Divorced, beheaded, died.
Divorced, beheaded, survived.
The story of Henry VIII and his six wives
is one of the best-known in history.
There's Katherine of Aragon, the bitter, abandoned first wife.
Anne Boleyn, the original other woman.
Jane Seymour, bit of a doormat.
Then you've got Anne of Cleves, she was the ugly one.
Katherine Howard, the one who slept around.
And Katherine Parr, the saintly nurse.
But I'm going to tell you a very different story.
I'm going to take you back in time
and into the private lives of Henry's six wives.
I'm going to see the story from their point of view.
And I'll watch as events unfold.
The fate of my soul is no longer your concern.
It will always be my concern.
These events all really happened
and were recorded in historical documents, or reported
by eyewitnesses.
I asked for his head.
Not his coat.
They reveal six complex women who lived in a dangerous age,
as they struggle to survive being married to Henry VIII.
You are still prepared to question me?
Six wives whose names were tarnished by Henry's propaganda machine.
Six Queens whose stories I want to re-examine.
Is she here?
I'll observe their life at court.
I'll watch them romanced by a charismatic king...
Tell me you want the same. Always.
..who craves the company of women.
The King is a very sociable man.
I have here a warrant for the arrest of Queen Katherine.
I'll see how their reputations are destroyed.
I beg of you to tell the king that my heart is filled with sorrow
and assure him of my repentance.
And lives cut short at the hands of a ruthless, brutal man.
Six children born.
Five of them dead!
This is the ultimate true story of love, lust, and betrayal.
Remember what happened to my last wife and queen.
Henry VIII's loyal first wife Katherine of Aragon
tried desperately to give the king a male heir.
I am afraid she has suffered a loss of the child.
Get out!
Mary? Mother?
After losing five children, she had a daughter, Mary.
But her failure to give him a son angered her husband.
He began to look elsewhere.
Sent from Anne Boleyn with her kindest regards, your Majesty.
Henry became infatuated with Anne Boleyn.
And he made her a promise that one day she would be his queen.
The storm shall pass.
If she has patience enough.
Or the will to see it through.
But he already had a queen.
I have been a true, humble and obedient wife.
Henry was determined to marry Anne.
But two people stood in his way.
The Pope, and Katherine herself...
who had no intention of giving up her crown.
The King has been trying to end his marriage
for more than two years.
Increasingly impatient,
he's now moved Anne Boleyn into the royal palace at Greenwich,
forcing Katherine of Aragon to live side-by-side with his mistress.
You are my one true husband.
You brought me here under false pretences.
I assumed it was to discuss a specific legal matter.
Not to be caught up in this futile, repetitious debate.
You, sir, face eternal damnation.
Not only of your own soul, but all of your subjects.
You cannot defy the Church in this way.
The fate of my soul is no longer your concern.
It will always be my concern.
You are no longer Queen. Accept this.
SHOUT OF ANGER AND FRUSTRATION
Your Majesty. My Lord.
How was your meeting?
Brief.
And the last of its kind.
It's 1530.
One of the stranger moments in English history,
because the country's got two queens.
One of them, Katherine of Aragon, is the crowned Queen of England,
and lawful wife of Henry VIII.
The other, Anne Boleyn.
No Tudor woman has been mythologised as much as Anne Boleyn.
She's been accused of being a seductress, an adulteress -
even a witch.
And because she was the other woman in a previously happy marriage,
she's had a pretty harsh press from historians.
It's the oldest cliche in the world.
A sexy young thing worming her way into a man's heart,
and pushing out his loyal first wife.
True, Anne was clever, and she was ambitious,
but she also had little choice,
because as soon as Henry set eyes on her,
he had to have her.
Where Anne was different from earlier mistresses
is that she set the terms, by refusing to sleep with him.
This only made Henry even keener.
He thought that Anne could give him everything that he wanted,
including a son and heir,
which poor old Katherine could no longer do.
To Henry's mind she was now old, and past her best.
She may once have been his warrior queen,
but now she was a bitter queen,
standing between him and happiness.
Henry decided to send Katherine away from court.
He moved her and their 12-year-old daughter, Princess Mary,
to Windsor Castle.
So where was Henry?
Well, he was off with Anne Boleyn.
They were travelling about, staying in people's houses, going hunting,
having dinner, acting just like a married couple.
