Henry VIII had six wives. Which means he had six weddings. What were those weddings like? Let’s dig into it and see in today’s YouTube video on the Six Weddings of Henry VIII.
Hey friend, welcome to the YouTube channel for the Renaissance English History Podcast. I am your host, Heather. I’ve been podcasting on Tudor England since 2009 with my show, the Original Tudor History Podcast. This channel is where I put all of my episodes from all of my shows, as well as lots of extra content like this video right here.
Today we are going to talk about the many weddings of Henry VIII. So of course, Henry had six wives. Which means he also had six weddings. So we are going to talk about each of those weddings and, you know, what it was like. I wonder, do you think he ever got bored with getting married after six times? Do you think he thought there was anything special?
Or was it just kind of like going through the motions? I wonder. Anyway, if you would like to see more Tudor history in your YouTube feed, go ahead and hit subscribe right now so you never miss a video I put out. All right, let’s start with Catherine of Aragon, the chivalric gesture. In early June 1509, young King Henry approached his first marriage with a sense of chivalric duty, casting himself as Catherine of Aragon’s protector and savior.
Catherine, the Spanish princess who had once been married to Henry’s older brother Arthur, had faced years of uncertainty in England after Arthur’s death. Henry’s decision to marry her felt as much like a knightly quest as a political alliance.
In a private, almost romantic moment, Henry arrived alone at Catherine’s apartment in Greenwich Palace. Dismissing her attendants, he lifted her from her curtsy. took her hand and declared his love, asking her to be his queen. Catherine, long hoping for such a turn of events, accepted joyfully. They wed on June 11th, the feast day of St.
Barnabas, in a small and private ceremony within the queen’s closet at Greenwich. William Wareham, the Archbishop of Canterbury, had officiated. Catherine was a vision of elegance, wearing a gown of virginal white with her hair loose under a golden circlet. After the vows, the intimate party moved to the nearby chapel of the observant friars to hear mass.
Notably absent was the public betting ceremony, which was typically held to confirm a royal marriage’s consummation, though the couple retired privately Catherine’s Swift pregnancy quelled. Any doubts about the union’s legitimacy?
On June 15th, she made her first appearance as the Queen of England, a role she embraced with dignity despite the tumult that lay ahead.
Then we have marriage number two, Anne Boleyn, the secret marriage. Henry’s marriage to Anne Boleyn reflected an entirely different spirit. Years of fervent courtship, Anne’s insistence on marriage, and Henry’s break with the Catholic Church had culminated in a union wrapped in secrecy and political defiance.
Their first ceremony was held in Dover in November of 1532, right after they returned from their trip to France, to Calais, I just did a members video on what went down in Calais with Henry and Anne, so if you join this channel you get access to all of the members videos, including that one.
So this initial wedding conducted privately while Henry was still technically married to Catherine, was little more than a desperate attempt to legitimize Anne’s standing and any potential children.
However, with Anne now pregnant, Henry felt the need for a second more formal wedding. On January 25th, 1533, in the early morning hours, Henry and Anne wed again, this time at Whitehall Palace. The officiant was Dr. Roland Lee. You might recognize that name, Roland Lee.
He was the father of John Dee, Elizabeth’s very famous astronomer, who I’ve also done videos on. The end. Tiffany actually requested a video on Roland Lee, which is on my list to do this week as well, so look at that, things all come together.
Anyway, Roland Lee was likely informed of the very high stakes and was pregnant now, and this required swift action to secure the child’s legitimacy. Anne wore her hair loose, dressed in luxurious fabric befitting her new status. While Henry radiated a triumphant confidence. The couple kept their marriage hidden for several months until Easter when Anne, loaded with diamonds and other precious stones, made her public debut as queen.
The secrecy around the wedding, juxtaposed with the grandeur of Anne’s later coronation, underscored the dramatic and ultimately doomed nature of their union. Within three years, Anne would be executed, the first wife to face Henry’s wrath so decisively.
Marriage number three, Jane Seymour. The reserved yet promising ceremony. [00:05:00] Henry’s third marriage to Jane Seymour had a distinctly solemn tone, underscoring his shift from passionate pursuits to dynastic pragmatism.
