Ah yes, the year that ruins the entire theory that Anne Boleyn seduced the king and her father pimped her out to the crown to further his own career . . . No wonder this part of her story has been erased from history. But I think almost five centuries of censorship is enough, so let’s go back to the core evidence and uncover exactly what happened in that missing year, the one that began in the summer of 1526.
With her suitor Henry Percy now safely married off, it was at last deemed acceptable for Anne to return to court; gone was the risk of the rebellious couple reigniting the flames of passion and putting a stop to Percy’s wedding. Cavendish states that Anne was back before the Battle of Pavia, which took place in February 1525, and Wyatt reports that her parents were at court with her when she returned. However, we know her father, Thomas, left again by the early months of that same year, and it’s been said that Anne was left under the supervision of her younger brother, George, who was returning from university. But George became a page to the king in 1514 around the age of eleven and had been a permanent fixture in court since then, with no evidence that he left to go to Cambridge at all.130
It is understood that Anne’s sister, Mary, who had married William Carey by this point, gave birth to her two children between 1524 and 1526. Information on Mary is sketchy to say the least, and there are question marks over pretty much every event in her life. The only reason we know she had an affair with Henry VIII in the first place is due to detail in the dispensation he later sought to marry Anne that allowed for him having slept with a member of her family. Also, from the fact that he didn’t deny sleeping with Mary when accused by Sir George Throckmorton. But the birth of Mary’s children within this time frame tell us two things: that her relationship with the king was over by late 1525 – after all, nothing kills the saucy vibe like a heavily pregnant mistress; also, that it’s likely she would have retired from court to give birth and recover around the time of Anne’s return.
Mary’s absence from court would certainly make sense for the events that were to follow, but it would also mean that Anne turned to George as her confidant at a time when she would have been paranoid that the entire court was gossiping about her return following the whole Henry Percy debacle.
Indeed, over time, George would prove to be the only one Anne could truly trust at court, no doubt bonding over their mutual love of evangelism, reform and a good old theology debate. Although Chapuys reported when he first met George he found him to be charming, courteous and with a refreshing frankness,131 the Spanish ambassador would later go on to say that he hated being entertained by him, as the enthusiastic courtier had an exhausting habit of embroiling him in a religious debate every time they met.132 Similarly, William Latymer was to say of Anne that whenever she sat down to eat with the king, she would be passionately debating scripture. By all accounts, George and Anne sound like kindred spirits, sharing the same work ethic, bolshie can-do attitude and, it has to be said, rather naughty sense of humour. Indeed, it was this humour that often pushed the boundaries of acceptable sixteenth-century banter and had a habit of erring on the dark side.
But one thing is clear from the many controversial conversations that have come to light between the two: George was someone with whom Anne felt safe enough to let her guard down and be herself – a true luxury in the duplicitous and backstabbing court of Henry VIII.
But, of course, it’s at this infamous point in history that Anne set her sights on the king of England and pursued him like the skilled huntress she was. At least that’s what we’ve always been told in the endless books, documentaries and dramas. If her sister could bed the king of England, then so could she, but with one vital difference: Anne was aiming higher than mere mistress; her goal was marriage. She wanted to be queen of England and so she charmed him, played him, tricked him, seduced him. She conspired with her pimp of a father and her wicked uncle, the duke of Norfolk, to snare the hapless king and tempt him away from his heirless marriage so she could replace his unwitting wife as queen.
Don’t get me wrong, it makes for a great story, but let’s just assess how logical it was for this to have been the Boleyn family’s dastardly plan.
The first problem we come up against is the simple fact that commoners didn’t marry into the royal family. The last known case of a commoner marrying a king was Elizabeth Woodville, who married King Edward IV in 1464. But this was two generations earlier. So much had changed politically since then: the Wars of the Roses, Richard III, the Tudor ‘usurpers’ who were now clinging on to the throne through sheer force and political manoeuvring. This meant that every royal marriage had to bring an international alliance to further secure their reign against threats of war and invasion.
Besides, hadn’t Anne just been told she wasn’t of high enough social ranking to marry the son of an earl? What on earth would make her return to court under the impression she could snare a king instead?
Of course, if we’re going to get all pedantic, I should also point out that Elizabeth Woodville never required Edward IV to take the unprecedented step of divorcing his queen to take a new bride. And not just any old queen; Anne would need to replace Henry VIII’s Spanish princess wife and in the process eradicate all the delicate international political ties she brought with her; and let’s not forget that Katherine of Aragon’s nephew was King Charles V of Spain, the Holy Roman Emperor and most powerful ruler in Europe. So it’s laughable to conceive that Anne or her father would ever have thought that she, as an English commoner, could aim to replace the queen of England. Just look at the fight Henry and Anne did eventually go through to marry. Every step of the way, they were breaking new and controversial ground. When Henry eventually instructed Wolsey to write to ‘all the bishops in this realm’ to get their thoughts on how to potentially proceed with an annulment, Cavendish reports that this group of intellectuals and bishops considered it ‘so obscure and doubtful’ they simply could not see how he could do it.133 This proves to us just how improbable a feat it would have been for any royal subject to believe themselves capable of achieving, meaning the idea of marriage could only have come from Henry himself.
Think about it: in order for Anne to have plotted to marry the king of England, or even just aimed higher than being a mistress, she would have had to believe that, first, Henry VIII had grounds to annul his marriage (divorce as a concept didn’t exist in the sixteenth century, at least not before the Reformation); then believe he was willing to defy the pope’s authority, risk excommunication, change the religion of the entire country and start a war with Spain to divorce their princess and marry a commoner. It’s all so far-fetched, so ridiculous, so unrealistic that there is no way any member of the Boleyn family would have thought to conspire such a turn of events. There’s ambition and then there’s downright delusion.
Of course, we can’t discuss any Boleyn schemes for the crown without talking about the shameless Tudor pimp that Anne’s father supposedly was. Here, history would have you believe, was a man so desperate to launch his career that he placed his two daughters in Henry VIII’s bed in order to get close to the king himself. The only thing that ruins this otherwise totally credible story is, once again, those pesky facts.
