The six wives of King Henry VIII were a disparate group of women united only by their marriages to Bluff King Hal. There is a famous rhyme describing their various ends – ‘Divorced, Beheaded, Died, Divorced, Beheaded, Survived’.
Henry’s first wife, Katharine of Aragon, was the youngest child of the ‘Catholic Kings’ of Spain, Ferdinand and Isabella; she and Henry were married for over twenty years. His second wife, Anne Boleyn, was the daughter of an ambitious knight; she was executed after three years of marriage. His third wife, Jane Seymour, died after less than two years of marriage, having finally produced a son and heir for Henry.
His fourth wife, Anne of Cleves, was divorced mere months after the wedding, for Henry found her unattractive and was already courting his fifth wife, Catherine Howard. Catherine Howard was executed after less than two years of marriage and the king settled upon the twice-widowed Katharine Parr as his sixth wife. She outlived the mercurial king.
Link/cite this page
If you use any of the content on this page in your own work, please use the code below to cite this page as the source of the content.
Link will appear as Hanson, Marilee. "The Six Wives of Henry VIII – Facts, Images & Biographies" https://englishhistory.net/tudor/monarchs/henry-viii-wives/, January 31, 2015