Henry VIII (1491-1547) and Wives

[An Ard Ri]

In Profile : Cardinal Thomas Wolsey


Tudor Times | Cardinal Thomas Wolsey

 

[eya]

Henry VIII spent £6m a year on alcohol, £3.5m on meat - and his second divorce cost him £30m - Mirror Online

Want to be King of the Castle???

Henry VIII and Anne Boleyn's honeymoon mansion is on sale | Daily Mail Online

Catherine Parr 'penned words' to Thomas Tallis piece | Daily Mail Online

"How Henry VIII's final wife Catherine Parr had a secret song writing talent and rallied the country behind"

 

[An Ard Ri]

Want to be King of the Castle???

Henry VIII and Anne Boleyn's honeymoon mansion is on sale | Daily Mail Online

Might be haunted as it was once owned by the Duke of Buckingham whom Henry had executed in 1521!

 

[bekalc]

The problem with Henry was he was a hypocrite he slept with Anne Boylen sister so the same issues spoiled to them and in fact he made that argument when he tried to get an annullment.

I don't blame Catherine for fighting for her daughter got for her. As for Mary being this awful bloody thing she was no more bloody than her sister. Huge amounts of Catholics died under Elizabeth. Only 275 people died for heresy under her reign and heresy was often linked with rebellion. She herself said she did not want to compel. Bloody Mary is very much a case of winners writing history.

 

[XeniaCasaraghi]

Why can't people remember that Mary reigned for 5 years and Elizabeth almost 50; so it says something that Mary killed so many in such a short amount of time compared to her sister.

 

[CyrilVladisla]

In 1511 the Holy Roman Emperor Maximilian I made King Henry VIII a gift of the best suit of armor in Europe, from Germany, in honor of King Henry's prowess in jousting at tournaments.

After King Henry VIII divorced his wife Catherine Howard, Anne of Cleves wanted to remarry Henry.
Writing Fiction & Nonfiction Set in the Past: Seven Surprising Facts About Anne of Cleves

In 1535 King Henry VIII and his second wife Queen Anne Boleyn stayed at Thornbury Castle.

Did King Henry VIII absolutely have to have the permission of Pope Clement VII to divorce Queen Catherine of Aragon?

Did not Henry VIII's nephew by marriage, Holy Roman Emperor Charles V, not cause Henry to have any fear when he, Henry, decided to divorce Charles' aunt, Queen Catherine? Charles was both Roman Catholic and very powerful. Charles V was also King Charles I of Spain. Was not Charles more powerful in the respect that he was a sovereign twice where Henry was a sovereign only once?

 

[Moonmaiden23]

Yes he did.

Henry had to obtain a special papal dispensation to marry Catherine of Aragon at all in the first place, since she had been previously married to(and widowed by) his older brother Arthur Prince of Wales. The dispensation granting the marriage was based on the assumption that the marriage between Arthur and Catherine had never been consummated.

Catherine went to her grave swearing that this was true.

What Henry was seeking from the Vatican was an annulment of his marriage to Catherine based on his belief(and like minded scholars and clergy that Henry had rounded up) that the previous pope had over-reached by granting him permission to marry his brother's widow, that it had been invalid from the first based on a passage in Leviticus forbidding it.

 

[Countessmeout]

Rules of consanguinity in the catholic church at the time. In other cultures it was allowed for a man to marry his brother's widow, actually custom. But the Roman Catholic church believed that when a woman married into a family, her husband's family became her own. So marrying her late husband's brother would be considered marrying her brother.

The church did make exceptions to the rule. In the case when the couple had no children of the marriage, a dispensation could be granted. This was how Catherine was allowed to marry Henry. Catherine refused to claim she had even slept with Arthur. Which was highly likely as he was so ill.

He used the rules to his benefit again to end his second marriage. Even if he had got an annulment from Catherine and remained catholic, the Pope would not have approved his marriage to Anne. Due to his previous relations with Anne's sister (even if not married). He used it as a reason to annul his marriage to Anne before beheading her.

 

[Moonmaiden23]

Exactly. The mind boggles at Henry's double dealing self serving hypocrisy.

By the way, a friend recently told me that he had read that Henry had also taken Anne's mother Elizabeth Howard as a mistress years before he began his celebrated affair with Anne??!!

Has anyone else heard this bizarre bit of information?

