Page 38 - All About History - Issue 52-17

W o men o f th e F r e n c h c o urt

Henry blamed Anne
for not giving him a
son, sealing her fate
in the Tower T h e rules of etiquette must be obeyed

Give birth to a son
The queen’s role was to provide an
heir. Claude was almost continually
pregnant, with her ladies assisting
during her numerous confinements.

Don’t mind the mistress
French kings traditionally appointed
official mistresses, such as Anne
de Pisseleu d’Heilly, who shared
Francis I’s bed and also wielded real
political power.

Dress to impress

French women were graceful and
stylish. Anne Boleyn favoured
fashionable French hoods, which
displayed a daring amount of hair.
Henry had forced the English clergy to accept him as
supreme head of the Church of England, although Keep foreign kings amused
38 the break with the pope came only after the
death of the aged William Warham, archbishop Claude’s ladies entertained the
English king at the Field of the Cloth
of Canterbury, and his replacement by the radical of Gold in 1520, with feasting and
Boleyn family chaplain, Thomas Cranmer. Cranmer,
who was secretly married, was a religious reformer dancing.
like his Boleyn patrons and was prepared to do the
king’s bidding. After repudiating his oath of loyalty Go into quarantine
to the pope, he formally pronounced the king’s
marriage to be invalid and crowned Anne Boleyn that Widowed French queens, such as
summer. This was Anne’s greatest triumph, although Mary Tudor, entered seclusion to
disappointment followed in September 1533 when she ensure that they would not bear
gave birth to a daughter – Princess Elizabeth – instead their husbands a posthumous child.
of Henry’s anticipated son.
Throughout their careers in France and at the
English court the Boleyn sisters had always been
supportive of each other, but there were tensions in the On the v e ry day o f K a therine o f Arago n’s
relationship. Anne conceived a second child early in 1534
and, that summer, sent for her sister to attend her at the
birth. To the surprise and anger of the queen and her funer a l, the queen misc arried a male fo e tus.
parents, Mary appeared visibly pregnant and was soon forced
to admit that she had secretly married a servant, William H e nry w a s furio u s
Stafford, earlier that year. She would later explain herself,
begging the king’s chief minister, Thomas Cromwell, whom
she asked to intercede with her sister, to “consider, that he She was furious with her sister, banishing her from court. It
[Stafford] was young, and love overcame reason,” and while cannot have helped matters that, while Mary found domestic
“I might have had a greater man of birth and higher… I assure happiness, Anne’s own marriage was falling apart.
you I could never have had one that should have loved me so Although Henry had faithfully waited for Anne for the best
well, nor a more honest man.” Mary was upset by her family’s part of a decade, he was unfaithful to her almost immediately
fury, but she was unrepentant, declaring of her husband that after the marriage was publicised, regularly taking mistresses
“I had rather beg my bread with him than be the greatest and expecting his wife to conform to a more submissive
queen in Christendom.” Mary Boleyn, who had been the wifely role than she may have expected. Anne’s second
mistress of kings, eventually chose love over worldly status. pregnancy ended in miscarriage not long after Mary’s secret
This was a position that Anne, who had always sought was uncovered, adding to the queen’s grief, although she had
to marry well and advance herself, could not understand. conceived again by the end of 1535.