The first of these is that by 1526, when Anne came to the king’s attention, Thomas Boleyn was forty-nine years old and had already enjoyed a twenty-year career as a highly respected royal courtier and diplomat. Historian Dr Lauren Mackay’s PhD thesis confirms that Anne’s father had ‘an importance that pre-dated and was distinct from his daughter’s’.134
Thomas’s first royal appointment at court was as one of six coveted roles of ‘esquires of the body’ to Henry VIII’s father. Upon the old king’s death, both of Anne’s parents were given the prestigious and symbolic honour of serving the new monarchs, Henry VIII and Katherine of Aragon, at the dinner the evening before their joint coronation in 1509. In that same year, Anne’s father was made keeper of the foreign exchange, sheriff of Norfolk and Suffolk, becoming justice of the peace in both counties, with Anne’s mother, Elizabeth, becoming baroness of the queen’s chamber, where she was in charge of Katherine’s wardrobe.135
Not only did Thomas go on to serve the king’s adviser Wolsey, as his trusted ambassador and right-hand man,136 becoming one of his top international negotiators, but over the years he was asked to perform a list of high-profile diplomatic and personal missions for the Crown, from welcoming Katherine of Aragon to England to escorting both the king’s sisters to their respective weddings abroad. When Katherine of Aragon gave birth to Princess Mary in 1516, Thomas Boleyn was even one of the men appointed to hold the canopy over the princess at her christening.137
By 1521 Thomas had become ‘part of a trustworthy and elite group of men’ working directly for the king, and all before either of his daughters had been intimate with Henry.138 So in 1522, as a reward for Thomas’s unwavering loyalty and services to the Crown for the past thirteen years, he was nominated for the Most Noble Order of the Garter, which every historian since, bar his most recent biographer Mackay, has accredited to his daughter Mary beginning an affair with the king in the same year. An injustice that was to repeat itself in 1525, when the king made Thomas Viscount Rochford, an ennoblement that has been dismissed as nepotism by all who report it.139
But far from Thomas’s career needing a boost from his daughters, there’s a vital piece of evidence that ruins his ridiculous ‘pimp’ reputation: Thomas was away from court when both Mary and Anne became embroiled in their respective relationships with the monarch, rendering it impossible for him to have been behind any family prostitution plots. Of course, we can’t rule out his having dispatched messengers back to England – but that would beg the obvious question as to whether a royal envoy of Thomas’s standing would dare commit to paper or trust a messenger with instructions to trick and seduce the king of England.
Once we realise the Boleyns didn’t set out to scheme their way to the throne, this changes things drastically – not only the way we interpret Anne’s character, but her intentions for their entire marriage.
In the year following Anne’s return to court, she ‘flourished in great estimation and favour’, according to Cavendish, another unusually honest admission from a ‘hostile source’ who has nothing derogatory or scandalous to report about her character.140 And indeed, by the end of 1525, it’s safe to say her respectable decorum had captured the eye of the very man who had previously banished her from court: the king himself.
Quite what Anne would have made of Henry’s sudden attention in those first few months is hard to imagine. She likely thought of it as nothing more than good-natured courtly love and so, no doubt, indulged the king in some light-hearted flirting. Playing along and having a bit of a jolly with His Majesty was all very well and innocent, but when he started to suggest they take it further in a sexual capacity, Anne would surely have panicked. Taking over from her sister as royal mistress would not have been the illustrious marriage alliance she had in mind.
But wait a second, wasn’t the position of mistress to the king of England meant to be a pretty prestigious one, where he rewarded your, ahem, services to the crown by marrying you off to a gentleman of note? Indeed, although Mary Boleyn married the king’s cousin two years before it’s said she began her royal affair, so not something we can directly accredit to knowing the king intimately, Henry’s other well-documented mistress, Bessie Blount, was married off to Gilbert Tailboys, 1st Baron Tailboys of Kyme, around the end of their affair.
Though it’s not quite as good as marrying an earl, baroness is certainly not to be sniffed at, and in light of the controversy surrounding Anne’s own social standing, it was a slightly more achievable goal. Perhaps if Anne had been as cold and ruthless as they make out, she might have considered this. However, being complicit in a marriage match was one thing; becoming a royal whore in order to achieve that marriage was quite another.
But by 1526, when Henry started to seriously pursue Anne, there would have been many more personal reasons as to why she would turn down the strapping, young and athletic king of England. Oh yes, Henry was quite the catch at this stage in life; there would be no beer belly and gout for another decade.
The first, slightly obvious and irksome reason would have been that he was her sister’s ex, and perhaps the father of her two children. Yes, it’s the timeless debate that stands no chance of ever being resolved; were Mary Boleyn’s children the king’s, or her husband William Carey’s? With no firm dates for when her royal affair started or ended, the fact of the matter is simple: if Mary was sleeping with both Carey and the king within the same time frame, there is an equal chance that Anne’s niece and nephew were Henry’s. Particularly when we note the testimony of the vicar of Isleworth, John Hale, who said in 1535 that a Bridgettine of Syon Abbey once showed him ‘young master Carey’, saying he was the king’s son.141
Maybe Anne Boleyn of the dastardly fictional novels might not have had a problem with pursuing her sister’s ex, but the real-life young woman who was practically raised in a nunnery couldn’t have failed to find it somewhat distasteful.
Biographer Wyatt then highlights another potential reason for Anne’s refusal, one that no one ever addresses, and that is ‘the love she bare to the queen whom she served’.142 Of course, most people are so busy pitting the two women against each other, they completely overlook the fact that Anne may have initially held the belief that you don’t have affairs with other women’s husbands, let alone that of the queen of England whom you have been loyally serving for the past few years. Granted, Anne’s resolve was clearly to weaken – and we are about to discover why – but it’s perplexing that historians are so ready to assume that she would be happy to overlook the fact that Henry had a wife, when she had dismissed Wyatt for exactly the same reason not too long before.143
Of course, Anne also had to contend with the old killjoy of not believing in sex outside marriage. At this point in her life, she still held this act to be unlawful. And even if she were to put aside all morals and pride, logistically an affair with the king would have risked pregnancy; and unlike her sister, she had no husband to hide behind with that one.
