Six Wives: Anne Boleyn

Want to walk the halls of ambulance childhood home, or explore the castles that made up Henry VIII's English stronghold? With a subscription to History Hit, you can dive into our Tudor past alongside the world's leading historians and archaeologists. You'll also unlock hundreds of hours of original documentaries with a brand new release every single week, covering everything from the ancient world to World War II. Let's visit historyhit.com/subscribe Six wives, six lives. About whom we think we know everything. But beyond them mostly doomed marriages to Henry VIII and, in many cases, tragic ends, here were six women who shaped history in their own unique ways. The National Portrait Gallery in London is hosting a new exhibition called Six Lives, displaying the images that have shaped our perception of Henry VIII's queens. It was just the excuse I needed to bring together the most illuminating interviews about them from the not-just-the-tudor's archives. Across six episodes I'll also be exploring some of the latest research, and speaking to the curator of the National Portrait Gallery's exhibition, Dr. Charlotte Bolland, to paint an even fuller portrait of each of Henry VIII's wives. Our second podcast in this series focuses on a woman who changed the history of England, Ambulin. In order to make her his queen, Henry altered the very faith of the country, banished his closest minister, broke with Christendom, and set aside his faithful once beloved wife, Catherine. So who was Ambulin? In this episode we'll hear from Dr. Lauren Mackay, Dr. Owen Emerson, Natalie Gruniger, Dr. Tracey Bohrman, Dr. Emma Kehl-Maron, Dr. Estelle Peronk, Dr. Kate Heard, Kate McCaffrey, Professor Joanne Deleneva, Dr. Charlotte Bolland, and Matt Lewis features as Henry VIII himself. I'm Professor Cisanna Lipscomb, and this is not just the tutors. To know who Ambulin was, we first have to know her people. Ambulin's parents were Sir Thomas Bollin and Elizabeth, Neigh Howard. Elizabeth was part of a wealthy and influential family. Her father was Thomas Howard, Earl of Surrey, later a second Duke of Norfolk. But the Bollins too had been on the rise for decades. Three generations of Bollin men marrying well had produced an extraordinary social ascent. The loss of these was Anne's father Thomas, Dr. Lauren Mackay explained. The Bollin story is really the story of many families at court in that particular era. They rise generation by generation. And in fact the story with the Bollins really takes shape in a little town called Sol in Norfolk, which is sort of a one pub, one horse town, minus the pub. With Jeffrey Bollin, and Jeffrey Bollin who was Anne Bollin's great-grandfather, he actually elevated the family from simply a family who worked on the land to landowners themselves. And he formed the blueprint for this idea for this mercantile family rising through the echelons of society. And what he did brilliantly was to marry into a very ancient and noble family. So he married Anne who, this particular connection acquired more land and gentility and wealth. Now, their son William Bollin would go on to be a very well-respected man of Norfolk as well. And he did the exact same thing he married into the prestigious ancient noble Butler family, which is where we see the oldem of our bond. And their son, our Thomas Bollin, would do the same. He married into the powerful and noble and illustrious Howard family. So you have three generations building upon these foundations, some generation to generation. That's really how they become a fixture at court. And crucially, by the reign of the first cheetah Henry VII, they are already part of the social fabric of Henry VII's court. So we know that William Bollin was a very well-respected courtier, so Thomas's father. And Thomas Bollin himself was actually a squire of the body under Henry VII's reign. So he had that personal intimate access with the king. And of course, this is the society upon which patronage is absolutely integral to your rise. So that connection with the king is vital to your success. So really, the Bollin story typifies this rise from the very modest beginnings to something that was quite brilliant. And this all took place before Anne Bollin was even born. This steady climb continued with Anne's father, Thomas. Laura Chi warns us that we needn't imagine he needed his daughter in the king's bed to succeed. Thomas Bollin really began to rise at court under the reign of Henry VII. He makes his first appearance about the age of 20 in the king's army of all places. He's alongside his father and they're putting down a rebellion at the corner of rebellion during one of the many riots during Henry VII's reign. I don't think the military was really his scene. So we actually see him sort of as a fixture at court. Now, I think Thomas Bollin was very lucky because he grew up in a world of wealth and privilege. So far from being this scheming Machiavellian man, he didn't need to have any of that because he was so well placed. So when Thomas Bollin's a young man at court, he has these incredible connections. His grandfather is Thomas Butler. Now Thomas Butler was Lord Chamberlain to Elizabeth of York. And he would also go to be Lord Chamberlain to Catherine Varigan in her early years as Queen. That's quite a connection there. But he's also flanked by his father-in-law, the powerful Earl of Surrey, Thomas Howard. These connections offer this entrain to court that very few young men actually would have enjoyed. So the young Thomas Bollin navigates these spheres of court. He is part of the inner sphere for Henry VII. He's also part of the political spheres. He really gets his big break at the beginning of Henry VIII's reign, so in 1509. He's already been present at all the coronations and christenings and weddings and funerals. And there he is at Catherine of arrogance, arrival into England. And he's present front and center at Henry VIII's coronation as well, where he's made a night of the bath. So all before Ann Bollin is on the scene. But crucially, what happens in the first