Beauty’s meaning

Written By: Katelyn Abbott

Author’s Summary: Princess Cassandra of Troy contemplates the apparent meaning of beauty.

A Glorious Beauty

By: Katelyn Abbott

Author’s Summary: A poem about who Helen of Troy is and her being a glorious beauty.

A Brilliant Beauty

By: Katelyn Abbott

Author’s Summary: A poem about who Princess Cassandra of Troy is and her being a brilliant beauty.

A Buffy Anne Summers Biography-Part Three

Written By: Katelyn Abbott

Season Four

 

A picture of Buffy being disconcerted when she was thrust into the new environment of college life

                                          

After the explosive events of her graduation from Sunnydale High School, Buffy initially experienced some difficulty adjusting to life as a college freshman at U.C. Sunnydale. She encountered a group of on-campus vampires and got her arm injured while she was battling their leader. She ended up coming off as insane to her friends when she suspected that her overly compulsive roommate Kathy was a demon only to be proven correct. Her freshman problems of doing her homework, end up studying for exams, and going to class were made even harder by her Slayer duties and her separation from Angel. When she shared what she believed to be a night of emotional intimacy with fellow college student Parker Abrams only weeks after meeting him in desperation for a relationship, she became depressed when he neglected to contact her afterward and decided to brush her off.

A Buffy Anne Summers Biography-Part Two

Written By: Katelyn Abbott

Character Biography:   

Season One

                                          A picture of Buffy Summers as a child 

Buffy Summers was born on January 19^th, 1981 to Hank and Joyce Summers in Los Angeles, California. Her parents had been the ones to feed her, clothe her, and keep a roof over her head. Childhood was fairly normal for Buffy—she was an only child and her parents were together. Buffy did fairly well in school and easily made friends. During her childhood Buffy and her cousin Celia had accepted each other for who they were, cared about each other, and developed a close friendship with each other and they enjoyed playing with each other. They would often play superhero together in which Buffy pretended to be the DC comic hero Power Girl. Shortly after Buffy’s eighth birthday Celia was sick and taken to the hospital.  She was visiting Celia in the hospital one day when Celia suffered some sort of seizure and then died before Buffy’s eyes. Though Buffy was unaware that Celia had been murdered in her hospital bed by Der Kindestod, a demon who killed sick children and was only visible to those who were ill, the experience instilled Buffy to have a fear of hospitals.

A Biography of Princess Cassandra of Troy

Written By: Katelyn Abbott

 A picture of Princess Cassandra of Troy by Evelyn De Morgan (1898, London); standing in front of the burning city of Troy at the peak of her insanity 

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 Cassandra (also known as Alexandra or Kassandra and the basic meaning of her name being “she who entangles men”) was the daughter of King Priam and Queen Hecuba and the twin sister of Helenus and therefore a princess of Troy. She had brown hair kept in curls, brown eyes, and fair white skin. Cassandra was considered to be very beautiful, intelligent, charming, desirable, and elegant with a friendly and gentle nature and she had much courage and determination in her, but she was deemed to be insane. She was described as “the second most beautiful woman in the world.”  Her beauty ended up even compared to that of Aphrodite the goddess of love and beauty and Helen of Troy.

A Buffy Anne Summers Biography-Part One

Written By: Katelyn Abbott

                                   A picture of Buffy Anne Summers the Vampire Slayer

“Into every generation, a Slayer is born, one girl in all the world, a chosen one. She alone will wield the strength and skill to fight the vampires, demons, and the forces of darkness; to stop the spread of their evil and the swell of their numbers. She is the Slayer.”

Eternally Helen of Troy

Written By: Katelyn Abbott

                                                      A picture of Helen of Troy

Author’s Summary: A daughter of Zeus and Leda and the sister of Castor and Pollux. Helen is the Queen of Sparta and she is then a princess of Troy. This is a second person perspective about the most beautiful woman in the world. This is mostly influenced by Amanda Elyot’s The Memoirs of Helen of Troy although I was also inspired by Caroline B. Cooney’s Goddess of Yesterday and Adele Geras’s Troy.

