Speaker 1: This is the only wife of the six that he
Speaker 1: didn't know beforehand, and he didn't have some say in marrying.
Speaker 1: They had this very awkward first meeting where she didn't
Speaker 1: recognize him. She seemed to be a little unsophisticated, not
Speaker 1: as educated as some of the other wives, and he
Speaker 1: decided within a couple of days he needed to get
Speaker 1: rid of her as quickly as possible.
Speaker 2: Welcome to One day University Talks with the world's most
Speaker 2: engaging and inspiring professors discussing their most popular courses. This
Speaker 2: podcast is your chance to discover some of our top
Speaker 2: rated lectures on your own schedule. I'm Stephen Shregis. We're
Speaker 2: wrapping up this season by telling you the real stories
Speaker 2: behind the six wives of King Henry the Eighth. Everyone
Speaker 2: knows the awful face of these women. There's even a
Speaker 2: rhyme to help remember devor beheaded, died, divorced, beheaded, survived.
Speaker 2: But Georgetown history professor Amy Leonard says there's a lot
Speaker 2: of misinformation out there about them, including in that rhyme.
Speaker 2: There was no divorce for King Henry, only in nulments.
Speaker 2: Amy also says, while the popular Broadway musical six is
Speaker 2: a great show and gets a lot right about the women.
Speaker 2: It also gets some things wrong, like Henry being duped
Speaker 2: by an inaccurate portrait of Anne of cleves Amy. Leonard
Speaker 2: separates fact from fiction in her one day university lecture
Speaker 2: The Six Wives of Henry the Eighth. In addition to
Speaker 2: learning the real story about the wives, she says that
Speaker 2: we should also remember King Henry for more than his
Speaker 2: multiple marriages.
Speaker 1: Henry is hugely important for English history, and it's kind
Speaker 1: of sad in some ways that it gets completely overshadowed
Speaker 1: by his personal life and relationship with his wives. One
Speaker 1: of the most important things he does is because of
Speaker 1: wanting a successor. Is he breaks from Rome and he
Speaker 1: brings about the English Reformation. There'll be lots of changes
Speaker 1: that happen after his time, but by breaking from Rome
Speaker 1: and setting up the king as the supreme head of
Speaker 1: church and state, he really changed the course of English history.
Speaker 1: I mean, he gives Parliament much more power. They're the
Speaker 1: ones who actually annull the marriage and allow him to
Speaker 1: take over. That religious movement transforms England into a Protestant nation,
Speaker 1: and so that was due to Henry. He himself was
Speaker 1: not that Protestant. He ends up pretty much Catholic for
Speaker 1: his whole life. He cared more about his own power
Speaker 1: than about religion. I mean, if it's England on to
Speaker 1: sort of the European stage instead of what had been
Speaker 1: kind of a remote backwater, he's in connection with France,
Speaker 1: with the Habsburgs, with Spain. He really makes England something
Speaker 1: that has to be kind of reckoned with. And also,
Speaker 1: I mean on a sort of cultural side, he's quite
Speaker 1: a renaissance man. He thinks of himself as being very
Speaker 1: well educated. He cares deeply about culture and the arts
Speaker 1: and wants to bring that into England as well. So
Speaker 1: there are lots of other things he does other than
Speaker 1: get married six times.
Speaker 2: What's the biggest misconception about these six women who were
Speaker 2: all wives.
Speaker 1: I think that they can be easily summed up or
Speaker 1: described in one word. You know, one's the temptress, or
Speaker 1: one's the loyal wife, one's the saint. And I think
Speaker 1: they're too often seen as pawns in history, that they're
Speaker 1: the victims so often of what happens, rather than having
Speaker 1: any kind of agency of their own or any kind
Speaker 1: of influence of their own. They're very important in their
Speaker 1: own right for what they do as queens, what they do,
Speaker 1: you know, within their courts, how much influence they might
Speaker 1: have on Henry and others around him, And so I
Speaker 1: think that they're too often talked about just sort of
Speaker 1: as these wives who are only understood in relationship to
Speaker 1: Henry and their mostly terrible ends, when in fact they
Speaker 1: have these rich lives that go beyond that.
