Anne Boleyn: 500 Years of Lies

In December 1521 Anne was summoned home to England. Some have attributed this timing to the war that was brewing between England and France,⁴⁵ but in truth a marriage match was being arranged for her with a courtier named James Butler.⁴⁶ This marriage was meant to kill two birds with one stone. Firstly, it would unite two sides of Anne’s family who were at loggerheads over the title of the earl of Ormond. Secondly, Wolsey needed a ploy to keep James, who was a valuable courtier in his own household, in London rather than him being sent back home to Ireland.

In a letter to the king, Wolsey says: ‘On my return I will talk with you how to bring about the marriage between [Butler’s] son and Sir Thomas Boleyn’s daughter, which will be a good pretext for delaying to send his son over [to Ireland].’⁴⁷

Who says romance is dead, eh?

So, while this match was being negotiated, Anne Boleyn at last made her debut at the Tudor court of King Henry VIII.

Anne’s personality is said to have stood out in court because she actually possessed one. She was said to have been a fan of lively conversation at a time when to give a simple smile was considered the height of intelligence. No wonder historians accuse her of shamelessly flirting with every man she encountered; she was probably the first woman who talked back and held eye contact when a coy glance to the side was all the fashion.

One historian recently described Anne as having ‘brazen self-confidence’.⁴⁸

Brazen, you say? How very dare she? If Anne was living in the modern world today, I suppose she would be one of those presumptuous women who speak up in the boardroom with an opinion of her own. So very brazen!

Now she was back in England, far from her focus solely being on how to have an uninterrupted stream of banquets and balls, as it’s often said, fresh from her powerful and progressive education in France among reformists and royalty, Anne would have been ready to make a difference in the world. And indeed, it’s said she made a splash from the start. People would speak of how she dazzled with a natural charm, impeccable manners, social grace and witty repartee. Even George Cavendish, a firm member of the later anti-Boleyn faction, admits that when Anne joined the court to serve Katherine of Aragon her ‘excellent gesture and behaviour did excel all others’.⁴⁹ Frankly, this is a missed opportunity from Cavendish to paint her as the flirty whore from hell, but he provides his readers with a startlingly honest recollection of her. Needless to say, this is one report from Cavendish that rarely sees the light of day in the popular history books.

As we’ve seen, during her time in France Anne had learned all about the state of religion, and the girl certainly had an opinion about it. Here was a lady of the court who was not scared of taking on the men in a theological debate. As part of Marguerite d’Angoulême’s court she had been taught to be literate, accomplished, intelligent and, lest we forget, in possession of that infamous brazen self-confidence. So, you see, it would have been impossible for Anne to return to the English court and play the meek and mild submissive.

Yet we have to realise that although she was joining her family at court, with her older sister, Mary, in the service of Katherine of Aragon and younger brother, George, in the king’s prestigious privy chamber, Anne was also joining a strange new world of cliques and factions where she was viewed as a foreigner.

Now, while Anne is regularly described as arriving at court with enviable French sophistications, the reality of sixteenth-century London, as J. J. Scarisbrick points out, was that the English held a deep-rooted antipathy towards the French. As unsavoury as this thought is, it got to the point where, on 1 May 1517, a racist mob took to the streets of London attacking all foreigners, including the Spanish and Portuguese, causing hundreds of locals to end up imprisoned in the Tower. Katherine of Aragon, to her great credit, intervened to appeal for leniency against the xenophobes who had abused her countrymen.⁵⁰

But one thing this tells us is that the French influence in Anne’s life would have been something that marked her out in a not particularly positive way at court. Following her arrival, she couldn’t have failed to notice the animosity felt by the English towards her childhood home. So while she may have appeared confident and knew how to hold a conversation, she probably would have been desperate to fit in and be accepted by these new people.

Alas, there was one way in which courtiers of every rank bonded, and that was via the sporting act that has now gone down in history as courtly love; this is basically an over-romanticised way of saying that they loved to flirt. The men would endeavour to outdo each other with acts of chivalry to woo the women, who in turn played along, writing poems and riddles back and forth.

