King Henry VIII & Anne of Cleves

Flanders Mare or Shrewd Survivor?

Anne of Cleves, Henry VIII's fourth wife, has gone down in history as the comic relief of his marital misadventures. She was the only one of his six wives whom he chose purely for dynastic advantage, fulfilling the common practice of cementing an alliance with another royal family (in this case the quasi-royal family of the Duke of Cleves in (what is today) Germany).

Henry being Henry, however, he wanted even a political wife to be good-looking. Negotiations for a French marriage broke down when Henry insisted that the French princesses be paraded in front of him, like a beauty pageant. The annoyed French ambassador asked Henry if he also wanted to take them for trial rides.

Henry's marriage diplomacy led to other embarrassments. One of the French princesses, Marie de Guise, was a tall, well-built, statuesque young woman. Henry liked that, saying that he was a big man and needed a big woman. When Marie heard, she responded that, while she was a big woman, she had a very small neck. (She later married the king of Scotland and was the mother of Mary Queen of Scots.) Another eligible young lady whom Henry's diplomats approached was Christina, Duchess of Milan (despite of her title a Danish beauty), then 16 years old. Christina's undiplomatic reply was that she would gladly marry Henry, if only she had two heads.

Given these problems, Henry had to dig into the second tier of ruling families to come up with Anne of Cleves. She had been brought up to be a glorified hausfrau - the English ambassadors thought her shockingly ill-educated for a princess. Henry liked a wife with whom he could converse; three of his six wives were notably intelligent and well-educated women.

But looks always mattered more to Henry, so he sent his court painter, Hans Holbein, to provide an advance viewing of his prospective bride. To most people today, what stands out in the portrait is Anne's ostentatious but unflattering gown, a fashion miscue for the ages.

Henry apparently liked what he saw, however, and the marriage negotiations went forward. Anne landed in England at the beginning of 1540. She had barely settled into her temporary quarters when Henry barged in on her unannounced. Their surprise meeting was a fiasco.

Whatever his expectations, Anne did not meet them. "I like her not," said Henry bluntly. Was Anne far less attractive than the portrait implied? Tradition has labeled her "the Flanders mare," but Anne's problem may have been not so much her looks as a lack of style and sophistication.

No one, of course, ever asked Anne what she thought of that first meeting or of the grossly fat man who burst in on her and turned out to be her husband-to-be.

It was too late for Henry to back out, so he had to go through with the wedding. Henry even duly went to bed with his new wife, but only to sleep. "There must be more!" an exasperated lady-in-waiting told the painfully naive Anne, or she would not provide Henry with a second son.

This was no life for Henry VIII. He wanted out, and by July he had his way, getting his marriage to Anne of Cleves annulled. His chief minister, Thomas Cromwell, paid with his head for having gotten Henry into the marriage, but Anne herself got off with a very comfortable settlement. She did not fight the divorce and had no wish to return to dreary Cleves and her brother's authority. Henry gave her the status of "honorary sister" and a settlement of estates worth several thousand pounds a year - a vast fortune at the time.

Why did Anne of Cleves fare so well, when two other wives of Henry lost their heads at his command? Simply, Henry was turned off by Anne, so he never fell in love with her; he merely wanted her out of his way so he could marry again and produce the male heir he craved - and Anne was happy to comply. She lived on for another seventeen years, and was the last of all Henry's wives to die, in 1557.

Comfortable on her estates, welcome at court, and spared the fate of Henry's other wives, it's hard to imagine that Anne of Cleves ever regretted that she was no longer married to Henry VIII.