Did Christina of Denmark really tell Henry VIII, "If I had two heads, one would be at His Majesty's disposal"?

It's one of the most famous quotations associated with Henry VIII's search for a fourth wife. Christina, the young widowed Duchess of Milan, was considered as a possible bride for the Tudor king in 1538, and the story goes that she responded to Henry's interest with this wonderfully cutting remark.

But did she actually say it?

This question came up in the comments on my recent video about Henry VIII and Anne of Cleves, when someone claimed that the famous quotation first appeared in Martin Hume's 1905 book, The Wives of Henry VIII.

I knew I'd seen it earlier than that, so I went down a historical rabbit hole to see just how far back I could trace it.

In this video, I follow the quotation through nineteenth-c ...