蜜芽传媒

Professor Suzannah Lipscomb is fascinated by everything in the Tudor period – and where better to start than the six wives of Henry VIII?

The National Portrait Gallery in London is hosting a new exhibition called Six Lives, displaying the images that have shaped our perception of Henry VIII and his queens. It was just the excuse Suzannah needed to delve into each of their stories.

Across six episodes of Not Just the Tudors on 蜜芽传媒 Sounds, Suzannah is joined by experts to explore their legacies. We all know the rhyme - divorced, beheaded, died, divorced, beheaded, survived - but there is still so much more to know about the wives of Henry VIII.

Here are just a few details we learned from the last three episodes.

Anne of Cleves

Anne of Cleves was the first and only wife Henry VIII didn’t know in person before their betrothal. This was a political match designed to give Henry another chance at begetting sons – but also to offer defense for England. In 1538, the Pope published an edict excommunicating the King of England due to his break with the Catholic Church. He named Henry a heretic, who could be lawfully deprived of his throne. Making war on England was now the official recommendation of the Catholic Church.

To make matters worse, in that same year, his enemies the King of France and the Holy Roman Emperor had met and promised each other perpetual peace and to be foes to each other's foes. Henry needed allies, and the ruling family of the United Duchies of Jülich-Cleves-Berg in Germany looked a possibility. As Dr Valerie Shute explains: “There were many duchies in Germany, and though they were considered part of the Habsburg Empire, they were actually ruled independently – and Cleves was one of them.”

Their first meeting in 1540 didn’t go very well. Henry had seen portraits of Anne, and had talked himself into loving her, says Valerie. Disguising himself as a servant, he went to see her on her arrival in Rochester Abbey.

“In sources from January when he met her, none of them reported a bad meeting. It's not until the July depositions that we hear Henry didn't really love her from the beginning. Maybe she didn't look like the portrait, and there would have been cultural differences.”

Historians also believe there may have been underlying foreign policy questions determining Henry's response to Anne. Or alternatively, as our host Suzannah Lipscomb suggests: “A third possibility: when Henry appeared before Anne in disguise, she recoiled. Her limited education had not taught her the games of courtly love. She had not been warned that the King of England had gone to seed and, amidst the reek of his pus filled ulcer, he saw himself reflected truthfully in her eyes, and it was enough to turn him right off her.”

Anne of Cleves was independent and politically influential. After her divorce with the king, Anne did not remarry. She ran her own household for 17 years and took care of herself financially. “We know she was involved with the financial running of her estates,” says Valerie Shute. “We know that she liked to pay for dresses. She played dice, she played cards, she had entertainment, and she ran her own household. And she would have been a very independent woman, and a very unusual one, in that she was foreign, living in England and doing all of this on her own, with some distant guidance from her brother and a cousin who stayed in her household with her.”

There’s an impression of Anne that she was the “ugly wife who was put away”, says Shute, “and that just isn’t the case”. She kept herself involved in English politics enough to be friends with two queens. “We think that she and Elizabeth had a relationship, and even after the divorce, she was still considered important internationally. We know that the books that were written about her in the 1540s lament her divorce, because Henry shouldn't have mistreated this important international woman in this way, and she's still involved in politics, even if the marriage wasn't intact.”

Catherine Howard

Catherine Howard has historically been portrayed as either a “vixen” or a “victim”. Dr Nicola Clark says that Victorian historians have a lot to answer for this, as her story was used as a didactic lesson to Victorian girls. “She tended to be written about by quite early historians as a temptress and a vixen. More recently, we've done a 180 and think of her more as a victim. But I'm not sure that is always necessarily better.”

We don’t know how old Catherine was when she married Henry VIII. The fact we have no conclusive evidence of her birth date therefore makes it harder to interpret her relationships with men such as Francis Dereham and Thomas Culpeper, which led to her downfall. She was potentially pre-contracted to Dereham before her marriage to Henry VIII, and it was this that ultimately led to her execution.

