess, the realms of Aragon and Castile having been united (temporarily, people thought) by the marriage of her parents. He was only 18 when he came to the throne and engaged in some Wacky Fratboy Hijinx in his early years as King — he and some male buddies once burst into the Queen's bedchamber dressed as Robin Hood and his Merry Men. A redhead, he does remind one of his contemporary namesake, Prince Henry, Duke of Sussex (the former Prince Henry of Wales).

He was far more extravagant than his miserly father — responsible for quite possibly the most extravagant diplomatic summit in history, the Field of the Cloth of Gold, to meet with the King of France, Francis I. There he proceeded to have an archery contest with Francis, with Henry won elegantly, and an impromptu wrestling match, which Henry lost rather spectacularly. Though very showy, the event didn't accomplish anything, as diplomacy between the equally strongheaded kings was already difficult. When Catherine's nephew Charles V, King of Castile and Aragon (i.e. Spain) and Holy Roman Emperor, had Francis captured after the Battle of Pavia five years later, Henry went to the extent of suggesting him to execute Francis and forget about it. Charles refused, which led to many other wars.^note After France declared war on them for the first time, Charles and Henry conspired with Francis' second-in-command, Charles of Bourbon, to partition France between the three. The plan failed, but Henry never lost hope of disposing of Francis and getting some part of France, possibly the whole kingdom.

Henry restored English control over most of Ireland by a system of 'surrender and regrant', bringing Ireland back under proper royal jurisdiction — prior to this point English power in Ireland had been in decline for centuries and was purely nominal outside the immediate surrounds of Dublin, an area known as 'The Pale'. (Yes, this is the origin of the phrase "beyond the Pale", or at least related to it.^note There were many "pales" around, as the word meant "place surrounded by a palisade", i.e. defensive wall, or more figuratively "an area protected by some kind of security line". The one around Dublin is most famous, but was hardly the only one and probably not the one English speakers were most familiar with.) Once this process was complete, he declared himself King of all Ireland in 1542, a title English (and later British) monarchs would hold for four centuries, and still hold in part, i.e. Northern Ireland (the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, it's called).

Henry was a devoted Catholic and remained so (at least in his own mind) until death. Working with Thomas More — a close friend and one of his best servants — he published an essay ("In Defense of the Seven Sacraments") in 1521 attacking Martin Luther's teachings, for which the Pope gave him the title Defender of the Faith — a title the British monarchy has retained to this day in spite of them only sporadically being of Catholic faith, with the last Catholic monarch being James II, who was deposed in 1688 and died in 1701.

We'll take this page by wife - largely because, while he had successes earlier in his reign, his habit of going to the altar is probably what he's best known for.

1: Catherine of Aragon (divorced)

It's therefore perhaps ironic that he's arguably best known for establishing royal control over the Church in England because he wanted a divorce (technically an annulment — as in, he insisted the wedding was invalid, after more than 20 years of what was, by all accounts, a loving relationship) so he could marry his mistress. That's the gist of it, anyway. Annulments of royal marriages were fairly common at the time^note Since at least The High Middle Ages, most royal marriages in Western/Central Europe had been inbred enough to be technically voidable under Catholic canon law. The Church had a long-standing habit of ignoring this when politically advantageous marriages among royals happened, and suddenly caring when the marriage failed to produce a healthy male heir and/or the spouses turned out to be so incompatible it threatened the stability of a major royal house. One of the most famous instances of this — the 1152 annulment of the marriage of Henry's ancestor Eleanor of Aquitaine to Louis VII of France — had both factors; and it didn't seem like it would be a big deal. Furthermore — and somewhat ironically, given his later place in posterity — there is an argument that Henry appears to have been genuinely fond of and devoted to Catherine for much of their marriage; however, England had only fairly recently in its past experienced a great deal of political and military turmoil due to questions of legitimate succession and Henry considered his wife's ability to produce a male heir more important to the stability of the kingdom overall than his feelings towards her.

