Famously, Henry was married to six different wives, but none of them – apart from Catherine of Aragon – lasted for more than a few years. Anne Boleyn was executed in 1536, accused of treason. Henry married Jane Seymour in the same year, who did provide him with the son he longed for but died soon after giving birth. His next three marriages, to Anne of Cleves, Catherine Howard and Catherine Parr, didn’t produce any more children.
After his death in 1547, Henry’s only son, Edward, became king at the age of nine, but died six years later. This meant that Mary, Catherine of Aragon’s daughter with Henry, became queen. During her short reign she became known as Bloody Mary: she was fiercely Catholic, unlike her Protestant younger brother, and executed hundreds of Protestant “heretics”. She died of influenza in 1558, leaving the throne to her half-sister Elizabeth (a Protestant), who would reign for 45 years before dying childless, the last of the Tudors.
Timeline of Tudor England
1485 Henry Tudor defeats Richard III at the Battle of Bosworth, and becomes Henry VII, the first Tudor king of England.
1486 Prince Arthur is born.
1491 Prince Henry (later Henry VIII) is born.
1501 Arthur marries Catherine of Aragon.
1502 Arthur dies.
1509 Henry VII dies. Prince Henry marries Catherine of Aragon and is crowned King Henry VIII.
1513 War with France and Scotland. James IV of Scotland dies at the Battle of Flodden Field.
1516 Catherine of Aragon has a daughter, Mary (later Queen Mary I).
1527 Henry starts his divorce from Catherine of Aragon.
1533 Henry marries Anne Boleyn. They have a daughter, Elizabeth (later Queen Elizabeth I).
1536 Anne Boleyn is beheaded. Henry marries Jane Seymour. Catherine of Aragon dies.
1536–9 The Reformation of the Church in England.
1537 Jane Seymour has a son, Edward (later Edward VI). She dies after the birth.
1540 Henry marries Anne of Cleves but they are divorced the same year. Henry marries Catherine Howard.
1542 Catherine Howard is beheaded.
1543 Henry marries Catherine Parr.
1547 Henry VIII dies. His only son becomes Edward VI of England.
1553 Edward VI dies. Catherine of Aragon’s daughter, Mary, becomes Queen.
1554 Mary marries Philip of Spain.
1558 Mary dies. Elizabeth I becomes Queen of England.
1603 Elizabeth I, the last of the Tudor monarchs, dies.
Picture acknowledgments
Portrait of a woman, possibly Catherine of Aragon (1503/4), Michiel Sittow (1469–1525), Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna/Bridgeman Art Library
Portrait of Henry VIII (c. 1525–30) English School (16th century) Philip Mould Historical Portraits Ltd, London/Bridgeman Art Library
Arthur, Prince of Wales, Mary Evans Picture Library
A banquet in the Presence Chamber, Hampton Court, Joseph Nash, The Mansions of England in the Olden Time, Mary Evans Picture Library
Windsor Castle, Gentleman’s Magazine, Mary Evans Picture Library
Picnic during a royal hunt, from Turbervile’s The Noble Art of Venerie or Hunting, Mary Evans Picture Library
Jester in cap and bells, A Kohl, Mary Evans Picture Library
Portrait, supposed to be of Catherine of Aragon, painted by Michiel Sittow in 1503/4.
Portrait of Henry VIII painted in the mid-1520s.
Stained glass portrait of Arthur, Prince of Wales, Catherine of Aragon’s first husband. Arthur died in 1502 within a few months of his wedding. Catherine married his younger brother, Henry, in 1509.
A banquet in the Presence Chamber of Hampton Court Palace.
A view of Windsor Castle during the reign of Henry VIII’s daughter, Elizabeth I.
An engraving showing a picnic during a royal hunt in the sixteenth century.
A jester wearing a traditional costume with cap and bells.
Vividly imagined accounts of life in the past.
Turn the page for an extract from My Story: Anne Boleyn and Me by Alison Prince
13th August 1525
Richmond Palace
This is the diary of Elinor Valjean, aged eleven.
