Anne Boleyn (c. 1501 or 1507 - May 19, 1536) was Queen of England from 1533 to 1536, as the second wife of King Henry VIII. The circumstances of her marriage and of her execution by beheading for treason and other charges made her a key figure in the political and religious upheaval that marked the start of the English Reformation.
Early Life and Education[]
Anne Boleyn was one of the 3 surviving children of Sir Thomas Boleyn, 1st Earl of Wiltshire, and Lady Elizabeth Howard, Countess of Wiltshire. Anne's exact date of birth is unknown, though it is dated to sometime between 1501 and 1507. Anne's early education was typical for women of her class.
In 1513, she was invited to join the schoolroom of Margaret of Austria and her four wards. Her academic education was limited to arithmetic, her family genealogy, grammar, history, reading, spelling and writing. She also developed domestic skills such as dancing, embroidery, good manners, household management, music, needlework and singing. Anne learned to play games, such as cards, chess and dice. She was also taught archery, falconry, horseback riding and hunting.
Life in the Netherlands and France[]
While Anne's father continued his political career, his charms won him many admirers including Archduchess Margaret of Austria who was ruler of the Netherlands on behalf of her nephew Charles. Margaret was so impressed with Thomas that she offered Anne a place in her household where she made a good impression in the Netherlands with her manners and studiousness; Margaret reported that she was well spoken and pleasant for her young age, and told Thomas that his daughter was "so presentable and so pleasant, considering her youthful age, that I am more beholden to you for sending her to me, than you to me". Anne stayed at the Court of Savoy in Mechelen from spring 1513 until her father arranged for her to attend Henry VIII's sister Mary, who was about to marry Louis XII of France in October 1514.
In France, Anne was a Maid of Honor to Queen Mary, and then to Mary's 15-year-old stepdaughter Queen Claude, Duchess of Brittany recent bride of King Francis I with whom she stayed nearly seven years. In the Queen's household, she completed her study of French and developed interests in art, fashion, illuminated manuscripts, literature, music, poetry and religious philosophy. She also acquired knowledge of French culture, dance, etiquette, literature, music and poetry; and gained experience in flirtation and courtly love. Anne's education in France proved itself in later years, inspiring many new trends among the ladies and courtiers of England.
Returning Home to England[]
In early 1522, Anne was called back home by her father to marry her cousin James Butler, 9th Earl of Ormond - a match intended to settle a dispute over lands and titles of the Earldom of Ormond. However, because Thomas wanted a better marriage for his daughter, negotiations for marriage ceased and instead she secured a post at court as lady-in-waiting to Henry's wife, Catherine of Aragon. In late 1519, her older sister Mary was called back home, ostensibly to end her ongoing affairs with the French King and his courtiers. In February 1520 at Greenwich Palace, the wedding of Mary to William Carey was celebrated and soon after Mary became a mistress of Henry VIII while also serving as lady-in-waiting to Queen Catherine.
On May 4, 1522, Anne made her debut at the Green Castle pageant in honor of the imperial ambassadors, playing "Perseverance" (one of the characters in the play). There she took part in an elaborate dance accompanying Henry's younger sister Mary, several other ladies of the court and her sister. All wore gowns of white satin embroidered with gold thread. She quickly established herself as one of the most stylish and accomplished women at the court, and soon a number of young men were competing for her.
During this time, Anne was courted by Henry Percy, Earl of Northumberland and secretly became engaged to him. However, the engagement was broken off when the Earl of Northumberland refused to support his son's relationship with Anne, and instead Henry Percy married Lady Mary Talbot, a young noblewoman he'd been formally engaged to since adolescence.
Being Pursued by a King[]
In 1526 the King's interest in Anne significantly upped the stakes.
Henry VIII's long marriage to Catherine of Aragon had produced only one surviving child, Princess Mary. Henry was becoming increasingly desperate for a legitimate son and heir to secure the future of the Tudor dynasty.
Either driven by her own virtue or ambition, or by her scheming relatives, and aware of the King's dynastic dilemma, Anne refused to become a royal mistress and would often retreat to her family home of Hever Castle to get away from court. However, within a year, Henry proposed to Anne and she accepted, while holding out for the possibility of marriage. There is no evidence to suggest that they engaged in a sexual relationship until very shortly before their marriage; Henry's love letters to Anne suggest that their love affair remained unconsummated for much of their seven-year courtship.
