Anne Boleyn: Difference between revisions

Anne Boleyn
Queen consort of England
Tenure	28 May 1533 – 19 May 1536
Spouse	Henry VIII
Issue	Elizabeth I
House	House of Tudor
Father	Thomas Boleyn, 1st Earl of Wiltshire
Mother	Lady Elizabeth Howard

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Anne Boleyn, 1st Marquess of Pembroke^[1] (1501/1507–19 May 1536) was Queen of England as the second wife of King Henry VIII. Henry's marriage to Anne, and her subsequent execution, made her a key figure in the political and religious upheaval that was the start of the English Reformation. The daughter of Sir Thomas Boleyn and his wife, Lady Elizabeth Boleyn (born Lady Elizabeth Howard), Anne was of more noble birth than either Jane Seymour or Catherine Parr, two of Henry VIII's later wives. She was educated in Europe, largely as a lady-in-waiting to Queen Claude of France. She returned to England in 1522.

In 1525, Henry VIII became enamoured with Anne and began his pursuit of her. Anne resisted the King's attempts to seduce her and refused to become his mistress, as her sister, Mary Boleyn, had done. It soon became the one absorbing object of the King's desires to secure an annulment from his wife, Catherine of Aragon so he could marry Anne. When it became clear that Pope Clement VII was unlikely to give Henry an annulment, the breaking of the power of the Roman Catholic Church in England began.

Thomas Wolsey was dismissed from public office, allegedly at Anne Boleyn's instigation, and later the Boleyn family's chaplain, Thomas Cranmer, was appointed Archbishop of Canterbury. The wedding between Henry and Anne took place on 25 January 1533. On 23 May 1533, Cranmer declared the marriage of Henry and Catherine null and void. Five days later, Cranmer declared the marriage of Henry and Anne to be good and valid. Soon after, the Pope launched sentences of excommunication against Henry and the Archbishop. As a result of this marriage, the Church of England broke with Rome and was brought under the King's control.

Anne was crowned Queen of England on 1 June 1533. Later that year, on 7 September, Anne gave birth to a baby girl who would one day reign as Elizabeth I of England. Anne failed to quickly produce a male heir; two and a half years after their wedding, a plot was led by Thomas Cromwell to replace her.

Although the evidence against her was unconvincing, Anne was beheaded on charges of adultery, incest, and high treason in 1536. Following the coronation of her daughter Elizabeth as queen, Anne was venerated as a martyr and heroine of the English Reformation, particularly through the works of John Foxe. Over the centuries, Anne has inspired or been mentioned in numerous artistic and cultural works. As a result, she has remained strong in the popular memory and Anne has been called "the most influential and important queen consort England has ever had."^[2]

Anne was the daughter of Sir Thomas Boleyn, later first Earl of Wiltshire and first Earl of Ormonde, and his wife, Lady Elizabeth Howard, daughter of the 2nd Duke of Norfolk. Thomas Boleyn was a respected diplomat with a gift for languages; he was also a favourite of Henry VII, who sent him on many diplomatic missions abroad. A lack of parish records from the period has made it impossible to establish Anne's date of birth. Contemporary evidence is contradictory, with several dates having been put forward by various historians. An Italian, writing in 1600, suggested that she had been born in 1499, while Sir Thomas More's son-in-law, William Roper, suggested a much later date of 1512. As with Anne herself, it is not known for certain when her two siblings were born, but it seems clear that her sister Mary was older than Anne. Mary’s children clearly believed their mother had been the elder sister.^[3] Mary's grandson claimed the Ormonde title in 1596 on the basis she was the elder daughter, which Elizabeth I accepted.^[4][5][6] Their brother George was born some time around 1504.^[7][8] As a child, Anne was familiarly addressed as Nan.^[9]

The academic debate of Anne's birthdate centres around two key dates: 1501 and 1507. Eric Ives, a British historian and legal expert, promotes the 1501 date, while Retha Warnicke, an American scholar who has also written a biography of Anne, prefers 1507. The key piece of surviving written evidence in the argument is a letter Anne wrote sometime in 1514, under the tutelage of "Semmonet", a male tutor in the household of Margaret of Austria.^[10] She wrote it in French (her second language) to her father, who was still living in England while Anne was completing her education in the Netherlands. Ives argues that the style of the letter and its mature handwriting prove that Anne must have been about thirteen at the time of its composition. This would also be around the minimum age that a girl could be a maid of honour, as Anne was to the regent, Margaret of Austria. This is supported by claims by a chronicler from the late 16th century, who wrote that Anne was twenty when she returned from France.^[11] These findings are contested by Warnicke in several books and articles, but the evidence does not conclusively support either date.^[12]

