Did Anne Boleyn and George Boleyn have an unnatural relationship?

[Music] hi welcome to the latest installment in my questions about amberlynn playlist I'm Claire Ridgeway I'm author of several history books and also founder of the amber limb files website and a couple of months ago it was more than a couple of months ago I asked ambolyn past followers for the questions that they had about amber Linda Blinn's amber Lynn's life and times and I said that I would try answering them in a series of videos so today we're going to be looking at a subject matter that can be a bit of a trigger for some people and I also feel the need to issue a warning just in case you really don't want to hear a talk on this going to be talking about amber Lynn's alleged relationship with her brother George so I'm going to be talking about incest so if you don't want to hear about that subject then you can tune off at this point and go watch one of my other videos on Tudor history but if you are interested in hearing my thoughts and the evidence and that about these this charge against Anne and George then you can carry on okay so Anne and George Boleyn on the 2nd of May 1536 Queen Anne Boleyn was arrested at Greenwich palace some of the way that the church bells always chime at the right time yes the chimes of doom and her brother George Boleyn Lord Rochford was arrested at Whitehall now they were both taken to the Tower of London and imprisoned there and in the Royal Apartments of the Royal Palace so in more sumptuous lodgings than her brother and the other men that were arrested at the time on the 15th of May 1536 the Berlin siblings Ann and George were tried separately one after the other in the Kings hall of the Royal Palace at the Tower of London now this this hall and just a note aside here this hall and lodgings the Royal Apartments they don't exist anymore at the townland and so unfortunately you cannot see them but they were taken one after the other to the Kings Hall and they were tried by a jury of their peers and this jury was presided over by their uncle Thomas Howard 3rd Duke of Norfolk who was acting in the role of Lord High Steward they were both charged with high treason they were found guilty of all charges and they were of course condemned to death now Queen Anne Boleyn was accused of seducing and committing adultery with five different men and also plotting with them to kill the King and one of these men was her own brother George now we have two indictments that were drawn up at listing the charges against them they were drawn up by the grand jury of Middlesex and the grand jury of Kent these were done separately because the the act the criminal acts took place in the counties of Kent and Middlesex at different royal palaces some of the royal palaces were in Middlesex some were in camps so there were two different indictments drawn up and the indictment drawn up by the grand jury of Middlesex stated that Anne was seduced by evil she had malice in her heart and she had frail and carnal appetites and here is which one of the charges against her the Queen on the second of November of the 27th year of Henry the eighth's reign and several times before and after at Westminster procured and incited her own natural brother George Boleyn Lord Rochford gentlemen of the a chamber to violate her alluring him with her tongue in the said George's mouth and the said George's tongue in hers and also with kisses presence and jewels whereby he despising the commands of God and all human laws on the 5th of November the 27th year of Henry the eighth's reign violated and carnally knew the said Queen his own sister at Westminster which he also did on diverse other days before and after at the same place sometimes by his own procurement and sometimes by the Queen's so there you have the Berlin sibling was being accused of committing incest and in quite salacious detail that language of tongues and the violation and carnal and all of that language would have shocked those listening in court it may not shock us today but it would have shocked a court at that time all of those listening it would have sounded scandalous now it must be awful for the Berlin's themselves to have heard that charge against them that they defended themselves admirably in fact George defended himself so well that it was reported that several of those present wagered ten to one that he would be acquitted but of course it didn't make any difference the other man had already been found guilty so there was no way out for an because they you know if they were guilty she was guilty and really there was no way out for George but what evidence did the crown actually use to accuse Anne Boleyn and George Boleyn of incest well some of the third that it was jangling wife of George Boleyn who was responsible for providing the crown with the evidence of incest however and I'm going to point you out the recent videos that I've done on Chamberlain and also the video that I did about her execution and Katherine Howard's execution this idea so my cats just deciding to meow me because I'm just not giving her any attention this idea is based on a later fictional account of James scaffold speech where she says she deserves this punishment she deserves to die because of what she did you know providing false evidence against her husband and the Queen and that story which was a forgery and fiction is not corroborated by the eyewitness account of her scaffolds speech or by any of the other contemporary sources so Jane did