WEBVTT - The Six Wives of Henry VIII 0:00:04.280 --> 0:00:06.560 This is the only wife of the six that he 0:00:06.600 --> 0:00:10.400 didn't know beforehand, and he didn't have some say in marrying. 0:00:10.880 --> 0:00:13.560 They had this very awkward first meeting where she didn't 0:00:13.600 --> 0:00:16.799 recognize him. She seemed to be a little unsophisticated, not 0:00:16.920 --> 0:00:19.439 as educated as some of the other wives, and he 0:00:19.520 --> 0:00:21.880 decided within a couple of days he needed to get 0:00:21.960 --> 0:00:23.280 rid of her as quickly as possible. 0:00:31.400 --> 0:00:34.760 Welcome to One day University Talks with the world's most 0:00:34.760 --> 0:00:39.920 engaging and inspiring professors discussing their most popular courses. This 0:00:40.000 --> 0:00:43.080 podcast is your chance to discover some of our top 0:00:43.159 --> 0:00:47.800 rated lectures on your own schedule. I'm Stephen Shregis. We're 0:00:47.840 --> 0:00:50.559 wrapping up this season by telling you the real stories 0:00:51.040 --> 0:00:54.600 behind the six wives of King Henry the Eighth. Everyone 0:00:54.720 --> 0:00:57.600 knows the awful face of these women. There's even a 0:00:57.640 --> 0:01:03.680 rhyme to help remember devor beheaded, died, divorced, beheaded, survived. 0:01:04.400 --> 0:01:07.920 But Georgetown history professor Amy Leonard says there's a lot 0:01:07.920 --> 0:01:11.760 of misinformation out there about them, including in that rhyme. 0:01:12.160 --> 0:01:15.360 There was no divorce for King Henry, only in nulments. 0:01:16.400 --> 0:01:19.840 Amy also says, while the popular Broadway musical six is 0:01:19.880 --> 0:01:23.040 a great show and gets a lot right about the women. 0:01:23.680 --> 0:01:27.080 It also gets some things wrong, like Henry being duped 0:01:27.120 --> 0:01:30.760 by an inaccurate portrait of Anne of cleves Amy. Leonard 0:01:30.800 --> 0:01:34.080 separates fact from fiction in her one day university lecture 0:01:34.520 --> 0:01:37.240 The Six Wives of Henry the Eighth. In addition to 0:01:37.319 --> 0:01:40.480 learning the real story about the wives, she says that 0:01:40.520 --> 0:01:43.280 we should also remember King Henry for more than his 0:01:43.480 --> 0:01:44.400 multiple marriages. 0:01:52.160 --> 0:01:55.160 Henry is hugely important for English history, and it's kind 0:01:55.200 --> 0:01:58.360 of sad in some ways that it gets completely overshadowed 0:01:58.400 --> 0:02:01.680 by his personal life and relationship with his wives. One 0:02:01.680 --> 0:02:04.400 of the most important things he does is because of 0:02:04.680 --> 0:02:07.680 wanting a successor. Is he breaks from Rome and he 0:02:07.720 --> 0:02:11.000 brings about the English Reformation. There'll be lots of changes 0:02:11.000 --> 0:02:13.880 that happen after his time, but by breaking from Rome 0:02:14.240 --> 0:02:16.960 and setting up the king as the supreme head of 0:02:17.160 --> 0:02:20.560 church and state, he really changed the course of English history. 0:02:20.600 --> 0:02:23.360 I mean, he gives Parliament much more power. They're the 0:02:23.360 --> 0:02:26.240 ones who actually annull the marriage and allow him to 0:02:26.320 --> 0:02:31.760 take over. That religious movement transforms England into a Protestant nation, 0:02:31.960 --> 0:02:34.720 and so that was due to Henry. He himself was 0:02:34.760 --> 0:02:36.840 not that Protestant. He ends up pretty much Catholic for 0:02:36.880 --> 0:02:39.079 his whole life. He cared more about his own power 0:02:39.320 --> 0:02:42.040 than about religion. I mean, if it's England on to 0:02:42.160 --> 0:02:44.959 sort of the European stage instead of what had been 0:02:45.040 --> 0:02:48.440 kind of a remote backwater, he's in connection with France, 0:02:48.560 --> 0:02:52.200 with the Habsburgs, with Spain. He really makes England something 0:02:52.240 --> 0:02:54.480 that has to be kind of reckoned with. And also, 0:02:54.560 --> 0:02:56.799 I mean on a sort of cultural side, he's quite 0:02:56.800 --> 0:02:59.160 a renaissance man. He thinks of himself as being very 0:02:59.160 --> 0:03:02.919 well educated. He cares deeply about culture and the arts 0:03:03.160 --> 0:03:05.680 and wants to bring that into England as well. So 0:03:05.720 --> 0:03:07.799 there are lots of other things he does other than 0:03:07.880 --> 0:03:09.040 get married six times. 