Do you think Henry VIII loved any of his wives?

[TheCactus1]

Do you think Henry VIII was actually in love with any of his wives? I know marriages at this time were often not for love but more to secure wealth and Henry VIII seemed to view his wives as disposable, but do you think he actually ever loved any of them at any point? Some have said he genuinely loved Jane Seymour but I wonder if this was just because she gave him a son?

@Kanaloa

I was replying to the comment that the parent/child bond in that period was quite different to what it is now, then I went on to say I agreed with that.

Oh, I follow you. Sorry, I should have made my response less general really - I have issues with the general point, which is all over the thread.

I don't see how you could know the parent/child bond was different? I mean, sure, maybe, but probably in quite complicated ways?

Kathryn of Aragon had 3 sons -- 1 or 2 stillborn & Duke Henry who died about 6 weeks old of unknown cause(s).

Well for example I mentioned being surprised at Marie-Adelaide’s comment that she didn’t like to visit her son too often as she ‘didn’t want to get too attached.’ I would be really surprised to hear anybody saying that nowadays. Or, for example, the many people whose children were sent away to be ‘fostered’ at a very young age by others, which was common at the time but would be unusual now unless the family was in crisis.

Of course I can’t know for sure that it was different, it was my opinion. The thread is pretty speculative but I think it’s clear that many things that are commonplace now were not then. As you mentioned, wet nursing which was common then would be extremely unusual now in modern Britain.

There was probably genuine love and attraction between Henry and Katherine of Aragon at some point. He did have respect for her early on and trusted her to handle matters of state in his absence. A man as devious and above the law as Henry could have also got rid of her in many appalling ways, as he later did with Anne Boleyn and Catherine Howard, but he chose to end the marriage formally and provide for her.

Anne of Cleves became a friend to Henry in his later years and the two wrote to one another as "brother" and "sister". Once the sexual tension between them had been removed, they seemed to understand each other much better.

Jane Seymour would have probably become boring to him had she not died so young.

@Wheretoeattweenandteen

Are the philipa Gregory books any good? Is this where people are getting their Intel?

They are very readable, but they do get quite a lot of criticism for being historically inaccurate.

Very enjoyable though and give you a good sense of everything if you then want to dig deeper into the facts.

Sure, but does wet nursing not being common mean the parent/child bond was different?

Likewise, does someone saying they don't want to get attached necessarily prove their emotion is different from ours - because it might be she felt able to express herself like that, but she felt the same as us, where it'd be frowned upon to say that?

I think it's similar to the debate about romantic love. These days, in my culture, it would be really unusual to say you weren't 100% sure you loved your partner when you married them. People would judge you. My friend, who comes from a culture where arranged marriages are quite common, doesn't have the same cultural taboo. I am not sure that proves we actually feel differently about people we love, just that we're culturally invited to express ourselves differently.

Trouble is, you can't judge all parents then by what documents survive. If my mates' and my fb pages were analysed in 400 years time, and only mine survived future generations would think 21c parents had v difficult relationships with their children. And swore a lot.

It's my pet hate in essays:'in Elizabethan times, all men were twats. Which is why they hated lady m.'

@SarahAndQuack "germs" is my word, Elizabeth I and baby Henry who died were given their own households away from the Court at a very early age. Maybe there was another reason but the most likely one is to avoid disease.

There’s no standardised Tudor spelling! Anne Boleyn is referred to as Nan Bullen at times. Shakespeare famously spelled his own name half a dozen different ways on the legal documents that survive with his signature on. Not sure why some posters are getting so het up on Catherine/Katherine/Katharine. They probably spelt them all the various ways as the fancy took them.

Oh, and I’d be Anne of Cleves, for sure. Catherine of Aragon was his love, I think, but the last part of her life was miserable and humiliating. Anne Boleyn, obviously not. Jane, dying in childbed, no thanks. Poor Katherine Howard, executed as little more than a child. And Katherine Parr lived a very interesting life and was undoubtedly very intelligent but she’s another who comes to an untimely end in childbirth after Henry’s death. By all accounts Cleve’s life was comfortable and secure once she was over the initial embarrassment of the divorce.

