The English King Whose Six Marriages Between 1509 and 1547 Produced Three Surviving Children, Two Beheaded Wives, and the English Reformation

Henry VIII (1491–1547) became king of England on 22 April 1509, aged 17. He died on 28 January 1547, aged 55. The six wives he married during the intervening 38 years are conventionally summarised in the English schoolroom mnemonic divorced, beheaded, died, divorced, beheaded, survived.

Catherine of Aragon (1509-1533)

Catherine of Aragon (1485-1536) had been first married to Henry’s elder brother Arthur, Prince of Wales, in November 1501. Arthur died of probable tuberculosis five months later. Catherine remained at the English court as a Spanish princess, in legal limbo, for the next seven years. Henry VIII married her on 11 June 1509 — seven weeks after his accession — under a papal dispensation from the canonical impediment of her previous marriage to his brother.

The marriage produced one surviving child: the future Mary I, born 18 February 1516. Catherine had at least five other pregnancies that ended in miscarriage, stillbirth, or infant death. By 1525 Henry had concluded that the lack of a male heir was divine punishment for the (technically uncanonical) marriage. He began the campaign that he called the King’s Great Matter to have the marriage annulled.

The annulment campaign produced the eventual break with the Roman papacy. Pope Clement VII could not grant the annulment for political reasons — Catherine’s nephew was Charles V, Holy Roman Emperor, who in 1527 had militarily occupied Rome and held the Pope captive. The 1533 Act in Restraint of Appeals, the 1534 Act of Supremacy, and the 1534 Annulment were the parliamentary acts that severed the English church from Rome. Catherine refused to accept the annulment. She died of cancer at Kimbolton Castle on 7 January 1536, aged 50.

Anne Boleyn (1533-1536)

Anne Boleyn (c. 1501-1536) had been a Boleyn family lady-in-waiting at Catherine of Aragon’s court since 1522. Her relationship with Henry began around 1525 and drove the annulment campaign. They married secretly on 25 January 1533. She was crowned at Westminster Abbey on 1 June 1533.

The marriage produced one surviving child: the future Elizabeth I, born 7 September 1533. Anne had at least two further pregnancies that miscarried.

By spring 1536 Henry had decided to dispose of Anne. The mechanism was a politically-engineered treason trial in May 1536, with charges including adultery with multiple court figures (including her own brother) and conspiracy to murder the king. The evidence was manufactured. She was beheaded on Tower Green by a specially-imported French swordsman on 19 May 1536, aged about 35.

Jane Seymour (1536-1537)

Jane Seymour (c. 1508-1537) was a quiet lady-in-waiting at Anne Boleyn’s court. Henry married her on 30 May 1536 — eleven days after Anne’s execution. Jane produced the desired male heir: the future Edward VI, born 12 October 1537. Twelve days after the birth Jane died of postpartum complications, probably puerperal fever, on 24 October 1537, aged about 29.

She is the only wife Henry was buried beside. Her tomb is in St George’s Chapel, Windsor.

Anne of Cleves (1540)

Anne of Cleves (1515-1557) was a German Protestant princess whose marriage to Henry in January 1540 was a Thomas Cromwell-arranged diplomatic alliance with the Lutheran German states. Henry had agreed to the marriage on the basis of a Hans Holbein portrait of Anne. On meeting her in person at Rochester on 1 January 1540 he reportedly told Cromwell, “I like her not.” He went through with the wedding ceremony six days later under political duress.

The marriage was annulled on 9 July 1540 on the grounds of non-consummation. Anne accepted the annulment without resistance and was given a property settlement: the manors of Hever Castle and Richmond Palace, an annual income of £4,000, and the title “the King’s Sister.” She lived out the rest of her life as a wealthy English landowner. She outlived all the other wives — and the king. She died of cancer at Chelsea on 16 July 1557, aged 41, having lived through the reigns of Edward VI and Mary I.

Catherine Howard (1540-1542)

Catherine Howard (c. 1523-1542) was a 17-year-old cousin of Anne Boleyn and a marriage-eligible Howard family niece of the Duke of Norfolk. Henry married her on 28 July 1540 — three weeks after his annulment from Anne of Cleves. He was 49; she was 17.

The marriage failed within 15 months. Catherine had had a premarital relationship with a Norfolk household secretary named Francis Dereham, which her enemies at court documented in November 1541. The Privy Council investigation found additional evidence that she had been carrying on a sexual affair with the king’s groom Thomas Culpeper through the spring and summer of 1541. Both Dereham and Culpeper were arrested and executed on 10 December 1541. Catherine was beheaded at Tower Green on 13 February 1542, aged about 18.

Catherine Parr (1543-1548)

Catherine Parr (1512-1548) was 30 when she married the king on 12 July 1543. She had previously been twice widowed — her first husband Edward Burgh had died in 1533, her second Lord Latimer in early 1543. She was an educated woman with Protestant religious sympathies; she published two religious works during the marriage (the second, The Lamentation of a Sinner of 1547, is the first English-language religious work published in print under a queen’s name).

She survived the marriage by diplomatic skill — a 1546 conservative-party attempt to have her arrested for heretical Protestantism failed when she persuaded Henry that her theological discussions had been intended to test his arguments rather than to assert her own. Henry died on 28 January 1547. Catherine married for the fourth time in May 1547 — to the younger Thomas Seymour — and died of postpartum complications on 5 September 1548 after the birth of her only child, Mary Seymour. She was 36.

What it produced

Henry VIII’s six wives produced three children who reached the throne: Mary I (1553-1558), Elizabeth I (1558-1603), and Edward VI (1547-1553). The two beheaded wives — Anne Boleyn and Catherine Howard — were the maternal grandmothers of Elizabeth I and the cousin of Anne respectively. The English Reformation, the Tudor break with Rome, the dissolution of the monasteries, and the post-1534 English national-religious identity were collectively the institutional consequence of the annulment crisis that the first marriage had produced. The 38-year sequence of six marriages shaped the subsequent four centuries of English religious and political history.