Anne Boleyn

Anne Boleyn
Queen Consort of England
Anne Boleyn
Born	ca. 1501/1507 (see The birth controversy)
Died	19 May 1536
	Tower of London
Consort	June 1533 - May 19 1536
Consort to	Henry VIII
Issue	Elizabeth I
Father	Thomas Boleyn, 1st Earl of Wiltshire
Mother	Elizabeth Boleyn, Countess of Wiltshire

Anne Boleyn, 1st Marchioness of Pembroke(ca. 1501/1507–19 May 1536) was the second wife of King Henry VIII and the mother of Queen Elizabeth I.

King Henry's marriage to Anne, and her subsequent execution, were part of the complex beginning of the considerable political and religious upheaval which was the English Reformation, with Anne herself actively promoting the cause of Church reform. She wielded immense political influence and has been called "the most influential and important queen consort England has ever had".

She is popularly remembered because she was beheaded on charges of adultery, incest and treason on 19 May 1536. Despite this, belief in her innocence was widespread and she was later celebrated as a martyr in English Protestant culture, particularly through the works of John Foxe. Her life has been adapted for numerous novels, plays, operas, television dramas and motion pictures, including Anne of the Thousand Days, The Other Boleyn Girl and The Six Wives of Henry VIII.

Early Life

Due to a lack of parish records from the period, historians do not agree when Anne Boleyn was born. The academic debate centers around two key dates: 1501 and 1507.

Anne was the daughter of Sir Thomas Boleyn, later 1st Earl of Wiltshire and 1st Earl of Ormonde, and his wife, Lady Elizabeth Boleyn (born Lady Elizabeth Howard), daughter of the 2nd Duke of Norfolk. She was born either at her family's mansion, Blickling Hall in Norfolk, or at their favorite home, Hever Castle in Kent.

It was later rumored that Anne was born with six fingers on her left hand. However is no contemporary evidence to support it. Since physical deformities were generally interpreted as a sign of evil it is unlikely that would have gained Henry's romantic attention had she had any deformities. Moreover, the rumor was not used as evidence against her when she was convicted of witchcraft.

Anne had two siblings, and older sister, Mary, and a brother, George. George was born sometime around 1504, making him older if Anne was born in 1501, but younger if she was born in 1507.

At the time of Anne’s birth, the Boleyn family was one of the more respectable families in the English aristocracy, although they had only held a title for four generations. The report of the Boleyns as social-climbing minor nobility seems to be exaggerated. In the words of one of her biographers, "Tradition also tells us that the Boleyns were a family of London merchants, and again tradition leads us astray. Anne Boleyn was born a great lady [of the aristocracy]." Her great-grandparents included a Lord Mayor of London, a duke, an earl, two aristocratic ladies and a knight. She was certainly more aristocratic than either Jane Seymour or Catherine Parr, two of Henry's other English wives.

Anne's father was a respected diplomat with a gift for languages. He was also a favorite of Henry VII and was sent on many diplomatic missions abroad. Thomas Boleyn's professionalism and charm won many admirers, including Archduchess Margaret of Austria, the daughter of Maximilian I, the Holy Roman Emperor. She ruled The Netherlands on behalf of her father and was so impressed with Boleyn that she offered Anne a place in her household. Anne 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 continue her education in Paris in the winter of 1514.

In France, Anne was a favored lady-in-waiting to Queen Claude of France and also acted as an interpreter whenever high-ranking English visitors came to the French court. In the queen's household, she completed her study of French and acquired a thorough knowledge of French culture and etiquette. She also developed an interest in fashion and religious philosophy that called for reform of the Church. Her European education ended in the winter of 1521 when she was summoned back to England on her father's orders, in January 1522.

Appearance and personality

A portrait of Anne Boleyn painted some years after her death. Her recent biographer (Ives) has called it very close to ‘the real Anne Boleyn.’