0:03:09.280 --> 0:03:13.200 What's the biggest misconception about these six women who were 0:03:13.240 --> 0:03:13.800 all wives. 0:03:14.160 --> 0:03:17.160 I think that they can be easily summed up or 0:03:17.200 --> 0:03:20.120 described in one word. You know, one's the temptress, or 0:03:20.160 --> 0:03:23.359 one's the loyal wife, one's the saint. And I think 0:03:23.360 --> 0:03:26.799 they're too often seen as pawns in history, that they're 0:03:26.840 --> 0:03:30.000 the victims so often of what happens, rather than having 0:03:30.040 --> 0:03:32.680 any kind of agency of their own or any kind 0:03:32.720 --> 0:03:35.120 of influence of their own. They're very important in their 0:03:35.120 --> 0:03:37.800 own right for what they do as queens, what they do, 0:03:38.160 --> 0:03:40.960 you know, within their courts, how much influence they might 0:03:41.000 --> 0:03:44.080 have on Henry and others around him, And so I 0:03:44.080 --> 0:03:46.120 think that they're too often talked about just sort of 0:03:46.160 --> 0:03:50.200 as these wives who are only understood in relationship to 0:03:50.240 --> 0:03:53.440 Henry and their mostly terrible ends, when in fact they 0:03:53.440 --> 0:03:55.400 have these rich lives that go beyond that. 0:03:55.720 --> 0:04:00.320 Wife Number one fifteen oh nine Catherine of Aragon. She 0:04:00.520 --> 0:04:04.520 was actually the widow of Henry's older brother, Arthur. How 0:04:04.520 --> 0:04:06.240 did she end up getting married to Henry. 0:04:07.200 --> 0:04:10.440 Well, Arthur dies young, and there's some debate over whether 0:04:10.520 --> 0:04:13.040 or not the marriage was ever even consummated. Catherine says 0:04:13.080 --> 0:04:16.919 it wasn't, and Henry the Eighth's father, Henry the seventh, 0:04:16.960 --> 0:04:20.600 who had arranged the marriage between Catherine and Arthur, didn't 0:04:20.640 --> 0:04:22.720 want to lose that connection. I mean, it was connecting 0:04:22.800 --> 0:04:26.760 to powerful Spanish monarchs. She had a huge dowry that 0:04:26.839 --> 0:04:29.200 she came in with and Henry didn't want to lose that. 0:04:29.400 --> 0:04:31.640 So Henry was trying to figure out a way of 0:04:31.800 --> 0:04:33.919 keeping all of those positive things that came from the 0:04:33.920 --> 0:04:34.800 first marriage. 0:04:35.160 --> 0:04:38.280 So amy, they were married for nearly twenty four years, 0:04:38.640 --> 0:04:41.600 and then the marriage ends not in a divorce, but 0:04:41.640 --> 0:04:44.919 in an annulment. I know why, but I don't know 0:04:44.960 --> 0:04:47.719 the details. Can you explain them to me and to 0:04:47.800 --> 0:04:49.760 our listeners. Yes. 0:04:49.880 --> 0:04:53.279 So the marriage starts off fairly happily. Henry is happy. 0:04:53.400 --> 0:04:55.800 He's grown up with Catherine, he knows her well, and 0:04:55.880 --> 0:04:59.640 so he agrees to marry her, and so by all accounts, 0:04:59.640 --> 0:05:02.719 they have a very good and close relationship. But then 0:05:02.800 --> 0:05:05.840 the problem is is that Henry wants a successor, and 0:05:05.920 --> 0:05:09.400 he wants a male successor. And so Catherine has many, 0:05:09.440 --> 0:05:12.640 many pregnancies, but all of them end in miscarriage or 0:05:12.640 --> 0:05:15.680 stillbirths except for one, and so she's only able to 0:05:15.760 --> 0:05:20.960 have one viable pregnancy with Mary, a girl being born. 0:05:21.120 --> 0:05:23.400 And so Henry just feels that this is a sign 0:05:23.400 --> 0:05:25.920 from God that somehow he never should have married her 0:05:25.920 --> 0:05:28.720 to begin with, and that God is punishing him by 0:05:28.760 --> 0:05:31.560 not giving him a male heir. And this is very 0:05:31.640 --> 0:05:34.040 much the sexism of the time, the idea that only 0:05:34.080 --> 0:05:37.200 a man can rule, although there were other female queens 0:05:37.240 --> 0:05:40.160 throughout Europe in the sixteenth century in particular, but Henry 0:05:40.240 --> 0:05:43.640 is fixated on the idea that it's because he married 0:05:43.800 --> 0:05:46.880 his brother's widow that he needs to get this marriage 0:05:46.920 --> 0:05:49.279 annulled and marry somebody else that can give him a 0:05:49.320 --> 0:05:49.960 male heir. 0:05:50.680 --> 0:05:53.760 Then let's turn to the Bible for a bitute. There's 0:05:53.760 --> 0:05:57.200 a reference in Leviticus that's sort of wrapped up in 0:05:57.240 --> 0:06:00.440 all of this. Can you explain that Bible passage to 0:06:00.520 --> 0:06:03.360 us and how Pope Julius the second got involved. 0:06:03.600 --> 0:06:06.679 Yes, So it's from Leviticus twenty twenty one of chapter 0:06:06.680 --> 0:06:09.280 and verse that says if a man shall take his 0:06:09.320 --> 0:06:13.080 brother's wife, it is an unclean thing, they shall be childless. 0:06:13.400 --> 0:06:16.880 Henry the seventh wanted to make sure that everything was 0:06:16.920 --> 0:06:20.440 as tied up neatly as possible, so he goes to 0:06:20.480 --> 0:06:23.080 the pope, who is Pope Julius the Second, and asks 0:06:23.120 --> 0:06:27.640 for a special dispensation to sort of counteract Leviticus and 0:06:27.720 --> 0:06:31.640 say that it's okay for Henry to marry his brother's wife. 0:06:31.880 --> 0:06:35.320 And so Julius then gives the dispensation, and they think 0:06:35.400 --> 0:06:37.800 that this is something that will sort of strengthen the case. 0:06:37.839 --> 0:06:39.560 But in the end it's going to become more of 0:06:39.560 --> 0:06:42.600 a problem later because the later pope is not going 0:06:42.640 --> 0:06:46.680 to want to countermand what the previous pope had decided 0:06:46.720 --> 0:06:47.720 with this dispensation. 0:06:48.520 --> 0:06:50.919 Okay, I'm going to remember that the Bible is complicated. 0:06:51.360 --> 0:06:56.400 Wife number two was Anne Berlin, and there are a 0:06:56.440 --> 0:07:00.560 few conflicting stories about Anne's physical appearance. Do you know 0:07:00.600 --> 0:07:01.279 what she looked like? 0:07:01.560 --> 0:07:03.520 This is a fascinating question, and this gets to the 0:07:03.560 --> 0:07:07.320 whole kind of power of tudor propaganda, and so that 0:07:07.440 --> 0:07:09.559 you know, Henry and the other tutors wanted to create 0:07:09.560 --> 0:07:12.760 their own story, and so once and later on gets 0:07:12.800 --> 0:07:15.280 written out, they do a great job of kind of 0:07:15.400 --> 0:07:18.200 airbrushing or out of history, and so we don't really 0:07:18.320 --> 0:07:20.200 know what she looked like. We have a bunch of 0:07:20.240 --> 0:07:22.840 different portraits, some of them saying that they're her, some 0:07:22.880 --> 0:07:25.240 of them that we aren't really sure, and there's a 0:07:25.280 --> 0:07:27.480 lot of difference in it. And so just in terms 0:07:27.480 --> 0:07:29.880 of having actual images of her, a lot of them 0:07:29.880 --> 0:07:32.840 were destroyed and a lot of them are unclear whether 0:07:32.880 --> 0:07:35.360 it's actually her. We have a lot of descriptions of 0:07:35.400 --> 0:07:37.680 her from the time, and most of those are from 0:07:37.680 --> 0:07:40.800 hostile sources. So they will say things like she had 0:07:40.840 --> 0:07:43.320 a sixth finger, she had a goiter on her neck, 0:07:43.400 --> 0:07:46.800 she had like wartz. They'd make her seem fairly unattractive, 0:07:46.840 --> 0:07:50.560 which seems somewhat surprising that Henry would marry someone like that. 0:07:51.000 --> 0:07:53.800 What we do know, what seems to be pretty consistent, 0:07:54.000 --> 0:07:57.040 is that she had dark hair, and she had really 0:07:57.160 --> 0:08:01.160 dark but lively and very attractive of eyes. Like