The Life of Anne Boleyn

hello my name is Gareth Russell and welcome to the life of Anne Boleyn I hope to do a series of short videos on different aspects of history that I've written about previously in the hope that they offer a brief distraction to people who are in lockdown or social distancing over the next few weeks or months these are rough around the edges and ad-hoc obviously in a video overview as well it's not possible to cover every aspect of arms life or her reputation but there may also I hope be a few things which are unfamiliar to you and provides some interest I can't a footnote or EndNote things in a video which I realize could be frustrating for some people if there are some things they're unfamiliar with but do please feel free to comment if you've any questions and I will try to get back to you on that everything I've included in this video is backed up by research and many happy years spent studying the balance and the Tudor monarchy as well whether you are familiar with the Chittor story or here to learn something about an IAM you've heard many times but would like to know more about I hope this rudimentary video entertains and informed Henry Leeds was King of England for thirty-eight years from 1509 until his death in 1547 he inherited the throne from his father Henry the seventh and at the time of his succession young Henry was a handsome and athletic seventeen-year-old things do change over the course of the next four decades his wit increased substantially to give us the images millions are familiar with from the portraits by Hans Holbein painted litter in Henry VIII gives life by the time Henry died he left his country grappling with crippling Envy it was divided internally by sectarian tensions English relations with France and Scotland were in tatters he had also devastatingly mismanaged his government in Ireland Wales and the north of England his most significant policy was of course his break with the Roman Catholic Church in the 1530s Henry made himself head of an independent Church of England living through the birth of the Protestant interpretation of Christianity which began with protests in Germany eight years after Henry became king in England Henry continued to cherish some Catholic traditions even after he rejected the Pope's Authority so there's an ongoing debate among sugar historians today about just how much was Protestant and how much was Catholic in the early church of england however although this was his most important long-term policy by far henry is more famous today because of his matrimonial misadventures he married six times and this is a profile of his second wife Anne Boleyn with whom he became parents to the famous Queen Elizabeth the first Anne Boleyn has been called the most important queen consort this country has ever had by eric ives an academic who wrote two biographies of her one in 1986 and another in 2004 she was however queen consort for only a relatively short period of time her coronation took place in June 15:33 and she was executed three years later in May 1536 Anne who had a sharp and witty sense of humor even in moments of extremis allegedly choked shortly before her execution the meant the people would have no difficulty in finding a nickname for her she would she said be remembered as our salted or an without a head but instead it was the brevity of her time as Queen those three short years between 15:33 and 1536 that led to her most enduring nickname and of the thousand days the sub-aqua endured to become the title of a Broadway play and later an oscar-winning movie starring geneviève Bujold and Richard Burton and which even forty-one years after its release remains praised by many as one of the best movies inspired by the chitters if you have seen out of the thousand days or more recent dramatizations of Anne Boleyn on screen like Natalie dormers performance in the first two seasons of The Tudors you'll be familiar with largely sympathetic depictions of Henry the IPPS second wife these writers presented an as a passionate nuanced determined and even heroic woman who was struck down mercilessly and unjustly by her husband and his advisers but you may be wondering how different they seemed to the much darker an offered in other forms of modern fiction for instance the best-selling novel The Other Boleyn Girl by Philippa Gregory was turned in 2003 into a BBC TV show starring Jodie May and then a Hollywood movie with Natalie Portman playing a or Hilary Mantel's award-winning novels Wolf Hall and its sequel bring up the bodies which saw Claire Foy play an in the BBC limited series adaptation The Other Boleyn Girl presents Anne Boleyn as a moral monster dabbling in witchcraft deceit adultery attempted murder and possibly even incest while wolf hole shows her as a callous intellectually shallow self-obsessed who would have done much worse had she not been stopped by the novel's hero Thomas Cromwell these splits abide Anne Boleyn in modern fiction echo a dichotomy about her that was really present almost from the beginning for instance a Catholic propagandist father Nicholas sander writing in the late 16th century claimed Anne had been a sittest and a wench who had fulfilled the devil's purpose by promoting England's break with the Vatican for others namely Protestant polemicists like John Fox or William Latimer Anne Boleyn was almost a kind of Sint thanks to her generosity to the poor and her defence of evangelicals who wanted to see the Bible translated into English why did they reach such differing conclusions this video is an overview of arms remarkable personality and her equally remarkable life prior to the lid 1530s english parishes were not required to keep records of christenings which means we have no idea at least not precisely when any of Henry the eighth's for English wives were born it seems fitting that our pollen literally came into the world sparking a bit at one point dates of birth as far