Anne Boleyn was not conventionally beautiful for her time. People seemed primarily attracted by Anne's charisma. She was thin and had dark eyes and long, dark hair. She made a good impression with her fashion sense, inspiring many new trends among the English court ladies. According to one account:

“Anne’s charm lay not so much in her physical appearance as in her vivacious personality, her gracefulness, her quick wit and other accomplishments. She was petite in stature, and had an appealing fragility about her… she shone at singing, making music, dancing and conversation… Not surprisingly, the young men of the court swarmed around her.”

Anne was a devout Christian in the new tradition of Renaissance Humanism Calling her a Protestant would be an overstatement. She also gave generously to charity and sewed shirts for the poor. In her youth she was "sweet and cheerful" and enjoyed gambling, drinking wine, and gossiping. She was also courageous and passionate. According to her critics, Anne could also be extravagant, vindictive, and bad-tempered.

Henry VIII

A royal love affair

File:Oldcath.JPG

Catherine of Aragon, Henry VIII's first wife

Immediately on her return to England, Boleyn became a lady-in-waiting to Queen Catherine of Aragon, Henry VIII's Spanish wife. Catherine was popular with many people, although she had been inactive in politics and court life for some time. All her sons by Henry had died young and Henry was anxious for a male heir to his throne in order to preserve the monarchy and prevent civil war.

Boleyn made her court début at a masquerade ball in March 1522, where she performed an elaborate dance accompanying the king's younger sister, several other great ladies of the court and his mistress – Anne’s sister, Mary. Within a few weeks of this performance, Boleyn was known as the most fashionable and accomplished woman at the court and she has been referred to as a "glass of fashion".

During this time, she was being courted by Henry Percy the son of the Earl of Northumberland around 1522. The exact nature of their relationship is unclear. It would have been impossible to break their betrothal if it had been consummated and Anne probably had seen too many reputations ruined to risk hers. A Catholic author, George Cavendish, who disliked Anne but was friendly with Henry Percy, later stated categorically that the two had not been lovers. It thus seems unlikely that their relationship was sexual. The romance was broken off in 1523 when Lord Henry's father refused to support the engagement.

According to George Cavendish, Anne was briefly sent from court to her family’s countryside estates, but it is not known for how long. When she returned to court she gathered a clique of female friends and male admirers around herself, but became famous for her ability to keep men at arm's length. The poet Sir Thomas Wyatt, wrote about her in the poem, Whoso List to Hunt, in which he described her as unobtainable and headstrong, despite seeming demure and quiet. In 1525, Henry VIII became enamored with her and began his pursuit.

Henry VIII, who bombarded Anne with dozens of love-letters.

Anne resisted his attempts to seduce her and she refused to become his mistress. She rejected the king’s initial advances by saying, “I beseech your highness most earnestly to desist, and to this my answer in good part. I would rather lose my life than my honesty.” The king was more attracted to her because of this refusal and he pursued her relentlessly, even after she left the court to return to Kent. Historians are divided over Anne’s motivations in rejecting Henry – some say it was virtue and others say it was ambition. Eventually, he proposed and she accepted. However, she decided not to sleep with Henry before their marriage, as pre-marital intercourse would mean that any children they had would be born out of legitimate wedlock. It is often thought that Henry's infatuation with her led him to seek a way to annul his existing marriage. However there is good evidence that Henry made the decision to end his marriage with Queen Catherine because she hadn't delivered a surviving male heir. Henry and his ministers applied for an annulment from the Vatican in 1527.

At first, Boleyn was kept in the background, but by 1528 it was common knowledge that Henry intended to marry her. Anne’s relatives promoted her cause and they had many supporters at court. Initially, however, she kept herself out of politics. She reveled in her newfound lifestyle - Henry paid for everything, and she accumulated a large wardrobe of gowns, furs and jewels. She was given her own staff of servants, several ladies-in-waiting and new palace apartments.

