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 14th, 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 had the joy of being reunited with her sister
Mary when she had arrived in France after over a year of not seeing her. Both
of them would have seen the beginning of the marriage of King Louis XIII and
Princess Mary Tudor. Their marriage was considered to be a marriage of opposites
due to the difference of age between them as Princess Mary was eighteen years
old and King Louis XIII was fifty-two years old. Princess Mary was described to
have been one of the most beautiful princesses of Europe at the time with her
red hair, her blue eyes, and her fair skin while King Louis XIII was an elderly
old man and in failing health from several ailments with the most obvious being
gout. Mary was far from happy to have to
marry him and had to be grateful in the expectation that he could not live for
very much longer. She gave into her brother King Henry VIII’s demands that she
marry King Louis XIII, but she had struck a deal with him that if she did what
he wanted her to do that upon King Louis XIII’s death she would be allowed to
choose whoever she wished to be her next husband.
Shortly after
they were married and Princess Mary had become the Queen of France King Louis
XIII had sent away some of his new wife’s English ladies-in-waiting such as Lady
Jane Guildford for meddling too much into the royal couple’s affairs like the
former ladies-in-waiting of his second wife Anne of Brittany had done and his
fear that they might sent themselves up as spies to report unfavorable
intelligence back to King Henry VIII of England. Anne and her sister Mary both
escaped his purge and they stayed in the royal service of the new French Queen.
The marriage between King Louis XIII and Princess Mary Tudor did not last long
as he died on January 1, 1515 less than three months after they were married. Princess Mary Tudor became ‘la reine blanche’ or
“The White Queen” as it was customary to call royal French widows. Custom
dictated that a royal widow “the white queen,” resided in seclusion for forty
days dressed in white to make sure if she was pregnant with the next heir to
the French throne. Anne did most likely serve her along with her sister Mary as
her attendants during her period of confinement
Princess Mary had accepted King Henry VIII’s best
friend, Charles Brandon, the Duke of Suffolk, for who he was, cared about him,
and deeply fallen in love with him and she had secretly married him when
he had been sent to France to escort
her back home to England. Historical
evidence suggested that Charles Brandon was more than likely living in bigamy
at the time. The events of their secret marriage that followed were a
completely royal mess that both Anne and her sister Mary had seen firsthand.
Anne remained in France to serve as a
lady-in-waiting to the brown-haired and blue-eyed fifteen-year-old Queen Claude
upon the accession of her black-haired and brown-eyed twenty-one-year-old
husband King Francis I of France after the death of her father King Louis XIII.
She became a favored lady-in-waiting to Queen Claude and she was called “Anna” by everyone in the French
Court. She came to have the
position as the official translator for her whenever any English Ambassadors
met with the French Queen. Anne definitely learned a lot from Queen Claude as
she was a beautiful and intelligent young woman of fine virtue and good
character despite her being crippled by lameness. Queen Claude demanded high
morality and restraint in her ladies-in-waiting, expected them to follow a
routine based on chastity, good works, and prayers, and firmly ran her
household like a covenant. They followed behind her in procession as she went
about her religious observances and they were to be good models of decorum and
modesty at every public appearance they accompanied her on. Queen Claude guided
her ladies-in-waiting’s thoughts towards holy and virtuous matters and she had
supervised the activities of her ladies-in-waiting herself with needlework
being a specialty. If Queen Claude had followed her mother Anne of Brittany’s
example then she would have had Anne and the other ladies-in-waiting sit on the
floor protected from the cold by only their heavy skirts and cushions most likely
in a Spartan chamber dominated by a large candlelit altar occupying their time
with needlework and reading Scripture. Anne might have been able to recite
Scripture by memory in English and French backward and forward, all four
Gospels, the catechism, and Psalms from all of the Scripture that she might
have had to read.
