The Stereotyped Six Wives: Four: 'A Lady of Right Commendable Regard'

Anne of Cleves, fourth wife of Henry VIII of England

Lifetime: 22 September 1515 - 16 July 1557

Reigned: January 1540 - July 1540 (6 months)

Pregnancies: 0

In this new six-part series, I will be reexamining the lives and personalities of Henry VIII's six wives, seeking to portray their lives realistically in a process that discards prevailing stereotypes. Much scholarly work has been done on Henry's reign in recent decades, affording fresh insights into the politics and achievements of the period. Understandably, widespread interest in Henry's marital affairs remains unabated. Yet stereotypes continue to bedevil our knowledge of the wives of this most enigmatic king.

On 6 January 1540, Henry VIII married his fourth wife, Anne of Cleves, at Greenwich Palace. The briefness of Anne's time as queen - six months - has left us only with scarce information about her character, her interests and the nature of her queenship. In popular culture she continues to be viewed as the 'Flanders Mare', an unattractive, unappealing woman who lacked the courtly accomplishments prized at Henry's court. The traditional story views Anne as celebrating her escape from the increasingly bloated Henry and considers that her fate rendered her the most fortunate of Henry's wives. However, the surviving evidence - much in Anne's own words - tells a very different tale of hope, disappointment and sorrow. Anne continued to regard herself as the rightful queen of England, which is perhaps understandable given her impressive lineage; after Katherine of Aragon, she was the most nobly born of Henry's consorts. Her relations with her successor Katherine Howard were perhaps more complex than usually believed and she was allegedly contemptuous of Henry's marriage to Katherine Parr. The French ambassador reported that Anne was much loved by her English subjects; sadly for Anne, this love was not shared by Henry VIII.

Above: Greenwich Palace. Anne of Cleves married Henry VIII there on 6 January 1540.

Anne was born on 22 September 1515, the daughter of Johann, duke of Cleves, and his wife Maria. The duchy of Cleves, located in the Holy Roman Empire, was of economic and military significance and was an important cultural centre. Anne's father employed musicians and showed favour to humanist scholars. Anne's mother was responsible for overseeing her education, which placed an emphasis on needlework and reading and writing in German. Shortly before her twelfth birthday, Anne was betrothed to Francois, heir to the duchy of Lorraine. This marriage would have enabled Anne to become a duchess, a position of prime political and social significance, enhancing her prestigious lineage and extending her family's power outwards. 

However, Anne was destined not to wed Francois. Within months of Jane Seymour's death, Henry VIII's privy councillors began considering foreign brides for their ageing monarch. Early on, Anne was considered as a candidate for Henry's hand. Christopher Mont, who served in the household of Thomas Cromwell, reported that everyone at the court of Cleves praised Anne's beauty: 'one said that she excelled the Duchess [of Milan] as the golden sun did the silver moon'. She was also reportedly demure and virtuous. In the summer of 1539, Henry VIII's court painter Hans Holbein arrived in Cleves to paint Anne. Nicholas Wotton, the resident English ambassador, confirmed that Holbein's representation of Anne was accurate. Other observers commented on Anne's physical attractiveness. The notion that Anne of Cleves was ugly, or even physically disfigured, is a later myth. Only in the following century did Bishop Burnet suggest that she was a 'Flanders mare'.

Above: The miniature that persuaded Henry VIII of Anne's beauty. 

Modern research has indicated that it was largely Henry VIII, rather than Cromwell, who was enthusiastic for the alliance with Cleves. In the face of combined Franco-Imperial hostility, marrying Anne appeared a shrewd move. In October 1539, the marriage treaty between England and Cleves was signed and Anne departed for England the following month. On 31 December, she arrived at Rochester in stormy weather, and the following day was greeted by the man who was to become her husband. Henry's behaviour, in greeting Anne in disguise, was not unusual: as Warnicke has explained, he was simply following the prevailing custom of Renaissance monarchs. However, the meeting did not go as expected. Upon sight of Anne, the king doubted that she was truly a virgin. He based his judgement on 'the looseness of her breasts and other tokens', an accepted sixteenth-century understanding of virginity. At the time, contemporaries followed Castiglione's belief that 'outward beauty is a true sign of inner goodness' and 'for the most part the ugly are also evil'.

