The Six Wives of Henry VIII

by Alison Weir

the education of girls was the privilege of the royal and the rich, and its chief aim was to produce future wives schooled in godly and moral precepts. It was not intended to promote independent thinking;

Yet such status and power emanated solely from her husband. She enjoyed no freedoms but those he permitted her. Without him, she was nothing.

for she felt that it became a woman of rank to undertake intellectual pursuits.

An early Queen Elizabeth II