Anne's great grandparents included a Lord Mayor of London, a duke, an earl, two aristocratic ladies and a knight. Tradition held that one of them, Geoffrey Boleyn, may have been a wool merchant prior to becoming Lord Mayor.^[13][14] This is disputed by some historians,^[15] who make the case that the family had held a title for four generations.^[16] The Boleyn family originally came from Norfolk and lived at Salle, near Aylsham, which was, in the fifteenth century, a thriving community grown prosperous as a result of the lucrative wool trade with the Low Countries.^[17] The spelling of the Boleyn name was variable. Sometimes it is written as Bullen, hence the bull's heads that formed part of her family arms.^[9] At the court of Margaret of Austria, Anne is listed as Boullan.^[6] She signed the letter which she composed to her father shortly upon her arrival in France as Anna de Boullan.^[18] What is known is that at the time of Anne’s birth, the Boleyn family was considered one of the most respected in the English aristocracy. Among her relatives, she numbered the Howards, one of the pre-eminent families in the land. She was certainly of more noble birth than either Jane Seymour or Catherine Parr, two of Henry VIII's later wives.^[19]

Anne's father had continued his diplomatic career under Henry VIII. In Europe, Thomas Boleyn's charm won many admirers, including Archduchess Margaret of Austria, the daughter of Maximilian I, the Holy Roman Emperor. During this period, she ruled the Netherlands on behalf of her father and she was so impressed with Boleyn that she offered his daughter Anne a place in her household. Ordinarily, a girl had to be twelve years old to have such an honour, but Anne may have been somewhat younger, as the Archduchess affectionately referred to her as "La petite Boleyn". It is not known if this was in reference to Anne's age or her stature.^[21] She made a good impression in the Netherlands with her manners and studiousness and lived there from the spring of 1513 until her father arranged for her to become a maid-of-honour to Henry VIII's sister, Mary Tudor, Queen of France in the winter of 1514.

In France, Anne was a maid-of-honour to Queen Mary, then Queen Claude of France.^[22][23] In the Queen's household, she completed her study of French and developed an interest in fashion and religious philosophy. She also acquired a thorough knowledge of French culture and etiquette.^[24] She made the acquaintance of King Francis' sister, Marguerite d'Angouleme, a patron of humanists and reformers and an author in her own right who encouraged Anne's interest in poetry and literature.^[25] Anne's education in France proved to be of great value. She later inspired many new trends among the ladies of England. William Forrest, author of a contemporary poem about Catherine of Aragon, complimented Anne's "passing excellent" skill as a dancer. "Here," he wrote, "was [a] fresh young damsel, that could trip and go."^[26]

Anne exerted a powerful charm on those who met her, though opinions differed on her attractiveness. The Venetian diarist Francesco Sanuto, who saw Anne during the meeting between Henry VIII and Francis I of France at Calais in October 1532, described her as "not one of the handsomest women in the world; she is of middling stature, swarthy complexion, long neck, wide mouth, bosom not much raised ... eyes, which are black and beautiful".^[27] Simon Grynée wrote to Martin Bucer in September 1531 that Anne was "young, good-looking, of a rather dark complexion". Lancelot de Carles called her "beautiful with an elegant figure", and a Venetian in Paris in 1528 also reported that she was said to be beautiful.^[28] Other descriptions of her were less neutral. An observer at her coronation wrote that "the crown became her very ill, and a wart disfigured her very much. She wore a violet velvet mantle, with a high ruff of gold thread and pearls, which concealed a swelling she has, resembling a goitre".^[27] The most influential description of Anne, but also the least reliable, was written by the historian and polemicist Nicholas Sanders as late as 1586: "Anne Boleyn was rather tall of stature, with black hair, and an oval face of a sallow complexion, as if troubled with jaundice. She had a projecting tooth under the upper lip, and on her right hand six fingers. There was a large wen under her chin, and therefore to hide its ugliness she wore a high dress covering her throat ... She was handsome to look at, with a pretty mouth".^[29] Sanders' description contributed to what biographer Eric Ives calls the "monster legend" of Anne Boleyn.^[30]

