Viewed variously as “the scandal of Christendom” and “the privye and open comforter and aider of al the professors of Christes gospel,” Anne Boleyn was a controversial figure both in her lifetime and posthumously.Footnote 1 While it would be an exaggeration to consider her, in John Aylmer’s memorable phrase, “the chief, first, and only cause of banyshing the beast of Rome, with all his beggarly baggage,” she was nevertheless an important figure in the tumultuous religious developments of the 1530s.Footnote 2 This chapter traces her life from her childhood in the courts of Margaret of Austria and Claude of France to her death on the scaffold of Tower Green on 19 May 1536, with particular attention to her role in evangelical reform. It argues that Anne had a genuine interest in reform and played a significant role in the opening stages of the Henrician Reformation, especially through her impact on the break from Rome and her promotion of evangelicals. Although Anne’s reign was short, her influence was anything but.

Education and Early Life

Anne’s parents were Thomas Boleyn and Elizabeth Howard. Thomas was the son of Sir William Boleyn and Margaret, daughter of Thomas Butler, Earl of Ormond, while Elizabeth was the daughter of Thomas Howard, Duke of Norfolk, and Elizabeth Tilney. The family’s origins may have been in the London mercantile classes, but by the time Anne was born the Boleyns were established within the Tudor upper class. There is some uncertainty—and, as with much of Anne’s life, considerable debate—over the exact date of Anne’s birth. General consensus is that she was born c.1501 at Bickling in Norfolk, making her the second of the Boleyns’ three surviving children. A birth date of 1507 has also been proposed, though most scholars favour the earlier date due to a letter Anne wrote to her father while at Archduchess Margaret of Austria’s court in the Low Countries.Footnote 3 This letter, in which the young Anne promises “to continue to speak good French and also to spell” appears to be written by a teenager, and Anne assures her father that it comes “from my own hand.”Footnote 4 She had two siblings, Mary (born c.1500) and George (born c.1504). Anne appears to have been particularly close to George, with whom she shared many interests, including the patronage of evangelical writers.

The Boleyns spent much of Anne’s childhood in Hever Castle in Kent. Little is known about Anne’s life until she was sent to the court of Archduchess Margaret in 1513, where she remained for about a year. It was an advantageous placement; Margaret was a formidable politician and a multilingual patron of the arts, and her court was an important training ground for the European elite. It is a testament to Thomas Boleyn’s diplomatic skills that he could secure a place for his younger daughter, and Anne’s time there appears to have been a success. Shortly after her arrival, Margaret would write to Thomas Boleyn, “I … find her so bright and pleasant for her young age that I am more beholden to you for having sent her to me than you to me.”Footnote 5

In 1514, Anne was sent to France for the marriage of Henry VIII’s sister Mary to Louis XII. Anne was accompanied by her own sister Mary, who was recalled to the English court in 1519. At some point between then and Anne’s own meeting with Henry, Mary Boleyn was for a time the King’s mistress. When the widowed Mary Tudor returned to England in 1515, Anne stayed behind to serve in the household of Queen Claude of France, where she remained until 1521. Anne’s time in France is relatively undocumented, but a poem published after her death by Lancelot de Carles suggests that her education included the standard courtly accomplishments of the time: “how to sing and dance … Sound the lute and other instruments … she had good and exquisite graces.”Footnote 6

Anne may also have become acquainted with François I’s sister Marguerite d’Angoulême who, although not a Protestant herself, was a noted supporter of French evangelicals. Both François and Marguerite were renowned for their artistic patronage, and—alongside Margaret of Austria—have been seen as significant influences on Anne’s intellectual and spiritual development. Of the reformist texts Anne owned later in life, many are associated with the humanist strain of early reform in France. While it may be too much to say that Anne consciously modelled herself after Marguerite, both women supported reformers and were accused of heresy by their detractors. Anne certainly sought to maintain friendly relations with Marguerite. Henry’s instructions to Lord Rochester in 1534 noted that at the 1532 meeting in Calais, Anne regretted “the want of the saide Quene of Navarres company,” and a message to Marguerite in 1535 said that “[Anne’s] greatest wish, next to having a son, is to see you again.”Footnote 7 Anne’s time in France may therefore have had a lasting impact on her faith. By the end of 1521, however, Anglo-French relations had soured, and Anne returned to England. Her time in France proved formative, as de Carles later wrote that “one would not have judged her to be English in her ways but born French.”Footnote 8 It was this continental polish that would make Anne such a sensation at the English court.

