Betwixt The Sheets: The History of Sex, Scandal & Society - Henry VIII vs. Catherine of Aragon | History's Worst Breakups

Episode Date: February 3, 2026

Welcome to a brand new mini-series on Betwixt the Sheets, where our host, Dr Kate Lister, takes you through the most catastrophic breakups in history.We're starting with one that our guest, author and historian Gareth Russell, calls "the most important breakup in British history by a country mile."Find out the ins and outs of Henry VIII and Catherine of Aragon's breakup, including all the awful gossipy details.This episode was edited by Tim Arstall. The producer was Stuart Beckwith. The senior producer was Freddy Chick.Sign up to History Hit for hundreds of hours of original documentaries, with a new release every week and ad-free podcasts. Sign up at https://www.historyhit.com/subscribe.  All music from Epidemic Sounds.Betwixt the Sheets: History of Sex, Scandal & Society is a History Hit podcast. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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Sign up to join me in locations around the world and explore the past. Just visit historyhit.com forward slash subscribe. Hello, my lovely betwixters. It's me, Kate Lister. Welcome back to Bertwix the Sheets, where we rip the knickers off history for your entertainment. But before we do, I have to tell you, this is an adult podcast,

spoken by adults, other adults, about adult things in adulthood, a adult, things in adulthood, I think you've got the message by now, right? Otherwise, why else would you be here? Right, let's get on with it. It's 1529, and we have seen. snuck into the back of a trial going on in London, where the Crown and the church are battling it out

to see if none other than Henry VIII's marriage to Catherine of Aragon is valid in the eyes of the Catholic Church. It's all very dramatic, I'm telling you. Although it has also been pretty lengthy and tedious, if I'm completely honest, but it has just reached an explosive moment where Catherine has knelt in front of that twat of a king and swore down that she came to England a virgin.

and she remained a virgin until she was married to him and that she has been faithful for the whole of their 20-year marriage. Go on, Catherine. And then she stormed out of the court. Total mic drop moment. You can't help but feel a bit sorry for Catherine. All right, you feel a lot sorry for Catherine. I mean, God, Almighty.

Imagine being shunned like that just for Henry's sidepiece and Berlin. Oh, God. But this is a breakup for the ages. And not just for Henry and Catherine, but for everybody else as well. Everyone, we're still living in the wreckage of this particular breakup. It did things to England. It did things to the church. It did things to Rome.

It was just an absolute atom bomb of a breakup. So, of course, we are going to talk about it in our little mini-series for history's worst breakups. Hello, and welcome back to Betwixtashersheets, the history of sex scandal and society with me, Hey, Lister. A bad breakup is a right of passage, isn't it? Oh, it is, isn't? I mean, is anyone actually out there listening to this who ended up with the very first person that they fell in love with ever and has never, ever, ever had their heartbroken. Maybe there's one. Maybe there's a couple of them. Drop us an email, let us know. But for 99.999% of us, you're going to have your heartbroken.

You're going to go through a shitty breakup at some point. And while the rest of the Western world spends February pushing cuddly toy cupids and ideas of love at you, I thought what better time to explore history's worst breakups? And why not start with the one that many consider to be the mother of all bad breakups? Henry the 8th and Catherine of Aragon. I mean, yeah, all right, your breakup might have been a little bit messy, but did it cause the dissolution of the Catholic Church in this country and piss off the Pope? No, it did not. Well, I mean, if it did, fair enough, but I haven't heard about it. And joining me today is the Always magnificent author and historian Gareth Russell, and he is going to help us get into the weeds of this horrendously bad breakup.

Are you ready to stamp all over Henry's codpiece? I know I am. Let's do it. And welcome back to Betwixt the Sheets. It's only Gareth Russell. How are you doing? I'm very good. I am preparing hopefully to eat. I would say we're just before Christmas when we're filming this.

So I'm hoping to eat 18 to 20,000 calories a day. in the next two or three weeks. I was preparing mentally for that. So I'm great. The last time I saw you, I think it was your book on King James the first, subtitled,

How Gay was King James? That's not true. It wasn't. Yeah, very. Kinsey level, Kinsie level, super. That was just being published. How did all that go?

That went really well. It was really lovely. And actually, kind of the joy of by James is that because he was king in three kingdoms, and I was doing stuff in, Northern Ireland, Scotland, England and Wales as well.

He sort of has very different reputations as you move through them. So it meant that every talk was different and you tweaked it depending where you were and you sort of focus a little bit more in certain lovers, etc. But yeah, I've loved doing it. And actually, I think it probably was so far my favourite book to write, which, I mean, Queen Mum second place and James first. And it was, I loved it. So getting to talk about it all the time is really nice.

Well, we're back again to talk about another royal. This is the first episode and a lot of mini-series we're doing called History's Worst Breakups. Sure. And we did think for a while, do we have to do Henry again? Because like, but you can't not. Yeah, someone's like, let's do like the worst, I don't know, holidays in history. And you're like, let's leave out the Titanic.

Like, I get it. It's been gone. It would be weird not to mention it. So we're going to get you on because, well, because I love talking to you. And also because you always have fantastically interesting takes on these things. So we've got to talk about Henry VIII and Catherine of Aragon because not only was it spectacularly ugly just on a personal level, but we're still living with the ramifications of this breakup today, right? Totally. And I think, I mean, obviously he has two terrible breakups of wives two and five. But what's interesting with the breakup with wife number one with Catherine of Aragon is that it takes down a lot of their mutual friends as well. It kind of just there's not, it's not an easy breakup on the on the wider circle. So, yeah. Yeah, and I think those victims are the first people who live with the consequences, and still today, I mean, you know, anywhere, England, Wales or Ireland that Henry ruled over the consequences of what happened between him and Catherine are still being held.