 

[Countessmeout]

Exactly. The mind boggles at Henry's double dealing self serving hypocrisy.

By the way, a friend recently told me that he had read that Henry had also taken Anne's mother Elizabeth Howard as a mistress years before he began his celebrated affair with Anne??!!

Has anyone else heard this bizarre bit of information?

Lady Elizabeth Howard, later Boleyn, was at court. She was lady in waiting to both Henry's mother and later Catherine. There were rumors by some historians that Elizabeth was a mistress to Henry as well, even some suggested Anne was his daughter. But it was never substantiated, and most historians seem to think Elizabeth Howard-Boleyn is being confused with Elizabeth Blount. Henry never mentioned Elizabeth as a mistress, including when he was seeking to marry, or later annul his marriage, to Anne. Only Mary was mentioned. The rumors seem to stem from the fall from grace and popularity of the family.

 

[Gawin]

Some of Henry's contemporaries claimed he had slept with Elizabeth Boleyn.

In 1537 Sir George Throckmorton stated he had pointed this out to Henry before Henry married Anne: "And I said to him that I told your Grace I feared if ye did marry Queen Anne your conscience would be more troubled at length, for it is thought ye have meddled both with the mother and the sister. And his Grace said 'Never with the mother.' And my lord Privy Seal standing by said 'Nor never with the sister either, and therefore put that out of your mind.'"

So Henry denied having slept with Elizabeth (Anne's mother) but not Mary (her sister). One of his ministers, realizing Henry's gaffe, quickly spoke up and denied Henry had slept with Mary.

Source: Letters and Papers, Foreign and Domestic, Henry VIII (scroll down to record #952):

Henry VIII: October 1537, 16-20 | British History Online

For a summary, see Sir George Throckmorton's entry in The History of Parliament; The House of Commons:

THROCKMORTON, Sir George (by 1489-1552), of Coughton, Warws. | History of Parliament Online

 

[Denville]

Exactly. The mind boggles at Henry's double dealing self serving hypocrisy.

By the way, a friend recently told me that he had read that Henry had also taken Anne's mother Elizabeth Howard as a mistress years before he began his celebrated affair with Anne??!!

Has anyone else heard this bizarre bit of information?

It is a very common rumour, that as well as sleeping Mary, he also had had an affair with her mother. However, it is not true...

 

[Moonmaiden23]

Henry was in fact very nervous about Charles. Not only was Catherine corresponding with her powerful nephew and soliciting his support, their daughter Mary was as well.

As much as he might have liked to offer more than moral support to Catherine and Mary during the divorce crisis, the Emperor had his own fish to fry politically that tempered his involvement with more caution.

But his Imperial armies did sack Rome and with Charles's hostile armies surrounding him Pope Clement did not dare declare the marriage null and void as Henry wanted him to.

So, in that way at least Charles V offer practical support to Catherine while sticking it to Henry.

 

[An Ard Ri]

Catherine of Aragon's family either ruled over large parts of Europe or were queen consorts.

Sister -Joanna I ,Queen of Castile,Aragon, Sicily and Naples
Nephew -Emperor Charles V
Nephew -Ferdinand King of the Romans,Hungary and Croatia.
Niece-Catherine,queen consort of Portugal
Niece -Eleanor,queen Consort of France
Niece -Mary queen of Hungary and Regent of the Low Countries.
Niece -Isabelle ,queen consort of Denmark.

 

[Zonk]

I had also heard the rumor about Anne's mother but as stated before, not definitive proof. But who knows, as it has been proved by historical events...Henry VIII was a liar. Denying he slept with Mary, what a horrible person! Or at least a horrible husband. And even worst, a horrible father.

 

[Denville]

I had also heard the rumor about Anne's mother but as stated before, not definitive proof. But who knows, as it has been proved by historical events...Henry VIII was a liar. Denying he slept with Mary, what a horrible person! Or at least a horrible husband. And even worst, a horrible father.

did ou expect him to admit thtat he did sleep with Mary? Of course it was well known but he was harldy likely to openly say it...
And its pretty certainly not true that he had an affair with Elizabeth Boleyn. Odds are that the rumour started because of confusion iwht Eliz Blount and the fact that the Boleyns were being demonised as a terrible family because Anne was trying to marry the King...