Anne would have seen the marriage between King Francis I and Queen Claude. King Francis I and Queen Claude might have had accepted each other for who they are, been good friends with each other, and cared about each other, but they had married each other out of duty instead of love. King Francis I was considered to have been a handsome, brilliant, charming, dashing, easygoing, and friendly man, but he was constantly unfaithful to his wife Queen Claude. He did have many mistresses and he ended up spending much of his time at Amboise while Queen Claude preferred to spend her time at Blois in the pretty chateau perched high above the magnificent Loire valley where she had spent much of her childhood at due to her feelings of uneasiness at her husband’s more exuberant court than her own. Queen Claude endured the suffering of a neglected wife in silent submissiveness and she fulfilled her duty giving her husband King Francis I children. She gave her husband seven children although not all of their children they had together had survived beyond infancy. Anne would have seen how Queen Claude was treated as a royal baby maker by King Francis I while her husband was unfaithful to her with a series of beautiful, intelligent, and charming mistresses with him having a preference for his mistresses to be definitely cultured and extremely well-educated. It would be safe to guess that Anne after seeing King Francis I’s unfaithfulness to Queen Claude and the suffering that it must have caused her might have decided that no man would ever treat her like that. Anne might have been present at the births of Princess Louise on August 19, 1515, Princess Charlotte on October 23, 1516, Dauphin Francis on February 28, 1518, Prince Henry on March 31, 1519, and Princess Madeline on August 10, 1520 as one of the ladies-in-waiting present when Queen Claude had given birth to her children.
As well as her day-to-day duties as a
lady-in-waiting to Queen Claude along with the other ladies-in-waiting and her
keeping their mistress company through conversation, doing silk work, playing
music, and reading books together, historian Eric Ives has written that Anne
might have accompanied Queen Claude and her mother-in-law, Louis of Savoy, on
their journey to Lyons and Marseilles to welcome King Francis I in October 1515
after his victory at the Battle of Marignano in Italy. Anne might have been
able to go with them when they went on a pilgrimage to Saint-Maxmin-la-Sainte
Baume while they were in the area. They had come there in order to see the alleged
tomb of Mary Magadalene.
During her time in the Queen’s household, Anne acquired a thorough knowledge of French art, culture, dance, etiquette, literature, music, and poetry and completed her study of French. She developed interests in fashion and religious philosophy. Anne ended up gaining a new skill in knitting. Fluent in speaking both English and French, Anne also had a working knowledge of Latin and she knew some Italian. She got to grow in the developments of her skills as a composer, a dancer, and a musician at the French Court. Historians strongly think that at the French Court Anne was likely to have had made the acquaintance of King Francis I’s sister, Marguerite de Navarre, a brilliant, cultured, and deeply well-educated lady and a patron of humanists and reformers. Marguerite de Navarre was also an author in her own right and her works included elements of Christian mysticism and reform that, but for her protection as being the French King’s beloved sister, verged on heresy. It had Marguerite de Navarre who brought the religious reformer Jacques LeFevre d’Etaples to court to become a tutor for her nephews and nieces the children of King Francis I and he came to serve as the librarian at the chateau in Blois where Anne was often in residence with Queen Claude as one of her ladies-in-waiting. She or her circle of ladies-in-waiting may have encouraged Anne’s interest in reform as well as in literature and poetry. There may have been invitations to Anne from Marguerite de Navarre to visit her in her apartments where Anne might have been allowed to read adventure books, humanist primers, romance books, and translated comedies and tragedies of Greece and ancient Rome with Marguerite and her ladies-in-waiting and discuss them with them along with card playing, dancing, drinking of wine, eating of good food, playing musical instruments, singing, and talking. This might have led Anne and Marguerite to accept each other for who they are, become friends with each other, and care about each other and their friendship was based on mutual affection for each other which would continue until Anne’s death with the two queens corresponding with each other by letters.
The time Anne spent abroad had her acquire many
books. Books that she possessed were written in English or French. The earliest
book Anne is thought to have acquired is in Latin which is a Book of Hours from
Bruges which can now be seen at Hever Castle. Anne wound up signing the edition
of the book with her name and the prophetical saying ‘le temps viendra’, or
‘the time will come.’ Other books that Anne would have owned were a French
Bible and French versions of the Scriptures.