So something that is often forgotten in this particular story is that in the beginning, when Henry met Catherine and Catherine met Henry, they seem to have really quite fancied each other and loved each other. Yeah, they definitely fancied each other. I mean, I think, and I think, yeah, as much as he was capable of love, I think... We'll get to that. You know, I think to quote the current king, misquote, like, whatever love means, I think Henry could sort of could grapple with it. But, you know, he was really good looking. She was five years older, considered very beautiful, sort of this petite, blonde, very elegant,

and charismatic, I think, as well. And very clever, which I think later in his eyes counts against her. There's some, I think, rose tinting that we do with early on there. marriage. It's like when your friends break up. They were so happy that everything was perfect. You're like, actually, no. Were they though? Do you remember that party? Yeah, because I remember.

That's a good point. That's a good point. Yeah, there's always one friend with their wine in the corner. No, they weren't. What earth you're talking about? I was getting DMs from him at 2am. Come on. This is why no one comes to you for advice, Judith. So, yeah, I mean, he definitely, I think, felt very strongly for her and vice versa. but some of the evidence that's rolled out like him jousting a Sir Loyal Heart.

There's a big jouse where he dresses a Sir Loyal Heart and he wears Catherine's colours. It's usually trotted out as what a grand gesture this was for her. But what's never mentioned is that he was one of six and they all were given names like that. And they all had to wear Lady of the Court's colours. So he picked his wife. So it's not quite as romantic. And he does, I mean, it seems like he cheats in her within a year. But it is early modern arranged marriages.

Let's set the bar low. And definitely for the first, like, let's say five, six, seven years, it's a pretty happy marriage. What is particularly weird about this one, and it gets very weird later on, is that she was married to his brother first of all. That is a very odd situation. Even amongst royalty that's got to be addressed. Can you give us the sort of the lowdown on what was happening there? And I'm really interested to know your opinion. on what was happening or not happening there? Yeah, that's a great question. I think that, yeah,

it is very weird. Even by the standards of the early 16th century and within arranged marriages and royalty, it's unusual enough that there's serious pushback. They have to apply to the Pope for dispensation. And there are what's often forgotten is that some of the people who litter will become massive fans of Catherine as Queen are the people preaching against us. So you have the Archbishop of Canterbury actually preach a sermon saying, this is, this is incest. Not biological incest, but within the canon law of the church, this is. And there's a lot made later of did Arthur, Henry's brother and Catherine do the deed in their six-month marriage? Or didn't they?

And sometimes they get at, like, I've been at Q&A, so we're like, what happened? I wasn't there. We just don't know. It's just this great big. No. And it's just really crucial because they weren't married for that long. did he die of? What did he just? So there's different, again, he dies, he dies, he's still in his mid-teens when he dies, and there's different theories. So one of them is tuberculosis, another is

cancer. There is a third theory that kind of, I think, has legs, which is that where they were when he died, Arthur and Catherine, excuse me, the plague is rampant, and she catches it and nearly dies, and he does die. So I wonder, you know, is there something else that the plague ushers on, or is it the sweat that takes him out? So, I have this, I mean, this is really speculative, but I, Catherine really clings later to nothing, we did not consummate it. But there does seem to be fairly widespread conclusions in the English court when our father-in-law is alive that it was consummated. And I kind of wonder, is it an element of Arthur thinks like, what is sex? If this is your first time doing it, you're not very sexually experienced, you know nothing about it. Does something happen? that Arthur thinks counts as consummation and then later when Catherine is fully married and she knows what sex actually is.

So it could be that. But ultimately, was Catherine lying? Was someone else lying? We don't know. But certainly, initially, that's not really the big issue. It becomes the issue later. But the issue for a lot of very pious people

is, you know, if you look at the way they even refer to in-laws at the time, it's quite rare to say in-law. It's very rare. They don't say step-sister. They don't say in-law. They just say your sister, your father. They use the terms of biological intimacy once you marry into your family. And so for some people, like the Archbishop of Canterbury, this is essentially Henry marrying his sister. Yeah. And that's why the Pope gets involved and does issue the dispensation. And it will all come back to this. It will all come back to two very contested verses in the Bible.

And whether or not the marriage with Arthur and Catherine was consummated and therefore did it or did it not count as a full marriage. So Arthur, dead and gone. God rest his wee bum. Only a little teenager in person. RIP. RIP. Very sorry about that and all that. Why do you think then Henry wanted to marry Catherine?

Because he was super eligible at this point. He was hot. He was tall. He's sporty. He's a fucking king. But women must have just been flinging their blooms at him. Why, Catherine? So, I mean, there is another one in the running, actually.

