In 1540, on this 27th day of July, Henry VIII married his fifth wife, Catherine Howard. He was 49, and aged well beyond his years, even for that era, grossly overweight, with boils, and likely syphilis. She may have been 18, a frivolous young woman, who did not long survive the marriage, being soon accused of adultery, stripped of her title as queen in 1541, and beheaded in 1542.
Also on this day in 1540, Henry had his former chancellor, confidant and boon companion, Thomas Cromwell, beheaded. He had a habit of that, killing his sometime intimates while adopting new ones. He married Jane Seymour, his third wife, on May 20, 1536, the very day after he had Anne Boleyn beheaded, yes, alluring Anne, for whom he started all his mess.
Cromwell had succeeded another Thomas as chancellor – More, whose death Cromwell helped arrange, but who died a saint, refusing to submit to the king’s disordered command. Not so Cromwell, an opportunist, who took full advantage of his power, dissolving every single monastery in England, having monks murdered, and enriching himself, along with many of the king’s lapdog ministers, in the process. Hence, all the ‘abbeys’ that provided the ‘manor homes’ of the compromised aristocracy of England – they were, and are, not what they once were, Jane Austen’s Mr. Darcy’s notwithstanding.