However, Catherine wasn't having it (very likely because it would have rendered their daughter, Mary, illegitimate, and Catherine herself a whore for living with a man for so many years while unmarried) and refused to retire to a convent quietly, so Henry had to do it the hard way. The problem was that Catherine's nephew Charles V had been fighting with Francis I and Clement VII, the Pope, over northern Italy. During the latest war against France and the Vatican, Charles' mercenaries had run amok, sacking Rome and taking the Pope hostage. This was sufficient to intimidate Clement into stalling over the annulment for a further six years to avoid provoking anyone. Looking back on the issue, it almost seems as if the Pope wanted Henry to take care of it himself: Henry was only excommunicated (cut off from the Church) in 1537, three years after he made himself head of the English Church (i.e. when it was clear that he had left the Roman fold and wasn't coming back).^note Also because excommunication of a king was an act of war, with Francis I and Charles V obliged as good Catholic kings to crusade in England. Not an easy decision to make.

In the year 1515, the only woman in his life who was allowed to defy him — his favourite sibling, Princess Mary, after whom his daughter was named the following year — did just that. She, having just been widowed and, apparently, having been so active in the bed chamber that her last husband (the elderly King Louis XII, who was all of thirty-four years her senior) apparently died of sexual over-exertion, convinced Charles Brandon to marry her and had consummated the marriage before Henry found out. He got a little angry and threatened to chop off many heads, but both survived (Charles Brandon became Duke of Suffolk and was invincible under Henry!), and Mary eventually died around the time of Henry's divorce from Catherine, from what is believed to be cancer, the sweating sickness, or a combination of both.

His relationship to his other surviving sister, Margaret, was frostier. She was married to King James IV of Scotland in an Arranged Marriage by their father. After James IV died in the Battle of Flodden, Margaret tried to consolidate power and rule as Regent. She made unwise alliances and was soon exiled from Scotland and her children. Henry gave her sanctuary and nothing else, much to her annoyance. Margaret soon annoyed Henry by getting an annulment from her second marriage on flimsy pretences. Henry angrily sent a letter saying marriage was sacred. Margaret later returned to her son in Scotland, and died peacefully.

2: Anne Boleyn (beheaded)

After seven years of legal stalling tactics, Henry decided he'd had enough and outlawed the Pope's authority via a legal Retcon in 1533, to remove the Papacy completely from English law. He turned his divorce settlement over to Thomas Cranmer, Archbishop of Canterbury, married Anne Boleyn in January 1533, and made himself Supreme Head of the Church in England in 1534. At the height of The Protestant Reformation, he had every monastery in the kingdom closed and their possessions confiscated, leading to the greatest redistribution of real estate since the Conquest, and the rise of many newly ennobled or simply very rich families who used their proclaimed loyalty to the king to grab formerly Church-owned lands (for an example, see the Crawleys of Downton Abbey); monastic life would not return to England for over three hundred years^note until the Oxford Movement in the 19th century. He also forced almost every literate man in England to swear an oath upholding the new succession and his new title; those who wouldn't, including his "close friend" Thomas More, ended up on the chopping block.

Anne Boleyn was crowned Queen in May 1533 to widespread apathy and gave birth to Elizabeth (later Queen Elizabeth I) that September. Anne was a very controversial figure in the court, apparently more willing to argue with her husband and Thomas Cromwell (Henry's right-hand man at the time) than either man liked. She was beheaded for adultery on trumped-up charges once Henry tired of her. It didn't help that after giving him a healthy daughter, Anne miscarried their second child, a son. And Anne was 34 at the time. Middle-aged. When Henry married Anne, she was 32, middle-aged even then. When they married, it was a secret ceremony and Henry was legally still married to Catherine of Aragon, however it couldn’t wait because Anne was already visibly pregnant.

As cruel irony would have it, during that last pregnancy, amid the scandals and court rumors of Henry being unable to "perform his royal duties", he decided that he would assert his masculinity in a tournament in 1536.