What can I say? They didn’t have TV back then so they had to make their own entertainment. But it was all incredibly sanitised and proper; they exchanged rings, not bodily fluids, as most at court were married or betrothed to others. But this was just an innocent way to kick back and have a few bants after the daily toil of serving king and country. No one took it too seriously.

No one, that is, except the past five centuries’ worth of historians who have since pored over every jaunty poem in existence that Anne Boleyn may or may not have written, searching for any hint that she was a wanton vixen who lured men in with a saucy iambic pentameter.

Now, of all the relentless accusations of illicit affairs that have plagued Anne from adolescence to adulthood, there is one that has really gained momentum over the centuries, and that is her supposed dalliance with Thomas Wyatt. Popular history has reduced him to a simple court poet, but he was also a diplomat and ambassador to Rome. Wyatt was supposedly good-looking and wealthy, hence quite the catch. He was also married, and had been for ten years; so if Anne was as smart as she appears to have been, it makes absolutely no sense for her to have risked her honour and respectability for a quick roll in the hay with a married man with whom she had no future. Even when she accepted Henry VIII, he was separated and in the process of getting his marriage annulled.

Of course, that’s not to say that Wyatt didn’t fall head over heels with Anne and try his luck.

Boys will be boys, eh?

As his grandson George explains in one of Anne Boleyn’s first sixteenth-century biographies, her ‘witty and graceful speech’ had Wyatt utterly smitten. However, the vital part we must take away from this insider family account is Anne’s response to his unwanted advances, with his grandson conceding that upon ‘finding him to be then married . . . rejected all his speech of love’.⁵¹

Now, it’s certainly not improbable that Anne played along in the etiquette of courtly love and flirted with the good-looking Wyatt. Indeed, we have a few poems and ditties they apparently wrote to each other, which, of course, certain historians have taken to be hard evidence of a full-blown sexual affair.⁵² (For the benefit of the jury I am inserting an ‘eye roll’ emoji right here.) But Wyatt’s grandson hits the nail on the head when he confirms in his biography that Anne ‘was not likely to cast her eye upon one who had been married ten years’.⁵³ I rest my case.

Of course, Anne was meant to have achieved this alleged feat in mass seduction during her early years in England and France while, according to some sources, looking like a three-armed hunchbacked deformed crone.

So let’s just clear up the sixth-finger rumour once and for all, shall we?

The fact is that Anne’s mere presence at the royal court meant there was no way she could have had an extra finger, welts on her face and wens on her chin,⁵⁴ as has been reported over the years, because noticeable birthmarks or any kind of deformity in the sixteenth century were interpreted as the ‘devil’s mark’ and signs of being a witch.⁵⁵ So, while this explains why the slurs about Anne’s appearance became part of the great legend following her death, it’s the very extremity of these supposed disfigurements that makes it impossible for them to be true or she would never have been allowed in high society, let alone the queen’s household and the king’s bed.

Henry VIII was extremely superstitious – we’re talking about the man who would cross himself at the sound of thunder and interpret any inclement weather as a sign from God. So, do we really think he would have been cool about his lover having an extra digit?⁵⁶

George Wyatt addressed the sixth-finger rumour directly, stating that while, no, there was none, Anne simply appeared to have ‘some little show of a nail’⁵⁷ on the side of her finger. But he went on to explain it was so small that it could be easily covered by her other fingertip. So whatever the anomaly was, realistically this has to be the extent of any deformity in such superstitious times, when people lived in fear of any signs of the devil, witchcraft or the occult. It also means you need to seriously question the reliability and motivation of any modern-day historian who implies the presence of a sixth finger in order to complete the picture of Anne Boleyn the Evil Witch who swept into court on her broomstick and cast a spell on the lovesick Henry VIII.

But I have something controversial to admit: I really couldn’t care less what Anne Boleyn looked like. I harbour not even a morbid curiosity. Those who hated her say she was ugly; those who loved her say she was pretty, as though any of it matters as to the person she was and what she achieved in her lifetime. The only thing these contrasting reports succeed in proving is that society has had an obsession with beauty since time began.

