Learn more about the Tudor history behind 'SIX'

Read our beginners' guide to the turbulent events of the Tudor era before seeing Toby Marlow and Lucy Moss’s musical SIX in the West End.

History’s about to get overthrown… and SIX turns six in the West End this month! Toby Marlow and Lucy Moss’s show originated as a Cambridge University production at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe and has become an international sensation, captivating audiences in the US, Australia, South Korea, Hungary, Japan and, soon, Croatia.

The show brings history to life in the form of a pop concert, in which the six wives of Henry VIII form a girl group to tell their stories with plenty of modern slang and pop culture references thrown in. Henry VIII’s court was full of music so a musical really is the perfect way to bring this story to life. While the musical style is wildly and wonderfully anachronistic, the storytelling sticks pretty closely to the facts.

Who exactly were the Tudors? Was Henry VIII always such a monster? How did religion change during the Tudor era? We couldn’t possibly do justice to all the complexities in one article but we hope that this piece will prove a useful primer. If it whets your appetite, there are countless popular and scholarly history books and resources out there from which you can learn more.

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Who were the Tudors?

The Tudor dynasty was never supposed to ascend to the throne. Their rise originated with the 1428 marriage of Owen Tudor, a member of a Welsh noble family, to Katherine of Valois, the widow of Henry V. It’s a very long story (there are few things more complicated than the Wars of the Roses!) but, following the defeat of Richard III at the Battle of Bosworth Field in 1485, a certain Henry Tudor took the throne as Henry VII of England.

Henry VII married Elizabeth of York, and they had four children: Arthur, Margaret, Henry (later Henry VIII), and Mary. Arthur died young, and his widow Catherine of Aragon became his brother Henry’s first wife. Henry VIII married six times in total and had three children: Mary (with Catherine of Aragon), Elizabeth (with Anne Boleyn), and Edward (with Jane Seymour).

All three children – Edward VI, Mary I, and Elizabeth I – ascended to the throne in due course. The dynasty lasted for 118 years until 1603, when Elizabeth I died without issue and named James VI of Scotland (of the House of Stuart) as her successor (the first monarch to rule England and Scotland). During the Tudor era, the Church of England was formed, the visual arts and literature flourished, the Royal Mail was founded, the first colony in North America was established, and the Spanish Armada was defeated. There was never a dull moment!

Who were the six wives of Henry VIII?

Divorced, beheaded, died. Divorced, beheaded survived. That’s how the rhyme goes, However, the six women who had the dubious honour of being married to Henry VIII were all complex individuals who were much more than archetypes.

Catherine of Aragon

Catherine of Aragon was everything a truly regal queen should be. The daughter of dual monarchs Ferdinand of Aragon and Isabella of Castile, Catherine received an outstanding education as befitted a future queen of England. However, her young husband Prince Arthur died a few months after their marriage, leaving Catherine in relative poverty. Eventually, the dashing Henry rescued her from her misery and made her his queen.

Hugely popular with her subjects, Catherine served as regent when Henry was fighting in France in 1513. During this time, James IV of Scotland tried to invade England and Catherine rode north to rally the troops. She was a skilled diplomat, a patron of the arts, religion, and charity, and a role model for women across society.

The marriage was happy for many years, yet it all went sour. Catherine and Henry’s only surviving child was a daughter, Mary. Catherine swore to the end that her marriage to Arthur was unconsummated and her marriage to Henry was biblically sound, but she was forbidden from seeing Mary and was passed around various draughty castles until her death.

Nevertheless, Catherine shouldn’t be remembered as an object of pity. Her marriage to Henry lasted longer than all the others put together and she was the only one of the six to live to be 50. A formidable woman who never gave in.

Anne Boleyn

Anne caught Henry’s attention in the 1520s as a lady in waiting to Catherine of Aragon. She refused to be his mistress – her sister Mary had held that role and it hadn’t done her many favours – and held out for marriage over a seven-year period. As queen, she championed Henry’s religious reforms, supported vernacular translations of the Bible, and promoted new educational identities for monasteries. She gave birth to a daughter, Elizabeth, but a son remained elusive.