Except for the fact they weren't having sex.
Now, Henry was in love with Anne, but his subjects weren't.
To them, Anne was "the other woman".
When she appeared in public, there was hooting and hissing,
and some people called her "the King's goggle-eyed whore".
There's a story from round about this time which shows just how much
Anne was vilified.
She was having dinner down by the River Thames
when she was set upon by a mob of angry women.
We're told that there were between 7,000 and 8,000 of them.
So many that Anne had to escape by boat.
Now I don't think it's particularly plausible
that THAT many women all went after Anne at the same time.
But the story does show how much the people of England hated her.
Katherine, though, remained hugely popular.
Henry would need to get rid of her for good.
He sent word that he and Anne were coming to Windsor to hunt,
and that Katherine would have to move again.
And painfully for Katherine,
he decided to split up mother and daughter.
Katherine will never be allowed to return.
And what's worse, she's not allowed to take the Princess Mary with her.
She will never see her daughter again.
The final humiliation will come
when Katherine is ordered to give back the Queen's crown jewels,
so that Henry can give them to Anne.
The Queen was unceremoniously removed from Windsor
and sent to the abbey at St Albans.
Mary was sent to Richmond Palace.
After 22 years of marriage, the King didn't even say goodbye.
All this was calculated to cause her maximum hurt
and deliberately to insult her.
This is something Henry did a lot.
He dodged problems.
With him, it was out of sight, out of mind.
He sent Katherine into exile
so that he wouldn't have to deal with her any more.
After all, when they had arguments face to face, she always won.
She was much cleverer than he was.
But nevertheless, she remained his legal wife.
With Katherine out of the way,
Anne agreed to consummate their relationship.
Henry had been waiting for seven long years for this moment.
And they both knew that if Anne got pregnant, he would have to marry her
and make her Queen of England so that any heir that she might produce
would be born legitimate.
However, there was still one man standing in their way -
the head of the Catholic Church.
After more than five years, the Pope was still refusing
to grant an annulment.
Fortunately for Henry, though, times were changing.
A religious revolution was unfolding in Europe.
A rift was opening up between the old traditional form
of Christianity, Catholicism, with the Pope at its head,
and a new stripped-back form of Christianity called Protestantism.
The clue to Protestantism lies in its name.
It was originally a protest movement
against the excesses of the Catholic Church.
Religious reformers wanted to change the way that people worshipped God,
with services held in their own native languages, not in Latin,
and churches led by themselves, not by Rome.
Anne was a strong supporter of this movement for reform,
and Henry too began to see how this might work in his favour.
He could be the head of his own church.
The new religion had many practical advantages to offer him.
So he joined this wider movement to cut out the Pope,
a movement that would allow people to decide for themselves
what God wanted them to do.
And Henry decided that God wanted him to leave his wife.
So he chose to ignore the Pope and to marry Anne.
It's January the 25th, 1533.
And a wedding has been hastily arranged.
You look breathtaking, my lady.
Thank you.
We should make our way.
I can't seem to stop.
It's to be expected.
Particularly if the entire kingdom harbours hatred towards me.
No. No, my lady.
The King is waiting.
We must go.
We must.
So why is Henry getting married so secretively?
I'd call it furtive to do it at dawn in such a small ceremony.
The answer is that if his subjects knew what Henry was up to,
getting married like this without the Pope's approval,
many of them would still think that he's committing the sin of bigamy.
With the danger of excommunication from the Church,
and the damnation of his soul.
But I believe Henry HAS TO marry Anne,
because she suspects that she's pregnant.
I will.
Henry must be hoping that, after all this time,
Anne will now give him the son he craves.
With Henry and Anne at last married,
and with his bride carrying his heir -
he was convinced it would be a boy -
the King was in a celebratory mood.
Anne's coronation four months later
was as public as her wedding had been private.
There was a grand procession
along from the Tower of London towards Westminster.
Anne had her long dark hair down,
and just a golden coronet on her head,
no veil - Henry wanted people to be able to see her face.
This was him saying, "This is my wife.
"She is your Queen.
"And there's nothing that the Pope
"or the people of England can do about that."
And when she arrived at Westminster Abbey,
Anne was crowned Queen.
Huge crowds had turned out to watch the ceremony,
but the mood was grim.
