For many years during the life of Anne Boleyn, and certainly
after her death, rumors about the relationship between Henry VIII and the
Boleyn family swirled. Some writers and Tudor figures have asserted that Henry
VIII not only had a relationship with sisters Mary and Anne, but that he also
engaged in sex with their mother Elizabeth Boleyn and during the torrid affair
that Anne was conceived. In this short article we will explore three things;
where did these rumors begin? What is the likelihood that there is substance to
them? What outcomes/obstacles were created due to the rumors?
The first thing we must do is evaluate where these stories
originate. In order to beta test the origination of these stories we will
consider two of the writers. Thomas Jackson and Nicholas Sanders were Catholics
(as were almost all of the writers of these rumors), therefore inherently anti-Anne,
as she and her family represented the Reformation movement in England. Jackson
lived during the time period in question and was charged with saying, “…the
King lived in adultery before his marriage [and] that he kept the mother and
afterwards the daughter, ‘and now he hath married her whom he kept afore, and
her mother also’”* Though he was a contemporary, Jackson would have been a very
young man during the time of the supposed affair without access to Elizabeth or
Henry. He also would have had motivation to write slander against the Boleyn
family to defend against what he viewed as an attack on the Catholic faith. Sanders, was writing two generations later during
the reign of Anne’s daughter Elizabeth I. In addition to not having firsthand
knowledge of Henry’s relationship with Elizabeth Boleyn, he also had much
motivation to blacken Elizabeth’s history and relationship as he had been exiled
from England because he was convicted of plotting to have Elizabeth killed and
replaced with one of her Catholic relations. Sanders account says that Anne was
conceived by Elizabeth during the time when her husband was abroad on King
Henry VIII’s orders as an ambassador to France. Unfortunately for Sanders,
Henry was not King in 1501 or 1507, which are the two debated dates of Anne’s
birth.
Despite a lack of evidence, the salacious gossip about Henry’s
love-life was not kept under wraps. In fact both Henry and Thomas Cromwell were
questioned about the rumors during a conversation with George Throckmorton
regarding parliamentary business. Throckmorton’s recollection of the
conversation was printed in the Letters and Papers of Henry VIII, Throckmorton
mentions the concerns of Parliament to the King saying “….I said to him that I
told your Grace I feared if ye did marry Queen Anne your conscience would be
more troubled at length, for it is thought ye have meddled both with the mother
and the sister…” to that the King answered, “Never with the mother!”** The
report continues with Throckmorton’s doubt coloring every word. There is
evidence that Throckmorton heard these stories from Friar Peto, a known enemy
of the Boleyn faction who preached a sermon drawing parallels between the
Biblical story of Ahab and relating Anne to the character of Jezebel.
If we believe these stories have merit, we would also have
to be willing to accept that Henry VIII, knowing that she was his daughter,
married Anne anyway. As I have written about on many occasions, Henry VIII’s
religious nature is undoubtable. He heard mass many times a day and it was
reported that he was training for the priesthood prior to the death of his
eldest brother and heir to the throne. He was known as Defender of the Faith
due to his well-known piety and his response to the perceived heresy of Martin
Luther. His deep faith troubled his conscious regarding his first marriage and
led him to consider a complete conversion of his belief system. It is, therefore, incomprehensible that
someone who valued his immortal soul so completely would go so far in the world
of consanguineal incest. Outside of contextual background on the situation there
is also the tangible evidence of a timeline to consider. Anne’s birthday, while
still debated in some historical circles, is most likely sometime in 1501
meaning that Henry would have been ten years old when Anne was conceived. It
is, therefore very, very unlikely that there was any sort of relationship
between Elizabeth Boleyn and the then Henry, Prince of Wales. Lastly, we can
infer that these rumors were not true due to the fact that Eustace Chapuys,
imperial ambassador to England, surely would have reported them to his master,
Charles V. If they had been true and subsequently reported they would have been
used as significant leverage to undermine the annulment process of Henry and
Catherine of Aragon’s marriage.
Despite my vehement belief that these rumors are untrue, it
is true though that almost every rumor starts with some kernel of fact. It is
my belief that Elizabeth perhaps had a poor reputation regarding her chastity
at court and Boleyn detractors saw this as an opportunity to damage the King’s
relationship with Anne. On what do I base my thoughts? Well on the importance
of symbolism to Tudor age people. Seeking to play up their good qualities,
people often sought to have themselves associated with virtuous figures from
the Bible and other literature. In fact, Anne herself was compared to Queen
Esther. In Elizabeth’s case she was compared to Greek literary figure Cressida
in a poem by contemporary writer John Skelton. Cressida, though always
described as extremely beautiful, has also often been depicted by writers as
being a false love, a paragon of female inconstancy. Because symbolism was so
important to writers and readers of the time period we can assume that
Elizabeth embodied the characteristics of Cressida, including her tendency for
infidelity.
Though these rumors were exceedingly damaging to the
reputation of Anne Boleyn and her family, Henry seems to have survived the
accusations relatively unscathed. The insinuations that Henry had engaged in an
incestuous relationship increased the dislike felt for the Boleyns amongst
religious conservatives at court and also by the common people in London where
the rumors were leaked. We can, in my opinion, discount these stories as
sensationalism designed to undermine the Boleyn marriage and the reign of
Elizabeth I. There is not only little
historical evidence to support them, but they all seem to stem from the same
Catholic, anti-Boleyn source, Friar Peto.
The rumors have a blatant agenda of creating damage aimed specifically
at the Boleyn family. Historical training teaches us to objectively evaluate
the claims to determine their worth and significance. These have neither.
**Extracts taken from the Letters and Papers of Henry VIII.
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