[quote BalloonSlayer]@SarahAndQuack "germs" is my word, Elizabeth I and baby Henry who died were given their own households away from the Court at a very early age. Maybe there was another reason but the most likely one is to avoid disease.[/quote]
It would be prestige, I think, but ok, yes, I'm sure they did realise crowded cities weren't healthy for little children.

@Bells3032 yes, I agree, although I do think she found what was happening untoward.
If there had been such a concept then Howard would have received professional help, not execution!

Well yes I would say that the relationship would have been different if the child was raised mostly by nannies and nurses than if the parent raised them.

It doesn’t mean the parent didn’t love the child or didn’t feel the same as we do, but the overall relationship would be different in a child who had not spent much time around their parent, with nannies and nurses doing daily care like meals, bedtime, etc, seeing the parent only for ‘visits’ compared to one whose parent performs daily care for them.

However that’s just my opinion. I’m happy to disagree.

Sorry, I didn't mean to make you feel cross-examined!

..... anyone have the lyrics to "six" in their heads now?

[quote BalloonSlayer]@SarahAndQuack "germs" is my word, Elizabeth I and baby Henry who died were given their own households away from the Court at a very early age. Maybe there was another reason but the most likely one is to avoid disease.[/quote]
Yes, the did fear germs, albeit not knowing the word for them.

I believe this is one of the reasons they would keep all windows closed during a woman's confinement, not understanding that giving them room a good airing out would actually be better.

The first 2. But once he discovered he could get rid of wives so easily from there on out it was all very different. I think he would have tired of Jane Seymour, she was a rebound and mostly prized for being different to Anne Boleyn. I think Anne was his great love.

@banisher

I think every generation likes to think that they invented love. It's so arrogant.

Of course people in the old days fell in love, and loved their children. We wouldn't have endless graves, poems, diaries saying it otherwise.

This

No, really, they did not have a germ theory of illness. They understood concepts of 'contagion,' but not in the sense of germs.

I think it's a bit unfair to sneer at them keeping windows closed during a woman's confinement. A major cause of death in childbed is puerperal fever, which is not the result of not airing rooms: it's infection transmitted by lack of a germ theory of illness and a lack of antibiotics.

On the plus side, keeping windows closed would keep the room warm and dark and quiet, which probably would have quite a bit of benefit in terms of providing a good environment in which to labour.

A couple of years ago I watched a documentary called "The She-Wolves of England", and one of the things it brought home was how incredibly bright and cunning aristocratic women had to be just to survive in those days - they were little more than pawns. To not only survive but thrive was remarkable.

I remember that being good - there's one about Margaret Beaufort I think by Sky or Channel 5 which was good - it went through how she went from a widowed 13 mother to putting her son on the throne of England - and all the set backs she went through and and the huge risks she took.

There doesn't tend to be much focus on her but she was the reason the Tudors ended up on the throne at all.

Perhaps Jayne Seymour

Yes, the did fear germs, albeit not knowing the word for them.
I think it was the miasma theory of infection that was current in Tudor times; that disease was carried in the air. They didn't know that e.g. cholera is caused by infected water.
Royal and noble children were certainly sent away from cities to avoid disease – the plague was a summer regular. And kings' and queens' summer progress around the country was partly designed to get them lots of fresh air, as well as an opportunity for staff at all the palaces to air them out.

@L1ttleSeahorse

..... anyone have the lyrics to "six" in their heads now?

Yes.

"Sitting here all alone...
On a throne...
In a palace that I happen to own..."

I'm pretty sure Jane Seymour was put in her place politically by Henry when there was a northern uprising and she asked for pardons - and was reportly told to rememeber her predecessors fate when she meddled in his affairs - which doesn't sound very loving.

So I'm not sure she had the influenced over him and power that katherine of Argon or even Anne Boleyn did though perhaps that would have changed if she'd lived. He also only had coronations for his first two wives but whether that was lack of love or just poltics I don't know.

I thought they knew they had to quarantine ships to stop the plague so they must have a crude understanding about how illness was spread from one person to another? Although I might be wrong.

They knew about contagion - the theatres and bear pits were closed in the summer as it was plague season, and the monarch would do a royal tour around the country mansions of his/her Lords at the same time to get out of London. No concept of germs/bacteria though, more a vague thought of bad smells (“miasma”) spreading disease, which persisted into the nineteenth century.