It all went wrong in a swift and spectacular fashion. Capital punishment for noblewomen was unprecedented but, by all accounts, Anne went to her fate with the utmost dignity and courage. She’s undeniably the wife with the greatest hold in the popular imagination, as alluded to in her introduction in SIX but the show doesn’t let her run away with all the attention, treating all six as equals.

Jane Seymour

Jane Seymour was less loftily educated than her predecessors, her training being of a more domestic nature (she had a particular talent for embroidery). Henry didn’t hang around, becoming betrothed to Jane the day after Anne’s execution. Despite her reserved personality, when Jane is mentioned in the historical sources, she’s more often than not showing agency, including pleading for mercy for the monasteries following the Catholic rebellion known as the Pilgrimage of Grace.

Jane was close to her stepdaughter Mary and engineered a father-daughter reconciliation, though Mary wouldn’t be restored to the line of succession until later. She gave birth to a healthy son, Edward, but sadly died shortly afterwards. She was the only one of Henry’s wives to be buried as queen of England and Henry would later be buried beside her at Windsor Castle. A mixed blessing we might think.

Anna of Cleves

Henry’s first three marriages were all for love but the fourth was for political gain. The Duchy of Cleves was a useful ally for the religiously isolated England and Hans Holbein’s portrait of Anna looked appealing. When they met, however, it was a disaster – he approached her in disguise (a courtly love ritual) and she had no idea who he was or what was going on, injuring his vanity in the process. Hence her image as the “unattractive” one.

Thomas Cromwell (of Wolf Hall fame) lost his head for organising the match but Anna ended up having quite a pleasant life with a good settlement (which included Anne Boleyn’s childhood home Hever Castle) and the title of “The King’s Beloved Sister” for graciously accepting all of Henry’s terms and not making a fuss. She outlived Henry and all his other wives. Not a bad outcome.

Katherine Howard

Henry’s teenage trophy wife (his midlife crisis?) was at least 30 years his junior. She was also a cousin to Anne Boleyn, and shared her grisly fate. Katherine attended a sort-of boarding school run by her step-grandmother, the Dowager Duchess of Norfolk, where she was pursued (we might say abused) by both her music teacher and the Dowager Duchess’s secretary. On catching Henry’s eye, he showered her with gifts, and they were married on the day of Cromwell’s execution.

However, she embarked on a relationship with courtier Thomas Culpepper, with disastrous consequences. Of the six, Katherine is surely the one with the least significant historical legacy but she probably cuts the most tragic figure. Nevertheless, in life she was a vivacious individual who loved French fashions, music, and dancing. It’s justice of sorts that she receives arguably the most moving solo in the show.

Catherine Parr

You’d think Henry would have called it a day by now but no, there was one more marriage to come. The twice-widowed Catherine Parr represented greater stability and maturity than her predecessor but was still very attractive (Henry never would have married merely for companionship). She has the distinction of being the first English woman to publish a book in the English language under her own name (Prayers and Meditations, followed by Lamentation of a Sinner).

Catherine was an excellent stepmother to Mary, Elizabeth, and Edward, and had Mary and Elizabeth restored to the line of succession. She was also a mentor to the ill-fated "Nine Day Queen" Lady Jane Grey. Henry trusted her as regent when he went on his last campaign to France. The marriage was, by Henry’s standards, pretty successful, apart from a sticky incident in which Catherine was nearly arrested for heresy – she got out of it by insisting to Henry that she was only arguing with him about religion to distract him from the pain of his ulcerous leg.

Catherine swiftly remarried after Henry’s death, to Thomas Seymour (to whom her solo “I Don’t Need Your Love” is addressed), brother of Jane. Sadly, she died in childbirth; her husband was executed for treason not long afterwards, and her daughter, Mary, disappeared from the historical record. The ending of her story is a sad one but what an amazing woman she was.

Who was Henry VIII?

We never see Henry VIII in SIX. Most people envision him as a larger-than-life tyrant, which was certainly the case in the later years of his reign, but he wasn’t always like that. The ginger-haired “spare” was raised by his mother with his sisters, and he never recovered from the death of his mother when he was 10. He was educated as a true Renaissance prince, which included studies in French and Latin, theology, philosophy, geometry, and music.