Marriage and Courtship

Upon Anne’s return to England, attempts were made to arrange a suitable marriage, ideally one that advanced the Boleyn family interests and expanded their property portfolio. One such match was proposed in September 1521 by Anne’s uncle, Thomas Howard, Earl of Surrey (later Duke of Norfolk). The marriage, between Anne and James Butler, would have solidified a Boleyn/Butler claim to the earldom of Ormond, but the negotiations collapsed. Anne may also have become attached to Henry Percy, the future Earl of Northumberland. Percy was reportedly infatuated enough to try to break a previous engagement in order to marry Anne, but again no settlement materialised.Footnote 9 George Cavendish suggests this was the result of a combined effort by Percy’s father and Cardinal Wolsey, and that this accounts for Anne’s later vendetta against the Cardinal, although scholars rarely lend the latter theory much credence.Footnote 10 It is possible that Anne was involved with the married poet and courtier Thomas Wyatt, too, but the evidence is inconclusive.Footnote 11

Throughout the 1520s, Anne’s father grew in prominence, and she is presumed to have been a lady at court. The first direct evidence we have of Anne at the English court is her appearance in the Château Vert pageant for Shrove Tuesday in March 1522, where—in what would become a rather prescient twist—she played Perseverance. It seems that Anne did not make much of an impression on the King. Little is known of the intervening years, and we cannot know for certain when the pair first became attached, as most sources pay Anne little attention until their relationship became publicly known. Henry’s pursuit of Anne seems to have begun in earnest in 1526, as suggested by a letter dated c.1527, in which the King claims he has “been more than a year wounded by the dart of love.”Footnote 12 Certainly, by May 1527, Henry was publicly exploring the possibility of an annulment of his marriage to Katherine of Aragon. His interest had become sufficiently serious that in August 1527 he applied to the Pope for a dispensation enabling him to marry someone to whom he was already related in the “first degree of affinity,” likely referring to his prior sexual relationship with Anne’s sister, Mary.Footnote 13 The dispensation also sought permission to marry a woman who had been previously precontracted in marriage, suggesting that either the Butler or Percy negotiations had progressed to this stage before collapsing. We can only guess what Anne thought of the matter. Very little remains in her own hand, and we do not have her replies to Henry’s letters. Henry himself was an indifferent correspondent, confessing to Wolsey that “wryttyng to me is somewhat tedius and paynefull.”Footnote 14 That he wrote such letters to Anne, then, reveals his affection for her, and sets her apart from so many of Henry’s other lovers.

Anne and Henry

Henry and Anne’s relationship might be seen as a marriage of true minds, and Anne shared many of the King’s interests, including hunting, riding, music, and cards.Footnote 15 Henry himself repeatedly referred to her as not only his “mistress” but also as his “friend,” and his “most dear friend” at that.Footnote 16 The attraction between the two was therefore, at least on Henry’s side, more than purely physical. Anne appears to have been initially cautious, capitulating only once a marriage proposal was firmly on the table.Footnote 17 By December 1528, however, the French ambassador was writing that “Greater court is now paid to [Anne] every day than has been to the Queen for a long time.”Footnote 18 Katherine had by then been sent away, and Anne was installed in her old rooms. Anne was effectively being treated as queen consort in all but name. Yet, it would be wrong to deem her, as Imperial ambassador Eustace Chapuys does, Henry’s paramour. The relationship was not consummated until shortly before their marriage in 1533. For Henry, marriage to Anne solved both his sexual and matrimonial desires. In two decades of marriage, Katherine probably became pregnant just six times, only once producing a healthy child, Princess Mary. Over time, the couple’s trouble conceiving caused Henry to doubt the canonical validity of their marriage. In marrying his brother’s wife, he had, Henry began to believe, defied the will of God. Their barrenness was God’s punishment for this offence.Footnote 19 Were he to re-marry, therefore, the longed-for male heir might finally appear. And who better to marry than the object of his affection, Anne Boleyn?

