Anne Boleyn, Queen, consort of Henry VIII, King of England, 1507-1536

Anne Boleyn (/ˈbʊlɪn, bʊˈlɪn/;[6][7][8] c. 1501 – 19 May 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. Anne was the daughter of Thomas Boleyn, 1st Earl of Wiltshire, and his wife, Lady Elizabeth Howard, and was educated in the Netherlands and France, largely as a maid of honour to Queen Claude of France. Anne returned to England in early 1522, to marry her Irish cousin James Butler, 9th Earl of Ormond; the marriage plans were broken off, and instead she secured a post at court as maid of honour to Henry VIII's wife, Catherine of Aragon.

Early in 1523, Anne was secretly betrothed to Henry Percy, son of Henry Percy, 5th Earl of Northumberland, but the betrothal was broken off when the Earl refused to support their engagement. Cardinal Thomas Wolsey refused the match in January 1524 and Anne was sent home to Hever Castle. In February or March 1526, Henry VIII began his pursuit of Anne. She resisted his attempts to seduce her, refusing to become his mistress, as her sister Mary had previously been. Henry soon focused his desires on annulling his marriage to Catherine so he would be free to marry Anne. Wolsey failed to obtain an annulment of Henry's marriage from Pope Clement VII and, in 1529–30, Anne helped bring about his downfall and his death. When it became clear that Clement would not annul the marriage, Henry and his advisers, such as Thomas Cromwell, began the breaking of the Catholic Church's power in England and closing the monasteries and the nunneries. In 1532, Henry made Anne the Marquess of Pembroke.

Henry and Anne formally married on 25 January 1533, after a secret wedding on 14 November 1532. On 23 May 1533, the newly appointed Archbishop of Canterbury Thomas Cranmer declared Henry and Catherine's marriage null and void; five days later, he declared Henry and Anne's marriage valid. Shortly afterwards, Clement excommunicated Henry and Cranmer. As a result of this marriage and these excommunications, the first break between the Church of England and the Catholic Church took place, and the king took control of the Church of England. Anne was crowned Queen of England on 1 June 1533. On 7 September, she gave birth to the future Queen Elizabeth I. Henry was disappointed to have a daughter rather than a son but hoped a son would follow and professed to love Elizabeth.[citation needed] Anne subsequently had three miscarriages and by March 1536, Henry was courting Jane Seymour. In order to marry Seymour, Henry had to find reasons to end the marriage to Anne.

Henry VIII had Anne investigated for high treason in April 1536. On 2 May, she was arrested and sent to the Tower of London, where she was tried before a jury of peers, including Henry Percy, her former betrothed, and her uncle Thomas Howard, 3rd Duke of Norfolk; she was convicted on 15 May and beheaded four days later. Modern historians[who?] view the charges against her, which included adultery, incest and plotting to kill the king, as unconvincing.[9][10]

After her daughter, Elizabeth, was crowned as Queen in 1558, Anne became venerated as a martyr and heroine of the English Reformation, particularly through the written works of John Foxe.[11] She has inspired, or been mentioned in, many artistic and cultural works and retained her hold on the popular imagination. She has been called "the most influential and important queen consort England has ever had",[12] as she provided the occasion for Henry VIII to annul his marriage to Catherine of Aragon and declare the English church's independence from the Vatican.
It is probable that Henry had thought of the idea of annulment (not divorce as commonly assumed) much earlier than this as he strongly desired a male heir to secure the Tudor claim to the crown.[citation needed] Before Henry VII ascended the throne, England was beset by civil warfare over rival claims to the crown, and Henry VIII wanted to avoid similar uncertainty over the succession. He and Catherine had no living sons: all Catherine's children except Mary died in infancy.[57] Catherine had first come to England to be bride to Henry's brother Arthur, who died soon after their marriage. Since Spain and England still wanted an alliance, Pope Julius II granted a dispensation for their marriage on the grounds that Catherine was still a virgin.[citation needed]

