The poor health of King Henry VIII

It is well known that King Henry VIII had no luck in trying to father a male heir until he married the third of his six wives, with Prince Edward being born to Jane Seymour in 1537, 28 years after Henry had come to the throne in 1509.

Henry was quite ready to place the blame for his misfortune on his first two wives, divorcing Catherine of Aragon after 24 years of marriage and having Anne Boleyn executed after being married to her for three years. However, it is entirely possible that it was his own health condition that was the cause of the problem all along.

Kell blood

It has been suggested (by researchers Catrina Banks Whitley and Kyra Kramer) that Henry had what is known as Kell blood, caused by a genetic abnormality. When a Kell-positive man fathers a child, so they assert, the mother’s antibodies will attack the foetus during pregnancy, leading to stillbirth or miscarriage.

This does not happen on every occasion, which is why three of the ten pregnancies of Henry’s first three wives led to the birth of live children, namely Mary, Elizabeth and Edward. However, the other seven pregnancies failed.

McLeod Syndrome

There is another condition that is known to be suffered by Kell-positive individuals, and only by them, namely McLeod Syndrome. The symptoms are both physical and mental, the latter including paranoia, depression and socially inappropriate conduct. The disease usually becomes apparent only after the victim has reached their 30s or 40s.

This pattern seems to fit Henry VIII quite well. As a young man he was very much an outgoing and fun-loving person who was greatly admired. However, things went downhill after he reached his 40s, which was when he divorced Catherine of Argon, executed Anne Boleyn and created the Church of England by rejecting the authority of the Pope.

The deterioration in Henry’s character led to him becoming a suspicious and ruthless tyrant with a quick temper. This is perfectly consistent with a diagnosis of McLeod Syndrome.

A fascinating "what if"

It should surprise no-one that this analysis is not accepted universally, with some objectors questioning the assertion - mentioned above – that a father’s Kell blood would affect a foetus. Apart from that, the theory might seem to have much to recommend it.

However, if the theory is correct, it could be the fact that an inherited gene had huge consequences for the later history of England.

If Henry had been able to father a healthy male heir with Catherine of Aragon, early in his reign, not only would his marital life have been very different – Catherine died in 1536, so he might well have remarried, but who to? – but there would have been no need to break with Rome or dissolve the monasteries.

The later history of England would therefore have been very different. Princess Elizabeth (the daughter of Anne Boleyn) would never have been born and so there not have been an “Elizabethan Age”, with all that that entailed.

History is full of “what ifs” – that posed by King Henry VIII’s health is just one of many!

© John Welford

The three wives of King Henry VIII

That’s right – three wives, not six as is popularly believed!

Surely not, you might say. Everyone knows the list - Catherine of Aragon, Anne Boleyn, Jane Seymour, Anne of Cleves, Catherine Howard and Catherine Parr - and the manner in which they ceased to be Henry’s wives (all but the last): divorced, beheaded, died, divorced, beheaded, survived.

The problem, albeit a technical one, is that Henry did not divorce wives one and four. He had the marriages annulled, and the same applies to Anne Boleyn who was separated from Henry by these means just before her head was separated from the rest of her.

So what’s the difference? It’s quite an important one, because an annulled marriage is one that is recognized as never having existed. Divorce as we know it today is a relatively modern invention, dating from the 18^th century, and simply wasn’t available as an option to King Henry.

The first annulment was a huge problem, because Pope Clement VII refused to grant it. Henry took the extraordinary step of giving himself the power to declare his marriage annulled, by declaring himself to be the head of the Church in England, and not the pope.

He used this power again to annul his marriage to Anne Boleyn when it was pointed out to him that she had previously been engaged to someone else. Her execution does therefore seem to have been founded on somewhat shaky ground in that she was accused of committing adultery at a time when she and Henry had not been legally married!

That means that King Henry’s first marriage was with Jane Seymour, the wife who gave him his long-wanted son but died shortly after giving birth.

The third annulment was the only one that would be recognized as valid today, as there is plenty of evidence to suggest that the marriage to Anne of Cleves was never consummated.