Maidens were expected to have slim figures, thus Anne's fuller figure caused Henry to worry that, perhaps, his prospective bride was no virgin. The ambassador of Cleves' failure to deliver a copy of the Lorraine contract fuelled the king's concerns. As Warnicke suggests, because Henry believed that Anne was truly the wife of Francois, she 'had therefore been symbolically deprived of her maidenhead'. Anne's ambassadors, however, informed Cromwell that she was not Francois' wife and promised to have a copy of the contract sent to England. Two days later, Anne became Henry's wife. She had been publicly greeted by Henry some days earlier at Blackheath Common in a lavish welcome attended by the nobility of the land. The chronicler Hall referred to her impressive dress and her long golden hair. Contemporaries were impressed by their new queen's dignity and gracious nature, and de Marillac, the resident French ambassador, reported that she was much-loved by her English subjects, who esteemed her as the kindest queen they had ever had.

Anne's kind nature, however, was not sufficient to win the heart of Henry VIII. Believing her to be Francois' wife, he was later to admit that he had failed to consummate his new marriage. Far from being ignorant, as she is often depicted, Anne endeavoured to communicate with Cromwell about her marital difficulties. Cromwell informed the earl of Rutland, Anne's lord chamberlain, to behave more pleasantly towards Henry, perhaps hoping that her gracious behaviour would encourage the king to consummate the marriage. It was to no avail. The king suffered relative impotence with her. As Warnicke has noted: 'contemporary medical experts, who were unaware of psychogenic sexual dysfunction, blamed witchcraft for causing relative impotence'.

Above: Thomas Cromwell. He was executed on 28 July 1540, merely weeks after the annulment of Anne's marriage. 

Henry's failure to consummate his union caused Anne dismay and concern. As noted, she had communicated to Cromwell her concerns about the king's behaviour. Shrewdly, she maintained her dignity and performed her queenly functions with success. She accompanied her husband to Westminster in February by barge and was festively greeted by the Londoners. Anne enjoyed warm relations with her stepchildren, as displayed by her decision to order her stepson Edward a bonnet; while the seeds of her long friendship with Mary Tudor were sown. At her coronation in October 1553, Mary provided Anne with a prominent place in the procession, sitting alongside her other stepdaughter Elizabeth. 

Although she was respected and loved by her subjects, Anne's position was perilous. Her last public appearance alongside her husband was at the May Day celebrations, and shortly afterwards she learned of Henry's growing infatuation with her maid-of-honour Katherine Howard. In June, Anne revealed to Harst, the Cleves ambassador, that the king's council had requested her removal to Richmond Palace, and she admitted to him that she feared that Katherine of Aragon's fate would become her own.

Anne consented to the annulment of her marriage, but it is hardly likely that she consented happily. Her ambassador later reported that she had screamed and cried loudly, thus breaking his heart. Her settlement was generous: she was granted possession of Richmond and Bletchingley Manor for life (and later Hever Castle); precedence over all of Henry's subjects except himself, his children and his new wife; and the allowance of 8000 nobles for the maintenance of her household. However, her correspondence with Cleves was censored, thus dishonouring her. 

How Anne felt about Henry's hasty marriage to her former attendant Katherine Howard is not known. Six months later, at the New Year celebrations, Anne was invited to court and publicly greeted the new queen, who later bestowed upon her the gift of a ring and two small dogs. It is often assumed that Anne bore no ill-will towards Katherine, but the truth is perhaps more complex. As Elizabeth Norton has suggested: 'Despite her acquiescence, Anne always believed herself to be the legitimate wife of the king and the true queen. In spite of this she was, first and foremost, a survivor and, if the price of that survival was a denial of her status in exchange for a life of opulent retirement, she was prepared to play along, even if that meant accepting a new lower status beside her former maid, Queen Catherine Howard'.

More likely, Anne was biding her time. The annulment of her marriage, in her eyes, had brought great shame upon herself and her family. Her correspondence with her family was heavily censored and her position remained, to put it mildly, highly ambiguous. Even the king's subjects were uncertain how to view the former queen. Rumours spread that Anne had been delivered of a son in the summer of 1541, which indicates that some, at least, continued to view her as Henry's true wife. Chapuys reported that she was delighted at the news of Katherine Howard's downfall, probably because she viewed it as indicative of her return to queenship. She was to be highly disappointed. Henry married Katherine Parr, rather than Anne, and the former queen was reportedly in great despair at the news. She allegedly made negative remarks about the new queen's appearance.