almost 0:08:01.200 --> 0:08:06.440 everybody comments on these eyes that showed intelligence, showed a vivacity, 0:08:06.800 --> 0:08:09.160 and that really drew people in. But I do find 0:08:09.200 --> 0:08:11.240 it interesting that we can't for sure saying we have 0:08:11.280 --> 0:08:12.880 this for a couple of his wives, that we don't 0:08:12.920 --> 0:08:14.280 know for sure what they look like. 0:08:14.760 --> 0:08:18.720 The marriage to Anne led to the Reformation, the establishment 0:08:18.760 --> 0:08:21.400 of the Church of England. Can you explain that rather 0:08:21.440 --> 0:08:22.760 a momentous event to us? 0:08:23.280 --> 0:08:24.960 Yes, And this is one of the things that Reformation 0:08:25.080 --> 0:08:28.520 historians debate endlessly of you know, was this just the 0:08:28.560 --> 0:08:31.400 flip of a pen and Parliament's decision, and that there 0:08:31.480 --> 0:08:33.880 was actually no kind of popular support, that this is 0:08:33.920 --> 0:08:37.240 a complete top down effort by Henry, And in some 0:08:37.320 --> 0:08:40.360 ways it was. And so that Henry desperately wants to 0:08:40.360 --> 0:08:43.040 marry Anne and at some point is pregnant. I mean, 0:08:43.080 --> 0:08:45.040 she'd held him off for a long time, but when 0:08:45.080 --> 0:08:47.600 she's pregnant, Henry is fixated on the fact that this 0:08:47.679 --> 0:08:50.800 must be his male heir, God is now rewarding him, 0:08:51.120 --> 0:08:53.520 and so that he needs to have the marriage annulled. 0:08:53.720 --> 0:08:55.880 The Pope is not doing it. The Pope is not 0:08:56.000 --> 0:08:58.800 on his side now, and so you know that all 0:08:58.800 --> 0:09:01.160 he can do is to after you, break from the pope, 0:09:01.160 --> 0:09:02.760 and that this is the only way that he's going 0:09:02.800 --> 0:09:05.320 to be able to get the marriage annulled and to 0:09:05.320 --> 0:09:08.640 get what he wants, which is a baby born legitimately, 0:09:09.000 --> 0:09:10.760 the assumption being that it's going to be a boy. 0:09:11.160 --> 0:09:14.520 So he gets Parliament to annul the marriage rather than 0:09:14.679 --> 0:09:19.520 the papacy, and in that moment breaks from the authority 0:09:19.559 --> 0:09:22.080 of the church. And so he then has the Act 0:09:22.080 --> 0:09:25.280 of Supremacy, which puts him as the head of both 0:09:25.280 --> 0:09:28.240 the church and the state, and has everybody, all the 0:09:28.360 --> 0:09:31.680 important people in England have to sign it, basically saying 0:09:31.800 --> 0:09:34.160 that the Pope is no longer the head of the 0:09:34.200 --> 0:09:37.040 Catholic Church and so now we have the king as 0:09:37.040 --> 0:09:39.840 the head of it, and that this sort of tangentially 0:09:40.000 --> 0:09:43.000 brings in the Reformation that will start the process of 0:09:43.040 --> 0:09:47.120 the Reformation, but that really won't get completed until under 0:09:47.320 --> 0:09:50.040 Henry's son, Edward the sixth and then later on even 0:09:50.080 --> 0:09:50.960 more so under. 0:09:50.720 --> 0:09:56.600 Elizabeth speaking of momentous events and ends up beheaded. How 0:09:56.600 --> 0:09:57.320 did that happen? 0:09:57.640 --> 0:09:59.320 This is one of the things that is certainly the 0:09:59.360 --> 0:10:02.000 history of this period tends to blame the wives a lot, 0:10:02.080 --> 0:10:04.199 or some of the wives for what happens. I mean, 0:10:04.240 --> 0:10:06.760 Anne's number one failure is that she's not able to 0:10:06.760 --> 0:10:09.320 give Henry what he wants, which is a male child. 0:10:09.480 --> 0:10:12.080 So he gets this annulment, he gets to Mary Ann, 0:10:12.320 --> 0:10:15.280 he's so excited, and then instead of the son that 0:10:15.360 --> 0:10:18.400 he's been assuming will come, it's Elizabeth. So now he 0:10:18.440 --> 0:10:21.720 has Mary and Elizabeth, and the whole Reformation was for 0:10:21.800 --> 0:10:25.160 naught in his mind. Anne is also pushing her own 0:10:25.200 --> 0:10:28.200 agenda in some ways, and she's going to alienate people. 