Page 29 - All About History - Issue 180-19

Anne and Henry’s marriage
n the morning of 19 May 1536, a
woman mounted a scaffold that
had been erected within the
confines of the Tower of London:
minutes later her head was
struck from her body with a single blow from a
French swordsman. This woman was no ordinary
prisoner, but one who had until recently been
revered as Queen of England: her name was Anne
Boleyn. A decade earlier Anne had embarked on a
courtship with the illustrious Tudor king, Henry
VIII – a relationship that had altered not only the
whole course of her own life, but also those of her
family. The Boleyns had been raised to soaring
heights before crashing to lows that were steeped
in misery and despair – for Anne and her brother
George, the result was death. The extraordinary
rise and fall of Anne Boleyn and her family is one
of the most controversial and intriguing stories of
16th century England; it is one that continues to
enthral to this day.
Almost every aspect of Anne Boleyn’s life is
controversial, including the year of her birth.
Now widely accepted to have been in around
1501, Anne was one of three surviving children
born to Sir Thomas Boleyn by his wife, Elizabeth
Howard. Thomas was a man whose family roots
lay in trade, though his grandfather, Sir Geoffrey
Boleyn, had once been Lord Mayor of London. His
father was a Norfolk landowner whose primary
estate was Blickling, and Thomas himself, born in
“Almost every
Aspect of Anne
Boleyn’s life is
controversiAl,
including the yeAr
of her Birth”
the mid 1470s, had risen to prominence steadily
under the Tudors. He had attended the wedding
of Prince Arthur and Catherine of Aragon in 1501,
been among the escort of Princess Margaret to
Scotland in 1503, and created a Knight of the Bath
went well until Anne gave
birth to a daughter, not a son
at the coronation of Henry VIII in 1509. Thomas
was well favoured by Henry, and was a frequent
participant in all of the leisure activities of which
the King was so fond. Thomas’s marriage to
Elizabeth Howard had also been advantageous,
for she was the daughter of the second Duke of
Norfolk. The couple raised their children, Mary,
Anne and George, primarily in the peaceful
surroundings of Hever Castle in Kent, a property
inherited from Thomas’s father.
During the early years of Anne’s childhood,
her father was often absent. Thomas was a well-
educated man who would later be the dedicatee
of two books by Erasmus, and was also fluent in
French. His skills had not gone unnoticed by the
king, and for this reason he was often employed in
diplomatic service abroad. It was during his time
in Mechelen at the court of Margaret of Austria,
the regent of the Netherlands, that Thomas spied
a glowing opportunity for his daughter Anne.
Margaret agreed to take the youngster into her
household, and in the spring of 1513 Anne arrived
to take her place. Margaret was delighted with
her decision, and wrote to Thomas expressing
that Anne was “a present more than welcome in
my sight”. So much so, that “I am more beholden
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