Then there is the not-so-small matter of Henry being vehemently against everything Anne held near and dear to her heart: her passion and driving cause of evangelism. It was Martin Luther’s controversial treatise of 1520, The Babylonian Captivity of the Church, which prompted the king to publicly condemn the ‘blasphemous’ work of the reformer, not his Ninety-Five Theses, as is widely reported. And what do you know? Henry managed to wrangle a fancy new title out of his efforts, too, with the pope naming him Fidei Defensor – Defender of the Faith.144
When the papal decree declaring the king’s new title arrived in February 1522, there were huge celebrations at court. This was just about the time that Anne joined the royal household.145 As a strong and passionate supporter of the new religion, she would have seen Henry’s response to Luther as suppressive and ignorant.
So, you can start to understand why becoming mistress to the man who denounced everything she believed in didn’t really appeal. However, I believe the real kicker for Anne was that she had just been told she wasn’t good enough to marry the son of an earl, and now here was the king implying the only role she was worthy of was that of a royal whore. The humiliation had to be a slap in the face for the well-bred and hopeful young Anne. This is why it is vital we look at the psyche of the Tudors alongside the evidence in order to fully understand their decisions. Because only now, instead of seeing Anne in an emotionless pursuit of the king, can we begin to imagine the levels of insult and indignation she must have been experiencing, which sent her reeling back in shock and horror from Henry’s progressively passionate advances.
Alas, there are only so many times you can politely refuse the king of England without offending or angering him. But when we start talking about how a woman can turn down the sexual advances of a man without upsetting him, we step into dangerous territory. Let me remind you that, in any given moment in history, when it comes to wooing a woman, not only has no always meant no, but if she’s not really into it, if she is repeatedly turning down your advances and you persist, then you are wading into the murky waters of sexual harassment.
But he was the powerful king. He was in control of not just Anne’s life at court, but the careers of her brother and father – so far, so Hollywood. Anne could hardly tell His Majesty to back off and jog on, as she had done with Wyatt, so she no doubt continued to play along in what was becoming an increasingly dangerous game of courtly love.
But then came that fateful day of the February 1526 Shrovetide joust. The day Henry made a public declaration of love for Anne by riding out into the field displaying the picture of ‘a man’s heart in a press with flames about it’ accompanied by the motto, ‘Declare, I dare not.’146
This would have served as a red flag, indicating just how serious Henry was getting – not only to Anne but to his wife, who it seems at this point also started to put the pressure on Anne.
According to Wyatt, the sole source of this now infamous Tudor story, Katherine is said to have entrapped Anne Boleyn in a game of cards, pointedly remarking, ‘My lady Anne, you have good hap to stop at a king, but you are not like others: you will have all or none.’147
Of course, hindsight allows us, and Wyatt, to interpret this double entendre to mean that Katherine saw that Anne would not settle for being mistress, and would only accept being queen. But just like Anne herself, Katherine would have never imagined Anne could replace her as queen at this stage and ‘have it all’. So, while I believe this passive-aggressive game may very well have taken place some time after the joust (not after Anne had accepted Henry, as it’s often retold,148 when both women were said to have avoided each other like the Tudor plague), I’m reluctant to put too much weight on these supposed words. As with all private conversations that were apparently recorded verbatim in these early biographies, unless it was a public address that could be corroborated by other witnesses, I’m always a little dubious.
But if, for the sake of argument, we are to take it that Katherine did indeed say this, a more realistic implication would be that she thought Anne was looking to take on the semi-official role as maîtresse-en-titre, similar to that of Francis I’s mistress who took on official duties in place of the queen.149 The fact that Henry would later go on to offer Anne that title certainly gives weight to this theory.
Of course, this notorious card game has also been retold as a way for Katherine to draw attention to the non-existent sixth finger on Anne’s hand. But Wyatt also offers a more plausible, albeit less dramatic reason: that the queen hoped to keep Anne occupied, giving her less time to be preyed on by her husband.150
Either way, Anne couldn’t have failed to feel the sudden heat of the queen’s glare. Now her seemingly innocent flirtation was getting in the way of the royal marriage. She wouldn’t have known which way to turn at this point without upsetting either the king or her mistress, the queen.
But as it turns out, Henry wasn’t the only one pursuing Anne. It appears that after she returned to court, Wyatt renewed his attentions towards her. His grandson describes scenes of Wyatt being a pest, hovering around Anne while she remained aloof. It surely must have crossed her mind that he, too, hoped that now she realised marrying the son of an earl was above her station, she might reconsider a married man; this would certainly explain her reportedly bitter coolness towards an old friend.
On one occasion, Wyatt snatched a decorative jewel off Anne’s dress and held it to his heart. She tried to get it back, but he refused, clearly hoping this would turn into some kind of flirtatious game. But exasperated by his childish antics, Anne simply walked off and left it with him.151
Then the king, who loved a bit of boisterous banter and had noticed how Wyatt fawned over Anne, decided to rub his nose in the fact that he himself was closer to her. During a game of bowls, Henry made an extravagant show of stating that the ‘next game’ was his, pointing with his finger on which he was wearing a ring he had taken from Anne (what was it about courtly love in the sixteenth century that turned men into jewel thieves?).
Recognising Anne’s ring immediately, Wyatt supposedly responded by stating ‘the game’ was actually his, and showing the jewel he’d stolen from Anne hanging from a lace around his neck; at which point the banter stopped dead. Henry is said to have stormed off to Anne, demanding to know why she was playing two men at the same time. She was quick to explain that the jewel was not a gift but in fact had been stolen. Henry apparently accepted this explanation, and the matter was done with.152
Why is this ridiculous story even relevant? Because it illustrates one important thing: Henry was willing to challenge any other man who pursued Anne. No, Anne didn’t want Wyatt, but if Henry scared him off, did that mean other potential suitors were holding back for fear of getting into a love match with the king of England?
This, and the attention from the queen, would have undoubtedly been a huge wake-up call for Anne. She was wasting valuable time in which to find a proper match while she kept up this flirtation with the king. She didn’t need to encourage it; she needed to stop it.153
So she made the extreme decision to remove herself from the Tudor court, and stayed away for almost a year.
Oh yes, that little nugget of information they conveniently forget to include in the majority of modern retellings of Anne’s story.
But how do we know she really left court? What proof do we have?