years of Henry VIII's reign is that he suddenly appears as a new face in the diplomatic lineup. And it's odd because it really comes from nowhere. He has no history as an ambassador. He doesn't as far as we know. And he's working all of a sudden alongside real stalwarts of Henry VIII's diplomatic stable, so men like Thomas Spinelli and Richard Wingfield. And this really comes about because of these connections, his grandfather and his father-in-law, who both knew the architect of Henry VIII's diplomatic policy and that is the one and only Richard Fox. Who would of course go on to mentor Thomas Walsy. So that's where that interesting connection comes into. Now I'm not going to throw his entire life, but Thomas Spine obviously begins to ascended court and to really cultivate this reputation. He's one of those new men because he doesn't necessarily have the noble lineage, apart from those few little insertions that are the generations. But he himself is not actually noble, but he has skill. He has political acumen. There's something about him that recommends him to the power men of court. So I think that's very, very important. So by the time Ann Ballin does burst on the scene in the 1520s, Thomas Ballin is already one of the most well thought of respected, reliable, trustworthy men of court. He is an absolute fixture and he's powerful, he's influential, and he certainly doesn't need to rise any further on the back of his daughter. What this intelligent, skillful diplomat did do, however, along with his wife, was to raise his surviving children, Ann, George and Mary, to ensure their own successful placements at the court in the fawness of time. Ann had probably been born at Blakeling Hall in Norfolk in around 1501, but she spent a large part of her childhood at Heaver Castle in Kent. Dr. Owen Emerson takes up the story. We know that she probably moved to Heaver around 1505, which is when Thomas Ballin took ownership of the castle from his father, and although we don't have a huge amount of information about the early life of the Ballin children here, we do have very good clues that they were located here, not least the graves of Thomas and Henry Ballin Junior, who are buried at Heaver Church and at Pennshurst. The early is, there was probably quite a lot of loss to the Ballin boys died, but I can imagine this being a place where Ann was educated, she would have begun her education here, and most likely her parents were involved in that education, particularly Elizabeth and mother. Thomas Ballin was a humanist, educated all of his children well, and he was a very keen and able diplomat, and was able to secure really advantageous positions for his daughters at European courts. So I like to think that Ann's education and her passions began here at Heaver. In 1513, when Ann cannot have been more than about 12 years old, she was sent to the court of Margaret of Austria. Although we know her confusingly as Margaret of Austria, she had been governor of the low countries from 1507, and joined Margaret at her newly built palace in Mechalan. The initiative to send Ann to Margaret to learn French and to receive training in courtly ways may well have come from Thomas Ballin, who had met Margaret through his diplomatic career. Another possibility though is that it was the idea of Queen Catherine, his Dr. Emma Kehl-Madon. Catherine, when she sent Ann to Margaret of Austria, it was because she valued the education that she would receive in the court of Margaret of Austria, and I think because she was trying to start this international court with Henry, she thought it was a good idea to send some ladies for the continent to learn things that they couldn't learn really in England, probably knowing that she was very bright as a young person. She thought she'll do really well, somewhere else she'll learn lots of things, she'll come back and we'll find her a good match, and that's how it really worked with many of the ladies, so I don't think it would have been different at that time. She was another lady in waiting at the court. Margaret described Ann as bright and pleasant for her young age. Ann was at Margaret's extraordinary court for a couple of years, but in 1515 Ann joined the court of the young French Queen Claude, Claude was wife of the new French king of Francois or France's the first. Natalie Gruniger gives us a flavour of what life at Queen Claude de France's court was like for Ann. Ann was not in service to France's, she was in service to Claude, his wife, known for her piety, for her intelligence, for her morality, she was greatly loved actually by the people, and in the time that Ann was there, Claude was pregnant a lot of the time, and in fact she had seven pregnancies over a period of nine and a half years, and she preferred to spend time at her estates in the Loire Valley, and Ann of course would have been expected to conduct herself modestly and decorously and guard her chastity like a treasure, this is essential. So I think when you picture all the dancing and all the flirting, most days would have been completely different, they would have been spent doing activities that were well regarded for women at this point, so we can imagine Ann and Claude's other ladies sewing, embroidering, spending a lot of time worshipping, so private prayer, public prayer, reading, devotional texts, reading scriptures, discussing scriptures, going to church, all the chapel, perhaps singing sands, or something like that, charitable works that they would have done together, maybe taking a walk in the garden, and practicing or playing an instrument, or just chatting among the ladies, so possibly some games as well, Ann was known for knowing and be very good at all the fashionable games, if the times are cards, dice, all that sort of thing. But it's very different to what's often portrayed in films and books. What Ann learned at Claude's court powerfully shaped her outlook? Ann will then experience female power like no one before. Dr Estelle Paranc. It was very clear that being a queen was better than being a