0:10:28.320 --> 0:10:31.680 She's not as politically savvy as she could be. There's 0:10:31.679 --> 0:10:33.800 a lot of debate over how much of this is 0:10:33.840 --> 0:10:37.320 Thomas Cromwell's fault or not that Thomas Cromwell really was 0:10:37.360 --> 0:10:40.679 instrumental in her downfall, and so in the end that's 0:10:40.720 --> 0:10:44.120 going to kind of undermine and through her own behavior 0:10:44.200 --> 0:10:47.480 and other people's kind of machinations, and so that'll end 0:10:47.559 --> 0:10:49.840 up where she's going to be accused of adult tree. 0:10:49.920 --> 0:10:52.439 She's going to be accused of incest with her own brother, 0:10:52.960 --> 0:10:57.680 and so she'll be then tried for treason, because cheating 0:10:57.720 --> 0:11:00.800 on the king is treason, and she will be convicted 0:11:00.880 --> 0:11:02.600 of that and then decapitated. 0:11:02.920 --> 0:11:05.559 So let's move on to wife number three, Jane Seymour, 0:11:06.080 --> 0:11:10.679 who finally produced the male heir that Henry wanted so badly. 0:11:11.400 --> 0:11:15.560 How did these two meet? I heard that he married 0:11:15.559 --> 0:11:19.680 her right after Anne's beheading? How did that happen so quickly? 0:11:20.080 --> 0:11:22.080 So Henry met Jane the way that he had met 0:11:22.080 --> 0:11:23.960 Anne and the way that he's going to meet some 0:11:24.000 --> 0:11:26.120 of his other wives is that she was a lady 0:11:26.160 --> 0:11:29.000 in waiting for the queen. So Jane had been a 0:11:29.080 --> 0:11:32.480 lady in waiting for Catherine of Aragon and then was 0:11:32.520 --> 0:11:35.720 also one for Anne Bolin, and so she was just 0:11:35.760 --> 0:11:38.000 always around in the court, and that he also knew 0:11:38.040 --> 0:11:41.000 her father. He claims that she's his favorite wife. And 0:11:41.120 --> 0:11:43.520 when he does a portrait of himself later on, when 0:11:43.520 --> 0:11:46.520 he's actually married to Catherine Parr, he does this portrait 0:11:46.640 --> 0:11:49.720 of him with Jane Seymour, who has been dead for 0:11:49.960 --> 0:11:52.880 over a decade, and his son Edward, and then his 0:11:52.960 --> 0:11:55.520 two daughters off to the side. So it's clear that 0:11:55.960 --> 0:11:58.480 she's the one that he has the most fondness for. 0:11:58.600 --> 0:12:00.800 I think first, because she gives him so and so 0:12:00.920 --> 0:12:02.719 that is what he wants. She is the only one 0:12:02.760 --> 0:12:05.120 of his six wives who gives birth to a boy 0:12:05.320 --> 0:12:08.800 who survives to inherit the throne. And two, I think that, 0:12:08.920 --> 0:12:11.080 and this is a little bit perhaps cynical of me, 0:12:11.480 --> 0:12:14.560 she dies right after Edward is born, and so she 0:12:14.600 --> 0:12:17.640 doesn't cause him any more problems. She isn't around to 0:12:17.720 --> 0:12:20.880 kind of ask for anything more. Her motto was bound 0:12:20.920 --> 0:12:23.560 to obey and serve, And so I think that she 0:12:23.720 --> 0:12:27.079 was definitely a much more controllable wife than the two 0:12:27.320 --> 0:12:29.800 previous ones for Henry. So I think all of that 0:12:30.160 --> 0:12:33.560 really appealed to Henry after going through two very strong 0:12:33.600 --> 0:12:35.920 willed marriages with strong willed women. 0:12:38.200 --> 0:12:41.439 After the break the last three wives of Henry the eighth, 0:12:41.960 --> 0:12:58.320 including one who gets a rare happy ending, we're up 0:12:58.320 --> 0:13:02.840 to wife number four, Anne of Cleaves. She's been referred 0:13:02.840 --> 0:13:06.000 to as the strategic wife, So what's her story. 