Disaster struck when a bad hit during a joust reopened a previous injury to his leg that the royal doctors were never able to heal. The king was also rendered unconscious for over two hours. The leg wound in effect made him unable to maintain the active, athletic lifestyle he had led and, as he didn't change his diet, he became morbidly obese as the years progressed. In modern medicine, it is a major red flag for a head injury patient to black out for five minutes, leading modern doctors to speculate that the two hours Henry was unresponsive was a sign of massive brain damage, which likely resulted in his already short temper and impulsive behavior becoming even worse as the years went on.

But the worst result, as far as Henry was likely concerned, was how the shock apparently resulted in Anne miscarrying the baby, costing him the son he had broken away from Rome to attain. That being said, it might not have been the shock that caused Anne's miscarriage — just recently before that, Anne had walked in on her lady-in-waiting, Jane Seymour, on her husband's knee.

Soon, Henry's advisors accused Anne of adultery and treason. Anne was almost certainly innocent of her charges, but was sent to the Tower of London, where she was convicted and sentenced to death. Anne could have been burned at the stake, but Henry decided instead that she would be beheaded. Henry also, somewhat generously, ordered a professional swordsman from France to come and execute Anne with a swift, speedy sword rather than a heavy, clumsy axe. Their daughter, Elizabeth, was then declared illegitimate, like her poor half-sister had been years before. Henry then married his latest mistress, Jane Seymour, just 11 days after Anne's execution; Anne was buried in an unmarked grave and rarely mentioned.

3: Jane Seymour (died)

Many Catholics hoped that Anne's death signalled the end of Henry's split with Rome. They were shocked to discover that it had been Henry all along who had been against them. This became crystal clear when Henry, who had married the reserved, shy and Catholic Jane Seymour eleven days after Anne's death, gave the order to close every religious house in England. This Dissolution of the Monasteries was wildly unpopular in the North and led to the largest and most dangerous rebellion of Henry's reign: the Pilgrimage of Grace. Henry pretended to concede to the rebels' demands, not having enough troops to put them down by force. When a further uprising began, Henry VIII considered himself absolved of the whole deal and brutally retaliated. The leader of the rebellion, Robert Aske, was sentenced to death and begged to be fully dead before being dismembered. Henry agreed and instead hanged him in chains — that is, sticking him in a gibbet while still alive.

Keep in mind that the death of Catherine of Aragon (which did purportedly lead to some tears when he read her farewell letter), the execution of Anne, the debilitating joust injury, the marriage to Jane Seymour, the Pilgrimage of Grace, and the death of Henry's acknowledged (and beloved) illegitimate son Henry Fitzroy all happened in 1536. A true annus horribilis.

Some months later, Jane Seymour finally gave him the son he craved, the future Edward VI. Her death twelve days after Edward's birth has been said by some writers to have devastated Henry. The one woman who had given him a legitimate son had died. Henry wore black for three months after Jane's death, and didn't feel much need for a fourth marriage, however even he knew just one legitimate son was a danger. There was a high chance that, seeing as it was Tudor England, Edward might die young.^note Henry had been the second son of his father, and it was expected that his older brother Arthur, Prince of Wales, would be King. However, Arthur died unexpectedly aged 15, so Henry knew the importance of a Spare to the Throne from experience.

Giving him the son he'd awaited for 27 years meant Henry was eternally grateful to Jane, and he was fond of referring to her as his first true wife; her family was able to reap massive benefits from their kinship to her and her son, particularly her brothers Edward and Thomas, the former of whom would end up as Lord Protector of the Realm during the minority of his nephew. While his marriage to Catherine of Aragon lasted much longer, and his passion (or obsession) for Anne Boleyn was much more all-encompassing, Henry went out of his way later in life to honour Jane. When he commissioned a portrait of his dynasty, Jane appeared posthumously with him and their son, and he was later buried beside her at his own direction. At the same time, contemporary reports suggest that Henry was only mildly upset that Jane's death had disrupted his hunting plans, and he began his search for a fourth wife barely a few days after her funeral.