Oh, you know, just the small matter of a handwritten letter to Anne by the king himself, in which he states: ‘Since my parting from you, I have been told that the opinion in which I left you is totally changed, and that you would not come to court either with your mother, if you could, or in any other manner.’154
As I believe Anne’s biggest concern would have been how to leave without making a fuss and offending the king, it makes sense that she would have waited for the royals to leave on summer progress in July 1526, then made her escape back home to join her father at Hever Castle, where he had recently relocated for work.155 This explains Henry’s statement ‘since my parting from you’, indicating he left court first on progress.
Fellow Boleyn historian Eric Ives has calculated that Henry wrote his first letter to Anne in the autumn, and now we know why: he had only just returned to court to find that she had gone.
No doubt the hapless task of relaying the bad news fell to Anne’s poor brother, George, who had stayed on at court as a cupbearer after being moved from page in the privy chamber in Wolsey’s January cutbacks. Over the coming year, George was to be used as a messenger, delivering letters from the king to Anne at Hever Castle. It’s hard to know if George would have seen this as an ideal opportunity to become closer to Henry, or a severe waste of his talents and time. But with George’s being by Anne’s side during the most emotional moments of her life, as she received the king’s dramatic letters and verbal messages, this surely would have bonded brother and sister more tightly than ever before.
A final indication that she left court after the king in July is that James Butler returned to Ireland shortly after, around 27 August,156 suggesting he had no cause to stay if Anne had gone for good.
But hear this: if Anne had wanted Henry, she would have stayed at court and taken full advantage of being the object of his desires. Her leaving proves his attention was unwanted. Which begs this awful question: how far did she feel she had to go to placate the king before she went? I make a point of asking because the dispensation Henry sought to eventually marry Anne allowed for the fact that he could have already slept with her. Now most agree with Scarisbrick that this was an ‘optimistic provision for the future’,157 meaning they could share a bed no matter how long the fight for an annulment continued. While I share his opinion, I do also believe it is possible that things could have gone too far, if only once, during this dangerous time at court. Could this be what prompted her to leave? Or was it merely a build-up of events?
Either way, the very nature of Anne’s leaving rings alarm bells. There was no goodbye, no sultry farewell of ‘Remember me’ played up for dramatic effect. She left without saying a word, and stayed away for a year before giving in to his advances. She was clearly running away.
Yet so skilled was Anne at outmanoeuvring the unwanted sexual advances of men without causing upset or embarrassment that the king was completely unaware of her lack of interest. In his first letter, you can see his utter confusion at her leaving. As far as he was concerned, everything was going well. So engrossed in the chase was he that her polite refusals and unwillingness to take things further didn’t even register with him.
After all, what woman would really mean no when the king of England was pursuing her? Upon returning to court in the autumn to be told that Anne had left and was not interested, Henry refused to take this seriously and proceeded to send her desperate ‘love letters’, begging her to be with him. These letters show that he was fully aware that Anne wasn’t returning his affections.
And yet he continued.
He even started to get angry and frustrated that she wouldn’t give in to his advances. It’s at this stage that phase one of ‘idealise, devalue, discard’ kicked in, triggering Henry’s sociopathic obsession.
And so to Henry VIII’s love letters.
Firstly, can we stop calling them ‘love letters’? The seventeen that survive span the course of almost three years, from approximately autumn 1526, when Anne had left court, to spring 1529.
Ah yes, that’s another thing. They were all undated. (If you listen very closely, you can hear the frustrated screams of historians the world over.) Any order you ever see these letters placed in is down to that writer or historian’s own conclusions, so it will come as no surprise to hear they have often been placed in an unusual order to fit a particular angle. Yet luckily for most of the letters, due to the topics Henry references throughout, we can get to the truth quite easily and place them within the right season or year.
On the basis of the tone and language, it’s clear that a good chunk of them were written either before or after Anne accepted his advances – the begging and pleading gives way to a more relaxed familiarity and, it has to be said, mundane updates of life at court.
But as far as being love letters, only three of them are frustrated odes to Anne in an attempt to predatorily hunt her down. Oh, I mean, ‘romantically woo her’.
His pursuit was relentless and, yes, this came from a man who avoided writing at all costs, which certainly says something . . . but is that something love? Or the frenzied, obsessive, desperate letters of a sociopath who would move heaven and earth to win his prize? This may appear a rather cynical way to interpret a few letters. However, when we put them into context of everything we know about Henry’s mental illness and Anne’s persistent, if polite, refusal of his advances up until this point, not to mention his eventual murder of her, it quickly moves from cynical brush-off to logical explanation.
People have struggled – myself included – to understand how their relationship could have gone from these deeply passionate declarations to decapitation . . . but once you replace ‘passionate love letters’ with ‘obsessive targeted hounding’, the shocking change of emotions not too far down the line no longer seems so out of place.
But what of these letters? All of Henry’s survive intact to this day in the Vatican, stolen from Anne, it was suspected but not proven, by Cardinal Campeggio, who came to London in 1528 from Rome to hear Henry’s case for an annulment. (Officials searched Campeggio’s bags when they later went missing, indicating they strongly suspected him.)
However, all and any of Anne’s replies to Henry have been destroyed. Which begs the question: why?
If there was anything in her letters that portrayed her in a negative light, her enemies would have used them as evidence against her and her marriage to the king.
So why do you suppose they were destroyed?
Could it be because they didn’t support the image her adversaries were trying to create of her? Even in the letter where Anne accepts the king’s proposal of marriage, she asks for his forgiveness for offending him, presumably in the way she had ignored and distanced herself from him. We know this from Henry’s reply, in which he mirrors her request, saying: ‘If at any time before this I have in any way offended you, that you would give me the same absolution that you ask.’158
Yet, for those spinning the Great Legend of Anne Boleyn, when Henry’s letters are read alone it conveniently allows them to make loaded assumptions about her replies – one even going so far as to describe them as ‘the saucy words of Anne Boleyn’. How do we know they were saucy? We’ve never read her letters!159
But you can see how it’s easily done; for example, when Henry writes, ‘The demonstrations of your affection are such, and the beautiful words of your letter are so cordially phrased,’ this could be taken to mean Anne was the seductress, weaving her web and confessing her undying love. But the reality could just have easily been innocent, with Anne merely a loyal subject politely flattering the king of England. Yet, without her responses to defend her virtue, historians are conveniently allowed to spin this one-sided love story to suit themselves.