The power behind the throne

Pope Clement VII

In 1529, it seemed as if Pope Clement VII was no nearer to granting Henry an annulment than he had been in 1527. Anne's spies reported that part of the problem was that the Emperor Charles V, Catherine of Aragon’s nephew, had taken Clement captive. Henry saw that Clement was thus unlikely to give him an annulment from the emperor's aunt. As political tension mounted overseas, the court was thrown into turmoil back home, and Cardinal Wolsey’s loyalty to the Boleyns was called into question.

Convinced that he was treacherous, Boleyn maintained pressure until Wolsey was dismissed from public office in 1529. After being dismissed, the cardinal begged Anne to help him return to power, but she refused. He then began a secret plot to have Anne forced into exile and began communication with Queen Catherine and the Pope, to that end. When this was discovered, Henry ordered Wolsey's arrest and had it not been for his death from a terminal illness in 1530, he might have been executed for treason. A year later, Queen Catherine was banished from court and her old rooms were given to Anne.

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Henry’s chief minister Cardinal Wolsey. He and Boleyn were enemies; she later insisted upon his exile.

With Wolsey gone, Anne Boleyn became the most powerful person at court. She had considerable power over government appointments and political matters.

Her exasperation with the Vatican’s refusal to make her queen also persuaded her to promote a new alternative to Henry. She suggested that he should follow the advice of religious radicals like William Tyndale, who denied Papal Authority and believed that the monarch should lead the church. When William Warham, the conservative Archbishop of Canterbury, died, Boleyn had her family's chaplain — Thomas Cranmer — appointed to the vacant position. She also supported the rise of the radical Thomas Cromwell, who became the king's favorite new adviser.

During this period, Anne Boleyn also played an enormous role in England's international position by solidifying an alliance with France. She established an excellent rapport with the French ambassador, Giles de la Pommeraye, who was captivated by her. With his help, she arranged an international conference 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.

Before going to Calais, Henry bestowed upon Anne the Marquessate of Pembroke, making her the first English female commoner known to become a noble in her own right by creation, rather than through inheritance. 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 – Earl of Ormonde. 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.

Marriage

The Six Wives of King Henry VIII
Catherine of Aragon
Anne Boleyn
Jane Seymour
Anne of Cleves
Catherine Howard
Catherine Parr

The conference at Calais was a political triumph, since the French government finally gave its support for Henry's re-marriage. Immediately upon returning to Dover in England, Henry and Boleyn went through a secret wedding service, finally enjoying a sexual relationship after seven years. She became pregnant within a few months and, as was the custom with royalty, there was a second wedding service, which took place in London on January 25, 1533.

Catherine was formally stripped of her title as queen in time for Boleyn's coronation in June 1533. In defiance of the Pope, Cranmer now declared that the English Church was under Henry’s control, not Rome's. This was the famous "Break with Rome," which signaled the end of England's history as a Roman Catholic country. Few people were aware of the significance at the time, and even fewer were prepared to defend the Pope's authority. Queen Anne was delighted at this development – although she remained a Catholic, she believed the Papacy was a corrupting influence on Christianity. Her residual Catholic tendencies can be seen in the ostentatious devotion to the Virgin Mary throughout her Coronation displays.

After her coronation, she settled into a quiet routine to prepare for the birth of her child. She was deeply distressed when Henry was infatuated with a lady of the court, which provoked their first serious fight. The affair was brief, since Henry wanted nothing to jeopardize his wife's pregnancy.

File:ElizabethTudorAt13-woc-0475.jpg

Elizabeth at the age of 13 by William Scrots

Princess Mary

Henry and Anne's child was born slightly prematurely on September 7, 1533, at the king's favorite palace, Greenwich Palace. The child was a girl who was christened Elizabeth, in honor of Henry's mother, Elizabeth of York. She was given a splendid christening, but Boleyn 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 was living with her own magnificent staff of servants. The country air was better for the baby's health, and Boleyn was an affectionate mother who regularly visited her daughter. Her visits were also scenes of friction between her and Princess Mary, who referred to her as "my father’s mistress," while Boleyn called Mary "that cursed bastard."