Speaker 2: Wife Number one fifteen oh nine Catherine of Aragon. She
Speaker 2: was actually the widow of Henry's older brother, Arthur. How
Speaker 2: did she end up getting married to Henry.
Speaker 1: Well, Arthur dies young, and there's some debate over whether
Speaker 1: or not the marriage was ever even consummated. Catherine says
Speaker 1: it wasn't, and Henry the Eighth's father, Henry the seventh,
Speaker 1: who had arranged the marriage between Catherine and Arthur, didn't
Speaker 1: want to lose that connection. I mean, it was connecting
Speaker 1: to powerful Spanish monarchs. She had a huge dowry that
Speaker 1: she came in with and Henry didn't want to lose that.
Speaker 1: So Henry was trying to figure out a way of
Speaker 1: keeping all of those positive things that came from the
Speaker 1: first marriage.
Speaker 2: So amy, they were married for nearly twenty four years,
Speaker 2: and then the marriage ends not in a divorce, but
Speaker 2: in an annulment. I know why, but I don't know
Speaker 2: the details. Can you explain them to me and to
Speaker 2: our listeners. Yes.
Speaker 1: So the marriage starts off fairly happily. Henry is happy.
Speaker 1: He's grown up with Catherine, he knows her well, and
Speaker 1: so he agrees to marry her, and so by all accounts,
Speaker 1: they have a very good and close relationship. But then
Speaker 1: the problem is is that Henry wants a successor, and
Speaker 1: he wants a male successor. And so Catherine has many,
Speaker 1: many pregnancies, but all of them end in miscarriage or
Speaker 1: stillbirths except for one, and so she's only able to
Speaker 1: have one viable pregnancy with Mary, a girl being born.
Speaker 1: And so Henry just feels that this is a sign
Speaker 1: from God that somehow he never should have married her
Speaker 1: to begin with, and that God is punishing him by
Speaker 1: not giving him a male heir. And this is very
Speaker 1: much the sexism of the time, the idea that only
Speaker 1: a man can rule, although there were other female queens
Speaker 1: throughout Europe in the sixteenth century in particular, but Henry
Speaker 1: is fixated on the idea that it's because he married
Speaker 1: his brother's widow that he needs to get this marriage
Speaker 1: annulled and marry somebody else that can give him a
Speaker 1: male heir.
Speaker 2: Then let's turn to the Bible for a bitute. There's
Speaker 2: a reference in Leviticus that's sort of wrapped up in
Speaker 2: all of this. Can you explain that Bible passage to
Speaker 2: us and how Pope Julius the second got involved.
Speaker 1: Yes, So it's from Leviticus twenty twenty one of chapter
Speaker 1: and verse that says if a man shall take his
Speaker 1: brother's wife, it is an unclean thing, they shall be childless.
Speaker 1: Henry the seventh wanted to make sure that everything was
Speaker 1: as tied up neatly as possible, so he goes to
Speaker 1: the pope, who is Pope Julius the Second, and asks
Speaker 1: for a special dispensation to sort of counteract Leviticus and
Speaker 1: say that it's okay for Henry to marry his brother's wife.
Speaker 1: And so Julius then gives the dispensation, and they think
Speaker 1: that this is something that will sort of strengthen the case.
Speaker 1: But in the end it's going to become more of
Speaker 1: a problem later because the later pope is not going
Speaker 1: to want to countermand what the previous pope had decided
Speaker 1: with this dispensation.
Speaker 2: Okay, I'm going to remember that the Bible is complicated.
Speaker 2: Wife number two was Anne Berlin, and there are a
Speaker 2: few conflicting stories about Anne's physical appearance. Do you know
Speaker 2: what she looked like?