The letters’ suspicious disappearance certainly rings more of censorship than of a heartbroken sociopath wanting to get rid of his lover’s passionate words; especially when we read Henry’s letters in their entirety, and it becomes abundantly clear that Anne was ignoring him for the most part – not responding, not encouraging and certainly not ruthlessly pursuing him with saucy words.
In what could logically only be the first letter from the king, Henry mentions that Anne has left court, having not seen her for a while, and complains that no news has been sent of her via a messenger. This is the note in which he writes, ‘Since my parting from you, I have been told that the opinion in which I left you is totally changed, and that you would not come to court either with your mother, if you could, or in any other manner.’
Disturbingly, Henry goes on to state that old classic, that a woman owes it to a man to return his affections and that it is rude of her to turn him down: ‘It seems a very poor return for the great love which I bear you to keep me at a distance both from the speech and the person of the woman that I esteem most in the world.’
He goes on, wanting confirmation that she left court specifically to get away from him, saying ‘if I knew for certain that you voluntarily desired [to be away from me]’.160
Now this is dangerous territory for Anne. Leaving was supposed to ensure that she wouldn’t have to confront awkward situations like this, or tell him directly she didn’t want to be around him. But here he was, posing the dreaded question in writing. You can almost feel her squirming as she read it, wondering how on earth she could reply diplomatically. Which we can only presume she did, for this was not the moment he decapitated her.
In what appears to have been his next letter, Henry declares he has been in love with Anne for a year, with his famous phrase of being ‘stricken with the dart of love’; this places the note around January or February 1527 (this being approximately one year after the joust): ‘On turning over in my mind the contents of your last letters, I have put myself into great agony, not knowing how to interpret them, whether to my disadvantage, as you show in some places, or to my advantage, as I understand them in some others.’161
Henry’s wording here is incredibly important. He admits Anne turns him down in her missing letter, making her feelings clear: ‘to my disadvantage, as you show’. He is openly admitting that the only encouragement in her letter is his own interpretation of her words: ‘as I understand them’. Yet, even after admitting that she is plainly showing a lack of interest, Henry persists that it is ‘absolutely necessary for me to obtain this answer’.
Mate, she’s not saying yes – I think you’ve got your answer!
It is also in this letter that Henry offers to make Anne his one and only mistress – ‘I promise you that not only the name shall be given you, but also that I will take you for my only mistress.’162
People see this as proof of the depth of his love for her, but all that jumps out at me is that up until now, while he’s been declaring his undying love, stricken by the dart of love for a year, he’s been sleeping with other mistresses.
Indeed, they were right – this is true love personified!
Henry’s next letter could not be more important in highlighting not only Anne’s refusal of him but her severe lack of encouragement, for he opens with the blunt statement that: ‘It has not pleased you to remember the promise you made me when I was last with you – that is, to hear good news from you, and to have an answer to my last letter.’163
This is an obvious reference to his offer to make her his only mistress, yet numerous historians have placed this letter much later in their correspondence, sometime around his trial for divorce from Katherine. However, it makes zero sense for Anne to be ignoring Henry’s letters at a time when she was back at Hever, keeping a low profile and hankering after every bit of news concerning her future as the queen of England. Especially when other letters from Henry around that time apologise for not giving her news fast enough, which shows us Anne’s impatience for constant updates.
Frankly, there is no way she would fail to reply at any point after she had accepted the king. Once she had agreed to be his wife, things got serious. It was no longer a coy game of courtly love, or the avoiding of an unwanted suitor. Her reputation was now at stake – her cause, her chance of becoming queen. Which means Henry’s scolding letter can only realistically be dated to before she accepted his advances – proof that far from encouraging him, Anne actually ignored some of his letters.
Then there’s the line ‘when I was last with you’ – implying that even after removing herself from court, she could not escape the king, who possibly orchestrated a meeting in between letters. It’s certainly not out of the question that he may have visited her at Hever, as we know he did various times in the course of their later fight to marry.164
Now, for the modern historians and writers who have acknowledged Anne’s leaving court, it has been described time and time again as ‘a masterstroke’, her refusal a ‘strategy’,165 a calculated tactic to whip the king into a sexual frenzy. But in the sixteenth century there’s playing hard to get and then there’s telling the guy you don’t love him and moving away with no means of frequent communication to ensure you stay in his thoughts. If Anne seriously wanted Henry, she wouldn’t have played such a risky game. How many factions at court were desperate to place a woman in the king’s bed and have access to him at any given time? It was relentless. She wouldn’t have left him alone with the buzzards circling.
And if Thomas Boleyn was meant to have been playing his poor daughter like a puppet, there’s no way he would have allowed her to leave when it was clear she was in the unique position of having the king of England wrapped around her little finger.
Remember, it was Wolsey and the king who sent Anne away from court during the Henry Percy debacle in order to cool off their romance, which proves that leaving court was seen as something that would stop a romance, not encourage it. Oh yes. That old chestnut.
Still, Anne found a diplomatic way to respond to Henry’s increasingly frustrated letters by telling him she was always his humble servant, because he was to reply in his third letter, ‘Though it is not fitting for a gentleman to take his lady in the place of a servant, yet, complying with your desire, I willingly grant it you.’
Then everything changed in the most drastic way.
In a letter that can only be placed next in the sequence, Henry is suddenly ecstatic at Anne’s ‘too humble submission’ and ‘great humanity and favour, which I have always sought to seek’.
This was Henry VIII acknowledging Anne’s acceptance of his offer of marriage – apparently accompanied by a gift from her: a trinket of a female figure on a ship crashing through stormy seas. Interpret that as you wish.
Hang on a second, though. He offered marriage to a commoner? She accepted the man she had been avoiding for months? Can we back up a little?
Yes, this is just one of the gaping holes history has left in the story of Anne Boleyn, allowing historians to fill in the blanks with scandal and drama. But how about we fill in the gaps with a few facts?
Anne clearly didn’t accept Henry’s proposal in person, instead sending a letter and a gift. However, we can only presume the king made his proposal in person, as we don’t have evidence of it in any of his letters.
