Anne Boleyn
Anne Boleyn (about 1507 - May 19, 1536) was the second wife and queen consort of Henry VIII and the mother of Queen Elizabeth I of England. Henry's marriage to her was the cause of considerable political and religious upheaval.
Childhood
Anne was the daughter of Thomas Boleyn, Earl of Wiltshire, and Elizabeth Boleyn (nÃÂée Howard,) daughter of the 2nd Duke of Norfolk. The year of Anne's birth is uncertain, but the cicumstantial evidence that survives would indicate that it was early summer of 1507. Later tradition would preach that the Boleyns were practically middle-class, but recent research has proven that Anne Boleyn was born a "great lady." Her great-grandparents included a Lord Mayor of London, a duke, an earl, two aristocratic ladies and a knight. She was certainly far better-born than either Jane Seymour or Catherine Parr. Anne's father secured a place with Margaret, Archduchess of Austria and daughter of Maximilian I, Holy Roman Emperor, for Anne to be educated in the Netherlands where she lived from the spring of 1513 to the autumn of 1514. This was followed by some years in France, until 1521, initially in the royal nursery where she was the companion to the queen's hunch-backed sister, RenÃÂée de Valois, but the last year probably in the French Court, under the influence of the king's glamorous younger sister.
The English Court
On her return to England, Anne apparently became an attendant of Katherine of Aragon, Henry VIII's "formidable" Spanish queen whose looks had definitely faded but whose dignity was still intact.
During this time, there was much talk of marrying Anne to one of her cousins, the Irish earl of Ormande. This was, however, cancelled, for uncertain reasons. It is presumed that Anne's father was secretly against the marriage, which had been engineered by the king's chief minister Thomas Wolsey who had shown himself to be the enemy of the Boleyns in previous years.
Around 1522, Anne began being courted by Lord Henry Percy. Some say that they became lovers, while others mantain that it was just a simple courtship. The latter was probably true, for Anne was far too intelligent to waste what value she had on a few nights passion that were to avail her nothing. Her elder sister had been sexually 'adventurous' in France, and Anne had been deeply humiliated as a result.
Probably in the spring of 1523, Anne became betrothed to Lord Henry Percy, who was the future 6th earl of Northumberland. Lord Henry's father refused to sanction the marriage when he heard of it from Cardinal Wolsey, who once again proved himself to be no friend to the Boleyns. Anne was sent from court to Hever Castle in Kent. It is not known how long she remained away from court, although she was certainly back by mid-1525. At Shrovetide 1526 the glamorous young courtier caught the eye of Henry VIII, something which initially horrified her.
Anne's older sister, Mary had previously been King Henry's mistress and may have borne him a child, and many historians believe their mother Elizabeth Boleyn had been Henry's mistress too, though Henry denied it. Anne refused to become the king's mistress, and she effectiely dodged his advances for over a year. Feminist historians now believe Anne was suffering as a silent victim of 16th-century sexual harrassment. Henry proposed marriage to her sometime in 1527, and after some hesitation, she agreed. She became the victim of a public hate campaign, and in 1531 a crowd of 8,000 women marched through the streets of London in an attempt to lynch her. During this period, Anne played an enormous role in England's international position, by solidfying the French alliance. When, in 1532, Henry gave her the title Marquess of Pembroke, it was the first time a woman had ever been created a peer in her own right. Anne's family also profited. Her father became earl of Ormonde and Wiltshire and her brother Viscount Rochford. Thanks to Anne's intervention, her sister Mary received an annual pension of ÃÂã100 and her son received a top-quality education in a prestigious Cistercian monastery. Anne and Henry finally slept together for the first time in late 1532 at Calais, and her reasons for submitting at this point are difficult to fathom. One historian has suggested that was probably because she had, by this point, properly fallen in love with the king.