flung as 1499 and 1512 had been suggested a huge 13 year margin of error today most of Anne's biographers believe she was born around 1501 a minority working off a comment made by one of her daughter's early by aquifers and another by her stepdaughters Liddy and willing argue in favor of the litter date of 1507 so it's still a fairly sizable margin of six years for what it's worth Eileen more personally to the minority of this one I used to be very strongly in favor of 1507 and I still think that 1501 is far far too early but it's a matter of the bit there are good pieces on the respective arguments for the different dates that you can check out if you're interested in the works of Eric Ives Antonia Fraser Alison Weir Claire Ridgeway Emmie license Lauren Mackay Marie Louise bris Hester Chapman and ratha work before we go any further I should just point out that as I said this is being recorded during lockdown in the UK and you might hear some discordant noises that sounds like pots and pans being banged in an ad-hoc military period those are children who live in my neighborhood it's not that I'm being besieged just thought I would put that out there in case she thought that I was in some sort of carnival so today there is a very curious move among some of arms defenders to describe her as a commoner who rose tenaciously to grid Heights from a humble beginning the basis of this is that her father didn't have a full noble title at the time of her birth so he wasn't a barren Viking Earl Marcus or joke however in terms of understanding the interplay of gentry and nobility in the early 16th century that really doesn't seem that important when you know the dynamics of those groups to use more modern parlance arborlon definitely was not entitled to carry a placard reading we are the 99% her family were extremely wealthy and well-connected her father Sir Thomas Boleyn was an esteemed diplomat as well as apparently an athletic joy stir crucially he was a gifted linguist he was trusted on many diplomatic missions abroad firstly by Henry the seventh and then by Henry the eighth's through his mother Lady Margaret Boleyn Thomas was heir presumptive to the Irish earldom of Warland one of the most prestigious and ancient titles in the British Isles ara stock receipts the 1515 will of his grandfather lord warmand makes it very clear I think that Thomas Boleyn was the grandson he wanted to inherit the family title Anne's mother Liddy Elizabeth was said to be very beautiful she was certainly well-connected being a daughter to the Duke of Norfolk this of course made an a Howard on her mother's side one of the most powerful families in the English nobility and the butler family on her father is one of the most powerful in the Irish arms father Thomas Boleyn has a generally dire reputation he's typically presented as a kind of monster really who essentially pimped out his daughters in order to create a career for himself he certainly seems to have had a ruthless or tough streak but no more so than many other sugar nobles which admittedly isn't selling the bar too high he was however widely esteemed by philosophers in Europe including the famous Erasmus of Rotterdam while the dark legend of Thomas Boleyn is firmly entrenched as a part of English myth I can't go too far off topic from this video however if you're interested in the latest research on the Boleyn men and the fact that they were almost nothing like the sycophantic sociopaths of modern legend I can strongly recommend Lauren McKay's new book among the Wolves of court dr. McKay wrote her PhD dissertation on the Berlin man's political career it's groundbreaking well researched and revisionist as is George Boleyn chuder poet courtier and diplomat by Claridge way and clare cherry on the younger generation back to if you ever get a chance to visit Hever Castle in Kent I would strongly recommend that you do it's ex excellent seize me it is excellently curated by its supervisor dr. Bowen Everson and as one of the blend family surviving homes the staff do a wonderful job of preserving the stunningly beautiful castle as a monument to and her family I very fortunately had the opportunity of a private tour last summer I think yes it was last summer and it is just a totally extraordinary place and very moving I think there's still a real sense of it having been a home she had at least four siblings that we know about Thomas and Henry who both sadly died as children and Mary and George who like survived into adulthood although she came to love heaver and to see it as something of a refuge litter in her life and doesn't seem to have spent too much time there when she was a child sometime in the fifteen Tanz Anne's father Thomas was on a diplomatic mission to the Netherlands which was then ruled by the Austrian royal House of Habsburg the Habsburg Emperor had delegated ruling the Netherlands to his capable and cultured daughter at the Archduchess Margaret the Archduchess was so impressed by Thomas Boleyn that after negotiations had ended she offered to take one of his daughters into her household as a ward it was a fairly standard part of early modern era Stowe chronic child rearing to foster a child if possible with an they're well-connected family and to score an invite for a daughter to be educated by the Habsburgs was a coup young Anne went to the art duchesses household which was a cultured and elegant establishment where she seems to have begun developing her interest in the arts she may also have started some Latin lessons there although later in life Anne would complain that her Latin wasn't as good as she would like it to be it's hard to tell her daughter Elizabeth apparently used to pull a trick where she claimed she wasn't very good at a language then stun everyone later by proving herself fluent in it and laughing up the surprised compliments so that might have been a family trip however good Anne's Latin was there is no debate on her French