One eyewitness claims that they showed themselves
as sorry as if it had been a funeral.
The rightful Queen had been banished.
Anne was a pretender.
It was a public scandal.
But most important of all, Henry had defied the Pope to marry her.
And devout Catholics up and down the country,
but particularly those at court, were all blaming Anne Boleyn.
Yet Anne had achieved her goal.
She was now Queen of England,
but she'd also managed to make some dangerous enemies at court.
What's worse, now that she was married to Henry,
the power that she'd held over him was beginning to slip away.
Anne's about to enter confinement for the last month of her pregnancy,
and she expects Henry to stay faithful to her
while she's locked away.
This should be the honeymoon period of Henry and Anne's marriage.
But Anne's learning very quickly
that it's not easy being married to King Henry VIII.
I'm unclear, my lady, exactly what it is you are asking of me.
And I am unclear, my lord,
as to why it is so difficult for you to comprehend.
I bestowed trust in my husband,
and I expect that trust to be honoured.
Surely, that is not unreasonable?
You are dissatisfied already with me, madam?
Of course not.
I simply wish to protect our union,
to enter confinement in the knowledge that you hold it
in the same esteem as I do.
For you, my dearest, so well versed
in respecting the sanctity of marriage.
HE CHUCKLES
A king has his needs.
But you are my queen.
Mother of my heir.
Your position is without question.
Then surely I deserve your respect, my lord.
You are still prepared to question me?
If you wish to protect our union, my lady,
then allow me to make a suggestion.
Look away.
Now, from Henry's point of view, this was quite straightforward.
He was just acting as any king should.
Obviously, when his wife was pregnant,
he should get his needs met elsewhere.
But Anne wasn't going to put up with this!
Unlike Katherine, who'd overlooked her husband's many indiscretions.
After this particular argument,
Henry and Anne didn't speak to each other for several days.
But Anne knew she had a trump card - that baby in her belly.
The King's doctors and astrologers
were all saying it was going to be a boy.
This would set the seal on Henry's dynasty
and upon Anne's destiny.
It's September 1533, and Anne has given birth.
The delivery was easy and the child is healthy.
But it's another disappointment for Henry.
The baby is another girl.
This is the Princess Elizabeth.
Her mother, Anne, is absolutely besotted with her.
Little do any of them know it,
but this "disappointment" will end up
as one of the greatest monarchs in English history -
Queen Elizabeth I.
But Anne hadn't solved the King's problem.
Henry needed a boy in addition to his two daughters -
Mary, from his first marriage, and now Elizabeth.
The girls wouldn't be able to continue the Tudor name,
and who knew if the country would accept a female monarch?
It hadn't been tried.
So the pressure was now all on Anne.
She only needed to look north to the bleak Fenland countryside
to see just how dismal her fate might be
if she failed to deliver a male heir.
Now in exile, and out of public sight,
Katherine was being made to suffer.
It would suit Henry and Anne if something were to happen to her.
Henry's advisers had been constantly moving her to more and more grim,
and more and more isolated residences.
One of them was described as "the most pestilential house in England".
These places weren't healthy.
They'd also been slowly getting rid of her servants.
Katherine was now in poor health,
and had been separated from Princess Mary
for more than two years.
She wrote heartfelt letters of love and advice to her daughter,
who was now 17.
Despite her pleading, though, Henry refused to let them see each other.
But still, the people of England hadn't forgotten Katherine.
During one of these moves, the road into Cambridgeshire, 24 miles of it,
was lined with people who called out her name as she passed.
The people of England still remembered their Queen.
This is where Katherine finally ended up,
Kimbolton in Cambridgeshire.
It was rebuilt in the 18th century,
but it was then a desolate medieval castle.
Katherine's health was deteriorating
in the cold and damp at the edge of the Fens.
She felt besieged.
She became paranoid that somebody was poisoning her food,
and some of her faithful ladies-in-waiting
were forbidden from seeing her.
Among them was Katherine's oldest, closest friend,
her fellow Spaniard Maria De Salinas.
It's January 1536.
Am I too late? Please tell me I am not too late.
Maria has defied the King to visit Katherine on her deathbed.
My Lady De Salinas. Mi senora.
IN SPANISH:
My Lord King...
..and dearest husband.
As the hour of my death now approaches...
..I wish for you to know...
..that you have...
my forgiveness.