Anne Boleyn Part Twenty: The Greatest Way to Describe Queen Anne Boleyn of England

                                        Written By: Katelyn Abbott

 

The greatest way to describe Queen Anne Boleyn of England is as British historian Eric Ives had said: “To us she appears inconsistent—religious yet aggressive, calculating yet emotional, with the light touch of the courtier yet the strong grip of the politician—but is this what she was, or merely what we strain to see through the opacity of the evidence? As for her inner life, short of a miraculous cache of new material, we shall never really know. Yet what does come to us across the centuries is the impression of a person who is strangely appealing to the early twenty-first century: A woman in her own right—taken on her own terms in a man’s world; a woman who mobilized her education, her style, and her presence to outweigh the disadvantages of her sex; of only moderate good looks, but taking a court and a king by storm. Perhaps, in the end, it is Thomas Cromwell’s assessment that comes nearest: intelligence, spirit, and courage. "

 

Anne Boleyn Part Nineteen: The Final Days of Anne Boleyn

                                                Written By: Katelyn Abbott

Apparently George Boleyn and the other accused men were executed on May 17, 1536 which Anne was said to have watched from her window in the Bell Tower at the Tower of London. William Kingston, the Constable of the Tower of London, reported that Anne seemed to be very happy and ready to be done with life. Anne had been hoping to be exiled with her daughter Princess Elizabeth and raise her to be a great and learned lady abroad in Europe or be forced to spend the rest of her days in a nunnery, but this was not to be. King Henry VIII commuted Anne’s sentence from burning at the stake (which was something that Anne was afraid of for she had a lifelong fear of fire and even smoke)  to beheading, and rather than have a queen beheaded with the common axe, he brought Jean Rombaud, an expert swordsman from Saint-Omer in France, to perform the execution. Imperial Eustace Chapuys did comment that Anne had blamed him for her downfall and he ended declaring that he was glad to know that 'the English Messalina' had held him responsible for her doom by saying, " I was flattered by the compliment, for she would have cast me to the dogs!" On the morning of May 19, 1536 Master Kingston wrote: “This morning she sent for me, that I might be with her at such time as she received the good Lord, to the intent I should hear her speak as touching her innocency alway to be clear. And in the writing of this she sent for me, and at my coming she said, ‘Mr. Kingston, I hear I shall not die afore noon, and I am very sorry therefore, for I thought to be dead by this time and past my pain.’ I told her it should be no pain, it was so little. And then she said, ‘I heard say the executioner was very good, and I have a little neck,’ and then put her hands about it, laughing heartily. I have seen many men and also women executed, and that they have been in great sorrow, and to my knowledge this lady has much joy in death. Sir, her almoner is continually with her, and had been since two o'clock after midnight.'

 

Anne Boleyn Part Eighteen: The Conviction and Doomed Trial of Anne Boleyn

                                             Written By: Katelyn Abbott

Apparently four of the accused men were tried in Westminster on May 12, 1536. William Brereton, Francis Weston, and Sir Henry Norris had basically publicly maintained their innocence and only the tortured Mark Smeaton supported the Crown by pleading guilty. The four men had not been permitted to defend themselves and they were convicted of high treason. The four of them were all predictably condemned to die by originally being hung and then cut down before they died only to be disemboweled and quartered, but King Henry VIII prevented this from happening by commuting their death sentences to decapitation by the axe on Tower Green.  Sir Thomas Boleyn, Anne’s own father, was one of the judges who found the four men guilty which basically sealed Anne’s fate.

Anne Boleyn Part Seventeen: The Ending up Arrest of Anne Boleyn and Being Brought to The Tower of London

                                               Written By: Katelyn Abbott

 A picture of Anne aware that something bad is going to happen to her, but she is unsure of what it will be

Anne’s almoner John Skip preached a controversial sermon in front of King Henry VIII on April 2, 1536. The theme had had been “Which of you can convict me of sin?” John Skip came to use the story of King Ahasuerus “who was moved by a wicked minister to destroy the Jews,” but Queen Esther stepped in with different advice and saved the Jews. King Henry VIII did happen to be King Ahasuerus, Anne Boleyn was Queen Esther, and Thomas Cromwell, who had just introduced the Act of the Suppression of the Lesser Monasteries into Parliament, was Haman, the “wicked minister.” This was sanctioned by Anne and thus a statement that although Anne believed in reform and tackling abuse and corruption, she did not agree with Thomas Cromwell filling the Crown’s purses rather than using the proceeds to aid the poor and for educational institutions.

King Henry VIII had a former meeting with Imperial ambassador Eustace Chapuys and this was the only record meeting of Anne and Chapuys who he had publicly acknowledge in the Chapel Royal for the first time.

