Anne Boleyn

May 19, 2025, marked 489 years since her execution.

Every anniversary of her execution, her ghost is seen in the Tower.

After the coronation of Anne's daughter, Queen Elizabeth I, Anne's image was rehabilitated. Anne Boleyn was perceived as a heroine of the English Reformation, a martyr who suffered from a conspiracy of supporters of Mary Tudor and her mother. According to John Foxe, Anne saved England from the evil influence of Catholicism and contributed to the strengthening of the monarch's power. Despite the ambiguous assessment of her contemporaries, Anne remained in memory as one of the most influential queen consorts in English history.

On May 17, 1536, William Kingston, Constable of the Tower, reported that Anne was ready to die. Henry VIII commuted the death penalty by burning to beheading by sword, for which an experienced swordsman from Saint-Omer, France, was called in.

It is believed that in anticipation of her imminent death in prison, Anna composed the poem "Oh Death, Rock Me Asleep", but the authorship is still controversial.

On Friday, 19 May 1536, shortly before dawn, Anne attended mass in Kingston's presence and swore that she had never been unfaithful to the king, repeating her oath twice before and after receiving Holy Communion. In the morning, Anne Boleyn, accompanied by two of her maids of honour, mounted the scaffold erected opposite the White Tower and made a short speech. The ermine robe was removed and Anne's hair was tucked under her coif. After a brief farewell to her maids of honour and a prayer, she knelt down and was blindfolded by one of her attendants. Her last words were: "O Lord, have mercy on me... To Christ I commend my soul. Jesus, receive my soul." The executioner severed her head with one blow. The execution was witnessed by Thomas Cromwell, Charles Brandon, 1st Duke of Suffolk, the king's illegitimate son Henry FitzRoy, the Lord Mayor of London and other members of the royal council.

Anne Boleyn was buried in an unmarked grave in St Peter's Chapel in Chains, where other Tower prisoners were also buried, including Thomas More, John Fisher, Thomas Cromwell, Catherine Howard, and Lady Jane Grey. Anne's remains were discovered during the rebuilding of the chapel in 1876 during the reign of Queen Victoria and marked with a plaque. During the reburial, none of the flaws that Nicholas Sandler wrote about, such as the six fingers on her hand, were found.

Anne's brother George was arrested on charges of incest with the queen and treason. On 2 May 1536, Anne Boleyn was arrested and taken to the Tower. She travelled by boat along the same route as she had taken to her coronation, but was accompanied in the boat by Thomas Cromwell on her way to the Tower.

According to biographers, Anne understood that the trial was a show trial and was prepared for the death sentence. After Cromwell's death, his papers contained the last letter written by Anne to the king on May 6, 1536, from the Tower, but never delivered to Henry. In the letter, Anne assures the king of her loyalty, asks for an open and fair trial, which will certainly confirm her innocence, and begs to release all the innocent. Historians still argue about the authenticity of the document and the authorship of the letter, the original of which has not survived.

On 12 May 1536, the four accused men were brought to trial; Weston, Brereton and Norris publicly protested their innocence, and only Smeaton, after being tortured, pleaded guilty. Three days later, Anne and George Boleyn were tried separately before a jury of 27 peers. Anne was found guilty of adultery, incest and treason. Under Edward III's Treason Act, infidelity to the queen was a form of treason because it threatened the queen's right to the throne, and was punishable by hanging, drawing and quartering for a man, and burning alive for a woman. Henry Percy, 6th Earl of Northumberland, who was on the jury that unanimously found Anne guilty, collapsed after the verdict was announced; he died without issue eight months later.

On 17 May 1536, Cranmer declared Anne's marriage to the king null and void; on the same day, George Boleyn and the others accused were executed.

Historian Eric Ives believes that Anne Boleyn's downfall and execution may have been engineered by her former ally Thomas Cromwell. He had previously supported Anne, sharing her reformist views, but increasingly felt that she threatened his power. Cromwell was also one of Cardinal Thomas Wolsey's confidantes and witnessed his fall from grace. Fearing that he would suffer the same fate, Cromwell eventually became Anne's rival for influence with the king. According to the notes of the imperial ambassador Eustache Chapuys and his letters to Charles V, Cromwell also sought an excuse to overthrow Anne, as she was arguing with him over the distribution of confiscated church revenues. In her opinion, the income should be invested in charity and the development of education, and she also supported the alliance with France, while Cromwell insisted on keeping the money in the treasury, with the appropriation of a certain share for himself, and on the alliance with Charles V.