It is my final wish.
I ask your grace...
..to forgive me also, to understand...
..that my behaviour is born...
..only from the grief of our separation.
A loss...
..too great...
..to endure.
My eyes...
..long for you above all else.
Farewell.
Katherine died six days later,
without receiving a reply to her final letter.
She was 50 years old.
She's been betrothed to Henry since she was 17.
She dedicated her whole life to being Queen.
And right to the end, she remained immensely popular.
People lined the streets to watch her coffin being carried here,
to Peterborough Cathedral in Cambridgeshire.
The King wasn't present at Katherine's funeral,
and neither was their daughter, Mary.
Henry refused to let her attend.
But the service was packed with
those who'd loved and respected Katherine,
including the ever-faithful Maria De Salinas.
Even today, people leave pomegranates on Katherine's grave,
the fruit from her personal emblem
and a reminder of her homeland in Spain.
A lot of people think of Katherine of Aragon
as a grim-faced, angry, rejected woman,
but I don't think that we should remember he like that.
I prefer to think of her as a fearless warrior queen.
And don't forget -
she was also Henry's first, and his longest-lasting love.
It's just days after Katherine's death.
Queen Anne is pregnant again.
This should be a time for celebration,
but tensions are increasing between the Royal couple.
With his wife preoccupied by the early stages of pregnancy,
Henry's eye is free to wander.
Your majesty. Madam.
The Queen is sleeping.
Should I wake her? No.
Then I shall come and find you, sire, as soon as she rises.
There's no need.
I shall wait here.
That's if you don't object to keeping me company?
It would be my pleasure.
The Queen has been feeling unwell this morning.
Hopefully, rest will be the cure.
Perhaps.
Although she's certainly no stranger to rest.
THEY CHUCKLE
I'd like to thank you again for my gift, your Grace.
It was a most unexpected thing.
Unexpected but...
..welcome? Of course.
It is beautiful.
As is the wearer.
The woman sitting on the King's knee is called Jane Seymour.
You might recognise her,
because she's one of Anne Boleyn's ladies-in-waiting.
And before that, she was one of Katherine of Aragon's.
My lady. How are you feeling?
It's almost like Henry's gone out of his way to humiliate his wife
by having this brazen flirtation with one of her servants.
A few days later, Anne miscarried her child.
When Henry discovered, he was too angry to speak about it,
and there was one report that he said scarcely anything to her,
except that he clearly saw that God
did not wish to give him male children.
I believe that this is the point at which Henry began
to turn against his wife.
The spell was broken for Anne.
Her power over Henry was ebbing away,
and Anne sensed this.
The reason she'd had the miscarriage, she told the King,
is because she was upset.
Her heart broke, she said, when she saw that he loved others.
After just three years of marriage to Henry,
Anne now had a rival.
Jane Seymour was young and attractive,
and unlike Anne, she seemed compliant and respectful.
But the real reason why Jane was such a threat
was because she'd been deliberately placed before the King
by Anne Boleyn's enemies.
The court was a hotbed of different factions,
all of them competing for the attention of the King.
One lot were the religious reformers -
they were very keen on Henry's new church in England.
But opposing them were the religious conservatives.
This lot were still secretly loyal to the Pope,
and they would've been very glad to see the back of Anne Boleyn.
But they had their own secret weapon - Jane Seymour.
They coached her in how to attract Henry's attention,
and it worked.
Henry seemed to be falling in love with Jane.
It must be agonising for Anne.
She's watching a love affair unfolding
between Jane Seymour and her own husband before her very eyes.
Ironically, she's in exactly the same position
as Katherine of Aragon had been before her.
Anne is feeling vulnerable and nervous,
and nervousness makes people do strange things.
So, Sir Henry...
..have you proposed marriage to my cousin yet?
Not yet, your Grace.
Poor Lady Margaret.
I have no ill feeling towards her.
I simply wish to... bide my time a little.
Such a gentleman.
Do you know what I think, Sir Henry?
No, my lady. But I feel sure you're about to tell me.
I think you look for dead men's shoes.
A rich widow? You think me so shallow?
Not just any rich widow.
What I mean to say is this.
That if something were to happen to the King, you'd look to marry me.
Am I right?
Madam, I'm sure that if ever I were to have even such a thought,
that I would be in grave danger of losing my head.