Anne's experience in France also made her a devout Christian in the new tradition of Renaissance humanism, although calling her a Protestant would be an overstatement. While she would later hold the position that the papacy was a corrupting influence on Christianity, her conservative tendencies could be seen in her devotion to the Virgin Mary.^[31] At this stage of her life, Anne was described as "sweet and cheerful". She enjoyed gambling, drinking wine, and gossiping.^[32] She was brave and emotional however, and Anne could also be extravagant, neurotic, vindictive, and bad-tempered. Ives evaluates what we know of her character:

To us she appears inconsistent—religious yet aggressive, calculating yet emotional, with the light touch of the courtier yet the strong grip of the politician—but is this what she was, or merely what we strain to see through the opacity of the evidence? As for her inner life, short of a miraculous cache of new material, we shall never really know. Yet what does come to us across the centuries is the impression of a person who is strangely appealing to the early twenty-first century: A woman in her own right—taken on her own terms in a man’s world; a woman who mobilized her education, her style and her presence to outweigh the disadvantages of her sex; of only moderate good looks, but taking a court and a king by storm. Perhaps, in the end, it is Thomas Cromwell’s assessment that comes nearest: intelligence, spirit and courage.^[33]

Her European education ended in the winter of 1521, when Anne was summoned back to England by her father. She sailed from Calais, which was then still an English possession, in January 1522.^[34]

Anne was recalled to marry her Irish cousin, James Butler, who was a young man roughly her own age and living at the English court,^[35] in an attempt to settle a dispute involving the title and estates of the Earldom of Ormond. The 7th Earl of Ormond had died in 1515, leaving his two daughters, Margaret Boleyn and Anne St. Leger, as co-heiresses. In Ireland, a remote cousin named Sir Piers Butler contested the will and claimed the Earldom for himself. Sir Thomas Boleyn, being the son of the eldest daughter, felt that the title belonged to him and protested to his brother-in-law, the Duke of Norfolk, who spoke to the King about the matter. The King, fearful that the dispute could become the spark to ignite a civil war in Ireland, sought to resolve the problem by arranging an alliance between Piers's son, James, and Anne Boleyn. She would bring her Ormond inheritance as dowry and thus end the dispute. The plan ended in failure, perhaps because Sir Thomas was hoping for a grander marriage for his daughter. Whatever the reason, the marriage negotiations came to a complete halt.^[36] James Butler later married Lady Joan FitzGerald, the daughter of Thomas FitzGerald, 11th Earl of Desmond and Katherine Desmond.

Mary Boleyn, Anne Boleyn's elder sister, had earlier been recalled from France in late 1519, ostensibly for her affairs with the French king and his courtiers. She was immediately married to William Carey, a minor noble, in February of 1520, at Greenwich, with Henry VIII in attendance: soon after, Mary Boleyn became the English King's mistress. The vast majority of historians, most notably Dr. Eric Ives, reject the notion of Henry VIII siring Mary Boleyn's children, as the latter were born after the affair concluded, and when Henry VIII's attentions focused expressly on Anne Boleyn. As well, Henry VIII did not acknowledge either offspring, as he did his son Henry Fitzroy, his illegitimate son by Elizabeth Blount, Lady Talboys.

Anne made her début at the Chateau Vert masque on 4 March 1522 as "Perseverance", where she was described as a woman of "charm, style and wit, and will and savagery which make her a match for Henry".^[37] The music book contains three secular chansons and thirty-nine Latin motets. There she performed an elaborate dance accompanying the King's younger sister Mary, several other ladies of the court and her own sister. All wore gowns of white satin embroidered with gold thread.^[38] Anne was known as the most fashionable and accomplished woman at the court and was referred to as a "glass of fashion".^[39]