This search took longer than expected, and it was nearly three years before Henry married again. This was partly due to the fluctuating politics in Europe that left Henry and his government constantly uncertain about with whom they needed to be allied, and partly because the European marriage market, shockingly, was not that keen on a king who had gone through three wives in five years. Anne Boleyn's fate stood out in particular; even those who didn't like her were surprised at her abrupt downfall and death, and many of the foreign ambassadors seemed to think the accusations against her were either unfounded or exaggerated, conveniently freeing Henry to marry someone else. Apparently when Mary of Guise — a French noblewoman who would later marry Henry's nephew James V of Scotland and give birth to Mary Queen of Scots — learned that Henry had told the French ambassador that he was a big man and needed a big wife, she glibly replied, "I may be a big woman, but I have a very little neck." When Henry's ambassadors were plying his suit to Christina of Denmark, she supposedly said, "If I had two heads, one should be at the King of England's disposal." While these stories are likely apocryphal, Christina and her relatives at least made no secret of her aversion to marrying Henry, particularly since Catherine of Aragon was her great-aunt. When she posed for a portrait by Hans Holbein the Younger (whom Henry had sent to paint all the prospective candidates for wife Number Four) she wore full mourning dress even though she had been widowed over two years prior; while this was customary for noble Italian widows (as her first husband was Franceso II Sforza, the Duke of Milan) her choice of wardrobe was still very telling. The wooing of both ladies went nowhere, and several other marriage negotiations also fell through.

4: Anne of Cleves (divorced)

Henry decided on a fourth marriage several years after Jane Seymour's death. However, unsurprisingly foreign princesses were not keen on marrying a notorious, wife-murdering monarch. Eventually, an alliance was arranged with Germany. Henry sent Holbein to paint portraits of Anne of Cleves, and her younger sister Amelie of Cleves. Her father was the Duke of Cleves, an important mover and shaker in the emerging Protestant Schmalkaldic League, who presumably judged that having England in his back pocket would be worth whatever risk his daughter might face marrying Europe's most notorious serial monogamist. Her elder sister, Sybelle, meanwhile, was married to the Elector of Saxony, who led the League. After Catherine of Aragon, she was Henry's only wife who would be considered a "royal", as the daughter of a sovereign prince.

Rumour has it that Hans Holbein portrayed her as misleadingly beautiful, and that she was in fact quite unattractive but, in truth, it's thought that Anne looked quite similar to her portrait. Anne was said to be tall, slim and blonde. Keep in mind that at this point, Henry was 48 years old and morbidly obese; with nasty, stinking, pus-spewing ulcers covering both legs^note Most fictional depictions have him suffering from only one sore, but that wasn't the case and possibly gout. It's most likely that Anne found Henry unattractive. It didn't help that at the time, Anne could only speak German, a language Henry couldn't speak. When they first met, Henry was confident that Anne would fall in love with him on sight and disguised himself as a peasant, drawing on an old chivalry trope that Anne was supposed to see through the disguise to find her "true love". However, when the old, overweight stranger burst in on Anne, she was visibly surprised, not helped by the fact that she was completely unaware of the tradition. Henry tried kissing her before he'd barely spoken, and Anne was horrified, not realising it was her fiancé. Henry was humiliated in front of his advisors and friends, as well as some of Anne's ladies-in-waiting.

While the English members of Henry's court felt compelled to say whatever the irascible king wanted to hear, none of the English courtiers who wrote about her after Henry's death mentioned her being anything but pleasant-looking and that Hans Holbein - known for painting realistic, rather than flattering, portraits - had, at most, made her nose slightly smaller. Charles de Marillac, the French Ambassador, opined that while Anne was no great beauty, she was reasonably attractive, pleasant to be around, and dignified. But she was also docile, tall, quite large-breasted, and largely trained in the domestic arts rather than activities that the royal court enjoyed like hunting, dancing, and singing, and Henry tended to like them feisty, tiny, boyish, keen on the outdoors and with a classically-trained intellect. Furthermore, Anne's conservative and not exactly fashionable or flattering German clothing did her no favours, and what one courtier described as her "serious" demeanor all served to make her appear older than her years: she was only 25, meaning she was 23 years Henry's junior.