Well, remember, I could certainly make that happen if I so wished it.
I'm teasing you, sir!
Then perhaps we should concern ourselves
with less gruesome thoughts and return to the celebrations.
A very wise idea.
Anne should know that, at the Tudor court,
conversations like this don't stay private for very long.
The man Anne was talking to was called Henry Norris,
and he was one of the King's most trusted and intimate confidants.
Now, to talk about the King's death was treason.
For Anne to talk about the King's death to the King's closest friend
and then to suggest that they might get married,
well, that seems absolutely bonkers.
So why did Anne do it?
Was she arrogant enough to think that she could get away with it?
Or was she really desperate to feel desired once again?
I think the answer is neither.
I think the really unfair thing is
that Anne was only acting in accordance
with the Code of Chivalry.
This was a way of behaving with which Henry was obsessed,
and according to chivalry a queen, or a noble lady,
was supposed to behave kindly and graciously
and flirtatiously to humble young knights.
So by flirting with Henry Norris,
Anne was only fulfilling her job description.
The only thing I'll concede
is that maybe fear made her go too far.
Whatever her reasons, Anne's ill-judged remark
would have enormous repercussions.
By the next day, everybody at court had heard
what Anne was supposed to have said -
including the King.
Rumours were flying about that Anne
had been having this affair with Henry Norris,
but also with other courtiers too.
It was even said that she'd been sleeping with her own brother.
No matter how preposterous the claims,
Anne's enemies fuelled the rumours,
and it suited Henry to believe them.
He was now obsessed with Jane Seymour,
and he wanted to get rid of his second wife.
My lord, my lord.
Pernicious gossip - can you not see that?
I cannot see everything.
And that is why I employ the greatest trust
in those I keep close to me.
And who closer than me?
Those who have served me for nearly their entire lifetimes.
I am your loyal wife, my lord.
Does that count for nothing?
I could not do anything to hurt or discredit you, I swear.
My loyal wife...
and trusted companion, Sir Henry...
..in each other's arms.
Lies! Witnessed by others.
Good men who have neither reason nor inclination
to fabricate nonsense.
How could I jeopardise all that I have for so long desired?
Only you hold the answer to that question.
Just think of our child.
My lord.
How long we have waited to be together.
You should heed your own advice, madam.
I do, my lord.
And I would no more slight you than I would harm a hair on the head
of our sweet daughter, Elizabeth.
Think of her, sire.
Sire.
I wish you to leave now.
But if my lord could give me a few precious minutes more,
then I could...
Leave, or I shall have you dragged from here.
Even after this really horrible confrontation,
Anne must still have had hopes of salvaging her relationship.
The very next day she attended the May Day tournament,
just as if nothing was wrong.
And, in fact, this would be her last public appearance as Queen.
As the King was riding away from the joust,
he went with Henry Norris,
and he questioned him closely
about what he might have been up to with his wife.
Henry Norris denied all wrongdoing, but nevertheless,
he was arrested and sent to the Tower.
And the King's men were coming for Anne too.
The following day, after three tempestuous years of marriage,
Anne was arrested.
She was taken by boat from Greenwich,
up the river to the Tower of London.
Henry didn't see her again, either to confront her, or say goodbye.
Just as he had with Katherine of Aragon,
he let other people do his dirty work.
Anne was accused of treason,
and of committing adultery with five male courtiers,
including her own brother, George.
Anne was frightened about where exactly they were taking her.
"Shall I go into a dungeon?" she asked.
But the guard said no,
they were taking her to the Royal apartments,
where she'd stayed the night before her own coronation.
When she heard this, Anne cried with relief.
"It is too good for me," she said.
"Jesus have mercy upon me."
It's at this point that we begin to see Anne's terror.
Anne's own servants were dismissed,
and she was given five new ladies-in-waiting.
But really, they were spies.
Every single word that Anne said was fed back to the King.
The ladies reported that Anne was growing hysterical,
sometimes crying, sometimes laughing.
She even made a joke that history would know her
as Queen Anne the Headless.
The five accused men,
including her brother and Henry Norris,
were quickly found guilty and executed.
Anne has also been found guilty.
Of treason.
And the punishment is death.
But, for me, there's a compelling piece of evidence
that points to her innocence.