Speaker 1: This is a fascinating question, and this gets to the
Speaker 1: whole kind of power of tudor propaganda, and so that
Speaker 1: you know, Henry and the other tutors wanted to create
Speaker 1: their own story, and so once and later on gets
Speaker 1: written out, they do a great job of kind of
Speaker 1: airbrushing or out of history, and so we don't really
Speaker 1: know what she looked like. We have a bunch of
Speaker 1: different portraits, some of them saying that they're her, some
Speaker 1: of them that we aren't really sure, and there's a
Speaker 1: lot of difference in it. And so just in terms
Speaker 1: of having actual images of her, a lot of them
Speaker 1: were destroyed and a lot of them are unclear whether
Speaker 1: it's actually her. We have a lot of descriptions of
Speaker 1: her from the time, and most of those are from
Speaker 1: hostile sources. So they will say things like she had
Speaker 1: a sixth finger, she had a goiter on her neck,
Speaker 1: she had like wartz. They'd make her seem fairly unattractive,
Speaker 1: which seems somewhat surprising that Henry would marry someone like that.
Speaker 1: What we do know, what seems to be pretty consistent,
Speaker 1: is that she had dark hair, and she had really
Speaker 1: dark but lively and very attractive of eyes. Like almost
Speaker 1: everybody comments on these eyes that showed intelligence, showed a vivacity,
Speaker 1: and that really drew people in. But I do find
Speaker 1: it interesting that we can't for sure saying we have
Speaker 1: this for a couple of his wives, that we don't
Speaker 1: know for sure what they look like.
Speaker 2: The marriage to Anne led to the Reformation, the establishment
Speaker 2: of the Church of England. Can you explain that rather
Speaker 2: a momentous event to us?
Speaker 1: Yes, And this is one of the things that Reformation
Speaker 1: historians debate endlessly of you know, was this just the
Speaker 1: flip of a pen and Parliament's decision, and that there
Speaker 1: was actually no kind of popular support, that this is
Speaker 1: a complete top down effort by Henry, And in some
Speaker 1: ways it was. And so that Henry desperately wants to
Speaker 1: marry Anne and at some point is pregnant. I mean,
Speaker 1: she'd held him off for a long time, but when
Speaker 1: she's pregnant, Henry is fixated on the fact that this
Speaker 1: must be his male heir, God is now rewarding him,
Speaker 1: and so that he needs to have the marriage annulled.
Speaker 1: The Pope is not doing it. The Pope is not
Speaker 1: on his side now, and so you know that all
Speaker 1: he can do is to after you, break from the pope,
Speaker 1: and that this is the only way that he's going
Speaker 1: to be able to get the marriage annulled and to
Speaker 1: get what he wants, which is a baby born legitimately,
Speaker 1: the assumption being that it's going to be a boy.
Speaker 1: So he gets Parliament to annul the marriage rather than
Speaker 1: the papacy, and in that moment breaks from the authority
Speaker 1: of the church. And so he then has the Act
Speaker 1: of Supremacy, which puts him as the head of both
Speaker 1: the church and the state, and has everybody, all the
Speaker 1: important people in England have to sign it, basically saying
Speaker 1: that the Pope is no longer the head of the
Speaker 1: Catholic Church and so now we have the king as
Speaker 1: the head of it, and that this sort of tangentially
Speaker 1: brings in the Reformation that will start the process of
Speaker 1: the Reformation, but that really won't get completed until under
Speaker 1: Henry's son, Edward the sixth and then later on even
Speaker 1: more so under.
Speaker 2: Elizabeth speaking of momentous events and ends up beheaded. How
Speaker 2: did that happen?
Speaker 1: This is one of the things that is certainly the
Speaker 1: history of this period tends to blame the wives a lot,
Speaker 1: or some of the wives for what happens. I mean,
Speaker 1: Anne's number one failure is that she's not able to
Speaker 1: give Henry what he wants, which is a male child.
Speaker 1: So he gets this annulment, he gets to Mary Ann,
Speaker 1: he's so excited, and then instead of the son that
Speaker 1: he's been assuming will come, it's Elizabeth. So now he
Speaker 1: has Mary and Elizabeth, and the whole Reformation was for
Speaker 1: naught in his mind. Anne is also pushing her own
Speaker 1: agenda in some ways, and she's going to alienate people.
