Wives of Henry VIII

King Henry VIII of England had six wives between 1509 and his death in 1547. In legal terms, Henry had only three wives and no divorces during his life, instead three of his marriages were annulled by the Church of England. Annulments declare that a true marriage never took place, unlike a divorce, in which a married couple end their union. Henry VIII was granted an annulment by the church in England, instead of one by the Pope, as he desired, for his marriage to Catherine of Aragon, his first wife, substantially leading to the English Reformation. This legal action was later revoked during the reign of their daughter Mary I. Along with his six wives, Henry took several mistresses.

Overview

The six women who were married to Henry VIII, in chronological order of their marriages, were:

No.	Name	Lifespan	Marriage dates and length	Fate of marriage	Issue and fate
1	Catherine of Aragon	16 December 1485 – 7 January 1536	11 June 1509 – 23 May 1533	Annulled	Mother of Queen Mary I. Died 7 January 1536.
2	Anne Boleyn	1501 or 1507 – 19 May 1536	14 November 1532 / 25 January 1533 – 17 May 1536	Annulled 2 days prior to Boleyn's execution	Mother of Queen Elizabeth I. Beheaded 19 May 1536 at the Tower of London.
3	Jane Seymour	1508 – 24 October 1537	30 May 1536 – 24 October 1537	Ended with Seymour's death	Mother of King Edward VI. Died 24 October 1537, due to complications twelve days after giving birth.
4	Anne of Cleves	28 June or 22 September 1515 – 16 July 1557	6 January 1540 – 12 July 1540	Annulled	No children. Did not remarry. Outlived Henry and the other wives. Died 16 July 1557.
5	Catherine Howard	1523 – 13 February 1542	28 July 1540 – 13 February 1542	Ended with Howard's execution	No children. Beheaded 13 February 1542 at the Tower of London.
6	Catherine Parr	July/August 1512 – 5 September 1548	12 July 1543 – 28 January 1547	Ended with Henry's death	No children. Widowed by Henry VIII. Remarried to Thomas Seymour Died 5 September 1548.

Henry's first marriage to Catherine of Aragon lasted nearly 24 years, while the following five lasted just over 10 years combined.

Details

English historian and House of Tudor expert David Starkey describes Henry VIII as a husband:

What is extraordinary is that in the beginning of Henry's marriages, he was usually a very good husband. He was very tender to them, research shows that he addressed some of his wives as "sweetheart". He was a good lover, he was very generous: the wives were given huge settlements of land and jewels. He was immensely considerate when they were pregnant. However, if his current wife did not please him or did anything to fire his short temper, there would be consequences. Two of Henry's wives were beheaded by his command.

A mnemonic device to remember the order of Henry's consorts is "Arrogant Boys Seem Clever, Howard Particularly", indicating their "last names", as known to popular culture: Catherine of Aragon, Anne Boleyn, Jane Seymour, Anne of Cleves, Catherine Howard, Catherine Parr.
A rhyme for their fates is "Divorced, beheaded, died; Divorced, beheaded, survived". This is well known to British schoolchildren but oversimplifies the story.
As far as the fates of the marriages, the poem actually should be "Annulled, annulled, died; annulled, beheaded, survived" as Henry VIII's marriage to Anne Boleyn was annulled just two days before her beheading, as well as Catherine of Aragon and Anne of Cleves' marriages being annulled instead of divorced. The basis of the Catherine of Aragon annulment was a retcon of the previous narrative of her transition from Arthur to Henry; the basis of the Anne of Cleves annulment was non-consummation. While Catherine Parr outlived Henry and was widowed when he died during their marriage, long-since annulled Anne of Cleves also survived him and was the last of his wives to die.
Modern historians note that such rhymes reflect cultural memory rather than historical accuracy, since each generation has reinterpreted the wives as victims, saints, seductresses, or feminist icons depending on contemporary values.

Descendants and relationships

Catherine of Aragon, Anne Boleyn, and Jane Seymour each gave Henry VIII one child who survived infancy: two daughters and one son, respectively. All three of these children eventually ascended to the throne, as King Edward VI, Queen Mary I, and Queen Elizabeth I. In addition, Henry had a relationship with Bessie Blount, resulting in a son- Henry FitzRoy.
Anne Boleyn and Catherine Howard, who were both beheaded due to accusations of infidelity, were first cousins. Jane Seymour was second cousin to both Boleyn and Howard. Several of Henry's wives worked in service to another wife, typically as a lady-in-waiting. Boleyn served Catherine of Aragon. Seymour served both of her predecessors, Aragon and Boleyn. Howard also served her predecessor, Anne of Cleves.
Henry VIII and his wives all descend from King Edward I ten generations earlier. See also the chart below.