 

[An Ard Ri]

Anne's Irish grandmother ,Lady Margaret Butler was the daughter of Thomas Butler, 7th Earl of Ormond.She lived a long life and saw short rise and fall of the House Boleyn.

She died sometime in 1539 but there's no mention of a burial site possibly beside her husband,Sir William Boleyn.

 

[Gawin]

I had also heard the rumor about Anne's mother but as stated before, not definitive proof. But who knows, as it has been proved by historical events...Henry VIII was a liar. Denying he slept with Mary, what a horrible person! Or at least a horrible husband. And even worst, a horrible father.

According to Sir George Throckmorton he did admit to sleeping with Mary:
"And I said to him that I told your Grace I feared if ye did marry Queen Anne your conscience would be more troubled at length, for it is thought ye have meddled both with the mother and the sister. And his Grace said 'Never with the mother.'"

 

[Osipi]

Reading through this thread and the discussion of Henry's um... relations... far and wide and with so many mistresses and wives, I kind of have to laugh at the thought of him being the head of the new Church of England.

Basically, I get the feeling that Henry wanted what Henry wanted and he moved mountains to get things to be his way.

 

[Gawin]

I should also point out that in 1527 Henry submitted a dispensation to the Pope. The dispensation would allow him to marry another woman (assuming the Pope would annul his first marriage) to marry another woman even if she and Henry were within the “first degree of affinity, ex quocumque licito seu illicito coitu [from any licit or illicit intercourse].”

Although the dispensation did not specifically name Anne Boleyn, the first degree of affinity phrase was an obvious reference to Henry’s previous sexual relationship with her sister Mary.

In a nutshell, he wanted to annul his marriage to Catherine of Aragon because she had been his brother’s wife, in order to marry a woman whose sister had been his mistress. His hypocrisy was pointed out by Cardinal Reginald Pole:

“Now what sort of person is it whom you have put in the place of your divorced wife? Is she not the sister of her whom first you violated? And for a long time after kept as your concubine? She certainly is. How is it, then, that you now tell us of the horror you have of illicit marriage? Are you ignorant of the law which certainly no less prohibits marriage with a sister of one with whom you have become one flesh, than with one with whom your brother was one flesh? If the one kind of marriage is detestable, so is the other. Were you ignorant of this law? Nay, you knew it better than others. How do I prove that? Because, at the very time you were rejecting your brother’s widow, you were doing your utmost to get leave from the pope to marry the sister of your former concubine.”

Under These Restless Skies: The Dispensation to Marry Anne Boleyn

 

[Osipi]

If only science had been more advanced back in the time of Henry VIII. He was obsessed not only with women but also wanted a son and heir to carry on his line and his name into the future.

I really wonder how much of all the ins and outs of Henry and his wives and the split from the Roman Catholic church would be if Henry knew, for a fact, it was *his* genes that determined the sex of a child. A lot of the marrying and divorcing and remarrying had the principle of getting a male heir behind it. Add to that, intrigue, politics and pure narcissistic tendency and we have one of the most colorful reigns in British history.

 

[Gawin]

If only science had been more advanced back in the time of Henry VIII. He was obsessed not only with women but also wanted a son and heir to carry on his line and his name into the future.

I really wonder how much of all the ins and outs of Henry and his wives and the split from the Roman Catholic church would be if Henry knew, for a fact, it was *his* genes that determined the sex of a child. A lot of the marrying and divorcing and remarrying had the principle of getting a male heir behind it. Add to that, intrigue, politics and pure narcissistic tendency and we have one of the most colorful reigns in British history.

And after his efforts to father a son and successor, guess what? He was succeeded by a son who died a brief six years later, followed by the two daughters who didn't even count in Henry's eyes.

Think of it: the headless, discarded wives, the disruptive break from Rome, the mistreated & emotionally abused daughters, the brutal persecution of those who refused to recognize his supremacy over the Church, all to produce one sickly boy.

 

[Tsaritsa]

And after his efforts to father a son and successor, guess what? He was succeeded by a son who died a brief six years later, followed by the two daughters who didn't even count in Henry's eyes.

Think of it: the headless, discarded wives, the disruptive break from Rome, the mistreated & emotionally abused daughters, the brutal persecution of those who refused to recognize his supremacy over the Church, all to produce one sickly boy.