In a desperate bid to get back his respect, he declared that Anne was the ugly one, which is thought to have surprised his courtiers. Henry even gave her a cruel nickname, the "Flanders Mare", and gossip soon spread around court. Luckily for her, Anne hadn't learnt English yet, so she didn't understand the rumours about her.

Anne of Cleves never remarried, which meant that she had control over her money and property. She was the last of Henry's six wives to die, ten years after Henry, though Catherine of Aragon had a longer lifespan. She was also the first of Henry's wives to lack strong religious convictions; born and baptized Catholic, she was raised in a Protestant environment and most of her close relatives became leading lights of the early Protestant movement, but she only converted to Anglicanism to marry Henry, and then converted back to Roman Catholicism when her former stepdaughter Mary took the throne. Had she lived long enough to see the accession of her other stepdaughter Elizabeth^note she didn't, dying during the reign of Mary, who threw her a lavish funeral and buried her with great pomp in Westminster Abbey; of Henry's six queens, she is the only one entombed there, she no doubt would have converted back to Protestantism once again. Her last act during her life was to ask Mary and Elizabeth to hire her servants, or, failing that, find them good jobs.

England's enemies started fighting each other again. Hence, the alliance fell apart, and Henry had another annulment for his latest unconsummated marriage, this time without any resistance from his soon-to-be-ex-wife. Anne, having learned English in the meantime, was no fool, and gained a good settlement out of it and lived the rest of her life unmarried but quite a happy and wealthy woman as "the King's Good Sister" in England, outranking every other woman in the kingdom, bar Henry's next wives. She's also remembered for having a warm relationship with Henry's children, and as a kind and easy-going mistress by her servants. Cromwell was arrested and executed shortly after the annulment. Henry later regretted executing Cromwell, one of the only known executions he truly felt guilt over.

5: Catherine Howard (beheaded)

Henry's next wife was Catherine Howard, a maternal cousin of Anne Boleyn who was most likely around 16 or 17 years old, but could have been as young as 15. Henry was 49, and while married to Anne of Cleves, was noted to have visited Catherine Howard's bedchamber frequently. After their wedding, Henry spoiled his beautiful young wife with new clothes, shoes and jewels. While Henry was doting on Catherine's childish desires, other men (most notably the handsome Knight Thomas Culpeper) were giving Catherine more mature desires. A year later, she was arrested under suspicion of adultery and treason (both for having imperilled the succession and for having imagined the King's death) and was eventually beheaded aged around 19. Unlike Anne Boleyn, the accusations against her were almost certainly true, but, strangely, Henry seemed to have been more upset over her premarital relationship with Francis Dereham (the former secretary at her grandmother's finishing school) than her adultery with Thomas Culpeper.^note In certain historians' eyes, Catherine's relationship with Dereham was not purely sexual but a premarital contract, which by then-contemporary standards was de facto marriage. For the deeply religious Henry, it was not that he had married a non-virgin, but that he had been bigamously married, a grievous sin. You have to wonder, did he think about his wedding to Anne Boleyn?

Despite the somewhat ominous timing of her wedding, as she married Henry on the same day that Thomas Cromwell (who had arranged the alliance with Cleves and whom Henry blamed for his disastrous marriage to Anne) was executed for treason and heresy, Catherine had a grand time during her early days as queen; her husband doted upon her and indulged her every whim, she was able to wear elaborate new clothes practically every day, and since she was too young (and probably not educated enough) to take part in affairs of state she was free to enjoy herself and have as much fun as she wanted. But as the honeymoon period passed and winter arrived, Henry's good mood soured; none of his ailments had magically disappeared when he married Catherine, and the recurring pain from his ulcerous legs caused him to grow bad-tempered, shutting himself away from the court, accusing his councillors of lying and beginning to regret his execution of Cromwell. When Catherine still hadn't announced a pregnancy around a year after her marriage, the pressure was on; not only would she not be officially crowned queen until she was confirmed to be expecting a royal baby, her position even as un-crowned queen was vulnerable.

