6 Mothers-In-Law Of Henry Viii

The Six Mothers-in-Law of Henry VIII Thank you to Send A Cake for sponsoring this video. They say the apple doesn't fall far from the tree, and in the case of the six most famous wives in history, it's true. Catherine, Anne, Jane, Anne, Catherine, and Catherine again all had mothers who greatly influenced them and played important roles in their dramatic lives. Some of them weren't too fond of their murderous son-in-law. Let's meet the six mamas of the six wives of Henry VIII, and find out if it really is like mother, like daughter. Isabel I, Queen of Castile, Madre de Catherine of Aragon, often called Isabella in English, she was born in 1451 to King Juan I of Castile and his second wife, Isabel of Portugal. Juan had four children from his first marriage, but only one, his adult son Enrique, was alive when Isabel and her brother Alfonso were born. When their father died and Enrique IV inherited the throne, he sent his stepmother and half-siblings to a dilapidated castle, where they often went hungry, but their mother educated them well. When Isabel was 11, Enrique called his siblings to court to witness the birth of his first child, Juana. The king tried to keep his siblings hidden from the public, but clever Isabel was well aware of what was going on. Nobles were dissatisfied with Enrique's inept rule. They also suspected that the king who was the impotent was not baby Juana's real father. Rebels started a civil war and crowned Alfonso as a rival king, but five years into the conflict, he died of the plague. Isabel became the new champion of the rebellion. The wise 17-year-old decided to try at diplomacy. She met with her brother and made a compromise that she would end the rebellion in exchange for being named heir to the throne, but Enrique would get a say in who she married. Isabel was renowned for her wisdom, modesty, honesty, religious devotion, and beauty. Numerous royals vied for her hand, but her brother wanted to sell her off to a wealthy nobleman 28 years her senior. The princess was horrified, but her prayers were answered when the don died on his way to the wedding. Twice more, the king attempted to marry his sister off to decrepit political allies. Finally, Isabel decided to engineer her own matrimonial alliance with a man her own age, her second cousin, Fernando, heir to the neighboring kingdom of Aragon. She told Enrique that she was going to visit their brother's tomb, but instead she met Fernando, who had crossed the Fernando was a shrewd politician and military commander, with an intellect that could match his brides. In 1474, King Enrique died, and Isabel became Queen of Castile and León. King Alfonso V of Portugal invaded, married Juana, and claimed the kingdom in her name. But Isabel and Fernando managed to defeat him. In 1479, Fernando inherited the throne of Aragon. The couple kept each kingdom politically separate, but ruled over both equally in a personal union, which sowed the seeds for the kingdom of Spain. They had seven children, five of whom survived infancy, Isabel, Juan, Juana, Maria, and Catherine. As queen, Isabel repaired numerous domestic problems left by her brother's incompetent rule. She enforced the law and put thousands of robbers and murderers to death. She demanded full payment for land her brother had sold for a song, and reorganized the government by replacing lackadaisical nobles with skilled and able men. The Catholic monarchs further consolidated power through a compromise with Rome. They made Catholicism the national religion in exchange for the right to name all church officials, who would of course be loyal to them. In order to enforce this new official religion, they began a little something nobody expected, the Spanish Inquisition. Spain had a large and wealthy Jewish population, but they had become scapegoats for recent outbreaks of the plague. Isabel and Fernando ordered all Jews to either convert or surrender their wealth and leave. About half of the 80,000 Spanish Jews fled. Those who remained were known as conversos, and were under constant suspicion as to the solemnity of their new faith. The bloody Inquisition lasted for three centuries. Over 150,000 people were tortured, and 5,000 were put to death. For centuries, Christian kings had been battling with Muslim sultans for control of the Iberian Peninsula. In 1482, the Catholic monarchs invaded Granada, the last Muslim stronghold. It was protected by mountains and rough coastline, but with the best artillery money could buy, they chipped away at it for 10 years. Isabel and Fernando entered Granada in 1492 and consecrated the mosque as a church. 