Anne Boleyn Part Sixteen: The Downfall of Anne

                                                 Written By: Katelyn Abbott

Anne’s marriage to King Henry VIII was only safe as long as King Henry VIII wanted it to be. As long as Katherine of Aragon was alive, she was fairly safe, since if King Henry VIII were to divorce Anne he would have ended up having to accept Katherine of Aragon as his true wife. He would never admit he had made a mistake in annulling his marriage to Katherine of Aragon and branding his daughter Lady Mary a bastard and he was hardly likely to go back to the barren Katherine of Aragon while he still had hope of Anne giving him a son. However Anne also had difficulty in giving him a son. Soon after Elizabeth was born Anne became pregnant again, but the baby was born dead around July of 1534. She again had a failed pregnancy in June of 1535. To Anne’s dismay Henry had taken another mistress in her cousin Madge Shelton, but the affair between them was a short one and Madge was soon replaced by a far more dangerous mistress however for King Henry VIII began to be come to accept in one of Anne’s own ladies-in-waiting Jane Seymour for who she was, care about her, and develop romantic feelings for her.

Anne Boleyn Part Fifteen: Struggling With Other Problems

                                         Written By: Katelyn Abbott

                                          A picture of Queen Anne of England

Anne nearly caused an international incident at a banquet by bursting into laughter when she was talking to the French ambassador Admiral Chabot on December 1, 1533. He had been offended by this and came to ask her, “How, now Madam! Are you amusing yourself at my expense or what?’ Anne did her best to mollify the situation with him by explaining that King Henry VIII had gone to bring another guest for her to entertain and an important one at that, but on the way there he had met a lady and the errand that he went on ended up going completely out of his head.

Anne Boleyn Part Fourteen: Strife with the King

                                                        Written By: Katelyn Abbott

                                                 A picture of Queen Anne of England

Anne Boleyn Part Thirteen: Relationship with Her Stepdaughter Lady Mary Tudor

                                          Written By: Katelyn Abbott

A picture of Princess Mary Tudor who would become Queen Mary I of England

Lady Mary Tudor did not accept Anne for who she was, cared nothing for her, and despised her. She blamed Anne for her father King Henry VIII annulling his marriage to her mother Katherine of Aragon, her being branded as a bastard and cut out of the line of succession, and King Henry VIII deciding to break apart from Rome. Anne considered her to be a threat to her daughter Princess Elizabeth’s position as long as she refused to acknowledge Anne’s marriage to King Henry VIII and her position as the Queen of England and Elizabeth’s position as the Princess of England. She did what she could to make Lady Mary submit and ended up furious with her when she refused. Anne would fiercely rail against Lady Mary by calling her names and describing in horrible various fashions how she would abruptly make Lady Mary her lady-waiting, marry her off to some varlet, poison her, or even put both Katherine and Mary to death if King Henry VIII left her as regent in his absence while he was in France when she was in one of these moods and she threatened to curb “her proud Spanish blood”, but she was just ranting to express her frustrations with Lady Mary and there is no evidence to suggest she carried out any of her threats against Lady Mary.  However Anne did tell her aunt Lady Anne Shelton who was in charge of Lady Mary’s care to starve her back into the Great Hall if she continued to eat a large breakfast in order to avoid having to eat dinner in the Great Hall and pleading illness to have supper brought to her chamber and that she should box Lady Mary’s ears as “the cursed bastard she was” if she tried to use the banned title of princess for herself and she ended up having Mary surrender her jewels to her for she felt they must now adorn Princess Elizabeth for she was the king’s lawful heiress until the time that she had a brother.

 

Anne Boleyn Part Twelve: Role as the Queen of England

                                                         Written By: Katelyn Abbott

 A picture of Queen Anne of England

 

 

Anne’s reputation as a religious reformer spread throughout Europe and she was hailed as a heroine by Protestant reformers. Even Martin Luther believed her rise to the English throne was a good sign. Anne constrained King Henry VIII to be tolerant of heretics. Protestants that did leave from England for fear of persecution of their religious beliefs were able to return to England thanks to Anne’s protection of them such as Robert Barnes who preached openly in London unmolested. Anne ended up securing the freedom of another convicted heretic Richard Herman who Cardinal Wolsey had sent into exile for having advocated the translation of the Bible into English which was something Anne was strongly in favor of along with an English evangelical such as Thomas Patmore who had been imprisoned for heresy by the Bishop of London. Facts show that not a single heretic was burned at the stake while Anne was the Queen of England and her goal for the advancement of a more tolerant religious point of view was unusual in an age that favored rigid religious practice. Anne had gone on to employ various women to smuggle illegal books into the country and she had written to release evangelical women imprisoned for their faith like a ‘Mrs. Marye.’ However it also lent ammunition to her detractors as for to many of them it was proof that she herself was a heretic. She also saved the life of the French reformer Nicolas Bourbon as she had appealed to the French royal family to spare his life as a favor to the English Queen. Nicolas Bourbon would later refer to Anne as “the queen whom God loves.” Thomas Alwaye, prosecuted for buying English New Testaments and other works, petitioned his cause to Anne and praised her goodness ‘as well to strangers and aliens as to many of this land.’ 

