Henry VIII Wives In Order: Who were Henry VIII wives in order?

Henry VIII is England’s most married monarch. He had six wives in total between 1509 and 1547. These were, in order:

• Catherine of Aragon
• Anne Boleyn
• Jane Seymour
• Anne of Cleves
• Catherine Howard
• Katherine Parr

Divorced, beheaded, died, divorced, beheaded, survived. It’s a mnemonic device many of us learned as children to remember the fates of the six women.

Henry VIII is best known for his six wives, and several mistresses he kept on his side. The monarch’s desperate quest for political unification and a healthy male heir drove him to annul two marriages and have two wives beheaded. His chaotic love life caused an unstable succession, and foreign policy implications and even led to the break with the Church of Rome.

Henry took the throne in 1509, at age 17. Six weeks later, he married Catherine of Aragon, daughter of King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella of Spain and the widow of his elder brother, Arthur.

From the moment young Henry took his nuptials, he obsessed over continuing the Tudor line. Of multiple pregnancies and several births, the only child to survive was Henry and Catherine’s daughter, Mary, born in February 1516.