A pedantic point, you may feel, but this question comes very close to asking which of Henry VIII's wives was nicknamed 'the Flanders Mare'. This is the epithet by which Anne of Cleves is best known today; she's the one that Henry found so unattractive that he just couldn't bring himself to consummate their union. It was said that she smelled bad, and had no fashion sense (among many other things). But how much truth is there in all this?
Henry VIII's third wife, Jane Seymour, died in October 1537 from post–natal complications, less than two weeks after the birth of Henry's first and only son – who would go on to succeed him as King Edward VI. Henry was concerned about the threat of invasion from Catholic France and Spain; Thomas Cromwell suggested that an alliance with the Duke of Cleves (who, although nominally a Catholic, leant towards Protestantism) would be to his advantage.
In January 1539, Henry VIII sent Christopher Mont, a member of Thomas Cromwell's household, as ambassador to Germany to discuss a possible marriage between the Princess Mary (later Queen Mary) and William, the heir to the Duke of Cleves. While he was there, Henry asked Mont to "inquere of the beautie and qualities of the lady eldest of booth doughters to the duke of Cleves, as well what stature, proportion and complexion she is of as of her lerning actyvitie, bihauiour and honest qualities." Mont reported back that "everyone praises the lady's beauty, both of face and body. One said that she excelled the Duchess [of Milan] as the golden sun did the silver moon". It does have to be said however that Mont was going on hearsay, as he hadn't met Anne himself.
The following month, February 1539, William (Anne's brother) himself became the Duke of Cleves, on the death of their father William III (the Rich).
In March 1539, Henry sent ambassadors to Cleves to get further reports on Anne. This mission met with frustration however, as both Anne and her sister kept their faces covered. In the summer of 1539, Henry sent his court painter, Hans Holbein, to Cleves to paint Anne and her younger sister. When the leading English ambassador, Nicholas Wotton, saw Holbein's portraits of the sisters, he declared that the artist "hathe expressyd theyr imaiges verye lyvelye" and that others also considered the portraits a good likeness of the young women. Although we don't know what Henry himself thought of the portrait, we have to conclude that he liked what he saw as he continued with negotiations.
Henry and Anne finally met at Rochester on New Year's Day 1540, but the meeting was a disaster. Always the romantic, Henry had decided to surprise Anne by disguising himself in the great chivalric tradition and intercepting her on her way to London. According to this tradition, the would–be bride would see through the disguise, fall in love at first sight, and swoon into the arms of her suitor. It would be the perfect first date, and they would both live happily ever after. Unfortunately, Anne knew nothing of this tradition; she didn't recognise Henry, and was shocked and scared by this monstrous man who tried to take such liberties with her. This clearly would not have gone down well with Henry, if only though embarrassment.
There is no contemporary evidence for Henry VIII calling Anne of Cleves a Flanders Mare. It was Gilbert Burnet, Bishop of Salisbury, who first wrote (in 1679 – 140 years later) that Henry "swore they had brought over a Flanders mare to him". In other words, we can't be sure whether or not Henry ever used this phrase at all. Whether he ever used it again, let alone whether anyone else dared to refer to the Queen in these terms, is not recorded; but I'm pretty sure that to describe it as a nickname (as many question setters do) is well wide of the mark.
For most of this information (and indeed many of the actual words) I am indebted to The Anne Boleyn Files, whose author goes on to say that "Anne was not from Flanders anyway, something that Henry VIII was well aware of." Cleves (Kleve in German) is a town in the Lower Rhine region of northwestern Germany, near the Dutch border; the Dukes of Jülich–Cleves–Berg (to give them their full title) had had their seat in nearby Düsseldorf since 1380, and that's where Anne was born. Flanders is the Dutch–speaking northern portion of what is now Belgium. Wikipedia notes that "Germany, although bordering Wallonia and close to Voeren in Limburg, does not share a border with Flanders."
Henry VIII's marriage to Anne of Cleves does seem, however, to have been doomed from the start. He soon cast his eye on Catherine Howard, a first cousin and lady–in–waiting of Anne Boleyn (and, at just 17 years of age, Anne's junior by eight years – and Henry's by 32 years). He sought to have his marriage to Anne annulled; she didn't argue, and confirmed that the marriage nad not been consummated. Henry gave her a generous settlement, and she was thereafter referred to as 'the King's Beloved Sister'. (So much for 'the Flanders Mare' being a nickname.)