Unfortunately, the diplomatic and theological consequences of such a union were substantial. Leaving Katherine would require a papal dispensation, and in the late 1520s the Pope was committed to Katherine’s nephew, Emperor Charles V. Henry and Anne had to tread carefully, and Henry sought assistance from his chancellor, Cardinal Wolsey. In 1528, Wolsey sent Stephen Gardiner and Edward Fox, provost of King’s College, Cambridge, to Italy to obtain a commission that would allow Wolsey to rule on the validity of the King’s marriage. After a series of protracted negotiations, Clement VII issued a commission permitting Wolsey to decide the King’s case in England alongside a papal legate, a representative of the pope to foreign nations who could act on ecclesiastical matters. When Fox returned to Greenwich with the news, he was instructed to report first to Anne, who was evidently seen as a key player in the King’s “Great Matter.”Footnote 20 Certainly, she sought to remain aware of developments; in June 1528 she wrote to Wolsey saying “I long to hear from you news of the Legate,” and again the next month to remind him that she “much [desired] the coming of the Legate.”Footnote 21 The legatine court finally met on 31 May 1529 at Blackfriars, and as Courtney Herber’s chapter on Katherine of Aragon details, matters did not proceed smoothly. On 16 July 1529, Clement formally revoked the case to Rome.

It would prove Wolsey’s downfall. His repeated failure to secure the annulment frustrated both Anne and Henry; Inigo Mendoza, Chapuys’s predecessor as Imperial ambassador, reported that Anne was beginning “to suspect that the Cardinal of England is preventing [her marriage] as much as he can,” and that “this suspicion has been the cause of her forming an alliance with her father, and with the two Dukes of Norfolk and Suffolk, to try and see whether they can conjointly ruin the Cardinal.”Footnote 22 Anne herself wrote to Wolsey to say that she could not “comprehend how … after having allured us with so many fine promises of divorce, [you] can have repented of your purpose, and how you could have done what you have, in order to hinder the consummation of it.”Footnote 23 Even Wolsey’s allies sensed that the wind was changing; Stephen Gardiner left the Cardinal’s service in July 1529 to become Henry’s principal secretary. Anne had thrown her considerable influence decisively against Wolsey, and on 9 October 1529 the Cardinal was charged with praemunire, the offence of maintaining papal jurisdiction in England. Eight days later, he was dismissed as chancellor and many of his properties confiscated. Two months later, Thomas Boleyn, by now Lord Rochford, was created Earl of Wiltshire and granted the coveted Irish earldom of Ormond. At the celebratory banquet the next day, Chapuys was appalled to find Anne “sit[ing] by the King’s side, occupying the very place allotted to a crowned Queen … as if nothing were wanting but the priest to give away the nuptial ring and pronounce the blessing.”Footnote 24

Wolsey was pardoned in February 1530, but the damage had been done. Reports began to circulate about his involvement not only with the French, but also with Chapuys, a supporter of Katherine.Footnote 25 Henry was furious, and Wolsey was arrested for treason on 1 November. He died en route to London later that month. Anne’s father became Lord Privy Seal on 20 January 1530, and the King, frustrated by Clement’s delays, began to solicit opinions from major universities regarding the validity of his marriage. Throughout the next six months, verdicts favourable to Henry’s cause came in from several universities including Padua, Pavia, Ferrara, Bologna, Orleans, Angers, Bourges, and the Sorbonne. Henry and Anne were jubilant, and by January 1531, Chapuys was reporting that Anne was “already sure of her affair,” that “she cared not for the queen or any of her family,” and that “she would rather see her[self] hanged than have to confess that she [Katherine] was her Queen and mistress.”Footnote 26

That Christmas, Chapuys remarked that Anne was “lodging where the Queen formerly was, and during the late festivities [was] attended by almost the same number of the ladies as the Queen herself had formerly in her suite, as if she were already a Queen.”Footnote 27 Her altered status was cemented on New Year’s Day 1532, which marked the first time Henry did not give Katherine presents, nor did he permit his courtiers to do so.Footnote 28 From then, things moved quickly. Anne was created Marquess of Pembroke in September 1532, meaning that any child Anne had would have status, whether or not she and Henry were wed. The title held significant connotations for the House of Tudor: Henry’s paternal great-uncle Jasper Tudor was created first Earl of Pembroke, and Pembroke Castle was the birthplace of Henry VII. The stage was evidently being set for her queenship.