Mere days after Anne’s execution, Henry’s court was buzzing with news of his engagement to Jane.
Jane was presented as the antithesis of Anne’s fiery character promised quiet obedience, and most importantly, the prospect of a male heir. On May 30th, 1536, Jane and Henry were married in a private ceremony at Whitehall Palace, Archbishop Thomas Kraner officiated in the queen’s closet with only a few close courtier in attendance.
The simplicity of the ceremony was notable as though it was a reflection of Jane’s reserved nature. After the vows, Jane then took her place under the canopy of a state in the presence chamber, a striking visual, many noted.
For within the same month, England had witnessed the downfall of one queen, the rise [00:06:00] of another, in bed and honor, A brutal cycle that shocked the court. Jane’s brief tenure as queen would bring the fulfillment of Henry’s longed for son Edward, though her death soon after left Henry in a period of intense mourning.
Her quiet demeanor and her role as mother to the future king earned her an exalted place in Henry’s memory. She was the wife he chose to be buried beside his true queen in retrospect.
Then we have Anne of Cleves, the diplomatic disaster. By the time Henry arranged to marry Anne of Cleves, he was deep in political maneuvers. His advisers had arranged to ally England with the Protestant German Duchy of Cleves against the powerful Catholic forces of France and Spain. But for Henry, the marriage was doomed from the moment he met Anne in person.
Displeased with her appearance, his ego was hurt because she didn’t recognize his courtly chivalric gestures, Henry famously remarked that she looked nothing like her portrait. Despite his reluctance, Henry proceeded with the wedding to uphold the diplomatic ties. On January 6, 1540, at Greenwich Palace, Henry married Anne in a muted, almost resigned ceremony.
Dressed in an elaborate gown adorned with large pearls, probably from Asia, Anne presented herself with a quiet dignity.
Henry, however, could not mask his distaste. He muttered complaints about the match throughout the day, saying he felt like he was putting his neck in the yoke. The ceremony itself was subdued with Thomas Cranmer officiating again. When the ceremony concluded, Henry took Anne’s hand and led her to the king’s closet to hear a mass, as was the tradition.
The marital bed was lavishly decorated with ornate carvings, yet Henry refused to consummate the marriage, claiming he found himself unable to proceed. He confided to his ministers that he abhorred Anne’s physical presence and found her repulsive. Within six months, their marriage was annulled on the grounds of non consummation.
And Anne, ever pragmatic, accepted this with grace. She received a generous settlement and the honorary title of the king’s beloved sister, ensuring her security. Outliving all of Henry’s wives, Anne ultimately proved herself to be both shrewd and adaptable in the face of royal politics.
Marriage number five, Catherine Howard, the passionate but doomed affair. After the diplomatic disappointment of Anne of Cleves, Henry turned his attention to Catherine Howard, a lively young woman barely out of her teens. Catherine, the niece of Thomas Howard, Duke of Norfolk, was placed in Henry’s path with the hope that she would bring the family influence at court.
Of course, they had fallen a bit after Anne Boleyn’s fall. Anne Boleyn was part of the Howard family as well. So they were looking to get themselves back up in Henry’s good graces. Catherine’s beauty and charm captivated the aging king, who saw in her a renewal of the vigor and vitality that he had begun to lose.
Their marriage took place on July 28, 1540, at Oatland’s Palace, the very day Henry’s former advisor, Thomas Cromwell, was executed, a day filled with starkly contrasting emotions. The wedding was private, with only a small gathering in attendance. Henry was besotted with his young bride, lavished her with gifts, and and make no attempts to hide his infatuation.
Catherine became a visible figure at court, celebrated for her charm and her vibrant youth. Henry was openly affectionate, displaying a rare ease in her company, and lavished her with gifts. For a time, Catherine appeared every bit the devoted queen. However, she harbored secrets from her past. namely liaisons with other men, which, unbeknownst to Henry, would lead to her downfall.