mistress. Lens, wealth, given, titles, given, no problem. At the end of the day, the one who was sitting by the side of the king was important, was queen Claude, and I think Ann blens saw that, really, and must have impacted her in many ways. She may also have been influenced by the king's sister, Marguerite Dangolem, who sought for reformation within the Catholic Church. There's something very mysterious about this relationship. Estelle Paranc again, I think that there's been a significant time together, so you're not going to have letters, you're going to have discussions. And it's not just about reformed ideas, I think they were just both very interested in education, especially of women. I'm not saying they're best friends. I'm saying that she probably learned more from Marguerite Dangolem, especially when we see how she behaved herself towards religion. It was only after seven years of service to Claude, nearly a decade away from England, that Ann returned to join the court of King Henry VIII and Queen Catherine. Lest we think of the court as a static place, Owen Emerson explains. The court is a very fluid thing, actually. It moves from space to space, so we have the palaces of Richmond, Greenwich, and Westminster, and the court will be continually on the move. And Ann enters into what is quite a sophisticated court, as Catherine's made up on it. On a day-to-day basis, they are essentially Catherine's companions. They are praying with her, reading to her, and also carrying messages, and being a front-facing sort of representation of the Queen's household. This was an incredibly colourful and sumptuous environment that Ann was going into. You can just get a flavour of that from the clothes that Catherine is wearing here. She's in red velvet and cloth of gold, and she is completely bejeweled. This is a really glittering environment, and it must have been really dazzling environment for the young Ambulin to enter into. Who was this Ann? To get a handle first on what Ann looked like, I talked to Dr Charlotte Volland, curator at the National Portrait Gallery, about Ann's portraiture. So that people will feel very familiar with portraits of Ann Belin, but caveat emptor, we should be wary of trusting them. Why is that? We don't have a painted portrait produced during Ann's lifetime, large-scale painted portrait that's been identified with certainty. The most familiar images with Ann in a French hood, often get to green background, with her "B" pendant with all the pearls, is actually produced in the late 16th century. It is an Elizabethan image, and it's so interesting to think about the way that image is constructed, because it has long been wondered whether that image might itself be based on a lost painting produced during Ann's reign, which is very possible and plausible. But it is equally possible that it is a complete construction of the Elizabethan period, when an artist was confronted with the question of in the celebration of Elizabeth, and wanting to celebrate her mother, how do you make an image of Ann? And so that idea of what's recognizable in that image of Ann, something that's familiar to us from portraits of Elizabeth, was an image of Elizabeth the starting point that then going backwards. And so there is sort of constructive identity of Ann, and in that it's intriguing as to how she is preferred to in the inscriptions and this very conscious use of the "B" emblem. We can know from the amazing inventory taken at Henry VIII's death of the way in which his initials were combined with his queens all over the place. HA emblems being everywhere, or AR of Anna Regina everywhere. But a "B" for Berlin isn't actually really necessarily part of the way that she would present herself, but it's intriguing to think about how the Elizabethans needed to deal with what happened to her, because while Elizabeth could never absolve her as it were legally, because to do so would imply that her father had murdered her mother, a fan, were completely innocent. Nonetheless, Ann needs to be celebrated because she has had this extraordinary daughter. And so it's intriguing that as a "B" that provides a helpful bit of distance as it were from situation, and also they often explicitly identify her as wife rather necessarily as queen. That has to be, because Elizabeth has to be legitimate, but the queen element can be quiet and down a bit in the iconography. That's so interesting, because I have often wondered why a "B" for Berlin, because after 1529 she's going to be R for Rockford, and then she's going to be P for Pembroke, and she becomes Marcus Pembroke, and then she's Anna Regina in the Latin for Queen. There's only a very slim window where she would have been B for Berlin, except this amazing possibility or presenting that it is posthumously that she'd Berlin rather than anything else. What do we have then that dates from her lifetime? The image of Ann that we have that's so emblematic, almost of the conundrum of her reputation, and her semi-arrasure and reconstruction, is a portrait medal made in 1534 that celebrates her as AR, and the most happy when around it. But it's in lead, which is very soft, in it's been very worn and flattened, and there is only one that whether it was created in hope of great celebrations, of a birth of a son in 1534 that didn't happen and was quietly put aside, never got made in great numbers. So you have that one sort of image of Ann that is very difficult to assess now, and we don't also know how much of a likeness it ever was, how close it had ever been to the queen in its original condition. There are other contenders to be an image of Ann produced during her lifetime. Here's just one of them. Grievous schools of historians have not thought it was Ann, but that is changing. Charlotte Bolland again. The other image which is growing much more securely identified as, and scholarship is sort of coalescing more about it, as Ann Berlin now, is drawing in the royal collection of a woman in a nightcap, wearing a sort of third gown, identifying the sitter as Ann Berlin. The challenge with this portrait is that people