How to Keep Your Head in King Henry VIII’s Court

Treason, tyranny, and terror are fabled words of King Henry VIII, one of history’s most controversial autocrats and matrimonial monsters. During his reign, King Henry VIII would marry six times, beheading two of his queens and two of his trusted ministers.

Historians concur that head trauma, his repudiation of Catholicism, and his failure to produce a male heir to the English throne led to Henry’s moral depravity and murderous streak. Here are some ways one could avoid the Tudor king’s tyranny.

The dissolution of Henry VIII’s marriage to his first wife, Queen Catherine of Aragon, resulted from her failure to produce a male heir. Paranoid about his succession to the throne and his increasing contempt towards Catherine, Henry developed a wandering eye that landed upon a young lady in waiting, Anne Boleyn.

For six years, Henry attempted to woo Anne with his ardent advances, but she would not yield unless she were his queen. Henry expressed his desire to Pope Clement VII, but he refused to annul Henry’s marriage with Catherine. Divorce, in the Tudor period, was a violation against God. Furthermore, annulling the marriage could endanger the pope’s connection with Charles V, the Holy Roman emperor, who had already taken the Pope prisoner after the Battle of Pavia in 1525. The pope was effectively beholden to Charles V; upsetting him could threaten the political stability of the papal states.

Anxious about the future of the Tudor reign, Henry turned to religious scripture to find a solution to his dilemma. According to Leviticus 20:21, “If a man marries his brother’s wife, it is an act of impurity; he has dishonoured his brother. They will be childless.”

Catherine had already wed Henry’s late brother, Prince Arthur, which meant, as per religious doctrine, any hope of conceiving a male heir with Catherine was doomed. The key to Henry’s problem was simple. He must persuade Pope Clement to rectify this error against the word of God. The pope, however, remained undeterred.

2. Find a Loophole in Henry’s Marriage Contract

In 1527, Henry petitioned Pope Clement that his marriage to Catherine was illegitimate for having married his late brother’s widow. Henry’s lord chancellor, Cardinal Thomas Wolsey, defended Henry’s case on his behalf to the pope, and his petition drew out across a lengthy two years. By 1529, Henry exiled and banished Wolsey to York before committing him with high treason.

Fortunately, Wolsey died before he was executed, and his protégé, Thomas Cromwell, took up his master’s failed endeavor. In 1531, Catherine was banished from court, and Henry and Anne quietly moved from Windsor Castle to Whitehall. Meanwhile, Cromwell was busy orchestrating a way for Henry to officially end his marriage to Catherine even though Henry secretly married Anne in January 1533.

To further complicate Henry’s annulment dilemma, Anne was pregnant with what Henry hoped was his son. Now, more than ever, Henry needed to annul his former marriage if Anne’s child would become a legitimate heir to the throne. Henry already had a son—young Henry Fitzroy—with one of his mistresses, but since the child was born out of wedlock, he was therefore prohibited from becoming king.

Another way for Henry’s servants to dodge the executioner’s block was to create laws that gave him more religious and political autonomy.

Between 1533 and 1534, the anti-papal revolution was well underway through a series of Acts that enabled royal power to supersede Pope Clement VII’s. Cromwell drafted and passed the Act in Absolute Restraint of Appeals in April 1533, which divested the pope from any spiritual and secular jurisdiction, diverting this responsibility to the king. In the following month of May, Thomas Cranmer, archbishop of Canterbury, was formally authorized to intercede in the king’s marriage to Catherine, declaring it null and void once and for all.

If Henry hadn’t already done the unspeakable, the next act he passed with Cromwell’s help would thrust the Protestant Reformation beyond the point of no return.

The Act of Supremacy that passed in November 1534 recognized Henry as the supreme head of the Church of England. In other words, Henry was the sole legal authority in all religious and political matters, meaning he could appoint anyone of his choosing to an ecclesiastical position.

Henry (or rather, Cromwell) had achieved the unthinkable. Henry had not only taken the place of the pope but of God himself. Anyone who refused to acknowledge Henry as the royal supreme was convicted of treason and executed. Two renowned clergy members, Thomas More and John Fisher, were executed for refusing Henry’s new order. Both were sent to the Tower of London in April 1534 and then to the block in July 1535.

The primary reason that Henry had divorced Catherine was because she couldn’t give him a son. Apparently, neither could Anne. Since his late father, Henry VII, had won the throne during the War of the Roses, securing the Tudor dynasty was of increasing concern for Henry.

