Written
By: Katelyn Abbott
Here
is a list of some interesting facts about Anne Boleyn.
A
picture of Anne Boleyn
-Anne Boleyn’s apparent nickname was Nan.
-Her hair had been black or dark brown which was so long that she could sit on it and dark brown eyes which were almost black.
- She was considered to be an unconventional beauty and her contemporaries described her allure, her brilliance, her charm, her drive, her elegance, her fine sense of humor, her generosity, her grace, her great self-confidence, her high independence, her kindness, her lively, opinionated, and passionate personality, her remarkable courage, her strength, her tendency towards utter devotion to those that she had loved, and her wit. Anne was devout with herself encouraging a more tolerant religious point of view throughout Europe. She did contribute much of her time to charitable works, donated much to educational foundations, and ended up being a patron of the arts. Extremely well-educated, fluent in several foreign languages, and gifted in the arts, Anne had an interest in politics and religion and was known for her intellectual curiosity. Anne enjoyed life and she fully lived life to the fullest with her coming to like beautiful clothes and captivating jewels, drinking wine, eating French cuisine, flirting, gossiping, and hearing a good joke, did play both cards and dice, enjoyed gambling, and was fond of archery, falconry, hunting, the occasional game of bowls, and participating in banquets, courtly games, dances, gambling parties, hunts, jousts, masques, pageants, and other medieval forms of entertainment. She gained fame for her sexual appeal and she was tremendously sexy which always had drawn men to herself unintentionally. Anne had a rather droll and sometimes dark sense of humor and there are many examples of this. The example of this would be Anne’s reaction to the protests against King Henry VIII’s decision to marry her and make her the Queen of England by taking as her motto for a short time, “ Ainsi sera, groigne qui groigue,” which translated into “ Grumble all you like, this is how it’s going to be.” Though many historians had interpreted this act to be “arrogant” and completely “defiant” on her part of using humor to express her exasperation and her frustration and make a very valid point about all of the complaints about her marrying King Henry VIII and becoming the next Queen of England. The other example of her sense of humor was when she referred to herself in the Tower of London as “Queen Lackhead” and her saying to Master Kingston about the French executioner prior to her execution, “I heard say the executioner was very good and I have a little neck.” She was arrogant, boastful, cocky, definitely emotional, domineering, extravagant, given to physical violence, headstrong, intemperate, proud, ruthless, stubborn, and vain. Anne was also well-known for her notorious sharp tongue and her terrible temper that she had sometimes forgot to withhold.
-Anne was deemed to be an animal lover. She had been fond of all animals, but her favorite animals were birds and dogs. Though she could not stand monkeys, pelicans, and peacocks as she disliked “noisy” animals.
- Her favorite color ended up being green, her favorite drink to be wine, her favorite food to be French cuisine (with her having an enjoyment for an assortment of fruits such as apples, cherries, and strawberries and beef porridge and a fondness for sweetbread), her favorite flowers to be roses, and her favorite gem to be pearls.
-She evidently was concerned with cleanliness as she bathed as often as she could. Anne bathed in white wine to lighten her skin. Courtiers that were envious of her in the English Court would say, “You are doubtless familiar with the degrading sycophancy of the English nobility who filled their glasses from the bath whilst the Queen herself was in it.”
-Anne favored fine food and good wine of the greatest quality. She created a small tart with an almond, curd cheese, and lemon filling in it in her younger days which King Henry VIII was so enchanted with that he named the creator of the cake maid of honor. Anne did not eat very much as she was concerned with staying thin.
-Anne was fond of beautiful clothes and captivating jewels. She favored French fashions such as French hoods and gowns of bright colors especially the color green. Anne had often worn her hair interlaced with jewels loose down her back. Her favorite piece of jewelry was her famous ‘B’ necklace. She wore this necklace around her neck strung with pearls and a large gold ‘B’ with three pearls hanging underneath of it. The perfume that Anne had favored the most was rosewater perfume.