In early 1527, we only have one record of Anne being back at court, and that was on 5 May, when she returned briefly to attend a ball for the French ambassador in the chambers of Henry’s daughter, Princess Mary. It is here that Henry was said to have led Anne out in a dance – though not in any official capacity as his mistress or bride-to-be, I hasten to add.
Anne’s brief return to court came at a tense time, as it was that very same month that Henry first told Katherine that he had serious doubts about their marriage.166
It’s a huge leap from this first, painful conversation between king and queen to proposing marriage to another woman, yet this is the timeline history has left us with, allowing us to draw our own conclusions as to what prompted such an unprecedented move. Was this the peak of Henry’s all-consuming obsession with Anne, when he suddenly saw her in the flesh and was gripped by the desperation not to lose his prize? Was it the growing panic over his heirless relationship with Katherine and the impending wrath of God? Or could it have been an explosive combination of the two? Either way, the timeline suggests that it was during Anne’s visit in May that Henry took the extraordinary step of offering her, an English commoner, his hand in marriage. The very fact that he was willing to overlook the opportunity to remarry into another international political alliance adds more weight to the analysis that his quest for a son was about God’s wrath and not about securing the kingdom with an heir. If his motivation was the safety and future of the Tudor throne, then without a doubt he would have backed that up with a new political marriage.
The very fact that Anne gave her response via letter rather than an immediate response in person tells us all we need to know about her dumbfounded reaction to such a shocking proposal. She must have asked for time to consider and then left once more for Hever, perhaps reluctant to accept straight away, if only out of pure scepticism. What was she honestly meant to make of this offer? Were these just passionate words spoken in the heat of the moment? A lothario’s ploy to get her into bed with outlandish promises he didn’t intend to keep?
Whatever the truth, this was no simple case of ‘Yes, I’ll marry you, sweetheart,’ as we’ve been repeatedly sold. There were a lot of very real, very dire consequences for Anne to weigh up before accepting this monumental position as the next queen of England.
As a royal envoy and ambassador, Anne’s father would have been well aware of just how precarious a political situation it would create were the king to attempt to obtain an annulment from his imperial queen. If he failed it could end badly, not just for his daughter Anne but for the whole country; it could start a war between England and Spain. So in reality, it seems highly likely that her father would have felt some reluctance for her to wade into such a dangerous situation.
But what could have prompted this almighty turnaround on Anne’s part?
Well, first, the obvious point is that this was at last a respectable prospect she could consider: queen of England. Not too shabby!
Not only that; after Anne left court in the late summer of 1526, the evangelical fight for reform began to pick up pace. In October, the bishop of London confiscated and burned six thousand copies of Tyndale’s English Bible, which had been illegally smuggled into the country from Cologne in Germany. Yet the more the Church tried to oppress the people, the more they fought back, and within eight years twenty thousand English Bibles would be smuggled into England.
Anne would have also heard through her brother, who had his ear to the ground back at court, of an incident two months later, when London lawyer Simon Fish satirised the king’s closest adviser Cardinal Wolsey in a controversial Christmas play at The Grey’s Inn. When Wolsey got word of this, along with news of Fish selling contraband religious books, the lawyer was forced to escape the country and joined Tyndale hiding out in Antwerp.167 Wolsey’s extreme response, causing a man to flee for his life, would no doubt have angered Anne, who, as we will go on to see, was herself a huge supporter of these illegal religious manuscripts.
While away from court, she would have been further riled by news the following month of Bishop Warham burning Tyndale’s English translation of what is now the New Testament in yet another public show of outrage in January 1527.168 At a high risk to those who owned them, these controversial religious books continued to be smuggled into England by merchants and travellers, with a secret Lutheran group regularly meeting in Cambridge at the White Horse tavern. Anne could see that the reformists needed protection from someone in a position of power. Everywhere around her there were reports of people laying down their lives for their religious beliefs. So, is it any surprise that when the king proposed marriage in the midst of this growing unrest Anne realised just how much she could do for evangelical reform from the position of queen?169
Like Henry, Anne would have seen herself as ‘chosen by God’ when this most unique opportunity was placed in her lap. She had to take it.
But at what point did she accept? This, again, is another hotly debated issue.
Henry is said to have been consulting lawyers in April 1527, a month before Anne’s appearance back at the royal court on 5 May, when it’s likely he proposed. Then, weeks later, on 17 May, the king held his first formal, yet top secret, divorce meeting.170 It’s believed that, spurred on by the encouragement received in this meeting, Henry told a devastated Katherine he was pursuing an annulment of their marriage. Then he did something strange. In the following month of June, he brought his illegitimate son, Henry Fitzroy, out of obscurity and made him the duke of Richmond, some say lining him up as a potential legal heir.171 Again, this proves the king had options for securing the Tudor throne other than producing a legitimate male heir, and was apparently considering them.
We must remember that at this point Anne may not have written to accept Henry’s offer of marriage. In fact, Eric Ives believes that it was unlikely she would have agreed to marry the king until she had the security that he was officially and safely separated from his wife.
So, in June 1527 it appears Henry was making arrangements for a life without Katherine, but also potentially without Anne. This all starts to fall into place when we realise it was around this time that Wolsey was enquiring about a possible marriage for Henry to Lady Renée. So the mere fact that Henry pursued a divorce from Katherine before he potentially proposed to Anne in May reveals something pretty damning regarding the stories we’ve all been told: Henry was adamant he needed to end his marriage to Katherine, with or without Anne confirmed as a replacement. Meaning, Anne was not actually responsible for Henry abandoning his wife.
But by the end of August, when Henry asked his secretary, William Knight, to officially seek a dispensation for him to remarry, it was pretty obvious that Anne had accepted his proposal. For the woman in question had been previously contracted in marriage (logically to James Butler, not Henry Percy, as this is the only marriage we have official correspondence of Wolsey planning for Anne). This woman was also related to the king in the ‘first degree of affinity . . . from . . . forbidden wedlock’ (i.e., related to his former mistress Mary Boleyn).172 But had the king not learned anything? Was this not the exact same situation that was compelling him to leave Katherine in the first place?
Not quite, because the scripture specifically referred to a man lying with his own brother’s widow. There were no scriptural rules about bedding two sisters – only ancient, man-made canon laws, which Henry was now trying to sidestep.