It is simplistic and probably erroneous to view Anne of Cleves as lucky, the most fortunate of Henry's wives. She herself did not view her situation that way. Not only had Henry publicly dishonoured her by annulling her marriage and marrying her attendant, but her situation as the king's 'sister' was uncomfortably ambiguous. When Henry failed to correspond with her she reportedly became melancholy. Anne later informed her brother that she felt like a stranger in England and longed to return to Cleves.

Moreover, her financial situation experienced strain following Henry's death. In 1547 Edward VI's council confiscated her manors of Bletchingley and Richmond, leading her to request her brother's assistance. Her situation remained unresolved when Mary succeeded her brother on the throne. Anne's final years were further troubled by household disputes. She died shortly before her forty-second birthday, on 16 July 1557, at her manor of Chelsea, and was later buried at Westminster Abbey. Authors, writing in memory of her, praised her gentleness, her household management, and her piety.

Anne of Cleves was a popular queen, much respected by her subjects, and has usually been viewed in modern times as the unattractive but kindly fourth wife of Henry VIII, who had the luckiest fate of all his wives. While it might appear that way today, Anne herself did not regard her situation so positively. She longed to be queen of England and was greatly distressed when Henry married Katherine Howard and, later, Katherine Parr. As Norton suggests, she continued to regard herself as the rightful queen and believed the annulment of her marriage had inflicted shame and dishonour upon her. Marriage was the primary vocation of sixteenth-century women, in particular royal women, and thus the annulment was viewed as a failure, a perversion of Anne's destiny and a slur upon her womanhood. She longed to return to her home country, believing herself an anomaly in England. This kindly, virtuous woman, who was reportedly attractive, has been much maligned and misrepresented in modern times. Perhaps of all of Henry's queens, Anne of Cleves remains the most stereotyped. This is a pity, for the evidence suggests that she was popular, much-praised, and in her short tenure as queen, she enjoyed success in her queenly role.  

The Birth of Elizabeth Tudor

On a late Sunday afternoon in September 1533 at Greenwich Palace, Queen Anne of England was delivered of a healthy, beautiful child. Everything about the child was perfect, but for its sex. It was a girl. Henry VIII had been assured by his friends, advisers and astrologers that his second wife's child was certain to be the male heir for which he had broken with the church of Rome and annulled his marriage to the resourceful Katherine of Aragon. However, pregnancy was an inexact and uncertain science in the sixteenth-century, and the child conceived in late 1532, weeks after her parents' secret wedding in Dover, was female.

Almost certainly named after her paternal grandmother Queen Elizabeth of York, and perhaps also for her maternal grandmother Lady Elizabeth Howard, the new princess was red-haired, coal-eyed and perfectly formed. She grew up to be a charismatic, shrewd and fiercely intelligent young woman who, despite her small stature, was able to cut hardened politicians down to size. Princess Elizabeth embodied both the best and worst traits of her parents: she inherited her father's charisma, warmth, fieriness and cunning, while inheriting her mother's wit, sensuality and deep-seated charm. The new princess, despite her obvious appeal, was not the male heir so longed for by both Henry and Anne. 

The majority of the English population, while swearing the oath demanded by the king that recognised his second marriage as lawful, continued to regard the beleaguered Mary Tudor, eldest daughter of Henry VIII, as the rightful heir to the throne. Katherine of Aragon was highly popular in England, especially among aristocratic women, and the new queen tended to be regarded as a scheming parvenu or a heretic responsible for her husband's increasing bloodthirstiness. Elizabeth was feted by her parents' supporters as the rightful heir to the throne, a promise of hope for the future, but those who opposed the break with Rome were unanimous in declaring the new princess a bastard undeserving of royal honours. 

Above: A later, fanciful artistic depiction of Henry VIII and Anne Boleyn.

At the time, no-one expected Elizabeth to become queen regnant of England. It was both hoped and expected that Queen Anne would shortly bear the longed-for male heir, but as all students of history know, that was not to be. Elizabeth was cruelly deprived of her mother before her third birthday. Anne was sacrificed to the brutality of realpolitik, the increasing paranoia of her husband, and a climate of misogynistic vitriol that ended not only with her beheading but the deaths of five (almost certainly innocent) courtiers, including her own brother, Elizabeth's uncle. Elizabeth was shortly afterwards deprived of her place in the succession and was, like her half-sister Mary, declared illegitimate. Their half-brother Edward, born in the autumn of 1537, replaced them as heir to the throne. However, Elizabeth was to emerge triumphant in November 1558. At the age of twenty-five, this brilliant and hardened young woman became queen of England. Her reign has been immortalised ever since as the golden age of Gloriana, a possibility no-one could have foreseen in September 1533. 

