Was Henry VIII A Bloodthirsty Wife Killer?

Above: Henry VIII of England.

In the public mind at least, Henry VIII is usually depicted as a bloodthirsty tyrant, suspicious and paranoid, bloodthirsty and brutal, a man who did not hesitate to chop and change his wives when he felt like it, and who on more than one occasion put to death his closest ministers and friends. The numbers and facts speak for themselves: between 57,000 and 72,000 people were put to death during Henry's 38-year reign, including two of his wives (Anne Boleyn and Katherine Howard), his two closest advisers (Cardinal Thomas Wolsey and Thomas Cromwell), several nobles (the Duke of Buckingham, the Marquis of Exeter, the Countess of Salisbury, and the Earl of Surrey) and several especially prominent courtiers (including George Boleyn, Viscount Rochford). It was even rumoured in the mid-1530s that Henry was considering executing his eldest daughter, Mary, because she refused to acknowledge that her parents' marriage was incestuous and unlawful, and because she refused to swear the Oath of Supremacy. Mercifully, Mary retained her life, but the same could not be said for possibly as many as 71,000 others.

Was Henry VIII what we might call 'a bloodthirsty wife killer'? I decided to write this blog post having read Suzannah Lipscomb's intriguing and engrossing book 1536: The Year That Changed Henry VIII (2009). As Dr Lipscomb correctly asserts, in popular culture this most famous king is frequently portrayed as a bloodthirsty and cruel king who had six, possibly eight, wives; women whose lives came to notoriously premature ends. But the reality is undoubtedly more complex. Henry was not necessarily a capricious, shallow and fickle man who willingly surrendered his consorts to the executioner when he was bored of them, or when they failed to provide him with a much-desired son. As respected historian Alison Weir recognises in her study of the queens of Henry VIII: 'Taking into account the ever-present problem of the succession, it is impossible to dismiss Henry VIII as the cruel lecher of popular legend who changed wives whenever it pleased him'. Truth is, in fact, stranger than fiction. 


Above: Anne Boleyn and Katherine Howard died prematurely, but were they married to 'a wife killer'?

This article considers whether Henry VIII can credibly be termed 'a wife killer' by looking at his two most infamous marriages, to Anne Boleyn and Katherine Howard, both of which ended on Tower Green. Henry's involvement with Anne was spectacular, for it catalysed the English Reformation as a result of breaking with the Roman Church, and it ushered in, as Lacey Baldwin Smith posits, the advent of the nation state. Married in 1533, Anne delivered arguably England's greatest monarch, Elizabeth I, in September that year. Boleyn biographers Eric Ives and G.W. Bernard both agree that Henry and Anne's marriage was volatile, 'sunshine and storms', although as Lipscomb intriguingly points out, observers commented on the royal couple's 'merry' times together more than they did with any of Henry's other wives. Although Anne was undoubtedly successful in promoting evangelicalism and was a responsible and enigmatic queen consort, she failed in her principal duty of giving birth to a much-longed for male heir. As everyone knows, in May 1536 she was accused of treason, incest and adultery with five men, and was executed as a result. Most scholars believe she was innocent of these crimes.

But, to turn to the question in hand: did ordering Anne Boleyn's execution render her husband, Henry VIII, 'a wife killer'? Lipscomb suggests not. Historical evidence credibly suggests that Anne was in high favour until barely three weeks before her death. Diplomatic correspondence indicates that Henry VIII was forcefully pressuring the European powers to recognise his second marriage and support Anne until as late as April 1536. It is therefore necessary to dispose of the myth that Anne's miscarriages caused Henry to tire of her. It is also a myth that Henry 'murdered' his wife because he had come to loathe and despise her. What, in fact, probably happened, as Lipscomb suggests in 1536, is that Anne's courtly behaviour with male courtiers caused her husband to believe that she was guilty of extramarital fidelity. She credibly suggests that Mark Smeaton, a lowly musician executed alongside the queen, was obsessed with Anne in a disturbing way perhaps reminiscent of a modern day stalker, and by extension admitted to sleeping with the queen as part of a misguided and disturbed fantasy. The queen then engaged in an exchange with Henry Norris, her husband's groom of the privy stool and personal favourite, in which she reprimanded him for seeking 'dead men's shoes' by looking to marry her when the king died. Speaking of Henry VIII's death was treason. Norris denied it and both he and Anne recognised their folly, the queen beseeching him to swear that she was a good woman as a result. When informed of these dangerous conversations, Henry VIII, shocked and in disbelief, ordered an investigation, which led to incriminations of several more men: Anne's own brother George, Francis Weston, William Brereton, and two others, Thomas Wyatt and Richard Page, who were later freed. They were all imprisoned, including the queen. 