Today is my sister Rosanna’s birthday. Mama gave her a beautiful diary to write in, because Rosanna is sixteen, the same age as Mama was when she came to England with Catherine of Aragon, our queen. I am going to write a diary as well, only I do not have a proper one, so I have to write it on scraps of paper. I will keep them in the back of my Latin book, so they will be private.
I am not jealous of Rosanna. Of course she must have nice things for her birthday. I gave her a beaded cap that I’d sewn myself, with some help from Mama. But I will have to wait a long time before I am sixteen, and I want to start writing my diary now. Mama began hers because she was leaving Spain and going on a dangerous sea voyage to a strange country. She showed Rosanna and me her diary, with its close-packed lines of neat Spanish writing. Mine will not look like that. I keep trying to make my writing smaller and more tidy, but I never seem to manage it.
Papa would laugh if he knew about my diary pages. He isn’t unkind, but he laughs at everything. I suppose it is because he is the court jester, “Mr John”, as they call him. He says he has to remember that things are funny because if he starts to think they are serious or sad, he would lose his job. I want to be a jester, too, but I am a girl, so I have to wear long dresses that make it hard to jump and tumble as he does. I wish I had been a boy. My brothers have far more fun, learning archery and fighting with swords and quarter-staves. Little William is not much good at it yet, being only four and not very strong, but Daniel, at seven, thinks himself quite the man.
Mama reminds me that I am lucky. She and Queen Catherine were childhood friends, so we live as members of the royal court, in whichever palace King Henry VIII chooses to have his household. Mama and Papa both serve the King and Queen, he as the jester and she as Catherine’s friend and favourite lady, and we children will be royal servants when we are old enough. Meanwhile, we ourselves are served by a great army of people who work in the barns and the yards and the smoky kitchens, tending livestock, washing clothes, and preparing and serving food.
Yes, we are lucky. We do not put in long hours of work in the fields, digging and sowing and reaping. We do not cart dung or pick stones or undertake the horrible work of slaughtering and skinning and plucking. Our food arrives ready-cooked, served on gold dishes if the King is entertaining guests. We play music and sing and dance, and every summer we go with the royal party on progress to other parts of the country while the palace where we have spent the winter is cleaned. When we come back in the autumn, we find the soot gone from the walls and the grease and filth scrubbed off the floors. There are fresh rushes scattered in the dining hall, sweet to tread on, and the bed-linen is washed and aired. I always love those first weeks after our return, while all the rooms still smell clean.
I would not have chosen to be a girl, but I enjoy some very nice things that the boys do not share. Sometimes Mama lets me join her when she and Maria de Salinas spend afternoons with the Queen. They talk together in Spanish, which I understand though I am not good at writing it, and they do their fine embroidery. Mostly it is Spanish style, black on white, as richly patterned as the bright sparkle of sunshine through dark leaves. It is very beautiful, but secretly I prefer the English use of reds and purples, blues and browns and gold. The Queen has all these colours, though she seldom uses them, and I love arranging the hanks of silk like a rainbow in their lacquered box. Queen Catherine said I could. She is a wonderful lady. Although she is the Queen of England, she is so kind.
I wish I was better at embroidery. I try hard, but my fingers seem sticky and awkward, and the thread makes itself into grubby knots. Perhaps I will find it e
asier when I am older. Meanwhile, I am always glad if Papa comes to join us, playing his lute or viol for the Queen and telling funny rhymes, for then I can lay the work down and listen. He can only be with us if King Henry does not need his services, for, like everyone else in the court, he has to obey orders.
This morning he could not come. To my amazement, Queen Catherine asked me to play instead, and handed me her own lute. I was very nervous, but she smiled, and when I had finished she clapped her hands. Papa must have told her I can dance as well, and that I make up my own stories, for she asked me to do these things, and afterwards she laughed and applauded again. She said I take after my father.