In his previous marriage to Catherine, Henry had a daughter, Mary I, who was declared illegitimate under the First Act. Then, with Anne, he had yet another daughter, Elizabeth I, an embarrassing mishap who should have been the son who would have justified his annulment to Catherine. Throughout his second marriage, the question of whether Anne could deliver his much-needed son wore the marriage down.

Three years after his marriage to Anne, Henry had a near-fatal jousting incident. He sustained significant head trauma, permanently damaging his frontal lobe, which is believed to have contributed to his irascible and violent nature. After hearing of her husband’s accident, the heavily pregnant Anne was so shaken by the news that she had a miscarriage. This would prove to be the catalyst for Anne’s ill fate.

On May 19, 1536, Boleyn was beheaded on charges of adultery, treason, and incest when, really, she was yet another wife who had failed to conceive a son. With Cromwell’s help, Henry fabricated the accusations for her execution, giving him a clean break to start again with his next wife. This woman, he believed, would surely be the one to provide him with his long-awaited son.

5. Better to Be Demure Than Determined 

Jane Seymour, Henry’s third bride, served as one of Anne Boleyn’s ladies in waiting when she caught Henry’s wandering eye. Jane and Henry became romantically involved while Henry was married to Anne. Henry married only Jane eleven days after Anne’s execution. Evidently, Henry was without remorse for his carnal appetites.

The documentation of Jane and her personality is scant, with most historians portraying her as demure and submissive. However, she makes up for what her predecessors had failed to give the king: a son.

On October 12, after three days of labor, Jane gave birth to her son, Edward VI.

Henry was overjoyed; the Tudor dynasty was secure, and Jane was clear of the threat of Henry’s matriarchal manslaughter. In fact, Henry could not have been more enamored with his wife. Thus far, Jane was the only wife who had fulfilled her duty, nor had she pontificated about religious or political matters to Henry as Anne Boleyn had. In accordance with gender expectations of the Tudor period (and of Henry’s), Jane was the perfect wife: obedient, reticent, and mother to Henry’s son.

But tragedy struck again. Jane passed away on October 24, 1537, from an infection she contracted during her labor, leaving behind a grieving Henry and his only son. Jane’s reign as queen lasted only seventeen months, yet she is recognized as the only bride Henry truly loved.

Thomas Cromwell was Henry’s chief minister, secretary, and right-hand man after he had served Cardinal Wolsey. Before Henry employed Cromwell into his court, Cromwell worked as Wolsey’s confidential secretary, dissolving several monasteries to reinvest the money back into Wolsey’s colleges at Oxford and Ipswich. Wolsey was highly impressed with Cromwell’s cunning. So was Henry. After Wolsey’s death in 1529, Henry recruited Cromwell into his court to aid him in annulling his marriage with Catherine of Aragon.

Both Cromwell and Cranmer leveraged reformist ideology and advised the king to split from Rome and consecrate the Church of England. Under the Act of Supremacy (1534), Henry was made the head of the church, and those who refused to accept his divorce from Catherine and remarriage to Anne were convicted of high treason.

Without Cromwell, the chances of Henry achieving a God-like status were slim. Cromwell made Henry unstoppable.

For ten years, Cromwell accrued influence and prestige in Henry’s court, earning the titles of master of the jewels, principal secretary, and chief minister. He was a superpower under Henry’s reign, but Cromwell would meet a tragic end. Historians identify Cromwell’s involvement in the Pilgrimage of Grace as the event that wavered Henry’s faith in his supernova.

By the autumn of 1536, there was simmering discontent in the north of England regarding the closure of monastic churches and Henry’s sanctioning of Protestantism over Catholicism. The rebels of the pilgrimage deemed Cromwell as the evil mastermind behind the new religious order, not Henry, who, from the safety of Windsor, ordered the rebels to be crushed mercilessly.

Although the rebellion had failed, almost 250 sympathizers were executed, and the onus for this massacre was put upon Cromwell, better known as the king’s “false flatterer” among the rebels. Consequently, Henry gradually distanced himself from his chief minister, registering the target that this tumultuous stint had left on Cromwell’s back. The last thing Henry wanted was for his chief minister to become a liability to him.