Considering that her future depended on getting pregnant by a short-tempered and vindictive man who was nearly old enough to be her grandfather, and whom she no doubt found just as physically repulsive as Anne of Cleves had, it's hardly surprising that Catherine might have found relief in friendships with the handsome young men of the court — and with Henry's closest body servant, Thomas Culpeper, in particular, carrying on with him behind the King's back.^note According to all sources, however, when the court was on progress to the house of Charles Brandon, Duke of Suffolk, and his second wife, Katherine Willoughby, the young queen actually behaved herself. What that says about the Duchess of Suffolk, who was able to keep Catherine in line, is up to you. Nonetheless, bad idea. An even worse idea was when she made Francis Dereham (her former boyfriend and the aforementioned man to whom she was probably legally married, due to a pre-contract) her Private Secretary and then a Gentleman Usher of the Queen's Chamber, after he came begging for a job. Dereham promptly antagonized most of the other gentlemen in Catherine's entourage and bragged that he would marry Catherine once Henry was dead. Word of the past relationship between Catherine and Dereham inevitably reached the ear of Archbishop Thomas Cranmer, who alerted Henry to the fact that he was technically Catherine's second husband. During the subsequent investigation, the flurry of arrests of Catherine herself and several of her relatives and courtiers, and the questioning/torture of Dereham, the truth came out that he was not only Catherine's former lover but that he had been "succeeded in the Queen's affections" by Culpeper.

Henry, unsurprisingly, had both Catherine's current and past boyfriends executed^note While both men were charged with treason, Culpeper managed to successfully petition his sentence to be reduced to a merciful beheading, while Dereham got the full 'hung, drawn and quartered' treatment. then sat around for months whining about how all women are whores. Catherine herself was imprisoned for a few months, until a bill of attainder was passed to make it treason for a queen to fail to disclose her sexual history to the king within 20 days of their marriage, or to incite someone to commit adultery with her. Conveniently, this absolved Henry of any culpability in the matter of Catherine's pre-contract with Dereham and meant she could be executed without a trial. The night before her execution, Catherine allegedly requested that the block be brought to her cell and spent many hours practising how to lay her head upon it; the practice seemed to have paid off, as while she was pale, terrified and needed help to climb the scaffold, Catherine met her end with relative composure.^note In a strange twist of fate, (and as if Catherine's fate wasn't already disturbingly similar to that of her cousin Anne) she was executed along with Jane Rochford, the wife of George Boleyn, who had been accused of incest with his sister and died for it; Jane was pressured into giving testimony against her husband and sister-in-law during the palace coup that unseated Anne, barely survived the fall of the Boleyns, and managed to return to court in due course to serve both Anne of Cleves and Catherine — only to be implicated in arranging meetings between Catherine and Culpeper. She seems to have had a nervous breakdown while imprisoned and was declared insane, which meant that legally she could not stand trial for aiding in the queen's adultery...but Henry, who wanted everyone involved in his humiliation dead, simply had another bill of attainder passed, which allowed the execution of the insane for high treason. Thus Jane followed Catherine, and belatedly George and Anne, to the block.

History has traditionally been sympathetic to Catherine's excessive punishment and untimely death, while at the same time critical towards the behaviour and lifestyle that led to such an end: 'wanton', 'hedonisitic', 'stupid', 'empty-headed' and the like all crop up in numerous histories and retellings. Modern scholarship tends to be more fair to Catherine; she was a very young woman who, while not pressured into marrying Henry, did not have the option of saying no. She likely kept her previous relationships secret not so much out of idiocy as out of self-preservation. Given her age and other events in her life^note She was likely around thirteen when she had her first 'relationship' with Henry Mannox, her music teacher, who was at least ten years older than her. During her interrogation, Catherine claimed that Dereham essentially forced himself upon her. At the same time, witnesses from Norfolk House (where both of them were living at the time of their affair) refuted this and said that Catherine enjoyed Dereham's attentions, Catherine was still likely no more than fifteen at this point and Dereham, again, was more than ten years older than her, meaning he might have pressured her into accepting said attentions. He possibly blackmailed her with their past relationship to get that cushy job as her Private Secretary. As for Culpeper (who was, once more with feeling, at least ten years older than Catherine) theories have been raised that he might have had knowledge of her previous affairs and hoped to use them to gain leverage and power over the young queen. He may also have been a rapist; in 1539, a Thomas Culpeper was accused of, and granted a royal pardon for, raping a park-keeper's wife and then murdering a villager... though it's possible that this might have been Culpeper's elder brother, confusingly also called Thomas., some historians now suspect she may have been coerced into the relationship with Culpeper and quite possibly raped — and then beheaded for it. Lucy Worsley even stressed that instead of the "good-time girl" some historians accuse her of having been, people today would call Catherine "an abused child."