Catherine Howard’s short reign as Henry’s queen might have gone exactly the same way as that of Anne Boleyn – annulment followed by execution - were it not that she refused to agree to the charge that she had been engaged prior to her marriage to Henry, although she almost certainly had been. Had she admitted this it would have made no difference to her fate, but the net result was that she has to count as official wife number two.

Catherine Parr was definitely married to Henry, as wife number three, and she was his only widow.

So there we are. King Henry VIII officially had only three wives, not six!

© John Welford

Anne of Cleves, King Henry VIII's "Flanders Mare"

This painting was the indirect cause of a considerable amount of stress and unhappiness for King Henry VIII (reigned 1509-47) and even more for his chief minister Thomas Cromwell, who would lose his head on Tower Hill a year after it was painted.

The sitter was Anne, the elder daughter of the Duke of Cleves, whose duchy was centred on Dusseldorf in northern Germany. The artist was Hans Holbein, the renowned court painter in the employ of King Henry.

Henry had lost his third wife, Jane Seymour, in October 1537. She died shortly after giving birth to Henry’s only surviving male child, who would succeed him as King Edward VI. Henry felt the loss very deeply and an unhappy Henry was a dangerous master to have. Thomas Cromwell therefore saw the need for Henry, and England, to have a new queen.

Another problem was that England was becoming dangerously isolated in terms of international politics. In 1538 the Pope had called upon Europe’s Catholic nations to unite against England, and Cromwell’s solution was to seek alliances with the Protestant princes of northern Europe, including the German states.

A marriage with an attractive German noblewoman would therefore have a double benefit, and the daughters of the Duke of Cleves were prime candidates. Henry had seen portraits of the sisters (Anne and Amalia) that had been painted by local artists, but he could not be sure that they did not flatter their subjects. He therefore sent Hans Holbein to do the job.

Holbein painted portraits of both women and the results were shown to Henry. He was impressed with Holbein’s work and, for a time, was unsure which sister to choose. His decision to go for Anne as his new queen was possibly prompted by the age gap – he was 48 and Anne was 24, so the gap would have been even greater had he chosen 22 year old Amalia.

Cromwell set the wheels in motion and Anne duly arrived in England on New Year’s Day 1540. Henry was horrified by what he saw, as he reckoned that the woman he greeted was “downright plain”. He stated: “I marvel that wise men could make such report as they have”. He clearly felt that the portrait he had seen was far removed from the reality of the woman he would later refer to as the “Flanders mare”.

However, there was nothing that he could do to stop the wedding going ahead and it took place four days later. The wedding night was a disaster, because Henry liked Anne undressed even less than he liked her dressed. He spared no detail in his report to Cromwell, even complaining about her body odour. Needless to say, in his own words: “I left her as good a maid as I found her”.

Henry had no wish to “try again” and the king and queen were soon sleeping in separate rooms.

Cromwell was now in huge trouble, not only for the Anne of Cleves affair but for his zeal in carrying out the religious transformation of the country in ways that produced a large degree of resentment. This was the final straw that led to charges of treason being laid against him.

Cromwell was offered a let-out clause – he could avoid the ultimate punishment of being hanged, drawn and quartered, which was particularly barbaric, and instead be beheaded, if he provided Henry with the evidence he needed for a marriage annulment. This accounts for the clinical details obtained from both Henry and Anne as to the non-consummation of their marriage.

Although Henry could not abide the prospect of living with Anne, he did not treat her unkindly after the annulment. He granted her the status of “King’s sister” and they became firm friends, with Anne being a frequent visitor at court. She was granted a generous settlement that included several properties, Hever Castle and Richmond Palace being the most notable. Despite Henry’s softening of his attitude to her, he did not take kindly to the suggestion that he should remarry Anne after the execution of his fifth wife, Catherine Howard, in 1541.

Anne survived into the reign of Queen Mary I, dying in July 1557 at the age of 41 and outliving all of Henry’s other wives.

As for Holbein, he does not appear to have been held accountable for any inaccuracy in his portrait of Anne. Indeed, most other people who saw both Anne and her portrait seemed to agree that he had done a pretty good job. It was only Henry who had a markedly different opinion.

© John Welford