Jane Seymour and Anna of Cleves, the Wives with Afterlives

The Six Wives of Henry VIII: Personality and Politics

Join us, online, as we welcome back Carol Ann Lloyd with another new series of talks.

Jane Seymour and Anna of Cleves, the Wives with Afterlives

After nearly three decades on the throne, Henry VIII was desperate for a son and heir—and Jane Seymour delivered. Her role as the mother of his only son is how Henry memorialized Jane, inserting her into a family picture nearly a decade after her death. But what more do we know about Jane? Although she’s often described as meek and mild, the anti-Anne Boleyn, Jane was deliberate in her pursuit of the king and the crown. She’s more complicated than we often think.

After Jane’s death, Henry sought a new wife quickly, but it took him more than two years to find someone who would agree to marry him. Eventually Anna of Cleves, sister of the Duke of Cleves and the only woman Henry didn’t pick for himself, became wife number four. She has earned the nickname “Flander’s Mare” (something Henry himself did NOT call her) and it’s often thought her looks turned the king against her. But when she arrived in England she didn’t know how to play the court games the king loved. Even so, Anna learned the rules quickly and, when Henry asked her for an annulment, managed to receive a generous settlement and live out his reign as the King’s Sister and survive into the reign of Mary I.

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