Henry's Obsession With Anne Boleyn | The Lovers Who Changed History (Part 1 of 2) | Real Royalty

[Music] ambolyn the wife of Henry the eighth's awoke in the Royal Apartments at the Tower of London her ladies-in-waiting made their final preparations and left her chambers at a little before eight o'clock to face her destiny awaiting her at the end of this short journey was an expert executioner famed for his skills with a razor-sharp blade he just arrived from France summoned by the king as the last-minute act of mercy for a wife for whom he'd risked everything but whom he ultimately believed had betrayed him the lives of Henry the eighth and Anne Boleyn have been cloaked in historical myths romantic legend cliches and half-truths henceforth my heart shall be dedicated to you alone their turbulent relationship continues to spark fierce debate I am entirely innocent of all these accusations I'll be retracing the footsteps of this extraordinary couple piecing together the fragments of evidence that have survived to discover what brought Henry and Anne together and what ultimately tore them apart we all know how this tragedy plays out but how well do we know its leading characters this is the story of Henry and Anne [Music] my journey begins in the Kent countryside in search of amberlynn [Music] her symbol was a Falken used to extol her purity her chastity and her grace there's a popular myth that Anne was from lowly origins that she was a bit of an upstart but that's far from the truth [Music] this is hever castle the seat of villains if Ambulance childhood home where she spent many 40 years here her parents Thomas and Elizabeth brought up with three children who made it to adulthood the eldest was Mary who fittingly later would be a mistress to hell in the eighth probably the youngest was George who was a great companion to Ann a bright young girl who would one day be queen [Music] her father Thomas Boleyn was a member of the Kings Council and Henry the eighth's ambassador to France and was well educated and from a wealthy privileged family the story goes that she was a free spirit someone who was Sparky intelligent and fun-loving but this is based as much on rumor and speculation as any hard evidence it's so hard to get a sense of the real ambolyn we have a few letters but we don't have any Diaries we don't really have any of the sort of things that we need to get a grasp on what she was really like and yet when you come to a place like this where she actually lived one has this incredible sense that the veil between past and present has grown thin and only time and not space separates us from fortunately a few telling pieces of evidence have survived which give us a rare glimpse into her character this is one of the few surviving possessions of an aunt Eva it's a book of ours it's a beautifully illustrated and illuminated manuscript book of prayers and devotions and these things were immensely popular in Europe at the time and what's really exciting about it is that Ann held it there's something of a real thrilled to be touching it it was probably one of her most treasured possessions what this reminds us is an importance of faith at this time it literally determined people's hours religion marked out their days we often have an idea of an in our heads that's of her being ambitious and worldly and perhaps something of a vixen and yet this is one of her few belongings that we know and can identify it reminds us that Ann is pious and religious but what's even more thrilling about it is that Anne herself wrote in it it's an inscription of French and it says little viondra sure Anne Boleyn the time will come I am Berlin the time will come I and Berlin now we don't know when she wrote this we don't know exactly what she meant by but it seems immensely prophetic and powerful it's on a page where there's a picture of Christ being raised above the earth and then there are these heads at the bottom that look like people coming up out of the grave so perhaps this refers to the day of judgement many people in the 16th century thought that they were living in the end times the last days before the second coming of Christ but perhaps there's a more earthly explanation I wonder if an thought that she was destined for greatness all our doings being ordered by that even if she was ambitious and could never have imagined that her destiny would lie with the most powerful man in the land a married man woman the king we all think we know Henry Lee A's but actually what we conjure up is Henry in the last decade of his life when his obese and savage and ruthless and cruel but he wasn't always like that in fact when he first came to the throne and for the first twenty or so years of his reign he was noted first of all for being really good-looking he had albin hair he was very tall he was six foot two when the average height was five foot seven and a half and he was so good at sport that everyone commented on it he surpassed all the archers of his guard he was a fine Jaster a capital horseman to see him play tennis one Venetian ambassador committed was the prettiest thing in the world [Music] that Venetian ambassador also said perhaps he had a crush that he had a round face so very beautiful that it would become a pretty woman but the thing that was most surprising to me coming across this young Henry was that he was also well loved he was considered to be kind the ambassador said that he was affable and gracious a man who harmed no one Erasmus said that he was a man of gentle friendship and gentle and debate he acts more like a companion than a king Henry was evidently very charismatic when he spoke to you it was like the Sun was shining as a king and a man he seemed to have few flaws but Henry would become tormented by his failure to perform the most basic yet most important task of any monarch it would put him on a collision course with Ann and together