So, by August 1527 we at last have firm evidence of Anne accepting the king’s proposal and of Henry ploughing ahead to free himself to marry her. ’Twas game on!
At this point I can almost hear the romantics wailing, ‘Did Anne love Henry at all?’
Well, let’s be honest, feeling that you were brought together by God probably goes a long way to making you fall for a person. Indeed, notes they wrote to each other in Anne’s Book of Hours firmly indicate she believed her union with the king to have been divinely orchestrated.173 One of these notes is symbolically situated beneath an image of the Annunciation, when Archangel Gabriel is supposed to have told the Virgin Mary she was to conceive the Son of God. Here Anne wrote to Henry, ‘By daily proof you shall me find to be unto you both loving and kind.’174
In the past, this note has been mistakenly placed in the early days of the couple’s timeline as yet another example of Anne manipulating the king’s emotions to lure him from his wife with promises of a son. To be fair, it’s easy to see why this message has been dated before Henry’s offer of marriage, as she appears to have written it in response to a note Henry himself penned in the same Book of Hours: ‘If you remember my love in your prayers as strongly as I adore you, I shall hardly be forgotten, for I am yours. Henry R. forever.’175
The fact that he wrote it under the ‘Man of Sorrows’, a biblical image that is associated with rejection and grief, tells us he did so while Anne was indeed rejecting him. However, we have no proof that her note to Henry was an immediate or direct response to his. In fact, considering that Henry was only offering Anne the role of royal mistress at this point, it rules out her replying with any suggestions of providing him with yet another illegitimate son. As we’ve already discussed, he didn’t need another one of those. So it was more plausible that Anne accepted Henry’s ‘Man of Sorrows’ note without reply; this wouldn’t be the first time she didn’t respond to a message from him. It would then have been later, during their seven-year battle to marry, that she decided to write a note for him on the Annunciation page to serve as a poignant reminder not only of his pursuit of her, but inspiration to them both that they had God on their side.
But in terms of Anne’s attraction to Henry, her refusal of an illicit affair up until this point did not necessarily mean that she didn’t find him alluring or charming; indeed, as we have learned, a sociopath can be the most charming person you will ever meet. She simply couldn’t allow herself to compromise her reputation and risk becoming a pregnant mistress.
There seems little doubt that Anne would have been physically attracted to Henry. At over six feet two inches, he was described as ‘the handsomest prince ever seen’, an ‘Adonis of fresh colour’ with ‘an extremely fine calf to his leg’!176
All right, steady on, there might be kids reading!
Upon accepting his proposal, Anne could finally drop her guard and for the first time allow herself to enjoy being the object of his pursuit. After all, he was saying all the right things – there’s no way she would have been aware, at this point, of the demons he was battling; and now, she had no reason to resist his seduction.
Over the next seven years, it’s clear that they bonded over their shared goal of fighting for the country’s independence from Rome, and would often have felt that it was ‘us against the world’: something that clearly sparked a passion, with Anne no doubt in time developing a deep affection for him. I’m sure, like anyone, she told herself along the way that she could change all the little things she didn’t care for, like his annoying habit of killing those who opposed his religious views.
But let’s not fool ourselves. As much as they were similar in their love of a fiery debate and a fight against the pope, they constantly clashed over their religious beliefs and political views. So, it wouldn’t have blossomed into seven years of passionate romance.
Everyone says Henry met his match in Anne, and they’re not wrong there. I’m sure he never thought the day would come when he could have the same banter with a mistress or a wife that he had with the boys. Even so, Anne’s eyes were wide open, and she was fully aware of Henry’s womanising ways – something she was able to laugh off, even in the early days of their marriage. We see this when she insulted the French ambassador by dissolving into fits of laughter during their discussion at a December banquet in 1533. However, the cause of her hysterics, she explained, was not him, but seeing her new husband across the room; he had gone to fetch an important guest to meet her, but had got distracted along the way by a beautiful woman, completely forgetting the task in hand. Anne’s light-hearted reaction not only highlights her personality but shows she entered this marriage for something other than love.177
But it is here that we risk judging Anne, blasting her as cold-heartedly ambitious for wanting to marry for anything less than true romance; yet we have to understand that while it was socially acceptable in the sixteenth century for men to rise to positions of power from lowly beginnings – take your pick, we’ve got butcher’s son Wolsey, we’ve got blacksmith’s son Cromwell – the only thing women were expected to do was ‘marry up’ in a smart match.
Now, the very fact that the king had to approve a good chunk of the marriages at court, given that they were considered domestic political matches, says a lot about this being standard practice. So, when arranged marriages were the social norm, why do we tear Anne Boleyn down for playing along? Why does she get branded as cold and calculating when all Tudors had been conditioned to see marriage as an alliance, from nobility to merchants?
Because, while this may have been the only acceptable form of career advancement for women, it certainly didn’t stop the men from pursuing business-minded marriages, too.
Just look at Henry Percy, who ended up marrying for money and prestige rather than following his heart. Charles Brandon made it his life’s mission to seek out multiple marriage matches that brought great financial gain, as he was forever looking to escape the omnipresent debt that came with trying to keep up with the king. Even Cromwell, who started life in Putney and was found begging on the streets of Florence as a young man,178 married in what his biographer Diarmaid MacCulloch describes as a ‘local alliance’ with Elizabeth Wykes, who came from a successful family back home.179
It was all about what dowry did a marriage match pay? How did the union elevate the family to a higher social ranking? What title did it bring?
Of course, we see it as distasteful in this day and age, but in the 1500s both men and women who wanted to influence society and make a difference knew this was the way the world worked. Particularly the women who wanted a voice and were not content to just sit by and let the men rule. These were the women who saw marriage as a business partnership and did the best with the cards their sex had been dealt.
But perhaps the real issue the modern world has with Anne is that, far from being forced into an arranged marriage, she actively chose to pursue a political match for herself. In the case of Henry Percy, we saw her fighting for it rather than against it, and aren’t girls meant to lead from the heart and not the head? Well, Anne Boleyn wanted to take control of her own life; she pulled the strings. She wanted to make a difference in the world, and to do that she needed to forge an alliance with someone in possession of a prestigious title. If you want to understand Anne Boleyn, this needs to be seriously considered. Her choices did not make her frosty and unfeeling. They made her a progressive thinker in an oppressive world.
