I haven’t read all of the replies above, but I do agree with the difference between true love and true wife. But I’m also very fond of the belief that Henry loved all of his wives in very different ways. Jane was definitely not his true love, at least not in the way I see it. She was, however, his true wife because she provided him with a son and heir. Had she survived, there would probably have been much more children and since she was Edward’s mother, Henry would never have dared to get rid of her. I do think he would have had many mistresses because Jane was so plain and I doubt she would have objected to his affairs since she was raised to obey and knew that as long as Edward was alive, she would be safe and sound. He called her his true love because she died in childbirth of her son which was of course very tragic so he was in a way supposed to say it.

He turned the world upside down for Anne, and if it had been nothing but lust that he felt for her, I don’t think he would have done so because then he would have found someone else to satisfy his needs. No, he loved Anne truly but a huge part of that love was the hope for a healthy son. She promised him that and when she broke her promise – though she possibly couldn’t know she wasn’t able to keep it when she gave him her word – his love vanished. Maybe he thought that a woman not being able to provide him with a son was not at all worthly of his love, or not expected to be worthy of it.

He loved Katherine of Aragon because she loved him, I think. He loved her because she was so very delicated to being queen and to being his wife, but that love also vanished as the years went on and a son never came – or at least didn’t survive. Anne was his true love because she was everything he was looking for and could handle him. Jane he loved because she gave him a son and was so very obediant. Anne of Cleves… I’m not sure he loved her, maybe he just loved the connections and relations she provided. Catherine Howard was young and carefree and he loved her for giving him back his own youth. Catherine Parr he loved because she was his companion in the last bitter years of his life, though I doubt she would have kept her head if he had lived a little longer.

So no, Jane was probably never his true love, but she was his true wife. Had Anne given birth to a son and died in childbirth, then he would have called her his true love ánd true wife and I think he would have meant it. God, how different things would have turned out if something like that happened.

I agree Olga, Henry was very good at play acting, he would have put any modern day Shakespearean actor to shame.. He acting ability was just so versatile.
With K.O.A he was the hero, the Golden haired Sod I mean God who rescued the damsel in distress. The conquerering hero of France and Scotland. (Bah Humbug)

With Anne he was the poor bleeding Martyr,sad act sack of crap, whose wife (K.O.A) didn’t understand him, and had failed him by not giving him a son. He was the villian who turned England upside down to acheive Anne and then turned it inside out to kill her.

With Jane he played the ever loving doting husband, who would forever love his true wife, just because she gave him the son he so wanted, and then blubbed because she went and died on him, before he had chance to chop her up as he did Anne, or leave her to die a sad and lonely death as he did K.O.A.

With Anne of Cleeves he once again donned the guise of the hard done by poor bleeding martyr sad act sack of crap, who had been betrayed by Cromwell, who had shackled him to the Flanders mare (Which by the way he never called her)

With Katherine Howard, he was once again the doting ever loving husband, but who ended up betrayed and humiliated, and sat in the cinders blubbing because his doodle didn’t work and that nobody loved him anymore. Once again the poor bleeding martyr sad sack of crap.

With Katherine Parr he once again played the lonely hard done by poor bleeding Martyr sad sack of crap, who had been used and abused by everyone he loved. He only chopped up people who needed chopping up. Oh and don’t forget he once again ponched around France trying to be the hero and the Golden sod of his youth. Yeah right Fat boy he couldn’t organise a decent P*** up in a brewery.

If Edward would have died either at birth or shortly after his mother however, would Henry still call Jane his “True Love”? I somehow doubt it. The only reason he called her that was purely because she had done what his other 2 wives hadn’t, given him a son. However both K.O.A and Anne had bore him sons. K.O.A’s son had lived 52 days, and she had bore him others that had died at birth or shortly (hours) after. Depending on what you believe Anne had bore him 2 sons, one who lived a few hours in 1534 and the other which of course was perhaps a 4 month fetus identified as male in late January/early Feburary of 1536. Which of course ended up with Henry murdering her in May 1536

I agree sharon, but as I said it does depend of what you believe, or should I say read. There are some accounts of her having a child a boy in 1534, who lived long enough to be named as Henry Duke of Cornwall, and then there are others that make no mention of him at all. I do find it very strange that this child isn’t mentioned. Yet another Henry Enigma to try and unravel I suppose. Is it possible that this child was as you say stillborn but was in some way deformed, and therefore was simply airbrushed from everyone’s memories and history alike. I have read somewhere that alledgely Anne was supposed to have had a deformed child. I always thought that was to do with her pregnancy of 1536. But is it possible that the deformed rumour was to do with the missing pregnancy of 1534 instead?

