King Henry VIII ruled England from April of 1509, when he was only 17, until his death in January of 1547. His rule is historically remembered for two major reasons: 1) He went through six wives in the span of 38 years, and 2) He separated England from the Holy Roman Church, officially creating and leading the Church of England. Below is a guide for those that want to find out what really happened to the six wives of Henry VIII.
Henry’s first wife, Katherine of Aragon, is easy to find but out of reach. Henry liked to keep her at arm’s length toward the end of their marriage, so the artist that built her monument, Suzanna Botticelli, insisted on placing her as far from the city center as possible. In the back corner of a little shop outside the Watford Junction, there’s a portrait of Katherine. If you happen to be in the store on a quiet day, you may be able to grab one of a few audio guides available. When you’re ready, press the green button to hear Spanish actress Penélope Cruz tell the story of the once proud, pious Spanish Princess that met her end alone, betrayed, and powerless.
Listen as she describes the forming of the Church of England through the perspective of an extremely devout Catholic Queen without sons. You will learn that Katherine was forced out of her comfortable palace home into increasingly smaller buildings until her life ended, all because the folly of Henry’s heart lead him to seek a son elsewhere. Cruz will tell you about how Katherine wasn’t allowed to see her daughter, Mary, the future Queen of England, in her isolation, and that many historians believe she was poisoned though others believe she more likely had cancer of the heart. Cruz will insist that Katherine was and always had been the true Queen of England and even go so far as to say that Anne Boleyn was nothing but a glorified courtesan.
When she’s done singing her own praises, Cruz will tell you to give your guide back to the cashier.
Henry’s next wife, arguably the most famous of the six, is Anne Boleyn. Her monument, however, is not so famous. After watching and adoring Natalie Dormer’s performance as Anne on the Showtime television series, The Tudors, Queen Elizabeth II hired Dormer to revive her role on the first Sunday of every month,. Dormer agreed because praise from the Queen is the highest praise of all. Even now, as she works between Game of Thrones and various movie schedules, Dormer still manages to make it back to the tower once a month to perform for curious visitors.
Anne was famously beheaded at Tower Green within the Tower of London. Now, instead of the scaffold on which rich bodies were decapitated, a round glass table sits with the names of those who were terminated at Tower Green. On the first Sunday of every month, Dormer puts on her full Anne garb and stands by the table. She tells the story of Anne Boleyn, a young, highly educated woman of both the French and English courts, who played a tricky game in capturing the heart of King Henry VIII.
She’ll insist that Anne was a young girl from an ambitious family who initially rejected the advances of a married king, but that eventually Anne fell in love with Henry, despite refusing to be his mistress. She wanted to be his wife, and for seven years she waited as Cardinal Wolsey, Henry’s Lord Chancellor, attempted to get the Pope to agree to Henry’s divorce from Katherine of Aragon. The Pope’s refusal to grant the divorce led to the Reformation of the English Church as Henry was forced to deny Papal authority in England to get an heir to the throne.
Dormer will go on to tell you that, once they were married, Anne and Henry were happier than ever — until Anne was unable to give Henry the one thing he wanted in life: a son and heir. The longer Henry waited for a son, the more impatient he grew with Anne. She gave birth to his beloved Elizabeth instead, but even that was not enough.
You will learn that after only three years, Henry had decided he was done with Anne. He wanted to divorce her as he had Katherine and found that easy to do after Anne had been accused of adultery. Dormer, however, will insist that Anne did not sleep with the following men: Mark Smeaton, Sir Henry Norris, William Brereton, Francis Weston, and especially not with her brother George. She will say that she was devoted to Henry and was as pious as any woman of her time. She knew her king and her God would turn from her if she committed the crimes with which she was charged, but they were still put on her shoulders until her head was taken off.
Because Dormer is rising in fame, the Tower no longer advertises her appearances publicly for crowd control purposes. Other Living History Performers might mention, “Queen Anne will arrive on Sunday,” if you ask them about the event, but no formal publicity is released.
Jane Seymour was Henry’s third wife, and she is remembered for her desire for privacy and her active avoidance of scandal. Brien O’Donnell, the artist, wanted to capture the discretion and brevity of her time as Queen of England, so he chose to place his portrait in Great Ormond Street Hospital with the idea that Jane would serve as a guardian angel to the children going into surgery. Her monument is only seen by those doctors, nurses, and patients admitted into the surgery center, unless you happen to meet a particularly friendly front desk receptionist on a slow day.
