Anne Boleyn: Henry VIII's Obsession (19 page)
At 3pm on 7 September 1533, Anne’s wait was over and she gave birth to a daughter. The sex of the child was a blow for both Anne and Henry and it was greeted by their ‘great regret’. Henry’s initial reaction was to cancel the grand tournament that he had planned to celebrate the birth of his son and Anne must have been distraught at the disappointment of her hopes. However, once the initial disappointment had subsided, both Anne and Henry accepted the birth of their daughter more happily. The baby was healthy and resembled her father and she was, at least, proof of Anne’s fertility and her ability to bear a healthy child. Anne also may have sensed another way to pursue her vendetta against Catherine and there were rumours that the baby would be named Mary as a demonstration of her elder half-sister’s complete irrelevance.
Although the baby was not a son, she was, as far as Henry was concerned, his heir until she was supplanted by a brother. Her birth was therefore still celebrated and Anne sent out official letters advertising that ‘it hath pleased the goodness of Almighty God of his infinite mercy and grace, to send unto us at this tyme good speed in the deliverance and bringing forth of a Princess, to the great joye and inward comfort of my lord, us, and all the king’s good and loving subjects’. Henry also decided to name his daughter after his mother, who had been widely considered to be heiress of England in her own time and Anne is likely to have agreed that Elizabeth was a highly suitable name. It was also, of course, coincidentally, the name of her own mother.
Elizabeth was given a grand christening as a testament to her parents’ ambitions that she should be considered the only legitimate child of the king. By convention, neither Anne nor Henry attended the christening, but Anne must have felt proud as Elizabeth was carried out to her baptism. According to Hall’s Chronicle, which provides a detailed account of the christening, the mayor of London and other chief citizens of the city assembled dressed in scarlet and wearing their ceremonial chains of office. The chapel had been richly decorated to mark the occasion and the citizens of London walked in procession, followed by gentlemen of the court and the king’s chaplains and council. The nobility came next, dressed in their ceremonial robes. Anne’s step-grandmother, the old Duchess of Norfolk, carried Elizabeth herself. Anne’s uncle, Norfolk, walked beside his stepmother in the procession and Anne’s father followed close behind. There was also a role for George Boleyn and he helped to hold a rich canopy above the baby, aided by other Howard relatives. Cranmer was named godfather to Elizabeth, something that must have been pleasing to Anne, with the old Duchess of Norfolk and the Marchioness of Dorset standing as godmothers. As soon as she had been baptised and named, Elizabeth was proclaimed Princess of England and heiress to England in preference to her halfsister, something that must have made Anne immensely proud.
The christening was a great success and the ceremonies ended with the return of Elizabeth to her mother’s chamber. For Anne, Elizabeth’s recognition as Henry’s heir and the grand ceremonies that accompanied her baptism, were another triumph. Looking at her tiny daughter, Anne cannot but have wished that she had been a boy. In spite of her coronation and Henry’s continuing, if cooling, love for her, Anne knew that her position was not yet entirely secure and that only the birth of a son could make her position unassailable. In September 1533 Anne knew she was capable of bearing a child and she would have expected that sons would quickly follow. She therefore threw herself into the role of queen, determined to outdo Catherine of Aragon in every respect.
QUEEN ANNE
Following Elizabeth’s birth, Anne was able to fully establish herself as queen. She was determined to be every bit the queen that Catherine had been and, to a certain extent, she was. Late 1533 and early 1534 were still part of the high point of Anne’s life and she retained Henry’s support, if no longer his entire love. Despite being recognised as queen, Anne caused mixed emotions in England and on the continent and people often had a strong opinion of Anne Boleyn.
Even after her coronation and the birth of Elizabeth, Anne was deeply unpopular in England. This was due to a mixture of reasons, including the great popularity of Catherine of Aragon and Anne’s comparatively lowly origins. Anne’s unpopularity was also increased by suspicion surrounding her religious beliefs and, for the mostly Roman Catholic population, Anne’s reformist views were guilty of leading the king astray. This was the view felt by many, but few dared express it in anything other than the sullen resentment offered at Anne’s coronation. One woman, Elizabeth Barton, known as the holy maid of Kent, did dare to express such views and she was a thorn in both Anne’s and Henry’s sides throughout the years of the divorce and Anne’s first few months as queen.