Following his brother Arthur’s death, Henry became the heir and ascended to the throne at the age of 17. A “golden youth”, he was showered with praise from all quarters for his intelligence, athleticism, charisma, and physical beauty. All but one of his marriages were entered into for love and it’s thought that he had more wives than serious mistresses. So, he could be considered something of a romantic, albeit one with a bloodthirsty streak.

Henry implemented many religious, military, and social changes during his reign, including the establishment of the Church of England. He was a true warrior king, and his development of the Royal Navy led to a new era of colonial expansion and imperial power.

It’s generally agreed that a jousting accident in 1536 was the first step in Henry's long decline, in which he gradually became ever more infirm, paranoid, and tyrannical. Henry died on 28 January 1547 at the age of 55.

What was the Tudor court and society like?

Tudor music

Henry VIII presided over a highly musical court and was a talented musician himself. He played the lute, organ, flute, and harp among other instruments, and he had a particular fondness for the recorder. He also dabbled into composing. There’s a myth that he wrote the folk song “Greensleeves”, which is referenced in SIX’s opening number, for Anne Boleyn (“Alas my love, you do me wrong to cast me off discourteously…”), who wears green in the show. Unfortunately, it isn’t true – it’s written in an Italian style that didn’t reach England until after Henry’s death. Sorry for any disillusionment!

Nevertheless, Henry did leave behind the “Henry VIII Manuscript”. Around a third of the 109 pieces are attributed to “the kyng h.viii”. Many of them would have been composed when Henry was a romantic-minded young man in his teens and early twenties.

However, Henry’s religious reforms meant that many church musicians and composers lost their jobs. His daughter Elizabeth I was also a great music lover. Elizabeth loved to dance and played the lute and virginal (a kind of harpsichord). During her reign, music became increasingly democratised and composers such as John Taverner and Thomas Tallis thrived. Music was also a key element of theatrical productions – Shakespeare made more than 500 references to music in his plays.

Tudor art

Hans Holbein’s portraiture is synonymous with Tudor art and he’s namechecked in the Germanic-inflected number “House of Holbein”, in which the Henry is seeking his fourth wife from among the royal beauties of Europe. Holbein brought an unprecedented psychological realism to portraiture and his images have played a key role in cementing the Tudor era in the public imagination throughout the centuries.

Catherine Parr sings, “I even got a woman to paint my picture”. Women artists did work at the Tudor court, including the miniaturists Levina Teerlinc, Susannah Horenbout, and Margaret Holsewyther (who is known to have painted several miniatures of Parr), though details of their lives and careers remain sketchy and no known surviving works have been formally attributed to them to date.

Tudor theatre

Prior to the Tudor era, public performances had a heavily religious element, with mystery plays (focusing on Bible stories) and morality plays performed by the guilds (associations of craftsmen and merchants). Private theatricals and masques were for the nobility. Unsurprisingly, life-long exhibitionist Henry VIII enjoyed putting on a show – there’s a scene in the BBC’s Wolf Hall: The Mirror and the Light in which he dances as a Turkish sultan, and everyone has to pretend to be wowed.

Purpose-built theatres only became a thing later in the Tudor era. The Theatre, the first public playhouse in London (based in Shoreditch) opened in 1576, almost 20 years into Elizabeth’s reign. The Curtain Theatre, located nearby, opened a year later. These venues took the form of a polygonal wooden building with three galleries surrounding an open yard. Standing room in the yard cost a penny and behaviour was often rowdy. Some of Shakespeare’s early plays were performed at The Theatre in the 1590s, prior to the construction of The Globe in Southwark in 1599. The modern Shakespeare’s Globe is a replica of an Elizabethan playhouse and makes for a wonderfully enjoyable experience.

Tudor fashion

Henry VIII introduced sumptuary laws during his reign, which ensured that an individual’s status could be ascertained by what they wore (ie. no dressing above your station). All the wives enjoyed looking the part of queen with the rich gowns and jewels that came with the job, and royalty. Catherine of Aragon arrived wearing Spanish fashions, including the farthingale, a kind of hoop skirt, but quickly adopted English dress. She favoured the rich colours black, purple, and crimson.