Anne Boleyn Part Eleven: Oncoming Birth of Princess Elizabeth Tudor

                                                       Written By: Katelyn Abbott

                           A picture of Anne in labor with her daughter Princess Elizabeth Tudor

As the Queen of England Anne had a larger staff of servants than Katherine of Aragon had. Her staff of servants had been over two hundred fifty servants to tend to her personal needs including butlers, cooks, maids of honor, ladies-in-waiting, priests, and stable boys. Anne had been responsible for the basic physical needs of clothing, feeding, and housing her maids of honor and her ladies-in-waiting and care for their moral, religious, and spiritual well-beings. She clearly had over sixty maids-of-honor who served her personal needs and take with her to accompany her to social events. Anne’s groomsmen and ladies-in-waiting did have to attend chapel daily, were expected to be gracious, virtuous, modest, humble, and above all obedient in the execution of their duties, frequently encouraged them to read an English bible (most likely her copy of William Tyndale’s forbidden New Testament of 1534 now in the British library) that she kept on a desk in her chamber at their leisure that she herself did not disdain to consult in it, gave her ladies-in-waiting prayer books to hang from their girdles, and had forbidden anyone in her household on  going to brothels or any other place of ill repute on the pain of instant dismissal from her service. Her ladies-in-waiting included her sister-in-law Jane Parker, Lady Rochford, and her cousins Mary Howard and Mary Shelton.In reality Anne had accepted them for who they were, been friends with them, and cared about them and she did treat them as both servants and dear friends. It was Anne who arranged a most impressive match of marriage for her cousin Mary Howard to the King’s own illegitimate son Henry Fitzroy as she arranged other marriages for her other ladies-in-waiting and been the one to provide dowries for some of them. Anne was known to be over friendly and generous when it came to her maids of honor and her ladies-in-waiting which was one of the many reasons each year saw hundreds of applications for new positions into her household. Anne’s personal silk-woman, Jane Wilkinson, would later tell how there never was “better order amongst the ladies and gentlewomen of the court than in Anne’s day. She had also gone to employ several priests who acted as her chaplains, confessors, and religious advisers. The favorite she had among them was the religious moderate Matthew Parker who would become one of the chief architects of Anglican thought during the reign of Anne’s daughter Queen Elizabeth I.

Anne Boleyn Part Ten: Anne’s Magnificent Coronation as the Queen of England

                                   Written By: Katelyn Abbott

                              A picture of Anne at her coronation as the Queen of England

Katherine had been formally stripped on her title as the Queen of England and Anne was consequently crowned Queen Consort on June 1, 1533 in a magnificent ceremony at Westminster Abbey with a banquet afterwards. Many important people had been known to refuse to attend including the Duke of Norfolk, Anne’s own uncle Thomas Howard, and Sir Thomas More, who had disapproved of King Henry VIII’s divorce to Katherine of Aragon, yet had nothing personal against Anne. She came to be the last Queen Consort of England to be crowned separately from her husband. Anne did get crowned with St. Edward’s crown unlike any other queen consort which had previously been used to crown only a reigning monarch. Historian Alice Hunt ended up suggesting that this was done because Anne’s pregnancy was visible by then and she was carrying the heir to the English throne who was presumed to be male.  On the previous day Anne had taken part in an elaborate procession through the streets of London seated in a litter of “white cloth of gold” that rested on two palfreys clothed to the ground in white damask, while the barons of the Cinque Ports held a canopy of cloth of gold over her head. She wore white in accordance with tradition and on her head was a gold coronet beneath which her long dark hair hung down freely. The public’s response to her appearance was lukewarm at best though Joanna Denny stated that Anne was accepted for who she was, cared about, and loved by many of the English city dwellers who welcomed her with open arms as many in the city were staunch believers in reform. Anne was popular among reformers who saw her as the champion of the Christian truths, scholars saw her as a shining example of the new educated woman, and there were English subjects that either believed or hoped that Anne would be the mother of England’s long-awaited prince. The people Anne was unpopular among  was many of the English rural country folk especially in the North who were pro-Katherine of Aragon and remained staunchly Catholic and never saw Anne as the Queen of England. Henry was said to have asked Anne, “How liked you the look of the City?” and that Anne replied to him, “Sir, I liked the City well enough—but I saw a great many caps on heads, and heard but few tongues.”