she was fluent to the point that it was later remarked but if you hadn't known better you'd assume that she was French this was largely because after Henri meets younger sister married the King of France English girls were moved to Paris to attend her Anne was to stay in France until the early 1520's attending the pious Queen Claude and coming to greatly admire the King's sister Marguerite who was the patroness of scholars and philosophers in Paris he experimented with the new ideas coming out of the Protestant protests starting in the neighboring German states France of course ultimately remained predominantly Catholic yet it was an exciting stimulating intellectual Wilier for the young Anne Boleyn she returned to England in the 1520's where she joined the royal household Henry the Eighth had been married for over a decade to Catherine of Aragon a pious Spanish princess who was also the Habsburg Emperor's aunt tragically all of Henry and Catherine's children had either died in infancy or in the womb except their precocious daughter Princess Mary at the time the royal couple had first married in 1509 there had been sermons preached against it by the Archbishop of Canterbury who like a very small minority objected to the wedding because Catherine of Aragon had previously been married to Henry's elder brother Prince Arthur who died during an epidemic in 1502 the Biblical Book of Leviticus forbids marriages between a brother and law and his widowed sister-in-law but the Pope intervened at the time to point out that such marriages seem to be encouraged in gitarama me another book of the Bible this tangled web is important for later I promise unlike in France the English Royals were not doubling with new Protestant ideas indeed Henry the eighth was so repulsed by the idea of a split in Christianity that he had even written a book arguing that the Pope's position as head of the church was the rock on which true faith could be built as for arm she became the toast of court society back in England she apparently had a beautiful singing voice which was useful since a lot of upper-class entertainment at the time centred on music she was also an excellent dancer she was a superb dresser with even one of her future enemies calling her the glass of fashion the rose of state she was of medium height with dark hair high cheekbones and beautiful dark eyes which many observers agreed were her best feature beauty is very much in the eyes of the beholder and this is true of hundreds of years after her death the great French novelist Alexandre Dumas repeated a fantastically silly legend that Anne had been is so beautiful that the noblemen of England fought Jules over who could own a vial of her bath water alas like most of Gemma's best stories it doesn't seem to have possessed so much as a nodding acquaintance with reality and I say that as a lifelong fan of his three musketeers one Italian diplomat heard from Parisians who may have known Anne when she was younger that she was very beautiful a Venetian diplomat who saw on in 1532 infamously judged her appearance quite dismissively by saying she is not one of the handsomest women in the world a Cambridge scholar who also met her said with a cocktail of a backhanded compliment that Anne was competent Belle meaning quite or sufficiently beautiful we have sources that say she was beautiful but that some of Henry the its previous love interests like his former mistress Elizabeth Blount had been better-looking another describes her as young and good-looking a family friend said that there were other women at court who were more beautiful so there you have it very beautiful quite beautiful attractive not beautiful beauty in the eye of the beholder of course a very famous legend about Anne Boleyn is that she had six fingers on one hand this is repeated in many popular histories and tour guides but it was actually conclusively disproved in a 1989 book the rise and fall of arborlon published by Cambridge University Press written by Professor Roth of Wernick she compiled all the eyewitness accounts of on Berlin's appearance to show that none of them mentioned the extra finger and that the first mention of it did from the aforementioned propaganda track Retton of 40 years after her death by father Nicholas sander the see'em writer who claimed she was a satanic wench who had a mole the size of a strawberry on her neck a third nipple found the beginnings of a cleft palate the great nephew of one of Anne's liddie's in where tank mentioned that he had heard a story that one of arms fingernails had a kind of dip or line in it although even this is only mentioned in one source so sorry - on the six-fingered three nipples goiter sporting and jaundice Levin sin list but there's no evidence of anything quite so exotic for the real arm in the early 1520's as a young well-connected and well-educated girl there were several discussions of marriage distant Irish cousins had objected to the families world on passing to her English born father and to mend the rift between the two sides of the family there was talk of marrying an to her handsome Irish cousin Lord James Butler she also seems to have been quite seriously infatuated with Lord Henry person the Earl of Northumberland heir who was in love with her and proposed marriage but who eventually caved to family pressure to marry Lord Shrewsbury daughter as originally planned a married poet Sir Thomas Wyatt seems to have been besotted with our and his poems are very beautiful unfortunately people seem to think that every single one of those poems must have been written about an I sometimes imagine the ghosts of other Tudor Court here saying there were other women around at the time you know only one of Wyatts poems Noli Me Tangere is definitely about Anne Boleyn and interestingly for us it points to two things I think unreciprocated infatuation by the poet and crucially that all other suggestions of sitters had fallen