Catherine and Henry married in 1509, but eventually he became dubious about the marriage's validity, claiming that Catherine's inability to provide an heir was a sign of God's displeasure. His feelings for Anne, and her refusals to become his mistress, probably contributed to Henry's decision that no Pope had a right to overrule the Bible. This meant that he had been living in sin with Catherine all these years, though Catherine hotly contested this and refused to concede that her marriage to Arthur had been consummated.[citation needed] It also meant that his daughter Mary was a bastard, and that the new Pope (Clement VII) would have to admit the previous Pope's mistake and annul the marriage. Henry's quest for an annulment became euphemistically known as the "King's Great Matter".[58]

Anne saw an opportunity in Henry's infatuation and the convenient moral quandary. She determined that she would yield to his embraces only as his acknowledged queen. She began to take her place at his side in policy and in state, but not yet in his bed.[59]

Scholars and historians[who?] hold various opinions as to how deep Anne's commitment to the Reformation was, how much she was perhaps only personally ambitious, and how much she had to do with Henry's defiance of papal power. There is anecdotal evidence, related to biographer George Wyatt by her former lady-in-waiting Anne Gainsford,[60] that Anne brought to Henry's attention a heretical pamphlet, perhaps Tyndale's The Obedience of a Christian Man or one by Simon Fish called A Supplication for the Beggars, which cried out to monarchs to rein in the evil excesses of the Catholic Church. She was sympathetic to those seeking further reformation of the Church, and actively protected scholars working on English translations of the scriptures.[citation needed] According to Maria Dowling, "Anne tried to educate her waiting-women in scriptural piety" and is believed to have reproved her cousin, Mary Shelton, for "having 'idle poesies' written in her prayer book."[61] If Cavendish is to be believed, Anne's outrage at Wolsey may have personalised whatever philosophical defiance she brought with her from France. Further, the most recent edition of Ives's biography[when?] admits that Anne may very well have had a personal spiritual awakening in her youth that spurred her on, not just as catalyst but expediter for Henry's Reformation, though the process took years.[citation needed]

In 1528, sweating sickness broke out with great severity. In London, the mortality rate was great and the court was dispersed. Henry left London, frequently changing his residence; Anne Boleyn retreated to the Boleyn residence at Hever Castle, but contracted the illness; her brother-in-law, William Carey, died. Henry sent his own physician to Hever Castle to care for Anne,[62] and shortly afterwards, she recovered.

Henry was soon absorbed in securing an annulment from Catherine.[63] He set his hopes 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. In 1527 William Knight, the king's secretary, was sent to Pope Clement VII to sue for the annulment of Henry's marriage to Catherine, on the grounds that the dispensing bull of Julius II permitting him to marry his brother's widow, Catherine, had been obtained under false pretences. 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.[64]


Catherine of Aragon, Henry's first wife and queen
As Clement was at that time a prisoner of Charles V, the Holy Roman Emperor, as a result of the Sack of Rome in May 1527, Knight had some difficulty obtaining access. In the end he had to return with a conditional dispensation, which Wolsey insisted was technically insufficient.[65] Henry then had no choice but to put his great matter into Wolsey's hands, who did all he could to secure a decision in Henry's favour,[66] even going so far as to convene an ecclesiastical court in England, with a special emissary, Lorenzo Campeggio, from Clement to decide the matter. But Clement had not empowered his deputy to make a decision. He was still Charles V's hostage, and Charles V was loyal to his aunt Catherine.[67] The Pope forbade Henry to contract a new marriage until a decision was reached in Rome, not in England. Convinced that Wolsey's loyalties lay with the Pope, not England, Anne, as well as Wolsey's many enemies, ensured his dismissal from public office in 1529. Cavendish, Wolsey's chamberlain, records that the servants who waited on the king and Anne at dinner in 1529 in Grafton heard her say that the dishonour Wolsey had brought upon the realm would have cost any other Englishman his head. Henry replied, "Why then I perceive...you are not the Cardinal's friend."[citation needed] Henry finally agreed to Wolsey's arrest on grounds of praemunire.[68] Had it not been for his death from illness in 1530, Wolsey might have been executed for treason.[69] 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.[70]

When Archbishop of Canterbury William Warham died in 1532, the Boleyn family chaplain, Thomas Cranmer, was appointed, with papal approval.[71]

