Wives' Tales

Divorced, beheaded, died: the childhood rhyme is well known, but what were Henry VIII’s wives really like?

- Neil Jones

Blue-eyed, auburn-haired, lively and gracious, the Spanish princess Catherine of Aragon was 23 years old to Henry VIII’s 18 and a diminutive 4ft-something to Henry’s towering 6ft 2 inches when they married in 1509. But any differences in age and stature evaporated in their mutual devotion: unusually for the times, theirs was no mere political alliance but also a love match. Nevertheless the union would end in bitterness some 24 years later as Henry embarked on his infamous marital merry-go-round.

“Divorced, beheaded, died; divorced, beheaded, survived” runs the well-known mnemonic recalling the fates of the King’s six wives, and it is easy to pigeonhole them as one-dimensional bit-players in the great dramas of Henry’s reign: pious Catherine of Aragon, scheming Anne Boleyn, plain Jane Seymour, ugly Anne of Cleves, frivolous Catherine Howard and nursemaid Katherine Parr. But such simplification ignores their flesh-and-blood personalities, how they influenced Henry, confirmed or broke conventions, championed new ideas or became catalysts for change.

Catherine of Aragon, the daughter of Europe’s power couple Ferdinand and Isabella of Spain, originally came to England as a 15-year-old to marry Henry VII’s eldest son Prince Arthur of Wales in 1501, strengthening an Anglo- Spanish alliance against France. But Arthur, 15 too, died suddenly the following year, leaving Catherine a widow facing an uncertain future.

In an early proof of her strong character, her father appointed her Spanish ambassador to the English court in 1507, the first-ever woman in Europe to hold the title of ambassador. Then two years later when Henry VIII ascended the throne Catherine took her second chance to fulfil her royal destiny (she maintained her marriage to Arthur had never been consummated, a claim backed by a papal dispensation).