His father's, well, there's a version that's put out, which is that on his deathbed, his father, Henry the 7th, feels bad for not arranging the marriage as promised for Arthur's widow. And asks Henry the 8th to do the right thing and marry her. I'm dubious about that. It seems a bit like James the first saying, oh, Elizabeth said me on her deathbed to succeed her. Deathbed testimonials are always pretty dicey. It's like when someone sort of starts telling you

what was wrong with their ex right after a breakup. You're like, this, I'm chronologically suspect. His father at one point had considered marrying him to Archduchess Eleanor of Austria. And I sometimes want, I think there are two things. Possibly, I think Henry really wanted a wife. he might have been horny, he might have really wanted to, although I think actually he really just wanted Camelot and needed a queen. And also, I think it's sometimes the most obvious thing,

which is he obviously knew her, and I have to assume he felt very strongly for her. He does have, from all of his life, this abhorrence of marrying somebody hasn't seen. Oh, that's interesting. Yeah, better the devil, you know. Yeah, I think so. I mean, it's one of the things that goes so spectacularly wrong with his fourth marriage. But, He hadn't seen Eleanor. He knew Catherine. He'd known her for, I think, at this stage, about seven years. She's right there. Yeah, exactly. She's right there. So it kind of ticks all the boxes. And also, she, she has comported herself with a great deal of dignity during the seven years of her widowhood, her father and her father-in-law had both kind of abandoned her. And she represents a great alliance in Europe. Now, the implosion of that alliance will be one of the things. that weakens her position at her husband's side, but in 1509, she is golden personally and politically for him, I think.

I can understand that. And she's been in sort of like a weird political limbo because she marries Arthur, Arthur dies. And then all of a sudden, Henry the seventh dies. Yeah. And then very quickly, Henry, oh, my God, now it's Henry the eighth. And she's kind of left in this like political limbo of like, well, I was the king's wife. And now I'm not, what's going on here? And actually, when, you know, she's still being referred to as the Dodger Princess of Wales, which she is, but no one's paying her any money.

I mean, there's always this thing as well when people will say, like, Catherine was in poverty and you're like, she was in genteel. Like, let's behave. Yeah, she wasn't using a food bank. So, like, she had to sell some of her gold and plate to pay her servants' wages. I'm like, that's not poverty. That's embarrassing for her. And I'm sure, you know, emotionally quite distressing. but there was a choice to cut down the staff numbers or keep the gold plate.

Those are not choices anyone of, you know, but she is certainly very unhappy. She also, I think Jalz Tremlitt, who's written a good biography off her about 10 years ago, there's indicators that she mentally does not cope very well and that she might have had something that we would now recognize as an eating disorder. So she's not eating. She's fasting quite obsessively from a religious perspective to the point. point that one, that the Pope does have to write to her and tell her it ease off. Wow.

Okay. Yeah. Okay. When the Pope says you're being a bit too much, you probably have. Yeah, that's a warning sign that one, isn't it? If even me saying, like, you're a bit extreme now, to be honest. Yeah, it's like, I remember this was years ago. I remember being out sort of for Christmas drinks with friends.

And a mate who was like sort of quite the rugby boy turned to one of her other friends and went, that's quite a lot you've had to drink. I was like, if he said that, I was like, find a sponsor and get out. Catherine feels things very, very strongly. There's never kind of a five on her emotional scale. And so there's very good evidence that actually she finds those seven years immensely difficult to deal with. And she in particular finds being ambiguous status is something that she does not handle very well. She likes to know her place in the world, which is understandable.

That is understandable. So I guess when Henry became king and went, actually, I'll marry you. that must have just been music to her ears. 100%. In terms of passionate love letters between them, they don't exist, although you could argue maybe there didn't need to be because they didn't spend that much time apart.

I think she feels very strongly for him. They knew each other. She wouldn't have seen that much of him in the countdown to the wedding. So I think when his father was still alive, I think she definitely felt for him, certainly. And I don't think she was lying when she said that she looked back on those days

is where 1509 up until about 1514 is sort of the happiest of her life. Oh, bless her. Oh, that's kind of sweet. So they get married and when they do get married, is the public with them or is there this sense of like, oh, God, that your brother behave or is that kind of gone? No, they seem to be with them. It's concerned among some of the church hierarchy that are like, hmm. Hate is going to hate.

Yeah, exactly. They were like, we, and then I think what's interesting, this is so speculative from my part, but it's the slightly older generation that are like, eh. And I wonder is that them being like, you're too young to remember this, but Richard III, Elizabeth Woodville, Edward VIII, if there's any room for ambiguity in a wedding,

like however, like, fragmentary it is, someone will find it. So maybe that's a thorn prick from the Wars of the Roses that's causing part of it, that they want this to be watertight. But the public do like her, particularly in London. With Catherine's story, you'll hear things like she was beloved by the people of England, They didn't know who she was.

They knew her name. It doesn't sound like us to love a Spanish queen. Well, also, I mean... That doesn't sound like something we'd do. No, but I think the other thing is it's so hard for us today with how the monarchy functions to imagine not knowing what they look like. Yeah, yeah. We'll spot...

Like, there's, you know, clips of Elizabeth II and her mom, like, getting really excited at the races and joking with each other. Like, that creates a certain sense of knowledge. There aren't even standardized portraits of the queen being. sent out in 1509. So if you're in Wales or if you're in the north, if you are not in an area where she and Henry are regularly visiting, they are a name in a prayer book. Yeah, they're going to mean nothing to you, are they really? To be completely honest. Exactly. They might mean as much as an angel does, which is that you respect them, but you don't see them and they don't have any impact that you can

see day to day. And Henry and Catherine don't go north. They stay very much in the south. I would always say trim it to she's very popular in London. Yeah, that's fair. That's fair. I often think about that. Like if you were just a regular, just a farmer, just, you know, in the Yorkshire area, just how much of this stuff did you even know was going on? Were you even aware of, quite frankly? No, when, you know, one day in 1533 you'll go to church and it'll be Queen Anne,

not Queen Catherine, and you'll think, well, there must be a good reason for it. Yeah, and it's nothing to do with me. That's probably what you think. I'll be back with Garrette. after this short break. So they get married. She must have been relieved. The public in London seemed to be broadly like,

yay, Henry seems to be delighted. But as you say, I think a real key to understanding Henry's character as much as I can figure it out is that he was raised on tales of chivalry and romance and King Arthur's table. And you alluded to earlier that he wanted a queen for his camelot.

