Born on 28 June 1491, Henry VIII, the King of England from 1509 until his death in 1547, is best known in history for his six marriages, apart from his numerous extramarital liaisons with a number of his mistresses who shared his bed.

In his portrait Henry appears to be a fat, larger-than-life individual with a neat red beard and dressed in expensive clothes decked with jewels. However, that was Henry in his later life. While he was young, he was handsome, athletic and the most eligible prince in Europe. He was a man of action and enjoyed all kinds of sport that included hunting, riding and jousting. With his angelic face, athletic built and red-gold hair, he had a magnetic charm which few women could resist. However, he was a complex man. While he was boisterous, flamboyant, extravagant, arrogant and ruthless, he was also intelligent, a musician who played the flute, the lute and the organ, a poet, an avid reader and owned a library of almost a thousand books. He was a passionate man and always had an eye for women.

Henry married Catherine of Aragon, widow of his older brother Arthur on 11 June 1509 and Catherine conceived in the same year. But unfortunately, she gave birth to a stillborn girl on 31 January 1510. After four months Catherine announced her second pregnancy and when a son, Henry, was born on 01 January 1511, the nation celebrated the occasion with festivities. However, the little prince suddenly died, only after 52 days of his birth on 22 February 1511.

Despite the consecutive mishaps, Henry and Catherine seemed to be very much in love and when he went to fight in France in 1513 he left his queen as regent. Catherine gave birth to two sons in 1513 and 1515, but both of them died shortly after birth. After that, Catherine delivered a healthy daughter, Mary on 18 February 1516 and despite his evident disappointment, Henry VIII said that surely boys would follow the girl. However, despite their apparent happiness, it was revealed that by that time, Henry was having an affair with Elizabeth or Anne Hastings, one of the sisters of Edward Stafford, 3rd Duke of Buckingham and from 1516, Elizabeth or Bessie Blount was the most significant mistress of Henry, for about three years. Finally, by 1525 Henry had ceased to live with his wife.

Elizabeth or Bessie Blount, known to be the first mistress of Henry, arrived at Henry’s court as a teenager. As her family home fell under the jurisdiction of Catherine of Aragon’s first husband, Arthur, it is not impossible that the young Catherine saw Bessie as a little baby. She is recorded as being one of the eight in a masque performed to celebrate New Year 1515, partnered with Henry himself and around October 1518 she was impregnated with Henry’s son. The pregnant Bessie disappeared from the court into the safety of the Essex countryside, where she gave birth to Henry Fitzroy in 1519, the only illegitimate son of the king. At the age of six, Fitzroy was given the dukedoms of Richmond and Somerset and it was thought that as the king does not have a male heir, he would legitimize Fitzroy. But he died in 1536, probably from consumption. It is speculated by many historians that Elizabeth Tailboys, the sister of Fitzroy, could also be the king’s child.

The Boleyn sisters, Mary and Anne, entered the Tudor scene in March 1522, when they took part in another masque in the Chateau Vert pageant at York Place. They were the daughters of Sir Thomas Boleyn and came back from the French court. Mary was sent back to England in 1519 for her alleged affair with Francis I and became one of Catherine’s ladies-in-waiting. Although Henry had attended Mary’s wedding to his gentleman of the privy chamber, William Carey in February 1520, soon she caught Henry’s eye and became his mistress. It is alleged by many that her two children, Catherine and Henry, born in 1524 and 1526 respectively, were fathered by Henry. However, as she was married, the children were legally considered to be fathered by her husband.

Anne Boleyn returned to England in 1522 and joined her sister as one of the ladies-in-waiting to the Queen. By the time of the birth of Mary’s second child, King Henry became completely infatuated with Anne Boleyn and her enchanting, dark eyes captured his full attention. He desperately wanted to have sex with her, with the hope that she would hopefully give him the much wanted heir to the throne. He thought it to be the best solution of the problem, as he cannot legitimize Mary Boleyn’s son, who is married to another man. Apart from that, after the death of her son from the sweating sickness, Mary remarried for love and was banished from the court for her indiscretion and lived out her days in the Essex countryside.

