HENRY VIII’S MISTRESSES: WHO ELSE DID THE TUDOR KING SLEEP WITH?
Popular history is so well versed in the six wives of Henry VIII that they require little introduction. Seemingly every depiction of his reign, from the colourful bodice-ripper series The Tudors to the flickering candlelight drama Wolf Hall, serves to remind us of the old mantra we learned at school: divorced, beheaded, died, divorced, beheaded, survived.
We could be forgiven for thinking the King was so busy keeping up with the women to whom he was married that he had little time for others. That was not the truth, however, as Henry – with his “angelic” face, athletic build and red-gold hair–had an eye for the ladies, and in his early years, particularly, few could resist him.
Paradoxically, we can learn about Henry’s mistresses through his wives. Anne Boleyn’s refusal to sleep with the king in the late 1520s was all the more successful because he was so accustomed to other women saying yes. Two in particular are known: Elizabeth Blount and Anne’s sister, Mary, who were Henry’s lovers in the late 1510s and early 1520s after he started to question his marriage to Catherine of Aragon.
‘BESSIE’ BLOUNT
Elizabeth, or ‘Bessie’, is the first woman who is known, with any certainty, to have been