Anne’s new rank may also have been designed to make her a suitable attendee at the upcoming royal summit in Calais. In October 1532, the new Marquess accompanied the King to Calais, for which occasion Henry ordered Katherine to cede the queen’s jewels to Anne. Anne’s presence at the summit may have been her own idea; Chapuys reported that Anne “had forwarded it [the idea] and was much pleased at it.”Footnote 29 The visit appears to have been a success; François presented Anne with an expensive diamond, and is said to have danced with her.Footnote 30 Moreover, the fact that François had agreed to the meeting was a coup for Anne, as this effectively recognised the validity of her and Henry’s engagement. Anne’s real triumph, however, came shortly thereafter. At some point between the visit to Calais and December 1532, she and Henry finally consummated their relationship. Anne was soon pregnant, and the pair were secretly married, most likely on 25 January 1533, although an earlier date was recorded by contemporaries Edward Hall and Nicholas Sander.Footnote 31 Chapuys reported that Thomas Cranmer had married Anne and Henry, but Cranmer refuted this.Footnote 32

By 25 February 1533, Anne was “occupying the same place and seat as the Queen in former times,” and Henry seems to have been openly referring to her as his wife by April 1533.Footnote 33 Matters came to a head on 9 April 1533 when Chapuys related that Henry sent nobles “to tell the Queen that she need not trouble herself about returning to him, for he had already taken another wife.”Footnote 34 Following parliamentary passage of the Act in Restraint of Appeals (1533), Cranmer—now Archbishop of Canterbury—could try the King’s Great Matter in England at last, and on 23 May 1533 he officially pronounced Henry’s marriage to Katherine null and void. Katherine was informed that the only title she was henceforth permitted to use was that of Dowager Princess of Wales, and on Holy Saturday 1533, Anne attended mass as Queen Anne for the first time.

Anne as Queen

On 31 May 1533, Anne processed from the Tower of London to Westminster. Some commentators alleged this procession aroused popular apathy, or indeed antipathy; one story circulated that crowds did not cheer “God save the queen” when Anne passed, and that many laughed at the letters ‘H.A’ (Henry and Anne) that were painted “in several places.”Footnote 35 This seems unlikely, however, for the most objective eyewitness—the Venetian ambassador—mentioned no such scenes, and instead remarked on “the very great pomp,” as well as “the utmost order and tranquillity” of the occasion.Footnote 36 The next day, Anne was crowned in Westminster Abbey by Cranmer.Footnote 37 The ceremony was followed by a grand coronation banquet, and further jousting, feasting, and dancing. Three months later, on 7 September 1533, Anne’s child, the future Elizabeth I, was safely delivered. While Anne and Henry had hoped for a son, the birth was nonetheless celebrated: Te Deums were sung, letters announcing the successful birth dispatched far and wide, and a grand christening planned for 10 September. This was another spectacular occasion, with bonfires and free wine in London, and Elizabeth was escorted from the ceremony by over five hundred torches. As the French ambassador noted, “the whole occasion was so perfect that nothing was lacking.”Footnote 38

It seems that Henry remained besotted with Anne after Elizabeth’s birth. On 3 November, Chapuys claimed one of Anne’s maids of honour had been heard remarking that “the king was so passionately fond of her mistress that she had heard him that he would rather be reduced to beggary, and ask alms from door to door, than abandon and desert the Lady [Anne] whom he loved more than ever.”Footnote 39 Anne swiftly fell pregnant again. Her condition was obvious by April 1534, when George Taylor observed that Anne “hath a goodly belly: praying our Lord to send us a prince.”Footnote 40 However, Anne appears to have miscarried at some point that summer.Footnote 41 This was a bitter blow.