Henry's behaviour during Anne's imprisonment, condemnation and execution was bizarre. He experienced severe distress and pain, on the one hand, for example comforting his illegitimate son Henry Fitzroy, duke of Richmond, and telling him that only by God's favour had Fitzroy and Mary Tudor, the queen's stepdaughter, escaped Anne's poisoning. Yet he also demonstrated happiness, leading the imperial ambassador to conclude that the king was only too pleased that his queen had supposedly cuckolded him, for it left him free to marry his new love, Jane Seymour. Henry also took a morbid, even disturbing, interest in the practical details of Anne's execution, and Weir credibly conjectures that he ordered for a French swordsman to execute his wife five or six days before her trial - meaning that he always intended to have her beheaded. This might seemingly suggest Henry was a wife killer, but let us not forget that sixteenth century social and gender norms dictated Henry's responses. The queen's alleged adulteries posed a severe threat to his masculinity by suggesting he could neither rule his wife nor his household, two crucial signifiers of successful manhood. Worse still, Anne had allegedly ridiculed Henry's sexual prowess, laughing with her brother about it. Whether she had in fact done so or not, it is possible to understand Henry's severe actions. Humiliated, enraged and devastated, he acted in this manner to restore his manhood, for his wife had supposedly undermined and threatened the social order of their world. It is essential to recognise that Henry had not been nourishing hatred for Anne for most of their marriage. He publicly and earnestly supported her until three weeks before her death. He ordered an investigation, examinations, and public trials for both her and the men accused with her. Henry did not hastily put his wife and five innocent men to death in a fit of bloodthirsty revenge. Baldwin Smith's belief that Anne 'was dispatched with callous disregard' is, therefore, not necessarily correct.


Above: Suzannah Lipscomb suggests that Henry VIII ordered portraits like the one above to be painted of him, depicting him as resolute, courageous and stern and celebrating his masculine glory, so fatally undermined by two of his wives.

While it is convincing to suggest that Henry VIII cannot be termed a wife killer regarding the downfall and death of Anne Boleyn, can the same be said of Katherine Howard? The grounds for designating Henry VIII a 'wife killer' regarding Katherine are even less firm. Henry adored his fifth consort, whom he married in the summer of 1540, and lavished jewellery and expensive presents on her. However, Katherine had an unsavoury past, and in the autumn of 1541, returning from a northern progress, the king was informed by Archbishop Thomas Cranmer of his queen's misdemeanours. The only evidence for Henry being 'a wife killer' comes in his initial response to this unwelcome news. When sitting with his Council, the king began weeping in a fit of sorrow, and called for a sword to execute that 'wicked woman' himself. Does this betray a bloodthirsty longing to be rid of a tainted wife? It is not necessarily that simple. Lipscomb convincingly indicates that after 1536, the year of Anne's execution, Henry became increasingly paranoid and suspicious, and reacted more and more brutally to personal betrayal. In a sense, he emerged as a tyrant. His response to Katherine Howard's behaviour can more plausibly be viewed as evidence of his views regarding betrayal. He refused to see Katherine ever again, and ordered her execution as a savage response to her betrayal, but which was fully justified and expected by the standards of the time. It was Katherine who was condemned for her behaviour, not her husband.