not confess to bringing the balance of Ling's down she's also not named as providing evidence that brought them down in 1536 the only names mentioned as providing information or Elizabeth Brown the Countess of Worcester lady Bridget Wingfield who was actually dead by this time but correspondence was used student posthumously to bring the villains down nan Cobham who were not sure who exactly she was there was a Cobham who was a lady-in-waiting to an but we're not entirely sure and a mystery one made more who area eyes that east of emoji horseman so no mention of Jane there now Elizabeth Brown the Countess of Worcester was named as the first accuser in a letter written by John Hussey who was a servant of Lord and Lady Lyle now the loyals were in Calais and John Hussey was their servant in London who corresponded with them to keep them up to date on the goings-on in London so he names Elizabeth Brown Countess of Worcester as being the first accuser Lancelot to Cole who was secretary to the French ambassador in London also names the Countess of Worcester in his poem on Anne Boleyn writing that when her brother Anthony Brown accused her of having loose behavior that she defended herself by saying that she was no worse than the Queen who has offended with musician Mark Smeaton and her own brother now as erica is pointed out in his excellent biography of amberlynn this was probably an exaggeration this was in an argument and the countess was probably just meaning that she was no more of a flirt than the Queen rather than actually saying that the Queen has you know slept around Justice John Spellman who is a law reporter who's who has a book of reports that he did on cases in his contemporary report on the trial he makes no mention of the Countess of Worcester at all as giving any evidence her name doesn't seem to come up so she obviously wasn't mentioned and she certainly didn't get called as a witness justice Spellman's assessment of the trial was that all evidence was a forgery and luxury so there was no such in the realm which makes it sound that you know the crown exaggerated everything to make amberlynn sound like yeah the greatest hall in the realm now Eustace sharp reads the Imperial ambassador who of course was a man who was no friend of the Blinn's because he supported Catherine of Aragon he never referred to Anne Boleyn as Queen he states that no witnesses were called and that there was no proof of George villains guilt no proof of George's guilt walls produced except that of his having once passed many hours in her company and other little Follies so there we have you know George the only evidence against George put incest was the fact that he'd spent a few hours with his sister shop we also noted that although Mark Smeaton had confessed to sleeping with the Queen the others were sentenced on mere presumption or on very slight grounds without legal proof or valid confession so here we have a man that really didn't have any time for ambolyn and George Boleyn who didn't like them being very skeptical of the charges against them but could there be any truth to the incest charge could Anne Boleyn have been so desperate to provide the King with a son that she'd sleep with her brother to try and conceive and and to do what the King needed and wanted her to do well no and no really that's that's you know the short the short answer to that nobody before the trials of May 1536 had ever commented on the Berlin siblings having an unnatural relationship in any way there was no court gossip no accusations nothing nothing of his in any dispatches and any chronicles there's just nothing to suggest that Anne and George you know had a weird relationship now uninsured were very close they were very like-minded but through my research they come across as both very witty very charming very intelligent people that wouldn't suffer fools gladly and they were very similar now George commissioned a beautiful illuminated manuscript for it was a translation of a religious work that he thought his sister would enjoy of the Reformed faith and he at the start of this work he wrote a beautiful dedication to her quite a long dedication - but it's lovely to read and in it he refers to himself as her most loving and friendly brother so this lovely gift is evidence of the siblings affection for each other their respect for each other their shared evangelical faith but it can't be twisted into something more than that there is absolutely nothing dodgy or weird in the dedication or in the gift itself a close bond does not equal a sexual relationship you just you just can't twist it like that now we know that from George's trial that Anne had convite competed in George's wife Jane about the king having problems in the bedroom sort of having problems with impotence and we know that Jane talked to George about this now I just don't think it makes sense that if the king was having problems that and would therefore sleep with her brother to conceive surely if the King is not actually able to perform then he can't you know he can't get his wife pregnant and there doesn't help but George sleeping you know George and am sleeping together to help aunt conceive because then the king would know that that baby could not be here see he can't sleep with his wife so that doesn't make sense and I can't see it at contra I think it was Philippa Gregory on a documentary said that it was a kind of a natural step for Anne to turn to her brother for help if you know she was in this situation but I