Anne has asked to see a priest,
Thomas Cranmer, the Archbishop of Canterbury.
You wish to take the holy sacrament of confession, my Lady?
My Lord God.
I am heartily sorry for having offended you.
I detest all of my sins
because I fear the loss of heaven, and the pains of hell.
But most of all, because I offend you,
my God,
who is all good, and deserving of all my love.
But I kneel before you now to protest my innocence
of the crimes I am accused.
I have ever been a faithful wife to the King.
Though I do not say I have always shown him that humility
that his goodness merited.
I confess that I have had jealous fancies
and suspicions of him that I had not discretion nor wisdom to conceal
at all times.
But as for my brother...
and those others unjustly condemned...
..I shall willingly accompany them into heaven with this assurance.
That I shall lead an endless life with them in peace and joy,
where I shall pray to God for the King.
May the Lord have mercy on my soul.
This is everything you wish to say?
God knows, and is my witness
that I have not sinned against him in any other way.
Anne believes, all Tudor people believe,
that if she tells a lie in confession,
she damns her soul to eternal torment.
So when she says she's innocent, in those extreme circumstances,
I think we have to believe her.
Anne's husband, Henry, had loved her so much
that he changed a country's religion so that he could have her.
But now he's tired, he's frustrated by her.
Anne's real crime is to have failed to give the King a son,
and to have become difficult to live with.
That's why she has to die.
All this for so little a neck.
Anne Boleyn's beheading on the 19th of May 1536
was the first execution of a queen in English history.
The country shed few tears for Anne, and her enemies rejoiced.
Her body was brought to the small chapel
that lies within the Tower of London.
This is where Anne is buried.
She really has been one of history's most controversial figures.
For much of the last 500 years, she has been vilified as a schemer,
a predator, even as a witch.
But from the vantage point of the 21st century,
it looks very different.
She seems like one of us.
She used wit and willpower to get what she wanted.
At first, this worked very well for Anne.
But ultimately, the Tudor court
was a dangerous place to be for an ambitious woman.
In the end, she was the victim of her own strength,
as well as the victim of the pitiless King.
As soon as he received the news of Anne's execution,
Henry went off to see Jane.
And 11 days later, he married her,
his third Queen, at Whitehall Palace.
He didn't waste any time, did he?
Preparations for the wedding had begun even before Anne was dead.
Jane was 27 and a devout Catholic.
Her family and her Catholic supporters
hoped she might steer Henry back to the old religion,
but I think Jane decided to take a different approach
now she was Queen.
And here's the clue.
The motto she chose was "bound to obey and serve".
Jane Seymour was your typical English rose.
Just look at her pale skin, the strawberry-blonde hair,
her lovely rosy cheeks.
But English roses aren't very exciting, are they?
And Jane's pale appearance does seem matched by her pale character.
She's curiously passive,
and I think that this was a clever choice -
to be the absolute polar opposite of Anne Boleyn,
who was a bit too exciting for her own good.
I think I might do exactly the same thing
if I were married to Henry VIII -
to pretend to be meek and mild, even if I wasn't,
so as not to annoy him, and to stay alive.
After so much upheaval,
a period of calm descended upon the Royal household.
Importantly, Jane was a peacemaker.
She improved Henry's relationship with his children.
For a long time, he'd been estranged from his daughter, Mary.
Mary was now 20,
and Henry had even made her sign a piece of paper
saying that her own mother's marriage
had been incestuous and unlawful.
But now, in 1536, Jane persuaded Henry to meet Mary once again.
So Henry's family life, for once, was going smoothly.
But meanwhile, out in the country,
a great big wave of political and religious change was about to break.
And this was the moment
when Jane's obedience to the King would be tested.
England was a country divided,
split between the new reformers and the Catholics.
Hundreds of monasteries, all around the country,
kept the old faith alive.
To Henry and his advisers,
these monasteries represented a challenge to his authority.
They were still answerable to the Pope.
Also, they were fantastically wealthy.
Henry had fought a lot of wars, he'd built a lot of palaces,
he was short of cash.
Hmmm...
In 1536, the King ordered that they be pulled down,
and their assets seized.
For many people, this destruction felt like a sort of apocalypse.
It destroyed the fabric of their world.
And the dissolution of the monasteries led to rebellion.
One particular rebellion, called the Pilgrimage of Grace,
started in the East Midlands.