-Folklore has always given Anne six fingers. She had been said have hid her finger by wearing gowns with long-sleeves or special gloves on her hands. There are other legends that have said that Anne had a large “wen” under her chin that she would cover with a black ribbon around her neck, moles all over her body that were the devil’s marks, a projecting tooth, and three breasts. There has never been any evidence to support these legends as they were created by her enemies to blacken her name the way that Nicholas Sanders did so none of them should be taken seriously. Though she might have had moles on her body they were most likely common moles that everyone else had on their own bodies.
-Finally Nicholas Sanders had gone on to write that Anne was raped by one of her father’s officials at Hever Castle when she was seven years old and that she sinned with her father’s butler and chaplain which caused her to be placed under the care of a certain French nobleman Phillippe Du Moulin at Brie-sons-Forges where she was educated at his home as he was a family friend of the Boleyns. Most historians do not mention these accusations as they see them as untrue. Only Alison Weir even mentions them in passing, but she then dismisses the rumors as untrue and stated that Nicholas Sanders was responsible for “some of the wilder inaccuracies that gained currency around Anne Boleyn” including those ones.
- Anne grew up at her family’s home at Hever Castle in Kent along with her brother George and her sister Mary.
- Anne had gotten to be extremely well-educated, fluent in several foreign languages, and gifted in the arts. Her academic education was in arithmetic, her family genealogy, grammar, history, reading, spelling, and writing with her enjoying to learn about Greek and Roman Mythology and legends like King Arthur and her having fun learning about the lineages and lives of the monarchs of Europe from her brother George’s tutors. Anne had been given instruction in etiquette, feminine accomplishments such as the curtseying, dancing, embroidery, music, needlework, and singing, good manners, how to carry herself with dignity and grace, and “maidenly, obedient, and proper” behavior. She came to learn games such as cards, chess, and dice and how to gamble. Household management did get learned by Anne along with her sister Mary from their mother Lady Elizabeth Boleyn’s guidance with them helping her to distill sweet waters, making medicines and poultices from the herbs in the garden, and preparing confits and conserves in the still room as it was important for girls of good birth to have the necessary skills to run a great household of their own to run and to see to their own servants. Anne ended up learning outdoor pursuits such as archery, falconry, horseback riding, and hunting. She was obsessed with striving to have perfect accents, perfect curtseys, perfect dance steps, perfect dinner graces, perfect gestures, perfect manners, and perfect posture for she was meant to become a perfect court lady. Anne had served as a maid-of-honor to Archduchess Margaret of Austria in 1513 and a lady-in-waiting to Queen Claude in France from 1515 to 1521 to complete her education before she had returned to England in January 1522 and served as a lady-in-waiting to Queen Katherine of Aragon. She began to learn French, came to develop her conversation and deportment skills, and did study art, the beauty in fabric, culture, dance, fashionable courtly games, literature, music, and poetry while she was at the court of Archduchess Margaret of Austria. Then at the French Court Anne had acquired a thorough knowledge of French art, culture, dance, etiquette, literature, music, and poetry, completed her study of French, developed interests in art, fashion, illuminated manuscripts, literature, music, poetry, and religious philosophy, ended up gaining a new skill in knitting, formed ego stroking and flattery skills, and gained a wide depth experience in flirtation and the game of courtly love. The languages that she was fluent in were English and French and she had a working knowledge of Latin and knew some Italian. Anne was well-read in Aristotle, Aesop’s Fables, and Socrates along with most likely the classics.
- Anne was actually amazing at acting. She had been gifted at drawing and painting. Anne came to be an excellent composer, dancer, and musician excelling at playing the blockflute/recorder, the clavichord which she had liked to decorate with green ribbons, the harp, the lute, the rebec, and the virginals. She did happen to be famous for her pleasant singing voice. Anne designed her own clothing and she ended up setting fashion trends at the courts that she had been to which were followed by other ladies. She was an expert needlewoman for she had made some of her own clothes—an embroidered headpiece and coif said to have been worked on by her are at Hever Castle—as well as spending hours of her time with her ladies-in-waiting embroidering bedding, carpets, nightgowns, and wall hangings for Anne had been instructed on how to make cloths for altars of churches, dressmaking, and shirt making for her future husband as a child. For there is a bed valance thought to have been worked on by her that survives to this day. Anne was a gifted poet and she had written masques though none of her poems survives expect for the two of them that were allegedly written by her being “Defiled Is My Name” and “Oh Death Rock Me Asleep” during her imprisonment in the Tower of London prior to her execution. She was known to have shared an interest with King Henry VIII in Renaissance architecture and design motifs.
