Black hearted

In December 1535 Catherine of Aragon wrote to her husband Henry VIII and included her last will and testament.

 (Public domain image sourced from wikipedia).

Although she recognised herself as the his first wife, Henry himself did not do so, styling her only as the Dowager Duchess of York, a title she held when married to his older brother Arthur.  Their marriage had been declared invalid based on the idea that a man should not marry his brother's wife, some three years prior.  This had paved the way for Henry to marry his long term mistress, Anne Boelyn.  It had also disinherited Catherine's daughter, Mary, a fact which caused her great distress and one she refused to recognise. 

Another wife easily found: Jane Seymour

Today we continue this blog's obsession with the Tudor period with a discussion about King Henry VIII's third wife, Jane Seymour.

In January 1536 Henry's second wife, Anne Boelyn, miscarried a son at four months gestation.  This followed two other miscarriages of male infants after the birth of a healthy daughter, Elizabeth.  This proved to be the final straw for Henry, who placed Anne on trial for witchcraft and had her beheaded soon after on the 19th May 1536.

In between the miscarriage and the beheading, Henry moved his mistress, Jane Seymour, into the palace.  The two were formally engaged on the 20th May, 1536, the day after Anne's execution, and married ten days later on the 30th May at Whitehall.  However Jane was never crowned as Queen as court remained away from London to avoid an outbreak of plague. 

The D-Downfall of Anne Boelyn

Anne Boelyn.

Love her or hate her, it's hard to decide.

Henry the Eighth couldn't really figure it out either.

Anne Boelyn was born somewhere between 1501 and 1507 at Hever Castle in Kent.  She was sent to France to wait apon Queen Claude of France and complete her studies, returning to England when she was about twenty.  This education in France proved pivotal and may have shaped some of Anne's more reformative beliefs in her later life.

Anne's family, and in particular her Uncle, Thomas Howard, the Duke of Norfolk, were ambitious for position at court.  They must have been delighted when Anne quickly caught the eye of King Henry VIII in 1526 and that within a year he had proposed marriaged to her.

The slight problem being, of course, that he was already married to Catherine of Aragon.

Catherine of Aragon, Henry's first wife, had birthed six children.  A stillborn son, a stillborn daughter, two sons who lived less than a month, both named Henry, Duke of Cornwell, an unnamed daughter who lived less than a week, and Mary, who would go on to become Queen of England.

She had not borne a living son, and Henry was determined to set her aside. 

Henry the Eighth I am I am

I have recently spent a great deal of my time thinking about the health of Henry VIII.

This may be, in part, because I have spent a great deal of my time recently watching The Tudors from start to finish. Not to mention a long term fascination with the history of the English Royalty which is, in many myriad ways, far more entertaining than any soap opera.

I had always supposed that Henry VIII died from syphilis. This has certainly been the theory that both of my colleagues and my mother repeated to me when I mentioned that I was watching the Tudors. However as I watched the show in question dramatically detail Henry’s ailments I remembered that Jonathan Rhys Meyers is a physically rather sympathetic portrait of the good King. With the constellation of symptoms as described another diagnosis, to my mind, became much more clinically apt.

I was very gratified in the course of my research to discover that many other scholars had also come to a similar conclusion.

Let us first consider Henry.

 (Public domain image sourced from wikipedia)