The Venetian ambassador said she ‘is not the most handsomest woman in the world. She is of middling stature, swarthy complexion, long neck, wide mouth and bosom not much raised.’⁵⁸

Oh, you old charmer!

Catholic propagandist Nicholas Sander later reported Anne to have had jaundice, a projecting tooth, the obligatory sixth finger on her right hand and a large wen under her chin. But then, in contrast to the insults, he describes her as ‘rather tall of stature’ and somewhat bafflingly concludes ‘she was handsome to look at’.⁵⁹

The French diplomat Lancelot de Carles, who was never a big fan of Anne’s, surprisingly goes against the trend of hostile sources in saying she was beautiful and ‘of elegant feature’.⁶⁰

However, I don’t need Anne to have been a stunning beauty devoid of all human imperfection, and neither should you. She had far too much else going for her. She was a kick-ass young woman, so I couldn’t care less if she was ‘goggle-eyed’⁶¹ or ‘reasonably good-looking’.⁶² The only reason I address her looks here at all is because, as we’ve seen, the accusations actually have a much more sinister meaning, with every imperfection being an apparent sign she had been ‘marred by the devil’. So it seems only right we put those myths to rest once and for all.⁶³

Alas, though those early days of courtly love were jolly good fun and all, while everyone else around her grew up, got married and became serious courtiers, Anne Boleyn has never been allowed to escape this flirty reputation from her early years at court, even as she matured and focused her energy on more important issues of the day.

Historian Maria Dowling points out that: ‘Traditionally [Anne] is pictured at the centre of a circle of brilliant gentlemen-poets who were devoted to the pursuit of courtly love and other frivolous matters.’ ⁶⁴

Yes, as though there weren’t more pressing concerns to be thinking about. While all of Europe was in religious upheaval, some writers will have you believe the royal courts were solely focused on shagging. You’ll be relieved to hear that this was not quite the case.

As it turns out, all evidence points towards Anne coming back to England with a revolution building inside her. Like a lot of her young European contemporaries, she would have been inspired by Martin Luther’s ongoing battle with the pope, which had begun to seep into England by the summer of 1521.⁶⁵ Now that the injustices had been brought to light, Anne would have been ready to join the cause herself and make a difference. But what could she do? Where was she needed?

One thing was for sure, if Anne wanted to do anything for the evangelical cause, she would need a voice. She needed to be in a position of power, and for most Tudor women, who weren’t allowed to climb the ranks of Parliament, this came in the form of a marriage alliance. If Anne was going to have the clout she required to help this so-called reformation that was rousing a new generation of activists then she needed the protection of a powerful title. Unfortunately, that wasn’t going to come from James Butler, whose father was still locked in a battle with Anne’s own father over the title of the earl of Ormond.

So, when she caught the eye of the strapping and single Henry Percy, who was the direct heir to the earldom of Northumberland, it’s not surprising that this would be a marriage she would want to pursue. Percy was a much better match than Butler, who, in time, did indeed spend years back home in Ireland and would have likely taken Anne with him. It’s always implied that Anne chased Percy down so she could live a meaningless life of luxury, but as the evidence we are soon to uncover shows, she had other plans in mind. As the wife of a genuine, legitimate earl, just think of the difference she could make in the world.

However, if Anne and Percy wanted to be together, not only would she have to perform a Houdini-style escape from Wolsey’s marriage negotiations for her to Butler, but they also had to tackle the small matter of Henry Percy’s own betrothal to Mary Talbot. That’s not even taking into account the fact that both marriages had already been personally approved by the king of England.

But young and headstrong, Percy and Anne were swept up in the romance of it all, for she had found herself that rarity in sixteenth-century England: a smart marriage match and alliance with a man she was not only attracted to, but who was equally as dedicated and smitten with her. So, throwing caution to the wind, the two did something highly controversial that would cause an uproar in court and come back to haunt them many times over the years: they attempted to arrange their own marriage match.