0:13:06.480 --> 0:13:10.360 So after Jane dies, Cromwell and some others really see 0:13:10.360 --> 0:13:14.559 this as an opportunity for creating more political alliances. Neither 0:13:14.640 --> 0:13:17.360 Anne nor Jane had really given anything in a kind 0:13:17.360 --> 0:13:22.160 of political international way that often royal marriages were supposed 0:13:22.200 --> 0:13:25.000 to bring. And so Cromwell sees this as an opportunity 0:13:25.080 --> 0:13:28.240 to shore up their kind of Protestant connections, and so 0:13:28.360 --> 0:13:32.679 he's looking to the Protestant states, particularly anyone who can 0:13:32.720 --> 0:13:35.040 sort of help them against Charles the fifth. And so 0:13:35.120 --> 0:13:38.000 Charles the fifth is the great, big, holy Roman emperor 0:13:38.160 --> 0:13:41.760 king of Spain. He controls a tremendous amount of territory, 0:13:42.040 --> 0:13:45.000 and Cromwell is looking to sort of help support England 0:13:45.080 --> 0:13:48.679 against that, both politically and in a Protestant way. So 0:13:48.760 --> 0:13:52.120 he looks at Anne as being the daughter of a 0:13:52.360 --> 0:13:55.840 Protestant prince or pseudo Protestant prince, but somebody who is 0:13:56.160 --> 0:13:58.800 a member of the Schmalkaldic League, which is a German 0:13:58.880 --> 0:14:04.000 league basically affiliated with Prosentism against Charles the fifth, and 0:14:04.080 --> 0:14:07.880 so sees that Henry marrying Anne can tie him closer 0:14:08.040 --> 0:14:12.960 to these princes, closer to Prosentism, and help against what 0:14:13.080 --> 0:14:16.200 is seen as this big threat of the Habsburg Charles 0:14:16.240 --> 0:14:20.800 the fifth. So it's the most pragmatic and political arranged 0:14:20.840 --> 0:14:22.040 marriage that Henry has. 0:14:22.680 --> 0:14:27.440 This one ends up in surprise and annulment, this time 0:14:27.520 --> 0:14:30.920 an agreeable one according to your lecture. Explain that, and 0:14:30.960 --> 0:14:32.880 explain how this one was annulled as well. 0:14:33.320 --> 0:14:35.600 This is the only wife of the six that he 0:14:35.640 --> 0:14:39.400 didn't know beforehand and he didn't have some say in marrying, 0:14:40.000 --> 0:14:42.560 and that they had this very awkward first meeting where 0:14:42.560 --> 0:14:44.840 she didn't recognize him, and she didn't really seem to 0:14:44.920 --> 0:14:48.760 understand the courtly ways of the tutor court. She seemed 0:14:48.800 --> 0:14:51.880 to be a little unsophisticated, not as educated as some 0:14:51.960 --> 0:14:54.200 of the other wives. This was something very kind of 0:14:54.200 --> 0:14:57.800 embarrassing to Henry, and that caused him to turn against 0:14:57.840 --> 0:15:00.520 the marriage right from the beginning. And then was really, 0:15:00.720 --> 0:15:02.760 you know, it was sort of doomed from the start 0:15:02.800 --> 0:15:05.360 where they could never consummate it, and he decided within 0:15:05.400 --> 0:15:07.320 a couple of days he needed to get rid of 0:15:07.400 --> 0:15:09.480 her as quickly as possible. She had been betrothed to 0:15:09.520 --> 0:15:11.960 somebody else, and so that caused complications, and so they 0:15:11.960 --> 0:15:15.440 were easily able to come up with reasons for annulling it, 0:15:15.720 --> 0:15:17.560 and Anne went along with it. And that is sort 0:15:17.600 --> 0:15:20.200 of the big difference between Anne and Catharine of Aragon. 0:15:20.480 --> 0:15:22.720 If she had gone along with the annulment, she probably 0:15:22.760 --> 0:15:25.040 would have been set up very well, but she refused. 0:15:25.080 --> 0:15:27.080 And she refused because they had been married for over 0:15:27.120 --> 0:15:29.720 twenty years and they had a child together and the 0:15:29.800 --> 0:15:32.680 child was made of Bastard by the annulment. Anne had 0:15:32.800 --> 0:15:35.520 had no connection like that. And for Anne, you know, 0:15:35.640 --> 0:15:37.880 she saw her options, she knew what had happened to 0:15:37.920 --> 0:15:40.800 other wives, and she realized that, you know, it would 0:15:40.840 --> 0:15:43.120 make no sense at all to hold out, and so 0:15:43.160 --> 0:15:46.200 she said, fine, I am happy with the annulment. And 0:15:46.480 --> 0:15:50.760 Henry is very grateful for this, and he settles a 0:15:51.000 --> 0:15:54.040 very large payment on her actually gives her one of 0:15:54.080 --> 