Six wives of Henry VIII
and years of marriage

• v
• t
• e

Catherine of Aragon
m. 1509–1533

Anne Boleyn
m. 1533–1536

Jane Seymour
m. 1536–1537

Anne of Cleves
m. 1540

Catherine Howard
m. 1540–1542

Catherine Parr
m. 1543–1547

During this time, Anne was courted by Henry Percy, son of the Earl of Northumberland, and entered into a secret betrothal with the young man. Thomas Wolsey's gentleman usher, George Cavendish, George Cavendish, maintained the two had not been lovers. It thus seems unlikely that their relationship was sexual.^[40] The romance was broken off in 1523 when Percy's father refused to support their engagement. According to Cavendish, Anne was briefly sent from court to her family’s countryside estates, but it is not known for how long. Upon return to court, she again entered the service of Katherine of Aragon. The poet Sir Thomas Wyatt, described her in a sonnet Whoso List to Hunt,^[41] as unobtainable, headstrong, and belonging to the King: "noli me tangere for Caesar's I am/And wild for to hold though I seem tame".^[42] In 1526, Henry VIII became enamoured with her and began his pursuit.^[43]

Anne resisted his attempts to seduce her and she refused to become his mistress, often absenting herself from court to the seclusion of Hever. Within a year, he proposed marriage to her, and she accepted. Both erroneously assumed an annulment could be obtained within a matter of months. At this point, they did engage in a limited sexual relationship, but avoided pregnancy: as Henry VIII's future queen and consort, her reputation had to remain unimpeachable.

It is possible that the idea of annulment (not divorce as commonly assumed) had suggested itself to the King much earlier than this, and motivated by his desire for a male heir. Before Henry's father Henry VII ascended the throne, England had been beset by civil warfare over rival claims to the English crown and Henry wanted to avoid a similar uncertainty over the succession. The King had no living sons: all Catherine of Aragon's children except his daughter Mary had died in infancy.^[45] Anne saw her opportunity in Henry's infatuation and determined that she would only yield as his acknowledged queen.^[46]

In 1528, sweating sickness broke out with great severity. In London, the mortality rate was great and the court was dispersed. The King left London, frequently changing his residence; Anne Boleyn retreated to Hever, but succumbed to the illness; her brother in law, William Carey, died. Henry sent his own physician to Hever Castle to care for her.^[47] It soon became the one absorbing object of the king's desires to secure an annulment from Catherine.^[48] Henry set his hopes upon a direct appeal to the Holy See, acting independently of Cardinal Wolsey, to whom he at first communicated nothing of his plans so far as they related to Anne. William Knight, the King's secretary, was sent to Pope Clement VII to sue for the annulment of his marriage with Catherine, on the ground that the dispensing bull of Pope Julius II was obtained by false pretenses. Henry also petitioned, in the event of his becoming free, a dispensation to contract a new marriage with any woman even in the first degree of affinity, whether the affinity was contracted by lawful or unlawful connection. This clearly referred to Anne.^[46]

As the Pope was at that time the prisoner of Charles V, the Holy Roman Emperor, Knight had some difficulty in obtaining access. In the end, the King's envoy had to return without accomplishing much, though the conditional dispensation for a new marriage was granted. Henry had now no choice but to put his great matter into the hands of Wolsey. Wolsey did all he could to secure a decision in the King's favour.^[46] Due to being under Charles V's political control, Pope Clement VII could not grant Henry VIII an annulment.^[49] The Pope forbade Henry to proceed with a new marriage before a decision was rendered in Rome. Convinced Wolsey's loyalties lay with the Pope and not England, Henry VIII, Anne Boleyn and Wolsey's many enemies ensured his dismissal from public office in 1529. Henry finally ordered Wolsey's arrest and had it not been for his death from an illness in 1530, he might have been executed for treason.^[50] A year later, Queen Catherine was banished from court and her old rooms were given to Anne. Public support, however, remained with Queen Catherine. One evening in the autumn of 1531, Anne was dining at a manor house on the river and was almost seized by a crowd of angry, hostile women. Anne just barely managed to escape by boat.^[51] Anne Boleyn often acted independently of her husband, able to grant petitions, receive diplomats, preside over patronage appointments and foreign policy. When Archbishop of Canterbury William Warham died, the Boleyn family's chaplain, Thomas Cranmer, was appointed to the vacant position. Through the intervention of the King of France, this was conceded by Rome, the pallium being granted to him by Clement VII.^[52]