You thought I was going to say ran off, got married and consummated their illicit affair, didn’t you?

Not that I’d blame you. So much has been made of the whole Henry Percy debacle over the centuries. So many sordid rumours are thrown around in the history books and documentaries that during my research I kept expecting to come across some damning evidence of the two having had a forbidden sexual relationship; or perhaps a secret elopement so that their parents had no choice but to accept their union. Just something terrible, as it was dredged up during Anne’s imprisonment and has been used ever since as a scandal that irrevocably proves she was a vixen of moral depravity.

But though Tudor biographer George Cavendish claims Percy and Anne signed a binding pre-contract,⁶⁶ the king’s men never found any proof of this in all their years at court. Evidence of an illicit marriage or pre-contract would have been a godsend when later annulling her marriage to the king. The fact that they even felt the need to interrogate Percy on the subject around the time of Anne’s trial speaks volumes. Surely, if they already knew Percy had been pre-contracted back when it supposedly happened, they wouldn’t need him to confess to anything, because they would have already had an admission of guilt in 1523 when the couple were trying to marry.

So, what did they do?

Well, the bare facts are pretty straightforward. Anne and Henry Percy wanted to be married, but his father disapproved, as he didn’t think she was of a high enough social ranking to marry his son. The Percys and Talbots had been in marriage negotiations since 1516, and for good reason;⁶⁷ Mary Talbot’s father was the fourth earl of Shrewsbury, lord lieutenant of the North and a trusted courtier of Henry VIII.

And who was this Anne Boleyn? Her great-grandfather Geoffrey Boleyn was a merchant who became the lord mayor of London in 1457, where he was later knighted. It was due to Geoffrey’s son William marrying Margaret Butler that the Boleyns had the Butler connection and an earldom in the family themselves. It was Margaret’s father who became the earl of Ormond, making Anne the great-granddaughter of an earl.

Nevertheless, this did not carry the same weight as ‘daughter of an earl’, which is what Mary Talbot was. Even though Anne’s father was an esteemed royal diplomat and her mother, Elizabeth Howard, was the daughter of the earl of Surrey, this connection was still not good enough. Sorry, love.⁶⁸

There was also such a thing as courtly etiquette; one did not gazump a husband or wife while marriage negotiations were ongoing. So, the happy task of warning Percy off his plans with Anne fell to the king’s adviser Thomas Wolsey.⁶⁹ You see, not only were Percy and Butler both members of staff in Wolsey’s own household – can we have a #Awkward? – but Wolsey was also good friends with Mary Talbot’s father. So, as well as taking orders from the king to stop Percy and Anne ruining a powerful alliance between two high-profile families, Wolsey was also looking out for his friend, who didn’t want to see his daughter Mary essentially ditched at the altar.

Wolsey’s gentleman usher, George Cavendish, reports in his biography that Wolsey gave Percy a public slap on the wrist in front of all his staff, explaining that the king had already arranged a match for Anne. However, it is at this point that Wolsey is meant to have confided in the group of men that the king wanted Anne for himself.

Oh, but shhhh, they had to keep it a secret, as no one knew, least of all Anne.⁷⁰

Do you even need me to point out how unrealistic this was? Firstly, as if Wolsey would just announce the king’s supposed top secret to his entire workforce, even if it were true. Secondly, the James Butler marriage to Anne was still in negotiations, so it’s highly likely that this was the match the king had in mind for her. And then, of course, there was the trifling matter of Henry VIII being in the midst of a relationship with Anne’s sister, Mary, at the time of the Henry Percy debacle in 1523.

But what we have to realise here is that Henry VIII didn’t end his relationship with Mary and begin to pursue her sister until 1525. So, are we meant to believe the king put a stop to Anne’s marriage attempt in 1523, then played coy for two years before finally plucking up the courage to make a move? Henry was many things, but a cautious and slow mover he was not. Alas, the timing simply doesn’t add up for us to credit the king’s desire for Anne as his motivation behind putting a stop to her attempted match with Percy.