Anne’s failure to provide Henry with a son was compounded by her unpopularity. Katherine of Aragon had been widely respected, and it is unsurprising that her replacement aroused feelings of hostility. Katherine herself naturally resented her treatment at Henry’s hands. According to Chapuys, she refused to let Anne have the ornamental christening robe that she brought from Spain prior to Elizabeth’s birth, declaring “God forbid that I should ever be so badly advised as to give help, assistance, or favour, directly or indirectly, in a case so horrible and abominable as this.”Footnote 42 Katherine’s daughter with Henry, the future Mary I, also objected to the discarding of her mother; Chapuys wrote in March 1534 that Mary told Anne that “she knew not of any other queen in England than Madame, her mother.”Footnote 43 Events proved particularly unpleasant for Mary, who was deprived of the dignity of princess in April 1533, after Henry announced his marriage to Anne. Mary was sent to live at Hatfield—where the Boleyns had charge of Princess Elizabeth—in December 1533, and was formally declared illegitimate under the 1534 Act of Succession.Footnote 44 Yet, Anne also inspired outrage from members of English society more broadly; for instance, one Margaret Chanseler, from Bradfield St Clare, Suffolk, described her as “a goggyl yed hoore” and exclaimed “God save queen Katherine.”Footnote 45

Despite these difficulties, relations did not break down between Anne and Henry. They were often tempestuous—as in June 1535, when the Venetian ambassador reported that “the king is already tired to satiety of this new queen”—but sunshine followed storm.Footnote 46 Henry and Anne’s relationship was apparently no diplomatic match, but a relationship of lovers, with such fierce passions that the conventions of the day––of courtly love, and of sovereign and consort––could scarcely accommodate them.Footnote 47 Relations between the two were warm in October 1535 when Sir Anthony Windsor informed Arthur Plantagenet, Viscount Lisle, that “the king and queen were very merry,” but tragedy was imminent. On 29 January 1536, Anne miscarried again.Footnote 48 While the ramifications have long been debated, it at least made Anne vulnerable. She lost not only a longed-for child, but also the objective recognition of her place that only the birth of a son could provide.

Anne’s position was undermined further by the King’s increasing interest in Jane Seymour, as Aidan Norrie’s chapter details. In February 1536, Chapuys reported that Henry gave Jane “very valuable presents,” and that “his behaviour” towards her made some fear that Anne would meet the same fate as Katherine.Footnote 49 Yet, perhaps the most ominous occurrence of early 1536 for Anne was her conflict with Thomas Cromwell over the suppression of the smaller monasteries. Anne thought their endowments should be re-allocated to educational or charitable causes, whereas Cromwell believed they could help solve the government’s financial problems.Footnote 50 Anne’s position also complicated foreign policy; on 18 April, Henry threatened the negotiations Cromwell had been pursuing for a rapprochement between England and the Holy Roman Empire by acting with extreme petulance in Chapuys’ presence and insisting on Imperial recognition of his marriage to Anne.Footnote 51 As Diarmaid MacCulloch has observed, however, it is possible that hatred between the two had been simmering for a while, and that the strained circumstances of early 1536 simply allowed it to surface.Footnote 52 The stage was set for Anne’s fall.

Anne and the Reformation

Throughout her reign, Anne was associated with religious reform in England. This was celebrated in the later sixteenth century, particularly by reformers who sought to influence the developing Elizabethan religious settlement.Footnote 53 In 1559 alone, John Foxe exclaimed that “the entire British nation is indebted to her … for the restoration of piety [and] the Church”; Alexander Ales wrote to Elizabeth I that “true religion in England had its commencement and its end with your mother”; and John Aylmer proclaimed that she was “the croppe and roote” of the Henrician Reformation.Footnote 54 Nevertheless, while most historians have accepted that Anne was an evangelical who helped to promote reform from the later 1520s until her death, vigorous debate over the last three decades has questioned whether this was the case.Footnote 55 So, what was Anne Boleyn’s influence on the ecclesiastical drama of Henry VIII’s reign?

An assessment of Anne and the Reformation must commence with an evaluation of her own religious views. Unlike Henry’s sixth wife, Katherine Parr, Anne wrote no religious works, so we lack much direct evidence from which to assess her convictions. We instead rely on the assertions of others and what can be surmised from her behaviour and belongings.Footnote 56 It is nonetheless clear that Anne was by no means a kind of proto-protestant. For instance, when Thomas Revell tried to present her with his translation of François Lambert’s radical Farrago Rerum Theologicarum—which included scepticism about the real presence of Christ in the eucharist, and detailed the socially disruptive implications of the priesthood of all believers—she declined his request, saying “she would not trouble herself” with the book.Footnote 57 Likewise, Anne’s comments during her imprisonment imply that—at least during this difficult period—she maintained many orthodox views. Sir William Kingston, constable of the Tower, wrote to Cromwell that she spoke of retiring to a nunnery; that she asked whether she would go to heaven, for she had “done mony gud dedys in my days”; and that she “meche desyred to have here in the closet the sacrament,” suggesting that she held traditional views on transubstantiation, the issue which Henry saw as the test of sound belief.Footnote 58