However, Anne cleverly encouraged the king’s advances, but at the same time, shrewdly refused to become his mistress like her sister. Therefore, it became an absolute necessary for Henry to annul his marriage to the now 40-year-old Catherine. He asked Pope Clement VII to grant him a divorce from Catherine, as before their marriage she had been briefly married to Arthur, which is contrary to the Book of Leviticus. But Catherine insisted that she had been a virgin when she married Henry and refused to accept an annulment of the marriage. Pope Clement VII found himself in a difficult situation, as Catherine’s nephew, the Holy Roman Emperor Charles V, became involved, threatening the Pope not to nullify his aunt’s marriage to Henry. Finally, Henry took matters in his own hands, broke from Rome and the Roman Catholic Church and appointed Cranmer as the Archbishop of Canterbury, who quickly granted Henry’s divorce from Catherine on 23 May 1533. Thus, to fulfill his lustful desire, Henry rejected papal authority and initiated the English Reformation. Catherine was formally stripped of her title as queen and banished from court. As the widow of Arthur she spent her days in seclusion in a series of dank castles and manors. After their secret wedding on 14 November 1532, Henry and Anne formally married on 25 January 1533. The heavily pregnant Anne Boleyn was crowned Queen of England on 01 June 1533 and gave birth to the future Queen Elizabeth on 07 September.

Although the royal couple enjoyed periods of calm and affection, but actually they were not perfectly pleased with their married life, as Anne refused to play the submissive role expected of her. Her vivacity and opinionated intellect made her too independent for the largely ceremonial role of a royal wife and it made her many enemies. Even her own uncle, the Duke of Norfolk, resented her attitude to power. Henry also disliked her constant irritability and violent temper. After two consecutive miscarriages in 1534 and 1535, Henry considered Anne as a failure to give him a son, which to him was a betrayal. Under the dismal circumstances, the queen became pregnant again in the later part of 1535. This time she was aware of the consequences if she failed to give birth to a son. Unfortunately, later in the month of January, the King was unhorsed in a tournament and was badly injured. For a time it seemed that his life was in danger. When the news of the accident reached the queen, she was terribly shocked and that resulted in the miscarriage of a male child that was about 15 weeks old on 29 January 1536. It is considered by many that this personal loss of the queen was the beginning of the end of the royal marriage.

During his marriage with Anne Boleyn, Henry is traditionally believed to have affairs with the queen’s cousin, Margaret or Madge Shelton, who may be the same person as a Mary Shelton and also with Joan Dingley, a laundress. Joan gave birth to a child called Ethelreda or Audrey and it is believed by many that she was one of the many children of Henry. Early in 1536 Madge was engaged to the ill-fated Henry Norris, who later lost his head and it was assumed that from mistress she would be elevated to the queen. But subsequently, she married another man in 1546.

Anne's downfall came shortly after she had recovered from her final miscarriage. One important indication of her fall from the grace is the inclusion of the 28-year old Jane Seymour as the new mistress of the king, who was shifted into new quarters. In the presence of Anne, Henry once gifted Jane a locket with a miniature portrait of himself and Jane inside it. Anne immediately responded the king’s action by ripping off the locket with such force, that her fingers bled.

By that time, Henry hatched a plan with his chief advisor Cromwell, to get rid of Anne and accordingly instructed Cromwell to set up a special commission to look into various acts of treason. After that, between 30 April and 02 May, five men, including Anne's brother, were arrested on charges of treasonable adultery and accused of having sexual relationships with the queen. George Boleyn was charged with incest with the Queen and plotting with Anne to kill the King. Anne was arrested on 02 May 1536 and taken to the Tower of London by barge, where she collapsed, demanding to know the charges against her. She was tried for alleged adultery, incest and plotting to kill the king before a jury of peers, which included Henry Percy, her former betrothed and her own uncle Thomas Howard. Although the evidences against her were unconvincing, she was found guilty and condemned to death on 15 May. George Boleyn and the other accused men were executed on 17 May 1536 and at 8 am on 19 May 1536 Anne was beheaded in Tower Green, the first English queen to be publicly executed. In fact, Henry killed her to get married again.

The day after Anne's execution, the 45-year-old Henry became engaged to Jane Seymour, one of the Queen's ladies-in-waiting and married her ten days later. She gifted Henry his much wanted son, Prince Edward, the future Edward VI, on 12 October 1537. However, due to postnatal complications, she died on 24 October. Although Henry quickly recovered from the shock, measures were taken to find another wife for him.