But either way, I think we can all imagine this wouldn’t have sat too well with someone as outspoken and opinionated as Anne, who no doubt would have fought the decision. It’s thought that Percy, too, tried to win his father round when he came to London to confront his son about the scandal in June 1523. Yet his father was not for turning, and told Percy in no uncertain terms he was to break this apparent promise to marry Anne, avoid her company entirely or be disinherited.⁷¹ This threat did the trick and Percy was quick to concede defeat, reluctantly following through with his commitment to marry Mary Talbot the following year.

What did Anne think of her dashing earl now? Like him, did she see the situation as hopeless, or did she think him spineless for backing down so quickly? We appear to get our answer in her defiance at accepting their fate, because the king decided it would be best if she was ‘sent home again to her father’ for a season to cool the rebellious romance down.⁷²

It seems Anne was all riled up and ready to challenge the system, but was perhaps picking the wrong fight.

Considering his role as the English ambassador, Thomas Boleyn would have been as horrified at the unfolding situation as everyone else, and so was likely to have supported the king’s decision for Anne to leave.⁷³ It certainly wasn’t the kind of scandal the daughter of a high-profile royal diplomat should be involved in. But attempting to arrange her own marriage was the extent of it. Aside from an obvious lack of evidence to the contrary, it makes little sense that a smart and deeply religious woman who’d had a respectable upbringing like Anne’s would have risked jeopardising a potential match to the son of an earl with anything as unholy as an illicit sexual affair.

So, if the hapless Wolsey was simply acting on the king’s orders,⁷⁴ as was the nature of his role, why would Anne shoot the messenger to the extent she’s been accused of doing? For isn’t this meant to be the very point at which she began to harbour a deep resentment of the cardinal? It is, and it all comes back to that public dressing-down he gave Henry Percy.

Cavendish reports that Wolsey berated Percy for attempting to marry without consulting his father or the king, who would have ‘matched you according to your estate and honour’. Ouch. Wolsey’s public declaration that he deemed Anne too lowly to marry the son of an earl would have made for salacious gossip at court, and soon enough it got back to Anne, who was understandably mortified at the slur.⁷⁵ Cavendish reported she was ‘greatly offended’, apparently saying, ‘If it ever lay within her power, she would work the cardinal as much displeasure.’⁷⁶

This statement, I believe, could very well have been true. It sounds like the kind of childish threat Anne was known to have made in the heat of the moment when hurt and embarrassed. But would it be the grudge that Cavendish claims brought about Wolsey’s downfall years later?⁷⁷ Oh no, for there were several more years and opportunities ahead for the cardinal to greatly offend the increasingly zealous reformer Anne Boleyn.

So Anne was sent home to Hever Castle ‘for a season’, where it was said she ‘she smoked’, so angry was she at being placed under what must have felt like house arrest.⁷⁸ She wouldn’t have been alone during her time back home, as her old governess, Mrs Orchard, was still in attendance at the castle, as was Anne’s grandmother Lady Margaret. In fact, Margaret lived at Hever until her death in 1539, and outlived almost the entire family, although she was said to have not been of sound mind with what we would today diagnose as dementia. So, it’s likely that Anne would have helped to care for her, possibly alongside her mother, Elizabeth, who may have accompanied her during her stint back at Hever.

But as nice as this quality family time surely was, there’s no doubt it still would have been a frustrating time for Anne, halting her religious mission before it had even begun.

Of course, the big question historians feel compelled to stop and ask here is: was religion really Anne Boleyn’s driving force? Either that or they downright dismiss all notions of her having had any true religious intent, too sexual and power-hungry was she to have ever been a good woman.

Yes, it may have started as sixteenth-century propaganda so the king didn’t come out of Anne Boleyn’s murder looking like the bad guy, but there are a depressing number of contemporary historians who have bought into the lie that to be a powerful woman your intentions have to be bad, to achieve greatness you had to have slept your way to the top, as well as the old classic that Anne had too strong and fiery a personality for religion to have been her true motivation. It’s apparently hard to swallow that someone so steely could be motivated by something as pure and delicate as religion. After all, religion is meant to be about piety, prayer, peace and love.