There remains much evidence, however, that Anne had evangelical sympathies. For example, Cranmer, who knew the Queen well, noted the “love which I judged her to bear towards God and his gospel,” when writing to Henry following her arrest in May 1536, and Richard Hilles lamented her loss in 1541 as one of the “sincere ministers of the word” who had been taken away.Footnote 59 Yet, perhaps the most telling evidence of Anne’s personal piety comes from the books that she owned.Footnote 60 These included a copy of William Tyndale’s 1534 edition of the New Testament, which was banned and considered to be a heretical work, and a part copy, part English translation, of Jacques Lefèvre d’Étaples’s Epistres et Evangiles, a work condemned by the Sorbonne for its potential Lutheran echoes.Footnote 61 Thus, while Anne cannot be described as a ‘protestant’—a term that did not become naturalised in England until after 1553—she seems to have been genuinely interested in religious reform and evangelical issues.Footnote 62

Anne’s impact on the Reformation is most obvious with Henry’s break from Rome. This was recognised in Anne’s own lifetime; when told that there was no pope, but only a bishop of Rome, one Henry Kylbie replied that “this business had never been if the Kinge had not maryed Anne Bullen.”Footnote 63 Although it was Henry’s desire to annul his first marriage to marry Anne that caused conflict with the papacy, the Boleyns provided more than a spark for this clash. They offered patronage to academics who worked on the campaign for Henry’s annulment, including Thomas Cranmer, the future Archbishop of Canterbury, and Edward Fox, the future Bishop of HerefordFootnote 64; they took a keen interest in the progress of Henry’s “Great Matter”Footnote 65; and they seemingly furnished Henry with evangelical literature, with Anne reportedly introducing him to both Simon Fish’s virulently anticlerical Supplication for the Beggars and Tyndale’s Obedience of the Christian Man, which argued that papal claims to independent power were bogus and unscriptural.Footnote 66 While the contribution these works made to the elaboration of the royal supremacy has been doubted, they may well have helped, and can hardly have hindered matters.Footnote 67 In these ways, Anne and her family played an important part in encouraging the rejection of papal authority and achieving Henry’s Break from Rome, a fundamental element of the English Reformation.

Anne also facilitated religious reform by furthering the careers of evangelicals. Writing to Elizabeth I in 1559, Alexander Ales hailed “the evangelical bishops whom your most holy mother had appointed from among those schoolmasters who favoured the purer doctrine of the Gospel.”Footnote 68 Who were these bishops? While William Latymer asserted that her influence lay behind the promotion of Thomas Cranmer to Canterbury, Hugh Latimer to the bishopric of Worcester, Nicholas Shaxton to Salisbury, Thomas Goodrich to Ely, and John Skip to Hereford, the evidence is clearest in the cases of Latimer and Shaxton, who Foxe also thought she “placed” and “preferred” to their sees.Footnote 69 Although Anne certainly did not ‘appoint’ Latimer and Shaxton to their dioceses, she undoubtedly assisted them, lending each £200 to pay their first fruits to the King after their elevations, and their preferment was plausibly due to what Latymer described as her “continuall mediacione.”Footnote 70 Anne herself recognised her links to these bishops, speaking in the Tower of “my bysshoppys.”Footnote 71 Her part in the promotion of these men to the episcopal bench was important, for it meant they could wield the power of episcopal office to promote fellow evangelicals, pursue reform in their dioceses, and frustrate the efforts of their opponents.Footnote 72