they would change England forever [Music] [Music] Henry the eighth wasn't born to be king he'd come to the throne after the death of his father Henry the seventh and only because his older brother Arthur had died suddenly at the age of just 15 within months of becoming King Henry married his brother's widow Catherine of Aragon they were crowned together but with marriage came a huge pressure now he needed to produce an heir to secure the dynasty for the next generation and not just one he needed an heir and despair as his brother's death had indicated Henry would be married to Catherine for over 20 years and for much of that time they were happy together but they were beset by a devastating series of miscarriages and stillbirths [Music] when a son Henry was born he died 52 days later Mary would be the only child to survive [Music] most people at the time saw little value in a female heir as she would likely end up marrying a European prince allowing England to be dominated by a foreign power and France and Spain were a constant threat throughout Henry's reign so siring illegitimate heir became Henry's overriding obsession it was an obsession that would manifest itself in Henry's relationship with God by whom he believed he had been anointed king this lack of a surviving legitimate male heir suggested to Henry the eighth that he was being punished by God and he suspected the reason was that he had married his brother's widow and scriptures backed him up in this in Leviticus it says in chapter 18 verse 16 you shall not uncover the nakedness of your brother's wife it is your brother's nakedness and chapter 20 verse 21 says if a man takes his brother's wife it is impurity he has uncovered his brother's nakedness they shall be childless Henry's theological experts assured him that childless in this instance actually meant no sons [Applause] while England waited for an heir to the throne the teenage Anne had crossed the channel and was embracing all that Europe had to offer after some time in the Netherlands her father found her role in the French Court which would become a defining influence in her life little is known of Anne's 9 years on the continent and yet much has always made of it it certainly was a formative period of her life it was the period when she was educated and people in the sixteenth century and today have speculated in a kind of Prayer nudge-nudge wink-wink kind of way then at the fringe caught particularly she learned the art of love I want to see for myself how and time in France shaped her character I'm traveling to the Chateau de bois one of the palaces where the French King Francis the first held his court I can only imagine what the young man must have felt when she first arrived here I've never been here before it's really exciting Anne would be a lady-in-waiting to the cultured and pious French Queen Claude three things I have stirred a look at this place I was it was the most fashionable court in Europe reflected in its spectacular architecture this is a extraordinary sort of Renaissance style you've got the little classical statues at the top here and all these columns and this amazing spiral staircase [Music] it's so incredibly beautiful this decade [Music] it would have been such an extraordinary time for analyst she was here because she was here with Claude of France who herself was a real patron of the Arts Francis the first her husband with so much for fan of the Renaissance they invited Leonardo da Vinci to France and he was installed just down the road so is every chance that Ann might have met him so basically Ann would have been surrounded by this world of intellectual endeavor and artistic endeavor it must've been such an exciting place to be here at abreast now Ann came of age in France one observer later wrote that no one would ever have taken her to be English by her manners but a native-born French woman what might and have learnt at this Court the first thing of course is French because French was a very important language at that time for something like the English today in the north and court of Europe we just know that she must have been at some very important events such as when the English ambassadors came to France in 1518 or at the field of the clothes of gold because she must there are played an important role as an interpreter between the English and the French she received a European education and she was really different from the young ladies who just stayed in England and also saw firsthand what was required to fulfill the essential role of a queen her mistress Claude gave birth to seven children in eight years including three sons something Henry and Catherine could only dream of Claude was also extremely pious so it's unlikely that her court was a hotbed of promiscuity simcha one of the things that's often said about and time in France with probably little evidence from what you said so far is it there's kind of this idea that somehow she's learnt all about sex while she's been at the court do you think this is at all plausible yeah my opinion would be that it's it's not true but that it may be true we don't know we have no evidence I don't think there was a clear difference at that time between the court of France is the first and the court of Henry the eighth our first surviving letter from Anne was written to her father and shows her aspirations to be accepted in the English Court sir I understand by your letter that you wish that I should be of all virtuous repute when I come to court and you informed me that the Queen will take the trouble to converse with me which rejoices me greatly to think of talking with the person so why is in virtuous Britain at five o'clock by your very humble and obedient daughter and under Boleyn we tend to think about amberlynn in black and white terms so she's either a sexual predator or she's sexually chaste she's either pious or she's worldly she's