Meanwhile, a number of other historians do not support this version. In order to remove Anne and clear the way for a new marriage, the queen was accused of treason and adultery against the king, for which she faced the death penalty. The queen's friends were declared lovers - Henry Norris, William Brereton, Francis Weston, Mark Smeaton and Anne's brother - George, Viscount Rochford.

On 30 April 1536, the king's servants arrested and tortured Anne's musician, Mark Smeaton, who denied any connection with the queen, but later retracted his initial testimony and confessed (possibly for the promise of freedom) that he was her lover. Another accused, Henry Norris, was interrogated on 1 May 1536 by Henry VIII, and arrested on 2 May.

Being of noble birth, he was not tortured. He claimed that the queen was innocent. Two days later, Sir Francis Weston and William Brereton were arrested, as well as Sir Thomas Wyatt, who was rumored to have had a romantic relationship with the queen before her marriage to the king. Thomas Wyatt was saved by the intercession of Thomas Cromwell.

On January 8, 1536, news arrived of Catherine of Aragon's death. The very next day, Anne and Henry VIII dressed in yellow (in England, yellow is the color of joy and celebration, and in Spain, Catherine's homeland, it is the color of sorrow, in addition to black). It is likely that the royal couple wanted to express their condolences in this way.

Despite her pregnancy, the queen was well aware of the danger of her situation if she failed to bear the king a son. After Catherine's death, Henry would be able to marry again, without the risk of the marriage being declared disputable. In addition, at this time, Henry VIII began to pay excessive attention to the queen's lady-in-waiting, Jane Seymour.

On the day of Catherine of Aragon's burial in Peterborough Cathedral, Anne suffered a miscarriage. This may have been due to her intense concern for her husband, who had fallen from his horse at a tournament five days earlier and remained unconscious for several hours afterward[87], perhaps due to a nervous breakdown that occurred when she saw Jane Seymour sitting on the king's lap. Whatever the reasons, the stillborn male child was considered by the Spanish ambassador Eustache Chapuys to be the beginning of the end of the royal marriage.

After Anne's recovery, Henry claimed he had been forced into the marriage against his will by witchcraft. His new lover, Jane Seymour, was given a court apartment.

In 1534, Anne became pregnant again. The King was expecting an heir and showered his beloved with gifts. Anne Boleyn spent huge amounts of money on dresses, jewelry, hats, riding gear, horses, furniture, etc. Many residences were renovated to suit her and Henry's tastes.[85] Towards the end of 1534, Anne miscarried. Tensions between the spouses mount, and Henry begins to discuss the possibility of divorce with his confidants. But after a period of estrangement, he returns to Anne again, the couple spend the summer of 1535 together, and by the fall of 1535, Anne announces that she is pregnant.

The situation in the country worsens, Henry VIII resorts to harsh tyranny, for which Anne is often accused. Public opinion blames the queen for her inability to give the king an heir.

The new queen had a much larger retinue than Catherine. More than 250 servants attended to her personal needs, from priests to stable keepers. More than 60 ladies-in-waiting attended to the queen and accompanied her to social events. She hired several personal priests, chaplains, and spiritual advisers. One of them was Matthew Parker, who later became the founder of Anglicanism during the reign of Anne's daughter, Queen Elizabeth I.

In 1534, Rome issued a papal bull declaring the validity of the king's marriage to Catherine and ordering Henry VIII to return to his lawful wife. In response to the bull, Parliament passed the First Act of Succession in March 1534, which confirmed the king's supremacy over the church, declared Princess Mary, born of Henry's sinful cohabitation with Catherine of Aragon, illegitimate, and made Elizabeth, daughter of Anne Boleyn, the only legitimate queen, the heir to the throne. Henry demanded that his subjects acknowledge the document; all who refused—notably Sir Thomas More, John Fisher (Bishop of Rochester), and others—were imprisoned in the Tower for treason and executed.

A little later in 1534, Parliament passed the Act of Supremacy, which declared Henry head of the Church of England. The break with Rome was complete.

Before and after her accession to the throne, Anne supported and patronized evangelicals and those who were willing to develop the ideas of William Tyndale. She entrusted the care of her daughter to one of the Protestant reformers, Matthew Parker, before her death.