The breaking of the power of Rome in England proceeded little by little. In 1532 Thomas Cromwell, brought before Parliament a number of acts including the Supplication against the Ordinaries and the Submission of the Clergy, which recognised royal supremacy over the church. Following these acts, Thomas More resigned as Chancellor, leaving Cromwell as Henry's chief minister.^[53]

During this period, Boleyn also played a role in England's international position by solidifying an alliance with France. She established an excellent rapport with the French ambassador, Gilles de la Pommeraie. Anne and Henry attended a meeting with the French king at Calais in the winter of 1532, in which Henry hoped he could enlist the support of Francis I of France for his new marriage. Anne's position continued to rise. On 1 September 1532, she was created suo jure Marquess of Pembroke, and became the most prestigious non-royal woman in the realm. She was the first female commoner to become a Peer by direct creation (as opposed to by marriage or inheritance); and she remains the only woman ever to have been made a marquess in her own right. Dr. Eric Ives refers to her as "Marchioness of Pembroke", but she was also known as Marquess. Both terms are correct.^[54] The Pembroke title was of emotional value to the Tudor family: Henry's great-uncle, Jasper Tudor, had held the title of Earl of Pembroke. With her later conviction for treason, the title was confiscated.

Anne’s family also profited from the relationship; her father, already Viscount Rochford, was created Earl of Wiltshire and, by means of a deal made by the King with Anne’s Irish cousins, the Butler family, he was made Earl of Ormond. At the magnificent banquet to celebrate her father's elevation to the Earldom of Wiltshire, Anne took precedence over the Duchesses of Suffolk and Norfolk, seated in the place of honour beside the King which was usually occupied by the Queen.^[55] Thanks to Anne's intervention, her widowed sister Mary received an annual pension of £100, and Mary's son, Henry Carey, received his education in a prestigious Cistercian monastery. The conference at Calais was a political triumph, since the French government gave its support for Henry's re-marriage.^[56] Soon after returning to Dover in England, Henry and Anne went through a secret wedding service.^[57] She soon became pregnant and, as was the custom with royalty, there was a second wedding service, which took place in London on 25 January 1533. Events now began to move at a quick pace. On 23 May 1533, Cranmer, sitting in judgment at a special court convened at Dunstable Priory to rule on the validity of the King's marriage to Catherine of Aragon, declared the marriage of Henry and Catherine null and void. Five days later, on 28 May 1533, Cranmer declared the marriage of Henry and Anne to be good and valid.^[58]

Catherine was formally stripped of her title as queen and Anne was consequently crowned queen consort on 1 June 1533 in a magnificent ceremony at Westminster Abbey with a sumptuous banquet afterwards^[59]. On the previous day, Anne had taken part in an elaborate procession through the streets of London seated in an open litter of white cloth of gold resting on two palfries caparisioned in white damask. She wore a surcoat and mantle of white tissue trimmed with ermine, and her long straight black hair hung down from a coif encircled with rich stones.^[60]The public's response to her appearance was lukewarm.^[61]The crowds did not cheer and few men even bothered to doff their caps.^[62] Meanwhile, the House of Commons had forbidden all appeals to Rome and exacted the penalties of præmunire against all who introduced papal bulls into England. It was only then that Pope Clement at last took the step of launching sentences of excommunication against the King and Cranmer, declaring at the same time the Archbishop's decree of annulment to be invalid and the marriage with Anne null and void. The papal nuncio was withdrawn from England and diplomatic relations with Rome were broken off.^[52] In response, the Peter's Pence Act was passed in England and it reiterated that England had "no superior under God, but only your Grace" and that Henry's "imperial crown" had been diminished by "the unreasonable and uncharitable usurpations and exactions" of the Pope.^[63] In defiance of the Pope, the Church of England was now under Henry’s control, not Rome's. Anne, Cranmer, and Cromwell were delighted at this development.