Anne's personality was complex, and it has been greatly distorted by those opposed to her marriage and religious views. She was a devout Christian in the grand tradition of Renaissance Humanism (calling her a Protestant would be too strong), she was also a very loyal woman who gave generously to charity and, contrary to popular myth, an extremely emotional woman who could be wounded easily. Her hurt confusion at why she had become an object of public hatred and her heightened devotion to her daughter who she "clearly adored" and her few friends also show this. Yet Anne could also be extravagant, neurotic and bad-tempered.
Marriage to Henry VIII
It is often thought that Henry's infatuation with Anne led him to seek a way to annul his existing marriage. However there is good evidence to suggest that Henry may well have made the decision to set aside his marriage with Catherine of Aragon solely because of her failure to bear him a male heir. He believed this was essential to prevent the collapse of the Tudor dynasty which had only been secured by his father Henry VII of England on winning the Wars of the Roses in 1485.
On January 25, 1533, before announcing the decision that his first marriage, to Catherine of Aragon, was invalid, he secretly wed Anne, either at York Place or at the Palace of Westminster. In any event, the marriage was not made public knowledge for some months, but Anne was already pregnant and gave birth to Elizabeth, future Queen Elizabeth I of England, in September of that year. Henry was reasonably pleased and believed that he and Anne could always have another child, even if the first was a girl. Anne's coronation in May of that year had been marked by the people's hostility, and they had refused to remove their hats as a sign of respect for their new queen. When asked what she had made of London at her coronation, Anne replied, "I liked the City well-enough, but I saw few caps in the air and heard few tongues."
Throughout her time as Queen, Anne patronised numerous religious scholars - and saved the life of a French philosopher, Nicolas Bourbon, who had been sentenced to death by the Inquisition in Paris. It was said, that every reformist bishop in England at that time, owed his position to Queen Anne's influence. Her court was generally regarded as extremely cultured and merry, and one observer remarked that "past time in the queen's chambers was never more."
Unfortunately for Anne, her next three pregnancies all ended in miscarriage or stillbirth. The last of these pregnancies resulted in a stillborn male child born in January 1536.
In May, 1536, Anne was accused of having used witchcraft to trap Henry into marriage and to entice five men to enter into adulterous affairs with her; of creating competition and jealousy between the five; of afflicting the king with bodily harm; and of conspiring to effect his death - treason. The men alleged to have been involved in adultery were a groom of the Privy Chamber - Marc Smeaton; Anne's own brother - Lord George Rochford, Henry Norris, Francis Weston and William Brereton. Anne's brother was effectively held to have been the father of the stillborn child. It is now generally accepted that none of the charges was valid; although that has not stopped the theory re-surfacing in several sensationalist historical romances.
There are several theories about the events leading up to these accusations:
The first is that Henry had been disenchanted with Anne for some time, but was reluctant to divorce her while his first wife Catherine was alive, because there was a large faction in England that believed (although they dared not say so in public) that in the eyes of God he was still married to her. But in January 1536 Catherine died, reducing the potential public opinion backlash. However several people who had met Henry and Anne in October 1535 reported them to have been getting on well, and Henry awarded Anne the keepership of the park in Colyweston in November. Whilst it is probable that the marriage had become strained, this cannot be regarded as the cause of the queen's downfall without incorporating other factors.
The second is that Thomas Cromwell used Anne's miscarriage as a lever to persuade Henry to remove her, taking the opportunity to plot to remove five of his own political enemies in the process.
More recently David Starkey has suggested that Henry had recently fallen in love with Jane Seymour and so moved quickly to fabricate charges to remove Anne so he could remarry again.
The final theory, argued by Retha Warnicke, is that Anne's stillborn child had been deformed, though the evidence is circumstantial. It was widely believed at the time that deformities resulted from illicit sexual acts by the parents - and obviously Henry could not be seen to be responsible. By alleging Anne's adultery, and with a planted rumour circulating that Henry had scarcely spoken to Anne in several months, his paternity of the deformed stillborn child could largely be disproved, should news of the deformity leak out. Henry's impotence would also fit with this theory. Exceptionally, Anne's January 1536 stillbirth was made public, together with its gender and age, though not until after a number of rumours had been started by Henry's aides about the adultery and witchcraft allegations. It is suggested that those executed for adultery were chosen because they were known libertines, and that under questioning Anne's maids had identified them as having visited Anne during the period from October 1533 and December 1535. This theory, however, is almost totally dependent on circumstantial evidence and there is almost no supporting evidence to suggest that the royal foetus was deformed.