0:15:57.080 the castles that have been in Anne Boleyn's family, and 0:15:57.160 --> 0:15:59.120 you know, it's this huge settlement that she is able 0:15:59.160 --> 0:16:02.240 to live very comfortably on for the rest of her life. 0:16:02.480 --> 0:16:04.520 It seems like she ends up the best of the 0:16:04.600 --> 0:16:07.080 six wives. We also have to remember that this was 0:16:07.080 --> 0:16:09.760 pretty humiliating for her as well. I mean, she gets 0:16:10.040 --> 0:16:13.200 rejected by the king. She can't go back home because 0:16:13.200 --> 0:16:15.720 she can't marry somebody else because then that's complicated as 0:16:15.720 --> 0:16:18.080 well for Henry. So she's sort of stuck in a 0:16:18.120 --> 0:16:21.200 country she doesn't know, she doesn't know the language very well. 0:16:21.600 --> 0:16:24.280 She's quite welcome at court. She gets along very well 0:16:24.280 --> 0:16:27.560 with both Elizabeth and Mary, and Henry calls her his 0:16:27.720 --> 0:16:30.240 dear sister and actually treats her better than he does 0:16:30.280 --> 0:16:33.320 any of his wives after that. So she does really 0:16:33.360 --> 0:16:35.280 make the best of it and make for quite a 0:16:35.280 --> 0:16:37.480 good Eddica, and she outlives all of the other wives. 0:16:38.000 --> 0:16:43.320 Wife number five, Catherine Howard. I heard she started out 0:16:43.560 --> 0:16:46.480 pretty well and then things took a serious turn for 0:16:46.520 --> 0:16:49.520 the worst and she ends up aheaded two years later. 0:16:49.880 --> 0:16:50.520 What happened? 0:16:50.920 --> 0:16:54.440 So Henry is absolutely smitten with her. She's very young, 0:16:54.720 --> 0:16:58.880 she has this vitality. She's beautiful, she's flirtatious, she's fun. 0:16:59.800 --> 0:17:03.320 But there's a serious age gap. He's forty nine when 0:17:03.360 --> 0:17:06.880 they get married, and she's anywhere between fifteen and twenty one. 0:17:06.960 --> 0:17:10.120 We don't actually know her real birth date. I would 0:17:10.119 --> 0:17:12.800 say she's closer to seventeen or eighteen. When she gets 0:17:12.840 --> 0:17:16.360 married to him. He lavishes her with gifts and praise 0:17:16.600 --> 0:17:19.000 and really kind of uses her to sort of feel 0:17:19.040 --> 0:17:21.600 young again. So I think in those first days she's 0:17:21.640 --> 0:17:23.640 really happy to be taken care of. She had grown 0:17:23.720 --> 0:17:25.719 up kind of poor in a lot of ways. And 0:17:25.760 --> 0:17:28.159 so that she's getting all of these gifts, and she's 0:17:28.200 --> 0:17:31.080 a queen, and so I think that she loves having 0:17:31.080 --> 0:17:35.040 that kind of influence and power. But Henry is not 0:17:35.160 --> 0:17:37.720 doing well. You know, he's only forty nine, but he 0:17:37.880 --> 0:17:39.560 had a hard life at that point, a lot of 0:17:39.600 --> 0:17:42.760 illnesses and injuries from his jousting, and so he was 0:17:42.800 --> 0:17:45.480 pretty cantankerous. He was starting to get more and more 0:17:45.520 --> 0:17:48.080 ill starting to rage more and more. There's a lot 0:17:48.080 --> 0:17:51.240 of debate over you know, maybe some brain damage that 0:17:51.320 --> 0:17:53.479 he had that's hard for her to deal with as 0:17:53.520 --> 0:17:56.119 a young woman, and so she starts sort of turning 0:17:56.119 --> 0:17:58.840 away from him and looking for other people to kind 0:17:58.880 --> 0:18:01.080 of get comfort from. I think she gets a bad 0:18:01.160 --> 0:18:03.159 rap in the historiography in a lot of ways, but 0:18:03.240 --> 0:18:06.280 she also doesn't make very sensible choices. So she is 0:18:06.320 --> 0:18:08.920 sort of falling in love with other people and putting 0:18:09.000 --> 0:18:12.040 that into writing, and so very quickly it's going to 0:18:12.040 --> 0:18:15.000 be clear that she's committing treason, because that's what happens 0:18:15.000 --> 0:18:17.600 when you cheat on the king. And so Henry is 0:18:17.600 --> 0:18:21.520 going to be extremely disappointed that yet again he's chosen 0:18:21.560 --> 0:18:23.760 wrong and his wife has betrayed him. 0:18:24.320 --> 0:18:27.720 You described her entrance to the Tower of London for 0:18:27.960 --> 0:18:31.080 I guess what you'd call her trial. That's pretty gruesome. 