8 Ways To Survive A Tryst With Henry VIII (According To The Women Who Did It)

6. Trigger A Scandal At Court To District From Your Affair

In Tudor England it was viewed as both immoral and dangerous to engage in sex while pregnant. This led to nine months during his wives pregnancies in which King Henry simply had no alternative but to turn his attention elsewhere. His first rumoured affair is believed to have taken place when the King was only nineteen years old during one of Catherine of Aragon's pregnancies. Despite his young age, Henry did not hold back on his choice of mistress and chose an older married woman with ties to a potentially dangerous English family. The woman in question was Anne Hastings, née Stafford. Her family were descended from Edward III and were widely suspected of considering themselves as having a greater claim to the English throne than the Tudors; a family background that created problems when Henry took her on as his mistress. For most well to do families in the sixteenth century England, the prospect of having the King's mistress as a daughter would have been a great opportunity to further themselves. However, the Stafford's did not see it this way and when Anne's brother, Edward Stafford, 3rd Duke of Buckinghamshire, learned of the affair he journeyed to court to end it. He believed that his sister was too good to be engaged in such scandal. Anne was removed from court and sent away to a convent by her family and husband. Anne's sister Katherine worked as a maid of honour to Queen Catherine of Aragon and it was her who had apparently told her family of the affair. To make the matter worse, Queen Catherine herself had also been informed of the affair and made her devastation and anger well known throughout Henry's Court. Again, Katherine was believed to be the informant and she was promptly dismissed from court by the King Henry VIII. The scandal supposedly worsened an existing feud between the Crown and Anne's family that would lead to the loss of her families titles and her brother Edward's execution. Despite the bad implications for her family, the scandal created around Anne's affair with the King allowed her to escape their relationship unharmed.