away because the King had fallen for arm himself dating this romance is difficult but it seems that after catherine of aragon passed the menopause in about 15-20 for both the king and his chief minister cardinal wolsey considered citing the text from Leviticus to have the royal marriage annulled Henry could then remarry elsewhere to father a son as heir to the throne initially the pro-french cardinal wolsey seems to have suggested that the next queen could be a French princess most likely princess Renee devour these discussions were kept in strictest confidence with even Queen Catherine initially knowing nothing about them how much our new is debatable but it seems likely even at this stage she - like most of the country knew nothing Henry pursued with the intention of making her his next mistress it's worth noting that most sources from the time even those hostile to her do not seem to suggest that she or even her family were exactly delighted by this development we assumed it was a medieval version of honour to be the King's mistress but in fact many great aristocratic families seem to have recoiled at the idea of having anybody else's hand-me-downs which is a horrible phrase if you look at Henry the eighth's other mistresses none of them married any higher than a baron and which was the lowest of the five rungs of the aristocracy and most of the married minor country landowners I think art her family planned a better marriage for her as evidenced by the earlier discussions with James Butler and Henry parsing Ann's father even seems to have taken the extraordinary step of moving her away from the court and back to Hever Castle Henry's love letters tree on which survived do not initially suggest she was particularly enthusiastic and given the difficulties of 16th century trouble moving her far away to camp suggests the Berlin's were seriously trying to get her away from the king added to this was the fact that there is a very very strong possibility and slightly disgusting one that Henry had already slapped with arms married elder sister Mary there are a few modern historians who don't this rumored affair between Henry the eighth and Mary Boleyn ever took place not long after arms rise to prominence her family's enemies even spread the ridiculous accusation that Henry had seduced her mother as well so there are understandable questions about the reliability of the sources regarding Mary most historians do believe a brief fling with the married Mary took place in the early 1520's possibly the lead 15 tens although it's very hard to tell because there's really only one or a stretch to pieces of documentation that unambiguously suggested again that's a matter for another debate what seems clear is that around 15 26 15 27 the berlin's were quite aware that a passing romantic interest from a married monarch was in fact something of a poisoned chalice when it came to success and respectability if Anne became Henry's mistress everything the bullen's subsequently achieved would be snickering Lee attributed to her bedroom antics and even worse if the relationship ended badly they could all be ruined arms refusal to become Henry's mistress was litter interpreted as the result of almost clairvoyant manipulation whereby she manipulated him into proposing to her she would have had to possess nearly psychic powers to do that but it is certain that when Henry seduction transformed into a proposal of marriage an ultimately accepted she still did not want to consummate the match preferring to wait until marriage a decision which became increasingly difficult as Henry's divorce from Catherine of Aragon didn't take the months thought but six years to accomplish referred to at the time as the Kings great matter the royal divorce was technically an annulment since Henry insisted that because of Katharine of Aragon's previous marriage to his late brother their own marriage had always been in contravention of God's law and that God had subsequently punished the king and queen by denying them a healthy son Catherine of Aragon not surprisingly resisted her devotion briefly every single step of the way and her Habsburg relatives made sure that the Pope Clement the seventh would not give King Henry the verdict he wanted there's a tendency in history to let hindsight Riyad for us to assume that things which are clear to us now were clear to people at the time and that certain character traits were eternal rather than developing in arms kiss there is an assumption that she was active dominant in politics from the moment she entered the limelight rather it seems that this developed over time at least initially she seemed quite content to trust in the boasts made by her fiance and his chief minister Cardinal Wolsey namely that she would be queen soon she even refused to involve herself in an early plot to oust Cardinal Wolsey from fever despite the fact that some of the plotters included her father and her uncle the Duke of Norfolk she had some health concerns too and very nearly died during the sweat epidemic of 1528 she had retreated to safety we might tongue-in-cheek call it social distancing at Hever Castle when this mutation of the plague that was famous for the speed with which it could kill caught her for a time it looked very much like an might join the thousands of victims which included her brother or sir William Carey she rallied our glitter used her burgeoning influence to ensure her widowed sister Mary received a generous widowhood settlement as the great mater dragged on ambolyn also began to flex her political muscles she had always been intelligent and with the influence no open to her because of her romance with the king it was perhaps inevitable that she would marry her mind to her new opportunities she did nothing to help cardinal wolsey when he lost the Kings favour a French diplomat reports that she did visit Wolsey when he was ill but that was matters rather than substance because she