Catherine of Aragon

was Henry's first wife. In modern sources, her name is most commonly spelled Catherine, although she spelled and signed her name with a "K", which was an accepted spelling in England at the time.
Catherine was originally married to Arthur, Henry's older brother. She was a year older than Arthur and six years older than Henry. After Arthur died of sweating sickness in 1502, a papal dispensation by Henry VII was obtained to enable her to marry Henry, though the marriage did not occur until he came to the throne in 1509, when Henry was 17 years old and Catherine was 23. Catherine became pregnant soon after, but the girl was stillborn. She became pregnant again in 1510 and gave birth to Henry, Duke of Cornwall in 1511, but he died almost two months later. She gave birth to a stillborn boy in 1513, and to another boy who died within hours in 1515. Finally, at age 30, she bore a healthy daughter, Mary, in 1516. After giving birth to Mary, Catherine is quoted to say, "We are both young. If it was a daughter this time, by the Grace of God the sons will follow". She never had any sons that survived to adulthood. It was two years before she conceived again; the pregnancy ended with a short-lived girl.
It is said that Henry truly loved Catherine of Aragon, as he professed it many times. However, Henry became concerned he did not have a son to continue the Tudor dynasty.
Henry took several mistresses throughout this marriage, including
Elizabeth Blount, with whom he fathered an illegitimate son, Henry FitzRoy. He also had an affair with Mary Boleyn – the daughter of Thomas Boleyn, English Ambassador to France. Later, Henry turned his attention to Mary's younger sister, Anne Boleyn, a lady-in-waiting to Catherine. Unlike her sister, Anne refused to become his mistress. Henry wrote many love letters to Anne, and quickly became infatuated with her. By the late 1520s, it was clear Catherine would not bear any more children, and Henry, increasingly desperate for a legitimate son, planned to marry Anne.
Henry, at the time a Roman Catholic, sought the Pope's approval for an annulment on the grounds that Catherine had first been his brother's wife. He used a passage from the Old Testament : "If a man shall take his brother's wife, it is an impurity; he hath uncovered his brother's nakedness; they shall be childless." Despite the Pope's refusal to annul the marriage, Henry separated from Catherine in 1531; Catherine was 45, Henry was 39. He ordered Thomas Cranmer, Archbishop of Canterbury, to convene a court. On 23 May 1533, Cranmer ruled the marriage to Catherine null and void. On 28 May 1533, he pronounced the King legally married to Anne. This led to England breaking from the Roman Catholic Church and the establishment of the Church of England.
Shortly after marrying Anne Boleyn, Henry sent Catherine away. She did not see Henry, or their daughter Mary, again before her death in isolation at age 50.
Catherine was posthumously declared lawful wife of Henry - and thus rightful Queen consort - once again during the reign of Mary, when annullment of her second marriage was revoked by parliament.
William Shakespeare, in the play Henry VIII, called Catherine "The queen of earthly queens".

Anne Boleyn

was Henry's second wife and the mother of Elizabeth I. Henry's marriage to Anne and her later execution made her a key figure in the political and religious upheaval at the start of the English Reformation. She was the daughter of Sir Thomas Boleyn and Elizabeth Howard, daughter of Thomas Howard, 2nd Duke of Norfolk. She was dark-haired with beautiful features and lively manners; she was educated in Europe by Margaret of Austria. She then moved to France, and lived there for some years, largely as a lady-in-waiting to Queen Claude.
Anne resisted the king's attempts of letters to seduce her and refused to become his mistress as her sister Mary Boleyn had been. It soon became the one absorbing object of the King's desires to secure an annulment from his wife Catherine of Aragon so that he could marry Anne. He wrote a love letter that provides evidence of some level of intimacy between them, in which he admires her "pretty duckies". It eventually became clear that Pope Clement VII was unlikely to give the king an annulment, so Henry began to break the power of the Catholic Church in England for the current obsession he had with Anne Boleyn. This sparked the English Reformation.
Henry dismissed Cardinal Wolsey from public office and later had the Boleyn family's chaplain Thomas Cranmer appointed Archbishop of Canterbury. On 14 November 1532, Henry and Anne hosted a secret wedding service. Henry was 41, and Anne was in her late 20s. She soon became pregnant and there was a second, official wedding service in London on 25 January 1533. On 23 May 1533, Cranmer declared the marriage of Henry and Catherine null and void. Five days later, Cranmer declared the marriage of Henry and Anne to be good and valid. Soon after, the Pope gave sentence of ex-communication against the King and the Archbishop. As a result of Anne's marriage to the King, the Church of England was forced to break with Rome and brought under the King's control. Anne was crowned Queen consort of England on 1 June 1533, and she gave birth to Henry's second daughter Elizabeth on 7 September. By 1536, she had suffered several miscarriages, and had failed to give birth to a son. Henry grew tired of Anne and waiting for a son; he looked around for another mistress while Thomas Cromwell, Anne's former ally, devised a plot to eliminate her.
Despite unconvincing evidence, she was found guilty of engaging in sexual relations with her brother, George Boleyn, and other men, and Anne was beheaded on 19 May 1536 for adultery, incest, and high treason after Henry had his marriage to her annulled just two days before. After the accession of her daughter, Elizabeth I, in 1558, Anne was venerated as a martyr and heroine of the English Reformation, particularly due to the works of John Foxe. Over the centuries, she has inspired or been mentioned in numerous artistic and cultural works.