Added to which there's the ongoing battle, lasting for centuries -resulting from the split- between Catholics and Protestants. The irony does not escape me!!!

 

[Moonmaiden23]

I should also point out that in 1527 Henry submitted a dispensation to the Pope. The dispensation would allow him to marry another woman (assuming the Pope would annul his first marriage) to marry another woman even if she and Henry were within the “first degree of affinity, ex quocumque licito seu illicito coitu [from any licit or illicit intercourse].”

Although the dispensation did not specifically name Anne Boleyn, the first degree of affinity phrase was an obvious reference to Henry’s previous sexual relationship with her sister Mary.

In a nutshell, he wanted to annul his marriage to Catherine of Aragon because she had been his brother’s wife, in order to marry a woman whose sister had been his mistress. His hypocrisy was pointed out by Cardinal Reginald Pole:

“Now what sort of person is it whom you have put in the place of your divorced wife? Is she not the sister of her whom first you violated? And for a long time after kept as your concubine? She certainly is. How is it, then, that you now tell us of the horror you have of illicit marriage? Are you ignorant of the law which certainly no less prohibits marriage with a sister of one with whom you have become one flesh, than with one with whom your brother was one flesh? If the one kind of marriage is detestable, so is the other. Were you ignorant of this law? Nay, you knew it better than others. How do I prove that? Because, at the very time you were rejecting your brother’s widow, you were doing your utmost to get leave from the pope to marry the sister of your former concubine.”

Under These Restless Skies: The Dispensation to Marry Anne Boleyn

The Cardinal put it succinctly. And since Henry could not take out his rage on Reginald Pole(as Pole had wisely left England), Henry ordered the savage execution of Pole's elderly mother Margaret, Countess of Salisbury.

One of the most shameful and brutal acts of Henry's reign imo.

 

[Denville]

Reading through this thread and the discussion of Henry's um... relations... far and wide and with so many mistresses and wives, I kind of have to laugh at the thought of him being the head of the new Church of England.

Basically, I get the feeling that Henry wanted what Henry wanted and he moved mountains to get things to be his way.

So many mistresses and wives??? he had several wives yes but very few mistresses. Only 2 were named, Bess Blount and Mary Boleyn, and there might have been a few flings with women that slipped by the radar of his being constantly watched.. but by royal standards frankly that's miniscule...

 

[CyrilVladisla]

Did King Henry VIII try to keep any of the Catholic rituals in the new Anglican Church?

Was the reason that Pope Clement VII did not annul Henry VIII and Catherine of Aragon's marriage was because he (Clement VII) was under the influence of Catherine's nephew, Holy Roman Emperor Charles V?

 

[Gawin]

That's correct, unlike his contemporary King Francis I of France, Henry VIII was not known for his mistresses. The few he did have were kept in the background & the relationships were brief.

Overall, he preferred wives over mistresses. Unfortunately, he had a habit of courting a potential wife while the current wife was still around. I suspect some of them would have preferred that he amuse himself with a mistress. ?

(I realize this is an oversimplification but I enjoy having fun at Henry VIII's expense).

 

[Osipi]

Did King Henry VIII try to keep any of the Catholic rituals in the new Anglican Church?

From what I understand, the Angelican church is very similar to the Roman Catholic church but without the leadership of the Pope in Rome. There are differences over the years but not drastic changes.

 

[Denville]

henry did not change the teachings or rituals of the Church. It was not until Edward VI that the C of E became more Protestant...

 

[Gawin]

Did King Henry VIII try to keep any of the Catholic rituals in the new Anglican Church?

He went to his grave believing he was a good Catholic. He did not support the Reformation, he simply denied the supremacy of the Pope and wanted to get his hands on the Church's wealth. For example, Henry continued to believe in the Real Presence, rejected communion in both kinds, outlawed priestly marriage, accepted Masses for the dead, and firmly rejected Martin Luther's teachings on justification, free will, and good works. If the Pope had granted his wish by annulling his marriage to Catherine of Aragon, Henry probably would have remained within the Roman Catholic fold and the English Reformation would have been forced to wait for another, more sympathetic monarch.

Many of the Protestant reforms within the Church of England came about during the reigns of Henry's son Edward VI (a Calvinist) and daughter Elizabeth I (who rejected both Roman Catholicism & Calvinism in favor of a "middle" approach).