While it might be fair to argue that, for the elite few who ruled the Church, religion was less about salvation in the afterlife and more about gaining power here on earth, we can’t deny that for the people, it was about having a deeper connection to God and the gospel.

And you’re telling me someone who had quick-witted comebacks and putdowns for those who challenged her had religion and faith in her heart?

As though the two simply don’t go together. But as history has taught us, indeed they do.

Thomas More tortured people for wanting to read the Bible in English. Henry VIII had people executed for refusing to accept him as the head of the Church of England. For centuries to come, Protestants and Catholics would regularly take it in turns to hack each other to death, all in the name of religion. These were forceful men willing to kill for their faith; not something any of us condone, but we do readily accept that men fight wars in the name of religion.

Yet we struggle to accept that Anne Boleyn could have been religiously motivated because, you know, she had quite a harsh tongue and could be rather sharp with people! I think if we were a bit more honest with ourselves, we might admit that it comes down to the fact that she was a woman.

While the men could hang, draw and quarter someone in the name of faith, we appear to expect our religious women to have been peacekeepers, spreading their good mission calmly and in a loving manner. Like Florence Nightingale or Mother Teresa. Why else do we struggle with allowing Anne Boleyn to have been angry, frustrated and fighting for her religious beliefs with the same unapologetic gusto as her husband? Yet the idea crops up time and time again with baffled biographers that because Anne would sometimes lash out with harsh insults, this subsequently cancelled out her lifelong faith.

Or is the issue more to do with her having been a cheeky flirt who was seen as potently sexual to men? Even Anne’s most neutral biographer concludes that she ‘radiated sex’,⁷⁹ and this is something many historians have decided doesn’t sit well with her being a religious woman.

Sixteenth-century historian de Carles spoke of her ‘eyes always most attractive, which she knew well how to use with effect, sometimes, leaving them at rest, and at other, sending a message’.⁸⁰

Can we have a collective eye roll, please?

Firstly, may I point out that the contemporary reports as to how alluring Anne was come from men, who appear to be blaming her for their being attracted to her. Sadly, it was Anne’s misfortune, and that of all sixteenth-century women, that her character and indeed life were left solely in the hands of male record-keepers, to be interpreted and written from their viewpoint. So, it’s not difficult to see how the misogynistic narrative of Anne Boleyn’s story began. What’s harder to accept, however, is how it’s been upheld for so long in the modern world, not only by men but an alarming number of female writers. These are the historians who reason that because Anne had once been happy to play along with her friends in the game of courtly love, she was somehow the one courtier who wasn’t deeply religious, whose world didn’t revolve around an almost hourly devotion to God. That because she had a flirty manner, she couldn’t have also been angered into rebellion by the misdemeanours of the Church.

Henry VIII was a notorious philanderer, regularly taking a mistress, yet we never question his Catholic beliefs because of it. In 1525, Martin Luther, priest and leader of the religious reformation, married a former nun, Katharina von Bora, to prove that vows of celibacy got you no closer to God than raising a family and enjoying a bit of hanky-panky. (You heard me, ladies and gentlemen, hanky-panky!)

Reformists like Anne were liberated by this new evangelical understanding that no amount of self-punishment and deprivation would advance your salvation before God. Meaning that, alongside her daily prayers, there was no harm in Anne Boleyn enjoying the flirty traditions of court life, so long as she had true faith in her heart and never took it any further than writing a silly poem and making eye contact with the opposite sex. It didn’t have to result in affairs or dalliances; a flirt does not a slut make. Yet people really struggle with this one – as though good girls do not laugh and dance. There is to be no joy when you are a true woman of God, apparently.

