Great Aunt Anne

Today I’m sitting in my study reading for work while a blizzard howls outside. Across the room hangs my copy of a portrait of Anne Boleyn, the original being in the National Portrait Gallery in London. This in turn is a copy of a lost original. When Henry VIII ordered that all portraits of Anne should be destroyed, he did it well, although obviously not everyone complied.

Most everyone knows the story of Anne. She was one of three children of Thomas Boleyn and Elizabeth Howard. Her birthdate is not know but is generally thought to be in 1501. Anne had the misfortune to grow up in an era in which women of wealthy families were traded like baseball cards. Marriage was not generally for love, but was for social position, and her parents knew that well. Her father was a unrepentant social climber, although everyone in his class was as well.

Anne spent some of her early years in the Netherlands and France where she gained a good education. Her sister Mary spent time in France as well, and was widely believed to have been a mistress of King Francis I. Mary eventually was the mistress of Henry himself, and is widely believed to have borne two children of his. This happened during her first marriage to William Carey, a marriage that Henry arranged for cover for himself. William had the decency to die young and Mary remarried in secret.

But, there’s Anne. We’ll get back to Mary in a minute.

The basics of Anne’s life are well-known. She was a lady-in-waiting for Catherine of Aragon, Henry’s first wife, who had ha several children with Henry, although one was stillborn and three (I think) only survived for a short time. Only one, Mary, survive to adulthood, later to become Queen Mary I. Henry also had a natural (illegitimate) son whom he recognized. Henry Fitzroy became the Duke of Richmond, the title his father had held. Catherine was not happy about this, especially since Henry came very close to naming him as heir. However, the young Henry died at the age of ninteen and it never became an issue. As Henry and Catherine grew older, he worried that he would not have a male heir. He was a Tudor, and like his father, he needed to prove that he was the legitimate heir. His father, Henry VII, had a claim to the throne but it wasn’t nearly as good as the claim others had. Henry VII worked overtime to prove his legitimacy, spending a number of years fighting off the infamous Perkin Warbeck, a pretender claiming to be Richard, the son of Edward IV and one of the two princes in the tower believed to have been killed by Richard III.

So, Anne provided a fresh distraction for Henry, who had already fathered an illegitimate son, Henry Fitzroy, whom he recognized and nearly legitimized as an heir to the throne. When Anne appeared in court in 1526 Henry pursued her, seeking  another conquest. Anne enjoyed the attention but wouldn’t let Henry have his way.

Fast forward to 1533. Henry had broken from the Roman Catholic Church because the Pope wouldn’t give him the annulment from Catherine that he wanted. His formation of the Church of England, on the surface, was to give Henry the power to provide his own annulment, but it was more than that. There had been tensions between London and Rome for years over questions of sovereignty.

Anne was queen for less than three years. She and Henry quarreled a lot, and when she gave birth to her daughter, Elizabeth (who later became Queen Elizabeth I) he began to find comfort elsewhere. After a couple of miscarriages he became convinced that Anne had seduced him with witchcraft, and asked his advisors to come up with a conspiracy against her. They dished up as much as they could manufacture, accusing her of sleeping with hundreds of courtiers, including her own brother George. After a kangaroo court she was condemned to death and was beheaded by a swordsman on May 19, 1536, aged somewhere between 28 and 35.

Anne was very intelligent, and by the standards of the time, not very beautiful. She had auburn hair (not black as often assumed) and black eyes, and a large nose. She was slightly built, and men interested in busty women commented on her deficit in that area.

Historians look back at Anne’s downfall and find little or no basis in the charges leveled against her. Probably the one thing she was guilty of, something women at the time had to be careful of, was that she had a quick wit.

So, after all this, why my interest in Anne? Because I am descended from her sister Mary, who is my 12 great grandmother. Henry had an affair with Mary before he married Anne, and many historians feel there is compelling evidence that Mary's daughter Katherine was actually the illegitimate aughter of Henry. Henry might have acknowledged her in different circumstances, but he never did In all likelihood he didn't do so because it would make him look bad if he had an affair with one woman and then married her sister. Since Mary is an ancestor, that makes Anne my 12 great aunt. My mother was delighted to discover this in her genealogical research a number of years ago.

So, I have my portrait of Anne to remind me of my connection to her, but to remind me of the frailty of human existence. As a pastor, lots of things remind me of that, but Anne in particular does because of her quick fall from grace. Women at that time lived a precarious existence, and her story, although played out on an international stage, was far from unique. For her, the stakes were higher.

Phillipa Gregory, the author of The Other Boleyn Girl, speculates that Anne in fact slept with her brother in the hope that a pregnancy would result in a male heir, whose parentage could be kept from Henry. There’s no question that once things started to go downhill for Anne, she tried as hard as any other sane person to save her own neck, literally. I doubt that she would have gone to that extreme, and it is a theory that hasn’t gotten a lot of traction.

So, on this snowy day I lift a glass to my great aunt Anne in the wish that she could have lived to see her daughter grow up to become the legendary Queen Elizabeth I.