1492 was a big year for them. A few months later, they sponsored Italian explorer Christopher Columbus in his expedition to find a western route to the East Indies. They hoped to profit from the valuable spice trade with Asia. Columbus returned the following year. He hadn't found a passage to the Indies, but an entirely new continent. He presented gold and enslaved indigenous Americans to his sponsors, who eagerly launched the age of exploration and colonization. Millions of atrocities and deaths would ensue. As their children grew, Isabel and Fernando married them off to secure their dynasty. They wed their eldest daughter Isabel to King Manuel I of Portugal, but she died giving birth to a son, Miguel, who died at two. King Manuel then married his dead wife's younger sister, Maria. She gave birth to 10 children, then died of exhaustion at 34. The Spanish monarchs made an important alliance with Holy Roman Emperor Maximilian I through a double wedding between their son and heir, Juan and Margaret of Austria, and their daughter Juana to Philip the Handsome. Juan died shortly after the wedding. Isabel never recovered from the deaths of her children. She wore black and withdrew from public affairs. Her youngest child, Catherine, was said to resemble her the most in both looks and temperament. In 1501, the 16-year-old princess bid her family farewell and sailed to England to wed Prince Arthur. Catherine would never see her parents again, but she wrote to them often. She asked for her mother's advice after her young husband died of the sweating sickness, and she was left widowed in an unfamiliar country. Isabel's letters comforted Catherine and gave her the strength to stay in England and pursue a betrothal to the new heir, Prince Henry. Catherine was devastated when she received word that her mother had died at the age of 53. Isabel was buried in Capilla Real in Granada. Her eldest surviving daughter, Juana, inherited Castile and stood to inherit Aragon from her father. But Fernando greatly exaggerated her mental illness in order to keep her and Castile under his control. Fernando's primary interest was his own gain, thus he refused to financially support his widowed daughter in England. Though Catherine no longer had her mother's backing, she had learned strength and conviction at the Great Queen's Knee. She personally negotiated with her father-in-law, Henry VII, as the first female ambassador in Europe. Eventually it paid off. In 1509, handsome Henry VIII inherited the throne and promptly married his Spanish sister-in-law. Isabel of Castile wasn't around to celebrate her daughter becoming Queen of England, or to console her at the loss of five babies and the breakdown of her 24-year marriage. But it was the unerring Catholic faith and belief in her own royal dignity which Isabel had instilled in her daughter that propelled Catherine to refuse to accept a quiet annulment. Without Isabel, the reformation of the Church of England might never have happened. Elizabeth Howard, Countess of Wiltshire, mother of Anne Boleyn, was born around 1480. Her father was Sir Thomas Howard, Duke of Norfolk, and her mother was wealthy heiress Elizabeth Tilney, Countess of Surrey. Both were prominent at the court of Richard III. Elizabeth was just five years old when the king was killed at the Battle of Bosworth. The Howard family might have fallen hard, but they quickly proved themselves loyal to the new king, Henry VII, and carried on at the Tudor court. Henry was keen to fill his government with men who possessed intelligence and merit, rather than just noble blood. This was the perfect opportunity for Thomas Boleyn, a bright courtier from a family on the rise. Around 1498, he wed Elizabeth. She served as a lady-in-waiting to both Queens Elizabeth of York and then Catherine of Aragon. Elizabeth was pregnant at least six times, but only three, Mary, Anne, and George, survived. All of the children were delivered at the Boleyn estate, Blickling Hall. In 1505, Thomas inherited Hever Castle, which was more convenient to London. Thomas and Elizabeth had demanding jobs at court, so the children were often left at Hever in the care of a nurse. Elizabeth was beautiful and popular. Years later, there were rumors that she'd had an affair with Prince Henry, and that her daughter Anne had been fathered by him. But Henry was at most 15 when Anne was born, and this was more likely just slander against unpopular Anne. Elizabeth taught her daughters to speak French, play chess, read poetry, play instruments, sing, dance, and perform archery, falconry, riding, and hunting, all skills which would help them contract noble marriages and bolster the family's prestige. Eldest daughter, Mary, was a bit of a sheep. When her father got the opportunity to send one of his daughters to Holland to serve as maid of honor to Archduchess Margaret of Austria, Juan of Aragon's widow, the younger daughter, 11-year-old Anne, was chosen. Mary eventually got to leave home and join her sister at the French court to serve Queen Claude. Mary was rather promiscuous. She even had an affair with King Francois I. Her father tried to get her under control by moving her back to England to wed a respectable courtier. There