The truth is probably that Henry's disaffection with his strong-willed wife pushed him into the arms of the doe-eyed and manipulative Jane Seymour, who was the pawn of Anne's many political enemies. These enemies capitalised on her last miscarriage and Catherine's death, and with the help of Thomas Cromwell and the (albeit tacit) support of the king, engineered an elaborate plot to bring the queen to the scaffold along with several of her strategic allies at court.
Anne was arrested on May 2 1536, and taken to the Tower of London. In her early days at the Tower she seems to have suffered a miniature nervous collapse, lapsing from fits of hysterical laughter to uncontrollable weeping. She is rumoured to have written a letter to her husband remonstrating against this "unworthy stain" on her reputation, and pleading with him to spare the five men accused with her and to remember their daughter Elizabeth. On the evidence of Smeaton's false confessions, possibly obtained by torture, and on the evidence of the members of Anne's court, Anne was convicted at her trial on May 15. She behaved with remarkable self-composure at the trial, and after her conviction told her judges that whilst she could believe they had good reasons for condemning her to death they were not the reasons produced in the courtroom. On May 17 her marriage to Henry was annulled, though the arguments used aren't known since the records were later destroyed. Anne found spiritual peace during her last two days on Earth, and told her jailer that she had confidence in God's mercy and believed that she would go to Heaven. She swore twice on the Blessed Sacrament that she was innocent of all the charges they had accused her of. On May 19, 1536 Anne was beheaded with one blow at the Tower of London. Before her death, she joked that, "I heardsay the executioner was very good, and I have a little neck." The executioner, an expert swordsman from France, was reputed to be an excellent (and quick) executioner. Anne selected a dark dress for her execution, with a crimson underskirt. On the scaffold she forgave those who had brought about her death, and prayed for her husband. She was blindfolded, and whilst she was kneeling her head came off with a single stroke.
Henry married Jane Seymour on May 30.
In 1876 when the Chapel Royal of St. Peter ad Vincula -- in the Tower of London, where Anne was interred (External link to Chapel webpage) -- was extensively restored, one of the bodies exhumed, examined, and re-interred was identified as hers.
Nicholas Sander, an opponent of the English church and of Elizabeth, was born after Anne's execution and made a number of claims about Anne, which were reworked and published after his death in De origine et progressu schismatis Anglicani (The origin and progress of the English Schism), 1585.
He was the first to claim in print that Anne was deformed, giving her the features of a witch. Allegations included that Anne was a nymphomaniac with in excess of a thousand lovers; that she had three breasts (the third "nipple" was a large mole on her neck); that she had a projecting tooth; and that she had eleven fingers. All these are features traditionally associated with witches, and there is no contemporary evidence to support such allegations, despite their popularity and inclusion in many textbooks. Indeed it is unthinkable that Henry would have accepted such deformities at a time when they were considered bad omens.Anne's Demise
On Film
Numerous works of fiction, books and films have been produced on the subject of Anne Boleyn's life. She is the title character in the 1969 film Anne of the Thousand Days which stars Genevieve Bujold (Anne), Richard Burton (Henry VIII), and Anthony Quayle (Wolsey). It was nominated for nine Academy Awards and won the award for best costumes.Reference
For a historical analysis of Anne's life, see Retha M Warnicke's book "The Rise And Fall of Anne Boleyn", Cambridge University Press, ISBN 0-521-37000-0. Also, see Eric W Ives' "Anne Boleyn" and Joanna Denny's book of the same title.Unfounded allegations
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