Six Wives with Lucy Worsley

Divorced, beheaded, died.

Divorced, beheaded, survived.

The story of Henry VIII and his six wives

is one of the best-known in history.

There's Katherine of Aragon, the bitter, abandoned first wife.

Anne Boleyn, the original other woman.

Jane Seymour, bit of a doormat.

Then you've got Anne of Cleves, she was the ugly one.

Katherine Howard, the one who slept around.

And Katherine Parr, the saintly nurse.

But I'm going to tell you a very different story.

I'm going to take you back in time

and into the private lives of Henry's six wives.

I'm going to see the story from their point of view.

And I'll watch as events unfold.

The fate of my soul is no longer your concern.

It will always be my concern.

These events all really happened

and were recorded in historical documents, or reported

by eyewitnesses.

I asked for his head.

Not his coat.

They reveal six complex women who lived in a dangerous age,

as they struggle to survive being married to Henry VIII.

You are still prepared to question me?

Six wives whose names were tarnished by Henry's propaganda machine.

Six Queens whose stories I want to re-examine.

Is she here?

I'll observe their life at court.

I'll watch them romanced by a charismatic king...

Tell me you want the same. Always.

.. who craves the company of women.

The King is a very sociable man.

I have here a warrant for the arrest of Queen Katherine.

I'll see how their reputations are destroyed.

I beg of you to tell the king that my heart is filled with sorrow

and assure him of my repentance.

And lives cut short at the hands of a ruthless, brutal man.

Six children born.

Five of them dead!

This is the ultimate true story of love, lust, and betrayal.

Remember what happened to my last wife and queen.

Henry VIII's loyal first wife Katherine of Aragon

tried desperately to give the king a male heir.

I am afraid she has suffered a loss of the child.

Get out!

Mary? Mother?

After losing five children, she had a daughter, Mary.

But her failure to give him a son angered her husband.

He began to look elsewhere.

Sent from Anne Boleyn with her kindest regards, your Majesty.

Henry became infatuated with Anne Boleyn.

And he made her a promise that one day she would be his queen.

The storm shall pass.

If she has patience enough.

Or the will to see it through.

But he already had a queen.

I have been a true, humble and obedient wife.

Henry was determined to marry Anne.

But two people stood in his way.

The Pope, and Katherine herself...

who had no intention of giving up her crown.

The King has been trying to end his marriage

for more than two years.

Increasingly impatient,

he's now moved Anne Boleyn into the royal palace at Greenwich,

forcing Katherine of Aragon to live side-by-side with his mistress.

You are my one true husband.

You brought me here under false pretences.

I assumed it was to discuss a specific legal matter.

Not to be caught up in this futile, repetitious debate.

You, sir, face eternal damnation.

Not only of your own soul, but all of your subjects.

You cannot defy the Church in this way.

The fate of my soul is no longer your concern.

It will always be my concern.

You are no longer Queen. Accept this.

Your Majesty. My Lord.

How was your meeting?

Brief.

And the last of its kind.

It's 1530.

One of the stranger moments in English history,

because the country's got two queens.

One of them, Katherine of Aragon, is the crowned Queen of England,

and lawful wife of Henry VIII.

The other, Anne Boleyn.

No Tudor woman has been mythologised as much as Anne Boleyn.

She's been accused of being a seductress, an adulteress...

even a witch.

And because she was the other woman in a previously happy marriage,

she's had a pretty harsh press from historians.

It's the oldest cliche in the world.

A sexy young thing worming her way into a man's heart,

and pushing out his loyal first wife.

True, Anne was clever, and she was ambitious,

but she also had little choice,

because as soon as Henry set eyes on her,

he had to have her.

Where Anne was different from earlier mistresses

is that she set the terms, by refusing to sleep with him.

This only made Henry even keener.

He thought that Anne could give him everything that he wanted,

including a son and heir,

which poor old Katherine could no longer do.

To Henry's mind she was now old, and past her best.

She may once have been his warrior queen,

but now she was a bitter queen,

standing between him and happiness.

Henry decided to send Katherine away from court.

He moved her and their 12-year-old daughter, Princess Mary,

to Windsor Castle.

So where was Henry?

Well, he was off with Anne Boleyn.

They were travelling about, staying in people's houses, going hunting,

having dinner, acting just like a married couple.

Except for the fact they weren't having sex.

Now, Henry was in love with Anne, but his subjects weren't.

To them, Anne was "the other woman".

When she appeared in public, there was hooting and hissing,

and some people called her "the King's goggle-eyed whore".

There's a story from round about this time which shows just how much

Anne was vilified.

She was having dinner down by the River Thames

when she was set upon by a mob of angry women.

We're told that there were between 7,000 and 8,000 of them.

So many that Anne had to escape by boat.

Now I don't think it's particularly plausible

that THAT many women all went after Anne at the same time.

But the story does show how much the people of England hated her.

Katherine, though, remained hugely popular.

Henry would need to get rid of her for good.

He sent word that he and Anne were coming to Windsor to hunt,

and that Katherine would have to move again.

And painfully for Katherine,

he decided to split up mother and daughter.

Katherine will never be allowed to return.

And what's worse, she's not allowed to take the Princess Mary with her.

She will never see her daughter again.

The final humiliation will come

when Katherine is ordered to give back the Queen's crown jewels,

so that Henry can give them to Anne.

The Queen was unceremoniously removed from Windsor

and sent to the abbey at St Albans.

Mary was sent to Richmond Palace.

After 22 years of marriage, the King didn't even say goodbye.

All this was calculated to cause her maximum hurt

and deliberately to insult her.

This is something Henry did a lot.

He dodged problems.

With him, it was out of sight, out of mind.

He sent Katherine into exile

so that he wouldn't have to deal with her any more.

After all, when they had arguments face to face, she always won.

She was much cleverer than he was.

But nevertheless, she remained his legal wife.

With Katherine out of the way,

Anne agreed to consummate their relationship.

Henry had been waiting for seven long years for this moment.

And they both knew that if Anne got pregnant, he would have to marry her

and make her Queen of England so that any heir that she might produce

would be born legitimate.

However, there was still one man standing in their way...

the head of the Catholic Church.

After more than five years, the Pope was still refusing

to grant an annulment.

Fortunately for Henry, though, times were changing.

A religious revolution was unfolding in Europe.

A rift was opening up between the old traditional form

of Christianity, Catholicism, with the Pope at its head,

and a new stripped-back form of Christianity called Protestantism.

The clue to Protestantism lies in its name.

It was originally a protest movement

against the excesses of the Catholic Church.

Religious reformers wanted to change the way that people worshipped God,

with services held in their own native languages, not in Latin,

and churches led by themselves, not by Rome.

Anne was a strong supporter of this movement for reform,

and Henry too began to see how this might work in his favour.

He could be the head of his own church.

The new religion had many practical advantages to offer him.

So he joined this wider movement to cut out the Pope,

a movement that would allow people to decide for themselves

what God wanted them to do.

And Henry decided that God wanted him to leave his wife.

So he chose to ignore the Pope and to marry Anne.

It's January the 25th, 1533.

And a wedding has been hastily arranged.

You look breathtaking, my lady.

Thank you.

We should make our way.

I can't seem to stop.

It's to be expected.

Particularly if the entire kingdom harbours hatred towards me.

No. No, my lady.

The King is waiting.

We must go.

We must.

So why is Henry getting married so secretively?

I'd call it furtive to do it at dawn in such a small ceremony.