have looked at it and thought, how is the status of this woman, this kind of incredible intimacy, this just can't be a queen. Why on earth would an artist have the access to producers who was it for? How can it happen? There is that inversion of the question of saying perhaps only a queen could afford to have an image of that type made, and that the identities have been written on a number of the portrait drawings that are all in the royal collection from the great pattern book of physiognomies that Holbein created, that while they're applied at a later date to the drawings, the list of the identities of the sitter was from people who would have known Ann by sight, and that the vast majority of the identifications of the sitter's in these drawings have been accepted. So why question this one of Ann? And there is also the great record of the fact that we have that crumb that Henry gave Ann a silk furlied gown prior to their marriage, and so is this that kind of direct connection. The person who would have known Ann by sight, and who identified Holbein's drawings was Sir John Cheek. Cheek was a tutor to Edward VI, and he identified the sitter's in the 1540s. I met Dr. Kate Hurd, the curator of an exhibition on Holbein by the Royal Collection Trust at Buckingham Palace to discuss the drawing. We're standing in front of a preparatory drawing labelled Ann Bylin, and there's been lots of people over the years who have said that this wasn't Ann. I myself am fairly convinced that it is, and I want to know all your thoughts and to talk about this particular picture, and why it has been identified as Ann and why it hasn't. I think there are all sorts of pieces of evidence you can bring to bear on whether this shows Ann Bylin or not, and to me, again personally I agree it's Ann Bylin partly because of the weight of that evidence, all these little pieces of the jigsaw that come together, and the first of those is that inscription we've talked about, these inscriptions a few times, Cheek would have known who Ann Bylin was, so the fact that in the 18th century, based on the 16th century inscription, this was identified as Ann Bylin, that's a good start. There's been some work on her dress, some really interesting dress history done that's been tied to items of clothing that Ann Bylin is known to have had. There are for me two very other interesting facts about the drawing. One of the reasons for debating whether it is Ann Bylin is the colour of the hair, and the sitter in this drawing has brown eyes, but her hair is very light. We looked at it under a microscope as part of the preparation for the exhibition, and the drawing is a chalk drawing like most of those in the exhibition, there will have been some rubbing of the surface. And what seems likely is that because we know that Holbein built up his hair colours in layers of different colours to create the tone he wanted, and he started with light chalks, and then built up the darker chalks on top to darken the hair, possibly quite a bit of that darker shading from the top has disappeared, so what you're seeing is probably a lighter hair colour than she would originally have had. But I also find the back of the drawing very interesting, because this is the only drawing in the exhibition that has something on the back, which in itself is unusual for a Renaissance drawings, usually papers expensive, an artist will use it as much as they can, but this has the white arms on the back. I think it's really interesting that Henry Wyatt, who's one of Holbein's patrons, dies in November 1536, shortly after Ann's executed, and you start to wonder if this became a scrap piece of paper. It would have been known, but no longer would any portraits of Ann Bylin be commissioned. Unlike Jane Seymour, we've got the drawing of Jane Seymour next to it, that was constantly used for portraits, but you can imagine Holbein turning it over and using it for a different project at that point. It's always up for debate, that's the excitement about Holbein, and there's lots of discussions to be had, but to me this is a good candidate for Ann Bylin. For centuries we have built up this image of Ann as a beautiful femme for Tar, maybe we need to imagine a radically different iconography of Ann. Perhaps it's time to reckon with the idea that maybe Ann was not beautiful. She was just brilliant, Natalie Gruniger agrees. We get this idea of, I suppose, what she looked like, which is a long oval face, quite a strong nose, and a pretty decited chin as well, Eric Ives concluded that it's a face of character, not beauty. She probably had dark, Albany, pear colour. You know, a lot of people think black, that we actually only have one contemporary account of her having black hair, and that comes later in the Elizabethan period. So her alooa was much more to do with her sophistication, her intelligence, her charisma, her wit, rather than, I think, her actual physical appearance. What then can we make of Ann's character? Owen Emerson suggests that, above all, we see evidence of her intelligence. You can see that evidence in a lot of her surviving written words in her books of hours, she writes the most poignant and beautiful couplets. Everyone that knew her, said how engaging she was, how sort of vivacious she was. She had a wonderful character. And I would say a very keen intellect as well. I would almost argue that she was on a par with Henry in terms of being able to debate. And I think that engagement underpinned a lot of the turmoil that their relationship went through. It wasn't all sunshine with Ann and Henry. There were some storms, shall we say, where they would butt heads and they'd make up. And I think, underpinning that was her amazing intellect. In coming to the English court, what did Ann hope for? What were her ambitions? And did she have designs on Henry? From a young age, 12, at least we've got evidence from a letter that Ann wrote. She is dreaming of serving Catherine. She wants to serve her loyally, diligently. She wants to be a really great perhaps lading, waiting to her one day. She wants to