In 1541, rumors surfaced about her affairs both before and after her marriage to Henry. When these allegations reached Henry, he was devastated, even claiming he wished to slay her himself in his grief.
Catherine was arrested and, despite her pleas, was found guilty of adultery. She was executed on February 13th, 1542, marking one of the briefest and most tragic chapters in Henry’s matrimonial history.
Marriage number six, Catherine Parr. In his final marriage, Henry sought companionship and stability. rather than passion or political advantage. Catherine Parr, a twice widowed noblewoman with a reputation for intelligence and discretion, offered exactly what Henry needed in his declining years.
Catherine was practical, nurturing, deeply religious, with a strong commitment to the Protestant faith that appealed to Henry’s increasingly reformist leanings. Henry found her presence comforting, and soon she became both his queen and his caregiver, although that whole idea of Catherine as Um, just the nurse.
She was a lot more than that, right? But she is often remembered as being his caregiver in his decline. On July 12,1543, Henry and Catherine were married at Hampton Court in a private ceremony. Cranmer officiated once again. I wonder if he was getting tired of this. The guest list was intimate, reflecting the subdued tone of Henry’s final union.
Following the vows, Catherine took her place under the canopy of a state in the presence chamber, a mark of her new status. Unlike Henry’s other queens, Catherine’s role was more than ceremonial.
She was a confidant, a caretaker, and a trusted regent when he went to war with France. The only other queen to ever be regent was Catherine of Aragon, again when he was at war with France. And Catherine of Aragon led troops, they say, but she was handling things when, uh, the troops went to Scotland and had a major battle there.
So when Henry embarked on a campaign to France, his final campaign, he appointed Catherine as regent, entrusting her with the governance in his absence, a rare and significant gesture. Catherine’s marriage to Henry was not without its challenges. Her outspoken Protestant beliefs clashed with the conservative factions at court.
At one point, she narrowly escaped arrest on suspicion of heresy, Yet, she managed to smooth over these tensions remaining by Henry’s side until his death on January 28, 1547. Soon after, Catherine would fulfill her own long held desire to marry Thomas Seymour, Jane Seymour’s brother, whom she had been interested in before her marriage to Henry.
Tragically, she died the following year after giving birth to her only child, Mary Seymour.
These final three marriages show Henry’s evolving desires and needs as he aged. Each wedding brought its own set of expectations, challenges, and ultimately a unique role for each wife within the tumultuous world of the Tudor court.
So before we go, I just want to do something fun. Do you guys know Catherine Holden? She’s an artist who makes amazing drawings. She comes to TudorCon and has a little, uh, not a little, it has a table every year with her, her work. She puts her stuff on, you know, mugs and cards and she has an Etsy shop.
Anyway, she sent me, she recently did a crowdfunding campaign to make these, uh, Tudor playing cards and she sent me a package with the Tudor playing cards in. And I just wanted to. Open it up, it’s funny because I was showing Hannah, my daughter, uh, the other day and she said, Mommy, you should do an unboxing video the next time you do a YouTube video.
So I’m not going to do a separate unboxing video for this, but I just wanted to show you. These are the playing cards that Catherine Holman, uh, sent me
and I will hold them up there. Well, let me take them out of the package first. I didn’t take them out of the package because I wanted to unbox them with you. Um, so these are the playing cards. And they’re just regular, you know, 54 playing cards. Oops. They’re in a, they’re packaged together. I need scissors because they come all.
In Shrinkwrap, there’s Thomas Tallis, the Joker. I love that because Thomas Tallis, of course, everybody knows I’m deeply into the music of this period. They call him Teflon Tallis because he managed to survive under four Tudor monarchs. And he wrote Protestant music, he wrote Catholic music. He managed to, uh.
To survive under all that and he wrote the amazing 40 part motet, Spem in Allium, which was a bit of a PR stun because there was another composer, I did a blog post about it recent, not recently, about 10 years ago actually, uh, there was another composer, an Italian I think, who had a, also like a 35 part motet, like 35 lines of music, And was performing at London and some duke, it might have been the Duke of Norfolk, somebody, don’t quote me on that.