After her coronation, Anne settled into a quiet routine at the King's favourite residence, Greenwich Palace, to prepare for the birth of her first baby. The child was born slightly prematurely on 7 September 1533. Between three and four in the afternoon, Anne gave birth to a girl, who was christened Elizabeth, probably in honour of Henry's mother, Elizabeth of York.^[64]

The little princess was given a splendid christening, but Anne feared that Catherine's daughter, Mary, would threaten Elizabeth’s position. Henry soothed his wife's fears by separating Mary from her many servants and sending her to Hatfield House, where Princess Elizabeth would be living with her own magnificent staff of servants. The country air was better for the baby's health, and Anne was an affectionate mother who regularly visited her daughter.^[65]

The new queen had a larger staff of servants than Catherine had kept. There were over two hundred and fifty servants to tend to her personal needs, everyone from priests to stable-boys. There were also over 60 maids-of-honour who served her and accompanied her to social events. She also employed several priests who acted as her confessors, chaplains, and religious advisers. One of these was Matthew Parker, who would become one of the chief architects of Anglican thought during the reign of Anne's daughter Elizabeth I.^[66]

The king and his new queen enjoyed a reasonably happy accord, with periods of calm and affection. Anne Boleyn's sharp intelligence, political acumen and forward manners, although desirable in a "mistress", in accordance with the practice of chivalry, were unacceptable in a wife. She was once reported to have spoken to her uncle in words that "shouldn't be used to a dog".^[67] After a stillbirth or miscarriage in 1534, as early as Christmas 1534, Henry was discussing with Cranmer and Cromwell the chances of leaving Anne without having to return to Catherine.^[68] Nothing came of the issue, the royal couple reconciled and spent the summer of 1535 on progress. By October of 1535, she was again pregnant. Henry VIII, an avid practitioner of chivalry, paid court to others ladies, infuriating his wife, but no evidence supports his infidelity: Henry had only two known mistresses, Elizabeth Blount and Mary Boleyn, both during his marriage to Katherine of Aragon.

Anne Boleyn presided over a magnificent court. She spent lavish amounts of money on gowns, jewels, head-dresses, ostrich-feather fans, riding equipment, furniture and upholstery - entirely consistent the ostentatious display required of a Renaissance monarch's divinely ordained status; a reflection of Humanistic perfection, a tradition further cultivated by her daughter, Elizabeth I. Numerous palaces were renovated to suit her and Henry VIII's extravagant tastes.^[69] Anne was blamed for the tyranny of her husband's government. Public opinion of her dropped, even though it was never good, following her failure to produce a son. It sank even lower following the executions in 1535 of her enemies, the Bishop of Rochester, John Fisher, and Sir Thomas More.^[70] However, upon her arrest, trial and execution, public opinion in London and the continent shifted to sympathy and frank disapprobation of Henry VIII's behaviour.

On 8 January 1536, news of Catherine of Aragon's death reached the King and Anne. Hearing of her death, Henry and Anne reportedly decked themselves in bright yellow clothing and briefly celebrated.^[71][72] Anne, for her part, attempted to make peace with Princess Mary as a line of defence.

The Queen, pregnant again, was aware of the dangers if she failed to give birth to a son. With Catherine dead, Henry would be free to remarry without any taint of illegality. Mary rebuffed these overtures, perhaps because rumours circulated that Catherine had been poisoned by Anne and/or Henry. The rumours were born after the discovery during her embalming that her heart was blackened. Modern medical experts are in agreement that this was not due to poisoning, but rather to cancer of the heart, something which was not understood at the time.^[73]

Later that month, the King was unhorsed in a tournament and was badly injured. It seemed for a time that his life was in danger. When news of this accident reached the Queen, she was apparently sent into shock and miscarried a child that was about fifteen weeks old and which had 'all the appearance of a male.'^[74] This happened on the very day of Catherine’s funeral, 29 January 1536. According to most observers, this personal loss was the beginning of the end of the royal marriage.^[75]

Given Henry's desperate desire for a son, the sequence of Anne's pregnancies has attracted much interest. Author Mike Ashley speculated that Anne had two stillborn children after Elizabeth's birth and before the birth of the male child she miscarried in 1536.^[76] Most sources attest only to the birth of Elizabeth in September 1533, a possible miscarriage in the summer of 1534, and the miscarriage of a male child, of almost four months gestation, in January 1536.^[77] As Anne recovered from what would be her final miscarriage, Henry declared that he had been seduced into the marriage by means of "sortilege" - a French term indicating either 'deception' or 'spells'. The King's new mistress, Jane Seymour, was quickly moved into new quarters. This was followed by Anne's brother being refused a prestigious court honour, the Order of the Garter, which was instead given to Sir Nicholas Carew.^[78]

