HISTORICAL QUEENS: ANNE BOLEYN

ANNE BOLEYN

Anne Boleyn is best known as the second wife of King Henry the Eighth and the mother of Queen Elizabeth the First. She was the first of his six wives to be executed on charges of adultery, incest, treason and witchcraft.

Anne was most likely born at Blicking Hall in Norfolk but the year of her birth, sometime between 1500 – 1510 is unknown and widely debated to this day by historians. Her father was Thomas Boleyn, a courtier and diplomat of London merchant stock and her mother Elizabeth Howard, daughter of the second duke of Norfolk. She also had two siblings, Mary and George whose birthdates are also unknown but apparently all three were close in age.

Anne spent part of her childhood at the court of the Archduchess Margaret in the Netherlands as a 'fille d'honneur' or 'maid of honour' then transferred to the household of Henry the Eighth's sister Mary, who was married to Louis XII of France. However, when Louis died, Mary Tudor returned to England while Anne remained to attend Claude the new French Queen.

It was here in France, where she remained for the next six or seven years, under the tutelage of Queen Claude, that Anne learned to speak fluent French, developed a taste for French clothes, poetry, music and became an accomplished musician, singer and dancer.

When she returned to England around 1521 Anne entered the service of Henry the Eighth's first wife, Katharine of Aragon and her striking looks and sophisticated manners earned her many admirers at the English court, which included the King himself. Henry VIII had all ready had an affair with Anne's sister Mary when he began his relentless pursuit of Anne. She and her family were given titles and gifts but Anne refused to become his mistress as her sister had until a divorce from his first wife was imminent.

Anne and Henry, she all ready pregnant, were secretly married in January 1533 and Anne was crowned Queen in the June of that same year. Anne was never a popular Queen beyond the court, partly because she was an advocate of the reformation of the church and partly because the public continued to love Katherine of Aragon.

In September 1533 Anne's first child, a daughter, Elizabeth, was born and Henry, desperate for a male heir, quickly began to lose interest in his new wife. Two more of her pregnancies, one in 1534 and the other in 1536 when the babies were boys ended in miscarriages convinced the King that his marriage was cursed.

On the second of May 1536, Anne was arrested and accused of adultery with her own brother and four commoners. These men were all tried and convicted of treason by Anne's uncle, the Duke of Norfolk and executed on the seventeenth of May at Tower Hill. However, shortly before Anne's execution, Anne's marriage to the King was dissolved and declared invalid and therefore nullified the charges against her but unfortunately this was overlooked as were so many other things that led to her death.

Anne Boleyn was executed privately by an expert swordsman on the nineteenth of May 1536 at the Tower of London and her body and head put into an arrow chest and buried in an unmarked grave in the chapel of St. Peter ad Vincula. Her body was identified during renovations of this chapel during the reign of Queen Victoria and her final resting place now marked in the marble floor.