It was the greatest compliment she could pay me, for I would love to be like him. My brother Daniel would laugh if he knew I wanted to be a jester, and little William would laugh as well without understanding why. Even Mama and Rosanna might be shocked, so I never mention it. But I dream of it all the same, and then I feel warm and excited inside.
I must be careful not to get married, or I will never do anything but work as a wife and mother. Some girls have their first baby when they are only twelve, specially if they belong to the titled families. They could never be jesters, poor things.
Princesses have no say in choosing their husbands. The Queen’s daughter, Princess Mary, is nine years old, two years younger than I am, but she was betrothed when she was six to the Holy Roman Emperor Charles V, who is a grown-up man. He is the Queen’s nephew, so I should not be rude about him – but he is such a funny-looking person. I saw him when he came here for the betrothal ceremony, and he has a long, pointed chin that sticks out so he can hardly close his mouth. He belongs to the Habsburg family, and Mama says all of them look rather like that. Mary was sent off to Ludlow Castle last month, with a huge retinue of horses and servants, to live in a separate household there. I don’t know why.
I must stop writing now. Mama is calling. She wants me to get William ready for bed. I tell him a story every night, and he will not go to sleep without it.
14th August 1525
Rosanna told me why Princess Mary went to live in Ludlow Castle. It’s all to do with the King’s son, Henry Fitzroy. He is six years old, and his mother is not Queen Catherine, she is called Bessie Blount. The little boy was brought here to Richmond Palace in June, and there was a big ceremony while the King made him Duke of Richmond and Somerset. Then he was sent to the north of England to be head of a great household. Rosanna says the Queen was annoyed because her own daughter, Mary, had not been given any such honours, and she told Henry she was not pleased. In fact, there was a frightful argument between them. So Mary has now been given her own household, to be equal with her half-brother.
I hope she will like it. I would hate to be sent away from my home and family to a castle near Wales, which they say is a very wet place. Thank goodness I am not a princess.
I saw Mark Smeaton catch Rosanna by her waist yesterday and give her a kiss. She was very offended and pushed him away. Mark said he was only trying to wish her a happy birthday, but I don’t think she believed it. Mark is one of the court musicians. He plays the lute well and has a good voice, but Rosanna detests him. “He is pathetic,” she said. “Like a trodden-on spaniel, always hoping people will like him. He has no spirit. He is just cheeky, and that is a different thing.” I didn’t understand what she meant. I quite like Mark. He gave me a bit of sugar candy the other day.
The King was in high good humour this morning. I saw him run his hand down Anne Boleyn’s back as she went through a door ahead of him yesterday, then he laughed and bent his head to kiss her on the cheek. Anne works with Mama and Rosanna as one of the Queen’s ladies, but she does not seem to mind being kissed. She smiled up at the King, all gaiety. She has been away at Hever Castle, her parents’ home, for the last two years, and only came back quite recently. Rosanna says the King himself is in love with her, and he sent her away because she was having an affair with a young man called Henry Percy. There was quite a rumpus about it, and Cardinal Wolsey, the King’s close adviser, told Percy that Anne Boleyn was not a suitable wife for a young man of good family. Percy was sent off to marry someone else. And Rosanna says Thomas Wyatt, the poet, is in love with Anne now.
I think all that is very silly. I love my family and I love the grey cat called Minna and the dogs that lie around when we all eat in the great hall, waiting for bones and scraps to be thrown. I love horses, too. But poets and young men called Percy sound a terrible bore.
This afternoon the King’s mood changed completely, and he flew into one of his rages. Papa had a terrible time with him. King Henry loves music and plays well himself, so he is usually easy to amuse, but today something had upset him. Papa found out later that the Emperor Charles has broken off his engagement to Mary. The King has taken it as a personal insult, so his temper has been explosive ever since the news came. The whole court was tiptoeing about for fear of being shouted at, and even the Queen, who is always so calm and wise, dissolved into tears.