Again, historical facts need to be clearly understood here in order to explain Henry's response to Katherine's alleged adulteries. He was informed in November 1541 and that same month, the queen was imprisoned at Syon Abbey, while her supposed lovers and accomplice Lady Rochford were also incarcerated. The two men were executed the following month. However, it was only three months later, in February 1542, that Katherine and Lady Rochford were executed at the Tower of London. Again, this does not suggest that Henry VIII reacted hastily and bloodthirstily to news of his queen's betrayal. Some historians have conjectured that he considered saving Katherine's life and merely annulling the marriage, rather than beheading her, because he still loved her and was devoted to her. It is true that he did not grant his fifth queen and her servant a public trial. They were sentenced by Act of Attainder and were not given the chance to speak in their own defence. A unjust and, to our eyes, tyrannical move, perhaps motivated by personal vengeance and a desire to silence the woman he had once loved without letting her defend her actions, but in actual fact Henry VIII consistently used acts of attainder against those suspected of treason, as Lipscomb suggests, denying them the chance to speak out in open court. Katherine's relatives, the Earl of Surrey and the Duke of Norfolk, would both be sentenced to death this way. 

Henry VIII loved Anne Boleyn and Katherine Howard intensely, as his love letters to Anne show and his lavish gifts of jewellery and costume to Katherine also prove. His emotional responses to news of their alleged adulteries also prove how much he cared for and loved them: he wept openly, cursed his bad luck, and became increasingly paranoid and dark as a result. As Philippa Gregory, the novelist, credibly suggests, after Anne's execution in 1536, the Tudor court became a darker place ruled by a suspicious and irascible monarch fearful of being betrayed at every corner. Henry did not rush hastily to condemn or kill his wives. He allowed Anne and her supposed lovers the chance to speak out in open court at their trials, and he showed initial signs of mercy toward Katherine Howard. But, as those who crossed Henry VIII found to their peril, the Tudor king responded brutally when he was, in his eyes, deceived and betrayed. This does not make him 'a wife killer', necessarily, but a man intensely concerned with maintaining and protecting his honour and sense of manhood, as were the majority of sixteenth-century men. 

The Execution of Queen Anne Boleyn

On this day in history, 19 May 1536, Queen Anne Boleyn, second wife and queen consort of Henry VIII of England, was beheaded within the Tower of London for alleged sexual crimes encompassing adultery and incest, and treason against the King in supposedly plotting his death. It was the first public execution of a Queen of England – but by no means the last – and, undoubtedly, encompassed the brutal end of England’s most captivating, controversial, and ultimately celebrated queen consort in history.

http://www.conorbyrnex.blogspot.co.uk/2013/05/the-downfall-of-anne-boleyn.html explored the various theories as to why Anne so shockingly, and quickly, fell from power in the early summer of 1536. It is disturbing that, being in an extremely secure position in January 1536 following Katherine of Aragon’s death and the announcement of Anne’s third pregnancy, just four months later, Henry’s second wife would be brutally decapitated for heinous crimes. As Retha Warnicke tellingly notes:

‘In January 1536... Anne could be optimistic about her future. She was pregnant again... Catherine was at long last dead... When her disgrace and downfall occurred, it was to catch Chapuys, that inveterate gossipmonger, with as much surprise and astonishment as it did the rest of Christendom’.[1]

Eric Ives seems to disagree, writing that:

‘The story of the events which led to the disgrace and death of Anne Boleyn need to begin almost a year before the tragedy itself’, referring to the royal couple’s visit at Wolf Hall, the home of the Seymour family, in the autumn of 1535.[2]

Whatever did lead to Anne Boleyn’s rapid downfall in the early summer of 1536 – whether it was factional conspiracy led by Thomas Cromwell (Ives), the miscarriage of a deformed son (Warnicke), the discovery of the queen’s actual adulteries (G. W. Bernard), a religious plot against the ‘Protestant’ Queen (Joanna Denny) or, simply, the result of Henry VIII’s long-standing ‘hatred’ towards his wife (Scarisbrick, Wilson), the events of May 1536 moved very quickly against the six involved, leading to six brutal deaths and a horrific tragedy.