A Marriage Annulled and a Queen Banished[]
Henry VIII and Catherine of Aragon had been married since June 11, 1509. Just 18 months after their wedding and coronation, on January 1, 1511, the couple's first living child, Prince Henry, Duke of Cornwall, was born. The elated parents threw extravagant festivities to celebrate the birth of their son, who was created Duke of Cornwall as heir apparent. Sadly, just over a month and a half later, on February 22, 1511, Henry and Catherine lost their beloved son to an unknown cause. The next living child born to them was Mary on February 18, 1516. Unfortunately, the couple would not have another living son and this led to succession and marriage crises that affected the relationship between the English Church and Roman Catholicism, giving rise to the English Reformation.
Henry's feelings for Anne soon absorbed him and he became set upon a direct appeal to the Holy See, acting independently of Wolsey, to whom he at first communicated nothing of his plans related to Anne; however Henry 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. In 1531 (two years before Henry's marriage to Anne), Catherine was banished from court and her rooms given to Anne.
Public support remained with Catherine. One evening, in the autumn of 1531, Anne was dining at a manor house on the River Thames and was almost seized by a crowd of angry women. Anne just managed to escape by boat.
Marrying the King and Becoming Queen[]
Anne finally married Henry on January 25, 1533, seven years after their courtship had begun. Henry's marriage to Anne was technically bigamous, as his marriage to Catherine was not officially annulled until May 23, 1533, when she was formally stripped of her title as Queen, and 5 days later on May 28, 1533, Henry and Anne's marriage was declared good and valid.
In May 1533, Anne was escorted by river to the Tower of London where she prepared for her coronation in the royal apartments before riding to Westminster in a triumphant procession through the streets of London, seated in a litter of "white cloth of gold" that rested on two palfreys clothed to the ground in white damask, while the barons of the Cinque Ports held a canopy of cloth of gold over her head. In accordance with tradition, she wore white, and on her head, a gold coronet beneath which her long dark hair hung down freely. The public's response to her appearance was lukewarm.
Anne was crowned Queen in Westminster Abbey on June 1, 1533 when she was six months pregnant with their first child.
The following year, Henry broke with the Roman Catholic Church, setting himself up instead as the Supreme Head of what would become the Church of England. This created shockwaves, which caused religious and political unrest in Britain for the next 200 years.
A Queen's Life[]
As Queen of England, unsurprisingly, Anne supported Henry's new religious and political policies, gathering around them a new team of rising courtiers, including Thomas Cromwell and Thomas Cranmer.
Anne presided over a court. She spent lavish amounts of money on gowns, jewels, head-dresses, ostrich-feather fans, riding equipment, furniture and upholstery, maintaining the ostentatious display required by her status. Numerous palaces were renovated to suit her and Henry's extravagant tastes. Her motto was "The most happy", and she chose a white falcon as her personal device.
Anne seems to have been active in promoting new educational identities for monasteries, no longer under the protection of the Catholic Church.
She was also the first royal patron of the great court artist, Hans Holbein, who designed an arch for her coronation and a rose-water fountain.
A New Princess is born[]
After her fabulous coronation, Queen Anne settled into Greenwich Palace, which was the King's favorite residence, to await the birth of their baby. On September 7, 1533, the Queen gave birth to a healthy baby girl, who was named Elizabeth after Henry's mother, Elizabeth of York, and Anne's mother, Elizabeth Boleyn, Countess of Wiltshire.
But the birth of a girl was a heavy blow to her parents, who had confidently expected a boy. All but one of the royal physicians and astrologers had predicted a son and the French king had been asked to stand as his godfather. Now the prepared letters announcing the birth of a prince had been hastily edited to read princess and the traditional jousting tournament for the birth of an heir was cancelled.
The infant princess was given a splendid christening, but Anne feared that Catherine's daughter, Mary, now stripped of her title of princess and labelled a bastard, posed a threat to Elizabeth's position. Henry soothed his wife's fears by separating Mary from her many servants and sending her to Hatfield House, where Elizabeth would live with her own sizeable staff of servants and the country air was thought better for the baby's health. Anne frequently visited her daughter at Hatfield and other residences.
The new queen had a larger staff of servants than Catherine. There were more than 250 servants to tend to her personal needs, from priests to stable boys, and more than 60 maids-of-honor 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 became one of the chief architects of Anglican thought during the reign of Anne's daughter, Elizabeth I.
A Queen's Struggle and Heartache[]
Although the birth of Elizabeth was a blow to Henry, he still held hope that he and Anne would have a living son, unfortunately the couple would conceive a son twice more in the summer of 1534 and in January 1536: the first miscarried possibly due to the stress of seeing her husband cavorting with other women including her own Lady in Waiting Jane Seymour while the 2nd was stillborn. Sadly after the birth of Princess Elizabeth, with the loss of 2 sons it became apparent that the couple would not have a son which led Henry who was always spiritually superstitious, to question whether he had made the right choice in marrying Anne. Henry and Anne’s relationship, built on passion and expectation, seems to have become more tempestuous and Henry, again, began to look outside his marriage for solutions.