According to historian Eric Ives Anne was likely to have met Leonardo da Vinci when he had settled at Cloux, near Amboise in 1516. Anne might have seen his “La Gioconda.” She might also have taken an interest in learning how to draw because of him. Anne was also able to hear Desiderius Erasmus lecture.
Anne’s behavior in the French Court, considered the
center of an “advanced, brilliant, Italianate culture” was described as bright,
charismatic, delightful, and joyful. She was enchanted by life in the French
Court as it was a whole new world to her full of excitement, fun, great
promise, and intrigue. Anne flourished there and she grew in popularity at the
French Court because of it. Her sister Mary and she had both gained themselves
much attention from the courtiers at the French Court, but they had both gotten
that attention for themselves for very different reasons.
Anne did not end up fascinating other people and gaining their attention not so much by her beauty the way that her sister Mary did as she did in her brilliance, her charm, her drive, her elegance, her fine sense of humor, her gracefulness, her keen wit, her liveliness, and her other accomplishments.
Anne did not end up fascinating other people and gaining their attention not so much by her beauty the way that her sister Mary did as she did in her brilliance, her charm, her drive, her elegance, her fine sense of humor, her gracefulness, her keen wit, her liveliness, and her other accomplishments.
Evidently Anne’s appearance had made her stand out
among the other women at the French Court. Anne was of average height and a
slender build. She had black hair, dark brown eyes, a considerably strong nose,
a definite wide mouth with pink slim lips, evident high cheekbones, an elegant
swan-like neck, fingers which were long and slender, and ivory skin with an
appealing fragility about her. Customarily Anne’s hair was of a great length
which she often wore interlaced with jewels loose down her back that was so
long she could sit on it. Anne dressed well with a particular love for gowns of
deep dramatic colors of any hue and emerald greens and silk hose. She enjoyed
initial pendants (with her having at least three of them being an ‘A,’ an ‘AB,’
and a ‘B’) and she was fond of rosewater perfume. Even though she did not
confirm with the typical standard of conventional beauty, her dark and exotic
looks made her an unconventional beauty.
Endless debates have occurred among different people
about Anne’s beauty because even though Anne was beautiful people’s opinions
differed on her looks. Some people did not believe her to be beautiful such as
at the Italian ambassador Marino Sanuto who met Anne in October 1532 described
her as being “not one of the handsomest women in the world; she is of middling
stature, swarthy complexion, long neck, wide neck, bosom not much raised….eyes,
which are black and beautiful.” Some other people considered Anne to be
beautiful as they described her as “competent belle” (“quite beautiful”) and
“young and good-looking” such as Lancelot de Carles who depicted her as
“beautiful with an elegant figure” and Simon Grynee who wrote to Martin Bucer that Anne
“was young, good-looking of a rather dark complexion” in September 1531. There were other people who did see her as
beautiful, but that there were other women even more beautiful than she was
such as John Barlow (a divine who was later in Anne’s service) who felt that
King Henry VIII’s former mistress Elizabeth Blount was more beautiful than Anne
was though Anne was ‘the more eloquent and graceful, more really handsome’ of
the two of them. However Anne was said to have some imperfections by other
people such as the Catholic propagandist and polemicist Nicholas Sander who had
written the most influential description of Anne, but also the most least
reliable of her, in 1586, half a century after Anne’s death: “Anne Boleyn was
rather tall of stature, with black hair, and an oval face of a swallow
complexion, as if troubled with jaundice. It is said that she had a projected
tooth under the upper lip, and on her right hand six fingers. There was a large
wen under her chin, and therefore to hide its ugliness she wore a high dress
covering her throat...She was handsome to look at, with a pretty mouth.” He
held Anne responsible for King Henry VIII’s rejection of the Roman Catholic
Church and he was keen to demonize her. His inaccurate description of Anne
contributed to what historian Eric Ives labeled as the “monster legend” for
references to Anne’s appearance even in some modern textbooks. In short, while
Anne might not have been the most beautiful woman in the world she was still a
beautiful woman in her own right and she was capable of making the most out of
her physical appearance. Lancelot de Carles stated of how Anne deployed her
eyes (one of her best features with her hair as her other best feature) with a
practiced skill: ‘Sometimes keeping them in repose, on other occasions, sending
them forth as messengers, to carry the secret witness of the heart.’ ‘Such was
their power, that many men were hers to command.’