she began an affair with King Henry VIII. Elizabeth and Thomas strongly disapproved of Mary's behavior, and grew to dislike their daughter, even as she gave birth to two children who may have been fathered by King Henry. Elizabeth was much closer to Anne. When the king moved on to proposition the younger Boleyn's sister, Anne was determined not to become a discarded mistress like her sister. She politely but firmly refused the king, and her mother became her protective chaperone. Elizabeth took Anne away from court, and when Henry pursued them to the countryside, her mother watched the king's interactions with her daughter like a hawk, and made sure Henry kept his filthy paws off Anne's silky draws. For seven long years, mother and daughter played hard to get. They kept Henry out of Anne's chemise, but still obsessed with her. He appealed to the pope, and then split with the church in order to separate from Catherine and wed Anne. When Anne was finally crowned queen, few were more elated than her mother. Meanwhile, the whole family shunned Mary when she chose to wed a penniless knight for love. Anne eventually sent her sister some money for her children, but Mary never reconciled with her family. Elizabeth served in Anne's royal household, and attended her during the birth of her daughter, Elizabeth. The baby was officially named after Henry's long-dead mother, Queen Elizabeth of York, but Anne likely privately intended to honor her own mother as well. Unfortunately, a daughter wasn't what the king had moved heaven and earth for. Anne suffered a miscarriage, and Henry grew impatient for a son, and frustrated with his wife's strong personality, which he'd once found so alluring. After just three years of marriage, Anne was charged with adultery and incest with her brother George, accusations which were undoubtedly fabricated. But the king wanted her gone, so Anne and George both lost their heads in the Tower of London. Elizabeth was devastated by the deaths of her two favorite children, and the annihilation of her family's ambitions. She and Thomas were no longer welcome at court, and retired to the countryside. Elizabeth died two years later, at 58, Thomas one year after that. Elizabeth was buried at St. Mary's Church, Lambeth. She did not live to see her daughter's legacy redeemed by the accession of her granddaughter and namesake, Queen Elizabeth I. Henry VIII was about the worst in-law a mother could get. If you want to do better by your own mother-in-law, don't execute her child, and give her a wonderful gift from Cinda Cake. I gave my mom the sassy flower shower box. Everyone was thrilled by the exploding flowers and fun music. Cinda Cake is a unique fun holiday gift idea your special someone will never forget, and it's not just for mamas. Cinda Cake has cute and creative options for graduations, birthdays, anniversaries, holidays, or whatever special occasion you're celebrating. Visit CindaCake.com to order an unforgettable gift for your loved one, and use my discount code HOLIDAY10 to get 10% off. Lady Marjorie Wentworth, mother of Jane Seymour, was born in 1478 into a prominent gentry family. Her father, Henry Wentworth, was a distant descendant of King Edward III. He defended Henry VII during an uprising in 1489 and was rewarded by being named Sheriff of Yorkshire. His wife, Anne Sey, was the half-sister of Elizabeth Tilney, Countess of Surrey. Through her, Jane Seymour was distantly related to both Anne Boleyn and Catherine Howard. Marjorie lost her mother when she was a child. She was sent to live in the household of There she met poet John Skelton, who waxed about her beauty, modesty, and kindness, and compared her to Primrose and Columbine. At 16, Marjorie was wed to 20-year-old Sir John Seymour. It was a double wedding with her father and his new bride, Lady Elizabeth Scrope. Marjorie and John got along well. They settled into Wolfe Hall and had ten children, six of whom survived. She educated her daughters, primarily in needlework and household management. Meanwhile, Sir John Seymour climbed the ladder at court. He was one of Henry VIII's bodyguards at the Field of Cloth of Gold. By 1532, he was promoted to a groom of the bedchamber and assisted His Majesty in the most intimate of needs. The ambitious knight took the opportunity to secure places for his two teenage daughters, Jane and Elizabeth, as maids of honor to Queen Catherine. When she was ousted, they served Queen Anne. The Seymours even hosted the King and Queen at Wolfe Hall during their annual progress. As His Majesty began to sour on his charming, willful, and demanding wife, Anne, he was increasingly drawn to the quiet, pale, and demure Jane. She took after her mother and was the Queen's opposite. It was Marjorie's small trickle of King Edward III's royal blood which made Jane an acceptable wife for a king. Marjorie's proven fertility also made Jane attractive to the monarch, who was desperate