Of course, there are a smattering of historians from #TeamAragon who claim Anne was only an evangelical to be fashionable. Now, knowing how closely she grew up with the religious reformists of the French court, it’s not surprising to learn that she owned many controversial works by evangelicals such as fellow courtier Clément Marot, who, as we’ve seen, translated the Psalms into French. Ignoring the ban on English Bibles, Anne defiantly owned a copy of Tyndale’s 1534 English translation of the New Testament and Jacques Lefèvre d’Étaples’s French translation of the Bible, which caused just as much outrage to the authorities as its English counterpart, and was burned en masse. Anne also owned two other highly controversial works by Lefèvre, The Pistellis and Gospelles and The Ecclesiaste of 1531.⁸¹ Rose Hickman, a friend of sixteenth-century historian John Foxe, also remembered that Anne had her father import manuscripts of the scriptures written in French, an incredibly risky move at a time when freedom of religious expression was essentially illegal.⁸²

By the time Anne was arrested in 1536, among her seized possessions were forty progressive reformist books and manuscripts.⁸³ There were strict bans on owning most of these works, and individuals caught in possession of them could face arrest, imprisonment and punishment as a heretic. So, forgive me if I don’t buy into the idea that Anne risked her career at court and any possibility of a prestigious marriage match simply to be seen as ‘on trend’ and a bit edgy. Lest we forget, her father was a high-profile royal diplomat and right-hand man to Cardinal Wolsey,⁸⁴ who was the all-powerful and devoutly Catholic adviser to the king of England. If Anne ever put that in jeopardy it was going to be for something she truly believed in. She was not playing games.

But perhaps the biggest clue that her true motivation was religion comes from Anne herself, in one of her few surviving written messages: the simple note of ‘Le temps viendra’ in her Book of Hours, which translates to ‘The time will come.’ This haunting handwritten note can be viewed to this day at the Boleyn family home of Hever Castle. But writers and historians alike, myself included for some time, have wondered exactly what Anne was alluding to. Was it her pursuit of power? Her quest to be queen? A prophecy for her daughter’s future on the throne? As it turns out, it is none of the above.

I have discovered a note written by Jacques Lefèvre D’Étaples in his Commentarii initiatorii in quatuor evangelia in 1522, during Anne’s first year at the Tudor court, which reads: ‘Le temps viendra bientôt où Christ sera prêché purement et sans mélange de traditions humaines, ce qui ne se fait pas maintenant . . .’⁸⁵ which translates as: ‘The time will soon come in which Christ will be preached purely, unsullied by human traditions, which is not being done now.’

His words ‘Christ will be preached purely’ relate to the evangelical quest to have a French translation of the Bible, a fight that Anne was personally to champion in her time. Then the line about ‘unsullied by human traditions’ is what Lefèvre sees as the priests’ misinterpretation of the scripture and the man-made rules they fed their congregations while hiding behind the language barrier of the Latin text. The note as a whole is a direct reference to the religious reformation that was whipping everyone into rebellious angst.

So, with Anne collecting Lefèvre’s work and here, it appears, cryptically quoting him in her Book of Hours, the connection is an obvious one and possibly the first indication that she was motivated by religion from the moment she set foot back on English soil.

Yet it appears to be only modern historians who question Anne’s religious conviction, because sixteenth-century supporters and enemies alike saw her as an evangelical reformer who championed the work of religious activists.

Chapuys, the Spanish ambassador in England during Anne’s ascent to the throne, regularly complained in letters home of her being ‘the cause and nurse of the spread of Lutheranism in this country’.⁸⁶ It was also Chapuys who said Anne was ‘more Lutheran than Luther himself’,⁸⁷ quite the statement knowing, as we do, how passionate Luther was about reform. Not that she held quite the same extreme religious beliefs as Luther; but it was a telling thing for Chapuys to claim.

Nicholas Sander, the propagandist responsible for a steady stream of vitriol about Anne over the years, believed it was Marguerite d’Angoulême who corrupted her, and Anne in turn who ‘corrupted’ England.⁸⁸

Jeez, no word of a thanks!

