Two Gentleman Poets at the Court of Henry VIII

I love when new research becomes available about the Boleyn family! Thankfully, Claire Ridgway, from the Anne Boleyn Files, recently translated and published a nineteenth century biography of George Boleyn. It is currently the only biography of Anne's ill-fated brother and gives insight on the Howards as well! Claire translated this book from 1800s French to English in order to give Anne addicts who do not speak French access to the this work. My copy is on order, stay tuned for a review! Purchase your own copy here!

On This Day in Tudor History

On this day in Tudor history, 1532 Henry and Anne set sail from Dover bound for Calais. It was to be the first time Anne was presented on the international stage as Henry’s intended bride, despite the fact that he was still married to Catherine of Aragon. In preparation for Anne acting as his consort on this trip, abroad Henry had raised her to the rank of Marquis and presented her with a large collection jewels and new dresses to wear while in France.

The purpose of this trip was multi-faceted; to renew the friendship between England and France as well as to serve as a public showing of King Francis’ approval of Henry’s intended plans for marriage to Anne. Anne and Henry hoped that Francis would agree to meet with the Pope on their behalf to encourage a quick annulment of Henry’s first marriage for the sake of the Church and peace in Europe. Francis assured Henry of his support and in turn Henry, confident that a resolution of his Great Matter was coming soon, began a sexual relationship with Anne.  Anne conceived before Francis had a chance to appeal to the Pope resulting in the hasty crowning of Anne as queen of England.

 

Henry, Henry, Henry

Need to teach someone the basics about Henry VIII and his wives? Use this entertaining video set to the tune of Abba's "Money, Money, Money"

Read of the Week

This week I read the book The Daring Truth about Anne Boleyn: Cutting Through the Myth by Sylwia Zupanec. *Sigh* I know I should never start a book review like this but I honestly had a very hard time reading this book because of the incredibly poor grammar, spelling errors and strange punctuation. I found myself re-reading whole passages trying to understand what the author was saying. Almost every page was littered with improperly used words, incorrect tenses and erratic commas. I struggled with Zupanec’s inability to address her audience in a learned, professional way. Her conclusions often begin, “In this chapter, I have proven…” It seemed like it was written by high school student trying to meet the requirement of a standardized writing test. After doing some research on the author I discovered that her primary language is not English, which could account for the editing issues in the book. However, when I purchase a book that is marketed as an academically researched and written book, I expect that I will not see spelling errors. The premise of this book is that there are many misconstrued ideas about Anne because they are based on primary source documents which have been mistranslated by historians and researchers. It is hard to take this assertion seriously when there are so many obvious translation issues in the author’s own writing.

Grammar issues aside, the book, while well researched in some areas, had me screaming at others. The author used urbandictionary.com as a source for the definitions of several words. All of us millennials know that urbandictionary.com is about as unreliable as an electronic resource can be.  Zupanec goes on the defensive when addressing the primary source letters of Eustace Chapuys to Charles V. She states these letters can be used as reliable, accurate information because Chapuys was merely doing his job, reporting the court happenings to his master.  She goes so far as to call him "trustworthy" and "reliable." Honestly, it is one of the most ridiculous statements in the book. Chapuys constantly called Anne, even while she was Queen, a google eyed whore, the Great Concubine and other derogatory names. His reports, in several cases, contain outright lies and court gossip. The ambassador had a vested interest in trying to damage Anne’s reputation and limit her rise to power, so arguing that these letters can be used as legitimate sources is completely illogical. Most Tudor era historians, myself included, pick pieces out of the Chapuys letters that can be backed by other evidence to use in our writing, but are careful to realize and cite the obvious bias that is colored by Chapuys’ devotion to the Hapsburg family, his Catholic faith and his aversion to all things/people that were pro-French.
 The author also spends a lot of time painting what I view as an inaccurate picture of Henry VIII. Using the Chapuys letters, Zupanec's writing portrayal Henry as a weakling, toddling along behind Anne and abiding by her every desire. I found this depiction not only factually questionable but also offensive to the historical legacy of a king who changed the social and political landscape of an entire country to suit his whims. Henry was far from the lovesick, schmuck that Zupanec describes and she would know this if she had researched him more thoroughly. Unsurprisingly, the use of primary and secondary sources on Henry in her writing are scarce and almost non-existent in her list of sources.

I also normally do not critique the cover art or aesthetics of books (you know the old adage), but in this case, I cannot help but weigh in. When my copy of this book was delivered I could not help but think that the cartoon like image of Anne on the front cover was both unflattering and unprofessional. The formatting in the book is awkward with sub-heading titles that are not capitalized correctly and divide the book in to choppy sections and it drives me a bit crazy that the spine title is upside down.  All in all, there is nothing in the book that cannot be gleaned from a better written, better researched book such as The Life and Death of Anne Boleyn by Eric Ives or Anne Boleyn by Paul Friedmann. My suggestion? Pick up one of them instead.

 

"Never with the mother!" The Relationship between Henry VIII and Elizabeth Boleyn

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.