The day before, Anne had taken part in a ceremonial procession through the streets of London, seated in a palanquin trimmed in white and gold and supported by two saddle horses, dressed in white damask down to the ground, while the barons of the Cinque Ports held a canopy of gold brocade over her head. According to the chronicler Edward Hall, Anne was dressed in white, wearing a gold crown and her long dark hair loose, in keeping with tradition. The public greeted the future queen with restraint.

Anne Boleyn was crowned queen consort on 1 June 1533 at Westminster Abbey. She was the last queen consort of England to be crowned separately from her husband. Unlike other queen consorts, Anne was crowned with St Edward's Crown, which had previously only been used to crown monarchs. Historian Alice Hunt suggests that this was done deliberately, as Anne was already visibly pregnant and it was assumed that she was carrying the heir to the throne.

In response to the king's marriage and Anne's coronation, Pope Clement VII excommunicated the king on 11 July 1533.

After the coronation, Anne retired to the king's favourite residence in Greenwich to prepare for the birth of her first child. On 7 September 1533, between three and four o'clock in the afternoon, Anne gave birth to a daughter, who was christened Elizabeth, most likely in honour of one of her grandmothers, Elizabeth Howard or Elizabeth of York. The birth of her daughter was a serious disappointment to her parents, who were expecting a son. Almost all the court physicians and astrologers predicted the birth of a son, and the King of France was to be the godfather. The traditional tournament in honour of the birth of the heir was cancelled.

Anne feared for her newborn daughter's position in connection with the possible claims of Mary Tudor, who, after the recognition of her mother's marriage to the king as annulled, was deprived of the status of princess and recognized as a bastard. Henry VIII heeded his wife's fears, depriving Mary of her retinue and sending Elizabeth to Hatfield House with her own court.

Anne's debut at the court of Henry VIII took place at the festivities in honor of the Spanish ambassadors on March 4, 1522, at York Place Palace in the masquerade performance of Chateau Vert (from French - "Green Castle"), where Anne played the role of "Perseverance". In dresses of white satin with gold ribbons, Anne, her sister Mary Boleyn, the king's younger sister Mary Tudor and other ladies of the court performed a dance. Anne quickly gained popularity at court; the courtiers noted the elegance of her clothes, pleasant voice, ease of dance performance, free knowledge of French, good performance on the lute and other musical instruments, energy and cheerfulness. Some noted that Anne enjoyed the attention from admirers around her, but kept a cool head, fearing the fate of her sister Mary Boleyn, who was rumored to have had an intimate relationship with King Francis I and a number of French courtiers, and upon returning to the English court became the mistress of King Henry VIII.

In an attempt to settle the dispute over the Earl of Ormond, Anne was summoned to England to marry her Irish cousin on her father's side, James Butler, 9th Earl of Ormond, a young man several years her senior who was living at the English court. Thomas Butler, 7th Earl of Ormond, had died in 1515, leaving his daughters Margaret Boleyn and Anne St Leger as co-heirs. In Ireland, the 3rd Earl of Ormond's great-great-great-grandson Sir Piers Butler (1467–1539) contested the will, declaring himself Earl of Ormond and seizing the Butlers' Irish estates. Thomas Boleyn believed that the earldom should have passed to him as the eldest son of Thomas Butler's eldest daughter, and so he complained to Thomas Howard, 3rd Duke of Norfolk, who in turn complained to King Henry VIII. The King did not want discontent in Ireland over a dispute among the nobility, and proposed to resolve the issue by marrying Anne Boleyn to Piers Butler's son, James Butler. The plan failed: perhaps Sir Thomas wanted a better match for his daughter, perhaps he dreamed of acquiring the title for himself, or perhaps Anne herself was opposed to a marriage of convenience. Regardless of the reasons, the engagement negotiations were terminated.

In 1520, after unsuccessful negotiations between Henry VIII and Francis I, relations between the two countries deteriorated; in January 1522, Anne sailed from Calais, summoned by her father to England.