As it goes if my lousy memory serves I’ve read somewhere that K.O.A last pregnancy resulted in a still born deformed child. It seems as if this deformed child/children rumour was bandied around quite a bit for about 10 years or so. Is it possible that the word “deformed” was used to describe a child that had been born before it’s time, and not as the word “deformed” actually means? Or should I say what is accepted as the general translation of the word by today’s standards?
There were children who were born back then who did indeed look different to what was expected as the norm. I.e clubbed feet/hair lip, cleft palate etc, but these children could well go on to live a normal life of sorts. They were generally or usually hidden away but they were still very much alive. Richard 3rd was considered a hunchback and yes it’s been proved that he certainly had a deformaty of the spine, but he lived an otherwise perfectly normal life and became King. Ivar the boneless (so called because he was alledgely unable to walk and was carried everywhere on a shield this is subject to a lot of speculation at the moment.) was an amazing tactition, son of a viking king called Ragnar Lodbroc affectionally known as “Hairy trousers”, Ivar ruled York with an iron hand.
There was a rumour that the late Queen mother ancestrial childhood home Glamis castle has a secret room which at one time housed a child which appeared to be of a monsterous visage. Glamis is a very strange castle anyway so nothing is impossible. Scotland is a very weird windswept, fog bound rain and blood sodden land anyway so nothing surprizes me about it now..
It’s said that if you switch on every light inside the castle and go outside and count up all the windows that are lit up you will find that there at least 3 windows that aren’t lit up, and no one knows why, in short it appears that there are at least 3 secret rooms to yet be discovered, and maybe even a few windowless cells/rooms hidden within the very walls of Glamis…..Many of the Scottish castles are like this, and even today there are many secrets hidden away in these castles to yet be discovered.
Anne’s child of 1534 may well have been a full term live birth, which may have well been a child that had a major deformaty, male or female, and was simply hidden away and forgotten about. I personally feel that given how many and how quickly woman were expected to have babies, there must have been many children who were born with some sort of genetic or phyical defect. A woman’s body had little time to recover from her last pregnancy before they were pregnant again. I believe it was expected that once the woman was churched which was around 6 weeks after the birth of their child, they were or could be pregnant again as little as 3 months afterwards, and as you know a lot of woman died at a very early age, simply worn out with the strain of being constantly pregnant.
Francois 1st first wife Claude Duchess of Brittany was only 24 when she died, but from the time she married Francois at the age of 14/15 she was almost constantly pregnant. By the way Claude had Scoliosis, and she lived a full if short life, with no problems, other than being constantly pregnant.
This was also the case with K.O.A although it only produced 2 live births a son who lived just 52 days and Mary Tulip, there were a a few full term children who lived just a few hours, her last known pregnancy was in 1518, but I feel that there may have been other children that were not recorded that ended in stillbirth or miscarriage after that date, perhaps as many as 6 or 7. When Henry met and decided to marry Anne it was then that he finally gave up all pretence of getting a male child by K.O.A and stopped sleeping with her other then sharing her bed for diplomatic reasons. Presumedly he treated K.O.A in bed as he did A.O.C simply kissed her and said “goodnight darling” and in the morning kissed her and said “farewell sweetheart” before stomping off to his own chambers.

Doctors these days seem to think that the average of 2 years between each pregnancy is better for the woman as in that time the woman’s body has time to fully recover and re generate to give her body the strength to go through the trauma of childbirth again. Pregnancy does knock a woman’s body about a bit and is very traumatic.