6: Catherine Parr (lived)

Catherine Parr, an intelligent and twice-widowed veteran of the royal court, was his sixth and last wife. Catherine was upset when Henry proposed to her, as she was in love with the handsome, dashing Thomas Seymour (brother of the late Queen Jane Seymour). However, she could hardly say no to the King, and was won over. Catherine got along very well with all three of her stepchildren, Mary Tudor, Elizabeth Tudor and Edward Tudor, and like her godmother and namesake Catherine of Aragon capably served as regent when Henry was away on campaign in France. However, Catherine was a devout Protestant, while Henry identified as a Protestant but still held traditional Catholic beliefs. Catherine tried to get Henry to be more Protestant, but he was infuriated at the idea of his wife lecturing him. He ordered guards to arrest Catherine, but she managed to win him over just in time by insisting that she didn't mean to lecture him, and that when she debated on religion she only wanted to learn from him. Catherine managed to save herself just in time, as it was rumoured Henry had plans on marrying a seventh wife, Katherine Brandon, Dowager Duchess of Suffolk. Had it not been for Catherine aiming Henry's sympathy, their marriage may very well have ended in divorce, or even an execution. Henry died before she did. A few months after Henry's death, Catherine angered her royal stepchildren by marrying her sweetheart Thomas Seymour (brother of Jane Seymour, as mentioned, and perhaps more significantly therefore also of Edward Seymour, 1st Duke of Somerset, who was the leading figure of Edward VI's Regency Council at that time), but they later forgave her. Catherine also took the young Princess Elizabeth into her household to be educated, along with Elizabeth's cousin Lady Jane Grey. Catherine later sent Elizabeth away after catching her embracing her husband.^note This was after a series of "jokes" in which Seymour would enter Elizabeth's chamber when she was asleep and wake her, catching her in her chemise, even slapping her buttocks; and an incident in which Seymour cut Elizabeth's gown to pieces whilst Catherine held her. Why she joined in is unclear, and why she decided to draw the line at a hug, more so (but what she caught was not any form of intercourse). Whether this was because Catherine Parr finally saw it was going to far and wanted to keep her stepdaughter safe from her pedophile husband or was merely infuriated that her beloved stepdaughter would fall in love with her husband (grooming wasn't exactly considered a thing back then) is unknown. Catherine was also shocked and thrilled to discover she was pregnant, aged 35 or 36, as her previous 3 marriages had resulted in no pregnancies. Catherine died giving birth aged 36 or 37 to a daughter named Mary Seymour (named after Princess Mary, Catherine's eldest stepdaughter), whose fate is not known, but she probably died in infancy.

