The Death of Catherine of Aragon and the Fall of Anne Boleyn

 The Death of Catherine of Aragon and the Fall of Anne Boleyn

Today is the anniversary of the death in 1536 of Catherine of Aragon, first wife of King Henry VIII and before that the wife of his brother Arthur (d. 1502), she having been put aside so that Henry could marry Anne Boleyn.  Catherine’s death at minimum contributed to and by some assessments precipitated Anne’s fall.

After the death of his older brother Arthur, who had married Catherine in 1501, for a variety of reasons including an unwillingness to return to Catherine her dowry and a desire to continue the linkage of the upstart Tudors to the united (and rich) crowns of Aragon and Castile, justified in part by Deuteronomy 25:5-10 and Genesis 38:8, Henry married Catherine.  

While Catherine became pregnant several times, only one child survived infancy, that being Mary.  Henry could not allow the succession to be imperiled thru no male heir (his illegitimate son Henry FitzRoy was not a viable candidate for the throne; the Tudor claim to legitimacy already being tainted by succession through the female line), so he began casting about for alternatives.  Focusing upon Leviticus 18:16 and 20:21 he asserted the marriage was in violation of canon law, and for that reason had been cursed as evidenced by the lack of male children. In doing so he conveniently ignored the fact that a Papal dispensation has been issued specifically sanctioning the marriage, that dispensation necessary as Henry (and Arthur before him) was related (distantly but within the otherwise prohibited degree) to Catherine.  Cutting to the chase Henry installed the (as to this matter) obsequious Cranmer as Archbishop of Canterbury, who at his consecration manifestly violated his oaths, who then declared the marriage of Catherine and Henry illegitimate. 

Through much of these machinations Anne Boleyn was waiting about.  She was the daughter of Thomas Boleyn, courtier and based on the record a dedicated social climber, and the niece of Thomas Howard, the Duke of Norfolk and a leading magnate. Anne’s older sister Mary (cite The Other Boleyn Girl to me as evidence Anne was older and … well I don’t know but it will not be pleasant) had been Henry’s mistress and Anne committed to not be in that role.  In 1533, while visibly pregnant, Anne and Henry were married; she was pregnant with Elizabeth, later Queen Elizabeth.

But then Anne had trouble getting again pregnant and suffered a number of miscarriages. Historian Retha Warnicke has made the case that Anne and Henry had rH incompatibility such that the first pregnancy could come to term but subsequent pregnancies would miscarry.

So Henry is still at first base; all of his legitimate children were girls and he needed a male heir.  Meanwhile he had the itch of knowing he married Anne after an illegitimate “divorce” (technically it was an annulment) from Catherine to the effect the marriage to Anne was itself illegitimate.  And here Henry could go back to his playbook - just as the defective marriage to Catherine had not produced a male heir so too had the marriage to Anne.  What more proof could be needed?

Catherine’s death would now precipitate Anne’s fall; with Catherine dead Henry could have the marriage to Anne set aside (the compliant Cranmer issued that decree) and as his former spouse Catherine was no longer of this world he could move on to a new marriage, this time to Jane Seymour, untainted by a hint of bigamy. And just to make sure there would be no lingering doubts Anne’s departure from this world would be accomplished by the sword of the Calais executioner after a farcical show trial of Anne and a bevy of others Henry and Cromwell wanted removed. Henry had the common decency to wait 12 days after Anne’s execution to marry Jane Seymour.  She would die of complications of the birth of the future Edward VI, who would die childless, leading to the reign of Mary Tudor (a/k/a Bloody Mary in the terminology of the English protestants) and then Elizabeth, she being the last Tudor on the English throne.

The best (by far) biography of Anne Boleyn is that by Eric Ives, The Life and Death of Anne Boleyn: 'The Most Happy'.  Garrett Mattingly’s Catherine  of Aragon and Giles Tremlett’s  Catherine of Aragon: Henry's Spanish Queen are both well done (although not nearly as in-depth as Ives’ Boleyn). The definitive treatment of the legal aspects of Henry’s efforts to divorce Catherine is the long out-of-print but now republished as in the public domain The King’s Great Matter:  A Study of Anglo-Papal Relations, 1527-1534 (de Clinton Parmiter).