If you ever have the opportunity to get into the center, look up at the ceiling. There’s Jane, painted into the tiles in the center of the room, a glowing light resonating around her. Her eyes are closed, hands upturned toward the back of the room in what would otherwise be seen as a gesture toward Heaven.
Looking up at her from the floor, you’ll notice that on the right by her shoulder is a medieval building. This is how O’Donnell envisions Jane’s home, Wulfhall (or “Wolfhall”) to have looked like in her time. It is at Wulfhall that Jane may have first formally met King Henry VIII, though she had been a lady in waiting for Queen Anne Boleyn. From their first surreptitious meeting, she rose above her station, especially after Anne was beheaded. Jane and Henry were married a day after Anne’s execution, and so her rise to power — though she never attempted to claim any power of her own — was brief, as she died only nine days after giving birth to her only child.
To the left of Jane is the face of a young boy with light hair and eyes and a strong, straight mouth. It’s the face of Henry VIII’s only son, Edward. Many reviews of the hospital state that this portrait of Edward and his mother helped children through successful surgeries and made them feel comfortable knowing that someone was looking out for them.
In much the same way as Henry and Anne of Cleve’s relationship worked, Henry’s fourth wife’s memorial is posted in a spot of convenience, not in accordance with the artists’ true wishes. Ripley Kazza wanted to place a marble statue of Anne of Cleves in Kensington Gardens because of its inviting atmosphere for both people and dogs, but the Mayor of London wouldn’t hear of it. Instead, Kazza was told he would be given £20,000 to complete a bronze statue of Anne if he agreed to install it at Parliament Square near the statue of Abraham Lincoln, between Big Ben, Parliament, and Westminster Abbey. Otherwise, he would be given nothing and fired from the project.
Knowing that the Anne of Cleves project would make or break his career, Kazza agreed to the terms and began working on the life-size statue of the former Queen. While crafting, he decided to include jewels and money in the palm of her right hand to reference the fact that Anne was the only wife of Henry’s that he divorced and still treated as a human being. Their marriage lasted all of seven months and was a consequence of England’s needing a queen after Jane Seymour died. It took Henry over a year to choose a wife, but he regretted his decision almost immediately after picking Anne.
Their wedding night was unsuccessful, as Henry told his right hand man, Thomas Cromwell. He complained that Anne had terrible body odor and saggy breasts, and that he would not stay married to her. Even from the beginning, their marriage was doomed.
Anne went quietly. To keep her head, she knew she had to please Henry and give him what he wanted, which was, coincidentally, what she wanted too: an annulment. When their marriage was officially over, Henry gave Anne money, jewelry, land, and, perhaps most importantly, independence.
She was a woman unlike most other women of her time as she held titles, governed servants, and remained a close friend to the king and his children throughout the rest of her life, all without the overruling authority of a man. Kazza wanted to capture that independence, so in Anne’s other hand he placed a small birdcage with the door unlatched. The statue was installed in Parliament Square on the 22 of September, 2015, Anne’s 500th Birthday, and can still be seen standing adjacent to the statue of Abraham Lincoln.
Henry VIII met Catherine Howard while he was still married to Anne of Cleves. Catherine was one of Anne’s ladies and Anne Boleyn’s cousin and either 16 or 17 at the time. They were wed on 28 July, 1540, not long after Henry had divorced Anne of Cleves.
Catherine wasn’t the smartest Queen though, since she hadn’t spent much time at court before serving Anne of Cleves and made many mistakes — like sleeping with men that weren’t her husband, the king. While England expected a child out of the young Queen, she was busy doing the one thing that would surely get her killed. Once the king got word of her adultery, Catherine was arrested, sent to the Tower of London, and was stripped of her titles on 23 November, 1541. She died three months later and is perhaps known as Henry’s most infamous wife.
Her reputation is most likely why street artist Raphael Buxton decided to commemorate her on the Millennium Bridge with pieces of chewing gum. Walking to the bridge from St. Paul’s Cathedral, you may see an artist lying on the cold metal. Upon closer inspection, you will see that they are (most likely) picking at the gum left in the divots of the structure with various small, thin tools. Raphael Buxton is perhaps the most famous of these artists, and is well known throughout London as “the man who makes art out of trash.”