-Anne had been gifted at all games fashionable at
court such as cards, chess, and dice and she had been an inveterate gambler.
King Henry VIII often gave her only five pounds (which equals one thousand five
hundred pounds) at a time often in small change from his Privy Purse “for
playing money.” He lost large sums of money to Anne often and one of their
favorite card games to play was “Pope July” with one another.
-Anne
had been an incredible sportswoman. She had been skilled at archery, bowls,
falconry, horseback riding, and hunting. There was a great love of Anne of
fresh air and nature in her.
-Anne had hated liars and she had liked a good
intrigue.
-Her hobbies had been in spending time in archery,
being into drawing and painting, cards and dice playing, chess, dancing,
embroidery, falconry, fine walks in the gardens, gambling, gardening, horseback
riding, hunting, knitting, listening to music, making music, needlework, the
occasional game of bowls, playing with her dogs, reading books, sewing,
talking, and writing poetry.
-Inevitably Anne had the ability to attract
fanatical male devotion from the men around her. She had been betrothed to
James Butler at first, but nothing came of those marriage plans. Anne did come
to accept Henry Percy for who he was, care about him, and deeply fall in love
with him and she ended up engaged into him in secret, but Cardinal Wolsey and
Henry Percy’s family put an end to their secret engagement. Anne had a
flirtatious relationship with Sir Thomas Wyatt, but there is no evidence to
suggest that Anne was no longer a virgin by the time that she married King
Henry VIII as her “maidenhead” was very important to her for she wanted to keep
her good name and make an honorable marriage for herself. Many other men were
charmed by and drawn to Anne such as the French ambassador Giles de la Pommeraye
who was completely captivated by her and paid tribute to her formidable
intellect and her influence over English foreign policy. The diplomat John
Barlow was devoted to her and he spied for her in Rome. This ability to attract
fanatical male devotion from the men around her later in life backfired
spectacularly on her since Anne found herself the object of feverish unrequited
love from a musician in her household named Mark Smeaton. -King Henry VIII came to accept Anne for who she was, care about her, and deeply fall in love with her and he ended up wanting her to be his mistress, but Anne refused him and said no as her sister Mary had once been his mistress and she did not want to be thrown away like Mary was when he had tired of her. Anne may have been the only woman to dare say “no” to King Henry VIII. Her refusal made him want her even more. She came to accept King Henry VIII for who he was, care about him, and deeply fall in love with him and their relationship with each other was very passionate. The king asked Anne to marry him and become the Queen of England in 1527 and she said “yes” to his proposal.
-King Henry VIII and Anne kept their relationship a secret at first since he was still married to Queen Katherine at the time and they needed to secure a divorce from her for him so that they could marry.
- King Henry VIII showed little signs of Anne’s star rising at the English Court at first as he did converse with her, dance with her, eat meals alone with her, she fashionably dressed in the most expensive and fashionable gowns and finest jewels and ended up using the cosmetics and different scented perfumes as well as the furs, gloves, hair pieces, lace fans, and pomanders that he gave to her; he gave her expensive gifts such as art pieces and books including two manors, he would go on walks in the gardens with her, he would go horseback riding with her; he would make music together with her, he would play games of board games, cards, chess, and dice and gamble with her, he would recite poetry with her, he would sit under a tree and watch the clouds with her, he would solve riddles and word games with her, and he wound up paying for her gambling debts for her. The both of them would pursuit in outdoor pursuits such as archery, bowls, falconry, and hunting in good weather. Anne took to allowing King Henry VIII to hug and kiss her and let him see her small breasts which he called her “ pretty duckies” while he would let her sit on his lap. The family and friends of Anne started to advance at the English Court through his love of Anne.