Due to the change in the political situation and the conclusion of an alliance with France, in 1514 Thomas Boleyn organized Anne's move to Paris, where she and her elder sister Mary were enrolled in the retinue of Princess Mary Tudor, sister of King Henry VIII, who was to marry the King of France Louis XII in October 1514. In 1515, Louis XII died, and the Dowager Queen Mary Tudor returned to England, but Anne Boleyn lived and served at the French court of King Francis I for about 7 more years as a maid of honor to Queen Claude of France, the eldest daughter of Louis XII and Anne of Brittany. At the court of Queen Claude, Anne completed her education, studying the French language, French culture, dancing, etiquette, playing musical instruments, showing interest in art, fashion, literature, music, poetry, philosophy of religion and learning the intricacies of high society flirting.

It is believed that Anne may have been acquainted with the sister of King Francis I, Margaret of Navarre, a patroness of poets, scholars and humanists of the Renaissance. It is likely that Margaret herself or her circle could have influenced Anne's interest in poetry, literature and reformist ideas in religion. Her stay in France made Anne a devout Christian in the new tradition of Renaissance humanist ideas. Anne did not know Latin well, so, having studied at the French court and being influenced by the evangelical texts of French humanism, she defended the need for the Bible in the national language. Despite her reformist position in relation to the papacy, which corrupted Christianity with corruption, her conservative religious beliefs are manifested, for example, in her devotion to the Virgin Mary. Years later, Anne would bring new trends to the life of the courtiers at the English court of Henry VIII and would have a certain influence on the king's relations with the papacy.

A fervent Catholic, Sanders held Anne responsible for Henry VIII's rejection of the Catholic Church, so such a description of her appearance could have been intended to "demonize" the image. Eric Ives calls this phenomenon the "monster legend" of Anne Boleyn. Despite the fact that details such as an extra finger or a thickening on her neck were fictitious and appeared several decades after her death, they formed the basis for subsequent references to Anne's appearance even in modern publications. Thus, the writer George Wyatt, who talked to Anne's former lady-in-waiting about her, noted in his notes from 1590 that she had "another nail barely visible from under the nail on one of her fingers" and mentioned several more moles, "such as are found even on the clearest skin." However, the imperial ambassador Eustache Chapuis, who knew Anne well and did not feel any sympathy for her, did not mention such flaws in her appearance in his reports.

When describing Anne Boleyn's appearance, eyewitnesses noted her great attraction to others, but judgments about her attractiveness differ. She was not considered a beauty according to the beauty standards of her time, which favored fair-haired and blue-eyed women. Anne was dark-skinned and dark-eyed, with thick dark hair. According to John Barlow, one of Thomas Boleyn's chaplains, she was much less beautiful than her sister Mary or the king's mistress Bessie Blount, but at the same time "very eloquent and gracious, and not uncomely". The Venetian memoirist Marino Sanudo, who saw Anne in Calais in October 1532 during the meeting of Henry VIII and Francis I, called her "not the most beautiful woman in the world; she has a medium figure, a dark complexion, a long neck, a wide mouth, not a high bosom, and beautiful dark eyes." The French poet Lancelot de Carle described her as "a beauty with a superb figure and even more beautiful eyes", adding that "by her manners and behavior you would never have taken her for an Englishwoman, she seemed to be a native Frenchwoman". In a letter received by Martin Bucer from Simon Grinet in September 1531, Anne was described as "young, beautiful, dark".

The most striking, but also the least reliable, description of Anne comes from the English Catholic propagandist and polemicist Nicholas Sanders, who wrote in 1585, almost half a century after her death: "Anne Boleyn was of a fair stature, with black hair, an oval face, of a sallow complexion, as if she had had 'jaundice.' They say she had a tooth under her upper lip, and six fingers on her right hand. She had a 'pilar cyst' under her chin, so that to hide the defect she wore a gown with a high collar... She was comely, with beautiful lips."

Anne, her sister and brothers spent their childhood at Hever Castle in Kent. Her early education was typical for women of her class. In 1512, Thomas Boleyn was sent on a diplomatic mission to Brussels by Henry VIII. He made a favourable impression on the regent Margaret of Austria, daughter of Maximilian I, Holy Roman Emperor, and she did not refuse his request to accept his daughter Anne into her retinue. Anne arrived at Margaret's court in 1513, and Margaret, despite her young age (under 12 at the time), was captivated by the talents of la petite Boulain. Her further education included arithmetic, family genealogy, grammar, history, reading, spelling, as well as household management, needlework, lessons in foreign languages, dancing, singing, music and good manners. Like any girl from a noble family, she learned horse riding, archery, hunting, playing cards, chess and dice.