Catherine Howard didn't fare so well. She married Henry on 28 July 1540 (the same day that Thomas Cromwell was executed – his part in engineering Henry's marriage to Anne being a major factor in his downfall). But before long Catherine was found to have had an affair (after her marriage to Henry) with Thomas Culpeper, a young courtier – to whom she was distantly related. She also employed Francis Dereham, who had previously been informally engaged to her and had an affair with her prior to her marriage, as her secretary. Henry, who was besotted with his new queen, at first refused to believe either of these stories, but Culpeper confessed under torture. Culpeper and Dereham were both executed, and Catherine too was beheaded on 13 February 1542. Henry VIII's fifth marriage had lasted less than 19 months.
Catherine Parr first caught Henry's attention in 1543, as a member of the household of his daughter Mary. Born in 1512, she was the daughter of Sir Thomas Parr – lord of the manor of Kendal in Westmorland (now Cumbria), and a descendant of King Edward III. Catherine had been married twice already; her first husband, Sir Edward Burgh, had died in 1533, and her second – John Neville, 3rd Baron Latimer – in 1543. But she was still only 31. She had begun a romantic friendship with Sir Thomas Seymour, the brother of the late queen Jane Seymour, but she saw it as her duty to accept Henry's proposal over Seymour's. Seymour was given a posting in Brussels to remove him from the king's court.
Henry and Catherine were married on 12 July 1543, at Hampton Court Palace. The marriage appears to have been successful. A reformer at heart, Catherine argued with Henry over religion; ultimately, Henry remained committed to an idiosyncratic mixture of Catholicism and Protestantism. She helped reconcile him with his daughters, Mary and Elizabeth, who, as daughters of Catherine of Aragon and Anne Boleyn (respectively) had, by the 1536 Act of Succession, been declared illegitimate and excluded from the succession. In 1543, an Act of Parliament put them back in the line of succession after their younger brother Edward.
But Henry's health was in decline – probably not from syphilis, as has often been claimed; but possibly as a result of a jousting accident that he suffered in 1536. He died on 28 January 1547, aged 55. He made provision for an allowance of £7,000 a year for Catherine to support herself. He further ordered that, after his death, Catherine, though a queen dowager, should be given the respect of a queen of England, as if he were still alive.
Catherine's old love, Thomas Seymour, was now (as the brother of Jane Seymour) the king's uncle. He returned to court, and was soon created 1st Baron Seymour of Sudeley. When he renewed his suit of marriage, Catherine was quick to accept. They married in secret some time in late May 1547 – just four months after Henry's death (which is why the marriage had to be kept secret; Edward was said to be furious when he found out).
On 30 August 1548, Catherine gave birth to a daughter, Mary Seymour. The pregnancy was something of a surprise, as she hadn't conceived in any of her previous three marriages and was now in her mid–thirties. But she died six days later, on 5 September 1548, at Sudeley Castle in Gloucestershire. The cause was probably what was then known as childbed fever but is now termed postpartum infection. She had survived Henry by just 19 months.
Just over six months later, Catherine's widower Thomas Seymour was also dead. His downfall was the result of his rivalry with his elder brother Edward, who had been created 1st Duke of Somerset and appointed as Protector to his nephew (and Thomas's), the nine–year–old King Edward VI. On the night of 16 January 1549, for reasons that are not clear (perhaps to take the young king away into his own custody), Thomas attempted to break into the King's apartments at Hampton Court Palace. He entered the privy garden and awoke one of the King's pet spaniels, which he shot and killed in order to silence its barking. He was arrested the next day, and sent to the Tower of London. He was executed on 20 March 1549.
This left Mary Seymour a penniless orphan, at the age of less than seven months. She was put into the care of Katherine Willoughby, Duchess of Suffolk, who appears to have resented this imposition. After 1550 Mary disappears from historical record completely; no claim was ever made on her father's meagre estate, leading to the conclusion that she did not live past the age of two.
© Macclesfield Quiz League 2017