- In the summer of 1528 Anne became deathly ill with the sweating sickness, but she survived it.
-Anne was lodged in luxurious apartments near those to King Henry VIII and maintained by several ladies-in-waiting and a small staff of servants for her own personal needs by the time the English Court spent Christmas at Greenwich in December 1528.
-Anne had maintained lifelong meaningful friendships with Anne Gainsford, Bridget Wiltshire, Cecily Williams, Doctor William Butts, Edward Foxe, Elizabeth Browne, Hugh Latimer, Joan Champerowne, John Barlow, John Skip, King Francis I, Madge Shelton, Mademoiselle Simonette, Margret Lee, Marguerite de Navarre, Mary Norris, Mary Wyatt, Matthew Parker, Mrs. Mary Orchard, Nan Saville, Nicholas Saxton, Princess Renee of France, Queen Claude, Rose Ogilvy, Sir Anthony Lee, Sir Francis Weston, Sir Henry Norris, Sir Richard Page, Sir Thomas Chenage, Sir Thomas Wyatt, Thomas Cramner, Thomas Goodrich, and William Latimer.
-Anne once shot a cow by accident when she had gone hunting with King Henry VIII.
-Queen Katherine had always usually been an obedient and passive wife to King Henry VIII, but she fought back to save their marriage and try to protect their daughter Princess Mary Tudor’s rights after she became aware that King Henry VIII wanted to annul their marriage and brand their daughter Princess Mary a bastard. Her situation had been desperate. She came to resort on lies and outbursts and seizing help that bordered on treason by writing to her connections abroad in Europe to implore them for their help to fight back against King Henry VIII in the Great Matter to prevent him from marrying Anne. The many supporters of Queen Katherine started a smear campaign against Anne which made the English people unable to accept her for who she was, care nothing for her, and despise her and see her as a gold digging and home wrecking whore, a heretic, and a witch.
-Queen Katherine and Anne, who came to be unable to accept each other for who they were, care nothing for each other, and despised each other, made enemies of each other during the nearly seven year wait of the King’s Great Matter.
-One of Queen Katherine’s ladies-in-waiting once cursed Anne Boleyn in front of her mistress because she saw how sad and troubled the Queen was because of Anne and Queen Katherine promptly scolded her saying, “Hold your peace. Curse not—curse her not, but rather pray for her; for even now is the time fast coming when you shall have reason to pity her, and lament her case.”
-Pope Clement VII paid spies to steal King Henry VIII’s love letters that he wrote to his fiancée Anne Boleyn in both English and French to prove that they were lovers, but no evidence of this was able to be uncovered and even Pope Clement VII had to grudgingly admit that all impartial evidence from England suggested that Anne was strong-willed, but she was morally upright.
-Anne had passionately believed that God had chosen her to be able to marry King Henry VIII and become the Queen of England instead of Katherine of Aragon just as in Biblical times that God had chosen Esther to replace Queen Vashti according to the reports of the Venetian ambassador to London in 1530.
-Anne and Cardinal Thomas Wolsey probably did not accept each other for who they were, cared nothing for each other, and despised each other and ended up being enemies with each other. Cardinal Thomas Wolsey referred to her as “the midnight crow” and he sought to delay King Henry VIII being able to marry Anne and her becoming the Queen of England because he did not want to let it happen. Anne threatened to leave King Henry VIII if he did not attack against Cardinal Thomas Wolsey for conspiring with the Holy Roman Emperor Charles V, the Pope, and Queen Katherine of Aragon to force her into exile so that King Henry VIII so that he would return to his wife and stay with her rather than him moving on with his life together with Anne so King Henry VIII had him arrested and beginning to be brought back to London for him to stand trial for his crimes of high treason, but he had died on his way there.
