Wives of Henry VIII

The wives of Henry VIII, of England were:

Mistresses

• Lady Mary Boleyn, sister of Anne Boleyn
• Elizabeth Blount, mothered Henry's firstborn son, Henry Fitzroy, 1st Duke of Richmond and Somerset, whom Henry acknowledged.

Henry had many other short-term mistresses, most of whom are unknown. He kept many of them in his private mansion called Jordan House and when his male courtiers said, "The King has gone to the Jordan," it meant that he was discreetly visiting one of his mistresses. Aside from Mary Boleyn and Elizabeth Blount, the only other two who are known by name are Lady Herbert (who he may briefly have slept with sometime around 1510) and Margaret Shelton (1535). There were also persistently others between 1510 and 1527, when he fell in love with Anne Boleyn and then again between 1533 and 1536.

Related Topics:
1510 - 1535 - 1527 - Anne Boleyn - 1533 - 1536

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A mnemonic for the fates of Henry's wives is "divorced, beheaded, died, divorced, beheaded, survived." An alternate version is "King Henry the Eighth, to six wives he was wedded: One died, one survived, two divorced, two beheaded."

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Some may dub these as misleading doggerel, and that Henry was never technically divorced from any of his wives, rather that his marriages to them were annulled. Likewise four marriages—not two—"ended" in annulments, Anne Boleyn and Catherine Howard, one could argue according to the technicalities of annulment, were never his wives at all.

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Accordingly, their executions could be said to have been for reasons 'divorced from divorce'; particulaly in the case of Catherine Howard, who (perhaps understandably) sought extramarital comforts. Anne Boleyn remains a sympathetic figure; mostly for her bad luck (unable to produce a male heir), and her early stature as a vocal female who dared to express herself forcefully in political matters.

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