Anne Boleyn Part Nine: Marriage to King Henry VIII

                                           Written By: Katelyn Abbott

Anne was able to accept receiving diplomats, give patronage, grant petitions, and had enormous influence over her future husband King Henry VIII to plead the cause of foreign diplomats to him. The ambassador from Milan wrote in 1531 that it was essential to have her approval if one wanted to be able to influence the English government. This view was corroborated by an earlier French ambassador in 1529.

Anne Boleyn Part Eight: King Henry VIII's Great Matter Part Two of Two

                                                        Written By: Katelyn Abbott

Anne, in conjunction with Thomas Cranmer, would provide the solution to the annulment of King Henry VIII’s marriage to Queen Katherine, since Thomas Cranmer was a Cambridge man and a reformer, said that rather than appeal to the Pope’s verdict King Henry VIII should amass a team of university theologians who could prove that his marriage to Katherine of Aragon was unlawful according to scripture. Thomas Cranmer became the Boleyn family chaplain and according to Joanna Denny “…he remained Anne’s pastor until her death and a friend to her memory thereafter.” After meeting with King Henry VIII in 1529 Thomas Cranmer accompanied Sir Thomas Boleyn in 1530 abroad to champion both King Henry VIII and Anne’s attempts to marry to both the Holy Roman Emperor Charles V at Bologna and the Pope along with their plan to have the universities in Europe decide the outcome of the Great Matter. This had been a disaster. The envoys clearly were too closely tied to Anne and there did happen to be no reason for their appeal to be any more persuasive than the previous ones. Sir Thomas Boleyn and Thomas Cranmer ended up refusing to treat the Pope with the expected courtesies like kissing his feet.

Alarmingly for all of Anne’s efforts King Henry VIII began to question England breaking away from Rome. It had been difficult for King Henry VIII to distance himself from what he had been taught about religion. His convictions caused him to fear that he was potentially jeopardizing his immortal soul by contemplating breaking away from Rome in order to annul his marriage to Queen Katherine and bastardize his daughter Princess Mary for him to be able to marry Anne and have her bear him the son that he so desperately longed for. He did order the copies of the much banned books that she had lent to him publicly burned and ended up outlawing all evangelical texts from England which must have been a move that had been very worrisome to Anne. For other reasons for Anne’s sadness was that Stephen Gardiner had declared that he could not in good conscious go against the Pope and Charles Brandon, the Duke of Suffolk, was also slacking on his duties to secure the King’s annulment.

Anne was undoubtedly in great distress from her anger, her bitterness, her confusion, and her disappointment as all that she had been striving for to be able to marry King Henry VIII and become the Queen of England must have now seemed further away from her than ever before. She had been upset about Sir Thomas More’s growing power as the Chancellor of England. Sir Thomas More came to be using his newfound position to call on for a new crusade on heretics. Despite Sir Thomas More being a brilliant, cultured,  and deeply well-educated man and he ended up being praised “ as a martyr for individual conscience” this was the same right that he had denied to those he had personally slandered through his inflammatory writings, tortured, and took to murdering by burning them as heretics as the stake as Chancellor of England.

King Henry VIII and Anne hosted a magnificent ball in honor of the departing Jean du Bellay on January 12, 1530.

Anne was not popular with the people of England who did not accept Anne for who she was, cared nothing for her, and despised her. Queen Katherine was beloved by the English people. The English people called Anne names such as diversely as “Nan Bullen” and denounced her as a heretic, a whore, and a witch. She ended up being the scapegoat for all of King Henry VIII’s unpopular decisions, but it is important to remember that no one ever controlled King Henry VIII or did make him do anything other than exactly what he desired to do. King Henry VIII’s desire for an annulment for his marriage to Queen Katherine had gone on to be the gossip of all Europe and Anne had been roundly condemned and criticized for it. She was not popular in the English Court either for many courtiers did not accept her for who she was, cared nothing for her, and despised her and Anne made many enemies both for her sharp tongue and her terrible temper that she had sometimes forgot to withhold and her unique situation. The English Court had been impressed by Queen Katherine’s solemn piety for three decades and she had many supporters though none of them were inclined to face King Henry VIII’s formidable wrath on her behalf. For among Anne’s many enemies were Bishop John Fisher, Sir Nicholas Carew, the Courtenays, Elizabeth Barton (“the Nun of Kent”), the Duke of Suffolk, the Duchess of Norfolk, Sir John Russell, the Montagues, the Nevilles, Reginald Pole along with the rest of his entire whole family, and Sir William FitzWilliam.  Princess Mary Tudor, the Duchess of Suffolk, was a great supporter of Queen Katherine who did not accept Anne for who she was, cared nothing for her, and despised her and she refused to come to the English Court whenever Anne was there. Her husband Charles Brandon the Duke of Suffolk was reported to feel the same way about Anne while Anne was reported to not have accepted them for who they are, care nothing for them, and despise them for Charles Brandon's inappropriate flirtation with Archduchess Margaret of Austria and their scandalous behavior together in France. Anne responded to her unpopularity among the English people by making her motto on December 25, 1530 “Ainsi sera, groigne qui groine’ which meant “Grumble all you like, this is how it’s going to be” for a few weeks before changing it, but she was sustained only by King Henry VIII’s romantic feelings for her and she knew his mercurial temper. She had might have been just as surprised by King Henry VIII’s faithfulness to her for seven years as everyone else was though he did have sexual relations with at least two women during this period of time