Speaker 1: She's not as politically savvy as she could be. There's
Speaker 1: a lot of debate over how much of this is
Speaker 1: Thomas Cromwell's fault or not that Thomas Cromwell really was
Speaker 1: instrumental in her downfall, and so in the end that's
Speaker 1: going to kind of undermine and through her own behavior
Speaker 1: and other people's kind of machinations, and so that'll end
Speaker 1: up where she's going to be accused of adult tree.
Speaker 1: She's going to be accused of incest with her own brother,
Speaker 1: and so she'll be then tried for treason, because cheating
Speaker 1: on the king is treason, and she will be convicted
Speaker 1: of that and then decapitated.
Speaker 2: So let's move on to wife number three, Jane Seymour,
Speaker 2: who finally produced the male heir that Henry wanted so badly.
Speaker 2: How did these two meet? I heard that he married
Speaker 2: her right after Anne's beheading? How did that happen so quickly?
Speaker 1: So Henry met Jane the way that he had met
Speaker 1: Anne and the way that he's going to meet some
Speaker 1: of his other wives is that she was a lady
Speaker 1: in waiting for the queen. So Jane had been a
Speaker 1: lady in waiting for Catherine of Aragon and then was
Speaker 1: also one for Anne Bolin, and so she was just
Speaker 1: always around in the court, and that he also knew
Speaker 1: her father. He claims that she's his favorite wife. And
Speaker 1: when he does a portrait of himself later on, when
Speaker 1: he's actually married to Catherine Parr, he does this portrait
Speaker 1: of him with Jane Seymour, who has been dead for
Speaker 1: over a decade, and his son Edward, and then his
Speaker 1: two daughters off to the side. So it's clear that
Speaker 1: she's the one that he has the most fondness for.
Speaker 1: I think first, because she gives him so and so
Speaker 1: that is what he wants. She is the only one
Speaker 1: of his six wives who gives birth to a boy
Speaker 1: who survives to inherit the throne. And two, I think that,
Speaker 1: and this is a little bit perhaps cynical of me,
Speaker 1: she dies right after Edward is born, and so she
Speaker 1: doesn't cause him any more problems. She isn't around to
Speaker 1: kind of ask for anything more. Her motto was bound
Speaker 1: to obey and serve, And so I think that she
Speaker 1: was definitely a much more controllable wife than the two
Speaker 1: previous ones for Henry. So I think all of that
Speaker 1: really appealed to Henry after going through two very strong
Speaker 1: willed marriages with strong willed women.
Speaker 2: After the break the last three wives of Henry the eighth,
Speaker 2: including one who gets a rare happy ending, we're up
Speaker 2: to wife number four, Anne of Cleaves. She's been referred
Speaker 2: to as the strategic wife, So what's her story.
Speaker 1: So after Jane dies, Cromwell and some others really see
Speaker 1: this as an opportunity for creating more political alliances. Neither
Speaker 1: Anne nor Jane had really given anything in a kind
Speaker 1: of political international way that often royal marriages were supposed
Speaker 1: to bring. And so Cromwell sees this as an opportunity
Speaker 1: to shore up their kind of Protestant connections, and so
Speaker 1: he's looking to the Protestant states, particularly anyone who can
Speaker 1: sort of help them against Charles the fifth. And so
Speaker 1: Charles the fifth is the great, big, holy Roman emperor
Speaker 1: king of Spain. He controls a tremendous amount of territory,
Speaker 1: and Cromwell is looking to sort of help support England
Speaker 1: against that, both politically and in a Protestant way. So
Speaker 1: he looks at Anne as being the daughter of a
Speaker 1: Protestant prince or pseudo Protestant prince, but somebody who is
Speaker 1: a member of the Schmalkaldic League, which is a German
Speaker 1: league basically affiliated with Prosentism against Charles the fifth, and
Speaker 1: so sees that Henry marrying Anne can tie him closer
Speaker 1: to these princes, closer to Prosentism, and help against what
Speaker 1: is seen as this big threat of the Habsburg Charles
Speaker 1: the fifth. So it's the most pragmatic and political arranged
Speaker 1: marriage that Henry has.