Cromwell’s demise was swift. Led by his court enemies, The Duke of Norfolk and Stephen Gardiner, they’d convinced Henry that Cromwell was a heretic and, therefore, a traitor. Henry had Cromwell arrested under a bill of attainder on June 10, 1540, and sent to the Tower of London. For less than two months, Cromwell was imprisoned before he was beheaded on July 28 of the same year. The grounds for which Cromwell was executed were entirely unjust, though his fate was ostensibly the accumulation of his misdoings over his career.

Cromwell was indirectly responsible for many of the rebel deaths in the Pilgrimage of Grace, the brutal legislative onslaught of the monasteries, as well as Anne Boleyn’s public humiliation and execution. Up until their disagreement over the distribution of proceeds from the dissolved monasteries, they were loyal allies. Perhaps his swift demise was the consequence of his fallout with Anne and his reprehensible accusations that spurred Henry to execute her.

No one likes to be deceived by appearances, especially Henry, who was incensed that his fourth bride, Anne of Cleves, did not look like the woman in Hans Holbein the Younger‘s portrait. Portraiture was the equivalent of dating profiles in Tudor times. Without seeing Anne in a painting, Henry had no idea what she would look like in the flesh.

Given England’s political unrest from Henry’s movement towards Protestantism, it was vulnerable to its Catholic enemies in France and Spain. Henry’s Catholic rivals, Charles V of Spain and Francis III of France, had signed a truce, committing themselves to repressing Protestant heresies. Meanwhile, Pope Paul III issued a papal bull, excommunicating Henry and absolving his subjects of their allegiance to him.

In response, Cromwell urged Henry to choose Anne, the German duchess, as his next bride because England desperately needed Protestant allies. Conveniently, Anne’s brother, Duke William of Cleves, was also looking to ally against Holy Roman Emperor Charles V. Cromwell’s plan was as follows: If Henry married, Anne, England and Germany would unite against their common enemy.

Cromwell dispatched Holbein, Henry’s most favored court painter, to Germany. There, Holbein would (accurately) capture Anne’s likeness for Henry’s approval—which was a yes!

Henry was highly pleased with Anne’s beauty in Holbein’s portrait and swiftly agreed to marry Anne before the two met in person. Henry’s agreement no doubt had curbed Cromwell’s anxieties about an encroaching war with Spain and France and offered an opportunity to redeem himself after the Pilgrimage of Grace debacle.

However, when Henry met Anne at Rochester Castle for the first time, he believed she looked nothing like Holbein’s portrait of her. In confidence, he declared to Cromwell, “I like her not!” and demanded Cromwell find a way to annul the marriage. However, Henry’s grumblings were more so motivated by an embarrassing first encounter with Anne at Rochester than by her lack of beauty.

Initially, Henry disguised himself and staged his welcome in a highly theatrical manner. When Anne was alone, gazing out a window, Henry boldly approached and kissed her hand. Anne, unfamiliar with English customs and justifiably horrified at a stranger’s gesture, did not reciprocate Henry’s advances. She withdrew in embarrassment, leaving Henry mortified. How could someone as dashing and enigmatic as himself be denied?

When Henry adorned himself in his kingly royal purple, Anne immediately registered her grave mistake, bowing deeply before the king. Their marriage did not start well and would last only six months.

Henry attempted to find a legitimate reason to nullify his union with Anne of Cleves. He employed his council to investigate Anne’s previous engagement to Francis, Duke of Lorraine, to ascertain whether it had been binding. The marriage had never been consummated, which legally meant Anne was free to marry the king, but Henry rebuked this. He believed Anne had not come to him as a virgin, nor did he have consent in his marriage. Cromwell, he protested, had cornered him into the marriage, and he could no longer remain married to a debauched queen.

This was good news for Anne. Rather than have her beheaded or banished from court, Henry dispatched a messenger to read the terms of their divorce. Anne was free to return home to Germany; otherwise, should she choose to remain in England, he would give her an income of 4,000 pounds (around 4 million US dollars today).

This was a surprisingly generous offer for a mercurial king renowned for his temper and slew of dead wives. However, Henry’s goodness was mostly owing to Anne’s equanimity in their divorce. Anne had not repudiated the claims, a reaction Henry was anticipating, but instead, Anne accepted them gracefully. Of all Henry’s wives, Anne had played the marital game well. She was now a free woman and still welcome at Henry’s court.

9. Do Not Cheat On the King

Infidelity was a common allegation King Henry VIII used to implicate his wives, especially for his fifth wife, Catherine Howard.