As has been noted, the Queen and the seven men (two, Sir Thomas Wyatt, celebrated Tudor poet, and Sir Richard Page, were eventually freed) had been arrested and imprisoned in the Tower of London in late April and early May 1536 on scandalous charges of treason, adultery, plotting the king’s death, and, in Anne and her brother George Boleyn’s case, committing incest. All six experienced shock, horror and dread – particularly the Queen, whose moods fluctuated from hysteria to grief to joy, and the lowly Mark Smeaton, who underwent psychological – if not physical – torture to extract a confession of adultery. The four commoners accused of committing adultery with Queen Anne – Smeaton, Henry Norris, William Brereton, and Francis Weston, all of whom had served the queen and been close to her – were tried in Westminster Hall on May 12, 1536, and found guilty of treason through committing adultery with the queen. They were sentenced to be hanged, drawn and quartered as traitors, although ‘mercifully’, the king decided to commute the sentences to beheading. Particularly for Smeaton, this was merciful, since a man of such lowly birth could not often expect such a quick and efficient method of execution.

Queen Anne and her brother George were tried later, on Monday 15 May. It was believed that Anne’s ladies, including the Countess of Worcester, Lady Wingfield, and her own sister-in-law Jane Lady Rochford (who would later be executed with Queen Katherine Howard), had supplied the crucial evidence against her. The Queen and her brother had been tried in the King’s Hall in the Tower of London, with their own uncle, the Duke of Norfolk, presiding in his capacity as Lord Steward. The Queen was brought in first, according to Antonia Fraser: ‘she arrived in a calm frame of mind’.[3] The contemporary chronicler Charles Wriothesley opined that she gave ‘wise and discreet answers to her accusers’ when questioned ‘as though she was not actually guilty’.[4] Ives goes further, movingly claiming that ‘her sparing and effective answers quietly dominated the court’.[5] Certainly, those who were actually there – including Anne’s arch-enemy, the Imperial ambassador, who admitted that she had given plausible and convincing replies to the questions posed – support this claim. She denied committing adultery with any of the men, or incest with her brother; she had not hoped and plotted for her husband the King’s death; she had not poisoned the former Queen Katherine of Aragon or her daughter Princess Mary; but it made no difference. She was found guilty on all counts, despite, as Warnicke notes, being ‘unrattled by these lurid details’.[6] 

Her uncle, the Duke of Norfolk, with tears in his eyes, sentenced her to burning or beheading – but as Alison Weir notes, the method of execution – decapitation by the sword – had been agreed long in advance, and the executioner had already been sent for. Meanwhile, Henry VIII told his new love, Jane Seymour, that Anne would be condemned by 3 o’clock that afternoon. How can anyone not feel immense pity for the Queen, when discovering this brutal detail? It is little wonder that many view Jane Seymour as a sly, cold-hearted plotter who, as the Victorian historian Agnes Strickland wrote in outrage, literally stepped over her former mistress’ dead body to become Queen.

Yet the Queen was noted for her bravery, as even her enemy Cromwell – who many think plotted the whole conspiracy – admitted following her death, praising her courage. All Anne admitted to was: ‘I do not say that I have always borne towards the king the humility which I owed him... I admit, too, that often I have taken it into my head to be jealous of him... But may God be my witness if I have done him any other wrong’. When one considers that Anne swore before eternal damnation that she had never committed the crimes alleged against her, one is convinced of her innocence. As Weir concludes in her study: ‘the historian cannot but conclude that Anne Boleyn was the victim of a dreadful miscarriage of justice’. Following Anne’s trial, her brother George was tried after her, and despite his bravery – something which clearly ran in the Boleyn family – was also sentenced to death.

Two days later, the five men condemned for committing high treason through adultery with the Queen and plotting the King’s death were beheaded on Tower Hill, outside the Tower of London. George Boleyn, as the highest in rank went first, stating that: ‘I was born under the law, I am judged under the law and I must die under the law, for the law has condemned me’. The other men admitted their sins and the fact that they deserved to die; but this does not necessarily mean that they were admitting that they were guilty of the crimes alleged against them. In the Tudor period, everyone was believed to be universally sinful – these men were alluding to their own sins. Smeaton, the last to be executed since he was the lowliest in rank, continued to maintain his guilt, causing the Queen notable distress when she heard.

