Queen Elizabeth IElizabeth I was born on September 7, 1533 at Greenwich Palace near London. His father was the English King Henry VIII; his mother was the king's second wife, Anne Boleyn. Elizabeth had an older half-sister, Mary, who was the daughter of the king's first wife, Catherine of Aragon. King Henry had moved heaven and earth to marry Anne Boleyn. He had separated from the Catholic Church, founded the Church of England, and annulled his twenty-four-year marriage to Queen Catherine - partly because he loved Anne, and partly because he wanted the male heir that Catherine could not give him. Henry and Anne were convinced that their first child would be a boy. The new queen even had a document drawn up in advance announcing the birth of a prince. When the prince was revealed to be a princess, his parents were dismayed. Over the next few years, Anne suffered three miscarriages and Henry – who had become disenchanted with her even before Elizabeth was born – decided to get rid of her. In 1536 he had Anne arrested on false charges of adultery. The Archbishop of Canterbury bowed to the king's wishes by declaring that Henry's marriage to Anne had never been valid. Like her half-sister Mary, two-year-old Elizabeth was now considered illegitimate. Anne was executed and two weeks later the king married Jane Seymour. In 1537, Queen Jane died after giving birth to a son, Edward. Elizabeth and Mary participated in his naming ceremony. As Edward grew up, he and Elizabeth became close; although they lived in separate households, they wrote to each other often. When Elizabeth was four years old, Katherine Champernowne became her governess. The well-educated Champernowne – known as Kat Ashley after her marriage in 1545 – began teaching Elizabeth astronomy, geography, history, mathematics, French, Flemish, Italian, Spanish and other subjects. Elizabeth was an excellent student. Her tutor Roger Ascham later wrote: “She speaks French and Italian as well as English. When she writes Greek and Latin, nothing is more beautiful than her writing. » In 1540, Elizabeth's father married Anne of Cleves. Repulsed by what he perceived as his fiancée's ugliness, Henry quickly had the marriage annulled and instead married Katherine Howard, Anne Boleyn's first cousin. Katherine was very young – about fifteen – and rather scatterbrained, but she was kind to Elizabeth, who was surely dismayed when, in a repeat of the past, the queen was arrested and accused of adultery. This time, the accusations were true. Queen Katherine was beheaded in 1542, when Elizabeth was seven years old..