Howard was one of Anne of Cleves’ ladies-in-waiting before she became queen consort. Young and charmed by her new lifestyle, Catherine married Henry before she was twenty, and like most young adults, she embraced the extravagant luxuries Henry gifted her. These included exquisite jewels, land, and other former possessions of her predecessor, Jane Seymour. Such trinkets, however, would later become instruments of Catherine’s end when they were used to prove her affairs with two other men.

Henry was appalled when he learned Catherine was unchaste. His privy council collated evidence of her indiscretions and levied two main charges against her. First, while at Lambeth, Catherine had laid with Francis Dereham. Second, after her marriage with Henry, she had entered illicit interactions with Thomas Culpeper, a gentleman of Henry’s privy chamber. At her trial, it was alleged that Catherine bestowed Culpeper with an array of gifts and tokens to excite him.

The geography of Catherine’s infidelity was significant circumstantial evidence that mapped the movements of her adultery. The cloistered chambers and shadowed corridors would have enabled her to move through the palace unseen, meeting with Culpeper in secret locations. Lady Rochford, Catherine’s lady-in-waiting, was also executed for colluding with Catherine. Reports attest that Lady Rochford had mapped the terrain of the palaces on her queen’s behalf, even locating a private meeting place for Catherine and her lover.

Both material and conceptual forces determined Catherine’s end at the executioner’s block on February 13, 1542. Although it’s unclear whether Catherine was indeed unfaithful to Henry, her willingness to receive gifts from Culpeper and other members of her court was damning evidence.

By Henry’s sixth marriage, his escape patterns from previous marital scruples had been well established. He had rid his wives in one of three ways: divorce, beheading, or a natural cause of death (such was the case for Jane Seymour). His sixth wife, Catherine Parr, had proven a fourth way out: outlive the king.

Before Catherine Parr had married Henry, she was already a widow from two previous marriages: one to Sir Edward Borough and the other to John Neville (more commonly known as Lord Latimer). Catherine established strong connections at Henry’s court through her two siblings and by serving Henry’s daughter, Lady Margaret.

By now, Henry was 52, his health was rapidly deteriorating, and all his previous marriages had ended badly. Naturally, he had reservations about remarrying, especially given that the possibility of conceiving a male heir at his age was unlikely. What Henry had needed, however, was an experienced wife to tend to his health, and Catherine fit the bill perfectly.

Despite already being in love with Lord Seymour, Jane Seymour’s brother, Catherine accepted Henry’s proposal. The two were wed in the Queen’s Closet at Hampton Palace on July 12, 1543. Whether Catherine had accepted Henry’s proposal out of fear of his wrath or to advance her Protestant convictions remains a topic of debate.

When Catherine married Henry, she was a devout Catholic before the public, yet her shift towards Protestantism had undoubtedly occurred sometime between her marriage to the king and the publication of her book, Lamentations of a Sinner. 

Stephen Gardiner, bishop of Winchester, acted upon his inkling of Anne being a covert Protestant, persecuting her and other would-be Protestants in her circle. Gardiner’s persecution of Anne enabled him to undermine other reformers in court and prevent her from further disseminating reformist ideology.

Henry soon interrogated Catherine on Gardiner’s allegations, but Catherine was a shrewd queen consort. She convinced the king that her previous religious debates with him, which, in retrospect, insinuated she was a religious reformer, were innocent ways of distracting him from the pain of his ulcerous leg. Appeased, Henry dismissed the charges, and Catherine survived her husband’s murderous streak. While Catherine likely desired reformist change throughout her marriage with Henry, she waited until after his death to publicly align herself with the Protestant Reformation. She published Lamentations in November 1547, eight months after Henry’s death on January 28.

Other than two of his wives, King Henry VIII had thousands of people executed during his reign, almost 2.6% of his kingdom. Rebels seized during the Pilgrimage of Grace and the English Reformation were executed en masse. Dozens of abbots and priests were also executed for failing to conform to Henry’s religious agenda.

Capital punishment was standard protocol in Tudor England, and not all executions were by Henry’s orders. Nonetheless, King Henry VIII was one of England’s most ruthless leaders who murdered many for undue reasons.

Surviving the King’s tyranny meant submitting to his religious polity, ensuring you were on a steady footing with members of his court, and above all, luck. As Cromwell’s fate proves, even those closest to him could not survive his brutality.

References 

Wilson, Derek. (2009). Moloch. In A Brief History of Henry VIII Reformer and Tyrant (pp. 240–270). Constable & Robinson.