please her parents and she wants to please the queen. Natalie Gruniger. She admires her. Perhaps she even loved her. There's all these years that we kind of just skip over and we go to the juicy bits later. But Ann's court from probably end of 1521, started 1522. We know that she was in service to Catherine. Perhaps it was on and off, but she was definitely in service to Catherine at some point. They would have spent time together. They would have eaten together. They would have worshipped together. They would have played games together. There was obviously a relationship there. We hear nothing until Henry's interest in Ann, which means that things were probably going really well. Ann was doing everything she was supposed to be doing. And this goes on for, let's say, four to five years. Hi there. I'm Dan, host of Dan Snows' History at Podcast. I can imagine on these dark winter nights, all you're going to do is curl up with a cup of tea and get lost in an amazing story. Well, I can help you with that. Twice a week, I tell you the most dramatic and extraordinary stories from history with details I can guarantee you never heard before. Feel the frostbite of that grizzly, failed American invasion of Canada in the dead of winter. Imagine every clash and blow at the battle of Bosworth. Follow Eleanor of Acritane, where are the most powerful women in the medieval world, as she goes on crusade to the Holy Land with 300 handmaidens in tow. She leads her own army, everyone goes gargant for Eleanor and trace the voyage of the first Vikings as they arrive on Iceland's lonely shores. For the best historical stories to get lost in, check out Dan Snows' History at. So I think when Henry does declare his intentions, it's a difficult decision for Anne. I think it must have caused her a great deal of distress. She's a pious woman. She's spent time serving the Queen. I don't think it's something that she just overnight decided I'm going to go off with Henry, I'm going to steal him. That I think is ridiculous. I don't think it's true. And I think we can see there are 17 love letters that Henry wrote and some in English, some in French, they're in the Vatican. And one of them that's thought to be one of the sort of first letters, Henry says that he's basically wanting an answer from her, he's wanting to clarify what their relationship is, what it's about, and he says having been for more than a year now struck by the dart of love. To me, this sounds like he has been pursuing her, you know, for at least a year, and that perhaps Anne hasn't known how to react. Perhaps she felt guilty. You know, she was serving Catherine. Catherine was a beloved Queen. At some point there's a shift, I think, and she feels like this is her path, but I don't for a second think that she was the aggressor, that she was the one chasing him, that she was trying to steal him, that it was a sort of plan of her families or a plot to rise even further in status. I don't think so. Although Anne is first recorded at the English court in March 1522, Henry's interest in her does not seem to have been kindled until 1526. At some point, during the years 1527 and 1528, Henry wrote Anne a series of love letters. His first letters were written in French, a language that Henry and Anne shared, a language that was deliberately courtly, formal and elevated. As we've heard, in one, he declares that he has loved her for more than a year, and he asks her to be his sole mistress. He promises that he will be loyal only and to her. I'm turning over in my mind the contents of your last letter. I have put myself into great agony, not knowing how to interpret them, whether to my disadvantage as you show in some places, or to my advantage as I understand them in some others, besieging you earnestly to let me know expressly your whole mind as to the love between us too. It is absolutely necessary for me to obtain this answer, having been for above a whole year stricken with the date of love. And not yet sure whether I shall fail of finding a place in your heart and affection, which last point has prevented me for some time past from calling you my mistress. Because if you only love me with an ordinary love, that name is not suitable for you, because it denotes a singular love which is far from common. But if you please do the office of a true loyal mistress and friend, and to give up yourself body and heart to me, who will be and have been your most loyal servant, if your rigor does not forbid me, I promise you that not only the name shall be given you, but also that I will take you for my only mistress, casting off all others beside you out of my thoughts and affections and serve you only. At some point, Anne consented to accept the title. Henry wrote to tell her of how he suffered in her absence. He begins, "My mistress and friend, my heart and eyes, surrender ourselves into your hands, besieging you to hold us commended of your favor, and that by absence your affection to us may not be lessened. For it were a great pity to increase our pain, of which absence produces enough and more than I could ever have thought could be felt, reminding us of a point in astronomy, which is this. The longer the days are, the more distant is the sun, and nevertheless the hotter. So it is with our love, for by absence we are kept a distance from one another, and yet it retains its further, at least on my side." Seeing as they cannot be together, he censored the nearest thing to that possible, a miniature painting of himself, probably one of those that have been painted by the horror boots in around 1525-26. "And seeing that I cannot be personally present with you, I now send you the nearest thing I can to that, namely my picture set in a bracelet, with the whole of the device, which you already know, wishing myself in their place, if it should please you. This is from the hand of your loyal servant and friend, HR." "If it should please you," Henry says, "and let us do Henry, which we know once existed no longer do. His survive through time by sheer accident, or perhaps by sheer design, they were