Anne Boleyn was born to Sir Thomas Boleyn (later Earl of Wiltshire and Ormond) and Lady Elizabeth Howard. Thomas Boleyn was a gifted diplomat who spoke several foreign languages, which allowed him to gain the favor of King Henry VIII Tudor, who repeatedly sent him on diplomatic missions abroad. Elizabeth Howard, who came from an old aristocratic family, was in the retinue of two queens, Elizabeth of York and Catherine of Aragon.

Both the Howards and the Boleyns were descendants of King Edward I Plantagenet, but the latter's rise to nobility began around the mid-15th century, when Anne's great-grandfather, Sir Geoffrey Boleyn, moved from Sault, Norfolk, to London, made a fortune in trade, and married the daughter of Lord Hoo and Hastings. Geoffrey himself traced his lineage back to the small landowners and farmers who had lived in Sault since the mid-13th century. The Boleyns' entry into the gentry was made possible by successful mercantile pursuits and advantageous marriages. Sir Geoffrey's second son and heir, William, made an equally impressive match by marrying a wealthy Irish Butler heiress, Lady Margaret, daughter of Thomas, Earl of Ormond. Their eldest son Thomas followed this family tradition by marrying Lady Elizabeth, daughter of Thomas Howard, Earl of Surrey (later 2nd Duke of Norfolk) and Elizabeth Tilney, around 1498.

The Boleyns lived at their family estate, Blickling Hall, in Norfolk, East Anglia, 15 miles (24 km) from Norwich. By the time of Anne's birth, the Boleyns were considered one of the most respected members of the English nobility. According to Eric Ives, she was certainly of nobler descent than Jane Seymour, Catherine Howard, and Katharine Parr, the three other English wives of Henry VIII.

mentioning that Anne was twenty when she returned from France.

Warnick disputes these arguments, arguing that numerous spelling and grammatical errors indicate that the letter was written by a child, and also notes that in her correspondence with Thomas Boleyn, Margaret of Austria referred to Anne as "la petite Boulain (sic)" - "little Boulain". Had Anne been old enough to be a lady-in-waiting, Margaret would hardly have emphasized her age. Moreover, Margaret had another girl in her retinue at the time who was about Anne Boleyn's age - the eldest daughter of Charles, Viscount Lisle, Anne Brandon, born around 1507 (or 1506).

There are two other independent contemporary sources that give Anne's birth date as 1507. One is the memoirs of Jane Dormer, Duchess of Feria, a former lady-in-waiting and friend of Mary I Tudor, written shortly before her death in 1612, which states of Anne Boleyn that "she was found guilty and condemned to death before she was twenty-nine years of age." The other is a marginal note in William Camden's almanac that "Anne Bolena nata MD VII," meaning Anne Boleyn was born in 1507. Camden was writing a history of the reign of Queen Elizabeth I, and had access to William Cecil's personal papers and the public record.

Date of birth controversy

Due to the lack of parish records for the period, it is impossible to determine the exact date of Anne Boleyn's birth. Contemporary accounts vary, and historians are divided on the issue. regarding this issue. An Italian scholar in 1600 suggested that she was born in 1499, while Sir Thomas More's son-in-law, William Roper, gave a much later date of 1512. As for the other Boleyn children, their dates of birth are also not clearly determined, but it is clear that Mary Boleyn was older than Anne. Her children clearly believed that their mother was the eldest of the sisters. Most historians believe that Mary was born in 1499, which is indirectly confirmed by her grandson's petition to Elizabeth I to create him Earl of Ormond in 1596, since his grandmother was the eldest of the Boleyn children. George Boleyn, the brother of Mary and Anne, was born around 1504.

There is no consensus among scholars regarding the year of Anne Boleyn's birth. However, historians have focused on two of the most likely dates: 1501 and 1507. Eric Ives, a British historian and biographer of Anne, is inclined to believe that she was born around 1501, while American Reta Warnick, who has also published a work on Anne Boleyn, prefers 1507[14], as does another colleague, Gareth Russell. The stumbling block is a surviving letter from Anne, written around 1514. It is in French and addressed to her father, Thomas Boleyn, who was then living in England, while she herself was in Mechelen at the court of Margaret of Austria. Ives argues that the style of writing in a language not native to Anne and the mature handwriting are convincing evidence that she was about thirteen years old at the time. In addition, this was the minimum age for girls accepted into Margarita's retinue as ladies-in-waiting.