It spread to the north
and it culminated with a bloody uprising in York.
Jane's stepdaughters, Mary and Elizabeth,
were brought back to the court in London
to avoid them getting caught up in the uprising.
Mary, in particular, was in danger,
because, as the daughter of
the staunchly Catholic Katherine of Aragon,
the rebels would have loved to use her as a figurehead.
Henry was determined to prevent this.
The religious tension playing out across the country
is also being felt within the palace walls.
Princess Mary has just returned to court
under the protective wing of her stepmother.
She has to tread carefully around her father,
who she barely knows.
What have you been doing today?
Tell me. Riding, sir.
Some needlework. A little music.
Pardon? Music, sir.
The lute.
Very good. Mary is extremely gifted, my lord.
Almost a match for her father.
Is she now? You must play for me again.
It's been a long time.
Of course.
It would be a pleasant distraction from the foolishness in York.
I've heard talk at court.
These men wish to see us slaughtered.
They are churchmen, not murderers.
They are simply protesting.
You sympathise with them?
I can understand their allegiance to their faith.
They are much attached to their monasteries in the north.
You do sympathise, then?
My concerns are for you alone, my lord.
For your soul.
If I upset you, sire, then I beg your pardon.
I only wish to offer my counsel as your devoted wife and queen.
And so I would urge you to tread carefully.
Remember what happened to my last wife and queen.
What Jane was doing was fulfilling
another of these recognisable roles of a Tudor Queen.
In this case, asking for mercy on behalf of the powerless.
Jane also thought it was here duty as a devout Catholic
to petition the King for a cause she believed in.
Although this was a brave thing to do,
Jane was wise to back off when she saw
that she'd pushed the King too far.
But she did do absolutely everything else that Henry asked of her,
including the most important thing of all.
On the 12th of October 1537, after a long labour
lasting two days and three nights,
Jane gave birth.
It was a boy.
Henry had a healthy, legitimate son at last.
It had taken him three wives to get to this point.
Three days later, baby Prince Edward,
this new hope of the Tudor dynasty,
was christened here in the Chapel Royal at Hampton Court.
It's 12 days since the birth of Prince Edward,
and the nation is still celebrating.
But Jane is taking longer than expected to recover.
Somebody fetch more cold water.
Can you hear me?
You are still here.
My sweet lady, where else would I be?
Where is our son?
He is thriving?
Very much so.
A more contented child I've yet to meet.
He must know how much his mother loved him.
You will tell him, my lord.
I do not give up hope that you may tell him yourself.
Many times.
Lord God, why must you punish me this way?
Jane Seymour never recovered from the infection she contracted
after the long and difficult birth of Prince Edward.
She died on the 24th of October 1537.
Henry genuinely grieved for Jane.
He wrote about his bitterness,
and it was said that he retired to a solitary place
to see to his sorrows.
Jane had been the perfect wife for him.
She hadn't bothered him.
She'd given him what he wanted, a son.
Who knows what would have happened next,
because they had only been married for 16 months.
There's a sense that he hadn't had time to get bored of her.
To me, Jane Seymour was a queen who played a canny hand.
By acting exactly like the wife that Henry wanted,
she became his most-loved queen.
When Henry died, he chose to be buried alongside her,
here in St George's Chapel, Windsor.
But that wouldn't be for some time yet.
Henry still had three wives to go.
The ageing and increasingly overweight King
will struggle to find a fourth wife.
And a blind date will prove a disaster.
IN GERMAN:
History will forever judge this Queen on her looks,
ignoring her gift for diplomacy
that will make her one of England's richest women.
A nice tight grip on the shaft.
Madam, this is an outrage.
Ambassador Haas, this is King Henry.
Oh, very good.
And the 50-year-old King's relationship
with a teenage lady-in-waiting
will lead to lurid tales of adultery and treachery.
I thought you were one of the King's men.
I am. His Majesty's most loyal and faithful servant.
And I'll reveal that this will be
the most disturbing story of them all.
Did you lie with Dereham?
Yes, my lord. I see.
The choice to lie with him was not mine.
I was a child.
You are charged with the murder of Mrs Emily French.
How do you plead?
We have been asked to send a small working party out there.
MUSIC: Stand By Me by Ben E King
Hope Clinic - a tiny mission hospital in South Africa.