had clearly convinced herself that Wolsey was the reason for the Pope's dithering upon the divorce her French upbringing came to the fore and her intellectual inquisitiveness resulted in her lending her support to those sympathetic to the new Protestant religion she even had Protestant texts smuggled into the country and took up her cudgels to see him evangelicals and preachers condemned to burn to death for heresy years later this protection was used to cast on as the first great Protestant heroine in England but that again I would argue is hindsight because by the time they were writing this the split between the two strands of Christianity in the West was very clearly defined the theological trenches between Catholicism and Protestantism had been dug but the generation arm belonged to was somewhere between universal Catholicism and a solidified separate Protestant faith this was a generation of spiritual transition so despite her growing animosity towards the Vatican ambolyn continued to the end of her life to hold beliefs which we would today recognize us predominantly Catholic she continued to express an interest in going on pilgrimage to sites associated with veneration of the Virgin Mary she kept since days she believed passionately in the Catholic doctrine of transubstantiation in regards the Eucharist and she believed in purgatory and prayers for the dead some of Anne's prayer books still survived at the one on display at Hever Castle which photographed here is a gorgeous testament to her sense of Christianity and it contains images like the assumption and coronation of the Blessed Virgin Mary as Queen of Heaven which you can see on the right page she did however hold certain evangelical and strongly reformist views as well she came to champion seeing the Bible translated into English rather than that Latin she wanted more money to be diverted from the church to hospitals and schools and she increasingly came to resent the Pope which of course may have been for the obstacles his lack of decision on the divorce put in her way there is evidence that by about fifteen thirty one Anne was mentally struggling with the campaign to make her Queen she once complained in a in a moment of low spirits that she felt her youth slipping away since she knew she couldn't make a good marriage if the one with the king of nigh field to materialize among the men are promoted to positions of prominence none was more significant than the Cambridge intellectual father Thomas Cranmer who became Archbishop of Canterbury in 1532 like an Cranmer fully believed that a king should be head of the National branch of the church and that monarchies should reject the Pope's authority over them harnessing a campaign of preachers and parliamentarians English separation from loyalty to Rome materialized an apparently put some of the books arguing for this split technically illegal in England directly into Henry's hands after a state visit to France in 1532 or more technically to Calais which is no part of France but was then under the control of England and and Henry were almost certainly married according to a chronicler on the feast day of Saint organ Walt so that would put it on November 14th it was at this point apparently that their relationship was at last fully consummated as with most medieval royal weddings there was a second ceremony this one at the Palace of Whitehall on January 25th by which time Anne was pregnant although it's questionable if she knew at that early stage a few weeks later she was still mentioning going on pilgrimage to the grid shrine at Walsingham to ask the Virgin Mary for a child Archbishop Cranmer ruled that the marriage between Henry the eighth's and Catherine of Aragon had never been legal catherine was allowed to keep a large retinue of servants but since she never accepted that she was not legally Queen she was kept away from court and cruelly away from her teenaged daughter Mary and was crowned queen in a glittering ceremony at Westminster Abbey in the early summer and on September 7th she gave birth her first child the Princess Elizabeth a girl unfortunately was not what anybody wanted happily Anne Boleyn was a devoted and affectionate mother as Queen she also had many successes she was extremely generous to charity increasing the royal households contributions to the poor and she also exerted significant influence over foreign policy and ecclesiastical matters she did however injure great difficulties as well which increasingly frayed her temper having been besotted with her for six years while they withered to get married once they were Henry the eighth's lost little time in taking a series of mistresses there was a rift between Anne and her sister Mary went Mary eloped with a commoner and their mother's health deteriorated significantly quite possibly developing tuberculosis the greatest heartbreak for the Queen was a series of miscarriages she lost a child carried nearly fully to term within the summer 15:34 there is some evidence to suggest that there may have been a miscarriage at a very early stage of the pregnancy in 1535 and without question she also lost a son in January 1536 which resulted in Henry screaming at her calling it her fault while she spent a spell of time in bed recovering what what seems to have been a particularly hideous and physically traumatizing miscarriage Queen Anne was strident outspoken clever well-informed and ambitious she had also come to the consorts throne at a time of unprecedented change and to many she was both the chief beneficiary and proponent of the country's break with Rome thus both her circumstances and her personality won her many enemies there was a small conservative cabal at court who remained loyal to her predecessor Catherine of Aragon chief among them being the Habsburg Emperor's ambassador in Eustis ship we he nonetheless was magnanimous enough to describe an as having the courage of a lion no such magnanimity