Anne Boleyn was Henry VIII's second wife. The marriage produced one daughter (the future Elizabeth I) and ended after three years. How did Anne die?
Anne was tried on substantially fabricated charges of adultery (including incest with her own brother George Boleyn) and beheaded with a French swordsman's sword — imported specially because the standard English execution axe was considered too crude for a queen. She had failed to produce a male heir; Henry wanted to marry Jane Seymour (which he did ten days after Anne's execution). Catherine of Aragon, Henry's first wife, was the one who died of natural causes (probably cancer, 1536). Catherine Howard, Henry's fifth wife, was also beheaded (1542). No English queen was ever burned at the stake.
Read the full facts →Henry VIII (1491–1547) was King of England from 1509 to 1547, the second Tudor monarch, and one of the most consequential figures of 16th-century European history. His six marriages, his break with the Roman Catholic Church to obtain a divorce, and his consequent founding of the Church of England produced the English Reformation and the constitutional separation of church and state in England.
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