Speaker 2: This one ends up in surprise and annulment, this time
Speaker 2: an agreeable one according to your lecture. Explain that, and
Speaker 2: explain how this one was annulled as well.
Speaker 1: This is the only wife of the six that he
Speaker 1: didn't know beforehand and he didn't have some say in marrying,
Speaker 1: and that they had this very awkward first meeting where
Speaker 1: she didn't recognize him, and she didn't really seem to
Speaker 1: understand the courtly ways of the tutor court. She seemed
Speaker 1: to be a little unsophisticated, not as educated as some
Speaker 1: of the other wives. This was something very kind of
Speaker 1: embarrassing to Henry, and that caused him to turn against
Speaker 1: the marriage right from the beginning. And then was really,
Speaker 1: you know, it was sort of doomed from the start
Speaker 1: where they could never consummate it, and he decided within
Speaker 1: a couple of days he needed to get rid of
Speaker 1: her as quickly as possible. She had been betrothed to
Speaker 1: somebody else, and so that caused complications, and so they
Speaker 1: were easily able to come up with reasons for annulling it,
Speaker 1: and Anne went along with it. And that is sort
Speaker 1: of the big difference between Anne and Catharine of Aragon.
Speaker 1: If she had gone along with the annulment, she probably
Speaker 1: would have been set up very well, but she refused.
Speaker 1: And she refused because they had been married for over
Speaker 1: twenty years and they had a child together and the
Speaker 1: child was made of Bastard by the annulment. Anne had
Speaker 1: had no connection like that. And for Anne, you know,
Speaker 1: she saw her options, she knew what had happened to
Speaker 1: other wives, and she realized that, you know, it would
Speaker 1: make no sense at all to hold out, and so
Speaker 1: she said, fine, I am happy with the annulment. And
Speaker 1: Henry is very grateful for this, and he settles a
Speaker 1: very large payment on her actually gives her one of
Speaker 1: the castles that have been in Anne Boleyn's family, and
Speaker 1: you know, it's this huge settlement that she is able
Speaker 1: to live very comfortably on for the rest of her life.
Speaker 1: It seems like she ends up the best of the
Speaker 1: six wives. We also have to remember that this was
Speaker 1: pretty humiliating for her as well. I mean, she gets
Speaker 1: rejected by the king. She can't go back home because
Speaker 1: she can't marry somebody else because then that's complicated as
Speaker 1: well for Henry. So she's sort of stuck in a
Speaker 1: country she doesn't know, she doesn't know the language very well.
Speaker 1: She's quite welcome at court. She gets along very well
Speaker 1: with both Elizabeth and Mary, and Henry calls her his
Speaker 1: dear sister and actually treats her better than he does
Speaker 1: any of his wives after that. So she does really
Speaker 1: make the best of it and make for quite a
Speaker 1: good Eddica, and she outlives all of the other wives.
Speaker 2: Wife number five, Catherine Howard. I heard she started out
Speaker 2: pretty well and then things took a serious turn for
Speaker 2: the worst and she ends up aheaded two years later.
Speaker 2: What happened?
Speaker 1: So Henry is absolutely smitten with her. She's very young,
Speaker 1: she has this vitality. She's beautiful, she's flirtatious, she's fun.
Speaker 1: But there's a serious age gap. He's forty nine when
Speaker 1: they get married, and she's anywhere between fifteen and twenty one.