- King Henry VIII proclaimed Anne to be the Marquess of Pembroke which was an appropriate peerage for a future Queen on September 1, 1532. She became a very important and rich woman. Anne came to be the only one of King Henry VIII’s six wives that he had raised to be a member of the peerage in her own right. The title she received included land and a monthly salary which was contracted that her children would inherit all land and money that went with the title after her death. Anne was the wealthiest of all of King Henry VIII’s wives including Katherine of Aragon and King Henry VIII lost a great deal of money to her whenever he played cards with her.
-Some sources say that King Henry VIII and Anne were already secretly married to each other before they made a trip to Calais to meet with King Francis I in the winter of 1532 as King Henry VIII hoped to enlist his support in his intended marriage to Anne as Anne was being referred to as “the king’s wife” by foreigners in attendance in Calais and that King Henry VIII’s and Anne’s apartments were connected by only one door to each other.
-King Henry VIII and Anne secretly married each other in January 23, 1533 and Anne’s coronation as the Queen Consort of England took place on June 1, 1533. She was the only one of King Henry VIII’s six subsequent wives besides Katherine of Aragon to have a coronation. The coronation she had was exceptionally elaborate and partially designed by Hans Holbein.
- Anne was said to
have eaten three dishes out of the twenty-eight dishes served at the first
course and twenty-three dishes at the second course of her coronation banquet
where she was afterwards served with comfits, sweets, and wine once the feast
had ended.
-She had to add a panel to her skirts from the
increasing girth of her pregnancy being announced in May of 1533 and bitterly
complained about the loss of her figure because of it, but her father Sir
Thomas Boleyn told her bluntly to thank God that she had found herself to be in
such a condition as being with child.
-The daughter of King Henry VIII and
Anne Princess Elizabeth Tudor was born on September 7th, 1533.
-Anne had been supportive of the censored writing of
religious reformers which she read after employing various women to smuggle
illegal books into England for her. She convinced King Henry VIII that the
Bible should be translated into English and made available to the common people
instead of just the clergy. Anne defended the censored writing of religious
reformers and she ended up considered to be the “patron saint” of Protestants
who were being persecuted at the time as she saved many lives of people who
were persecuted for their faith. For the time period that Anne was the Queen of
England no religious heretics were burned at the stake. Anne was generally for
purging the church of abuses (selling of indulgences) and superstitions
(worship of relics). However she ironically worshipped as a Catholic until her
death.
- Anne came to preside over a brilliant and cultured magnificent court at the English Court. She did import exotic wines from exclusive vineyards in Austria, France, and Italy for the English courtiers to drink and insisted that gourmet food was to be served at meals for them to eat and she ended up setting the fashions of French gowns and hoods and glittering jewels that the other ladies had followed at the English Court. For numerous palaces had been renovated to suit King Henry VIII’s and her extravagant tastes of having art work, crystal objects, dazzling objects of gold and silver, elaborate tapestries, lavish furnishings, and marble flooring in them. Anne got some of the best artists, court jesters, dramatists, musicians, poets, scholars, and writers from all over of Europe to reside at the English Court to make it more cultured. She organized and presided over banquets, courtly games, dances, gambling parties, hunts, jousts, masques, pageants, and sporting events. The center of attention had always been on Anne since her early youth and she had reveled in it.
-Anne had done much for charity as she distributed blankets, clothing, food, and wine to the needy and ended up giving a fortune in money to the poor among the English people. George Wyatt (the grandson of Sir Thomas Wyatt) estimated that she had disturbed more than £1500 per year to the poor alone. She was found to have given more money to the poor in three years that she was Queen than Katherine of Aragon did during her entire reign as the Queen of England of more than twenty years. Anne funded educational foundations, got into sewing shirts and smocks with her own hands to distribute to the poor with her ladies-in-waiting, provided for widows and poor householders, sometimes paid for livestock for destitute farmers, and was known to have on at least one occasion to have personally tended to the ill during her travels. She had gone on to wash beggars’ feet as the Queen of England on Maundy Thursdays. Anne had spent more time than her husband King Henry VIII inquiring after how she could help the English people out during her summer progress in 1535. However few of her biographies mention her charitable acts at any length and these were also not publicized during her own lifetime.
-Anne had ended up wanting to give her husband King Henry VIII a son that would be the living image of his father like she had promised to do when he had asked her to first marry him.
