The mnemonic for the fates of Henry VIII's six wives, in order, is the four-word rhyme:
Catherine of Aragon (divorced, after a 24-year marriage and the political crisis that broke England from Rome), Anne Boleyn (beheaded for fabricated adultery, 1536), Jane Seymour (died of postpartum complications, 1537), Anne of Cleves (divorced after six months because Henry didn't like the look of her), Catherine Howard (beheaded for actual adultery, 1542, at age 18 or 19), and Catherine Parr (outlived him, married someone else, died 1548). Henry himself died at Whitehall on 28 January 1547, aged 55. None were burned — execution by burning was for heretics, not queens.
Read the full facts →Henry VIII (1491–1547) was King of England from 1509 to 1547, the second Tudor monarch, and one of the most consequential figures of 16th-century European history. His six marriages, his break with the Roman Catholic Church to obtain a divorce, and his consequent founding of the Church of England produced the English Reformation and the constitutional separation of church and state in England.
Related questions
- Anne Boleyn was Henry VIII's second wife. The marriage produced one daughter (the future Elizabeth I) and ended after three years. How did Anne die?
- In 1326 the Queen of England raised a small army in the Low Countries, invaded her husband's kingdom, deposed him, and ran the country for three years with her lover. The husband was Edward II. The queen was?
- William the Conqueror's Norman army defeated the Anglo-Saxon king Harold at the Battle of Hastings, founding the English political-administrative tradition that the modern British monarchy descends from. What year?
- Oliver Cromwell ran England after the execution of Charles I in 1649. What title did he hold from 1653 onward — and did he ever accept the offer to become king?