Somewhat ironically, considering all of the above, by then-contemporary standards, Henry appears to have been considered something of a romantic. While debate naturally exists over how much or little Henry truly cared about his wives beyond their ability to produce a male heir or otherwise please him, he appears to have insisted on marrying for love, or at least on having some kind of personal interest, attraction or connection with the woman he was marrying; one of his marriages, after all, ended largely because the couple just didn't click together romantically, a reason for divorce we take for granted today. In addition, numerous accounts suggest that, when things were going well at least, Henry could be a charming, considerate and affectionate spouse who valued his wives and enjoyed spending time with them. While many of these accounts have to be taken with a grain of salt — and we still have to remember that he ended two marriages via officially-sanctioned decapitation, which hardly puts him in the running for husband of the year — even meeting this baseline was incredibly rare in an age where most royal marriages were arranged purely for political or diplomatic advantage with little concern for whether the participants loved, liked or could even communicate with each other.^note This trait was actually shared amongst his sisters, as both, when freed of their political marriages, married men that they had romantic feelings for rather than strategic alliances. The Tudor children may have been seeking to follow the example set by their parents, Henry VII and Elizabeth of York (a genuine love match which began as a political alliance), as their widower father did not remarry even though it would have been politically (and financially) advantageous to do so, because he was still in love with his late wife. Another formative example for them would have been their grandfather Edward IV, who married their lowborn grandmother Elizabeth Woodville for love over a dynastic marriage with a continental ally.

His obsession over siring a son also needs to be placed in context of the time he was living in; not just an intensely patriarchal time, but one which was also not far removed from a lengthy period of civil war. The Wars of the Roses had ended barely twenty years before Henry came to the throne, so was still in living memory for a lot of people, and a key trigger for that three decades of war had been precisely the issue that Henry was desperate to avoid — an unclear path of succession to the throne, and numerous competing 'bastard' claims. The period of stability Henry had inherited was the result of the painstaking efforts of his father and was potentially fragile should the issue of another succession crisis emerge. Furthermore, the last time a woman (Empress Matilda) had been in line to the throne of England, the result had been yet another devastating decades-long civil war among competing claimants; England had not enjoyed the successful reign of queens that twenty-first century readers will be familiar with (and, in yet another of the ironies that marks Henry's reign, it would be Henry's own daughters who in large part established that precedence). None of which exactly justifies things, of course, but at least goes some way towards explaining them.

Generally speaking, historians and the establishment dislike him (see the page quote from Dickens) while he remains quite popular with the English people — largely because he, or rather his famous portrait by Holbein, is what people invariably picture when they think of an interesting king. The fact that the British history syllabus emphasises the Tudors probably helps too. In his time, his prestige generally allowed England to punch above its weight class, diplomatically — when he wished to marry Anne of Cleves and ally with the Protestant princes of northern Germany, said German princes were amazed that he was actually willing to talk to them. Furthermore, there is some historical evidence that King James V of Scotland missed out on their summit in the 1540s out of intimidation — another king was scared to meet with him.

While he undoubtedly left England a much more powerful, wealthy and important nation than when he came to the throne, and though English Protestants and others credit him for founding the Church of England (albeit for acknowledged selfish reasons, and his Church was not Protestant in any way), the fact that he built that wealth on looting the church monasteries and Lords he didn't like (and bear in mind, the church at this time was largely responsible for education, welfare, and health care, though he did reform the apothecaries to make up for this to an extent), combined with his bluebeard tendencies, the butchering of many of his closest advisors, ministers and friends, and his disturbingly large body count (somewhere in the region of 10,000 people were executed during his reign, for heresy or trumped-up charges — more than the Spanish Inquisition in all of its history) and his habit of making enemies of every power in Europe for reasons of his own vanity, do not make him an endearing figure to most historical researchers.

In an ironic twist, Henry's long sought-after son Edward VI would only 'reign' for six years, with a regency council actually calling the shots until he reached his majority, before dying at age 15. It would be Henry's daughters, first Mary, then Elizabeth, to lead England for the next fifty years — and it would be his sister Margaret's line that would reign in England after his daughters' deaths, down to this very day. Essentially, as David Mitchell points out, for all the fuss and disinheritances and reinheritances, not only would Henry's children would end up reigning in the exact same order they would have reigned anyway, but his attempts to secure his family's legacy with a male heir and the drastic shifts to English society they resulted in were all for naught.

His reign has also engendered an astounding number of real life what-ifs that continue to be hotly debated by historians and writers. Suffice to say, they'll be debating Good King Hal's reign for centuries to come.

He ended at #40 in One Hundred Greatest Britons.

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Portrayals of Henry VIII in fiction:

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