km from the jig of Suffolk who despised her although and scored the comeback of the century when the Dukes wife died suddenly and he caused a scandal by marrying his son's fiancee Anne and her clink had a field day apparently with quips at the Jukes expense she also quarreled with her uncle the Duke of Norfolk which was not exceptional since many of his relatives seemed to her fine the warrior Duke insufferable the Duke of Norfolk complained the Queen Anne spoke to him worse than she went to one of her dogs which was accurate if not in the way he intended since she loved her dogs and she hated him for someone so intelligent Anne had recurring moments of emotional obtuseness when it came to her stepdaughter Mary Catherine of Aragon died most likely as a result of cancer in 1536 and even before that Anne seemed to think that she could win over Katherine's daughter to her side why she ever thought that Mary would accept her as queen is baffling no matter how much charm she initially poured out in pursuit of winning her over and sincerely seems to have wanted Mary Tudor's approval there is a mortifying anecdote that one day when the two women were attending Mass at the same church one of Anne's ladies-in-waiting saw the ex Princess genuflecting to the altar which she mistook as a curtsy in the exiting Ann's direction the Queen in her turn was delighted when the lady in waiting told her this and she sent a friendly message to teenage Mary who replied that she couldn't have been curtseying to the Queen since the only lawful Queen in England her mother Catherine who was miles away instead she had been genuflecting to God my Maker and hers but if I'm who Mary described pointedly as the King's mistress wanted to put a good word in for her with Henry that she would be very grateful and was furious and retaliated by cheerleading Mary's devotion which included having her moved to live as a dependent in the household of her infant half-sister Anne's child Elizabeth in one particular fit of pique and remarked that she would like to box Mary's ears the most significant enemy army was Thomas Cromwell who had replaced Cardinal Wolsey as Henry the eighth's chief advisor Cromwell and Anne had both supported the break with Rome but after the policy widened to include the closure of England's Catholic convent and monasteries the Queen and the politician began to diverge Cromwell shrewd and ruthless an organizational genius had also made overtures of friendship to Henry's latest mistress Jane Seymour even offering the Seymour's the use of his apartments matters came to a head when Queen Anne sisters that the wealth confiscated from the closing monasteries and nunneries should be put into funding new hospitals and schools while Cromwell insisted that it was all directly deposited into the royal treasury at Easter and had one of her chaplains publicly preach a sermon which took assets text the biblical story of Queen Esther a pious and holy queen who persuaded her husband to abandon human his chief minister a greedy extortioner persecuting a religious minority the chaplain may have been preaching about the Old Testament but it was not hard to see who he or through him his royal employer was alluding to what happened next is more easily explained than why Ann was arrested at Greenwich palace around lunchtime on May 2nd 1536 she was told that she was accused of committing adultery with a palace musician a servant called Mark Smeaton and also with one of her husband's closest friends Henry Norris Smeaton had confessed although as a commoner he could be tortured and contemporary reports indicate that he may have been grievously rocked on Cromwell's orders Norris had been offered his life if he confessed but he had refused insisting that he and I were innocent the counselors also told the Queen that she would be accused of adultery with a third man whose identity would be revealed to her litter and like Henry Norris protested her innocence and was taken by River to be imprisoned at the Tower of London as Queen she was not put in a dungeon but kept in the Royal Apartments which had been redecorated for her coronation three years earlier she was forbidden from sending messages to her friends or family and she was attended by servants who were loyal to Cromwell the list of her accused lovers soon expanded not from two to three but two to seven they included her old admirer the poet Sir Thomas Wyatt he was also a friend of Cromwell's who allegedly told Wyatt at the time of his arrest not to worry and that everything would be all right the Queen's friend and Ally Sir Richard Page was also arrested neither he nor Wyatt were brought to trial and true to thomas Cromwell's promise both were later released which led to the suspicion then and later that they had been arrested to neutralize two of the Queen's supporters but also as red herrings to make Cromwell's investigations of the others seem more genuine and credible a prominent landowner Sir William Brereton who had been a thorn in Cromwell side for years was also arrested as was the handsome playboy Sir Francis Weston and most horrifyingly so too was Anne's brother George Boleyn Lord Rochford who was accused of committing incest with her despite the historical legend she was not accused of witchcraft the five-man Rochford Norris Weston and Brereton Ann Smith were find guilty at Short trials and beheaded outside the Tower of London on May 17th the Queen rebutted the charges against her at her trial two days earlier was fine guilty swore on the Eucharist and damnation of her soul that she was innocent during her final vows and was beheaded by a French swordsman at the Tower of London on May 19th the next day Henry was betrothed to Jane Seymour and they married ten days after that on May 30th why this truly extraordinary sequence of events happened is still a matter of debate and I'll try and give you the different theories as best I can as concisely and fairly