To his chief minister he once ‘lamented the state of princes… in marriage’ for ‘princes take as is brought to them by others’ while ‘poor men be commonly at their own choice and liberty’. Oddly enough, Henry was in many ways an incurable romantic. Antonia Fraser is the author of numerous novels and historical works including Marie Antoinette, The Wives of Henry VIII, Mary Queen of Scots, and Faith and. Since Henry went on to divorce his fourth wife, beheaded his fifth, and contemplated arresting his sixth on capital charges of heresy, the Duchess’s scepticism was amply justified. Henry’s ambassador protested that his master was ‘the most gentle gentleman that liveth’, but at this the Duchess found it hard to keep a straight face. The latter could summon little enthusiasm, for she had heard that Henry’s first wife ‘was poisoned, that the second was innocently put to death, and the third lost for lack of keeping in her childbed’. When Henry was combing the Continent for a woman willing to become his fourth wife, English diplomats opened negotiations for the hand of the attractive young Duchess of Milan. The Wives of Henry VIII Fraser, Antonia 18,224 ratings by Goodreads ISBN 10: 067973001X / ISBN 13: 9780679730019 Published by Vintage, 1993 Used Condition: Acceptable Soft cover Save for Later From Reliant Bookstore (El Dorado, KS, U.S.A. Even in his own lifetime, King Henry VIII became notorious throughout Europe for his serial marriages.
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