Yes, I mean, he very much. I mean, there's even theories later on with Anne Boleyn being accused with Henry Norris that this is him trying to create Guinevere and Lancelot. I mean, it's... Yeah, and then the sword is used. Anyway, there is a kind of Arthurian obsession there, and it's widespread, it's not just him.

But he very much has this idea of himself as a neo-Arthurian key. And it initially helps Catherine, and then I think undermines her. So Henry is incredibly enthusiastic. but not overly experienced, which is, you know, keen but dim. And her, Catherine's father, if his lips are moving, he's probably lying. And so he says to Henry, you know, they're going to do the alliance that she represents,

they're going to invade France and the Habsburg Emperor Maximilian also quite keen on the old duplicity. They're all going to invade France together. They will back one another and they will meet in Paris and Henry VIII will be able to finish what Henry the Fitz started and take back the Plantagenet Empire for himself. Ferdinand and Maximilian have no intention of doing this. The idea of marching the Spanish armies the length of France is a nonsense. All they want to do is rob France a bit, where Henry thinks he's going to get the house. And they use the English to distract the French for long enough for them to get what they want,

and then they abandon Henry. And that is about 1513, 1514, so 14. So four to five years into the marriage. And that's the first time that you see Catherine's position start to wobble because the alliance that she represents has actually humiliated her husband on the international stage. Ah, okay. Because Henry went rushing in. As all young men, young and inexperienced men have done all throughout history when it comes to warfare,

which is that this is jolly japes. We're all going to go and be heroes. We'll save the day. Everyone keeps their promises and everybody's honorable. No. Yeah. Yeah, nonsense. And I think that there's some suggestion that should Catherine not have warned him, you can't trust my father. But I think it is worth remembering that she hadn't seen her father in

a dozen years or so. And hope springs eternal in some children that maybe this time, they'll not be a colossal dick. But you know what, that's what Ferdinand was. And you learn, don't you? You learn these things. I think, yes, sorry, go ahead, you're absolutely right. So the Spanish, they've kind of shafted Henry by not keeping their promises, which to a young naive, who Ray Henry must have been like, but, but they promised. And then, oh, Henry. Oh, she said you'd be there.

I was there. I was there. We're all supposed to be honorable. Oh, Henry, Henry, Henry, Henry. So it's gone a bit a bit wobbly. Yeah. Have we got any records of the time of how that impacted Henry? Well, initially, she is in a doubly trick.

key situation, because when he invades France during this war, she is left in control of the government in England as regent. And France has a very longstanding alliance with Scotland, so King James IV invades England from the north to sort of help the French. And to date, James the Fourth's army is still the largest foreign army to invade English soil. It's massive. And Catherine sends one of the Howard's the early, aged Earl of Surrey, north with an army to defeat James the Fourth. and he does, he obliterates the Scottish army. And it's an enormous victory, James the fourth is killed. There's pretty much not a family in the Scottish aristocracy that's not bereaved.

It's from an English perspective, a bloody but thorough victory. And there are two things. One, I think, relevant at the time, the other later, that this shows about Catherine. The first is she seems to be in her letters a little bit aware that her victory over Scotland has actually been more militarily impressive than her husband's campaign in France. And she seems a bit worried that this might rub salt in the wounds.

So she's trying to talk it down. The second thing is that it reveals a side of Catherine's personality that never gets any attention, which is ruthless and not that, and actually unnecessarily unpleasant. So sometimes, I know you're not supposed to compare the six wives

and we should stop. But it does sometimes seem as if there's a standard to Catherine of Arients. and that just isn't applied to the rest of them. So you'll hear people saying, you know, Ambulin was really mean to her stepdaughter. And you're like, granted, she's not winning step-mummy of the year.

But do we think that was as bad as Catherine wanting to use her dead Scottish brother-in-law's corpse as a victory pinnata? Because I think there are questions here. So when James VIII is killed, despite the fact he's married to Henry's sister, Catherine wants to have him essentially taxidermied and sent as a present. to Henry in France. I said, ta-da, here's one I made earlier. And people, when I have said this actually was an extremely unpleasant thing for how to do, people will say it was just the standard at the time.

No, it wasn't because according to Catherine's own letters to Henry, she had to be talked out of it by some of the men who'd gone north and killed him. So when you have the hurd saying, do you know what, this actually seems like back-crack crazy and maybe we just bury the corpse, ma'am. Some people just aren't good at sending gifts, though. Are they? Like, so it's just, it's a skill. It's thoughtful.

It's unique. So, handmade? It's handmade. And it has a really long shelf life. You will get, it's for life, not just for Christmas, you know. Oh my God. Can you even imagine, Henry, there's some post for you. Oh, God.