as I can before going forward I should just explain the reasons for this to be it is that much of the evidence has been lost in the intervening centuries quite a bit of it frustratingly for historians particularly some of the trial records and Anne's itinerary in the months preceding her death were among the treasure trove of documents lost about 200 years in there and an accidental fire at the cotton library in London what Henry Lee it did in publicly slaughtering his wife was unprecedented and some modern observers for reasons best known to themselves cry context for this moral turpitude but there's no context which adequately explains it the public execution of a disgraced queen was hardly standard practice in European politics at the time it hadn't happened in any other contemporary monarchy nor had it happened in the English past when eleanor of aquitaine for instance was accused of betraying her husband henry ii by plotting a rebellion she had been imprisoned french princesses who had been accused of adultery were forced to perform million public periods of penance English Royals had fallen violently in military campaign before harold ii richard the lionheart and richard the third the deposed and inconvenient had disappeared almost certainly to be quietly murdered as hard edward ii richard ii Henry the sixth and Edward v Henry the fourth widow Joanna of Navarre had been accused of witchcraft so she could be stripped of her fortune and then imprisoned but the public execution of an anointed Queen was unheard of so what happened what reasons can the surviving evidence which is fragmentary but still substantial give us for explaining why this terrible fiat landed on Anne Boleyn and there was five men in May 1536 explaining it has excited scholars for years prompting the Oxford historian Stephen gun to quip that the debate over Hans downfall constitutes academic trench warfare the easiest explanation of course was that Anne must have been guilty us hillary Montell the best-selling novelist poet she must have given the appearance of being guilty of something in 1536 mattel is the author of the wolf whole trilogy the only historian who believes this in terms of being a specialist currently is professor George W Bernhard who articulated it in a 90 91 paper up then again in his 2010 biography and belen fatal attractions published by Yale University Press professor Bernard argues but although many of the charges against a seemed preposterous and it is highly unlikely that she committed incest with her brother or adultery with all of the men accused Bernard says quote it remains my hunch that Ann had a date committed adultery with Norris probably was smitten possibly with Western and was then the victim of the most appalling and bad luck this view however as I said is very much in the minority both nye and at the time a large part of Bernards evidence for his theory rests on a very long poem written by a French bishop who was in London in 1536 but never saw except from a distance one crucial piece of evidence against the guilty theory is the trial itself in which there were at least a dozen errors in the indictments against her in which either she or her alleged lovers were nowhere near either the place they were allegedly having sex in or one another even as was wracked by uncertainty in her rooms in the Tower of London her behavior before her judges was calm the Spanish ambassador applauded her answers in his letters saying that she had rebutted all the charges against her very convincingly King Henry's own joyous repulsive behavior during his wife's downfall which included banqueting and feasting in nighttime river parties while the Queen was imprisoned was described at the time with Magisterial understatement as ringing badly in the ears of the public I would say it does not exactly strike a convincing note to posterity either especially when you compare this nautical River bind good times to Henry's Ridge and humiliation when he believed that his fifth wife Catherine Howard had taken a lover a few years later dr. Greg Walker does not believe I was guilty but he thinks that her flirtatious aren't going to give credibility to the charges against her the next theory is one you might be familiar with us it was included as a storyline plot point in the other Boleyn Girl and also in season two of The Tudors so it has quite a widespread reach through popular culture it comes from a theory put forward in the 1980s by Rafa Warnock who argued the arms final miscarriage in January 1536 held the key professor Warnock argues the fetus are lost had been partially deformed which resulted in the Queen at being suspected of witchcraft and those around her including her homosexual brother Lord Rochford and his lover the musician Mark Smeaton of being sexual deviants who had according to the prejudices of the time consorted with the Queen in other so-called unnatural activities resulting in the monstrous demonic birth as they would have seen it however there is very little evidence to support the idea that George Boleyn Lord Rochford was homosexual and almost nothing in the way of concrete evidence to clinch the idea that the King and queens lost child in January 1536 was somehow deformed the most popular theory put forward initially by the lid and must much best excuse me professor Eric Ives and expanded upon by others brilliantly is that Anne's death to quote Ives is explained by what happened not in the bedroom but in the corridors of power in this version of events are Boleyn was victim of a coup with Thomas Cromwell moving to destroy her before she could destroy him Cromwell also decided to destroy other enemies at court by accusing some of arms most influential supporters of being her lovers then selecting a suitably weak and malleable servant like Mark Smeaton who he could torture into providing the necessary fig-leaf of legal evidence needed to begin the arrests he then concocted the