Katherine Howard. After what happened to her cousin, to take such stupid risks is just unbelievable. I get that she was just a kid, and manipulated into Henry’s arms by her family, but it still beggars belief that she would do what she did. She knew how catastrophic the consequences could be, and really, how did she think it was all going to end?

I have to agree with Claire-Louise and Olga on this one.. KOA is a very difficult person to understand. Whilst I admire her for sticking to her guns concerning her marriage, I also want to smack her one for it too. Taking Henry’s relationship with Anne out of the equation for the minute. Was Henry actually being unfair to KOA by asking her to step down as Queen and retire to a convent? The answer there is NO. There were cases where annulment/Divorce had been allowed due to failure of producing a heir, one of them was his sister Mary Tudor’s first Husband who I believe divorced Anne of Brittany for her failure to produce a son..
So in that Henry wasn’t being unreasonable he was mearly being pratical. Did COA believe that she could still produce children which is why she refused to annul the marriage? In some ways it was COA’s fault that Henry turned to vehemently against Mary, COA was a tough old bird and wouldn’t let anything bother her, and Henry knew that so he thought “Oh well blow it if I can’t get to her directly I’ll get at her by bullying her child.” The result being that COA dug her heels in even further and poor Mary took the brunt and backlash of it all.
I sort of inclined to think that when Henry made his intentions know about the annulment KOA was not so much upset as why but more of who she was being displaced for. If Henry had decided on a French or even another Spanish Marriage (perish the thought) she may not have been so hostile about the whole situation.. Although Henry broke with Rome over this eternal love triangle if was COA’s stubborn refusal to see the wood for the trees, that was the catalyst that kick started it all. Tindale just happened to point out the truth or at least what he perceived as the truth.
In short he was master of his own fate not some Red dress wearing Bishop in Rome.

I can see that she didn’t want Mary to be condemned as a bastard, but by her decisions and actions, condemned Mary to a miserable childhood. I know COA had great religious conviction, but I think it was just as much her hurt her pride to have Henry cast her aside, especially for a ‘nobody’ like Anne. I greatly admire COA’s strength in her convictions, but I think that it made life for Mary miserable.

KH is the one that I really don’t ‘get’. She wasn’t all that young by Tudor standards and I always have the picture in my head of KH dancing around singing “tra-la-la I’m queen and can have anything I want”. She lived for the moment without any thought to the consequences in the future. She had a perfect example in her cousin of what could/would happen, but she didn’t seem to care. I just don’t understand that mentality.

Louise, this is why you’ll never find me writing a book. I don’t express my thoughts very well. I think COA’s stubbornness was the catalyst for Henry’s actions. I think the blame rests mostly with Henry because he is the one that decided to make Mary miserable, but I think COA was partly responsible because of her decisions. This is where, for me, the whole fall-off-the-horse-head-injury kind of goes out the window. His treatment of Mary is an example of Henry’s cruel streak. He had to have his own way and it didn’t matter who he hurt to get it, even his own daughter, or his murder of Anne and the men.
Just my opinion, but I always think it’s ironic that Henry’s long awaited, precious male heir didn’t rule for very long and Mary and Elizabeth, both named bastards by their dear father, made it to the throne.

Louise, I didn’t think you sounded grumpy, just a difference of opinion. When I’m trying to write something, I have trouble getting the words from my head to my fingers and leave half of them out. I know what I mean, but usually no one else does.

She could have retired to a convent and Mary would still have been legitimate, Mary would have been safe. Bo is right, divorces had happened before when a wife was unable to bear children and there would have been no shame in her position. She made the choice to say no and fight it, and that placed Mary in danger. If you want to be brutal about it, a Queen’s job was to produce heirs and she failed. Obviously that is not her fault but Henry wanted to set her aside to have children. We can romanticise his relationship with Anne all we want but Henry didn’t feel he needed another wife for love. He felt he needed another wife to have children. Henry could love all the mistresses he wanted to.
I also completely understand her not wanting to say her marriage had been a sham, and it was BS, but she could have agreed to retire. She didn’t. Then Henry started using Mary as a pawn to control Katherine, and vice versa. They were both as bad as each other in that respect.