Speaker 1: We don't actually know her real birth date. I would
Speaker 1: say she's closer to seventeen or eighteen. When she gets
Speaker 1: married to him. He lavishes her with gifts and praise
Speaker 1: and really kind of uses her to sort of feel
Speaker 1: young again. So I think in those first days she's
Speaker 1: really happy to be taken care of. She had grown
Speaker 1: up kind of poor in a lot of ways. And
Speaker 1: so that she's getting all of these gifts, and she's
Speaker 1: a queen, and so I think that she loves having
Speaker 1: that kind of influence and power. But Henry is not
Speaker 1: doing well. You know, he's only forty nine, but he
Speaker 1: had a hard life at that point, a lot of
Speaker 1: illnesses and injuries from his jousting, and so he was
Speaker 1: pretty cantankerous. He was starting to get more and more
Speaker 1: ill starting to rage more and more. There's a lot
Speaker 1: of debate over you know, maybe some brain damage that
Speaker 1: he had that's hard for her to deal with as
Speaker 1: a young woman, and so she starts sort of turning
Speaker 1: away from him and looking for other people to kind
Speaker 1: of get comfort from. I think she gets a bad
Speaker 1: rap in the historiography in a lot of ways, but
Speaker 1: she also doesn't make very sensible choices. So she is
Speaker 1: sort of falling in love with other people and putting
Speaker 1: that into writing, and so very quickly it's going to
Speaker 1: be clear that she's committing treason, because that's what happens
Speaker 1: when you cheat on the king. And so Henry is
Speaker 1: going to be extremely disappointed that yet again he's chosen
Speaker 1: wrong and his wife has betrayed him.
Speaker 2: You described her entrance to the Tower of London for
Speaker 2: I guess what you'd call her trial. That's pretty gruesome.
Speaker 1: Yeah, So it's pretty sad for Catherine. And I think
Speaker 1: there's clear evidence that she was sexually assaulted as a
Speaker 1: young girl, probably when she was like twelve or thirteen,
Speaker 1: then had another affair with another older man when she
Speaker 1: was still very young. When she's put on trial for
Speaker 1: adultery for treason, some of these old lovers are going
Speaker 1: to come back and testify against her and sort of
Speaker 1: talk about the sexual relationships they had. Her supposed lover
Speaker 1: within the court and then someone from earlier before she
Speaker 1: got married. Both of them testify against her, and because
Speaker 1: they've committed adultery with the King's wife or soon to
Speaker 1: be wife, they are both executed, and after their execution,
Speaker 1: their heads are put on spikes outside the Tower of London.
Speaker 1: And so when Catherine comes in for her own trial,
Speaker 1: she comes in through what's known as the Trader's Gate,
Speaker 1: and the boat takes her past these pikes with her
Speaker 1: former lover's heads on top of them, and I just
Speaker 1: can't imagine what that must have been like for her.
Speaker 2: On to wife number six, the very last one who
Speaker 2: was Katherine Parr. She actually outlived Henry for a little while.
Speaker 2: I've heard she had the most influence upon him in
Speaker 2: terms of culture, religion, the role of women, education of
Speaker 2: his children. What's that all about.
Speaker 1: So Catherine is fascinating. I think all the wise influence
Speaker 1: in some ways, but Catherine Parr and Catherine Aragon we
Speaker 1: really sort of see it in terms of culture and education.
Speaker 1: And so for Catherine Parr, she is one of the
Speaker 1: great educated women of her day. She is a published author.
Speaker 1: She's the first published female author whose name is actually
Speaker 1: on the work that is printed. I mean, she was
Speaker 1: more classically Protestant than Henry was at this point, so
Speaker 1: she had to hide that a little bit. But that's
Speaker 1: going to be something that influences particularly Elizabeth, and so
Speaker 1: she has a good deal of say in how Elizabeth
Speaker 1: gets educated. Who are the tutors for her? And Elizabeth
Speaker 1: gets this very very good humanist education. Many see Catherine
Speaker 1: as being fundamental to that, although there's a little bit
Speaker 1: of debate over how much she was involved, but I
Speaker 1: think she was involved enough that it does make a
Speaker 1: difference certainly for Elizabeth's later life in terms of really
Speaker 1: lasting influence for both Mary and Elizabeth Jane Seymour had
Speaker 1: started this, but Katherine Parr is able to kind of
Speaker 1: ended of getting both Mary and Elizabeth added back into
Speaker 1: the succession, so that she gets Henry too, even though
Speaker 1: there's still technically illegitimate. She gets Henry to add them
Speaker 1: both in after his son Edward the sixth and so
Speaker 1: that would be next, and then Elizabeth, and that Most
Speaker 1: historians think that Catherine was really instrumental in doing that,
Speaker 1: and she had a very good relationship with both Elizabeth
Speaker 1: and Mary until after Henry died, and then she and
Speaker 1: Mary will have a falling out because of her next actions.