-Anne often quarreled with King Henry VIII and she was prone to fits of hysterical laughter.
-Anne was unable to provide King Henry VIII with a son and he came to be unable to accept her for who she was, care nothing for her, and despise her as he saw her failure to bare him a son as a betrayal.
-King Henry VIII had presented the Bishop of Carlisle with a play that he had written entitled ‘The Tragedy of Anne’ which dramatized Anne’s alleged evil before his wife’s arrest that nearly made him faint from mortification at the King’s actions
-Anne was arrested on false charges of adultery, conspiring the death of King Henry VIII, high treason, incest, mocking King Henry VIII’s clothes, music, and poetry, plotting to poison Katherine of Aragon and Lady Mary Tudor, and witchcraft, brought to trial, convicted, and deemed to be sentenced to death by either burning at the stake or decapitation at King Henry VIII’s pleasure.
-When Sir Henry Norris refused to give evidence against Anne he said that he “would rather die a thousand deaths than accuse the Queen of that which I believe her, in my conscience, innocent.”
-King Henry VIII wound up disbanding Anne’s household and dismissing her two hundred and fifty servants eleven days after her arrest before her trial even began which left no serious questions as to his intentions of having her being found guilty. Many of Anne’s former servants returned to serve Jane Seymour after she became the Queen of England. Though Anne’s former Queen’s Mistress of the Wardrobe Lady Margaret Lee went into retirement rather than serve Jane Seymour out of loyalty for Anne.
-King Henry VII went on to annul his marriage to Anne and brand their daughter Princess Elizabeth Tudor a bastard shortly before her execution. Some sources had Anne branded cruelly with false promises of freedom if she gave her consent to the annulment. Common sense makes you wonder how Anne could have committed adultery when she was never legally married to King Henry VIII in the first place.
-King Henry VIII sent for a French swordsman named Jean Rombaud to behead Anne and the French executioner was paid twenty-three pounds to reduce her suffering to a minimum in executing her. He was so skilled that he once beheaded two felons with one stroke. Anne was scared of being beheaded by the axe as executions with the axe were routinely botched and the executioner often took several strikes to sever the person’s head which worried Anne for the misery and pain it caused the person just like she had feared being burned at the stake since she had always been afraid of fire and even smoke. The French executioner took off Anne’s head with one stroke of his sword to prevent this from happening to Anne like she had witnessed happen to other condemned traitors and this was King Henry VIII’s last act of “kindness” towards Anne.
- It was said that when Anne was beheaded and her head was cut off that her eyes still moved and her lips were said to be still moving in prayer for a few seconds.
-Some sources recorded that after a person’s head is decapitated from their body that the person lives on for a few more seconds registering what had just happened to them which is horrible to think that it might have happened to Anne.
-Though King Henry VIII was said to rarely mention Anne’s name again after her death some sources such as Agnes Strickland said that upon his deathbed he was full of remorse and shame over him causing Anne’s death when he knew that she had been innocent.
-Their daughter Princess Elizabeth Tudor would go on to become one of England’s most successful monarchs as Queen Elizabeth I of England who was better known as the “Virgin Queen.”
-Anne’s daughter Elizabeth would refer to her mother several times throughout her life and from her actions and her speech it seems that she had accepted her mother Anne for who she was, cared about her, deeply loved her, and viewed her in a sympathetic light. Elizabeth demonstrated this by adopting her mother’s badge, being close to certain of her Boleyn relatives, and having a statue of Anne at her coronation procession. She ended up having her Archbishop Matthew Parker of Canterbury to find evidence to indicate that King Henry VIII and Anne’s marriage had been lawful and she was legitimate. Perhaps the most touching tribute Elizabeth had paid to her mother Anne to show that she had cherished her mother’s memory was the locket ring Elizabeth had worn that had a portrait of Anne and another portrait of Elizabeth in it beside each other that speaks louder of Elizabeth’s true feelings of her Anne than any words Elizabeth could have said about her mother.
1 comments:
Loved reading this. I love Tudor history.
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