Anne Boleyn Part Seven: King Henry VIII's Great Matter Part One of Two

Written By: Katelyn Abbott

King Henry VIII wanted an annulment from Queen Katherine in order for him to be able to marry Anne. It had been probable that the idea of an annulment (not divorce as commonly assumed) had suggested itself to King Henry VIII much earlier than this and clearly was motivated by his desire for an heir to secure the legitimacy of the Tudor claim to the crown. Katherine of Aragon did get married to King Henry VIII’s brother Prince Arthur first who died soon after their marriage. Since England and Spain ended up still wanting an alliance with one another a dispensation was granted by Pope Julius II on the grounds that Katherine of Aragon was still a virgin for her to be betrothed to King Henry VIII. The marriage of King Henry VIII and Queen Katherine finally took place in 1509, but eventually he had come to believe that his marriage to her was cursed because he had married his “dead brother’s widow” and dubious about its validity due to Queen Katherine’s inability to provide a male heir being seen as a sign of God’s displeasure. In a section of Leviticus in the Old Testament it is said that “if a man shall take his brother’s wife, it is an unclean thing….they shall be childless” which he interpreted to mean that he should not have married Queen Katherine. That meant that he had been living in sin with Katherine of Aragon for twenty years though Queen Katherine hotly contested this and refused to concede that her marriage to Arthur had been consummated. This also meant that his daughter Princess Mary was a bastard and that the new Pope Clement VII would have to admit the previous Pope’s mistake and annul his marriage to Queen Katherine. King Henry’s quest for an annulment was known as the “King’s Great Matter.”

Anne Boleyn Part Six: Juggling King Henry VIII's Romantic Feelings

Written By: Katelyn Abbott

                                      A picture of King Henry VIII during the 1520s

A public ceremony was held in June of 1525, with both Anne and King Henry VIII’s wife Katherine of Aragon in attendance, King Henry VIII created his illegitimate son Henry Fitzroy by Lady Bessie Blount, the Duke of Richmond. The title had been held by King Henry VIII’s own father King Henry VII and by creating his illegitimate son Henry Fitzroy the Duke of Richmond he was effectively preparing to have an alternate option as his heir to the throne. Only one of at least six attempts at him having children with his wife Katherine of Aragon came to end in the birth of a healthy and living child red-haired and blue-eyed Princess Mary who was a beautiful, intelligent, charming, and deeply sweet little girl during King Henry VIII’s nearly twenty year marriage to Queen Katherine. King Henry VIII desperately wanted a son to succeed him on the throne and it ended up governing his thoughts for the remainder of his reign. England had only recently recovered from a very turbulent period of civil war called the War of the Roses and for King Henry VIII the last thing he wanted was any question as to the legitimacy of his heir. Though technically a woman was not barred from the English throne and could rule in her own right the only example of this occurring had ended in disaster and the queen Matilda was disposed. With this in mind King Henry VIII was convinced that if Princess Mary were able to succeed him on the English throne it would be disastrous for England and the best that could happen to England would be that she would marry a foreign prince and therefore bring England under foreign rule. The ceremony was most likely humiliating for Queen Katherine to attend since it was King Henry VIII essentially saying that she failed to provide him with a male heir especially since King Henry VIII had lost the affection that he had once had for her and she was well past child-bearing years.

