Henry VIII “had seventh wife”, claims historian

[Blackleaf]

According to a well-known historian, Henry VIII didn't have six wives - he had seven.

In an article published anonymously in the journal Tudor Matrimonial Studies, a historian has revealed that the former king married Anne Mourgan in 1538 – less than a year after the death of his third wife Jane Seymour (who bore Henry the future King Edward VI).

Fearful of public opinion, the pair married in secret. But the relationship soon collapsed, and Anne emigrated to the Low Countries, apparently without a formal ending of the marriage.

Henry VIII “had seventh wife”, claims historian


Tuesday 1st April 2014
Submitted by Emma McFarnon
BBC History Mag

Henry's wives in (L-R) the order that he married them

He is one of the best-known kings in British history, famed for his six wives. But it has now emerged that Henry VIII may have wed a seventh woman.

In an article published anonymously in the journal Tudor Matrimonial Studies, a historian has revealed that the former king married Anne Mourgan in 1538 – less than a year after the death of Jane Seymour.

Fearful of public opinion, the pair married in secret. But the relationship soon collapsed, and Anne emigrated to the Low Countries, apparently without a formal ending of the marriage.

Historians first uncovered evidence of the marriage in the 1930s, but were reluctant to publish their findings for fear of ruining the well-known rhyme:

King Henry the Eighth,
to six wives he was wedded.
One died, one survived,
two divorced, two beheaded

The well-known historian and author of the journal article told History Extra: “An inner circle of historians has known about the marriage of Henry VIII to Anne Mourgan for some 80 years, but believed it would interfere with the famous verse.

“‘One died, one survived, two divorced, one emigrated and two beheaded’ doesn’t exactly flow well, does it? Many felt that making Tudor history any more complex would be disastrous for the popularity of this era and hamper attempts to broaden historical understanding.

“But I believe the time has come to reveal the truth about Henry’s ‘third Anne’. The marriage took place at a crucial time: as the king was grieving the loss of Jane Seymour, and before his disastrous marriage to Anne of Cleves in 1540.

“It is time to put on record that Henry had not four, but five failed marriages, and that he eased the pain of losing the only woman to provide him with a son and male heir by hastily wedding another.”

The journal article includes the text of a letter uncovered by the historian, written by Henry to Anne Mourgan at the time of their marriage.

This letter, published for the first time, reveals Henry’s affection for Anne Mourgan, who he describes as “my sweete flowere”.

Tudor historian Dr Suzannah Lipscomb told History Extra: “This rumour has been circulating in little-read journals for years, but I disregarded it for lack of evidence.

“This extraordinary finding utterly transforms our understanding of Henry VIII and the Tudor period.”

Henry VIII “had seventh wife�, claims historian | History Extra

 

[tay]

Inside The Court Of Henry VIII






Henry VIII is the most iconic king of English history.


Part medieval tyrant, part renaissance prince, he ruled over his people as no king of England had ever done before. He took a country salvaged by his father from the wreck of civil war and set over it a single, sovereign ruler. By the end of his reign the power of the Tudor dynasty was absolute — but at a terrible cost.


Personally responsible for the death of two of his own wives, along with many of his closest friends and advisors, he is said to have ordered the execution of up to 72,000 Britons. His reign will go down as one of the bloodiest in history.










www.youtube.com/watch?v=AOvwXIlnztk

 

[Sal]

Inside The Court Of Henry VIII






Henry VIII is the most iconic king of English history.


Part medieval tyrant, part renaissance prince, he ruled over his people as no king of England had ever done before. He took a country salvaged by his father from the wreck of civil war and set over it a single, sovereign ruler. By the end of his reign the power of the Tudor dynasty was absolute — but at a terrible cost.


Personally responsible for the death of two of his own wives, along with many of his closest friends and advisors, he is said to have ordered the execution of up to 72,000 Britons. His reign will go down as one of the bloodiest in history.


www.youtube.com/watch?v=AOvwXIlnztk

yes but it's all good because kings/queens are divinely chosen...

 

[tay]

yes but it's all good because kings/queens are divinely chosen...

Yes, well Henry thought so.


Good video.........

 

[Ludlow]

blackloaf doesn't think his hero's take dumps. Or ever pick their noses.

 

[Sal]

blackloaf doesn't think his hero's take dumps. Or ever pick their noses.

well you can tell him that indeed I do :toothy1:

 

[Ludlow]

I guess we all put certain people on pedestals some time in our lives. I know I did. We create our own illusions I guess. Ole Blacky needs someone to look up to. Maybe we all do.

 

[BaalsTears]

I love Jane Seymour. She was great in Dr. Quinn, Medicine Woman.

 

[Ludlow]

I love Jane Seymour. She was great in Dr. Quinn, Medicine Woman.

I think she is very pretty. One of just a couple I've seen with two different color of eyes.

 

[Blackleaf]

Personally responsible for the death of two of his own wives,

The first for adultery, incest and witchcraft and the second for adultery. They were responsible for their own downfall and death.

he is said to have ordered the execution of up to 72,000 Britons.