2nd October 1525
I meant to write my diary every day, but there are so many other things to do. I practise my dancing and singing, and Papa has given me a wooden flute, so that is a new instrument to learn, as well as the viol and lute. But I love the sound it makes, and Papa is a good teacher. My fingers are getting quicker at finding the notes.
Mark Smeaton still pesters Rosanna, though she won’t have anything to do with him, and Thomas Wyatt gazes with soulful eyes at Anne Boleyn. But so does the King, which I find very odd. If she is too common a girl for young Percy to marry, how can she cast her spell on the King of England? Everyone is whispering that he is in love with her, but I can’t understand it. King Henry is married to Queen Catherine, so how can he be in love with Anne? I am sure the Queen must be very upset about it. I asked Mama, and she sighed and said, “Poor lady – if only she had given him a son.”
It is true that the Queen was unlucky. She had child after child, but all of them died except Mary. I know babies die sometimes. Mama had a little boy after I was born, and he died before he was a year old. But at least she has four of us. People say the Queen’s last childbirth left her injured, so she cannot have any more children. The King is disappointed because he wanted a son who would inherit the throne of England. All this fuss about sons puzzles me. Surely Princess Mary can be Queen of England when King Henry dies? Her grandmother, Isabella, was Queen of Spain, and she ruled the country, with some help from her husband. If Isabella could do it, why not Mary? Mama shook her head when I suggested this. “King Henry is set on having a son,” she said.
15th February 1526
There was a joust this afternoon. We watched from the covered stand, and Daniel was grumbling that he is not old enough yet to take part. I said, “But you will one day.” He is lucky. I myself will always be sitting on the benches under the striped awning, a mere spectator.
When the men rode in, they looked magnificent, as they always do. They were in armour, of course, but scarlet plumes flew from their helmets, and they wore full-skirted, embroidered tunics. Their horses were beautifully dressed as well, in embroidered trappings that covered them almost completely, just showing the lower part of their legs. There was one I specially liked, in pale blue and silver.
When the King came riding in on his big, black horse, a murmur went up because his tunic was stitched with the words, DECLARE I DARE NOT. All the ladies were giggling behind their hands, and I asked Mama what it meant. Her face had turned quite pink and she said, “Never mind,” so I asked Rosanna later. She told me the words meant the King has a new love, but he dares not say her name. But everyone knows her name. It is Anne Boleyn.
I keep thinking about Anne, wondering what it must be like to be loved by a king who already has a wife. I came face to face with her this evening as she brought a flask of sweet wine to the Queen’s chamber. She is hardly taller than I am, a slender wisp of a thing. I suppose I must have been s
taring because she asked me what I thought I was looking at. She sounded very annoyed. It was no use pretending I hadn’t been looking. I dropped her a respectful curtsey while I thought fast, then said, “I was looking at you.”
“And why, pray?” she asked.
I told her, “Because you are so beautiful.” Papa has always said a jester must look innocent.
It worked very well. “Bless the child,” Anne said. She patted my cheek and smiled at me. Then she went on to the Queen’s door with her flask of wine.
She is not really beautiful. She has a slim figure, but her face is very pale, with a pointed chin. Rosanna says she is quick-witted, with a ready retort to any courtier who makes a flirtatious remark, and the men like her for that. She has jet-black eyes, as lively as a bird’s. She makes me think of a magpie; neat and smart and attracted to things that glitter. And I suppose the greatest and most glittering prize of them all must be the King.
19th April 1526
King Henry hurled a jug of wine at Papa today, causing him a deep cut above the eyebrow. Mama said nothing, just bathed the wound and put some knitbone ointment on it. This afternoon we heard that Henry has sent Thomas Wyatt away to Italy on some sort of diplomatic mission that will last for years. Rosanna laughed and said, “His Majesty must be getting desperate. He is not used to having his wishes refused.”
Mama looked at her and shook her head. Neither of them would explain what Rosanna meant. But I met Mark Smeaton coming from the Queen’s chamber with his lute, and I asked him. He was happy to tell me. “The King wants Anne to be his mistress, and she has turned him down. So he is raging about like a mad bull.”
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