Evidence suggests that at least part of the cause for the multiple miscarriages of Henry's wives may have been male infertility.
It is unclear exactly why Katherine lost so many of her children. During the Tudor period it was not unusual for babies to die young and it is reported that only two out of every five births resulted in children that would live to adulthood.
Henry VIII's Legitimate Children
Mary, born in 1516, was the only surviving child of King Henry VIII's 24-year marriage to Katherine of Aragon.
On 7 September, she gave birth to the future Queen Elizabeth I. Henry was disappointed to have a daughter rather than a son, but hoped a son would follow and professed to love Elizabeth. Anne subsequently had three miscarriages and by March 1536, Henry was courting Jane Seymour.
He had several children from different women, but only three were legitimate and survived past infancy. These were King Edward VI, Queen Mary I and Queen Elizabeth I. Many others were born illegitimately and only one of these was recognised - Henry Fitzroy.
King Carlos I of Portugal allegedly had an illegitimate daughter who became one of the most famous and controversial royal bastards in the history of European royalty: Maria Pia of Saxe-Coburg and Braganza.
Jane's sweet and charming demeanor captured Henry's heart. Married just days after her predecessor's death, she was to become Henry's favorite wife. Jane, unlike any of Henry's other wives, gave Henry the one thing he wanted most -- a son, an act that would lead to her death.
She was extremely obese after the age of 30, and she occasionally had abnormal accumulation of fluid in different parts of her body. These problems combined with the multiple miscarriages seem to indicate that Queen Anne was suffering from lupus erythematosus.
After the execution of her mother and the birth of her younger half-brother, Edward, Elizabeth was deemed illegitimate and removed from the English line of succession. After her father's death, she was raised by a series of governesses, as well as by her stepmother, Catherine Parr.
Their remarkable legacy came in the form of two magnificent monarchs – Queen Elizabeth I, Anne's daughter, and Queen Elizabeth II, a direct descendant of Anne's sister, Mary Boleyn.
While Anne Boleyn's sister Mary was King Henry VIII's mistress for several years, Diana's elder sister Lady Sarah Spencer (now McCorquodale) was one of Prince Charles' earlier girlfriends. In addition, they are also related to each other: Mary Boleyn is Diana's 13th great-grandmother.
According to his account: Anne Boleyn was rather tall of stature, with black hair and an oval face of sallow complexion, as if troubled with jaundice. She had a projecting tooth under the upper lip, and on her right hand, six fingers.
It was rumoured that one or both of Mary's children were fathered by the king. Even if this was so, however, Henry did not acknowledge either of them as his children, although he had previously acknowledged Henry FitzRoy, his son by another mistress, Elizabeth Blount.
The reproductive and nutritional history of King Henry VIII indicates that 70 percent of the legitimate pregnancies attributed to Henry and his six wives resulted in miscarriage or stillbirth.
Middle ages
Fright, blaspheming, strong emotions, sneezing, riding in a carriage, heavy lifting, and being conceived under bad planetary alignment were all thought to cause miscarriage.
Anne had one living child—who went on to become the legendary Queen Elizabeth I.
A new biography of Queen Elizabeth II has revealed the monarch was suffering from bone marrow cancer before her death.
What happened to the child that Mary was carrying is unknown, but most likely she either miscarried or the child did not live long after birth. Also, in another point of frustration, we do not know where Mary went after her banishment.
He is thought to have died from tuberculosis, after falling ill with smallpox and measles when he was fifteen years old.
To give just one example, this week I am going to be talking at a workshop about the case of Queen Mary I (1516-1558). It's quite well known by historians that she had two false pregnancies. She thought she was pregnant, her physicians and female attendants thought she was pregnant, but she wasn't.
Historians are not certain of the year in which Anne Boleyn was born. In those days, births were rarely recorded - especially those of girls, and so it often comes down to conjecture and piecing together bits of evidence to establish a likely birth date.
Anne is 16th in line to the throne – even though she is the second of the late queen's four children. That's because she was born before a new law was passed in 2013, changing the rules for the succession so that it is based on birth order, not gender, known as male primogeniture.
Jane Seymour married Henry VIII on May 30, 1536. She was born circa 1508 or 1509. She was approximately twenty-seven or twenty-eight years old when she married the King and became his third wife.
A tragic ending. Katherine remained loyal and devoted to Henry throughout their five years of marriage until his death. She was then free to marry her sweetheart Thomas Seymour a few months later.