Anne also influenced lesser clerical appointments. She employed a series of evangelical clergy as her chaplains, including Latimer and Matthew Parker.Footnote 73 She also sought appointments for her favoured clergymen elsewhere, and was prepared to pressure them into taking them up and making the most of them, as in May 1535, when she addressed Edward Crome concerning the parsonage of St Mary Aldermary in London, which she had “obtained for him.” She exhorted him to make “no farther delays in this matter, but to take on … the cure and charge of the said benefice,” for she desired “the furtherance of virtue, truth, and godly doctrine, which we trust shall not be a little increased, and right much the better advanced and established, by your better relief and residence there.”Footnote 74 The indefatigable commitment that some of the clergy she appointed showed to driving reform at a local level is clear in the case of William Barlow, who she made prior of Haverfordwest in 1534. From his position, Barlow “endeveryd … with no smalle bodely daunger agenst Antichrist, and all his confederat adherentes, sincerely to preche the gospell of Christ,” arousing much hostility from the local clergy.Footnote 75 Anne’s promotion of such clerics was significant. Not only did men like Barlow show great zeal in fighting for reform within their spheres of influence, but her promotion of men as her chaplains also proved an important step in the careers of individuals like Latimer, who became Bishop of Worcester in 1535, and Parker, who became Elizabeth I’s first Archbishop of Canterbury in 1559.Footnote 76 This was attested by Parker himself, who wrote to William Cecil, Lord Burghley, in 1572, professing that “if I had not been so much bound to the mother [Anne], I would not so soon have granted to serve the daughter [Elizabeth] in this place.”Footnote 77

While previous queens had often interceded for those facing punishment, Anne used her intercessory role in to protect those interested in reform. For instance, in 1528 she wrote to Cardinal Wolsey, beseeching him “to remember the parson of Honey Lane for my sake.” This was a reference to either Thomas Forman (rector of All Hallows, Honey Lane) or Thomas Garrett (curate of the same church), who were both implicated in the trade of evangelical books.Footnote 78 Likewise, in May 1534, she wrote to Cromwell asking for Richard Herman, one of the principal promoters and financial sponsors of Tyndale’s New Testament, to be restored to his position, after hearing that he had been expelled from his “fredome and felowshipe of and in the Englishe house” of Antwerp, because he helped “the settyng forthe of the Newe Testamente in Englisshe.”Footnote 79 Anne may have acquired a reputation for lending aid in such matters, which might explain why Thomas Alwaye sought to petition her in 1530 when imprisoned for his involvement in buying English New Testaments and other prohibited books.Footnote 80 While the evidence is not certain, Anne’s patronage potentially had longer-lasting repercussions, as individuals like Thomas Garrett later became troublesome evangelical preachers.Footnote 81

Anne was thus clearly an important figure in the early stages of evangelical reform in England. She was by no means an omnipotent proto-protestant—that evangelicals like Thomas Bilney and John Frith were burnt between 1531 and 1533 reveals limits to either her beliefs or her influence.Footnote 82 Yet, individuals did not need to be all-powerful to encourage religious change: Thomas Cranmer’s failure to prevent the passage of the Six Articles in 1539 did not hinder his influence in the ecclesiastical politics of the early Tudor period.Footnote 83 Nor did they have to be fully fledged evangelicals to have sped the course of reform. That Henry VIII himself published Assertio Septem Sacramentorum in 1521 (a rebuttal of Martin Luther’s anti-papal De Captivitate Babylonica), remained devoted throughout his life to the Blessed Sacrament, and consistently rejected the teachings of Luther and Huldrych Zwingli does not invalidate his centrality to the reforms of his reign.Footnote 84 Moreover, Anne’s influence on reform need not be at the expense of others. The course of religious change in sixteenth-century England was not simply shaped by monarchs, devout conservatives like John Fisher, or devout evangelicals like William Latimer, but also by many who lay between these extremes, like Stephen Gardiner, who argued for Henry’s divorce and accepted the Dissolution of the Monasteries, but fiercely defended transubstantiation.Footnote 85 Anne—as a promoter, defender, and supporter of evangelicals, who played a significant part in instigating the Break from Rome—was one of the most important of these individuals.