Life as queen

Boleyn had a larger staff of 250 servants than Catherine; with over 60 maids-of-honor, whose parents hoped the queen would act as a good mistress and arrange a suitable marriage for them. She maintained a strict control over her maids’ morals and spiritual well-being, chastising Margaret Shelton when she was caught writing poetry in her prayer book. She also employed several priests who acted as her confessors, chaplains, and religious advisers. Her favorite was the religious moderate Matthew Parker, who would become one of the chief architects of the modern Church of England under her daughter Elizabeth I.

Her reputation as a religious reformer spread through Europe, and she was hailed as a heroine by Protestant figures; even Martin Luther viewed her rise to the throne as a good sign. She also saved the life of the French radical Nicolas Bourbon, who was sentenced to death by the French Inquisition. She appealed to the French royal family, who spared Bourbon’s life as a favor to the English queen. Bourbon would later refer to her as "the queen whom God loves." Although she championed religious reform, especially the translation of the Bible into English, she did not challenge the sacred Catholic doctrine of Transubstantiation. She was also a generous patron of charity, distributing alms to poor relief and funds to educational foundations and was important as a patron of the arts, particularly in relation to Hans Holbein.

A group of young gentlemen continued to visit the queen’s quarters, where they flirted with her ladies-in-waiting and, with permission, danced with the queen. She never stepped beyond propriety, however, even going so far as to reprimand them if they became too jovial with her or her maids. There was nothing new in this, for a group of young men had also served as Catherine of Aragon’s adherents in the 1510s; it was only later that this behavior would harm Anne’s reputation.

Boleyn's married life was stormy; the royal couple enjoyed periods of calm and affection, but Henry's frequent infidelities greatly upset his new wife, who reacted with tears and rage to each new mistress. For his part, Henry found Boleyn’s strident opinions about religion and politics irritating, and he saw her failure to give him a son as a betrayal. Her second pregnancy resulted in a miscarriage in the summer of 1534.

The French ambassador reported on the frosty atmosphere between the royal couple at a banquet in 1535. When he asked Boleyn about it later in the evening, she told him that she felt utterly lonely and that she could feel the eyes of the entire court spying on her. This pressure inflamed her temper, and she clashed with her uncle, Thomas Howard, 3rd Duke of Norfolk, when she discovered that his loyalty to her was suspect. When her sister Mary secretly married a commoner, she exiled her from court. Both sisters refused to apologize to one another and Mary wrote a letter proclaiming her steadfast love for her new husband. Anne later relented by sending the newlyweds a magnificent wedding present, but she still refused to receive them back to court.

Death of Catherine of Aragon

In January 1536, Catherine of Aragon died of cancer. Upon hearing the news of her death, Henry and Anne reportedly decked themselves in bright yellow clothing. Some historians have interpreted this as public displays of joy regarding Catherine's death, but others have pointed out that yellow was Spain's national color of mourning during the era, and was worn out of respect for the deceased. It is doubtful that the royal couple would have publicly celebrated Catherine's death, as Henry considered her to be the Princess Dowager, as the widow of his brother Prince Arthur.

Rumors circulated that Catherine had been poisoned (both Anne and Henry being blamed); the rumors were born after discovery during her embalming that her heart was blackened. Modern medical experts are in agreement that the blackness of Catherine's heart was not due to poisoning, but due to cancer of the heart, something which was not understood at the time. In the aftermath of Catherine’s death, Anne attempted to repair relations with Catherine's daughter, Mary, but she was once again rebuffed.

Thomas Cromwell: Anne's one-time ally who later arranged the plot to cause her death.

On the day of Catherine’s funeral, 29 January 1536, Boleyn miscarried a son. For most observers, this personal loss was the beginning of the end of the royal marriage. What happened next is one of the most controversial periods of English history, given that it is both a personal tragedy and indicative of larger political trends governing the Tudor monarchy at this period.