I’m not sure but I believe that a deformed or malformed child born alive or dead, in the upper eschelons of sociaty was taken as a sign that the woman had been having a nibble of something un-natural (i.e God had punished the guilty person by making the child deformed). Of course we all know that now that is apsolute and complete ballast and ballcocks.
I think that this was one of the arguements/charges that were levelled at Anne, when she was put on trial that the child she miscarried in late Jan of 1536 was deformed because she had transgressed God’s law by her un-natural carnal desires towards other men.
Sander as you rightly say was the biggest of all Elizabethan propergandists, but like many of Elizabeth’s subjects they were largely Catholic and viewed Elizabeth as a bastard brat from an incestious and illegal marriage and he would along with others no doubt would have said and done anything to try and cause a rebellion.
I have heard of a rumour that Elizabeth was alledgely supposed to have one shoulder slightly higher than the other, which again Sander may have tried to exploit etc..
Given that genetics or birth defects were never even heard of at that time or even understood why they happened, when they did occur it was always viewed as a sign of guilt of doing something they shouldn’t have, and strangely if you look at it it was always viewed as the woman’s fault.
If there were any deformed children in any of Henry’s 3 marriages it may have been possible that it was something to do with Henry’s sperm and not to do with any of his wives..
He had as Sharon points contracted Malaria at some point in his life as well as having measels when he was 23 I believe, both of these illnesses may have caused issues to do with Henry’s sexual prowess, but they may not have started to appear until a little later in his life. Certainly both K.O.A and Anne got pregnant quickly, but I think by 1535 his sexual health well more to do with his sperm production or should I say the quality of his sperm had started to degrade a little. Given the length of time it took Jane to get pregnant theres a good chance that he was more or less shooting blanks, and that Jane just got lucky getting pregnant with perhaps one of the last live rounds he was able to produce. Whatever it was it certainly was a lucky event for Jane as I think if she had failed to become pregnant when she did he would have found a way to annul the marriage.
I certainly feel that he was all out of live ammo by the time he married K.H, despite the fact that they known to have “loud and noisy sex” and yet nothing came of it.
Again that may have been down to K.H she might have been the one who was infertile, as we know that she and Dereham were having a sexual relationship with each other when she was still just an unknown girl in her grandmother’s household and no child as far as we know was ever conceived from that union. However I don’t think that we can entirely rule out that possibility, there may well have been a child which either died at birth or in infancy or was farmed out and forgotten, a foundling child so to speak who just suddenly appeared to a childless couple. I can’t prove that of course but it is a possibility. I don’t believe K.H and Culpepper had sex, she was foolish to be involved with him whilst the king was alive I agree, but she wasn’t so dence to have sex with him again whilst the king was alive. Unfortuately due to her sexual behaviour with Dereham in her grandmother’s household she had opened herself to that possibility ie being tarred with same brush. K.H was just a simple (loosely worded) teenager who allowed her heart to rule her head, who was as I’ve said before thrown into the lions den and swallowed up for breakfast.
Did K.P and Henry have sex? Well she wasn’t over the hill yet and a child or children with Henry was a possibility as no child appeared that could again be down to Henry, yes both of her prior marriages were childless, but they like Henry were getting on a bit in years and again like Henry may not have been able to reproduce. Both of her husbands had been married before and had had children with the previous wives. I can’t believe that K.P was infertile as her marriage to T.S proved she was more than capable of having a child. If there hadn’t been a child from her union with T.s then it could be argued that she was infertile.

Birth defects or physical/mental problems could also come about by excessive inbreeding as it was in the case of the Hapsburg families. Young Charles, who was Philip of Spain’s (Mary Tulip’s other half) heir was said to be a half wit, and certainly Philip’s mother Juana had some sort of a mental health issues (Possibly Clinical depression or maybe even manic depression)
The madness gene (for want of a better word) was certainly in the Tudor bloodline via the Valois line. I have mentioned this before, so I won’t bother going over it again.
However I have been having an internet footle inbetween writing this, as we know Henry was very much a hypercondiac when it came to illness and perhaps chucked down “all sorts of so called good for you” medicines down his lying throat over the years, one of his favourites was one called pills of Rasis (mentioned as you know in series 1 of the Tudors) these were so called after the man who invented them Muhammad ibn Zakariyā Rāzī. He was the first doctor to come up with a supposed a cure for measels, However his pills of Rasis contained Mercury, although as Anyanka I think pointed out, there are no records that show Henry as ever being treated with Mercury. I.e “we gave old fat boy a shot of Mercury today”(The only shot I’d like to give him is a point 202 straight between the eyes) that doesn’t mean that Henry was injesting it through the other medicines he was chucking down his horrible little grub tunnel. Razi was a known advocate of using mercury or mercurial as he called it in his medicines, and other doctors would have seen a chance of increasing their own business acumen by copying Razi’s medicines. Mercury was used as a purge, and we do know that Henry suffered with Constapation when he was older so it stands to reason he may have been given a mercurial purge to help move things along a little. Mercury poisoning has many side affects and Henry possibly suffered from neurological disturbance, which was probably made worse with a possible brain injury that happened during his jousting accident of 1529? and again in 1536. mood swings, lethagy, nightmares and hallusinations, (Henry was alledgely supposed to have said before his power of speech was lost to him on his death bed “Monks Monks Don’t you see them? Don’t you hear them? Monks Monks everywhere” servere stomach cramps and joint/muscle pain and the one that could possible explain why there were no children after Jane, Jaffa syndrome I.e seedless, because of the mercury he was taking, however inadvertly..
Am I right in thinking that poor Edward lost all of his finger and toe nails and his hair during his final illness? and that Henry was all but a slap head (I’d like to slap his head with something. a piece of 4×2 would be good) when he died? if so again these are side affects from mercury poisoning

Boleyn said

Am I right in thinking that poor Edward lost all of his finger and toe nails and his hair during his final illness? and that Henry was all but a slap head (I’d like to slap his head with something. a piece of 4×2 would be good) when he died? if so again these are side affects from mercury poisoning

Edward did suffer from those affects but the cause was believed to be arsenic rather than mercury. The arsenic was administered by a “wise Woman” who claimd she could cure Edward or relieve his sympthoms long enough for Dudley to fulfil Edward’s or Dudley’s plan for the succession.