That day, Anne’s marriage to the King was annulled and her daughter, Elizabeth, bastardised. It was likely on the grounds of Henry’s previous sexual relationship with Anne’s sister – thus creating affinity between them – although Warnicke suspects it was annulled because Anne, believed to be a witch, had bewitched Henry into marrying her. Anne’s own execution, in her mind, was believed to take place the next day, but the day came and went with no summons for the scaffold, leading to Anne’s increasing concern. The Constable of the Tower, William Kingston, eventually told her that it was postponed to the following day, Friday 19 May 1536.

The execution was held within the grounds of the Tower, before a small audience, at nine o’clock in the morning. The Queen emerged from the Tower accompanied by four ladies, and probably would not have been pleased to see her enemies Thomas Audley, the lord chancellor, Charles Brandon duke of Suffolk, Henry Fitzroy, the bastard son of Henry VIII, and Thomas Cromwell himself prominent among the spectators. Anne was dressed in a mantle of ermine (emphasising her queenly rank) over a grey damask gown lined with fur with a crimson petticoat, accompanied with an English gable hood (somewhat surprisingly for her, as she usually preferred the considerably more fashionable French hood). Those who were present remarked that ‘The Queen had never looked so beautiful’, while a Spanish commentator wrote that she looked ‘as gay as if she was not going to die’.[7] Anne’s speech was given by Edward Hall, Henry VIII’s court chronicler, as follows:

‘Good Christian people, I have not come here to preach a sermon; I have come here to die. For according to the law and by the law I am judged to die, and therefore I will speak nothing against it. I am come hither to accuse no man, nor to speak of that whereof I am accused and condemned to die, but I pray God save the king and send him long to reign over you, for a gentler nor a more merciful prince was there never, and to me he was ever a good, a gentle, and sovereign lord. And if any person will meddle of my cause, I require them to judge the best. And thus I take my leave of the world and of you all, and I heartily desire you all to pray for me’.[8]

This is probably very close to Anne’s real speech, and in no way shows Anne admitting any guilt. Whether she did truly love Henry VIII, as she suggests, is impossible to know. Natalie Dormer, in the Showtime TV series The Tudors (despite its inaccuracies), gives a very moving portrayal of Anne’s execution, in which this speech is replicated:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hZJOhwlFiuU

Numerous versions of Anne’s scaffold speech were given by different writers present on that day. According to Wriothesley, Anne stated:

‘Masters, I here humbly submit me to the law as the law hath judged me, and as for mine offences, I here accuse no man. God knoweth them; I remit them to God, beseeching Him to have mercy on my soul. I ask Jesus Christ to save my sovereign and master the King, the most godly, noble and gentle Prince that is, and long to reign over you’.[9]

Despite their glaring inaccuracies (in The Other Boleyn Girl, it is implied that Anne might be given a reprieve before falling into hysterical tears, two things which never occurred; and in The Six Wives of Henry VIII, where Anne is executed indoors before a block, two huge inaccuracies) this is the speech given by Natalie Portman and Dorothy Tutin.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qd7Avid6z2w

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-4U2leBuQHQ

The Queen’s head was removed with a single stroke – mercifully – and she was buried that day in the Chapel of St Peter ad Vincula near Tower Green; where she would be joined less than six years later by her cousin and fellow queen, Katherine Howard, and her own sister-in-law, Jane Rochford, who may have supplied evidence against her. It was the end of the incredible career of Anne Boleyn. Her exact age is unknown but she was probably 34 or 35. She had been Queen for just under 3 years, but she had captivated the King and held his love for closer to 10 years, before being brutally eliminated in a murderous conspiracy – probably masterminded by her own husband – which also saw the deaths of 5 people close to her, including her own brother. One can only pity the Boleyn family, who saw two of their relatives bloodily removed in the space of a few short weeks.