either innocent or sophisticated and yet actually what I've learned here is that her French education her time at the French Court was such that it prepared her to be a much more complex character than that her 9 years on the continent transformed her from a teenage girl into an extremely desirable woman the Anne that emerges back in England is one who's been shaped by many different influences who is both pious and worldly who's both sophisticated and something of an innocent she's one who can play musical instruments who can sing who can dance who can speak French who is sophisticated and witty who's been exposed to a world of cosmopolitan glamour [Music] and she's such an attractive prospect because precisely because she is so complex the time will come I and Berlin in her early 20s an arrived back in London Henry held court in palaces all over the capital and I've come to one of the few that has survived Hampton Court [Music] I love this place I'm always amazed when I come here imagine what it must be like for an when she came to court she was joining Katharine of Aragon's court she was a lady in waiting and Katherine would have had a number of women serving her and of course it's meant really being a companion to Katharine reading with her so with her being by her side as well as looking after her needs there would have been perhaps 1,200 people at the court at its most about 200 of whom were women Katharine of Aragon's women and of course Catherine's Court was part of the wider Court Henry's called which was probably at most a thousand men a Tudor Court was a heady mix of politics and theatre the core ought to be formal or to be serious or to be religious but it also ought to be as well as all they ought to be a place where people are having fun parties are going on where people are enjoying themselves you don't want to call she's too serious Henry's court is awash with desire and love and sex it's full of young people with lots of time on their hands and not much to do in Henry's Court when people talk about love they're often actually talking about promotion they're often actually talking about politics courtly love this game Henry has lots of Rods but one of them is the leading courtly lover now in order for him to play that role he has to have the leading courtly woman as his object of desire as the person he performed to competition for this role was intense and maybe an aspired to be one of the leading players [Music] Henry did have mistresses not nearly as many as the French king but it was considered to be a normal part of court life especially when Katherine was pregnant because it was considered unlucky in Tudor times to have sex during pregnancy so 1519 for example one of the most beautiful women at the court elizabeth plant had given birth to an illegitimate son Henry Fitzroy his surname means son of the king and of course this indicated to Henry that if Katherine wasn't bearing him sons it wasn't his fault when Anne came to court in 1522 Henry had another mistress someone and knew rather well Henry went out to just one day bearing the motto Elmont Khurana Vivar she has wounded my heart which spoke of this mistress and the she in question was Mary Anne's elder sister we don't know that much about Mary we know that she was beautiful giddy high-spirited she enjoyed the trappings of court life as Anne would later do and we know even less about her relationship with Henry except that it was short-lived the risk of fleeting royal affection Shirley served as a warning to Anne over the coming years [Music] it's one of the most famous love stories in history and yet we know very little about how Henry the 8th and ambulance romance began it's likely that Henry first noticed and during courtly entertains [Music] what is more certain is that their stories came together in early 1526 four years after Anne's arrival at court we know this because Henry was soon writing love letters and giving her romantic gifts one of these supposed presents is housed in the Victoria and Albert Museum in London one of the first gifts that Henry is said to have given Ann is this beautiful miniature gold whistle pendant it's covered with foliage and it's really rather tiny and as well as being a whistle it also has within it a scoop for one's earwax and a pick for one's teeth so it's all about personal hygiene it is the sort of thing that Henry the eighth's might have worn on his clothing in it to the court mask or festivity that will then be given away as a present but above all it tells us a message and the message is clear Henry is saying if you whistle I will come it might have been just another gift from a king to a courtly love mistress but it soon became clear from Henry's own hand that this was something far deeper I and my heart put ourselves in your hands begging you to recommend us to your good grace and not let absence lessen your affection when historians study Henry and Anne much is made of the dark political forces maneuvering behind the scenes to unite or to separate this couple and what is lost amongst his affairs of state is the fact that this was a very real and very passionate love affair between two individuals these are copies of Henry the eighth's letters - and the originals the manuscripts are in the Vatican Library they probably ended up there as part of the evidence against Henry's divorce from Catherine of Aragon when these are quite extraordinary because they show to us these intimate moments these private thoughts this letter for example starts mine own sweetheart this should be to advertise your the great loneliness that I find since your departing first sure you mean the time longer since you're departing now last then I was wanting to do a whole fortnight I think your - my fervency of love causes it for otherwise I would not have thought it possible that for so little a while it should have affected him so much and