Discussion Main / HeirClubForMen

• Catherine of Aragon, whom he repudiated because she had stopped menstruating and only one out of the six children she had bore him lived, and that was a girl. Henry, logically enough, took this as evidence his marriage was hateful in the eyes of God and applied for an annulment. The Pope did not agree and Henry only got his annulment after pulling England out of the Roman Catholic Church. Many historians believe that the English Reformation was due mainly to Catherine's stubborn (and immensely stupid for all involved, but especially for her) refusal to back away gracefully - had she done so, there would have been no need for Henry to break with Rome.
  • In Catherine's defense, Catholics do not believe that divorce is a spiritual reality, and believe that it is impossible to dissolve a marriage; an annulment is not a divorce but a declaration—based on evidence and investigation—that the marriage was never valid to begin with, meaning that Catherine, assuming she really believed in Catholicism, couldn't simply back down and pretend the marriage wasn't valid if she had every reason to believe that it was. More importantly, the same is true for the Pope, who couldn't grant an annulment with any degree of integrity unless he was truly convinced that the marriage had been invalid from the beginning. In short, Katherine knew very well that agreeing would make herself a whore and her daughter a bastard, and wasn't having any of it.
    • Catherine was also offered the chance to enter a convent, which was a fairly common practice for aged women, especially those of royal or noble birth, and would have had the desired outcome for all involved — Mary stays legitimate, Catherine stays respectable, Henry can marry someone else. Thus, we're back to stubborn and stupid.
    • No, we're back to 20th century mindset being applied to a 16th century court. Bastardry implied a huge loss of rights for a child. Henry could NOT marry another woman while Katherine was still alive, so the "to a nunnery" way out was NOT an option. Divorce does NOT exist in Catholicism. It doesn't exist nowadays, much less back then. Annulment does exist, but it does NOT mean the marriage is over, it means the marriage never even existed in the first place. And a woman who had sex, not to mention children out of wedlock was a whore, pure and simple, and her children bastards. Katherine would have been legally a whore, a loose woman, and her only child a bastard, had she admitted to break up the marriage. And for a woman who had six dead children among miscarriages and infant deaths, it makes tremendous sense to consider the status of her only child as a priority. Stubborn for sure. Stupid? No way.
    • Oh sure, blame her. Blame the woman. Don't blame the husband who should have honored his marriage. Don't blame the man who forced her into prison and refused her allowance to see her daughter. Don't blame the man who repudiated her as "that Spanish whore". It's all her fault for being stubborn and stupid and not letting Henry have his way (with other women).
    • Catholic doctrine states that only death can dissolve a legitimate, consummated marriage. Even if she went to a convent, an annulment or divorce would still be required for Henry to marry another woman. Thus, in her mind, she'd still be made a whore, and her daughter, a bastard. What he was offering was a way to slightly lessen the stigmatisation by showing that she was still godly and the knowledge that, bastard or not, Mary could still remain in the succession. Personally, this troper, though sympathising with all of his wives, wonders why he didn't back off when he realised that Catalina wasn't going to give in, wait a while for everyone to more-or-less forget, and then, discreetly find a way to kill her that made it look like an accident/natural causes. He mourns for the appropriate amount of time, and then, he takes another wife with no complications, Mary still considered his legitimate daughter and still in the succession after any legitimate half-brothers. I'm glad he didn't, but he was an intelligent man and had no problem publicly killing two wives, so, I don't see why he didn't privately do that to her.
      • Because her nephew was one of the most powerful men of the time. Said nephew sacked Rome (and it was one of the most brutal sackings of the time) just to make sure the Pope didn't annul Henry and Katherine's marriage. Had Henry killed Katherine, it would have meant war. It was more logical for Henry to think that, given enough time, it would be easier to break up Katherine into submission than face the Emperor's troops. Katherine proved that wrong, but Henry's reasoning wasn't flawed. Boleyn and Howard's fates would have been different had they had relatives with thousands of troops.
    • There were several royal precedents that had less justification than Henry's case against Katherine — notably Eleanor of Aquitaine's first marriage to the King of France which resulted in two daughters and an annulment because they were second cousins — allowing Eleanor to turn around and marry another second cousin who later became Henry II of England.