Fascination that Anne ended up causing from other
people which got her to be a center figure at the French Court was because of
her allure, her beauty, her brilliance, her charm, her drive, her elegance, her
flirtatiousness manners, her good sense of humor, her grace, her great courage,
her high independence, her impeccable sense of fashion, her keen wit, her
lively, opinionated, and passionate personality, her self-confidence, and her
tender heart when she chose to show it. Favorites among Anne’s were her
favorite animals being birds and dogs, her favorite color being green, her
favorite drink being wine, her favorite food being French cuisine, her favorite
flowers being roses, and her favorite gem being pearls. She came to like
beautiful clothes and captivating jewels, drinking wine, eating French cuisine,
flirting, gossiping, and hearing a good joke. Anne did play both cards and
dice, enjoyed gambling, and was fond of archery, falconry, hunting, and the
occasional game of bowls. She was full of fun and she had been good-natured and
happy in her younger years. Anne was highly well-educated, well-read, and
gifted in the arts and she was known for her intellectual curiosity. She shone
at acting, conversation, dancing, making music, poetry, and singing at the
glittering French Court. Anne was also most noticeably of all tremendously
sexy. Yet according to her enemies Anne could also be arrogant, boastful,
cocky, definitely emotional, extravagant, given to physical violence,
hysterical, jealous, proud, ruthless, sharp-tongued, terrible-tempered, and
vain yet her friends said that her terrible temper was never unprovoked by
people.
Anne’s great impression on people not surprisingly
made the young men of the French Court swarm around her. Even King Francis I
was fascinated by Anne. He wrote of her: ‘Venus était blonde, on m’a dit: L’on voit bien,
qu’elle est brunette’ which in English means ‘Venus was blonde; I’ve been told:
Now I see that she’s a brunette!’
Queen Claude had indulged her ladies-in-waiting at the various entertainments such as banquets, courtly games, dances, jousts, masques, and pageants held at King Francis I’s court. In these entertainments, Anne would have been at her element for she loved these kinds of festivities. Anne would have let down her glorious black hair and passionately thrown herself into the gaiety of these festivities. In a description of Anne at this point in her life by the Viscount de Chateaubriand had asserted of her fine singing voice and her great talent for poetry:
“She possessed a great talent for poetry, and when
she sung, like a second Orpheus, she would have made bears and wolves
attentive. She likewise danced the English dances, leaping and jumping with
infinite grace and agility. Moreover, she invented many new figures and steps,
which are yet known by her name, or by those of the gallant partners with whom
she danced them. She was well skilled in all games fashionable at courts.
Besides singing like a siren, accompanying herself on the lute, she harped
better than King David, and handled cleverly both flute and rebec. She dressed
with marvelous taste, and devised new modes, which were followed by the fairest
ladies of the French Court, but none wore them with her gracefulness, in which
she rivaled Venus.”
William Forrest,
author of a contemporary poem about Katherine of Aragon, complimented Anne’s
“passing excellent” skill as a dancer. “Here, “he wrote, “was [a] fresh young
damsel; that could trip and go.” That was only one of many compliments paid to
Anne on her skill as a dancer.
In a description about Anne’s costume Agnes
Strickland has stated:
“The French chroniclers have preserved a description
of the costume Anne Boleyn wore at the court of Francis I. She had a bourrelet
or cape of blue velvet, trimmed with points, at the end of each hung a little
bell of gold. She wore a vest of blue velvet trimmed with silver, and a surcoat
of watered silk lined with miniver, with large hanging sleeves, which hid her
hands from the curiosity of the courtiers; her little feet were covered with
blue velvet brodequins, the insteps were adorned each with a diamond star. On
her head she wore a golden-colored aureole of some kind of plaited gauze, and
her hair fall in ringlets.”