for a male heir. Henry was betrothed to Jane one day after Anne was beheaded. While Marjorie was celebrating her surprise rise to power, she was mourning her husband John, who died at the age of 62. Sixteen months after the wedding, Queen Jane thrilled the King and her family by giving birth to the long-awaited male heir, Prince Edward. Sadly, Jane did not live to enjoy the victory. She died of childbed fever nine days after giving birth. Marjorie and the rest of the Seymours mourned her. As the relatives of the heir, they were now the most powerful family in England. Marjorie was Prince Edward's only living grandparent. The Seymours' power grew when Henry VIII died in 1547 and Edward became king at nine years old. His uncle, Edward Seymour, was created Duke of Somerset. As regent to his nephew, he was the true ruler of England. His younger brother, Thomas, wed King Henry's widow, Catherine Parr, but he plotted to take the regency from his brother and tried to kidnap his nephew, so he was beheaded. This shock may have been too much for his mother, who, at 70, had already lived a remarkably long life by Tudor standards. Marjorie died the following year, surrounded by her family. She didn't live to see her son, Edward, lose his own head in another power shift, or her grandson, King Edward VI, die of illness at just 15. Marjorie was buried in St. Mary's churchyard, Wiltshire. Maria, Duchess of Jülich-Berg, Motte von Anne of Cleves, came from a long line of German princes, which included electors of Saxony and Brandenburg, and members of the Habsburg dynasty before they struck it big as Holy Roman Emperors. Her parents, Wilhelm IV, Duke of Jülich-Berg, and Sibylla of Brandenburg had so many noble guests at their wedding that the celebration had to be moved out of the castle and into an open field. The illustrious couple remained childless for 10 years. Finally, Sibylla gave birth to a daughter, Maria, in 1491. In the empire, a woman could not inherit a duchy, so five-year-old Maria was betrothed to six-year-old Johann, heir to the Duchy of Cleves. The children didn't wed for another 13 years, until they were 18 and 19. Maria's father died two years after the wedding, and Jülich-Berg was inherited by Johann, though he allowed his mother-in-law, Sibylle, to continue governing. Ten years later, Johann inherited his own father's lands, and he and his wife's realm were merged into the united duchies of Jülich-Cleves-Berg. Johann III was now the most powerful noble in Western Germany. The couple lived in Berg Castle, where Maria gave birth to four children, Sibylla, Anne, Wilhelm, and Amalia. She educated her daughters as was typical for high-born German ladies, in the Catholic faith and in practical skills needed to run a noble household. Though the Cleves court was rather serious and pragmatic, the duke was open to new ideas. Philosopher Erasmus had great influence on him. He questioned many of the same problems as Martin Luther. But while Luther started his own Protestant church, Erasmus wanted to reform the Catholic church from within. The growing religious conflict across Germany was echoed in the Cleves family. Maria remained a devout Catholic, while her son, Wilhelm, became a Lutheran. The daughters were somewhere in the middle. Eldest daughter Sibylla was 15 when she wed the Elector of Saxony in a lavish wedding. Anne and her sister Amalia remained at home long after most noble ladies were married off. When they were 25 and 23, an opportunity arose to wed them to the newly widowed and newly Protestant King Henry VIII of England. He sent his court painter Hans Holbein around Europe to capture the likenesses of several eligible princesses. Both Cleves' sisters were sketched, and Henry, after being turned down by several other candidates, decided he liked the looks of Anne. Her father Johann died in the middle of the nuptial negotiations, and her brother, now Duke Willem, took over. Duchess Maria loved her daughter very much, and was loathed to see her depart, especially to marry a man who had abandoned and executed his previous spouses. But politics came before maternal affection. Maria bid her beloved daughter farewell as she set sail for England. She learned in letters of how Anne had displeased Henry. He preferred quick-witted women who could spar with him intellectually, but always let him win. Anne had very little education, and spoke only a few words of English. The 49-year-old King cried that his 25-year-old bride was unattractive, and he was thus unable to consummate the marriage. Anne may not have been witty, but her mother had raised her to be wise and above all, practical. She took the generous annulment terms offered to her, and stepped aside. Anne left her short marriage with a generous allowance, several palaces and estates. In England she was a wealthy woman, and treated as the King's beloved sister, but back in Cleves, she was the penniless spinster sister of a