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Anne Boleyn Biography

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BOLEYN, ANNE (1507-36). Queen of England as second wife of Henry VIII. She was the mother of Queen Elizabeth. The date of her birth is given as 1501 or 1507, the latter being the more probable. The family name is frequently found in contemporary writings as Bullen, Bouleyn, Boullan, or Boulain. She was the daughter of Sir Thomas Boleyn, afterwards Earl of Wiltshire and Ormond. In her twelfth year Anne went to France, where her elder sister, Mary, had previously accompanied Mary Tudor, the affianced bride of Louis XII of France, and sister of Henry VIII. She remained at the French court three years, and soon after her return to England was wooed by Lord Henry Percy, the heir to the earldom of Northumberland, and by King Henry himself, who, in April, 1522, began to shower wealth and honors on her father, and before this had dishonored her sister Mary. Henry's "religious scruples" regarding the lawfulness of his marriage with Catharine became too urgent for the slow decision of the court of Rome, but not till the King's divorce was set afoot (in May, 1527) did Anne favor his addresses. However, long before Cranmer pronounced the divorce (May 23, 1533), she was Henry's mistress, and in the preceding January they had been secretly married. She was crowned with great splendor in Westminster Hall on Whitsunday; but within a few months Henry bade her shut her eyes to his unfaithfulness, as her betters had done, for he could abase yet more than he had raised her. His cooling passion was not revived by the birth (September, 1533) of the Princess-afterwards Queen-Elizabeth. The new Queen, naturally light and gay of heart, and educated at the French court, where these qualities were likely to be developed to the utmost, conducted herself toward the courtiers with an easy familiarity not customary in England for one in her position. Concerning the first two years of her married life we have little information. It is said that she was favorable to the Reformation, and promoted a translation of the Bible. In January, 1536, the Queen gave premature birth to a son. The mishap is said to have been caused by learning of the King's newly developed passion for Jane Seymour, her successor. The King became more and more estranged, and her freedom of manners had given but too good grounds for her enemies to speak evil of her. On May 1 the annual tournament was held at Greenwich, in the presence of the King and Queen. The tilting had commenced, the challengers being Viscount Rochford, brother to the Queen, and Sir Henry Norris, one of the gentlemen of the King's Privy Chamber. Suddenly the King rose, his outward bearing manifesting inward disturbance, left the tourney, and with a small party rode up to London, leaving the Queen at Greenwich. The popular account is that the King had seen her drop a handkerchief into the lists in order that one of her presumed lovers might wipe his face; but the necessity for any such romantic and sudden pretense of jealousy is annulled by the fact that in the previous week a commission composed of members of the Privy Council had been secretly engaged in examining charges of adultery against Anne; indeed, two of her alleged accomplices, Sir William Brereton, a gentleman of the Kings household, and Mark Smeton, a musician at court, had already been arrested. The Queen remained at Greenwich that night. On the following morning she was examined before the Privy Council, and protested her innocence. In the afternoon she was sent up the river to the Tower. Sir Henry Norris and Sir Francis Weston, another courtier, along with Smeton, were also examined, and all at first declared their innocence of the charge imputed to them; but under torture, the musician confessed to the crime. In the Tower, the Queens every action and word were watched and reported; but anything she said while a prisoner seems quite as compatible with innocence as with guilt. Her letter to Henry, written on May 6, speaks decidedly in her favor, but this letter is now supposed to be a fabrication of the time of Elizabeth. On the 10th of May the Grand Jury of Middlesex found a true bill on the indictment which charged the Queen with committing adultery with no less than five persons, including her own brother, Lord Rochford, and of conspiring with them, jointly and severally, against the life of the King, the adultery being alleged to extend over a period of nearly three years. On the 11th the Grand Jury of Kent also found a true bill. On the 12th the four commoners, Brereton, Weston, Norris, and Smeton, were found guilty, the last confessing to the charge of adultery only, the other three pleading not guilty to both charges. With her case thus prejudged, on the 15th the Queen and her brother were tried before 27 peers. Their uncle, the Duke of Norfolk, was president, and their own father was one of the judges. The accused affirmed their innocence, but were found guilty and condemned, the Queen to be burned or beheaded on the Tower Green. On the 17th Smeton was hanged, and the other four beheaded; general protestations of unworthiness by them at the hour of death being regarded by some historians as evidence of guilt. On the 19th, the Queen was beheaded, with her last words, praying a blessing on Henry, who, she said, had ever been to her a good and gentle lord, but making no confession of guilt. Henry was betrothed to Jane Seymour the next day. It is difficult to form anything like a just and satisfactory estimate of the character of Anne Boleyn-historians, for the most part, having made her but a lay figure upon which to hang the drapery of religious partisanship, or to display the colors of individual sympathy. That she was guilty of adultery with Henry is certain; but that she was guilty of the other heinous offenses laid to her charge remains at least not proved, and it is a suspicious fact that every trace of evidence has vanished. The character of this mother of the English Reformation was not saintly; but she was not the Jezebel that Saunders, the Jesuit, would have us believe. According to him, she was even in person ugly, misshapen, monstrous; but although Holbeins portraits do not confirm the statements of others that she was comely, we know that she had beautiful eyes and hair, and that her only positive defect was a supplemental nail.