As Anne recovered from her miscarriage, Henry declared his marriage was cursed by God. Jane Seymour was moved into new quarters and Anne's brother was refused a prestigious court honor, the Order of the Garter, which was instead given to Jane Seymour's brother. On several occasions throughout these months, Anne expressed the fear that she was about to be divorced.

Downfall

In the last few days of April, a Flemish musician in Anne's service named Mark Smeaton was arrested and tortured by Thomas Cromwell. He initially denied that he was the queen’s lover, but under torture he confessed. He also provided the names of another courtier — Sir Henry Norreys (or Norris) — an old friend of both Anne and the King. Norris was arrested on May Day, but since he was an aristocrat he could not be tortured. He denied his guilt and swore that Boleyn 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, but it seems likely he was really the victim of an old grudge against him, held by Thomas Cromwell. 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.

On 2 May, 1536, Anne was arrested at luncheon and taken to the Tower of London. In the Tower, she suffered a minor nervous breakdown, demanding to know full details of her family's whereabouts and the charges against her.

Four of the men were tried in Westminster on May 15, 1536. Weston, Brereton and Norris publicly maintained their innocence and only the tortured Smeaton supported the Crown by pleading guilty. Two days later, Anne and George Boleyn were tried separately in the Tower of London. She was accused of adultery, incest, witchcraft and high treason. Popular suspicion against Henry and his mistress, Jane Seymour, both of whom were seen banqueting on the Thames, was widespread. Several pamphlets circulated in London mocking the trials and supporting the queen.

Quite interestingly, just before Anne's execution on charges of adultery, her marriage to the King was dissolved and declared invalid. How she could have committed adultery if they had never been married? This question was overlooked, as were so many other lapses of logic in the charges against Anne.

Execution

George Boleyn and the other accused men were executed on May 17th. Lord and Lady Kingston, the keepers of the Tower, reported that Anne seemed very happy, and ready to be done with life. She was reported to have said, when Lord Kingston brought her the news that the King had commuted her sentence from burning to beheading, and had employed a swordsman from Calais for the execution, rather than having a Queen beheaded with the common axe: "He shall not have much trouble, for I have a little neck. I shall be known as La Reine sans tête ['The Headless Queen']!"

The Tower of London

They came for Anne on the morning of May 19th to take her to the Tower Green, where she was to be afforded the dignity of a private execution. The Constable of the Tower wrote this of her:

...as she received the good Lord (i.e. took Communion), to the intent I should hear her speak as touching her innocency alway to be clear...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...

She wore a plain, dark gown with a mantle of ermine. Her long, dark hair was bound up and she wore a headdress, although sources are contradictory about what else she wore beyond these specific points. She 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.

She then knelt upright (in French-style executions, with a sword, there was no block.) 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, comprising of a single stroke: according to one tale, the swordsman was so taken with Anne that he said, "Where is my sword?" and then beheaded her so she would think that she had just a few moments longer to live and would not know that the sword was coming.

Across the river the Scots reformer Alesius accompanied Thomas Cranmer as he walked in the gardens of Lambeth Palace. They may have heard the cannon fire from the Tower, signaling the end, for the Archbishop looked up and proclaimed: "She who has been the Queen of England on earth will today become a Queen in Heaven." He then sat down on a bench and wept.

The government had failed to provide a proper coffin for Anne. 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 one that was identified in renovations of the chapel under the reign of Queen Victoria, so Anne's final resting place is now marked in the marble floor.

Reputation

Historians still debate over why Anne's fall from the throne took place. Professor Ives contends that Anne was done away with on a carelessly prepared and trumped-up charge of adultery. He reports that Anne was not even in the same place when most of the supposed offenses occurred with her alleged lovers. There are four main theories about Anne Boleyn's demise, which the Oxford historian Steven J. Gunn described as historical "trench warfare."

