Jiminy Cricket Was Wrong

King Henry VIII was desperate. He was swept with lust for Anne Boleyn, but she was holding out for a wedding ring. The problem, of course, was Queen Katherine, who had been his loyal, forgiving wife for 20 years.

Henry needed an annulment, but the pope kept stalling. So Henry moved Katharine from one damp, drafty lodging to another, reducing her provisions, in hopes that illness would carry her off. To break her spirit, he replaced her staff with hostile spies, and refused to let her see their daughter.

Then Henry came to a brilliant solution: he would put himself in place of the pope. His own conscience was "the highest and most supreme court for judgement and justice," he declared. As spiritual head of the nation, he pronounced his first marriage invalid, and Anne was finally his bride. Citizens were forbidden to write or say anything critical of the new marriage, and those who wouldn't take an oath supporting the law were tortured to death.

But in a few months Henry's ardor for Anne cooled, and soon Jane Seymour was the object of his desire. So Henry had Anne framed for a capital crime, and two weeks later she was beheaded. Jane became the third of Henry's wives, though three more were still to come. As historian Alison Weir writes, "with each passing year [Henry would] become more egotistical, more sanctimonious, and more sure of his own divinity."

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