The (non)validity of Henry VIII's marriages

I’d known the popular story of Henry VIII many marriages, and the TV program The Tudors has popularized it in my mind, and I’ve browsed Wikipedia. I recognize that isn’t really scholarship, but I just want some clarity on a random supposition of mine.

Henry didn’t really do anything wrong. Or at least, nothing that should have stuck. From a purely marriage point of view.

Briefly, he married Catherine of Aragon, and then Annulled his marriage on his own authority as Head of the Catholic Church in England. (Yeah, I know the Refomation’s attitudes crept into the Church of England, but it remained distinctly Catholic, at least, until his son’s reign.) That of course violated the policy of the Catholic Church in Rome, under the leadership of the Pope. And his marriage to Anne Boleyn, while his annulled wife was alive is just salting a wound. However, at some point Catherine of Aragon died naturally. I guess Henry saw no reason to “re-marry” Anne. But if he had, that would have solved the entire problem wouldn’t it? And so what if he hadn’t been married under the Church, maybe his heir Elizabeth isn’t legitimate, but that could be fixed later.

He never annulled his marriage to his non-wife Anne Boleyn, she regrettably pre-deceased him, executed by the government in a perfectly legal trial under established norms of the day. His marriage to Jane Seymor must be perfectly legitimate, all previous wives are deceased, right? Or did the Church in Rome still have a legitimate complaint with the events so far, and events (marriages) later?

He was marriage to Catherine 24 years. In my book, that is not brief, although it seems so in the Tudor series.

And, as they’d specifically received a dispensation for that marriage, getting it annulled on the same grounds for which the dispensation was granted is… iffy at best. The second request would have been tossed by pretty much any court in which the judge was neither a party nor a subject of the requestor.

I guess.

But you’re sort of glossing over the fact that he “reformed” the church in a large part so he was the head of the church so he could declare his own marriage null and void. Technically, sure, legal. But that’s a pretty damn big pardon just for the sake of making a point.

And same thing with his marriage to Jane Seymour. Yes, technically Anne was dead, but he sure as hell had her executed for his own convenience. Once again, a pretty big leap to say “sure, that marriage was fine” when he so blatantly killed her (and a pile of other probably-innocent people) to make it so.

Anne of Cleves? Probably the easiest annulment to forgive, but even then, the average person in England at the time probably wouldn’t have found it so easy to annul a marriage just because as it turns out, the new wife wasn’t as attractive as promised.

Katherine Howard? I’ll believe she cheated on him before I believe Anne Boleyn did. But still, I have a hard time with execution as the result. He was a big stinky 50-year-old guy married to a very young woman. Pretty natural she would find solace elsewhere. And even in the lens of the time they lived in, he could have found a way to send her to a convent or something over beheading her.

So that’s my view. As far as the Church itself, he was a heretic from the moment he left the church, so I’m guessing yes, they did have a complaint with pretty much everything he did.

Henry’s fight with Rome had little to do with his wives. (As if the Vatican gave a shit about women.) It’s true church doctrine remained unchanged under Henry, but the finances changed dramatically. The break with Rome stopped all church tithes from going to the Vatican, and the dissolution of the monasteries gave Henry an extra £36,000,000 per annum (in 2015 pounds, according to Wikipedia.)

The pope’s beef with Henry was over money, not marriage.

Henry had no authority as the “Head of the Catholic Church in England”. You can agree or disagree with Catholic belief, but the belief itself is quite clear - the Pope is the supreme authority and no other church authority can overrule him.

Assuming that Henry had decided to rejoin the Catholic Church at some point after his first wife’s death, it wouldn’t have changed the issue of Elizabeth’s legitimacy. As far as the Catholic church was concerned, Henry was married to Catherine from 1509 until her death in 1536. So Henry couldn’t have been legally married to Elizabeth’s mother, Anne, when Elizabeth was born in 1533.

I’d say it was both. Henry certainly was concerned with finances. But he was equally concerned with the continuation of his dynasty and he felt he needed a legitimate male heir for that. So nobody may have cared that much about wives in their own right but they were a vital issue as a means of producing heirs.

First, Henry distributed some of the largesse from the church dissolution (especially monasteries) to assorted nobles thus guaranteeing their support in any upcoming dispute with Rome. (Almost) Nobody wanted to give up hundreds of thousands of pounds of money, lands and farm income on religious principle, and most took the gift.