• Guilty as charged: The English historian George W. Bernard is the only modern historian to argue that Anne was guilty of adultery and treason. In 1991 he wrote, "Perhaps the safest guess for a modern historian is that Anne had indeed committed adultery with Norris and briefly with Mark Smeaton and that there was enough circumstantial evidence to cast reasonable doubt on the denials of the others."

• A romantic victim: The traditional theory is that Anne was the victim of her husband's cruelty and that her failure to produce a son meant that Henry would stop at nothing to get rid of her. The famous Tudor historian, Sir Geoffrey Elton believed that "Anne and five men were put to death by due process of law because the king wished to marry again...Henry had now so far discarded scruple that to get his way he was prepared to appear as a cuckold and a victim of witchcraft".

• A political attack: The most popular theory is that Anne was removed by a palace plot orchestrated by her enemies. An alliance with Spain was becoming desirable for various reasons, and Anne was so unpopular with the Spanish royal family, that her presence was a serious obstacle to progress. Thomas Cromwell, her one-time supporter and the King's chancellor, therefore realized Anne would have to go. He was more than prepared to sacrifice five innocent men to do it (who were also Anne's friends and might, therefore, object to her destruction if they were left alive).

• Sexual heresy: This theory was first promoted by American academic, Retha Warnicke, in 1989. She argues that there is circumstantial evidence to suggest that the fetus Anne miscarried in January 1536 may have appeared deformed to 16th century eyes; this led to the belief that the queen might have links to perverse sexual practices and the Occult. Her so-called lovers were, probably, homosexual and were thus equally likely to be victimised by 16th century sexual prejudices. Warnicke's theories are not widely accepted in academic circles, but several books by David Loades and John Guy suggested that they could be taken seriously.

For twenty years after her death, Anne was seldom discussed, although in ultra-Catholic circles several dark legends were deliberately nurtured - particularly the stories of her deformities which were concocted to prove that she had been linked to the Devil through witchcraft. These legends eventually formed the basis of a piece of propaganda by an exiled Jesuit priest, Father Nicholas Sander, who published his various allegations in 1576. He also added elaborations which suggested Anne Boleyn had actually been her husband's biological daughter, that she had slept with her brother and had been sexually active from childhood. By the 17th century, Catholic historians of the Reformation moderated these allegations into the charge that Anne had simply been a promiscuous and immoral woman, but stopped suggesting that she had been a witch. This critical view has been expressed by various historians since, although generally they no longer present their views based on a politico-religious bias. The extreme criticisms of Anne formed the imaginative basis of the bestselling British novel, The Other Boleyn Girl.

After 1558, Anne was venerated as a martyr and heroine by English Protestantism, particularly through the works of the ultra-Protestant propagandist, John Foxe, who argued that Anne had saved England from the evils of Roman Catholicism (as he saw it) and that God had provided proof of her innocence and virtue by making sure her daughter, Elizabeth I, later became queen. As a result of this view, many English nobles displayed pictures of Anne in their homes, in order to show their loyalty to Elizabeth and the Protestant monarchy. Although this veneration of Anne diminished in the 18th and 19th centuries, the idea of her as a Protestant heroine was recently resurrected by an English historian, Joanna Denny.

A more common view in the 18th and 19th centuries was the image of Anne as a romantic victim; a strong-willed and beautiful woman who was destroyed by her husband, who was presented as a brutal tyrant by most popular historians. A 19th century biography of Anne by Margaret Benger was particularly full of praise for Anne, as was one entitled Star of the Court, by Serena Banbury.

Finally, in the latter half of the 20th century, academic historians who were determined to study Henry VIII's government and court as serious political and cultural institutions argued that Anne Boleyn had been one of the most ambitious, intelligent and important queens in European history. They researched her political sympathies, patronage network and influence over foreign policy and religious affairs. This led to several academic studies of her life, the most famous of which are the two biographies written by the British historian, Eric Ives. David Starkey is another historian who keenly promotes this interpretation of Anne. Combined with the intellectual force of feminism, most academic histories write about her with respect and sympathy. The work of American academic, Retha Warnicke, focuses on the gender prejudices of the early 16th century and their role in Anne Boleyn's rise and fall.