Cromwell arranged a fourth marriage for Henry to Anne of Cleves, a German Protestant princess and after seeing her portrait, painted by Hans Holbein, the 49-year-old king agreed to wed Anne. They were married on 06 January 1540, but it was a disaster. Henry disliked Anne at the first sight and the couple's first night as husband and wife was not a successful one. Later the king infamously referred to her as a ‘Flanders mare’ and told courtiers and ambassadors that he is unable to perform his conjugal duties because of Anne’s appearance. He wanted to annul the marriage immediately, to which Anne did not argue and confirmed that the marriage had never been consummated. Consequently, the marriage was annulled on 9 July 1540, on the grounds of non-consummation. Anne was entitled ‘The King's Sister’, along with two houses and a generous allowance. However, Cromwell was not forgiven for arranging the disastrous match and was executed on a false accusation of treason.

Soon it became clear that Henry had fallen for the 17-year-old Catherine Howard, a first cousin and lady-in-waiting of Anne Boleyn. They were married on 28 July 1540, the day on which Cromwell was executed. By that time, Henry had lost his athletic figure, became overweight and plagued by leg ulcer, but he was still eager to get the second male heir to secure the succession. He also seemed to be in deep love with his new young wife and lovingly called her Rose without a Thorn. What Catherine thought of her aging, obese and cripple husband is not known, but made the fatal mistake of resuming her former love affair after the marriage. She was arrested for adultery on 23 November 1541 and stripped of her title as queen. Finally, she was beheaded with a single stroke of the executioner's axe in the morning of 13 February 1542.

This time, the king sunk into a deep depression due to the execution of his beloved wife. However, he married again for the last time, the wealthy widow Catherine Parr in July 1543, who helped reconcile Henry with his daughters, Mary and Elizabeth. She acted as a dedicated nurse to Henry VIII, now weakened by oozing leg ulcers. He died on 28 January 1547, at the age of 55 and was buried next to his third wife, Jane Seymour, in St. George’s Chapel at Windsor Castle.

Henry VIII was a lustful man and he slept with numerous women, even with the wives and sisters of some of his close friends. He was never tired of copulation, although unlike most of his royal contemporaries, he tended to marry women who would otherwise have been only his mistresses. Apart from the host of the ladies who received gifts from Henry at some point or danced with him in a masque, Henry VIII had adulterous relationship with numerous women in his life. He was a complete sex pest.

In 1509, during the first pregnancy of Catherine of Aragon, Henry was embroiled with Anne Hastings, sister of the Duke of Buckingham and a newly married member of Catherine’s household. Later, as she started an affair with William Compton, one of the close friends of Henry, she was sent away from the court in retaliation. There was also a lady, known as Madame the Bastard, who kept Henry dancing into the small hours of the morning in 1513 at the court of Margaret of Savoy. There was the mysterious Jane Popincourt, a Frenchwoman, who was a distinguished tutor to Princess Margaret and Mary, during the reign of Henry VII. Later, in 1509, on the accession of Henry VIII, she was appointed a maid-of-honour to his wife, Catherine of Aragon and in 1514 there were rumors that she had become the mistress of the king. It is said that in 1514, King Henry VIII also slept with Elizabeth Carew, wife of one of his close friends Nicholas Carew and the half-first cousin of Anne Boleyn. Over the years, he made huge presents to her, which included royal jewels. He slept with Mary Berkeley, the wife of Sir Thomas Perrot, who used to accompany Henry in hunting. It is said that the king enjoyed hunting with Sir Thomas Perrot and also enjoyed other recreational pursuits with his wife. The result was her son, Thomas Parrot, who resembled Henry. Henry was also attracted by the young beauty of Anne Basset, one of the ladies-in-waiting and the step-daughter of Henry’s uncle. She was rumoured to be his mistress in 1538 and 1539. For a few brief months in 1538, it looked as though his choice had fallen on the almost unknown Margaret Skipwith, before Henry quickly moved on to Lady Anne Bassett. However, Lady Margaret received a fine marriage and her husband was gifted money and a title by the king.