You've got a message to take actually, customs have a couple of questions about this one. So she and she. What a bad bitch? I'm fucking up. Yeah, well, and she jokes in her. letter, she admits that her contemporaries, like hardened warriors in England, have to talk her out of it. And she says our English men's hearts would not suffer this. So she, as a compromise, she lets them give James the fourth's body a Christian burial. But she keeps his slashed, blood-stained jacket that he died in. And she sends that as a gift to Henry. And she says, you can see what a good housewife I am in saving us money, because you can use this instead of new military banners. yeah that's mental that's that's that's that's out there isn't it that's ruthless yeah let him be better like let again it's also not super christian like let him be buried and again when

you have like people who survived the wars the roses going god that seems a bit harsh even it's like it's like when duff mckegan was thrown out of guns and roses for being too much it's like that is that's something else that is exactly so I think it does reveal the issue of her brother-in-law's taxidermine corpse does reveal two things the first is that she is aware that her husband is prickly about what has happened the second is that there is a streak in Catherine that is mad as a bag of cats I would say like there's just there is definitely there's a there's a ruthlessness in Catherine I don't think gets a lot of attention when do we start to see wobbles in the marriage. I mean, if the taxidermid body of your brother-in-law arriving by FedEx wouldn't do it, is Henry having lots of affairs?

Because one of the things I found quite surprising about him is that he's not quite the wenching, hoaring womanizer that you often think he is. There's very few names that survive. There's definitely indicators that it starts quite early and allegedly he tries to or does boink the jig of Buckingham's sister. and this is the affair that Catherine objects to quite early on

and tries to have the lady banished from court. She's actually backed by the Duke of Buckingham who thinks this is an insult to the family's honour of what Henry has tried to do. But Henry retaliates by dismissing one of Catherine's ladies and winning as a sort of warning shot over the boy and Catherine does not do it again. Yeah, there's a long-standing tradition

that he has an affair with Mary Berlin. I am slightly on the fence about if that actually happened. Interesting. We had Estelle Parank on for a couple of episodes ago and that was her take. She's not convinced. She's not convinced. I'm not convinced either.

Because I made a slightly... I have to talk to you still actually because I am not convinced either. You could team up on this one. Yeah, absolutely. Let's go debunk. Ebunk the debrief. Yeah.

So it's just that the evidence is so, so slender when you actually look at it. You're talking like three lines. And I did make the snippy comment in my book on James the first and said, like, on the basis of three lines, Mary Boulin has accepted as Henry. his mistress, but on the pages of dozens of erotic paragraphs, we still have to say they might

just have been friends with James and his beefy lovers. So Mary Berlin's a question mark, I think, but there is pretty decent evidence that Elizabeth Blunt, who bears his bastard son, is not the only one. Okay. That there are, I don't think he's quite the wencher that we think, but I think there is recreational wenching with names that haven't survived. One of the slightly trickier, parts of this is that there are two very conflicting pieces of evidence about Catherine's response to this. One is not so much to her

credit and one is. So the one that's not so much to her credit is that Catherine's often praised for looking the other way when Henry sort of came sniffing around her ladies and waiting for lovers. But the flip side of that is that she essentially left these young women completely defenseless and prioritized, making her own life easier than maybe sending them away from court, getting them married. Like, she, the less pleasant side of that is actually she's kind of leaving these young women defenseless.

The second part, however, there's a long tradition that contradicts this. It could preserve a pretty accurate oral tradition. We don't know, but I'll throw it out there in Catherine's defense, which is that for a long time, there has been a suggestion that she actually backed. Anne Boleyn leaving court when Henry started sniffing around her and Anne was quite uncomfortable and wanted to go and go back to heaver and Catherine let her. So is it possible that that is a preserving an accurate oral tradition? And because it sort of turns up not that long after. And does it then indicate that actually she might have been that subtle with other young women

beforehand and us saying that she didn't help them is just that she was very good at covering her tracks and theirs. So there definitely are affairs. I tend to think Catherine probably, I don't think she was sort of abandoning them, but we don't know one way or the other. Certainly, after the Duke of Buckingham's sister, she's not publicly rocking the boat anymore, but whether she's subtly steering it another way, who knows? So Anne, enter stage rights, Anne Boleyn. And I guess well I'm just guessing here but I suppose maybe Catherine looks at her and thought she'll come and go like all the others

that she's an infatuation that you know it's just it's slightly embarrassing but what are you going to do I've got a crown you know crack on I wonder when she started to realise that this is more than that I think initially we sort of forget Anne has brought back from France to marry

her Irish cousin James Butler sort of resolve an earldom dispute between the two sides of the family So as far as Catherine is concerned, Anne will be Blink and you miss her because the plan is for her to become the next Countess of Ormond and she'll start dividing her time between Ireland and England. That obviously doesn't happen. And if it's true that Anne asked Catherine's permission to leave court, which she actually would have had to do and Catherine gave her permission, maybe Catherine's also under the impression Anne is not that keen. And I believe Anne was. at the start. I think if you go to Heaver today, it's not even an easy, it's like you go through those roads, it's a long drive. She wasn't retreating somewhere to make him more coy. She wasn't a clairvoyant. She actually was leaving and she knew that Henry wouldn't be able to follow her and that letters would take a day or two to get through. So I think initially both Catherine and Anne think that this is the whim of the moment. And then it's, you know, Anne Boleyn is one of those people in

history. Eleanor Vakotane's another one that just has, you can't, you don't know what it was, but it's the unquantifiable power of charm or charisma. It's something that they had. And Henry becomes, yeah, she has there is. And I think for Henry, it becomes an obsession. And I've never really, I mean, I have to respect all different historical opinions. I do throw up a little bit in my own mouth when people call Henry and Anna love affair. I'm like, It's history's most elegant red flag, but let's be clear, that's what it is. He's obsessed with her. It's restraining order territory, really, isn't it?