He had married his elder brother’s wife (Catherine of Aragon) to keep the alliance with Spain. He reasonably requested annulment when after 24 years (and she was IIRC 10 years his elder) she had failed to provide a living heir other than a girl, Mary. This sort of thing happened all the time back then, but the Pope was a “guest” of the King of Spain, and nobody treats his little girl like that.

Anne of Cleves, the marriage was annulled for non-consumption. Henry was old and sickly and needed enticement, and basically Anne in person didn’t match her centerfold picture so Sir Woody made no appearance. The official excuse was her “appearance” but I recall reading some comment that he made that “her breasts were not those of a maid”, hinting she’d gone to visit her aunt in the country for nine months sometime in her past and now she looked no longer ready for prime time. However, if you don’t consume the marriage, annulment is a perfectly valid and legal outcome. Apparently, of all the failures, this was the most civil.

It is interesting to note that Henry’s marriage to Anne, whether he was free to marry or not, was illegal on the same grounds as his marriage to Catherine was annulled: fornication with two siblings.

This is one reason Henry couldn’t acknowledge his affair with Anne’s sister Mary, nor acknowledge his children by her. Scholars now mostly accept, I think, that Henry Carey (as well as, perhaps, his older sister) was the King’s child, though Wikipedia still shows William Carey as the father.

[QUOTE=Leviticus 18, verses 16 and 18]
Thou shalt not uncover the nakedness of thy brother’s wife: it is thy brother’s nakedness.

Neither shalt thou take a wife to her sister, to vex her, to uncover her nakedness, beside the other in her life time.
[/QUOTE]

Hmmm, apparently sex with a sister is OK if the other sister is dead, but the proscription against sex with a brother is permanent. (Of course this is the Mosaic law; I didn’t Google for Vatican law.)

True. The ongoing marriage of Henry to Catherine meant that his heir was Princess Mary. Mary as the heir meant that England would likely fall under Spanish influence when Henry died. So Spain had a vested interest in keeping Henry married to Catherine and not married to some other woman who might produce a replacement heir. And, as you noted, Spain controlled the Pope at the time.

And there was another issue prompting the Pope to refuse Henry’s request. Henry’s marriage to Catherine hadn’t been an ordinary marriage because Catherine had been married to Henry’s brother Arthur before his death. Marrying your brother’s widow was normally prohibited under Church law at the time. So it had taken a special dispensation from the Pope to rule that the marriage was legal.

Ruling that it was now illegal would be saying that the previous Pope’s declaration had been wrong. This was the period when the Protestants and Catholics were fighting over the issue of Papal authority. Henry had picked the worst possible time to ask the Catholic Church to issue a declaration that a Pope had been wrong.

Fascinating. Some of the other issues mentioned upthread I have a shouting awareness of–you know, sex and one-and-one battles with the King v. Pope, an easily grasped concept ready for a Hollywood pitch. But this two- and three-step play, requiring knowledge of a bigger playing field (to mix metaphors) seems absolutely central.

In an earlier thread, some guy called errrr, Bl-97 or Ak-33 or something summerisedit as thus.

Edward VI was legitimate; all sides agreed that. When Henry married Jane Seymour Anne and Catherine were both dead. He had no wife living; the marriage was perfectly valid; Edward was legitimate. As a boy, he pre-empted any sisters, legitimate or otherwise. So even the diehard Catholics regarded Edward as Henry’s legitimate successor.

Things get complicated when Edward died childless. The older of Henry’s two daughters, Mary, was the daughter of Katherine of Aragon, and Henry had annulled that marriage and declared Mary illegitimate. Catholics, however, regarded her as legitimate. The younger daughter, Elizabeth, was the daughter of Anne Boleyn. Catholics regarded her as illegitimate, no question. Henry had in fact annulled his marriage to Anne just before her execution - he was never one do do things by halves - and so for a time Henry and his followers regarded her, too, as illegitimate.

Henry expected Edward to survive him (which happened) and no doubt expected that Edward would marry and produce children of his own (which didn’t). If Edward had married and had children, they would have come between Mary/Elizabeth and the throne, so Henry probably though, and certainly hoped, that their place in the line of succession would be an academic question.