almost certainly seized and taken back to Rome, where they remain in the Vatican Library. But and letters to him were not. We should not imagine that she was silent. The word she was writing to him evidently moved and convinced him. The demonstrations of your affection are such the beautiful motos of the letter so cordially expressed that they oblige me forever to honour, love and serve you sincerely, besieging you to continue in the same firm and constant purpose. Assuring you that on my part, I will surpass it rather than make it reciprocal, if loyalty of heart and a desire to please you can accomplish this. Assuring you that hence forward my heart shall be dedicated to you alone. I wish my person was so too, God can do it if he pleases, to whom I pray every day for that end, hoping that at length my prayers will be heard." Henry was praying that God would endorse adultery, but he didn't see it like that. In September 1527, Henry's agents had been sent to Rome to ask for an annulment of his marriage to Catherine, the business of getting that annulment, what became known as the King's Great Matter, would take another six years, and could only be accomplished by the casting aside of Queen Catherine, the destruction of Cardinal Thomas Walsy, and the severing of England from the Roman Catholic Church. Eventually, in 1533, Henry's new Archbishop of Canterbury, Thomas Kramer, proclaimed the marriage to Catherine, null and void. He had already married Henry to Anne, and big with child Anne was crowned Queen of England on the 1st of June 1533. The child she was carrying was born on the 7th of September. It was a girl. They named her after both their mothers, Elizabeth. It was a disappointment, and it was a setback, and it was a bit embarrassing, particularly for Henry, after everything he'd done to marry Anne. Dr. Tracy Warman. But she had proved that she could come through a birth, she could survive unscathed, and so could her child who was thriving. So it wasn't a disaster at all, and what I really love, actually, is that Anne herself showed no regret, no disappointment. That was all Henry, and doted on her child from the very beginning, asking that Elizabeth be placed next to her on velvet cushions, so she didn't have to be parted from her, and even causing a bit of a scandal by expressing her intention to breastfeed her daughter, which definitely wasn't done in a royal life, and she had to step down from that intention. But she was proud of Elizabeth, and made sure that everybody honoured her as the heir to the throne that she was. Anne used her position as queen to advance the causes that were dear to her heart, chief among them reform. Tracy Warman again. Henry might have gone through the break with Rome really sparked by the desire for an annulment, but for Anne it was genuine. She wanted to reform the Catholic Church, and she certainly instilled her daughter Elizabeth with the same kind of reforming zeal that would ultimately become known as Protestantism. She was enormously influential. She took risks for her faith, importing banned heretical texts, and actually showing some of them to Henry, so she was always a great advocate for religious reform, and she was listed by one member of Henry's court at the head of a group of four or five really influential religious reformers, including Thomas Cromwell, her erstwhile ally, of course, they would plash over religion and the dissolution in particular with fatal results for Anne. But we should, I think, focus more and celebrate more the influence that Anne was able to have during her brief tenure as queen. As the saying goes, "If these walls could talk, and on the Betwix the Sheets podcast, we make it our business to discover what happened behind closed doors, and even more importantly in the bedrooms of people all throughout history. Kings, queens, mistresses, servants, and everyone in between. We also get up close and personal with medieval Afro-Dizziacs, lethal Victorian makeup routines, and look at the scandalous lives of beloved children's authors. Nothing is off limits." In other words, it's the best bits of history, with me Dr. Kate Lister. Listen to Betwix the Sheets for History of Sex, Scandal and Society twice a week, every week, wherever it is that you get your podcasts brought to you by the award-winning network History Hit. Her tenure was brief because only three years into her reign Anne was accused of adultery, incest, and conspiring the king's death. The last of those charges was treason. Within three short weeks, in May 1536, she and the men charged with her had been tried and executed. The reason for these charges has long been a mystery. Did Henry want to get rid of Anne so suddenly? Was it a conspiracy against her? Was she guilty? Professor Joanne DeLineva has studied a poem from June 1536, which was sent as a dispatch from the French Embassy in London to Paris within two weeks of this unprecedented and unfathomable execution of an anointed queen. The dispatch was written by Lancelot de Carl, Secretary to the French Ambassador to England, and it shed some light on how these accusations arose. Well, I think if you talk about it in journalistic terms, he delivers a scoop, which is how exactly did the story of Anne-Belin's adultery break? And that's his main claim to fame here because he frames this as a conversation or an argument that takes place between a close counselor of the king and that counselor's sister, who he would like to amonish for her bad behavior. And so his sister responds with, "Well, if you think I'm behaving badly, basically you should see what's going on with the queen." And she makes the accusation that Anne has been sleeping with her brother, George, and that Mark's meeting would know all about it. So go talk to Mark and he'll tell you even more than I can claim. Now, of course, there are other sources that talk about the fact that these accusations may have ever risen from her inner circle, but the thing that's distinctive about Carl's is that he dramatizes this moment. He gives a dialogue of this conversation between