Murky mystery of an executed queen
By Hilary Mantel |
January 31, 2010, Sunday
|
Print Edition
Print Edition
THE story of Anne Boleyn, second wife of Henry VIII, ended in May 1536, when the master executioner of Calais -- sent for specially, and said to be an adept in his art -- separated her clever head from her seductive body with one clean stroke of his sword.
Historians are still puzzling over Anne's downfall. Henry had fought for years to extricate himself from his first marriage and create a world where he and Anne could be husband and wife; to achieve it, he had split Christian Europe apart.
How did he become so alienated from her that he wanted her dead? Had she really slept with her brother George? Who was the prime mover in alleging against her multiple acts of adultery, involving five men? Was it Henry himself, crediting some slander and lashing out in blind rage? Or his minister Thomas Cromwell, fighting for his own career?
Anne is one of the most striking female presences in English history, but we can't even be sure of her date of birth, let alone her bedroom secrets. She was the daughter of Sir Thomas Boleyn, a courtier and diplomat, and her uncle was the powerful magnate Thomas Howard, Duke of Norfolk.
She had spent some of her girlhood at the louche French court, and when she appeared at the English court in 1521, she brought with her polished sophistication and new fashions. She was not an acknowledged beauty, but she was sparkling, sinuous, a natural intriguer.
When Henry fell in love with her, he already wanted to be free of his long marriage to Catherine of Aragon, because he had no son to succeed him, and Catherine's childbearing years seemed to be over. Cardinal Wolsey, the powerful statesman at the king's right hand, expected Henry to remarry for diplomatic advantage, and a state of courteous warfare set in between himself and Anne.
To everyone's surprise, Anne refused to become Henry's mistress; she outfaced Wolsey, who fell from power, and played Henry astutely till he broke away from Rome, declared himself head of the English church, arranged his own divorce and married her secretly.
She was crowned queen in June of 1533, at which time she was heavily pregnant with the child who would become Elizabeth I.
Henry cannot have been pleased by the emergence of another daughter. He seemed to take it philosophically at the time. But miscarriages followed, and his attention began to move elsewhere.
Alison Weir, a respected historian, has already written about Anne in "The Six Wives of Henry VIII" and "Henry VIII: The King and His Court." Her new book focuses on the last few months of Anne's life. She has sifted the sources, examining their reliability.
Historians deal in documented facts, and the power of rumor and gossip are hard for them to evaluate. Doubts have already been cast on Weir's assumptions and some of her findings, she admits, contradict her previous beliefs; she no longer thinks that Anne was pregnant at the time of her execution.
But it may have been innuendo that ruined Anne, creating around her a black climate that followed her when she stood before her judges. When Anne's narrow body was put into an arrow chest and taken away for burial, the substance of the truth went with her.
The story is of its time and place, but also universal. She is the young fertile beauty who displaces the menopausal wife, the mistress whose calculating methods beguile the married man who in time sees through her and turns against her.
It is the human drama that engages us. Her trial is only patchily documented, but you can make an argument that, in judicial terms, Anne was murdered. In human terms, we see that she has been paid out. Natural justice came for Anne not in the shape of the headsman, but in the shape of Jane Seymour, the sly rival who replaced her, within days, as the king's third wife.
Historians are still puzzling over Anne's downfall. Henry had fought for years to extricate himself from his first marriage and create a world where he and Anne could be husband and wife; to achieve it, he had split Christian Europe apart.
How did he become so alienated from her that he wanted her dead? Had she really slept with her brother George? Who was the prime mover in alleging against her multiple acts of adultery, involving five men? Was it Henry himself, crediting some slander and lashing out in blind rage? Or his minister Thomas Cromwell, fighting for his own career?
Anne is one of the most striking female presences in English history, but we can't even be sure of her date of birth, let alone her bedroom secrets. She was the daughter of Sir Thomas Boleyn, a courtier and diplomat, and her uncle was the powerful magnate Thomas Howard, Duke of Norfolk.
She had spent some of her girlhood at the louche French court, and when she appeared at the English court in 1521, she brought with her polished sophistication and new fashions. She was not an acknowledged beauty, but she was sparkling, sinuous, a natural intriguer.
When Henry fell in love with her, he already wanted to be free of his long marriage to Catherine of Aragon, because he had no son to succeed him, and Catherine's childbearing years seemed to be over. Cardinal Wolsey, the powerful statesman at the king's right hand, expected Henry to remarry for diplomatic advantage, and a state of courteous warfare set in between himself and Anne.
To everyone's surprise, Anne refused to become Henry's mistress; she outfaced Wolsey, who fell from power, and played Henry astutely till he broke away from Rome, declared himself head of the English church, arranged his own divorce and married her secretly.
She was crowned queen in June of 1533, at which time she was heavily pregnant with the child who would become Elizabeth I.
Henry cannot have been pleased by the emergence of another daughter. He seemed to take it philosophically at the time. But miscarriages followed, and his attention began to move elsewhere.
Alison Weir, a respected historian, has already written about Anne in "The Six Wives of Henry VIII" and "Henry VIII: The King and His Court." Her new book focuses on the last few months of Anne's life. She has sifted the sources, examining their reliability.
Historians deal in documented facts, and the power of rumor and gossip are hard for them to evaluate. Doubts have already been cast on Weir's assumptions and some of her findings, she admits, contradict her previous beliefs; she no longer thinks that Anne was pregnant at the time of her execution.
But it may have been innuendo that ruined Anne, creating around her a black climate that followed her when she stood before her judges. When Anne's narrow body was put into an arrow chest and taken away for burial, the substance of the truth went with her.
The story is of its time and place, but also universal. She is the young fertile beauty who displaces the menopausal wife, the mistress whose calculating methods beguile the married man who in time sees through her and turns against her.
It is the human drama that engages us. Her trial is only patchily documented, but you can make an argument that, in judicial terms, Anne was murdered. In human terms, we see that she has been paid out. Natural justice came for Anne not in the shape of the headsman, but in the shape of Jane Seymour, the sly rival who replaced her, within days, as the king's third wife.
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