However he recognised that he did have a responsibility to make provision for the eventuality that Edward would die without issue. He havered back and forth as to how to deal with this. Eventually he got Parliament to pass a law saying that he, Henry, could determine the succession by his own Will, and by his will he provided that the order of succession would be (1) Edward and his issue (if any); (2) Mary and her issue (if any); (3) Elizabeth and her issue (if any); (4) Henry’s niece Frances, the daughter of Henry’s younger sister Mary. (5) Frances’s daughter, Lady Jane Dudley. In laying down this succession, Henry passed over his older sister Margaret who had married into the Scottish royal family, and her issue, since he did not want the same person to be king of both England and Scotland.

As we know, Edward succeeded and then died without issue. He did not wish to be succeeded by a Catholic, so he made a “Device” omitting Mary frm the succesion (and Elizabeth, partly because her religious position was in doubt, and partly because it was easier to justify excluding Mary if Elizabeth were also excluded. On Edward’s death the next in line, Frances, renounced her rights, so Jane Dudley was proclaimed Queen.

The problem was that, while Parliament had granted Henry the right to prescribe the succession by his Will, it had granted no such right to Edward. The supporters of Mary, the person entitled under Henry’s Will, pointed this out. In the ensuing political struggle Mary’s supporters prevailed, Mary was proclaimed Queen and Jane and her supporters Got What Was Coming To Them.

Mary died childless and Elizabeth succeeded, as per Henry’s Will.

When, many years later, Elizabeth also died childless, the terms of Henry’s will would cause the throne to pass to the 23-year old Lady Anne Stanley, the senior heir of Henry’s younger sister Mary. Nobody seemed to think it was a good idea that the throne would pass to Lady Anne. Elizabeth’s prinicpal courtiers favoured James VI of Scotland, who would be heir if Henry had not skipped over his Scottish relatives in the Will made, by then, 56 years previously. They understood that Elizabeth preferred James also, though she never formally proclaimed the fact. On Elizabeth’s death, her courtiers proclaimed James VI king and Lady Anne, probably wisely, made no objection.

That depends on whether the Act was seen as being in suit for all time or just simply applied to Henry VIII’s successors.

In reality for the decade preceding Elizabeth’s death, there was no doubt as to who would succeed her, James VI of Scotland. By primogenitor he certainly had the best claim. Lady Anne was too young, too female, too childless and most importantly, too Stanley (the Seymour and Stanley families hated each other and could have prevented each other from succeeding but not get the top job themselves).
A bigger problem was James technical ineligibility. His ggGrandmother’s marriage treaty had stipulated (as was standard at the time) that her descendants would have no claim to the throne of England. In real life, they got over that by reviving Englands long dormant claim to Overlordship of Scotland.

I read the OP to be asking only why Rome was mad at Henry, not what Henry’s beef was with Rome. Yes, from Henry’s perspective, his wife and heirs were of paramount importance.

It’s all about power and money. Unless the succession was in no doubt, it could be manipulated by the people with the real power - in those days, (and roughly speaking) the Barons and the church. Can you imagine all the clandestine meetings and undocumented deals that were going on?

Today we have politicians who make grand speeches and promise stuff to get elected. The people who hold the power are those who finance them, and they support the candidate that offers the best deal for them.

BTW MD200 - you consummate a marriage not consume it.

As noted, Henry VIII was already seizing Church property in large measure before the marriage issues came up. Henry’s six wives persist in poplar culture but it was really just a side-show at the time, like the final insult to the Pope’s authority, but by no means the worstest insult.

When Mary Tutor passed away without children, by the strictest rules Mary Stewart should have inherited the English Throne. Unfortunately, Mary Steward was profoundly Catholic (and Queen of France at the time), thus completely unacceptable to the English peerage. Her only son, James VI, was raised Protestant, thus allowing him to reign after Elizabeth I.

This was why Henry wanted a male heir. Under the sexist assumptions of the time, it was felt that only a male monarch would be strong enough to rule in his own right. A female monarch would just be a figurehead for her husband’s family or the foreign nation her husband came from.

That was not a sexist assumption, that was borne out by harsh and bitter experience, both before and after Henry’s reign.

More like 5/6 years. He was just-turned 18 and she was 23 when they married–which probably didn’t seem like much of an age gap at the time.