Carole Levin
Carole Levin discusses these six women and their roles in religious and political change in Tudor England.
Description
In part because of his desperation to have a legitimate male heir, Henry VIII married six times and broke England off from the Catholic Church when the Pope refused to annul his first marriage to Catherine of Aragon, the mother of his older daughter Mary. His second marriage was to lady in waiting Anne Boleyn, and he was sure her baby would be a son. Instead, it was a second daughter Elizabeth. Less than three years later he had Anne executed on trumped up charges that she had many lovers and seduced him into the marriage by witchcraft. His third wife, Jane Seymour, finally gave him the son he craved, but died soon after. When a few years his fourth wife, the German Anne of Cleves, arrived in England Henry declared himself appalled by her. After only a few months he divorced her too, and married another lady at court, Katherine Howard, who was also executed for adultery. Only her cleverness saved his sixth wife Katherine Parr, who managed to survive him.