The fabulously chic Anne Boleyn popularised the French hood, a more fluid and daintier head covering than the more architectural gable hood. Jane Seymour then banned it. However, Jane was far from plain in her dress sense, and her household accounts show that she was particularly fond of rich trims and embroidery. Henry was unimpressed with Anna of Cleves’s heavy German dress; however, after the divorce, the French ambassador observed that she was “as joyous as ever and wears new dresses every day”.

During Katherine Howard’s brief time in favour, the chronicler Hume commented: “The King had no wife who made him spend so much money in dresses and jewels as she did, who every day had some fresh caprice”. Catherine Parr was both an intellectual and a lover of fashion, who spent lavishly – see her gorgeous full-length portrait by Master John in the National Portrait Gallery.

Mary I dressed in a Spanish-influenced style; the farthingale that her mother rejected became mainstream, and the ruff was also popularised during her reign. Her half-sister Elizabeth was obsessed with fashioning her image, her portraits becoming more and more blingy and theatrical as she aged.

Gabriella Slade’s costumes for SIX are inspired by the stage outfits of modern-day pop stars with nods to the structure of Tudor dress, featuring symbolic elements such as gold embellishments highlighting Catherine of Aragon’s royal ancestry and pink to emphasise Katherine Howard’s youth.

Tudor religion

Where to start with this hot-potato subject? During the Middle Ages, Europe was fully Roman Catholic. Then Martin Luther came on to the scene in the early 16th century with ideas about how salvation was entirely dependent on one’s faith in Jesus Christ, rather than performing good deeds, and making the Bible more accessible by translating it from Latin to German.

Henry VIII formed the Church of England in the 1534 a practical measure to annul his marriage to Catherine of Aragon and marry Anne Boleyn. It’s important to note that despite the break with Rome, he lived and died as a Catholic, just one who did away with the pope’s authority. “I broke England from the Church / I’m that sexy,” Anne Boleyn sings. Well, various factors were moving England towards major religious reform, but the Boleyn girl certainly helped to speed things up.

Decades of turbulence followed. Guided by his Seymour relatives, Edward VI was strongly influenced by Protestantism, as was the short-lived Lady Jane Grey. “Bloody” Mary I, her mother’s daughter, fully swung the other way. Eventually, the Protestant Elizabeth I implemented a more centrist approach, with the monarch as the head of the Church of England, that attempted to be as inclusive as possible. Unsurprisingly, however, it was impossible to please everyone, and Elizabeth could certainly be ruthless over religion when she had to be.

Tudor London

At the beginning of the Tudor era, the population of London was about 50,000 people; by the time of the Stuart takeover, it had swelled to an estimated 200,000. Business flourished, with Cheapside as the city’s commercial centre. Local government was conducted from the Guildhall. London Bridge was the only crossing across the Thames, which must have been a tad inconvenient.

Very few Tudor-era buildings survive today. Slightly outside the capital is Hampton Court Palace, which became one of Henry’s favourite residences and his one-time love nest shared with Anne Boleyn. You’re also sure to enjoy Sutton House in Hackney, East London, a surviving 1530s manor house built for Ralph Sadler, protégé of Thomas Cromwell and Principal Secretary of State to Henry VIII – the building’s survival really is nothing short of a miracle. And, if you can get a chance, the Elizabethan Middle Temple Hall, located off Fleet Street, with its double hammerbeam ceiling is a glorious sight.

Women in the Tudor era

The women in SIX represent the elite of society but they are still as constrained by the expectations established by the patriarchy as their less privileged counterparts. Catherine of Aragon, Anne Boleyn, and Catherine Parr were all exceptionally well-educated, but marriage was still their goal. Plus, the religious life was no longer an option following the dissolution of the monasteries. Of course, Elizabeth I, the “Virgin Queen” remained single in order to safeguard her power, but she was an exception to the rule.

The women of SIX employ a contemporary rock and pop energy to express their joys and frustrations. The final number offers them a chance to imagine what they could have achieved if they’d had the chance to choose their own paths – what indeed!

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