I’ll have to find the article that I wrote because I researched it, um, had said that they wondered whether any English composer could do something the same and Thomas Tallis wrote Spaminalium. So here he is on the Joker. Love that. All right, so, um, these are all the cards, and I will just show you a couple.
Let me see, here’s an Ace, Elizabeth I, here’s Hampton Court Palace, oh I see, and then here’s Sudley Castle. So it looks like, oh no, um, Ludlow Castle, oh and then there’s Jasper Tudor. I’m trying to see whether they go in any kind of order. Francis Drake, Henry VII. There’s Thomas Howard, Mary Stewart, queen of Scott’s.
They’re still pretty. Ann of Cleaves, Thomas Cromwell, Ann Bely, and Henry vii as the king of hearts. That’s quite clever. I mean, I don’t know if it’s fitting or not, but Elizabeth first, ACE of Spades. None such palace. So we’ve got a mix of people, Thornbury Castle, St. James’s Palace, Lady Margaret Beaufort, my favorite.
I love her. I love her so much. There’s Arthur Tudor. Um, so yeah, it’s super, super cool. Oh, and there’s Henry again as the king. Oh, so I guess, oh, look at that. I’m, I’m seeing a pattern. I’m seeing a pattern. Henry’s the king. Always. Elizabeth is the ace, um, and then we’ve got some places in the early, early numbers, um, and then we go to other people.
So see, I’m starting to see this pattern. And then, yeah, there’s Henry again. See now the other joker here is Thomas Wyatt. Since we had Thomas Tallis. as, there’s Thomas White. Since we had Thomas Tallis as the one joker, I would have put William Byrd as the other joker because those two were partners in a music publishing business.
They had, had the first, uh, patent. Elizabeth gave Byrd and Tallis, they had a, a business partnership and Elizabeth gave them the first patent to create printed music in England. So that was fun. So I would have made Thomas, uh, William Byrd the other, the other joker to go with Thomas Tallis, but. Thomas Wyatt is, so you’ve got two Thomases as jokers, and um, there you go. Anyway, um, but, oh, but I see because Thomas Wyatt was a poet, Thomas Tallis was a composer, so. Maybe that ties it all together. Or maybe I’m just reading way too much into it. Maybe I’m just reading way too much into it. Anyway, so these I think are gonna be on her Etsy shop.
I don’t know. She didn’t, she didn’t ask me to do this. This isn’t like a sponsored post or anything. I just wanted to share it with you. Um, and then she also sent me these cool dice, die. What’s the plural of die? It’s like die, right? With, um, the wives because there’s six of them, right? So they’re pretty cool, too.
So you can check out her shop if you want to, uh, want to see those. And thank you, Catherine, for sending me these. It was very fun. And, uh, my husband, Jonathan, actually really loves playing cards, and he has a lot of decks of playing cards., yeah, so Jonathan will appreciate looking at those. All right, my friend, if you made it to the end of this video and you enjoyed it, I sure would appreciate a press of that like button.
It helps to feed the algorithm and get this content to even more people. And I hope I earned your subscription to my channel where I put out videos like this on the regular. All right. Thank you so much for listening. Remember, you are deeply loved. I am so glad I shared the planet with you. And don’t forget to drink your water.
All right, friend. I will be back soon. Bye bye.
Heather Teysko is the creator, writer, and producer of The Renaissance English History Podcast,  the original Tudor history podcast, started in 2009. She's been writing about history online for over 25 years, since her first site on Colonial American history became number one in history on Yahoo in 1998. In 2019 she created Tudorcon, which is now a yearly event, in addition to writing books, and running TudorFair.com - a whimsical Tudor Merch shop.
She has been passionate about Tudor England since she first read Alison Weir's The Six Wives of Henry VIII 30 years ago, and subsequently moved to London after college to spend her time immersed in Tudor history (how exciting when she got to interview Alison for the first time!). In addition to history, she is passionate about travel, and has lived in 3 countries and 4 states (not counting her perpetual state of confusion), and her family (who help her host her YouTube channel occasionally).