he includes darling wishing myself especially of an evening in my sweethearts arms it was pretty duckies I trust shortly - kids ducks is the tutor slang for breasts and he says written by the hand of he who was is and shall be yours by his will and lyrics and these sentiments are reiterated elsewhere so here it says for example I would that you were in mine arms or iron yours or I think it long since I kissed you [Music] and of course you get offer to remember me I send you by the bearer of this a buck billed late last night by my own hand hoping when you eat of it you will think of the hunter but perhaps the sweetest one of all is this one which is written in French and he promises an that in the future his heart would belong to her alone would be dedicated to her alone and that he desired that his body could be also and signs off again in the sweetest possible way H and are his initials alternate sure SH is not looking for any other and then draws a love heart and puts a B in the middle so he's like a schoolboy doodling on his exercise book Henry loves Anne I beg also if at anytime before this I have in any way offended you that you would give me the same absolution that you asked assuring you that henceforth my heart shall be dedicated to you alone I wish my person was so - God can do it if he pleases - I pray every day to that end hoping that a length my prayers will be heard [Music] we don't know exactly when these letters were written and sadly we don't have Anne's responses but it's clear that Henry's love for her was becoming ever stronger we know that Ann received many of these letters at Hever Castle she was there in the late 15 20s when she was suffering from sweating sickness and separated from Henry we just don't know what she wrote back [Music] although you want my mistress it has not pleased you to keep the promise you made when I was last with you that is to say to hear good news of you and to have an answer to my last letter sweating sickness was a potentially lethal disease which had spread through Tudor England forcing an to stay away from the king I think because we don't have her responses a lot has been written to fill in that gap and there's been an assumption that somehow she was playing hard to get and manipulating him that he loved her and she was just playing a game but in practice I think ultimately Burson wanted to do what was right and above all Henry of course wanted to have that legitimate heir he could only do that if Anne became his wife there was no point to her becoming pregnant beforehand in fact it would have been detrimental to his cause I think both of them decided to hold out and to wait I don't think we should read into the absence of letters from Anne some sense that she was the one holding all the cards and Henry was just desperate to have her I think the two of them were passionately in love but wanted to do this correctly wanted to be right but the stakes were high Thomas More said politics be Kings games and for the most part played on scaffolds and love that the tutor court was a political affair and was risking everything and it was tough for Henry to he now had to think the unthinkable to divorce Catherine and Marianne [Music] the time will come I and Berlin [Music] no king had ever divorced a queen the issue would become known as the Kings great matter a play later performed at court no doubt with Henry's approval made his feelings about Catherine and clear that means must be done even now is making of a new moon he says it was called the play of the weather and was packed with political rhetoric talking of Jupiter needing a new tighter moon to replace his old leaky new moon I death lay my gown except a few drops that have gone down you get no right walking and embarrassing Catherine the play was a cruel statement of Henry's intent to discard a loyal wife whose only crime had been her failure to provide a male heir sound this new moon shall make a thin spring more in this while than our old moon shall while a mile go a mile but Henry would dramatically underestimate how difficult it would be to end this 20-year marriage legally England was a Roman Catholic country and on religious matters even the king came under the authority of the Pope and he wasn't going to play ball I've come to see a document that testifies to the lengths that Henry would go to get Rome's permission this document dates from 1529 and it was produced at a court that had been convened in order to examine Henry the eighth's marriage to Catherine of Aragon and the possibility of an annulment this document has lots to tell us first of all saying that Henry's you know King of France and Ireland and all the other things that he claims to be and what's really interesting about it is that Henry has gathered all the officials of the church so it mentions Cardinal Thomas Wolsey we've got the Archbishop of Canterbury we've got the bishops of Ely and London and Bath and Exeter it says that Henry feels that this matter of his marriage to Catherine has caused him a real rupture in his tranquility of his mind and his body in other words being married to his brother's widow in this sham marriage as he's claiming it to be has caused such a burden on his soul that his conscience is severely troubled so this is the first time we really have this recognition that something has to change and this document also demonstrates to us the lengths to which he will go to get what he wants among these beautiful seals on the third from the left we have one that has the signature up here of John Fisher Bishop of Rochester but not everything as quite as it seems Rochester was a really important figure in Henry the eighth's life and yet his signature here is not genuine he later claimed that it was a forgery that he'd never signed this document and that he was entirely opposed to this matter of the divorce in the end Fisher would pay the ultimate