The Fall of Queen Anne

Anne’s fall has attracted an incredible amount of historiographical debate, and it is impossible to do justice here to the various theories that have been proposed, amended, and refuted, and all the evidence that has been marshalled and dismissed, in favour or against her. Yet, the most famous theories are fourfold. Firstly, that Anne may have been guilty of at least some of the charges of adultery that led to her being cut down by her husband.Footnote 86 Secondly, while Anne may not have committed adultery, there was sufficient controversy surrounding her household in April 1536 to lend the charges credibility, in circumstances where there had been excessive unguarded speech and gossip.Footnote 87 Thirdly, that Anne’s fall hinged on her miscarriage of a deformed foetus in January 1536, which awakened suspicions of witchcraft, incest, and adultery on the part of the King.Footnote 88 Finally, that Anne fell because of a carefully co-ordinated plot by Thomas Cromwell, which fabricated charges of adultery to convince Henry to destroy his Queen.Footnote 89 Cromwell certainly claimed responsibility for orchestrating her fall, telling Chapuys on 24 May that he “set himself to think up and plot out the whole business.”Footnote 90 These theories are not all mutually exclusive, and much of the evidence can be read in different ways. This is perhaps unsurprising given the nature of the sources, which were produced by different people, from different angles, for different purposes, and at different times. It may therefore be only right, as Steven Gunn has suggested, to remain sceptical as to the precise cause of Anne’s fall, and indeed about the nature of early Tudor politics more generally.Footnote 91

If the causes of Anne’s fall are uncertain, we can be more confident about its immediate course. On 24 April 1536, two special commissions of oyer and terminer were appointed for the counties of Middlesex and Kent.Footnote 92 Anne may have sensed that something was awry; she seems to have laid a special responsibility on her chaplain, Matthew Parker, to watch over her young daughter “not six days before her apprehension.”Footnote 93 On 27 April, writs of summons were issued for a new parliament, and Bishop Stokesley of London was apparently asked “whether the King could or could not abandon the said concubine [Anne].”Footnote 94 Matters escalated on 29 April when Anne was overheard having a charged encounter with Mark Smeaton, which she later insisted was merely her upbraiding him for his over-familiarity. Within hours, however, Smeaton was under interrogation, and by 1 May he had confessed to adultery with the Queen. The following day, Anne and her brother were both arrested and confined to the Tower of London, where they were soon joined by a number of other courtiers.Footnote 95 When Anne was taken into custody by Kingston, she asked him if she would die “withowt justes,” to which he replied that even the poorest of the King’s subjects have justice. At this, Anne simply laughed.Footnote 96

On 12 May, Smeaton, Sir Francis Weston, William Brereton, and Henry Norris were all tried in Westminster Hall, found guilty of committing adultery with the Queen, and sentenced to death. On 15 May, Anne and her brother were tried before an audience of their peers in King’s Hall in the Tower of London. According to chronicler Charles Wriothesley, she gave “wise and discreet aunsweres to all thinges layde against her, excusinge herselfe with her wordes so clearlie, as thoughe she had never bene faultie to the same.”Footnote 97 Nonetheless, they were similarly found guilty and sentenced to death.Footnote 98 During the period of her captivity, Kingston’s letters paint a picture of Anne reacting to events with a mixture of fantasy, claiming that it would not rain until she was released from the Tower; black humour, joking that her little neck would be easy work for the executioner, before putting her “hand abowt it lawyng hartely”; and optimism, thinking that she might travel to Antwerp and being “in hope of lyf.”Footnote 99 Yet, no amount of hope could prevent her brother’s execution on 17 May, the same day on which Cranmer declared Henry’s marriage with Anne null and void.Footnote 100 Two days later, Anne was beheaded before perhaps one thousand spectators. According to Sir John Spelman, Anne knelt, saying “to Christ I commend my soul,” before the executioner cut off her head with a single blow of a “very sharp” sword, “so that the head fell to the ground with her lips moving and her eyes moving.”Footnote 101

The (In)Famous Queen Anne

Anne’s reign was short but significant. Although she was buried in the chancel of St Peter in the Tower of London less than three years after her coronation, she nevertheless made her mark on English history, contributing to evangelical reform in England, the consequences of which were far-reaching and are still manifest today. Anne lived a life of considerable drama and colour, and she has since inspired great interest from commentators, from Thomas Cromwell, who on 24 May 1536—just five days after her execution and burial—told Chapuys of her “sense, wit, and courage,” to historian George Bernard, who told the Daily Express in August 2020 that, “in a court of law, you might not accuse her for the crime [of adultery], but I don’t think you’d acquit her either.”Footnote 102 Much of her life remains subject to debate—including her courtship of Henry, her religious views, and the details of her fall—but what is beyond doubt is that she is a fascinating figure, as captivating to modern scholars as she was to Henry VIII.