David Starkey on Anne of Cleves - part 2/3

Clips on Anne of Cleves, fourth Queen Consort of Henry VIII. Clips taken from Starkey's series on the six wives. Part 2 focuses on the breakdown of Henry and Anne's marriage and the annulment.

I've had several people asking me why I haven't posted the remaining parts on Anne of Cleves. To cut the long story short, I had this episode saved on my laptop, then my laptop was stolen and for a while I didn't have time to upload this. But here it is at last!

In regards to Anne of Cleves approach to the annulment; it does appear that she was greatly humiliated when Henry discarded her. The popular notion of Anne tends to picture her as a woman happy to be rid of the tyrannical king. However this overlooks Anne's obvious distress and anger over what had happened to her. Anne had been sent to England to be Queen, a prestigious position, yet she had been pushed aside by Henry. She had to endure the malicious rumours concerning her body. And although the title of 'King's sister' was prestigious, and this made her one of the highest women in the land (after the Queen and the King's daughters), this still was a step down from Queen.

About Anne's looks: again our perception of Anne has been distorted by the stories of later writers. The idea that Anne was genuinely ugly is hard to believe as we only have one contemporary who thought Anne was not pretty and that was Henry. Anne actually received good reports from others. Also Henry never referred to Anne as a 'Flanders Mare' or even linked her looks to that of a horse's. This story was invented by a C17th writer. It is a shame though that such a silly story is repeated by some today.

Category:

Entertainment

Tags:

• Anne
• of
• Cleves
• Henry
• VIII
• 1540s
• Thomas
• Cromwell
• Tudor

[seywhat82]

poor anne.... so innocent! also, it seems to me that the description of anne's body sounds like the perfect body to bear him many male heirs.... silly man! :P

[missdevine09]

He likely didn't like them because he probably had a large set of manboobs himself. LoL.

[whyNasra]

omg poor girl!

[firmingitup]

He was mad b/c his breasts were larger than hers.

[monkfan72]

I bet Henry's big breasts and full belly turned many women off. jk, I love Henry Tudor. What a bastard!

[MegaWeike]

@diddims

Yes, thank you for bring it up. That is a well known fact. That's why I'm surprised. The society as it is, here we have a piece of documentury on youtube that actually touches the facts. Amazing, even for Strakey.

[chrisiam1968]

@heartofsnow23 LMAOOOOOOO@your comment...."go to ye olde weight watchers" Priceless!!!

[YanPrettyPink]

ironic that the fat diseased old man should stand in judgment

[happybkwrm]

I think part of it was that Anne was another Royal. Henry seemed to like picking out commoners and making them queen.