price for his hostility to Henry and an and for the lengths to which Henry would go in order to be with her Fisher ended up as so many others in Henry the eighth's reign on the scaffold now Henry and Anne's future together seemed to rest on the judgment of the Pope [Music] Henry the eighth was used to getting his own way blocked by the Pope from ending his marriage to Katherine so that he could marry Anne he needed to find another solution and help came from a source close to the king and herself I want to show you another book this is William Tyndale's the obedience of a Christian man from 1528 fact it was a rather battered addition but what it has to say is really important Tyndale was a Protestant and he argues in this book that the supreme authority is Scripture over and above the force authority of the Pope he also adds that it's shameful for princes to be under the authority of the Pope in other words that Kings are the highest authority in the land it says the king is judge over all and over him there is no judge what's really interesting is that an almost certainly gave a copy of this book to Henry and Henry on reading it said this is the book for me and all Kings to read he evidently rather liked it and it gave Henry a solution to his dilemma if he were the supreme religious authority there was no need to get permission from the Pope for his divorce and this idea that actually he was first under God played to his egotism it was something he'd secretly suspected all along and this is another example of the way in which this love affair was having a profound impact this love affair was so important that it would end up changing the very faith of England Henry broke ties with Rome removing the Catholic Church's influence over the country and he set about creating a new Church of England over which he would be the supreme head it was an incredibly brave move that risk-taking England to war with its Roman Catholic neighbors in Europe so Henry desperately needed a powerful ally in December 15:32 he crossed the channel with an to seek approval for their marriage from the French King and they got it they had waited for each other for seven long and difficult years now they had cleared a pathway to marriage and all the evidence suggests that by the time they left Calais and returned to Dover Henry and Anne were lovers [Music] I've always believed that Henry and Anne were passionately in love and if anyone should doubt their feelings for each other there's a remarkable 500 year-old book I don't suppose it was ever meant to be seen by anyone except Henry and Anne in all my years of studying this couple this is the first time I've had a chance to see the real thing so it's a stunning recent turn of the 15th century 16th century probably Flemish illuminated book of ours but really evocative and very special because it provides us with a really intimate glimpse into Henry and Anne's relationship it contains two remarkable written interest in the hand of Henry the eighth and amberlynn that's amazing and this is Henry's here written in his own hand beneath very importantly an illumination of the flayed Christ sometimes refer to his Man of Sorrows or okay homo the kenri is trying to portray himself by association as the lovesick King suffering you know in his heart [Music] if you remember me in your prayers as strongly as I adore you I shall hardly be forgotten for I am yours forever if you remember my love in your prayers as strongly as I adore you then I shall scarcely be forgotten your Henry Rex forever well would you like to see what Ann wrote gosh yes yes I think she chose the page very carefully we can see here an image of the Annunciation so Virgin Mary has been told by the angel that she's going to have a son and I think that this is what Ann is telling Henry yes she is the woman to provide him with the Sun and air that he so desperately wanted and then at the foot of the page we can see she writes to Henry a couplet by daily proof you shall me find to be to you both loving and kind [Music] by daily proof you shall me find to be unto you both loving and kind Wow these words that Henry and Anne wrote to each other remind me of wedding vows Henry declaring that he would be hers forever and Anne promising to give the King the son and heir he desperately wanted now they set about making their union official Henry brought Anne to one of his favorite palaces the palace at Whitehall at the time it was the largest palace in Europe bigger even than the Vatican and this map from 1680 shows something of its large extent it shows that it had a tiltyard tennis courts Gardens a Great Hall and many many apartments it would have been a glorious place for Henry and Anne to celebrate being together Whitehall palace was burnt to the ground in 1689 virtually all Henry's Tudor buildings were destroyed and what little is still left is now only seen by politicians and civil servants working in the Cabinet Office and this is it almost all that remains of that once-mighty palace it's a crying shame because so much of this story would have been played out here at Whitehall including the pinnacle of Henry and Anne's romance their marriage [Music] somewhere near here in January 1533 Henry and Anne were officially married it was a pretty private affair there weren't many people there and so we have few witness accounts of exactly what took place but what we do know is that the couple would have been overjoyed because Anne was pregnant and surely this time it would be a boy [Music] they had defied a pope and redefined a kingdom it seemed that love had conquered all [Music] love had brought Henry and Anne together of body small of power regal no manner fault is in this Vulcan white but what would tear them apart [Music] [Music] you

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Id: 7TA-D9FNlj4

Length: 44min 47sec (2687 seconds)

Published: Fri Mar 13 2020