A hundred percent. And it's, you know, she is, she is ambitious and it's not true that the great families of the aristocracy welcome discarded royal mistresses into their weddings. They don't. They do not want to marry them. So if her previous suitors have been the future Earl of Ormond in Ireland and the future Earl of Northumberland, in England, she can kiss goodbye to being a contest or more if this happens. So Henry's really playing Russian roulette with her future and we don't know at what point he goes over completely and proposes marriage to her. She does seem to hesitate. I mean, you would, wouldn't you? It's like,

yeah, it's a big risk. This was like, you know, now we talk about divorce and every, it's an everyday thing and even royal divorces. They're like, all right, then crack on with it. But like the idea at this point that the king is going to divorce his wife and marry somebody else. Like that is, it's you know, it's like Brexit but you know turned up to a million.

It's deranged. It's just something that no one ever expects coming to see coming. And I think also there are memories of Elizabeth Woodville, Edward Henry's grandmother, and how tricky her position had been because she was English and

it offended the other great family. I think Anne is very aware that there will be odd stacked against her. But we sometimes make Anne a very modern woman, and I think we have to put her back into how religious the time was. God has picked her. This is so improbable that actually you must see the hand of God in these things. And it's interesting that she becomes fascinated by the biblical story of Esther. And in the Bible, Esther is a noble-hearted woman born within the end.

empire. She's Jewish, but she's born within the remit of the empire. And the king in the Bible divorces his first wife Vashti in order to marry Esther, and that's God's will. So I think Anne is very much kind of starting to see herself in this providentialist mindset. And there is a Venetian diplomat who knows her. He says she is completely convinced that this is God's will. So you have two women going in, being actually essentially flung into battle against each other by Henry the 8th, but they both believe that their victory is the will of God. I mean, I just try and think, like, what on earth must Catherine have been thinking at this point? She does not go quietly, though.

We'd have to give her that. She is not, like, I mean, we're talking, like fingernails being left in the door frames here. She is not. I would have packed this in a long time ago, personally. I think I would. I'd have an have cleaves myself. Yeah, right? Give me a castle, give me a load of jewelry.

and you just... Privileged irrelevance. Bring it on. Darling, you do the paperwork and I'll see you at Ascot. Like, I will be doing nothing. For the rest of my life, I will be maybe one week

I'll be learning how to cook, next week working on my posture. I will be doing nothing. I'll be fine. I'll just commit myself to getting gold in British Airways or something. Like, nothing.

But the thing we have to factor into this, though, that you and I really wouldn't care much about, but she did, is this is humiliation on a global stage. Yes. This is like the king is going to try and divorce you. I don't know how many kings have even divorced before this point around the world. So he's going to experiment on you now and he's going to divorce you for some bitch-ass lady in waiting who, you know, has got some French tricks up a sleeve.

And also there's the religion thing. So she genuinely thinks that she's upsetting God. Yes, she, both of them, I think once you start to factor in, and I think the longer it goes on for both, Catherine and Anne, there is obviously the Christian, particularly at the time, the teaching that suffering and enduring is something that is a test of faith and a test. They both, the longer this drags on it, drags on for seven years. Both of them start to really see that they are being tested and that that is, that they must hold the faith. And so for Catherine, so initially Henry, I'll blame Henry for this in a different way, because he,

approaches the Vatican, and the annulment argument he has is one that the Pope is almost guaranteed to find tricky, which is that Henry says, it was never within the remit of the Vatican to provide a dispensation for me to marry my brother's widow. And for the Pope, that's sort of, you're asking him to, first of all, cancel a previous Pope's dispensation, which is tricky. They don't like doing that. They don't like doing that. And also, you're asking him, to permanently curtail the power of his own office. And are there other marriages of less famous people that have been granted the same dispensation

and will therefore become invalid the length and breadth of Europe because of this argument? And people infallibility? Yeah, the whole... That means God was wrong. Yeah, it means that the interpretation of Scripture and also by this point, Protestantism has started. So the Vatican's interpretation of Scripture

as something that is a guideline, but not an absolute is something that Protestantism is pushing hard against. So they don't want to yield an inch on their scriptural analysis at all. And then you have the fact that Catherine's nephew is the Habsburg Emperor Charles V, who controls much of Italy. And so Catherine, he basically, he moves his army into Rome, and the Pope is even less inclined to offend the emperor by divorcing his aunt. but initially there is an option that Catherine could have taken

and they're going to offer an annulment but they're going to offer it with something that's by this point established Christian tradition which is the good faith clause which is the marriage will be declared to have been chronically religiously invalid but you and the people involved that didn't know that at the time so any children born from it will remain legitimate. Some good small print there, isn't there?

Wow. Yeah, exactly. So by the time this start, she has an 11-year-old daughter, Princess Mary, and this deal would have allowed Mary. Yeah. Mary would have stayed in the line of succession and she would have stayed legitimate.