John Aylmer, who was later to become the bishop of London, wrote An Harborowe for faithfull and Trewe Subjectes in 1559, in which he confirms Anne’s religious mission by explaining that, in his view, the Reformation was not started by men but by a certain woman: ‘Was not queen Anne . . . the chief, first, and only cause of banishing the beast of Rome? Was there ever in England a greater feat wrought by any man than this by a woman?’

Not, he hastens to add, to take away from the work Henry VIII did, but ‘yet the crop and root was the queen’ and that Anne deserved her due praise, for she was the driving force of the Reformation, which he believed God had given her the wisdom and mindset to achieve.⁸⁹

It appears John Foxe agreed with him, believing Anne was a martyr of the ‘new religion’ and ‘zealous defender’ of the gospel, who used her powerful position as queen to promote the evangelical cause.⁹⁰ So too did George Wyatt, who credits the Reformation and changing of religion to Anne, saying she ‘bore a most great part in the great and remarkable conversion in the state of religion . . . which living she so courageously stood to support’.⁹¹

Then someone much closer to home, William Latymer, Anne’s chaplain who went on to become one of her earliest biographers, confided that she dedicated her time to furthering the ‘purity of the scriptures’ and to the ‘abolishing of the blind ignorance and abuses grown in this land’ – clearly a reference to practices such as the sale of indulgences and fake holy relics.⁹²

Even following Anne’s death, Nicholas Shaxton wrote to Cromwell asking him to be as committed to spreading the ‘honour of God and his Holy word than when the late queen was alive and often incited you thereto’.⁹³ Wyatt takes this one step further, controversially confirming that it was Anne’s pushing for religious reform ‘which has moved so many to write and speak falsely and foully of her’.⁹⁴

On and on it goes, pages of eyewitness accounts from Anne’s Tudor peers confirming the evangelical motivation behind every action in her life. Anyone who continues to overlook these statements is dismissing the very original sources on which our entire knowledge of Tudor history is built.

However, I suspect part of the reason modern historians have jumped to the conclusion that Anne’s religious conviction wasn’t as strong as the more gung-ho reformists was due to the fact that she championed ‘moderate reform’. Indeed, there is a great deal of confusion over the meaning of this phrase, but let me clarify: when history speaks of moderate reformists, who were mostly Christian humanists, it didn’t mean they were half-arsed about their religion. It simply meant that they were in support of reform in the main areas that needed change, as opposed to bull-in-a-china-shop, we’re leaving, it’s over, don’t text me again!

Anne still fought hard for what she believed in and was deeply passionate, but the difference between her and, say, the Martin Luthers of the world, is that she wanted to see change rather than complete abolishment where reformers felt the Church was taking advantage of the congregation. But it’s interesting to note that while many moderate reformers went on to become evangelical and eventually Protestant, many still remained Catholic.

You see, reformists didn’t reject or deny Roman Catholic teachings; it’s just that they felt the leaders of the Church didn’t quite practise what they preached. And it appears this is where Anne sat in the theological debate. It explains why she didn’t want the monasteries to be ripped apart in their entirety but did make the effort during her reign to visit them and help them reform their practices, as we will come to see.

But we have to remember that Anne Boleyn was a first-generation evangelical. It’s called a ‘new religion’ for a reason. Anne was finding her feet, just like everyone else, figuring out where she stood with these new ideas versus the orthodox Catholic teachings. It was a time of religious growth and uncertainty, and hence we shouldn’t chastise the Tudors for not knowing immediately where their beliefs lay.

So, historians who use the fact that Anne took holy communion and prayed before the sacrament while in prison as final proof she wasn’t a true evangelical, really need to go take a theology lesson and hit us up when they’re down with the basics.

By the time Anne was finally allowed back at court, the Butlers had given up on any hopes of a marriage between her and James.⁹⁵ So it’s at this point that she found herself in London, for the first time unattached and ready to forge forward to find a marital alliance of worth. All scandal was in the past; nothing was going to ruin her mission this time.

Little did she know Henry VIII was about to bulldoze his way into her life.