the brother and sister, which has fatal consequences, of course. So was Anne incestuous with her brother? Anne and George had a very special relationship. Natalie Grunigo. They were incredibly close. I think they loved each other dearly. They were two peas in a pod. I think having the two of them in the same room must have been overwhelming. You know, they were just incredibly intelligent, captivating, witty. And I think, in the end, this really great at On Henry. I think he felt somehow diminished in their presence, to be honest with you. It's pretty ludicrous, but the only evidence that is given at court, and this is Shapouille used to shop with the imperial ambassador that's commenting on this. So this is a man that of course is devoted to Catherine and to the Lady Mary. Every second he's trying to improve their situation. That's what he's there for. He's just totally devoted to that. He says that the only evidence of this incestuous relationship was that George had spent a long time with his sister. This is one occasion that apparently he spent a long time with her. That's it. There's no witnesses. There's no other testimony that we know of. That's the only thing. It is just fascical, really. That's all they could get, whoever it was, Cromwell and whoever thinking, what are we going to do here? Oh yes, George spent a long time with Anne that day because he did. He would come back from diplomatic missions and rather than going to the king, he would go to Anne. That's how close they were. That's how much he valued his sister and how much he believed in her right to rule by Henry. It's really touching and it's really moving and it makes this whole story all the more tragic to be honest. Another enduring myth is that Anne Berlin was accused of witchcraft. The only contemporary reference that corresponds at all to this comes from a piece of gossip, heard third or fourth hand, suggesting that Henry thought Anne had attracted him by the use of salty ledge. This was picked up later in the 16th century by a Catholic enemy of Elizabeth I, Nicholas Sander. 29th of January, 1536, quite a crucial date actually. Natalie Gruniger used to Shepwy reports on that very day that morning that he's heard Henry has confessed some things. Henry stressed something's happened, Shepwy doesn't know what it is at this point. But apparently, Henry in great secrecy has confessed that he had been seduced and forced into this second marriage by means of saltelage and charms and that owing to that, he held it as null. So this word saltelage, there's so much confusion around exactly what Henry was talking about if Henry ever said it, because let's remember this is translated as well and it's gone through about three different people, two different languages. So was the king implying that his wife was a witch? If he was, then it would appear to lend credence to another myth which is that Anne gave birth to a baby that had malformations, because of course at the time birth defects were associated with witchcraft and sorcery as well as moral and theological and maybe sexual sins as well. But let's just go back to the witch thing, so Anne was not accused of witchcraft with any at her trial, this is not oning diamond. And Eric Ives actually says in his biography that the primary English meaning of the word at the time saltelage was divination. So he suggests that if Henry did in fact use this term remembering all the people that's gone through, that he's perhaps referring to those promises that Anne had made in, the promises that she would give him sons that their union would solidify the tutor reign and they'd have a whole soccer team of boys or something like that. So it's possible that that's what he was referring to and that he felt that he had to unburden himself to one of his courtiers and then went and shared the gossip that Shupri gets. But it's Nicholas Sandra as well that picks up on this. He's painting the picture of a witch because people are using Anne's memories for their own political agenda. So people that want to curry favor with Elizabeth are of course honoring Anne's memory and she becomes this sort of Protestant martyr in this saint. People that are trying to destroy Elizabeth and bring her down use Anne's memory in order to do that so that they try and blacken Elizabeth's reputation by saying all these crude things about her mother. So there's all that going on as well but I think if she'd been accused of witchcraft we would have heard about it in the trial. People like Shupri is talking about what she's accused of would have mentioned of. It was also Sandra who perpetuated the idea that Anne gave birth to a deformed fetus. There is absolutely no contemporary evidence to support Sanders theory. Natalie Goonigur again. And let's just remind everyone that Sanders at the time is around six years old. Just in case you all want to drink. So you know this is not something he's an eyewitness to or anything like that. He's obviously relying on things that he's heard but at no point during Anne's life or Henry's lifetime all during Edwards and Marys for that matter where there probably was reason to you know bring these stories out. Did anyone comment or remark on the appearance of that baby and claim that it was in any way unusual. Used to Shupri comments on the fact that Anne herself thought she was about 15 weeks gone at the time. There is no comment that there's anything wrong with this baby apart from obviously the reason why she's miscarried. In one copy of Lancelot de Carl's poem at the biblioteque National de France there are some additional verses that carry an important message about Anne's guilt or innocence. I think that some of the verses are comparable to other verses that are found in different manuscripts. Why they're there and not and others I'm not quite sure. Joanne de la Niva. But there are four verses in particular that read in the English translation. He's describing the moment of Anne's execution and how the witnesses to her execution are reacting to that and he says that everyone on the basis of her mightily