Did Henry spot that Anne had already had a child?
King’s ‘vast experience of women’ led to his setting aside union with Anne of Cleves, historian claims
HENRY VIII may have discarded his fourth wife, Anne of Cleves, because she had already conceived a baby with someone else, an historian has claimed.
The German aristocrat, also called Anna, was queen for just seven months before the marriage was declared unconsummated and annulled in July 1540.
Henry claimed he was repulsed by Anne’s body and to get out of the union, alleged she was still pre-contracted to the Duke of Lorraine’s son.
Alison Weir, author of the novel Anna of Kleve, suggests that Henry may have realised his new wife was not a virgin but did not want to cause a scandal or damage his alliance with Cleves by revealing her impropriety. Weir believes that by the time of his fourth marriage, Henry would have recognised the signs of childbirth.
Appearing at The Hay Festival, she said: “Was some scandal locked away in Anna’s past? It is inconclusive, and speculative but I think you might find it convincing.”
Weir said she had discovered that on the morning after the wedding night Henry had told several courtiers that he believed Anne was not a virgin.
He confided to Thomas Cromwell: “I liked her before not well, but now I like her much less, for I have felt her belly and her breasts and as I can judge, she should be no maid.”
Weir said: “I puzzled for a long time what Henry meant by these remarks. Was he just trying to find a way out? What if he was telling the truth? Henry had had vast experience of women, he’d been married three times and must have known the difference between a female body that had borne children and one that hadn’t.
“A man whose previous wives and mistresses had had between them a total of 15 pregnancies would surely have been able to recognise the signs. Were Anna’s loose breasts and belly indicative of her [having been] pregnant?
“Loose flesh can be the consequence of losing weight and it’s common for a bride to lose weight before her wedding. But the other tokens Henry mentions, which included stretch marks, might argue against a more innocent explanation.”
Weir believes that Anne may have been seduced by one of her many cousins at the court of her brother William V, Duke of Julich-Cleves-Berg, in Germany.
Unlike Henry’s first wife Catherine of Aragon, Anne never contested the annulment.