0:18:31.320 --> 0:18:33.480 Yeah, So it's pretty sad for Catherine. And I think 0:18:33.520 --> 0:18:36.600 there's clear evidence that she was sexually assaulted as a 0:18:36.600 --> 0:18:38.960 young girl, probably when she was like twelve or thirteen, 0:18:39.400 --> 0:18:41.960 then had another affair with another older man when she 0:18:42.080 --> 0:18:45.280 was still very young. When she's put on trial for 0:18:45.400 --> 0:18:48.719 adultery for treason, some of these old lovers are going 0:18:48.800 --> 0:18:51.280 to come back and testify against her and sort of 0:18:51.280 --> 0:18:54.640 talk about the sexual relationships they had. Her supposed lover 0:18:54.760 --> 0:18:57.359 within the court and then someone from earlier before she 0:18:57.400 --> 0:19:00.760 got married. Both of them testify against her, and because 0:19:00.800 --> 0:19:04.159 they've committed adultery with the King's wife or soon to 0:19:04.200 --> 0:19:08.960 be wife, they are both executed, and after their execution, 0:19:09.280 --> 0:19:13.280 their heads are put on spikes outside the Tower of London. 0:19:13.440 --> 0:19:16.639 And so when Catherine comes in for her own trial, 0:19:17.080 --> 0:19:19.320 she comes in through what's known as the Trader's Gate, 0:19:19.680 --> 0:19:23.320 and the boat takes her past these pikes with her 0:19:23.359 --> 0:19:26.560 former lover's heads on top of them, and I just 0:19:26.600 --> 0:19:29.280 can't imagine what that must have been like for her. 0:19:29.680 --> 0:19:32.640 On to wife number six, the very last one who 0:19:32.720 --> 0:19:37.240 was Katherine Parr. She actually outlived Henry for a little while. 0:19:37.600 --> 0:19:40.320 I've heard she had the most influence upon him in 0:19:40.480 --> 0:19:44.919 terms of culture, religion, the role of women, education of 0:19:44.960 --> 0:19:46.879 his children. What's that all about. 0:19:47.040 --> 0:19:49.560 So Catherine is fascinating. I think all the wise influence 0:19:49.600 --> 0:19:52.000 in some ways, but Catherine Parr and Catherine Aragon we 0:19:52.080 --> 0:19:55.120 really sort of see it in terms of culture and education. 0:19:55.359 --> 0:19:58.000 And so for Catherine Parr, she is one of the 0:19:58.040 --> 0:20:01.600 great educated women of her day. She is a published author. 0:20:01.720 --> 0:20:05.560 She's the first published female author whose name is actually 0:20:05.640 --> 0:20:08.320 on the work that is printed. I mean, she was 0:20:08.520 --> 0:20:11.600 more classically Protestant than Henry was at this point, so 0:20:11.640 --> 0:20:13.400 she had to hide that a little bit. But that's 0:20:13.440 --> 0:20:16.679 going to be something that influences particularly Elizabeth, and so 0:20:16.760 --> 0:20:20.080 she has a good deal of say in how Elizabeth 0:20:20.080 --> 0:20:23.600 gets educated. Who are the tutors for her? And Elizabeth 0:20:23.680 --> 0:20:27.439 gets this very very good humanist education. Many see Catherine 0:20:27.440 --> 0:20:29.520 as being fundamental to that, although there's a little bit 0:20:29.640 --> 0:20:32.800 of debate over how much she was involved, but I 0:20:32.800 --> 0:20:34.919 think she was involved enough that it does make a 0:20:34.920 --> 0:20:39.200 difference certainly for Elizabeth's later life in terms of really 0:20:39.240 --> 0:20:42.880 lasting influence for both Mary and Elizabeth Jane Seymour had 0:20:42.880 --> 0:20:45.239 started this, but Katherine Parr is able to kind of 0:20:45.440 --> 0:20:48.960 ended of getting both Mary and Elizabeth added back into 0:20:49.000 --> 0:20:52.600 the succession, so that she gets Henry too, even though 0:20:52.600 --> 0:20:56.119 there's still technically illegitimate. She gets Henry to add them 0:20:56.160 --> 0:20:59.479