 

Anne Boleyn Part Five: Henry Percy and Her Involvement with Sir Thomas Wyatt

                                                      Written By: Katelyn Abbott

                                                 A picture of  Henry Percy

Anne met Henry Percy, the brown-haired and blue-eyed handsome and intelligent son of the Earl of Northumberland, who was a member of Cardinal Wolsey’s household, during his visits to Queen Katherine’s apartments to chat and delightfully flirt with the maids of honor there. Both of them came to accept each other for who they are, care about each other, and fell in love with each other and Henry Percy courted Anne during 1523. The two of them did enter into a secret engagement with each other. Anne might have ended up enjoying Henry Percy’s title and felt excited to be the future Countess of Northumberland and the chatelaine of Alnwick Castle, but her feelings for Henry Percy seemed to be genuine for the most part with her gladly making plans  in her mind of the list of all of the fine wine and game needed for the wedding feast, the cloth merchants and dress makers needed to make her bridal wardrobe and her wedding gown, and the excellent artist needed to paint a wedding portrait of the couple. Cardinal Wolsey’s gentleman usher, George Cavendish, maintained that the two of them were not lovers with each other and that meant their relationship was celibate with them most likely resolving to embraces, holding hands, kisses, and Anne sitting on his lap until they had consummated their relationship once they were married. Their secret engagement soon reached the ears of Cardinal Wolsey as it alarmed him since he knew that Henry Percy had been betrothed to Lady Mary Talbot, daughter of the Earl of Shrewsbury, since 1516 and it had been very rash for Henry Percy to involve himself with Anne as pre-contracts were as legally binding as a marriage then. Cardinal Wolsey saw Anne as no fit bride for Henry Percy and thought that it was unlikely that his father, the Earl of Northumberland, would ever agree to such a match for his son. He wasted no time in making King Henry VIII aware of the matter without whose permission no aristocratic marriage could be contracted and he was furious at not being consulted on the matter. Cavendish, who would have inside knowledge of the whole episode, went on to say that it King Henry VIII had already begun to accept Anne for who she was, care about her, and deeply fall in love with her and the thought of her being betrothed to another man disturbed him so much so that he reluctantly confessed the ‘secret affection’ he had been nurturing for her to Cardinal Wolsey and set him to break off the engagement.

Anne Boleyn's Early Life Part Four: Going Home to England

Written By: Katelyn Abbott

                                                      
                                                 A picture of James Butler

Anne had been recalled to England so that she could marry her Irish cousin, James Butler, a handsome and intelligent young man with red hair and blue eyes who was several years older than she was and a member of Cardinal Thomas Wolsey’s household at the English Court, in an attempt to settle a dispute over the estates and the title of the Earldom of Ormond. The seventh Earl of Ormond had died in 1515 leaving his daughters Anne St. Leger and Margaret Boleyn as his co-heiresses. Sir Piers Butler, the great-great grandson of the third Earl of Ormond, evidently contested the will and claimed the Earldom of Ormond for himself in Ireland. He was already in possession of Kilkenny Castle which was the ancestral seat of the earls. However Sir Thomas Boleyn, being the eldest son of Lady Margaret Boleyn, felt that the title of the Earldom of Ormond belonged to him and protested about it to his brother-in-law, Thomas Howard, the third Duke of Norfolk, who had spoken to King Henry VIII about the matter. King Henry VIII, fearful that the dispute could be the spark to ignite civil war in Ireland, sought to resolve the matter himself by arranging a marriage between Sir Piers Butler’s son James Butler and Sir Thomas Boleyn’s daughter Anne Boleyn. She would bring the Earldom of Ormond inheritance as her dowry into her marriage with James Butler and thus end the dispute between Sir Piers Butler and Sir Thomas Boleyn. This plan seemed agreeable to everyone involved except the couple themselves. The plan of the marriage of James Butler and Anne Boleyn ended in failure regardless of the fact that it was proposed on several occasions though the reason for why the marriage never took place is unknown. The several theories as to why their marriage never happened was perhaps because Cardinal Wolsey who was an enemy of the Boleyns even before his clash with Anne had been able to stop the marriage because to him it had seemed as advantageous to the family, Sir Thomas Boleyn coveted the title of the Earldom of Ormond for himself or he desired to make a grander marriage for his daughter Anne, or Anne had a strong resolve not to marry James Butler had won out against marriage to him since a life in dreary Ireland would have seemed to almost have been like a banishment to her compared to her life at the French Court. Whatever the reason for the marriage negotiations between James Butler and Anne Boleyn came to a complete end and James Butler would later end up married to Lady Joan Fitzgerald, the daughter and heiress of James Fitzgerald and Amy O’Brien.