But maybe that’s just another female issue we have. After all, we’re allowed to look back on the men in history, on whom the king bestowed a similar power to Anne, with approval and admiration.
Didn’t he do well? Look how far he came from such humble beginnings, using his business sense, intelligence and diplomatic skills.
While Anne is seen as a social climber accused of having used what? Her sexuality. Underhand scheming. Oh, and witchcraft, apparently. Although, may I use this moment to put to rest the witchcraft rumours once and for all?
It appears we have Spanish ambassador Chapuys to thank for turning this particular court gossip into historical fact. He was to report in January 1536 that a source told him that another source told them that the king told a principal courtier (it’s a tenuous link, but stay with me) ‘that he had been seduced and forced into this second marriage by means of sortileges and charms’.180
However, in terms of reliable evidence and formal accusations, having personally viewed the original trial records of Anne Boleyn, nowhere in her devastating list of charges does it state witchcraft. This was merely another rumour picked up by the negative propaganda at the time, along with the claims that she had a few outstanding parking fines.
But modern historians need to stop this sexist, double-standard analysis that has them call the self-made men shrewd for using their wit, diligence and industriousness181 while they imply the women are whores and sluts who used their bodies to play the men like sexual puppeteers. This warped interpretation of Anne’s actions needs to be left in the past if we want to really understand who she was and why her life unfolded the way it did.
Alas, while Anne has been labelled ‘calculating’, Henry continues to be described as a romantic who loved women, with one of our most prominent male Tudor historians stating that ‘Henry was usually a very good husband . . . he liked women – that’s why he married so many of them!’182 Also, that the key aim of a 2001 documentary The Six Wives of Henry VIII was for viewers to ‘grasp the romance of history’.183 Oh dear. But even our female historians have fallen foul of pleading the case for Henry’s ‘romanticism’ in interviews.184
Now, I hate to be pedantic about this, but we cannot call a man who murdered two of his wives ‘romantic’. Henry’s not being intimidated by strong women and making them his equal, while commendable and progressive, doesn’t cancel out or override his violence towards women. Yet he gets featured in publications such as Love Letters: 2000 Years of Romance with the obsessive letters of harassment above used as evidence of his chivalrous nature.
Indeed, in historical biographies and documentaries we see historians swooning over Henry’s letters (‘all this is the stuff of love’185) with none of them in the least bit disturbed or haunted by the fact that the man who wrote those seemingly loving words would end up murdering the recipient.
Almost all media depictions exclusively sell the viewer the notion that Henry and Anne’s relationship imploded with passion; when a man loves a woman to that extent, how else is he to vent his heartbreak? As though decapitation was inevitable. In fact, one historian recently told television viewers that what happened to Anne was a terrible ‘mishap’, concluding that Henry, ‘feeling betrayed and hurt, sentenced the queen that he loved to death’.186
It needs to go on record here and now that you don’t sentence the women you love to death. Also, that the word ‘romantic’ is off limits when reporting the actions of domestic violence perpetrators. And yes, ordering the death of two of your wives does indeed come under the category of domestic violence, whether committed by a king or a commoner, last week or five centuries ago. If a man can kill a woman, whatever the extenuating circumstances it was never love.
Even though we are now starting to understand that Henry was subject to the blind will of his mental illness, and that his actions were not calculated attacks carried out by a rational mind, we still need to change the rhetoric we put out there. Knowing how their story ends, we owe it to the victim, in this case Anne Boleyn, to interpret the warning signs without putting a dreamy spin on it in favour of the murderer; not least in order to understand the truth, for if we realise it wasn’t a love story then we will continue to look for the real reason events unfolded the way they did. And, as historians, is that not meant to be our very job?
For those who still hold Henry’s so-called ‘love letters’ as proof that it was indeed love between the two – or at least on hapless Henry’s part, with Anne Boleyn just using him for her own cruel gain – then this one’s for you.
A year after Anne accepted Henry’s offer of marriage, in the summer of 1528, a deadly disease broke out in London, claiming the lives of courtiers and commoners alike. Ambassador Jean du Bellay confirms that Henry and Anne were back together when her maid contracted the deadly sweating sickness, stating on 18 June that ‘One of the filles de chambres of Mademoiselle de Boulen was attacked on Tuesday by the sweating sickness. The king left in great haste and went a dozen miles off.’187
In the following purported love letter sent to Anne from the utterly devoted king, Henry warns her: ‘I think, if you would retire from Surrey, as we did, you would escape all danger.’188
As we did? Meaning he left without taking her with him? The supposed love of his life? Oh yes. Not only did he leave Anne behind, but he took his wife Katherine away instead.189 But Henry reassured Anne that no women in his party were known to have been taken ill, so she should be safe. She wasn’t. Anne and her father soon fell ill and left for the confines of Hever Castle to battle the disease.190 It is here that Henry sent the following heartfelt love letter that writers have since described as frantic with worry and grief. But given that we now know the circumstances, his words suddenly ring incredibly hollow: ‘To hear of the sickness of my mistress, whom I esteem more than all the world, and whose health I desire as I do my own, so that I would gladly bear half your illness to make you well.’191
But he didn’t bear her illness, did he? He didn’t even risk it. He ran away and left her, refusing to visit for fear of getting ill himself, as the life of his beloved perilously hung in the balance.192
Ah, young love!
Look, I’m not intentionally trying to ruin all your Tudor fantasies here. I, too, was disappointed when I first realised that Henry and Anne’s was not the love story I’d always been told it was. But if writers are going to continue holding it up as the pinnacle of romantic escapism, then we need to get truthful about how their story unfolded. Which means, first, we must realise that Anne’s flirty demeanour wasn’t to blame for his year-long harassment. Her repeatedly turning him down wasn’t the ultimate example of when a girl says no she really means yes. Her accepting him for reasons less than love doesn’t mean she was ruthless and deserved her downfall, that she had it coming or ‘paid the price’.
We need to stop normalising this disturbing interpretation of powerful women just as much as we need to stop romanticising these narratives from history. Henry and Anne’s story is one of the most dark and perverse that history can provide. So, if you want drama, look no further; but if it’s romance you’re after, this might be the wrong couple for us to focus on.