The Independent on Sunday, in reviewing Eric Ives’ monumental – and to date, the best – biography of the Queen, termed Anne Boleyn ‘the most controversial woman ever to have been queen consort of England’. While this is undoubtedly true – just witness the numerous books, films, plays, and stories produced about her monthly – she was, as Ives rightly notes, the most important queen consort in English history. It is almost certain that Anne Boleyn was innocent of the crimes alleged against her. She was outspoken, highly intelligent, shrewd, calculating, at times vindictive, arrogant, and even spiteful; but at the same time she was deeply religious, kind, loyal to family and friends, charismatic, intelligent, attractive, highly talented, energetic, opinionated and bold. These qualities had commended her to a King because they so emphatically showed that she was not the typical sixteenth-century submissive ideal of a woman which Jane Seymour embodied.

Thomas Wyatt, Anne’s close friend – who had been imprisoned in the Tower as one of her accomplices – movingly wrote following these six deaths: ‘These bloody days have broken my heart’. While the Queen was by no means universally mourned – Catholic Europe openly rejoiced at her death and congratulated Henry VIII, while many English people, who hated Anne, saw it as divine retribution – a growing sense of pity emerged for Anne and the men killed with her; while others began to become increasingly suspicious towards the King. Jane Seymour was by no means universally popular, as scurrilous ballads circulated about her affair with the King. As one contemporary wrote:

‘It was thought strange by some, that in the same month which saw the Queen flourishing, accused, condemned and executed, another was assumed into her place’.

As Agnes Strickland, a Victorian historian writing in an era of high moral values, openly vilified the new Queen:

‘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. Yes; four-and-twenty hours had not elapsed since the sword was reddened with the blood of her mistress, when Jane Seymour became the bride of Henry VIII... The picture is repulsive enough, but it becomes tenfold more abhorrent when the woman who caused the whole tragedy is loaded with panegyric’.

Anne remains romanticised in today’s society, largely because of her brutal fate, an innocent Queen. She was far from perfect, but she deserved better than how she has been treated in recent fiction and film – whether that is Helena Bonham Carter’s shrewish and middle-aged Queen; Natalie Portman’s scheming and hysterical homewrecker; or the calculating and vindictive Anne of Hilary Mantel’s Bring Up the Bodies. To conclude, the last words should belong to Anne’s chief biographer, as they are very moving and aptly epitomise this blogger’s position:

‘She had been a remarkable woman... There were few others who rose from such beginnings to a crown, and none contributed to a revolution as far-reaching as the English Reformation... What Anne really was, as distinct from what Anne did, comes over very much less clearly. To us she appears inconsistent – religious yet aggressive, calculating yet emotional, with the light touch of the courtier yet the strong grip of the politician... Yet what does come across to us across the centuries is the impression of a person who is strangely appealing to the early twenty-first century. A woman in her own right – taken on her own terms in a man’s world; a woman who mobilized her education, her style and her presence to outweigh the disadvantages of her sex... taking a court and a king by storm.’ She was vindicated, 22 years later, when her daughter Elizabeth acceded to the throne.[10]

I agree. Anne Boleyn, an unbelievably complex person, was an incredible woman. In my research into English queens, there is none to compare with her. Her story continues to fascinate, entrance and captivate people across the world to an extent which few other historical personages are able to do. Innocent of the crimes she died for, Anne Boleyn was England’s most important queen consort – and perhaps the greatest.

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[1]  Retha M. Warnicke, The Rise and Fall of Anne Boleyn (Cambridge, 1989), pp. 189-90.

[2] Eric Ives, The Life and Death of Anne Boleyn (Oxford, 2004), p. 291.

[3] Antonia Fraser, The Six Wives of Henry VIII (Phoenix, 1992), p. 308.

[4] Ibid.

[5] Ives, Anne, p. 340.

[6] Warnicke, Rise and fall, p. 228.

[7] Fraser, Six Wives, p. 315.

[8] Ives, Anne, pp. 357-8.

[9] Fraser, Six Wives, pp. 315-16.

[10] Ives, Anne, p. 359.