    • The only reason the Pope didn't grant the annulment was because he was a prisoner of the Holy Roman Emperor of the time, who happened to be Catherine's nephew. On the other hand, the reason several earlier annulments were granted was because the Pope was a "guest" of the ruler in question.
    • Also, the marriage itself had been made possible by a Papal dispensation in the first place—Catherine had been married to Henry's brother Arthur, and Leviticus prohibited marrying your brother's wife (although in the event of said brother never siring a male heir, Deuteronomy practically required it).
• Anne Boleyn, who was executed for adultery after she gave birth to a daughter then later miscarried a son. However several of Anne’s supporters clam that the charges were false and invented by Thomas Cormwall who she was in a power struggle with. One of the men she supposedly sleeped with was according to her sister-in-law Jane Boleyn was her own brother George. .Anne's daughter turned out to be the last and greatest of the Tudor monarchs, Elizabeth I.
• Jane Seymour, who died of puerperal fever only a few weeks after giving birth to Henry's only legitimate male heir, the future Edward VI. Common wisdom has it that "she had the good fortune to bear a male heir, and the good sense to die almost immediately afterward, before the King could tire of her."
• Anne of Cleves, whom Henry first saw in a painting. Artists tended to gloss over small pox scars—so, upon seeing her in real life, he found her very ugly. The marriage was arranged by Thomas Cromwell as part of a diplomatic agreement which soon became unnecessary - and so did Cromwell. Henry held no grudge against Anne though. She was smart enough to agree to a divorce and Henry, in gratitude, gave her a large income, two huge manors to live in and the rank and precedence of his 'sister'. One might say they lived happily ever after.
• Catherine Howard, Anne Boleyn's cousin. A sly little minx with an eye for the main chance she was delighted to catch Henry but not smart enough to keep her legs crossed. She was executed for treason and adultery with a young courtier, and unlike her cousin was as guilty as sin.
  • Not necessarily - it's definitely true that she wasn't a virgin before her marriage, but at least one historian thinks she might not have actually slept with Culpepper (the aforementioned young courtier). Technically, it's not treason until you actually have sex. That never stopped Henry, though.
• Katherine Parr, a widow who survived Henry only to die a year later in childbirth after having her heart broken by the first husband she'd ever loved.
  • Also of note: Henry was going to have her killed too (the charge was heresy this time, not adultery) but she found out ahead of time, and actually convinced him not to. She was the only Queen who managed that.
  • For the fun of making everyone's head spin, said fourth husband (she'd married two other old men before getting stuck with Henry) was Thomas Seymour - the brother of #3, Jane.
  • Isn't adultery grounds for divorce in the Catholic church? I don't think he would have been smart to use that accusation against Catalina (and even using the fact he was an adulterer probably wouldn't have worked if she still refused to consent), but several people have said that a legitimate, consummated marriage can only be dissolved by death. That's not what I understand, but then, I'm not Catholic.

Modern medicine has brought some irony to cases where men find another woman when their wife produces only daughters, as the chromosome that determines sex is transmitted by the male.

For even more irony, Henry VIII?s second daughter, Elizabeth I, whom he declared illegitimate after he had her mother beheaded, became Queen of England and is considered one of the greatest English monarchs. On the other hand she did effectively end the Tudor dynasty (and Henry's direct legitimate line) so it is unlikely old Henry would have taken too much comfort in that.

Henry's many marital escapades might seem misogynist or wrong to a modern onlooker, but it had been put into his head like a mantra from childhood that a king's most important job is to have an heir. His father had taken the power of England after a civil war which had left the country in really bad shape, a civil war that had been caused by the previous king dying with no heir to take over. Henry was told by his father on the latter's death bed that his number one priority as king would be to have sons, plural, to prevent another situation where an heirless king dies and England is torn apart by civil war. Does that justify beheading or divorcing wives for not bearing him sons? No, but it does paint Henry in a different light than just a male pig. As it appears he learned his lesson too - on Henry's own deathbed he told his son that a king's number one job was in fact not to produce an heir.