Had Catherine taken the deal? And Catherine says, no. They try to encourage her to do what Louis Xelth's first wife had done and go into a convent and Catherine won't do it. again, I think possibly because she thinks she doesn't have a vocation and it would be spiritually dishonest. There is a lot of criticism from some scholars of Catherine not taking that early deal,

partly because of what it condemned her daughter to. And there's some pretty questionable advice that Catherine will later give Mary, which is essentially that she would rather see Mary's head on the block than negotiate on this. So you're seeing a whiff of that James the Fourth Corp's ruthlessness again. See, I can understand why I didn't know. But like the last two years when I was working at the university, I was chair of the lecturer's union and you'd see it all the time. Somebody had been fucked over by the system badly and they were being treated badly.

And because they knew that they were right and they knew that they were being treated badly, they wanted to take it to the absolute nth degree. They were going to go to court. And no amount of you saying, I think you should take the deal on the table, I know that you're right, but this isn't the way the system works. Correct. would convince them to do it because they knew that they were right. And just too often you saw that fall because the power blocks that are in place

are always going to be rigged against them. See, that's where I think that to me is what happens with Catherine. And I can understand, particularly some people who look at the social and psychological toll it takes in her daughter. I get that. But I can't help but feel that this is just someone who is justified in feeling that she is being screwed over. and this isn't fair. And also, again, this is what Henry will do with his second wife and his fourth wife, which is that he will gynecologically humiliate them.

It's always sex life with them. And so it's not enough for Henry to say, listen, the marriage contravened Leviticus in the Old Testament. He goes after this batshit claim that the verse in Leviticus that says you should not marry your brother's widow, and if you do, you will be childless, that it actually means sonless, which now you have people who have criticized the marriage at the start coming round to defend it and saying, that's not what it means.

I never liked her anyway. Yeah, and they're like, do you know what, actually, we've got you here? It doesn't mean sonless. And also, they did have a son. He died after six weeks. He was baptized, so the church considers him a fully living communicant member of the church. So even if it had meant son, it doesn't apply. And also, as pretty much every Christian who knows the Bible will tell you,

the Levitical laws don't apply after the Ministry of Christ. He says they're done, which is why Christians aren't kosher. Like, that's, there's just, that's, you know, so from a sort of exegetical perspective, Henry's argument is insane. There are, there are so few people willing to bat for him on this. And he then goes further, and he insists that Catherine Muff, to have been lying, and that because the marriage between her and Arthur had been fully consummated, it's a full marriage, and that's why the marriage has been cursed. And so, essentially, what Henry is doing is he is raking up the multiple miscarriages she's had and saying they were her fault for lying. He's also playing sort of cut and paste with a book that is, you know, it's not,

is at the centre of the faith that she is very devoted to. So as both, devout Christian and Honourable Woman, he is firing at the very core of her belief. He makes it, apart from that brief window with the Early Deal and the Good Faith Clause, he makes it impossible for her to climb down without essentially, yes, humiliating herself in her entire life to everyone she knows.

I'll be back with Gareth after this short break. We get to this, he's going to break with the church, that he's actually going to undo the very faith that she believes in the fabric of society. This has gone way beyond just a personal thing. Now, there's no way she's going to back down after that. There's just, it's not going to happen. She'll go to the wall with this. Yes, there are some, this is really sort of mid-20th century,

but very hard-line Catholic historians who did criticize her and said that the minute it became clear that he was being swayed by Protestant sympathizer, she should have martyed herself for the cause and accepted that the church is greater than any one story. Which, again, I can understand that. I think if you're looking at the long history of how many Catholics would end up dying because of this in the 1530s, I get it.

But from a Christian perspective, you're not really supposed to start lying because the world is rotten around you. You're supposed to die for the truth if it's forced upon you. And also she believes in her And she must have believed in her very soul that she was right And that will take you to wait

Like she's not going to concede that That she wasn't right Until the Pope rules against her Which he will not do She's not going to back on And there's also an element where you start to see The suffering Weaves itself into her in a way

There's those I haven't I've only seen bits of it online but there's a German musical about Cece, Franziosi's wife Elizabeth, and the narrator is death, and she sort of waltzes with death the whole way through. And it becomes a companion, and it's all about how suffering is quite dangerous,

because it can become your companion. And suffering dull, like humiliation becomes Catherine's companion. She can't, the longer goes on, the harder it is to back down from, on every level. And she starts to see careers being destroyed because of this.

And to her, I think, to be honest, fair enough, it's her husband's fault. The devil has got to him one way or the other. And she, look, there's still an element of claiming poverty as she had after her first widowhood where actually it's just a slightly smaller palace and a reduced entourage. It's not poverty. No, it's not. But she is lonely and she is humiliated and she's heartbroken. And I say all of those things to sort of build her up a bit because

lonely, humiliated and heartbroken is usually when people's strength starts to give way and Catherine's doesn't. She is we often talk about Anne Boleyn holding the course for seven years and she does she's tough as Niels too but so is Catherine so she sees

the ship as sinking and thinks sort of as it's captain well I'm going to go down with it then that's what will happen and that is what happens I mean she I would have tapped out a long time ago but it's one of those things of like it becomes like this moral arms race and the more extreme gets, the more there is to lose, the less likely she's going to let go of this. But obviously,

it does, we know the way that it goes. Henry rips the church part, founds his own, marries Ambellin. And what happens to Catherine after all that? Because like, she never accepts it, does she? She never squares herself with this or attempts to go, look, all right, can I have my castle back or anything like that? No, she still signs herself Catherine the Queen. there's some really interesting evidence that I think gets overlooked that actually Anne Blynn, who's the new queen, sort of hoped that Catherine would give in and that she really wants Mary to and that Anne is prepared to offer Mary a very good deal to do it.