In 1532, Thomas Cromwell brought before Parliament a number of acts, including the Supplication against the Ordinaries and Submission of the Clergy, which recognised royal supremacy over the church, thus finalising the break with Rome. Following these acts, Thomas More resigned as Chancellor, leaving Cromwell as Henry's chief minister.[72]

Premarital role and marriage
Even before her marriage, Anne Boleyn was able to grant petitions, receive diplomats and give patronage, and had an influence over Henry to plead the cause of foreign diplomats.[citation needed]

During this period, Anne played an important 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.[citation needed] Anne and Henry attended a meeting with the French king at Calais in winter 1532, at which Henry hoped to enlist the support of Francis I of France for his intended marriage. On 1 September 1532, Henry granted her the Marquessate of Pembroke, an appropriate peerage for a future queen;[73] as such she became a rich and important woman: the three dukes and two marquesses who existed in 1532 were Henry's brother-in-law, Henry's illegitimate son and other descendants of royalty; she ranked above all other peeresses. The Pembroke lands and the title of Earl of Pembroke had been held by Henry's great-uncle,[74] and Henry performed the investiture himself.[75]


Henry VIII, by Hans Holbein the Younger, around 1537
Anne's family also profited from the relationship. Her father, already Viscount Rochford, was created Earl of Wiltshire. Henry also came to an arrangement with Anne's Irish cousin and created him Earl of Ormond. At the magnificent banquet to celebrate her father's elevation, Anne took precedence over the Duchesses of Suffolk and Norfolk, seated in the place of honour beside the king that was usually occupied by the queen.[76] Thanks to Anne's intervention, her widowed sister Mary received an annual pension of £100, and Mary's son, Henry Carey, was educated at a prestigious Cistercian monastery.[citation needed]

The conference at Calais was something of a political triumph, but even though the French government gave implicit support for Henry's remarriage and Francis I had a private conference with Anne, the French king maintained alliances with the Pope that he could not explicitly defy.[77]

Soon after returning to Dover, Henry and Anne married in a secret ceremony on 14 November 1532.[78] She soon became pregnant and, to legalise the first wedding considered to be unlawful at the time, there was a second wedding service, also private in accordance with The Royal Book,[79] in London on 25 January 1533. Events now began to move at a quick pace. On 23 May 1533, Cranmer (who had been hastened, with the Pope's assent, into the position of Archbishop of Canterbury recently vacated by the death of Warham) sat in judgement at a special court convened at Dunstable Priory to rule on the validity of Henry's marriage to Catherine. He declared it null and void. Five days later, on 28 May 1533, Cranmer declared the marriage of Henry and Anne good and valid.[80]

Queen of England: 1533–1536

Anne Boleyn's coat of arms as Queen Consort[81]

Bishop John Fisher, by Hans Holbein the Younger. Fisher refused to recognise Henry VIII's marriage to Anne Boleyn.
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 banquet afterwards.[82] She was the last queen consort of England to be crowned separately from her husband.[citation needed] Unlike any other queen consort, Anne was crowned with St Edward's Crown, which had previously been used to crown only monarchs.[83] Historian Alice Hunt suggests that this was done because Anne's pregnancy was visible by then and the child was presumed to be male.[84] On the previous day, Anne had taken part in an elaborate 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.[85] The public's response to her appearance was lukewarm.[86]

Meanwhile, the House of Commons had forbidden all appeals to Rome and exacted the penalties of praemunire against all who introduced papal bulls into England.[citation needed] It was only then that Pope Clement at last took the step of announcing a provisional excommunication of Henry and Cranmer. He condemned the marriage to Anne, and in March 1534 declared the marriage to Catherine legal and again ordered Henry to return to her.[87] Henry now required his subjects to swear an oath attached to the First Succession Act, which effectively rejected papal authority in legal matters and recognised Anne Boleyn as queen. Those who refused, such as Sir Thomas More, who had resigned as Lord Chancellor, and John Fisher, Bishop of Rochester, were placed in the Tower of London. In late 1534 parliament declared Henry "the only supreme head on earth of the Church of England".[88] The Church in England was now under Henry's control, not Rome's. On 14 May 1534, in one of the realm's first official acts protecting Protestant Reformers, Anne wrote a letter to Thomas Cromwell seeking his aid in ensuring that English merchant Richard Herman be reinstated a member of the merchant adventurers in Antwerp and no longer persecuted simply because he had helped in "setting forth of the New testament in English."[89] Before and after her coronation, Anne protected and promoted evangelicals and those wishing to study the scriptures of William Tyndale.[90] She had a decisive role in influencing the Protestant reformer Matthew Parker to attend court as her chaplain, and before her death entrusted her daughter to Parker's care.[91]