4 June 1536: Jane Seymour Proclaimed Queen

Above: miniature portrait of Jane Seymour by Lucas Horenbout.

On this day in history, 4 June 1536, Jane Seymour, third consort of Henry VIII of England, was proclaimed Queen of England at Greenwich Palace. The herald and chronicler Charles Wriothesley reported that: 
'the 4th daie of June, being Whitsoundaie, the said Jane Seymor was proclaymed Queene at Greenwych, and went in procession, after the King, with a great traine of ladies followinge after her, and also ofred at masse as Queene, and began her howsehold that daie, dyning in her chamber of presence under the cloath of estate'. Later, the king's fifth and sixth wives, Katherine Howard and Katherine Parr, would also be shown to the court publicly as queen and would dine publicly under the cloth of estate.

Jane had married the king five days previously, at Whitehall Palace. Only eleven days prior to their marriage, the king's second wife and Jane's mistress, Queen Anne Boleyn, had been executed within the Tower of London on charges of adultery, incest, and plotting the king's death. Historians have speculated endlessly about how Jane felt about her mistress' death - did she take an active role in it? Did she encourage Henry to destroy his wife, even in so bloodthirsty a manner? Did she delight in Anne's death? Victorian historian Agnes Strickland thought so. Terming Jane's conduct 'shameless', she wrote thus: 'Jane saw murderous accusations got up against the queen, which finally brought her to the scaffold, yet she gave her hand to the regal ruffian before his wife's corpse was cold'. Modern historians such as David Starkey, Joanna Denny, and Eric Ives have similarly refrained from offering overly sympathetic or positive interpretations of Jane's behaviour.



Above: Queen Jane Seymour gave birth to Henry VIII's only legitimate son, Edward (above). Edward succeeded to the throne in 1547 as Edward VI on his father's death.

Yet we have no clue how Jane really felt about the bloody and brutal events of spring 1536, when her mistress Anne Boleyn was dethroned and Jane was forced to step - literally - over her mistress' dead body to become queen of England. Whether she was personally willing or not, it cannot be denied that Jane's family were extremely ambitious and were determined that their relative should become queen in Anne's place. That they personally coached Jane on how to attract Henry seems likely.

Although Jane was presented to the English court as queen in June 1536, she was not crowned. There seem to have been plans for a coronation in the autumn of 1536, but an outbreak of plague derailed these plans. In the spring of 1537, the twenty-eight year old Jane fell pregnant, and that October gave birth to Henry VIII's only legitimate son, Edward, who became king of England aged nine years old in 1547 on his father's death. Tragically, however, Jane developed puerperal fever. The queen's attendants were blamed for allowing her to eat food that was unsuitable and to take cold. The queen developed septicaemia and she eventually became delirious. Just before midnight on 24 October, only twelve days after the birth of her son, Queen Jane died, aged twenty-nine. The king was grief-stricken, and wrote to his rival and fellow king, Francois of France, that: 'Divine Providence has mingled my joy with the bitterness of the death of her who brought me this happiness'. 

That Henry VIII loved Jane Seymour and sincerely mourned her is borne out by the fact that not only did he and the court wear mourning for her until Easter 1538, but Jane continued to be represented in Tudor portraits, most famously featuring in a 1545 depiction of the king and his son - although Henry was, at that time, married to Katherine Parr. By virtue of providing the king with a male heir, Jane Seymour's important role in the Tudor dynasty was enshrined forever and appreciatively celebrated, as conveyed in this mural below, which portrays Henry VIII and Jane alongside his parents, Henry VII and Elizabeth of York. Henry VIII may have been drawn to Jane and loved her because she, in some respects, resembled his beloved mother: not only in looks, but also because both were docile, gentle, shrewd, peaceful, and loving. When King Henry died in 1547, he was buried at Windsor alongside Jane, whom he viewed as his one true wife.


Above: Henry VII and Elizabeth of York; Henry VIII and Jane Seymour.