Thank you Sharon.. I knew it was one or the other Henry contracted. I said measels because a kid up the road has got them at the moment.
I don’t suppose we will ever really know what made Henry go completely tonto as he got older, or what really caused his illnesses, excluding smallpox and Malaria. Nor we will really know what he was treated with. I know Dr Butts and Dr Wendy I believe were considered his top physicians and they were the ones generally asked to treat him, with the medicines they had at their disposal at the time. Many of these medicines contained all sorts of herbs and spices and other things such as ground up pearls. And at that time the medicine science or to be more prescise the cause, and affects of certain medicines on the human body, and the chemical analysis of what were in these medicines, was still very much in it’s infancy. Their thinking maybe being at that time.
“Here lets just chuck this concoction down Henry’s horrid little grub tunnel and sit back and wait. If it kills him well obvisiously that isn’t the right concoction to use. If he survives well ok we can use that one, but lets see what happens if we put rat turds in it.?”
In short the poor paitent was more or less a guinea pig (In Henry’s case he was just a pig and a big lying fat one at that) used for for vivisection purposes. In Many way the poor people were spared this torture (Loosely Worded) and for so many they could only make do and mend with what medicines they could find or forage. Many of them simply couldn’t afford a doctor and therefore relied on their local cunning woman for cures. These poor cunning woman were also open to a lot of abuse because of it too, if their paitent died, very often they had to hot foot it promply from the villiage or run the risk of being accused of witchcraft.
I believe that during the last Illness of Charles 2nd, quite apart from the more or less medievil torture they carried out on him in an attempt to cure him of his malady, some of which were used to try and cure the madness affecting King George 3rd. The doctors at that time gave Charles a drink with the remains of a crushed up mummy.
Perhaps the only true or perhaps to give us some sort of idea to what Henry may have been treated with, is to do a DNA analysis on one of his bones or should I say a very small fragment (if they are any left) of one of his bones.
This has been done with varying degrees of success in many of our historical heros and villians and has perhaps given us a explaination to what made them act as they did, due to medicines they had been given at the time and the known side effects of the medicines that were used thanks to modern day medical science, which by the way is improving on an almost daily rate.
Incidently I found a little snippet not long ago about Diana De Portiers (Henry 2nd of France long term mistress and companion) it appears that her bones have recently been unearthed and Analysis was carried out on her bones. It appears that they contained a high concentrate of gold with in them, and that hair found in her coffin appeared to shine again due to the high level of gold found in it. It appeared that she consummed something called drinkable gold which was considered as a youth tonic and she drank it in an attempt to preserve her beauty and extend her life. However the Analysis shows that this “Drinkable gold” probably ended up killing her in the end. Although she was a good age when she died in 1566 Just a few months short of her 67th birthday, espeically for those days.

I have to feel sorry for poor Edward during those final onths of his life, the poor little sod must have suffered no end of pain, as first one medicine was tried then another and went that failed, dudley resorted to any thought or idea that sounded plasible to keep him alive just long enough for Edward to do the minimum amount need to get Dudley’s plan a small chance of actually succeeding. Is there any documentation to say what happened to this cunning woman after Edward’s death? Was she charged with poisioning the King or anything. Yes she perhaps may have escaped justice for the 9 days that Jane sat on the big cushioned chair with the sparkly tin hat on, but I do feel no matter how bad Queen Mary was for the country well more for Dudley at that time and for as bad as she became one she took over I think she would hsve wanted to punish the very person who killed her brother.

Physicians today say Edward’s final symptoms can be seen as secondary symptoms of TB. The loss of hair, the loosening of fingernails and toenails, the swelling of his limbs, and the discoloration of his skin. I always assumed it was from the arsenic. I found this in Skidmore’s book, Edward VI. Interesting.
Did Mary believe Edward had been poisoned? Poisoning was a rumor, yes, but the autopsy said he died of lung disease, not poison.

Henry was all about showing off!

I read some time ago where Henry VII told Henry the dangers of jousting and getting on horses – yet he jousted and rode daily anyway. If he hadn’t he wouldn’t have had that traumatic fall in 1536.