Duke. She elected to remain in England, though it meant she would never see her mother or family again. Maria did, at least, have her youngest daughter with her. Amalia never married, and remained at Bear Castle with her mother. Maria died in 1543, aged 52. She was laid to rest in the Carthusian Monastery on Grave Island. Joyce Culpepper, mother of Catherine Howard, also called Jocasta, was born around 1480 to Sir Richard Culpepper and Isabel Worsley. She had two siblings, a sister Margaret and a brother Thomas. Her father died while they were children, and Thomas died at just 8 years old. Thus Joyce and Margaret inherited the family property. Their mother remarried to Sir John Lee. When Joyce was just 12, she was married to her stepfather's younger brother, Ralph. The couple did not live as man and wife until Joyce was in her late teens. At 22, she gave birth to the first of five children. Her husband died in 1509, and Joyce was remarried to Lord Edmund Howard. He was the third son of the Duke of Norfolk. His sister, Elizabeth, was the mother of Anne Boleyn. Despite his noble pedigree, Edmund had twenty siblings and inherited very little. He was often reduced to begging his more affluent relatives to support his large family. He and Joyce had another three sons and three daughters. The ninth of her eleven children was Catherine, born in 1523. When the future queen was five years old, her mother died. No cause of death was recorded, but 48 was a pretty long life at the time, and 11 pregnancies surely took their toll on her body. Motherless Catherine and some of her siblings were sent to live with their father's stepmother, the Dowager Duchess of Norfolk. The household's many wards were neglected and ran amok. Catherine was molested by a 36-year-old music teacher. Just as Joyce had been married off young for the gain of her male relatives, Catherine was used as a pawn by her uncle, the Duke of Norfolk. He brought her to court and placed her in the path of surly, sickly 49-year-old King Henry, who became infatuated with the beautiful, vivacious teenager. Their marriage was short, as Catherine, possibly under pressure to conceive an heir, had an affair with courtier Thomas Culpepper, who was a distant relative of her mother's. She was also being blackmailed by a former confidante who knew of her premarital sexual history. When evidence reached her uncle's enemies, they were eager to throw the queen under the bus. Catherine was beheaded at the age of 18 and buried in the Tower Chapel near her first cousin, Anne Boleyn. If she'd had her mother's guidance and protection, then perhaps the cycle of trauma might have been broken, and her life may have gone very differently. Lady Maud Green, mother of Catherine Parr, was born in 1490, meaning Henry's last mother-in-law was five years younger than his first wife. Her parents, Sir Thomas Green and Joan Fogg, were minor nobles. Maud lost her own mother when she was an infant. At 18, she wed Sir Thomas Parr, Sheriff of Northamptonshire. Maud joined him at court, where she served as a lady-in-waiting to Queen Catherine of Aragon. Her Majesty recognized Maud's intelligence and assigned her to help tutor her own daughter, Princess Mary. Maud greatly admired her patroness, and asked the queen to stand as godmother for her first child. The baby was named Catherine in the queen's honor. Maud had two more children who survived, William and Anne. Thomas inherited property in the north, including a dilapidated Kindle Castle, but their London residence, Parr House, was much more convenient for their careers at court. Thomas died of the sweating sickness in 1517. Maud was pregnant at the time, but she lost the baby. Now she was a widow at 27. If she remarried, she would put her children's inheritance at risk, so she chose to remain single and focus on educating her children in philosophy, theology, the classics French, Latin, and Italian. When Catherine was 11, Maud began negotiating for her marriage, but because of her meager dowry, prominent families weren't interested. It wasn't until Catherine was 17 that Maud made a decent match to Sir Edward Burrough. She had better luck with her 13-year-old son, William. She spent a great deal of time and money maneuvering his betrothal to Anne Bouchier, only child of the Earl of Essex. Maud died in 1531, age 39, when Catherine was just 19. She was buried in St. Anne's Church, London, beside her husband. Maud wasn't there to guide her daughter through being widowed twice, or becoming Henry VIII's sixth and final wife, but she had raised her daughter to be steely, intelligent, and strong-willed, with the conviction to carry out the vocation of Queen with dignity and grace. If you enjoyed this video, please like, subscribe, comment your thoughts, and check out my other history videos. You can also join my Patreon to support my work and get early access to all of my multi-part series. Thank you for watching!