He was inspired to pick off the gum on the bridge and depict Catherine after hearing about her at the Tower of London. When he realized she was so young — only about 19 at the time of her death — he wanted to immortalize her in a public place that would be visited by droves of young people as a sort of cautionary tale. The fact that the Millennium Bridge was featured prominently in the film Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince certainly helped as that meant that many Harry Potter fans would visit the site whenever possible. Buxton realized, upon choosing chewing gum as his medium, that Catherine would not be immortalized exactly but stomped out over time, which seemed “bittersweet and appropriate,” he said when asked by a pedestrian why he’d picked gum.
If you have the chance (sooner rather than later) to see the Catherine gum piece, you’ll be lucky. Soon enough, she’ll look like every other piece of gum stuck in the bridge, in the same way that she became just another one of Henry’s discarded wives.
Finally, the monument to Katherine Parr, Henry’s last wife and the only one to survive him, was put in a relatively quiet place, despite their relationship not always being so discreet. Katherine can be found in a stained-glass window in St. Martins in the Field, a quaint church just across the street from Trafalgar Square. She stands tall in a purple gown, looking down over the congregation with a straightforward glance, two faces on either side of her. To her left is King Henry. Together, they were an odd couple, but affectionate toward one another. At times she pushed him too far with discussions about whether or not religion should be interpreted by the people of England, rather than the Church of England, which Henry was the head of.
These arguments angered and annoyed Henry and almost lead to Katherine’s death. He wanted to keep control of his people, but she felt that his subjects should have the religious freedom they desired. Her opinions warranted an arrest, which Henry found out about before she did. He warned Katherine of the imminent threat to her life, possibly to make himself a hero, and she appealed to his ego, telling him that her argument was made to distract him from his ailments (old age, a puss-filled leg from a jousting accident, and extreme obesity as a direct result of both), and that her place as his wife and Queen was to obey him.
Once he was gone, however, she no longer had to submit to Henry. Upon Henry’s death, Katherine hastily married Thomas Seymour, a long-time love of hers as well as her stepson’s uncle. Seymour’s is the other face beside Katherine in the glass. Their marriage was short and tumultuous, and not for personal reasons, but political. England knew of Thomas’ dangerous ambition, but he still became Protector of the Land until his nephew, Edward, was old enough to take the throne. He and Katherine were married for only a year before she passed away.
These six memorials are, believe it or not, the most accessible landmarks featuring the wives of King Henry VIII, a man widely known as a terror to his wives. The victims of his terror are so often forgotten. Be sure to see them all during your time in London.
Henry’s first wife, Katherine of Aragon, is easy to find but out of reach. Henry liked to keep her at arm’s length toward the end of their marriage, so the artist that built her monument, Suzanna Botticelli, insisted on placing her as far from the city center as possible. In the back corner of a little shop outside the Watford Junction, there’s a portrait of Katherine. If you happen to be in the store on a quiet day, you may be able to grab one of a few audio guides available. When you’re ready, press the green button to hear Spanish actress Penélope Cruz tell the story of the once proud, pious Spanish Princess that met her end alone, betrayed, and powerless.
Listen as she describes the forming of the Church of England through the perspective of an extremely devout Catholic Queen without sons. You will learn that Katherine was forced out of her comfortable palace home into increasingly smaller buildings until her life ended, all because the folly of Henry’s heart lead him to seek a son elsewhere. Cruz will tell you about how Katherine wasn’t allowed to see her daughter, Mary, the future Queen of England, in her isolation, and that many historians believe she was poisoned though others believe she more likely had cancer of the heart. Cruz will insist that Katherine was and always had been the true Queen of England and even go so far as to say that Anne Boleyn was nothing but a glorified courtesan.
When she’s done singing her own praises, Cruz will tell you to give your guide back to the cashier.
Henry’s next wife, arguably the most famous of the six, is Anne Boleyn. Her monument, however, is not so famous. After watching and adoring Natalie Dormer’s performance as Anne on the Showtime television series, The Tudors, Queen Elizabeth II hired Dormer to revive her role on the first Sunday of every month,. Dormer agreed because praise from the Queen is the highest praise of all. Even now, as she works between Game of Thrones and various movie schedules, Dormer still manages to make it back to the tower once a month to perform for curious visitors.
Anne was famously beheaded at Tower Green within the Tower of London. Now, instead of the scaffold on which rich bodies were decapitated, a round glass table sits with the names of those who were terminated at Tower Green. On the first Sunday of every month, Dormer puts on her full Anne garb and stands by the table. She tells the story of Anne Boleyn, a young, highly educated woman of both the French and English courts, who played a tricky game in capturing the heart of King Henry VIII.