The Beginning of the End[]
On January 8, 1536, sad news reach English Court announcing the death of Catherine of Aragon, with this sad news Anne made an attempt to make peace with Catherine's daughter Mary who refused believing that in some way the Queen was responsible for her mother's death due to the discovery of a black heart which led Mary to believe that her mother has been poisoned when in fact it was most likely cancer of the heart that caused her death.
Anne had lost a son to miscarriage just 2 years before, and was almost 4 months pregnant with another baby when she walked into a room and saw Mistress Jane sitting on her husband's lap, this sent her into a rage and stressed her out greatly which sadly led her to go into premature labor and deliver her baby and unfortunately for her it was a son. Anne was devastated, and Henry began to think their marriage was brought about by some sort of deception. This loss was the beginning of the end of the King and Queen's marriage, and soon after Henry moved his mistress, Jane Seymour, into royal apartments.
Charges of Incest, Adultery, and Treason[]
Sir Thomas Cromwell, was an ally of Anne in the beginning, but by this time he was fully her enemy and is thought to have been instrumental in the plot to get rid of Anne.
In 1536, Cromwell made a decisive move against Anne. Accusations of adultery, incest, treason and even of plotting against the King’s life were levelled against the Queen, her own brother and a small group of courtiers.
Anne was arrested on May 2, 1536 and taken by barge to the Tower of London, arriving at the private postern gate (now the Byward Tower).
Henry VIII, notoriously prone to suspicion, and now besotted with one of Anne’s own ladies-in-waiting, Jane Seymour, ignored the Queen’s protestations of innocence.
A sham trial filled with Anne’s enemies found her guilty, and she found herself a prisoner at the Tower of London, in the same royal apartment where, just three years before, she had awaited her coronation.
Final Days, Execution and Burial[]
The accused were found guilty and condemned to death. George Boleyn and the other accused men were executed on May 17, 1536. William Kingston, the Constable of the Tower, reported Anne seemed very happy and ready to be done with life. Henry commuted Anne's sentence from burning to beheading, and rather than have a queen beheaded with the common axe, he brought an expert swordsman from Saint-Omer in France, to perform the execution.
On the morning of Friday, May 19, 1536 Anne was taken to a scaffold erected on the north side of the White Tower, in front of what is now the Waterloo Barracks. She wore a red petticoat under a loose, dark grey gown of damask trimmed in fur and a mantle of ermine. Accompanied by two female attendants, Anne made her final walk from the Queen's House to the scaffold and she showed a "devilish spirit" and looked "as gay as if she was not going to die".
The ermine mantle was removed and Anne lifted off her headdress, tucking her hair under a coif. After a brief farewell to her weeping ladies and a request for prayers, she knelt down and one of her ladies tied a blindfold over her eyes. She knelt upright, in the French style of beheadings. Her final prayer consisted of her repeating continually, "Jesu receive my soul; O Lord God have pity on my soul." The execution consisted of a single stroke.
She was then buried in an unmarked grave in the Chapel of St Peter ad Vincula. Her skeleton was identified during renovations of the chapel in 1876, in the reign of Queen Victoria, and Anne's grave is now identified on the marble floor. According to popular legend the ghost of Anne Boleyn haunts the Tower of London today, and walks the chapel of St Peter where she is buried...with her head tucked underneath her arm.
Aftermath[]
Sir Thomas Cranmer who was the only supporter Anne had on the council was at Lambeth Palace, and was reported to have broken down in tears after telling Alexander Ales: "She who has been the Queen of England on earth will today become a Queen in heaven." When the charges were first brought against Anne, Cranmer had expressed his astonishment to Henry and his belief that "she should not be culpable".
Cranmer felt vulnerable because of his closeness to the queen; on the night before the execution, he 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, although some sources record that he had prepared her for death by hearing her last private confession of sins, in which she had stated her innocence before God. On the day of her death, a Scottish friend found Cranmer weeping uncontrollably in his London gardens, saying that he was sure that Anne had now gone to Heaven.
Legacy[]
Anne Boleyn was described by contemporaries as intelligent and gifted in musical arts and scholarly pursuits. She was also strong-willed and proud, and often quarreled with Henry.
No contemporary portraits of Anne Boleyn survive. A bust of her was cast on a commemorative medallion in 1534, believed to have been struck to celebrate her second pregnancy.
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, 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 ascended the throne. An example of Anne's direct influence in the reformed church is what Alexander Ales described to Queen Elizabeth as the "evangelical bishops whom your holy mother appointed from among those scholars who favored the purer doctrine". 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 has been called "the most influential and important Queen Consort England has ever had."