can't see that at all I mean oh the King can't get me pregnant I really really need to give him a Prince of Wales oh hey George power Bassett's well no fact that doesn't work does it the Kings would know that Anne was being unfaithful and that the little prince or princess was not his what about the deformed fetus that an allegedly miscarries in 1536 well that's been used in fiction to back up the idea that George and Ann committed incest a monstrous baby produced from a monstrous act you know that's how we see it in fiction but no because there wasn't a deformed fetus being miscarried in January 1536 I'll give you link to my video on that looking at the evidence because I explained it all in that but suffice to say that no contemporary report makes any mention of an miss carrying a deformed fetus she had a miscarriage yes but there was nothing unusual about it the idea that she miscarried a shapeless mass of flesh comes from a book a piece of Catholic propaganda written in the 1580s so a long time after the event in this book it also states that Anne had an extra finger a protruding tooth oh when and that she'd also been sent to France in disgrace by her father because she'd slept with her father's chaplain and Butler so yeah she didn't have she didn't miscarry deformed fetus and you can't use that as proof that you know there was this incestuous act that then caused that problem with the baby Anne and George were also very pious people they were both they both embraced reformed ideas coming from France Anne Boleyn was very influenced by French reformers they were interested in theology they were interested in the reform of the church the authority of Scripture the translation of the Bible into English to suggest that these two people who were so interested in religion and what the Bible said would commit an act like incest makes no sense at all to me they would have seen that as evil as horrific I just I just can't can't see that making sense to them in any way now the charges against Anne Boleyn and Georg villain and in fact the other four men did and do not make any sense Erick eyes pointed out that three-quarters of the alleged offenses can be dismissed and in fact would be in today's court of law by an insurer's lawyers because either an all the man listed was not at the place that they were supposed to be you know and would be said you know to be with George Boleyn at Westminster on a certain day but either an or George you know wasn't actually there on that date anyway they just don't make sense 3/4 of them make no sense at all or and was actually confined at the time following childbirth these indictments are very very careless they perhaps were put together in a rush and they don't make sense but of course that doesn't matter when a jury knows what is expected of them that they are supposed to find these people guilty that that is what the king wants so that doesn't matter I'm of the opinion that the incest charge was added to completely black in the name adultery was pretty good you know queen amberlynn she's yeah five men you know not just one five man and she conspired to kill the king as well that that's shocking but incest is taking it to another level that is really nasty completely scandalous and it's something that would be remembered for a long time afterwards and be associated with the berlin name forever they made out that Anne was willing to stop at nothing to satisfy her carnal appetites her carnal cravings that she was a monster and poor King Henry the Eighth couldn't help you know falling in love with her and doing what he did and he's that complete victim that was the Anne that needed to be portrayed in 1536 to bring her down once and for all and so that Henry the Eighth could walk away and marry Jane Seymour very very quickly afterwards you know without any problem so I actually am of the opinion that and I we there's no firm evidence for this that I'm of the opinion that the incest charge came from King Henry the eighth it seems a very personal thing to me the idea that he just totally wanted the Berlin's blackened forever but that is just my own theory my own personal opinion now if you're interested in finding out more about George I've got a playlist of videos of interviews that some ideas along with Claire sherry who is my co-author called the George Boleyn interviews where we we answer questions about George Boleyn look at the evidence and that so I'll give you a link to those and also our biography that those videos were for George Boleyn chewed a poet courtier and diplomat George Boleyn is a fascinating character I just love him so very interesting there's so much about him because he was such an important person so he's not a shadowy figure like Mary Boleyn there is so much we know about him a fascinating man so I hope this has kind of answered the question that people may have about did the Berlin siblings really commit in a incest I don't believe they did at all so thank you for joining me and I hope you've enjoyed this video you can click Subscribe and hit the bell as well to be notified of new videos because I will be answering more questions about Anne Boleyn have family her life at times but I'll take my leave of you now take care bye bye [Music]

Channel: undefined

Views: 72,697

Rating: 4.925735 out of 5

Keywords: Anne Boleyn, George Boleyn, British History, Tudor, The Tudors, Henry VIII, Thomas Cromwell, Wolf Hall, Weir

Id: VGbZGI-Fr08

Length: 22min 52sec (1372 seconds)

Published: Mon Feb 18 2019