Elizabeth Barton was a young woman from Kent who suffered from a severe illness. In search of a cure for her condition, she went to church to pray for a miracle ‘and when she was brought thither, and laid before the image of Our Lady, her face was wonderfully disfigured, her tongue hanging out, and her eyes being in a manner plucked out and laid upon her cheeks, and so greatly disordered. Then was there heard a voice speaking within her belly’. To the amazement of everyone present, Barton rose to her feet and declared herself cured of her illness. She quickly became a nun and word of her prophecies and visions spread widely across England. According to Thomas Cranmer, in his own account of the nun, Barton was even able to hinder Henry and Anne’s marriage through her communication with both Wolsey and the previous Archbishop of Canterbury, William Warham. This in itself would never have endeared the nun to Anne, and neither Anne nor Henry would have believed Barton’s prophecies which quickly turned into an attack on the king and his new wife.
Barton was not afraid to speak her mind and she declared herself a supporter of Catherine of Aragon, even attempting to meet with the ex-queen. Catherine, perceiving the potential danger in being directly associated with the nun, refused all communication with her. Catherine’s great supporter John Fisher, Bishop of Rochester, and her friend, the Marchioness of Exeter met with Barton and accepted her prophecies as the divine word of God. Both Anne and Henry recognised that the nun was dangerous because she was so widely believed and she was considered by most to be ‘a good, simple, and saintly woman’. Barton was afraid of no one and even secured a personal meeting with Henry where she told him that, in a short time, he ‘would not only lose his kingdom, but that he should be damned, and she had seen the place and seat prepared for him in Hell’. Barton later claimed that Henry had offered to make her an abbess if she would retract her prophecies and this seems likely. Both Henry and Anne knew that it was too dangerous to act against the nun at first. When the nun claimed that Henry would cease to be king within a month of his marriage to Anne, they would have both reasoned that they would soon be able to prove her wrong.
Henry showed a restraint unusual to him over the nun but, in November 1533, well over a month after his marriage to Anne, he had Barton and her associates arrested. Both Cranmer and Cromwell had already investigated her in the summer of 1533 but, in November, Barton was subjected to a much more intense examination. In spite of her earlier defiance, she quickly confessed and, according to Cranmer, she admitted that her miraculous healing had been a sham and that ‘she never had a vision in her life, but feigned them all’. This was exactly what Anne and Henry wanted to hear and Barton was publicly denounced as a fraud. A confession was not enough to save Barton and, on 20 April 1534, she and five of her associates were executed. Anne would have felt that this was a fitting punishment for a woman who had delayed her marriage and publicly denounced her queenship as sinful in the eyes of God. Anne herself would also have laughed at the credulousness displayed by Barton’s supporters, having always considered Barton to be a fraud.
Anne had always been interested in religious reform and she was determined to promote it once she was queen. Even before her marriage she built a circle of men and women around her who were also interested in the new religion, among them her brother, George Boleyn. Anne never appears to have been close to her sister, but she and George were very similar characters and George rose with Anne. No portrait survives of George Boleyn but, like Anne, he was intelligent and ambitious. Even a hostile contemporary, William Cavendish, admitted that George stood out at court, writing poetically that ‘God gave me [George] grace, dame Nature did hir part, Endowed me with gyfts of natural qualities’. Cavendish did go on to comment on George’s lechery, something which may also account for his wife’s testimony against him at his trial. George was often at court with Anne during her time as queen and he quickly gained a reputation as one of the powerful men there. In 1533, for example, George sent a servant to Flanders to buy hawks for him and managed to ensure that no dues would be payable by him on his return to Calais. George was as interested in religious reform as Anne and both sought to promote it in her household.
27. Anne Boleyn. Anne was noted for her black hair and captivating dark eyes.
28. A later artist’s impression of Anne Boleyn showing evidence of her fate below the portrait.
29. Anne’s father, Thomas Boleyn. Thomas recognised his youngest daughter’s promise and always expected her to make an advantageous marriage.
30. Anne’s uncle, the Duke of Norfolk. Norfolk was ambitious for his family and saw two of his nieces become the wives of Henry VIII.