Henry never got divorced. Divorced, beheaded, died, divorced, beheaded, survived is a myth. In reality it was just died, survived because Henry only had two wives.
His marriages to Catherine of Aragon, Anne Boleyn, Anne of Cleves and Catherine Howard were all annuled. He had no grounds to divorce Catherine. He was asking for the marriage to be annuled i.e. that it never happened. By doing so he was making Mary illegitimate, although admittedly not in Cannon law. By agreeing an annulment Catherine was not only making her daughter a bastard she was also saying she had lied about her relationship with Arthur, therefore putting her honour and integrity into question. To her that would have been a mortal sin, making her soul at risk as well.
I ‘get’ all of Henry’s wives. They all did what they felt they had to do. None of the wives had a great deal of choice in how their lives turned out. Not even Catherine Howard, who was arguably pre-contracted to Francis Dereham. She was foolish with Thomas Culpepper knowing what had happened to Anne Boleyn, so I suppose her behaviour with Thomas is the most difficult to fathom.

I have trouble understanding Jane Seymour. Silent yet devious? Placid yet a viper in the grass? She is a contradiction, I imagine her a cold, spiteful woman with a sense of entitlement, devoid of personality. Anne may have followed a similar path in her climb to the throne, but at least she was honest, perhaps too much so. I find it strange that Jane is so exalted for nothing much at all…

As regards to Katherine of Aragon, she did lie. She lied to her father after her phantom pregnancy in 1510. In May, she sent her father a letter where she told him she had miscarried of a daughter “some days before”, and that the fact”her child was still born is considered to be a misfortune in England . . . “Do not be angry with me, for it has been the will of God.” – There was no still born. No one knows whether her marriage was consummated or not with Arthur, so there will always be a possibility she lied about that too. If she did lie about her marriage with Arthur, who could blame her? She was abandoned by her family, alone and poor in a foreign country. If she had slept with Arthur and was no longer a virgin, her worth on the marriage market was significantly reduced, whereas if she were a virgin she could still become Queen.

It’s also possible that Henry believed his lack of sons was due to his marriage to Katherine, as he had stated. Although the Bible contradicts itself with regards to the marriage between a widow and her brother in law, the marriage is only acceptable if they live within the same house. Henry and Arthur lived separately, so this did not apply. According to the Bible they had committed a sin by marrying, and so would remain without a son. Henry was overly paranoid, so I can imagine this played on his mind often. Katherine and Mary were the victims of a paranoid king who was horribly insecure about his right to the crown.

Louise….A great example of Henry’s very convenient conscience.

Louise said

Leviticus says, “If a man marries his brother’s wife, it is an act of impurity; he has dishonoured his brother. They will be childless.” It goes on to say, “and the same holds good of a wife’s sister”, which is how Henry got out of his marriage to Anne.
Deuteronomy say, “If brother’s dwell together and one of them dies and has no son, the wife of the dead shall not be remarried outside of the family to a stranger; her husband’s brother shall go into her, and take her as his wife, and perform the duty of a husbands brother to her.”
I read this to mean that Deuteronomy gives one exeption to Leviticus, which is what the Pope took into account when giving Henry a dispensation to marry Catherine.
Henry later denied that the Pope had power to grant the dispensation using Deuteronomy by saying Catherine had lied about her relationship with Arthur. I believe that Catherine didn’t lie, but irrespective of that she certainly didn’t have a son with Arthur, therefore in my view the Pope could and did rightly give the dispensation using Deuteronomy. If Henry and Arthur did not dwell together then this fact could argue against this, but Henry only argued the toss once it was in his interests to do so.

Katherine and Arthur lived at Ludlow Castle, Henry was not there.