In the final days of April, a Flemish musician in Anne's service named Mark Smeaton was arrested and tortured. He initially denied that he was the Queen’s lover, but under torture he confessed. Another courtier, Henry Norris was arrested on May Day, but since he was an aristocrat, he could not be tortured. He denied his guilt and swore that Queen Anne was also innocent. Sir Francis Weston was arrested two days later on the same charge. William Brereton, a groom of the King's privy chamber, was also apprehended on grounds of adultery. The final accused was Queen Anne's own brother, arrested on charges of incest and treason, accused of having a sexual relationship with his sister over the last twelve months.^[79]

On 2 May 1536, Anne was arrested at luncheon and taken to the Tower of London. In the Tower, she collapsed, demanding to know the location of her father and "swete broder", as well as the charges against her. Four of the men were tried in Westminster on 12 May 1536. Weston, Brereton and Norris publicly maintained their innocence and only the tortured Smeaton supported the Crown by pleading guilty. Three days later, Anne and George Boleyn were tried separately in the Tower of London. She was accused of adultery, incest and high treason.^[80] Adultery, in 1536, was not a civil, capital crime necessitating execution, but an ecclesiastical offense. The charge of treason related to murdering the King and ostensibly marrying one of her putative lovers after. The accusations of adultery were designed to impugn her moral character.

Anne Boleyn's fall and execution were primarily politically motivated, and orchestrated by Thomas Cromwell: the two clashed bitterly over the distribution of Church revenues and foreign policy. She preferred revenues be distributed to charitable institutions and educational facilities, and a French alliance. Cromwell insisted upon filling the King's depleted coffers, and a renewal of relations with the Imperial forces of Charles V. Anne Boleyn, having sufficient political power to strike him down, nearly did so, but Cromwell acted first with a clumsy and hastily assembled plan revolving around accusations of treason. None of the dates of the alleged encounters coincided with the Queen's location, and one date was shortly after Elizabeth's birth, when still secluded, before being churched. (Dr. Eric Ives, pp. 319-329).

Although the evidence against them was unconvincing, the accused were found guilty and condemned to death by their peers. George Boleyn and the other accused men were executed on May 17 1536. Lord Kingston, the keeper of the Tower, reported that Anne seemed very happy and ready to be done with life. The King commuted Anne's sentence from burning to beheading and employed a swordsman from St Omer for the execution, rather than having a queen beheaded with the common axe. They came for Anne on the morning of May 19 to take her to the Tower Green.^[81] Anthony Kingston, the Constable of the Tower, wrote:

This morning she sent for me, that I might be with her at such time as she received the good Lord, to the intent I should hear her speak as touching her innocency alway to be clear. And in the writing of this she sent for me, and at my coming she said, 'Mr. Kingston, I hear I shall not die afore noon, and I am very sorry therefore, for I thought to be dead by this time and past my pain.' I told her it should be no pain, it was so little. And then she said, 'I heard say the executioner was very good, and I have a little neck,' and then put her hands about it, laughing heartily. I have seen many men and also women executed, and that they have been in great sorrow, and to my knowledge this lady has much joy in death. Sir, her almoner is continually with her, and had been since two o'clock after midnight.^[82]

On the morning of Friday 19 May, Anne Boleyn was executed, not upon Tower Green, but rather, a scaffold erected on the north side of the White Tower, in front of what is now the Waterloo Barracks^[83] She wore a red petticoat under a loose, dark grey gown of damask trimmed in fur and a mantle of ermine,^[84]. Accompanied by four female attendants, Anne made her final walk from the lieutenant's lodgings to Tower Green and she looked "as gay as if she was not going to die".^[85] Anne made a short speech:

Good Christian people, I am come hither to die, for according to the law, and by the law I am judged to die, and therefore I will speak nothing against it. I am come hither to accuse no man, nor to speak anything of that, whereof I am accused and condemned to die, but I pray God save the king and send him long to reign over you, for a gentler nor a more merciful prince was there never: and to me he was ever a good, a gentle and sovereign lord. And if any person will meddle of my cause, I require them to judge the best. And thus I take my leave of the world and of you all, and I heartily desire you all to pray for me. O Lord have mercy on me, to God I commend my soul.^[86]

This is one version of her speech, written by Lancelot de Carles, in Paris, a few weeks following her death. All the accounts are similar, and undoubtedly correct to varying degrees.