Anne Boleyn's Early Life Part Three: Formal Training at the French Court

                                                          Written By: Katelyn Abbott

                   A Picture of Princess Mary Tudor who became the Queen of France

Sir Thomas Boleyn sent a letter to his great friend the Archduchess Margaret of Austria to request for her to release Anne from her service in her household and send her back to England with a chaperone sent by him for him to send her to serve as a maid-of-honor to Princess Mary Tudor at the French Court on August 14^th, 1514. Anne must have been sad to have to leave the Archduchess Margaret, but the thoughts that she must have had about it are unknown. Though both her sister Mary Boleyn and she had both been chosen to serve the soon–to-be new Queen of France, the records are not exactly clear as to which Boleyn girl had traveled to France with Princess Mary Tudor and where Anne joined her new mistress at. Eric Ives wrote of how the list of ladies paid for the period of October to December 1514 shows the name “Marie Boulonne,” but not Anne so it may be that Mary Boleyn had attended Princess Mary on her difficult crossing on the English Channel to France, for the wedding which took place on October 9, 1514 at Abbeville and that Anne had joined the royal party in Paris in time to attend to Princess Mary for her coronation on November 5, 1514. He has hypothesized that the Archduchess Margaret of Austria might not have gotten Sir Thomas Boleyn’s letter in time for her to send Anne back home to England because she was visiting the islands of Zeeland at the time so Anne traveled directly by land to France to meet up with Princess Mary and her  household there.

Anne Boleyn's Early Life Part Two: Education at the Court of the Archduchess Margaret of Austria

                                                      Written By: Katelyn Abbott

                                         A picture of the Archduchess Margaret of Austria

Sir Thomas Boleyn had continued his diplomatic career as an ambassador under King Henry VIII and during this period his brilliance and his charm won him many admirers throughout Europe. He encountered the Archduchess Margaret of Austria the regent of the Netherlands when he was sent on a diplomatic mission to the Netherlands in 1512-1513. Thomas found her to be a brilliant, cultured, and deeply well-educated lady and was greatly impressed by her court which was “Europe’s premier finishing school” where the elite of various European countries fought for their daughters and their sons to be placed in her household. Young men and women with positions in Archduchess Margaret of Austria’s household got to be educated and “finished” with Margaret’s Hapsburg nephew Prince Charles and nieces Princess Eleanor, Princess Mary, and Princess Isabella and other children of “the elite of Europe.” Margaret was so impressed by Sir Thomas Boleyn that she offered to let Anne have a place in her household and he took her up on her offer.

Anne Boleyn's Early Life Part One: Birth, Childhood, and Details about Anne's Early Education

Anne Boleyn: The most important and influential Queen Consort England has ever had

Written By: Katelyn Abbott

                                                          A picture of Anne Boleyn

“The king has been very good to me. He promoted me from a simple maid to be a marchioness. Then he raised me to be a queen. Now he will raise me to be a martyr.”- Anne Boleyn

Anne Boleyn, considered being “the most important and influential queen consort England has ever had”, was the daughter of Sir Thomas Boleyn and Lady Elizabeth Boleyn. She had black hair and brown eyes and came to spend her childhood at Hever Castle in Kent. During her adolescence Anne was educated in the Netherlands largely as a maid-of-honor to Archduchess Margaret of Austria and France mainly as a lady-in-waiting to Queen Claude of France. Anne ended up returning to England where her allure, her beauty, her brilliance, her charm, her drive, her elegance, her fine sense of humor, her grace, her high independence, her impeccable sense of fashion, her keen wit, and her lively, opinionated, and passionate personality earned her a circle of admirers. She entered the service of Katherine of Aragon as a lady-in-waiting and first was engaged secretly to Henry Percy, but their engagement was ended by Cardinal Thomas Wolsey. Anne had a flirtatious relationship with Sir Thomas Wyatt, but she had gone on to catch the attention of King Henry VIII of England. King Henry VIII had tried to make Anne his mistress, but she refused because she had seen how her sister Mary Boleyn had scandalized herself as she had been his mistress and Anne wanted to keep her good name and make an honorable marriage for herself. King Henry VIII offered to marry her and make her the Queen of England and Anne promptly accepted his proposal. She put up with waiting for nearly seven years for King Henry VIII to obtain an annulment from his marriage to Katherine of Aragon. The final break away from Rome by King Henry VIII was what it took before they were married on January 25, 1533 and Anne was crowned the Queen of England on June 1, 1533. Anne was unable to give King Henry VIII the son that he desperately needed and their marriage ended tragically for her. She was arrested, brought to trial, convicted on false charges of adultery, conspiring the death of the King, high treason, incest, and making fun of King Henry VIII’s clothes, music, and poetry, deemed to be sentenced to death, and executed on May 19, 1536.  Their daughter Princess Elizabeth Tudor would become England’s greatest queen.