Bullcrap. A wildly exaggerated number. It only takes an ounce of commonsense to know that that's just downright false.

Regarding Henry (and his bodycount)

If in doubt, resort to a cheap Carry On reference​

For once I’m going to respond to something right up to date – a claim on the nonetheless excellent and thoroughly entertaining (if somewhat ghoulish) ‘Execution of the Day‘ blog that King Henry VIII, famous for killing all his wives (two of them actually), also had executed 72,000 of his subjects. In its defence, they do say that it came from ‘reality’ TV programme ‘Big Brother’, although you might think that this would be reason enough to reject it out of hand.

Except it’s not really an up to date claim. It’s been doing the rounds since the 16th century, and is practically received knowledge. But more on that in a moment, as I like to subject these things to the old bullsh*t ‘smell test’. How plausible is the claim?

Well, the English population in 1550 was around 2,800,000. 72,000 is 2.6% of the population – more than the percentage of the US population killed in the American Civil War, for example. That’s 2000 people a day on average – the equivalent of a large scale set-piece medieval battle. In fact, 72,000 deaths is more than twice the number of deaths than occurred in the bloodiest battle in English history (Towton; March 1461). And I think the battle analogy is appropriate, because you’d be talking about a majority of physically able males – precisely the sort of people required to keep a strained post-medieval economy and fluctuating birth-rate going (bearing in mind that we aren’t just talking ‘capital’ crimes here). This would surely be a massive impact upon society (for better or worse) that (to the best of my knowledge) we just don’t see evidence of in the historical record. More than just one chronicler would have noticed a death toll of that nature. But more than that there’s the logistical difficulty of getting that many people killed. The Nazis had poison gas and automatic weapons. The Tudors had archery, arquebuses, and artillery. Then there’s the expense of (for the sake of argument) firing several people at a time out of a bombard bombard – much easier to half-starve a criminal in a disease-ridden sh*thole of a prison that he might well die in anyway.

Anyway, we’re verging on argument from incredulity, so let’s look at the evidence. This work has already been done, by James Anthony Froude and mid-19th century contributors to Notes and Queries. To summarise, the figure of 72,000 is usually (even today) attributed to chronicler Holinshed, but incorrectly so (a sure sign of a lack of primary source checking by those perpetuating a claim). The figure is sometimes disputed on the basis that said author was writing some 30 years after Henry’s death, but in fact by historical standards, that’s still a primary source. It’s actually William Harrison’s ‘Description of England‘ that the claim appears;

“Henry the Eighth, executing his laws very severely against such idle persons, I mean, great thieves, petty thieves, and rogues, did hang up threescore-and-twelve thousand of them in his time.”

Note that far from decrying Henry’s brutality, Harrison is actually approving of the idea, due to a perceived rise in crime at the time of writing (despite 3-400 crims still being executed by his own estimation!). This is a bit like pining for the days of Margaret Thatcher, but ironically this hard-line criminal justice angle isn’t the origin of the claim. Thanks to Harrison giving his sources, we see that, via astrologer Girolamo Cardano, the source is actually the Bishop of Lisieux. Now, I don’t need to tell you that bishop is a Catholic post. Nor should I that Henry’s relationship with the Pope was not the most cordial. But if I also told you also that the claim by this bishop is often given as being 72,000 Catholics, and not “thieves and rogues”, you might get a sense of the bias bound up in this myth. Note also an Irish Republican who states that the figure has been “computed” in order to lend it extra weight.

What if I then told you that the bishop in question was the brother of one of King Henry’s sworn enemies – the Admiral of France who led the same failed invasion of England that also saw the loss of Henry’s flagship, the Mary Rose? Between the personal, national, and denominational angst that the bish must have held toward Henry, we have more than enough bias to have serious concerns over the figure given.

There is also the extreme unreliability of figures in individual historical sources in general. It’s rare for historians to go with a single claimed figure for anything because of an awareness of this tendency to over-estimate numbers – people were not, for one thing, aware of the population of the country at the time. Take battle casualties – which are routinely re-assessed at much lower totals, sometimes even 50% lower. Or, as the Notes and Queries link relates, the number of churches in England was overestimated by fives times the actual figure. In short, we cannot take this source on face value.

Now, let’s qualify this debunking somewhat: Henry absolutely did have people killed for being Catholic – amongst other things – and directly or indirectly, must have been responsible for a lot of deaths. In the best (or worst) traditions of English monarchs, he also killed lots of French people – as the source of this piece of propaganda would have been all too aware! By today’s standards, he was bloodthirsty, and although he was not responsible for killing that many people, it may not have been for want of trying – the implication of Froude’s research is that the laws enacted during Henry’s reign were actually too harsh and were unworkable, ironically (and unintentionally) saving lives. But whatever the truth, this is why we need to critically examine sources in order to make reasonable judgements of figures from history, without being blinded by our evolved sense of morality and social justice.


https://bshistorian.wordpress.com/2009/07/09/regarding-henry-and-his-bodycount/