She then knelt upright, in the French style of executions. Her final prayer consisted of her repeating, "To Jesus Christ I commend my soul; Lord Jesus receive my soul." Her ladies removed the headdress and tied a blindfold over her eyes. The execution was swift and consisted of a single stroke.^[87] Across the river, Alexander Ales accompanied Thomas Cranmer as he walked in the gardens of Lambeth Palace. When they heard the cannon fire from the Tower, signalling the death of Anne, the archbishop looked up and proclaimed: "She who has been the English queen on earth will today become a Heaven's queen." He then sat down on a bench and wept.^[88] When the charges were first brought against Anne, Cranmer had expressed his astonishment to Henry and his belief that "she should not be culpable." Still, Cranmer felt vulnerable because of his closeness to the queen. On the night before the execution, he had declared Henry's marriage to Anne to have been void, like Catherine's before her. He made no serious attempt to save Anne's life.^[89]

Henry had failed to provide a proper coffin for Anne, and so her body and head were put into an arrow chest and buried in an unmarked grave in the Chapel of St Peter ad Vincula. Her body was identified during renovations of the chapel in the reign of Queen Victoria and Anne's final resting place is now marked in the marble floor.

After her death, a number of myths sprung up about Anne. Many of these stories had their roots in anti-Anglican works written by Roman Catholics. It was reported by some that Anne suffered from polydactyly, having six fingers on her left hand. Others claimed she had a birthmark or mole on her neck that was at all times hidden by a jewel. Although the first legend is popular, there is no contemporary evidence to support it. None of the many eyewitness accounts of Anne Boleyn’s appearance—some of them meticulously detailed—mention any deformities, let alone a sixth finger. Moreover, as physical deformities were generally interpreted as a sign of evil, it is difficult to believe that Anne Boleyn would have gained Henry's romantic attention had she had any.^[90] Anne Boleyn was described by contemporaries as "young, good looking and likely enough to bear children", intelligent, forthright, gifted in musical arts and scholarly pursuits. She was certainly strong willed and outspoken in the tradition of the powerful Renaissance women she knew on the continent. ^[91]

Upon exhumation, no abnormalities were discovered: her frame was described as delicate, approximately 5'3" or 5'4", with finely formed, tapering fingers. Elizabeth I certainly inherited her mother's frame, height, facial structure and hands. No contemporary portraits of Anne Boleyn have survived: the only likeness is a medal struck in 1534 to commemorate her second pregnancy; it is, however, severely damaged. For a full description of Anne Boleyn's remains, see Doyne C. Bell: "Notices of the Historic Persons Buried in the Tower of London", John Murray, Albemarle Street, 1877.

Following the coronation of her daughter as queen, Anne was venerated as a martyr and heroine of the English Reformation, particularly through the works of John Foxe, who argued that Anne had saved England from the evils of Roman Catholicism and that God had provided proof of her innocence and virtue by making sure her daughter, Elizabeth I, later became Queen regnant. Over the centuries, Anne has inspired or been mentioned in numerous artistic and cultural works. As a result, she has remained in the popular memory and Anne has been called "the most influential and important queen consort England has ever had."^[92]

• List of English consorts
• Anne Boleyn in popular culture
• Anna Bolena, an opera by Gaetano Donizetti with lyrics by Felice Romani (1830).

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• Wilson, Derek. Hans Holbein: Portrait of an Unknown Man. London: Pimlico, Revised Edition (2006). ISBN 9781844139187.

• Anne Boleyn, a Music Book, and the Northern Renaissance Courts: Music Manuscript 1070 of the Royal College of Music, London." Ph.D., Musicology, University of Maryland, 1997. ISBN 0-591-46653-8.
• The Challenge of Anne Boleyn by Hester W. Chapman (1974).
• The Politics of Marriage by David Loades (1994).

• A geo-biography tour of the Six Wives of Henry VIII on Google Earth

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