Preceded by: Catherine of Aragon

Queen Consort of England June, 1533 - May 19, 1536

Succeeded by: Jane Seymour

See also

• Henry VIII of England
• Tudor Dynasty
• Church of England
• Elizabeth I
• Thomas Wyatt
• Geoffrey Elton

References

ISBN links support NWE through referral fees

• Bruce, Marie-Louise. Anne Boleyn, Putnam Pub Group, 1972. ISBN 9780698104808
• Chapman, Hester W. The Challenge of Anne Boleyn, Putnam Pub Group, 1974. ISBN 978-0698106123
• Denny, Joanna. Anne Boleyn: A new life of England's tragic queen, Da Capo Press, 2006. ISBN 978-0306814747
• Fraser, Lady Antonia. The Wives of Henry VIII, Vintage, 1992. ISBN 978-0679730019
• Ives, Eric W. Anne Boleyn, New York: Blackwell, 1986. ISBN 9780631160656
• ____________The Life and Death of Anne Boleyn, Wiley-Blackwell, 2005. ISBN 978-1405134637
• Lindsey, Karen. Divorced Beheaded Survived: A Feminist Reinterpretation of the Wives of Henry VIII, Da Capo Press, 1995. ISBN 978-0201408232
• Meyer, Caroline. Doomed Queen Anne, 2002. Gulliver Books, 1st. ed, 2002. ISBN 978-0152165239
• Plowden, Allison. Tudor Women, Sutton Publishing, 1998. ISBN 978-0750928809
• Starkey, David. Six Wives: The Queens of Henry VIII, Harper Perennial, 2004. ISBN 978-0060005504
• Warnicke, Retha M. The Rise and Fall of Anne Boleyn: Family politics at the court of Henry VIII, Cambridge University Press, 1991. ISBN 978-0521406772
• Weir, Alison. The Six Wives of Henry VIII, Grove Press, 1991. ISBN 08021-3683-4

External links

Retrieved June 11, 2008.

• "The Six Wives of Henry VIII of England" bbs.keyhole.com
• A 1996 interview with Anne Boleyn's most respected academic biographer, E. W. Ives publications.bham.ac.uk
• "The Death of Anne Boleyn" www.tudorhistory.org

English Royal Consorts

George, Duke of Cumberland (1702-1707) · Mary of Modena (1685-1688) · Catherine of Braganza (1662-1685) · Henrietta Maria of France (1625-1649) · Anne of Denmark (1603-1619) · Philip II of Spain (1554-1558) · Lord Guildford Dudley (1553) · Catherine Parr (1543-1547) · Catherine Howard (1540-1542) · Anne of Cleves (1540) · Jane Seymour (1536-1537) · Anne Boleyn (1533-1536) · Catherine of Aragon (1509-1533) · Elizabeth of York (1486-1503) · Anne Neville (1483-1485) · Elizabeth Woodville (1464-1483) · Margaret of Anjou (1445-1471) · Catherine of Valois (1420-1422) · Joanna of Navarre (1403-1413) · Isabella of Valois (1396-1399) · Anne of Bohemia (1383-1394) · Philippa of Hainault (1328-1369) · Isabella of France (1308-1327) · Marguerite of France (1299-1307) · Eleanor of Castile (1272-1290) · Eleanor of Provence (1236-1272) · Isabella of Angoulême (1200-1216) · Berengaria of Navarre (1191-1199) · Eleanor of Aquitaine (1154-1189) · Matilda of Boulogne (1135-1152) · Geoffrey V, Count of Anjou (1141) · Adeliza of Louvain (1121-1135) · Matilda of Scotland (1100-1118) · Matilda of Flanders (1066-1083)

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