Struggle for a son
After her coronation, Anne settled into a quiet routine at the king's favourite residence, Greenwich Palace, to prepare for the birth of her baby. The child was born slightly prematurely[citation needed] 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 either or both Anne's mother Elizabeth Howard and Henry's mother, Elizabeth of York.[92] 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 an s hastily added to them to read princes[s] and the traditional jousting tournament for the birth of an heir was cancelled.[93][94]


Greenwich Palace, also known as the Palace of Placentia, after a 17th-century drawing
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.[95] Anne frequently visited her daughter at Hatfield and other residences.[96]

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-honour who served her and accompanied her to social events.[citation needed] 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.[97]

Strife with the king

Henry's reconciliation with Anne Boleyn, by George Cruikshank, 19th century
The king and his new queen enjoyed a reasonably happy accord with periods of calm and affection. Anne's sharp intelligence, political acumen and forward manners, although desirable in a mistress, were, at the time, unacceptable in a wife. She was once reported to have spoken to her uncle in words that "shouldn't be used to a dog".[98] After a stillbirth or miscarriage as early as Christmas 1534, Henry was discussing with Cranmer and Cromwell the possibility of divorcing her without having to return to Catherine.[99] Nothing came of the matter as the royal couple reconciled and spent summer 1535 on progress. By October, she was again pregnant.[citation needed]

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.[citation needed] Numerous palaces were renovated to suit her and Henry's extravagant tastes.[100] Her motto was "The most happy", and she chose a white falcon as her personal device.

Anne was blamed for Henry's tyranny and called by some of her subjects "the king's whore" or a "naughty paike [prostitute]".[101] Public opinion turned further against her after her failure to produce a son. It sank even lower after the executions of her enemies More and Fisher.[102]

Downfall and execution: 1536

Jane Seymour became Henry's third wife shortly after Anne's execution.
On 8 January 1536, news of Catherine of Aragon's death reached the king and Anne, who were overjoyed. The following day, Henry and Anne wore yellow, a symbol of joy and celebration in England but of mourning in Spain, from head to toe, and celebrated Catherine's death with festivities.[103][104] With Catherine dead, Anne attempted to make peace with Mary.[105] Mary rebuffed Anne's overtures, perhaps because of rumours circulating that Catherine had been poisoned by Anne or Henry.[citation needed] These began after the discovery during her embalming that Catherine's heart was blackened. Modern medical experts are in agreement that this was not the result of poisoning, but of cancer of the heart, an extremely rare condition which was not understood at the time.[98]

Queen Anne, pregnant again, was aware of the dangers if she failed to give birth to a son. With Catherine dead, Henry would be free to marry without any taint of illegality. At this time, Henry began paying court to one of Anne's maids-of-honour, Jane Seymour, and allegedly gave her a locket containing a portrait miniature of himself. While wearing this locket in the presence of Anne, Jane began opening and closing it. Anne responded by ripping the locket off Jane's neck with such force that her fingers bled.[106][full citation needed]

Later that month, the king was unhorsed in a tournament and knocked unconscious for two hours, a worrying incident that Anne believed led to her miscarriage five days later.[107] Another possible cause of the miscarriage was an incident in which, upon entering a room, Anne saw Jane Seymour sitting on Henry's lap and flew into a rage.[citation needed] Whatever the cause, on the day that Catherine of Aragon was buried at Peterborough Abbey, Anne miscarried a baby which, according to the imperial ambassador Eustace Chapuys, she had borne for about three and a half months, and which "seemed to be a male child".[108] Chapuys commented "She has miscarried of her saviour."[109] In Chapuys' opinion, this loss was the beginning of the end of the royal marriage.[110]