Actually more than Jane Seymour will offer, but Mary just at this point can't, like Catherine, can't accept it, understandably. And then later Anne starts to get very angry and that's sort of the more famous stuff about her actively loathing Catherine. And actually at this stage four Anne, Catherine, it's a zero-sum game between the two of them, which is really sad. It does go a bit Miss Havisham, doesn't it? Yeah, there is. So there's, I think, the emotional peaks and troughs I talked about earlier, they're still there.

And this is, you know, there's quite a bit of paranoia. They're sort of barricading herself in her room at one point that she refuses to speak to servants who won't address her as queen. Oh, Catherine. And obviously if they won't get paid if they do that, they might actually be arrested if they do that. So they have to, she is legally reclass. She's still a member of the royal family. Henry has reclassified her as his brother's widow, the Dodger Princess of Wales. So technically speaking, she is the second highest ranking woman in the kingdom after Queen Anne. But she and there are, there were in fairness compared to like 99.9% of the population, a very generous alliance. aside. But it's a gold-tinged humiliation in order to get this, to have full access to it. She'll have to yield an inch and she won't. So her circle shrinks because these servants can't participate. It's all very, very sad. And she dies of cancer in January 1536 shortly after her 50th birthday. She's not allowed any access to her daughter because of it. And it's an immensely sad end for a very

dignified woman. And sometimes I sort of feel like I'm maybe overstating Catherine's faults, but it's partly deliberate because I think, you know, mess maketh the man kind of thing. And I think it's really sad that Catherine has sort of just been stripped of all her color and made quite bland. And actually, yeah, some of the stuff she did was to put it mildly questionable, particularly early in her career. But also, I think she was immensely courageous and the level of

backbone she had to have to wage the war for her right was tremendous. I think she was a truly remarkable woman. I think Anne Boleyn was too. I think it's just the man in the middle

was about as remarkable as skimmed milk, to be totally honest. I tend to think Catherine of Aragon and Anne Boleyn could have made really great queens of England if they'd be married to different men. And so I think that's the tragedy of it. And also

of course, in both their cases and even more so in Catharines, there is the physical toll that childbearing had taken on them. There's a lot to admire or at least be in awe of with Catherine of Aragon, absolutely. So as a final question then, as this

is a mini-series about history's worst break-ups, there's no doubt that this has got be up there. But what do you think the impact, the fallout of this breakup has been? I mean, not just on the emotions of those involved, which was colossal, but like on a global, not global, political scale. Yeah. So if, let's say the Pope had given in or Catherine had given in, amblin probably would have become Queen of England in about 1528, 1529. She would have had four extra years of childbearing. Even if she had only had Elizabeth, Elizabeth would have been regarded as completely legitimate by the Catholic world, Anne would have raised her a Catholic.

There's no question in my mind, Anne would have done it, and that she was iffy on the Vatican, but she really would have accepted the Pope's ruling, obviously. England would have stayed Catholic. I think the impact of they're not being the Mary Queen of Scots aspect of things, the tensions with Europe, the Spanish Armada, the whole shape of English foreign policy in the centuries to come would have been completely. different. Wow. It's almost incalculable the impact it has because the impact of Protestantism on English and then later British history is colossal. So I don't think this is this much of a stretch, but barring, you know, maybe another royal converting down the line, there probably wouldn't have

been years and centuries of sectarian bitterness in Ireland because it wouldn't have been religiously defined. Like it, the dominoes that fall from it are huge. And obviously things could have happened that we couldn't foresee. But it's the most important breakup in British history by a country mile. Put everyone else's breakups in the in the shade really. If you listen to this and you think you've had a bad breakup, like, come on. Come on. Yeah, no one's being, yeah, no one's like, listen. Did it result in people being burnt at the stake? No. No. Did it somehow, did an English king and a Spanish queen somehow end up causing Ireland 300 years of difficulty? No. No, yours didn't do that, guys. So until you can come back to me with that, sit down.

It's just, it's small change, quite frankly. Absolutely. Although what I do love about what we've established is that you and I would have sold out like that. Instantly. Instantly. Yeah. Completely weak-willed and greedy. Just like, yeah.

Just us, stress, head to toe in our matching ermines turning up to a Hampton Court Christmas and being like, we're fine. We're fine. We're fine. We're so sad. We're so sad. We miss him. Terribly. awesome. I've shown you my new emeralds.

Garret, you have been so much fun to talk to. You always are. If people want to know more about you and your work, where can they find you? Instagram underscore Gareth Russell and then my website, gareth Russell.com. Will you come back and talk to us some more about history's naughty people? Anytime. Thank you for listening and thank you so much to Gareth for joining me. And if you like what you heard, don't forget to like with you and follow along whatever it is. You get your podcasts.

Coming up, we have got an episode on The Truth About the Bronte Sisters and the second installment of this little mini-series on history's worst breakups where we are looking at, Bob, Bom, Bom, Lord Byron and Lady Caroline Lamb. Of course we are. And if you want us to explore a subject, or perhaps you just wanted to say hello, then you can email us at betwixt at history hit.com. This podcast was edited by Tim Arstall and produced by Stuart Beckwith.

The senior producer was Freddie Chick. Join me again, Betwixt the Sheets, the History of Sex Scandal in Society, a podcast by History Hit. This podcast contains music from Epidemic Sound.