charges against arm which were in Simon Shamas memorable turn of phrase one part pornography one part paranoia to make sure no one would be tempted to speak out in her defense some proponents of this argument even believe that Cromwell was so sufficiently ruthless and persuasive that he actually managed to convince Henry that Anne was guilty thus completing his crew and emerging from it as the Kings unquestioned closest advisor finally and perhaps most chillingly of all is the conclusion of two of Henry's modern biographers JJ's Cara's brick and Derek Wilson which holds that Henry knew his wife was innocent that he wanted to be rid of her and then he alarge his underling Cromwell to organize the case against her once Henry's own obsessive possessive fascination with arm finally entered acid so often does in the most tragic of cases with quote devastating infatuation turning into bloodthirsty loathing for reasons we will never completely know that's from stars Brooke and Wilson writes that the extremely cumbersome and illegal means used to bring abdon some high whiff of Henry's own cumbersome attempts to secure his first divorce putting him at the center of what happened in 1536 not Thomas Cromwell it was neither on nor Cromwell he murdered only Henry in 2014 I wrote a book called a history of the English market in which I said really ever calling it a love affair between Henry and arm is questionable I think even from the beginning Henry have this slightly unhinged possessive obsessive attitude to her and we know from many kiss many tragic cases that sometimes that really obsessive love is a hair's breadth away from turning into destructive hatred and I think to me that is what happened but I have hopefully given you an overview of all the different views I do think Cromwell had a rule a huge role in it I think he was allied kind of free rein to go after her but that some in some way the order had to have come from Henry so he he seems to have a large his servants and underlings to kind of pursue their own agendas as long as they did his work for them I'm being very reductive and I huge day bid and sugar historiography but hopefully that gives them a decent overview nine years ago I wrote a series of articles on our villains final days alive I tried to make them informed and artistically enjoyable readable it was probably the best way I informed and readable was what I was aiming for whether I did that is debatable but those articles really do have such a special place in my heart because they unexpectedly kick-started my career and help lead me to my wonderful agent historians are still us hopefully you'll have seen with this they are still divided between sympathy or suspicion when it comes to Boleyn I hope I have been honest in this video that my own views of Harleen much more towards sympathy and admiration while being fair to the views of colleagues who are critical of her whose work I would encourage you to read if you're interested too because honest well formed a bit is for me one of the best parts of history in AD those articles on ambulance execution I thought back on what it is about her story that keeps pulling us back in what continues to make the story of the thousand day Queen fascinating and I would like to share that paragraph with you as much as I might change certain things with that series when I look back on it this in a nutshell is why I believe Anne Boleyn continues to intrigue because the arc of her life is quite simply one of the greatest stories in European history no one would dare write a story like arms and still hope to make in half as interesting or half as believable as what really transpired born into a life of aristocratic privilege educated at the courts of two of the most powerful and magnificent empires in Christendom nurtured in the decadent world of the European aristocracy's she had been a dazzling debutante an accomplished courtier a talented musician and the muse of poets songwriters and clearance glamour sophistication charm and charisma had been hers in abundance then she had captured the attention of the most powerful sovereign ever to reign in the British Isles for her consumed by obsession and a desire to possess he had turned the world upside down and the continent had echoed to the side of the roar she had created in her homeland at long last she had been crowned queen in splendor in a dress shimmering with a conscience worth of jewels and pearls Archbishop's had knelt before her foreign rulers had showered her with gifts Evangelicals had celebrated her as God's chosen nymph and for a moment the world had been hers then with a gradient of catastrophe so unparalleled it still has the power to boggle the imagination she was dragged from her throne at a thousand rimmed Palace to be left kneeling alone in the sawdust witting for a sword to strike at the neck that had once inspired poetry and glittered with diamonds and in the final crowning touch to the tragedy of her life the most gallant knight in all the lot for want of a better phrase Henry Norris had laid down his life for her rather than besmirch her honour neither in Sparta Troy Babylon Alexandria or Camelot have there ever been a story quite like the Boleyn tragedy nor would there ever be again a little flurry but I hope it still works a man who witnessed arms composure at her execution wrote the Queen died boldly God took her to his rest I think that's beautiful succinct epitaph I'd like to thank you for your time and listening to this I really hope it's been halfway interesting I would thoroughly recommend the works of other historians if you're interested in our story I can leave a list below of books you might like most importantly this is going out during the spring of Kovan 19 so I would most especially like to wish you all a very safe few weeks thank you

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Length: 63min 45sec (3825 seconds)

Published: Wed Apr 01 2020