She’ll insist that Anne was a young girl from an ambitious family who initially rejected the advances of a married king, but that eventually Anne fell in love with Henry, despite refusing to be his mistress. She wanted to be his wife, and for seven years she waited as Cardinal Wolsey, Henry’s Lord Chancellor, attempted to get the Pope to agree to Henry’s divorce from Katherine of Aragon. The Pope’s refusal to grant the divorce led to the Reformation of the English Church as Henry was forced to deny Papal authority in England to get an heir to the throne.
Dormer will go on to tell you that, once they were married, Anne and Henry were happier than ever — until Anne was unable to give Henry the one thing he wanted in life: a son and heir. The longer Henry waited for a son, the more impatient he grew with Anne. She gave birth to his beloved Elizabeth instead, but even that was not enough.
You will learn that after only three years, Henry had decided he was done with Anne. He wanted to divorce her as he had Katherine and found that easy to do after Anne had been accused of adultery. Dormer, however, will insist that Anne did not sleep with the following men: Mark Smeaton, Sir Henry Norris, William Brereton, Francis Weston, and especially not with her brother George. She will say that she was devoted to Henry and was as pious as any woman of her time. She knew her king and her God would turn from her if she committed the crimes with which she was charged, but they were still put on her shoulders until her head was taken off.
Because Dormer is rising in fame, the Tower no longer advertises her appearances publicly for crowd control purposes. Other Living History Performers might mention, “Queen Anne will arrive on Sunday,” if you ask them about the event, but no formal publicity is released.
Jane Seymour was Henry’s third wife, and she is remembered for her desire for privacy and her active avoidance of scandal. Brien O’Donnell, the artist, wanted to capture the discretion and brevity of her time as Queen of England, so he chose to place his portrait in Great Ormond Street Hospital with the idea that Jane would serve as a guardian angel to the children going into surgery. Her monument is only seen by those doctors, nurses, and patients admitted into the surgery center, unless you happen to meet a particularly friendly front desk receptionist on a slow day.
If you ever have the opportunity to get into the center, look up at the ceiling. There’s Jane, painted into the tiles in the center of the room, a glowing light resonating around her. Her eyes are closed, hands upturned toward the back of the room in what would otherwise be seen as a gesture toward Heaven.
Looking up at her from the floor, you’ll notice that on the right by her shoulder is a medieval building. This is how O’Donnell envisions Jane’s home, Wulfhall (or “Wolfhall”) to have looked like in her time. It is at Wulfhall that Jane may have first formally met King Henry VIII, though she had been a lady in waiting for Queen Anne Boleyn. From their first surreptitious meeting, she rose above her station, especially after Anne was beheaded. Jane and Henry were married a day after Anne’s execution, and so her rise to power — though she never attempted to claim any power of her own — was brief, as she died only nine days after giving birth to her only child.
To the left of Jane is the face of a young boy with light hair and eyes and a strong, straight mouth. It’s the face of Henry VIII’s only son, Edward. Many reviews of the hospital state that this portrait of Edward and his mother helped children through successful surgeries and made them feel comfortable knowing that someone was looking out for them.
In much the same way as Henry and Anne of Cleve’s relationship worked, Henry’s fourth wife’s memorial is posted in a spot of convenience, not in accordance with the artists’ true wishes. Ripley Kazza wanted to place a marble statue of Anne of Cleves in Kensington Gardens because of its inviting atmosphere for both people and dogs, but the Mayor of London wouldn’t hear of it. Instead, Kazza was told he would be given £20,000 to complete a bronze statue of Anne if he agreed to install it at Parliament Square near the statue of Abraham Lincoln, between Big Ben, Parliament, and Westminster Abbey. Otherwise, he would be given nothing and fired from the project.
Knowing that the Anne of Cleves project would make or break his career, Kazza agreed to the terms and began working on the life-size statue of the former Queen. While crafting, he decided to include jewels and money in the palm of her right hand to reference the fact that Anne was the only wife of Henry’s that he divorced and still treated as a human being. Their marriage lasted all of seven months and was a consequence of England’s needing a queen after Jane Seymour died. It took Henry over a year to choose a wife, but he regretted his decision almost immediately after picking Anne.
Their wedding night was unsuccessful, as Henry told his right hand man, Thomas Cromwell. He complained that Anne had terrible body odor and saggy breasts, and that he would not stay married to her. Even from the beginning, their marriage was doomed.