Speaker 2: Well, then phillis in what happened to Catherine after Henry died.
Speaker 1: So they're married a couple of years Henry dies. Before
Speaker 1: Catherine had married Henry, she had actually already been planning
Speaker 1: to marry somebody else, Thomas Seymour. They had known each
Speaker 1: other for a while and everything had been going sort
Speaker 1: of a pace. But then when Henry offered for her,
Speaker 1: you know, you always take the king over anyone else.
Speaker 1: But after Henry died, she actually goes back to Thomas.
Speaker 1: So they end up getting married, and it's something of
Speaker 1: a scandal because they get married very quickly after Henry
Speaker 1: had died. You're supposed to have a morning period of
Speaker 1: at least a year, particularly because you want to make
Speaker 1: sure that the wife, the widow, isn't pregnant with the
Speaker 1: dead monarch's child. And so the fact that she gets
Speaker 1: married within a couple of months is really look down upon.
Speaker 1: People are very critical about it, and particularly Mary. And
Speaker 1: this is what's going to break the relationship between Mary
Speaker 1: and Catherine Parr is that this is seen as kind
Speaker 1: of a betrayal of the father, and that she's married
Speaker 1: Thomas Seymour and sort of moved on in this way
Speaker 1: seems very unseemly to Mary and others. So she's only
Speaker 1: married to Thomas for about a year before having a
Speaker 1: child and dying before she could see him grow up.
Speaker 2: One last question, how unusual is this story of Henry
Speaker 2: the eighth and then six wives? Is there anything else
Speaker 2: like it? Can you compare him to any other monarchs
Speaker 2: in this regard?
Speaker 1: There really is nothing else like this. Plenty of monarchs
Speaker 1: get married multiple times. Plenty of monarchs will have an
Speaker 1: annulment to either have a better marriage that gives them
Speaker 1: better alliances or to get a male heir. All of
Speaker 1: that is true. We have a big a mist in Germany,
Speaker 1: Philip Professa, who has two wives. So you know, there
Speaker 1: are little nuggets of this everywhere. Six wives, two of
Speaker 1: whom are executed and two of whom have annulments. That's
Speaker 1: really unusual. There is nothing quite like that, and I
Speaker 1: think that that is one of the reasons why people
Speaker 1: at the time were sort of shocked by it. The
Speaker 1: French king is writing things like you really need to
Speaker 1: do better with who you're choosing to be your wife.
Speaker 1: This was gossip for the continent just as much as
Speaker 1: it is for us now, and I think that that's
Speaker 1: one of the reasons that it has this hold on
Speaker 1: our imagination, and you have all of these movies and
Speaker 1: TV shows and musicals that go over it, and it's
Speaker 1: why it's the main thing that he's remembered for, which
Speaker 1: is unfortunate because there's a lot else that was going
Speaker 1: on in his reign. But when you do something this
Speaker 1: kind of out of the box and just so different
Speaker 1: and crazy from what everybody else is doing, you know
Speaker 1: it's going to be something that's going to be part
Speaker 1: of your living legacy.
Speaker 2: Amy, thanks so much for this. We just appreciate you
Speaker 2: taking the time to tell us six great stories.
Speaker 1: Thanks well, thank you so much for having me on.
Speaker 1: I really appreciate it.
Speaker 2: Thanks for joining us here at One Day University. Sign
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