Wives of Henry VIII
Along with the ghost of the Glastonbury monk, others wronged by Henry continue to make post-mortem appearances. The most famous phantom wife of Henry is his second spouse, Anne Boleyn (c.1501-36). Anne was the woman whose many attractions caused Henry to seek a divorce from his first wife, Catherine of Aragon, going so far as changing the country’s religion and making himself head of the church to achieve it. Anne was beautiful, cultured, and witty, and cast a spell over the enamored King. Unfortunately, these characteristics and her failure to produce a male heir led Henry to tire of her.
Accusing her of witchcraft (for seducing him), adultery, incest, and treason, Henry beheaded Anne at the Tower of London in 1536. Amongst other locations, Anne’s ghost is seen at her birthplace of Blickling Hall on her birthday, and her headless body is said to stride occasionally through the Tower of London. In these apparitions, we see a popular sympathy for the Tudor queen: she always protested her innocence, and later Tudor historians have been inclined to agree. A common interpretation of her ghost’s appearance fits this hypothesis: she is said to wander still because of the grave injustice she suffered.
Another beheaded wife, Catherine Howard (c.1523-42) is also said to return as a ghost. Like innumerable oafish men through the course of human history, the fat and middle-aged Henry chose to marry a pretty, flirtatious woman many years his junior. As is often the case, he became jealous and paranoid that she was unfaithful to him. Unusually, his suspicions were actually correct, and Catherine was beheaded after only 16 months of marriage, along with her lover, Thomas Culpepper. Tragically, while imprisoned at Hampton Court, Catherine managed to escape and tried to find Henry to beg for mercy, but was caught.
Her ghost is said to haunt Hampton Court, and the phenomenon is a remembrance of her failed attempt to ask for clemency. Contemporary accounts describe Catherine being dragged back to her room kicking and screaming, and her screeching ghost returns every year to a corridor known as the Haunted Gallery. Catherine’s trauma in this place seems to affect the living, too: people often faint, electronic equipment frequently malfunctions, in a particular spot in the Haunted Gallery. She is also seen floating to the Royal Chapel, turning, and then ‘to hurry back with disordered garments and a ghastly look of despair’.
As in the case of Anne Boleyn, Catherine’s ghost cuts a sympathetic figure. Although she did commit adultery, she is never seen in the company of Thomas Culpepper or the lovers she scandalously had before her marriage. Instead, she is seen in her moment of greatest despair, futilely seeking forgiveness and realising that her death was nigh (Henry had left Hampton Court, anyway). Just as Henry’s ghost represents Henry at his most disreputable, the way in which he is best-remembered, guilty Catherine and innocent Anne appear as reminders of his tyrannical later years, when he became a ludicrous pantomime villain.