Anne went quietly. To keep her head, she knew she had to please Henry and give him what he wanted, which was, coincidentally, what she wanted too: an annulment. When their marriage was officially over, Henry gave Anne money, jewelry, land, and, perhaps most importantly, independence.
She was a woman unlike most other women of her time as she held titles, governed servants, and remained a close friend to the king and his children throughout the rest of her life, all without the overruling authority of a man. Kazza wanted to capture that independence, so in Anne’s other hand he placed a small birdcage with the door unlatched. The statue was installed in Parliament Square on the 22 of September, 2015, Anne’s 500th Birthday, and can still be seen standing adjacent to the statue of Abraham Lincoln.
Henry VIII met Catherine Howard while he was still married to Anne of Cleves. Catherine was one of Anne’s ladies and Anne Boleyn’s cousin and either 16 or 17 at the time. They were wed on 28 July, 1540, not long after Henry had divorced Anne of Cleves.
Catherine wasn’t the smartest Queen though, since she hadn’t spent much time at court before serving Anne of Cleves and made many mistakes — like sleeping with men that weren’t her husband, the king. While England expected a child out of the young Queen, she was busy doing the one thing that would surely get her killed. Once the king got word of her adultery, Catherine was arrested, sent to the Tower of London, and was stripped of her titles on 23 November, 1541. She died three months later and is perhaps known as Henry’s most infamous wife.
Her reputation is most likely why street artist Raphael Buxton decided to commemorate her on the Millennium Bridge with pieces of chewing gum. Walking to the bridge from St. Paul’s Cathedral, you may see an artist lying on the cold metal. Upon closer inspection, you will see that they are (most likely) picking at the gum left in the divots of the structure with various small, thin tools. Raphael Buxton is perhaps the most famous of these artists, and is well known throughout London as “the man who makes art out of trash.”
He was inspired to pick off the gum on the bridge and depict Catherine after hearing about her at the Tower of London. When he realized she was so young — only about 19 at the time of her death — he wanted to immortalize her in a public place that would be visited by droves of young people as a sort of cautionary tale. The fact that the Millennium Bridge was featured prominently in the film Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince certainly helped as that meant that many Harry Potter fans would visit the site whenever possible. Buxton realized, upon choosing chewing gum as his medium, that Catherine would not be immortalized exactly but stomped out over time, which seemed “bittersweet and appropriate,” he said when asked by a pedestrian why he’d picked gum.
If you have the chance (sooner rather than later) to see the Catherine gum piece, you’ll be lucky. Soon enough, she’ll look like every other piece of gum stuck in the bridge, in the same way that she became just another one of Henry’s discarded wives.
Finally, the monument to Katherine Parr, Henry’s last wife and the only one to survive him, was put in a relatively quiet place, despite their relationship not always being so discreet. Katherine can be found in a stained-glass window in St. Martins in the Field, a quaint church just across the street from Trafalgar Square. She stands tall in a purple gown, looking down over the congregation with a straightforward glance, two faces on either side of her. To her left is King Henry. Together, they were an odd couple, but affectionate toward one another. At times she pushed him too far with discussions about whether or not religion should be interpreted by the people of England, rather than the Church of England, which Henry was the head of.
These arguments angered and annoyed Henry and almost lead to Katherine’s death. He wanted to keep control of his people, but she felt that his subjects should have the religious freedom they desired. Her opinions warranted an arrest, which Henry found out about before she did. He warned Katherine of the imminent threat to her life, possibly to make himself a hero, and she appealed to his ego, telling him that her argument was made to distract him from his ailments (old age, a puss-filled leg from a jousting accident, and extreme obesity as a direct result of both), and that her place as his wife and Queen was to obey him.
Once he was gone, however, she no longer had to submit to Henry. Upon Henry’s death, Katherine hastily married Thomas Seymour, a long-time love of hers as well as her stepson’s uncle. Seymour’s is the other face beside Katherine in the glass. Their marriage was short and tumultuous, and not for personal reasons, but political. England knew of Thomas’ dangerous ambition, but he still became Protector of the Land until his nephew, Edward, was old enough to take the throne. He and Katherine were married for only a year before she passed away.
These six memorials are, believe it or not, the most accessible landmarks featuring the wives of King Henry VIII, a man widely known as a terror to his wives. The victims of his terror are so often forgotten. Be sure to see them all during your time in London.