Given Henry's desperate desire for a son, the sequence of Anne's pregnancies has attracted much interest. Mike Ashley speculated that Anne had two stillborn children after Elizabeth's birth and before the male child she miscarried in 1536.[111] Most sources[who?] 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.[112] As Anne recovered from her miscarriage, Henry declared that he had been seduced into the marriage by means of "sortilege" – a French term indicating either "deception" or "spells".[citation needed] His new mistress, Jane Seymour, was quickly moved into royal quarters.[citation needed] This was followed by Anne's brother George being refused a prestigious court honour, the Order of the Garter, given instead to Sir Nicholas Carew.[113]

Charges of adultery, incest and treason

Thomas Cromwell, Anne's one-time strong ally, with whom she clashed over foreign policy and the redistribution of church wealth. Portrait by Hans Holbein the Younger, c. 1532.
Anne's biographer Eric Ives believe that her fall and execution were primarily engineered by her former ally Thomas Cromwell.[114][115] The conversations between Chapuys and Cromwell thereafter indicate Cromwell as the instigator of the plot to remove Anne; evidence of this is seen in the Spanish Chronicle and through letters written from Chapuys to Charles V. Anne argued with Cromwell over the redistribution of Church revenues and over foreign policy. She advocated that revenues be distributed to charitable and educational institutions; and she favoured a French alliance. Cromwell insisted on filling the king's depleted coffers, while taking a cut for himself, and preferred an imperial alliance.[116] For these reasons, Ives suggests, "Anne Boleyn had become a major threat to Thomas Cromwell."[117] Cromwell's biographer John Schofield, on the other hand, contends that no power struggle existed between Anne and Cromwell and that "not a trace can be found of a Cromwellian conspiracy against Anne ... Cromwell became involved in the royal marital drama only when Henry ordered him onto the case."[118] Cromwell did not manufacture the accusations of adultery, though he and other officials used them to bolster Henry's case against Anne.[119] Warnicke questions whether Cromwell could have or wished to manipulate the king in such a matter. Such a bold attempt by Cromwell, given the limited evidence, could have risked his office, even his life.[120] Henry himself issued the crucial instructions: his officials, including Cromwell, carried them out.[121] The result was by modern standards a legal travesty;[122] however, the rules of the time were not bent in order to assure a conviction; there was no need to tamper with rules that guaranteed the desired result since law at the time was an engine of state, not a mechanism for justice.[123]

Towards the end of April a Flemish musician in Anne's service named Mark Smeaton was arrested. He initially denied being the queen's lover but later confessed, perhaps after being tortured or promised freedom. Another courtier, Sir Henry Norris, was arrested on May Day, but being an aristocrat, could not be tortured. Prior to his arrest, Norris was treated kindly by the king, who offered him his own horse to use on the May Day festivities. It seems likely that during the festivities, the king was notified of Smeaton's confession and it was shortly thereafter the alleged conspirators were arrested upon his orders.[citation needed] Norris denied his guilt and swore that Queen Anne was innocent; one of the most damaging pieces of evidence against Norris was an overheard conversation with Anne at the end of April, where she accused him of coming often to her chambers not to pay court to her lady-in-waiting Madge Shelton but to herself.[citation needed] Sir Francis Weston was arrested two days later on the same charge, as was Sir William Brereton, a groom of the king's Privy Chamber. Sir Thomas Wyatt, a poet and friend of the Boleyns who was allegedly infatuated with her before her marriage to the king, was also imprisoned for the same charge but later released, most likely due to his or his family's friendship with Cromwell. Sir Richard Page was also accused of having a sexual relationship with the queen, but he was acquitted of all charges after further investigation could not implicate him with Anne.[124] The final accused was Queen Anne's own brother, George Boleyn, arrested on charges of incest and treason.[125] He was accused of two incidents of incest: November 1535 at Whitehall and the following month at Eltham.[126]

On 2 May 1536, Anne was arrested and taken to the Tower of London by barge. It is likely that Anne may have entered through the Court Gate in the Byward Tower rather than the Traitors' Gate, according to historian and author of The Life and Death of Anne Boleyn, Eric Ives. In the Tower, she collapsed, demanding to know the location of her father and "swete broder", as well as the charges against her.