steady end judges her life to have been prudent and believes that they have committed a great offense in having thoughts so ill of her. And those lines are quite distinctive from anything else that he's written because they are the most explicit with regard to Carl's depiction of her guilt or innocence and clearly by saying that she has been prudent, which he had said specifically earlier on that he doubted that she was prudent, but she wasn't following the path of the prudent mistress, Clude de France. Here he's saying her life had been prudent and prudent is an important virtue, according to Thomas Aquinas. It's the virtue that you need for holding the passions and the appetites in check. So if you know that, if you know your Aquinas and clearly he is a clerk, would have and many people at the time would have. That's a really loaded expression right there and it would mean that he is suggesting that not only had she repented of anything but it's more than that she probably was not guilty and no one should ever have sought her to be guilty. And that's pretty astounding. It's so exciting because it means that de Carl is tying his colors to the mast. We can see what he thinks and it's crucial that we can understand the meaning of the language that he's using in order to do that and also because actually de Carl, as you well know, has often been used or particularly been used recently by my dear friend George Bernard to suggest that actually this is an indication of Anne's guilt and that the de Carl poem really testifies to that but actually what you're saying is something quite different. Right and it's understandable that other people might not have come to that conclusion so easily if they don't have access to these extroverses. So I do think that these verses are important for historians to consider in the overall picture. And certainly early in the poem Carl is not depicting Anne in a favorable light. He says all kinds of nasty things about her. He says that she was full of malice and evil. I mean that's pretty damning but then at a certain point it shifts and he becomes much more sympathetic and generally people have thought well this is the moment towards the middle of the poem where she's already imprisoned and she turns her thoughts to God. That's what he says. And so it's because she realizes that her past has been bad, that she has not been living up to a good Christian standard and she's repenting. That's why Carl is now sympathetic to her because she's repentant and worthy of our mercy as well. But I think this changes that because it's more than she's simply saying she has repentant. It's saying she was never guilty. Her life has been prudent and we have thought ill of her and we have done her a great offense. On the 19th of May 1536 Anne Belin, that intelligent, learned, reforming woman from a family in the ascendant shaped by a training on the continent who had become like her erstwhile mistress Claude de France and an anointed queen was beheaded at the Tower of London. Henry had destroyed her body but he could not quench her memory. In her printed book of hours now kept it heave a castle and had written remember me when you do pray that hope defleed from day to day. Kate McCaffrey discovered some other erased inscriptions in the same book of hours. So John Gage probably is the most famous of the authors inside this book. He was very prominent politician in Henry's court and later through to the court of Mary the First and it's him and his wife who have both written inside it. Mary West was part of the West family who were the Barrens de la War and Elizabeth Shirley and Philippe Gage were both daughters of Sir Richard Gilford who was a close friend of Henry the 7th. So these were kind of people who were no well at Henry's court but they seem to have been mainly in the provinces in Kent and especially the women who wrote in this book seem to have been mainly from this area. That's a phenomenal piece of historical detective work that you've done. What do you think it tells us about the memory of Anne? Is it that it's something provincial that it becomes just a memory you keep in the county from which she came? Or do you think it has something more to tell us about her status in people's minds? It can tell us a lot in terms of how despite these widespread attempts to discredit Anne in the years after her downfall she was still cherished and held close by people who knew her or had a close connection to her and I was able to discover a connection between these other owners and Anne which comes through another woman, Elizabeth Hill who was the wife of the sergeant of the King's cellar Richard Hill and we have some anecdotal evidence to suggest that they were close to Anne. And I suppose we could imagine that this is a Protestant story in some ways. If they're very willing to cross out the Pope's name and if they're cherishing Anne's memory those two things might be connected by their faith at the time. Do you think that's part of it? I think certainly that is part of it because as you said we see in that kind of deletion of Thomas Beckett and the Pope's that there's at least a conformer to your compliance to the kind of evangelism at the time but whether that's purely religion also I think definitely is the personal connection to Anne but with this personal connection comes a suggestion that maybe they were connected also in that religious way as well and in these kind of Kent networks that were close to the Berlin family it feels like perhaps that remained in kind of similar religious circles as well. Anne was remembered and she still is. Thanks to you for listening to Not Just The Tudors from History Hit and also to my researcher Alice Smith, my producer Rob Weinberg and Ella Blacksall who edited this episode. We're always eager to hear from you so do drop us a line at [email protected] or on x formerly known as Twitter at Not Just Tudors and do remember to follow Not Just The Tudors wherever you get your podcasts so you get each new episode as soon as it's released. [BLANK_AUDIO] [BLANK_AUDIO]