Henry VIII, desperate for a male heir that his Queen Catherine could not give him and bored with his former mistress, Mary Bullen, fixed his attentions on Mary's younger sister, the 18 year old Anne. Henry, after finding out from his Chancellor that it would be impossible to have his marriage to Catherine annulled, declared that his marriage had always been illegal. The Pope and the Holy Roman Emperor, who was Catherine's nephew, refused to consider a divorce. Henry then carried out the most momentous actions of his reign as he removed England from the jurisdiction of the Pope, created the Church of England with himself at its head, suppressed the monasteries and set the Reformation in motion-all for the love of Anne Bullen from Hever Castle.

In January 1533 Anne, already pregnant, married Henry. Anne Boleyn, as she now decided she should be called to accord with her new dignity, was crowned Queen of England in Westminster Abbey, on June 1, 1533. Her baby was born on September 7, 1533, but instead of the son and heir that Henry and the country craved, it was a girl, the future Queen Elizabeth l. HenryÕs disappointment rapidly became rage and on May 2, 1536 Anne was arrested, imprisoned in the Tower of London and within two weeks, on the morning of May 19, 1536, beheaded. King Henry promptly married Jane Seymour, Anne BoleynÕs Lady in Waiting; the license actually granted on the day of Anne's execution. King Henry appropriated Hever Castle after Sir Thomas Bullen's death and in 1540 gave Hever to his fourth wife, the unfortunate Anne of Cleves, whom he had married for political reasons on the strength of a highly flattering portrait miniature. From the early 1700's until the beginning of the present century Hever gradually declined until 1903 when William Waldorf Astor purchased it.