“This is partly why this vixen-victim dichotomy exists,” says Clark, “because it really depends a lot on how old you think she was when a lot of these things were happening. My best estimate is the very early 1520s, which would put her at about 17 or 18 by the time she marries the king.”

Catherine Parr

Catherine, Henry VIII's last wife, was named after his first. She was born in 1512, and named for the Spanish queen, Catherine of Aragon, who was probably her godmother. She spelled her name as K, A, T, E, R, Y, N. Both of Catherine's parents, Maud and Sir Thomas Parr, were operating at the heart of the new Henrician court. Maud saw to it that her three children were very well educated, which meant that Catherine's natural intelligence was sharpened with knowledge.

Catherine was very conscious of hygiene. By looking at the accounts of her household, we can learn a lot from the queen’s habits, says James. “They tell us that she had a pet spaniel named Rig that she adored – and she kept his red velvet collar in her jewel case till she died. She also had a parrot. She was very conscious of hygiene. She had a lead bathtub. She took milk baths and carried breath mints with her in a little box. She had scented oils. She loved shoes; she ordered an enormous amount.”

Of all of Henry’s wives, Catherine has the most varied portraits. Whereas images of the other queens are often copied or repeated, Dr Charlotte Bolland explains, we can tell that Catherine deliberately sat for a number of different artists throughout her reign. “Her self-presentation is interesting, because of the extraordinary position that she found herself in. She was the third queen called Catherine, and I think she would have felt this in some way.”

Bolland says the portraits were an assertion of Catherine’s individuality. ”I think she was very interested in clothing and jewels and the way in which they asserted your status. You know that she is presenting herself as Queen very self consciously and deliberately.”

Catherine Howard

Catherine Howard has historically been portrayed as either a “vixen” or a “victim”. Dr Nicola Clark says that Victorian historians have a lot to answer for this, as her story was used as a didactic lesson to Victorian girls. “She tended to be written about by quite early historians as a temptress and a vixen. More recently, we've done a 180 and think of her more as a victim. But I'm not sure that is always necessarily better.”

We don’t know how old Catherine was when she married Henry VIII. The fact we have no conclusive evidence of her birth date therefore makes it harder to interpret her relationships with men such as Francis Dereham and Thomas Culpeper, which led to her downfall. She was potentially pre-contracted to Dereham before her marriage to Henry VIII, and it was this that ultimately led to her execution.

“This is partly why this vixen-victim dichotomy exists,” says Clark, “because it really depends a lot on how old you think she was when a lot of these things were happening. My best estimate is the very early 1520s, which would put her at about 17 or 18 by the time she marries the king.”

Catherine Parr

Catherine, Henry VIII's last wife, was named after his first. She was born in 1512, and named for the Spanish queen, Catherine of Aragon, who was probably her godmother. She spelled her name as K, A, T, E, R, Y, N. Both of Catherine's parents, Maud and Sir Thomas Parr, were operating at the heart of the new Henrician court. Maud saw to it that her three children were very well educated, which meant that Catherine's natural intelligence was sharpened with knowledge.

Catherine was very conscious of hygiene. By looking at the accounts of her household, we can learn a lot from the queen’s habits, says James. “They tell us that she had a pet spaniel named Rig that she adored – and she kept his red velvet collar in her jewel case till she died. She also had a parrot. She was very conscious of hygiene. She had a lead bathtub. She took milk baths and carried breath mints with her in a little box. She had scented oils. She loved shoes; she ordered an enormous amount.”

Of all of Henry’s wives, Catherine has the most varied portraits. Whereas images of the other queens are often copied or repeated, Dr Charlotte Bolland explains, we can tell that Catherine deliberately sat for a number of different artists throughout her reign.
“Her self-presentation is interesting, because of the extraordinary position that she found herself in. She was the third queen called Catherine, and I think she would have felt this in some way.”

Bolland says the portraits were an assertion of Catherine’s individuality. ”I think she was very interested in clothing and jewels and the way in which they asserted your status. You know that she is presenting herself as Queen very self consciously and deliberately.”