Alison Weir, who is a very famous popular historian, just had an article published in History Extra about Henry VIII’s reproductive problems. In it she wrote:
“One theory is that Henry suffered from McLeod Syndrome [a neurological disorder that occurs almost exclusively in boys and men and affects movement in many parts of the body], but the pattern of Katherine’s pregnancies doesn’t fit with that”
This is so blatantly incorrect that I had to send the following letter to the editor:
I need to inform you of a factual mistake in Alison Weir’s recent article “The Lost Heirs of Henry VIII”. Ms. Weir wrote that there is a theory that Henry VIII’s reproductive issues were cause by McLeod Syndrome. That is simply incorrect. In both the article, “A New Explanation for the Reproductive Woes and Midlife Decline of Henry VIII” (The Historical Journal, Vol. 53:4) and the book Blood Will Tell: A Medical Explanation for the Tyranny of Henry VIII, the theory expressed is that the king’s reproductive issues were possibly the result of the king having a Kell positive blood type. McLeod’s syndrome was theorized to be the cause of his cognitive decline, but was not linked to his reproduction.
Moreover, Ms Weir seems to be unaware of the fact that the king’s reproductive pattern is consistent with that of a man who had a Kell positive blood type. If a fetus inherits the Kell positive blood type from the father, a Kell negative mother’s body will develop a Kell alloimmunization after the first Kell positive pregnancy. This means that the mother’s immune system would attack a Kell positive fetus as foreign tissue, which would result in fetal or neonatal death.
Kell alloimmunization would have been a risk (but not a certainty) for women who had multiple pregnancies with the king. At least three of his children who survived infancy were the result of their mothers’ first pregnancies — and would have therefore been completely unaffected by Kell alloimmunization even if they had inherited the king’s Kell positive genes. However, any Kell positive fetus conceived after the first baby which inherited the Kell gene from Henry would have been attacked and killed by the mother’s antibodies. Queen Mary was the fifth known infant born to Katherine of Aragon, which would simply mean that she had not inherited the Kell gene from her father, and therefore was not attacked by antibodies during the pregnancy. It is very reasonable and consistent with the theory that at least one of Katherine of Aragon’s many pregnancies did not inherit the Kell gene from the king.
The theory that the Henry VIII had a Kell positive blood type is further supported by the fact that his male relatives descended from their common maternal grandmother, Jacquetta of Luxembourg, had similar reproductive troubles, as outline in the paper “Henry VIII, McLeod’s Syndrome, and Jacquetta’s Curse” in the medical journal for the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh (Vol 43, Issue 4).
I believe that Ms Weir’s article should at least be amended to reflect the correct theory that the king had a Kell positive blood type, since McLeod Syndrome has not been theorized to have effected his reproduction.
Sincerely – Kyra Cornelius Kramer