In this description of Anne’s costume Agnes
Strickland correctly remarked this was not Anne Boleyn as people would usually
picture her as with bells on her cape, large hanging sleeves, and ringlets in
her hair. The description of Anne’s costume would have seemed to refer to a
dress designed and worn for a specific occasion maybe perhaps as the costume of
some character that Anne was portraying at a pageant. There is also the
possibility that Anne might have experienced with clothes and hairstyles as
much as she did with dance steps.
The French Court was one of the most licentiousness
courts in Europe. Anne was familiar with the arts of flirtation and the game of
courtly love because of it and she gained a wide depth experience from
witnessing the licentiousness of the French Court and its damaging consequences
of a woman’s good name. Her sister Mary had gained herself an unfavorable
reputation for her scandalous behavior for her enjoyment of men and her
frequent and illicit affairs with them including her becoming the mistress of
King Francis I which might have horrified Anne. He had referred to Mary as “the English mare,” “a great prostitute, infamous above all, “and
“my hackney.” Anne had surrounded herself with
honorable ladies known for their chastity and their honor and she behaved
impeccably well around flirtatious men to protect her maidenhead from them.
King Francis I was impressed by the way she handled her male admirers and told
her father Sir Thomas Boleyn in a letter that she was discreet and modest
around them. He had heard a rumor that Anne desired to be a nun and wrote,
‘This I should regret.’ It is unlikely that Anne had any inclination at all
towards the religious life of a nun, but she perhaps might have used it as a
weapon with which to ward off unwelcome suitors or whet the appetites of those
men she found attractive. Anne wanted to develop her own future as she was
determined to have a good and respectable life and make an honorable marriage
for herself so she learned from her sister Mary on how not to act.
Her experience in France made her a devout Christian
in the new tradition of Renaissance humanism. Anne had only a working knowledge
of Latin, but trained at the French Court, she was influenced by an
“evangelical variety of French humanism” which led her to champion the
vernacular Bible. While she would later hold the reformist position that the
papacy was a corrupting influence on Christianity, her conservative tendencies
could be seen in her devotion to the Virgin Mary.
It is possible that Anne would have probably taken
part in the coronation of Queen Claude at St. Denis in May 1516 and her
triumphant entry into Paris. Anne might have been present at the banquet given
in honor of the visit of the English diplomats sent to negotiate a marriage
between the Prince Henri and King Henry VIII’s daughter Princess Mary Tudor on
December 22, 1518 as Queen Claude’s ladies-in-waiting had accompanied her to
this event and Anne likely would have been useful as an interpreter for her
with the English diplomats. Anne might also have taken part in Queen Claude’s
entry into Cognac in 1520.
Anne most likely had accompanied her mistress Queen
Claude along with the other rest of her ladies-in-waiting to the meeting of the
two kings King Francis I of France and King Henry VIII of England at the Field
of Cloth of Gold in June 1520 just outside Calais. Her name had not been
mentioned among those who had attended the event, but Anne must have been there
as her fluency in French would have made her useful as an interpreter to Queen
Claude. Certainly it was an exciting event full of banquets, costly clothes,
dancing, fireworks, good music, masques, processions, and sporting events, but
the meeting between King Francis I and King Henry VIII was merely for show and
of no political significance between England and France. Anne might have
enjoyed a reunion with her family meaning her father Sir Thomas Boleyn, her
mother Lady Elizabeth Boleyn, her sister Mary, Mary’s new husband Sir William
Carrey, and possibly her brother George as they had all attended the event as
did their Howard relatives and she possibly might have seen King Henry VIII for
the first time there if she had not seen him at Lille.
Anne’s European education ended in the winter of
1521 when her father Sir Thomas Boleyn had summoned her back to England.
England and France had been brought to the brink of war with each other because
of the recent pact made between King Henry VIII and the Holy Roman Emperor
Charles V and English subjects living in France at the time were cautioned to
return home. The French Royal Family did protest her leaving the French Court,
but their protests ended up to no avail. She might not have wanted to leave the
French Court as she had a circle of friends there and her parents Sir Thomas
Boleyn and Lady Elizabeth Boleyn might possibly have wanted for her to marry
abroad in France, but Anne had to obey her father Sir Thomas Boleyn’s orders.
Anne sailed back from Calais back to England in January 1522.
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