Dear Heart, How Like You This
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Surely Cavendish’s choice of the words “very young” tells us more than anything else that Anne was a child in France, and goes against the argument that, in 1527, Anne Boleyn first caught the King’s eye when she was at least twenty-six. Even in today’s world, women of twenty-six are not regarded as young girls. Yet we have contemporary description from William Forrest—a supporter of Catherine of Aragon who was in England during her “divorce” from the King—of Anne as a “fresh young damsel” (Warnicke p. 56). We also have Anne Boleyn’s own words to consider. Firstly there is Anne’s letter written to the King after he arranges for her to be a maid of honour to Catherine of Aragon, just after the fire of the King’s passion really started blazing bright. Anne writes at the start of this letter,
“It belongs only to the august mind of a great king to whom nature has given a heart full of generosity towards the sex; to repay by favours so extraordinary artless and short conversation with a girl” (Hanson, M. 2009).
Anne’s words are also documented just before the final downfall of Cardinal Wolsey. One night, Henry VIII decided to sup with Catherine of Aragon, the woman he was working hard to divorce. Not surprisingly, even though somewhat surprising to the King, he found Catherine of Aragon not prepared to be her usual companionable self, rather her antagonistic mood soon resulted in an argument. Henry then went to Anne Boleyn, in hope of receiving some sympathy from his mistress, only to find Anne angry in turn. After saying that she feared he would one day return to Catherine, she went on to say:
“I have been waiting long and might in the meanwhile have contracted some advantageous marriage, out of which I might have had issue, which is the greatest consolation in this world, but alas! Farewell to my time and youth spent to no purpose at all” (Fraser 1992, p. 169).
If she had been twenty-six at the start of her relationship with the King, Anne could not lay claim to being either a “girl” or having “spent” her youth during the long years prior to her marriage to the King. It is also extremely unlikely that she could have lied about her age. Anne had too many enemies who would have delighted in telling the truth to the King.
Anne’s relationship with the twenty-year-old Henry Percy, later Earl of Northumberland, needs to be considered here too. This relationship, documented by George Cavendish as well as later brought up during the trial for Anne’s life, possessed all the hallmarks of “first love,” both of them entering into this relationship as if naive of how their lives were controlled by their place in Tudor society. Moreover, there are potent hints suggesting that Anne and Percy may have pre-contracted themselves to one another, which would have put into question the legality of any future marriage entered into by Anne and Percy (Fraser 1992, p.126).
Disregarding Percy’s loud protests that he had committed himself to Anne Boleyn, Wolsey broke up their relationship, Percy being married in quick haste to Mary Talbot. It was a marriage doomed to failure from the start. As for Anne and Percy? Because of their youth, this break-up apparently hit them both hard, making them never forget what had happened. Was it just a coincidence that the man leading the party to arrest Wolsey for treason was none other than Percy? And Anne said later that she rather had been Henry’s Countess (meaning, Percy’s wife) than Henry’s Queen. When the verdict of Anne’s execution was delivered, Percy, a judge at her trial, fainted.
In 1876, St. Peter ad Vincula, a chapel situated at the north end of Tower Green, was remodelled extensively. Part of the project involved repairing the floor, under which were found the remains of—amongst others—Anne Boleyn, Katherine Howard and Jane Grey. Close to the choir chapel, a “beheaded” woman’s skeleton was found under a paving stone. A medical examiner described the exhumed skeleton as having a “delicate frame with a small neck,” as one would expect of a skeleton belonging to Anne Boleyn, a female beheaded in her middle or late twenties. Admittedly, we cannot be certain that this age is correct, but it was concluded that these bones were indeed the bones of Anne Boleyn (Warnicke, pp. 235–6). As Katherine and Jane Grey, both also buried at St. Peter ad Vincula and also believed identified during these excavations, were teenagers (respectively, 19 and 16) and executed before bearing children, I believe the differences between skeletons would have been apparent. I have no doubt the bones found in 1876 were indeed those of Anne Boleyn.
So how do we briefly summarize society attitudes to “age” at this time? Life was far shorter then—with an average life expectation somewhere around forty years. However, just because life was brief does not mean people of the period automatically regarded those in their thirties as old. Nevertheless, we have to keep in mind that life was much harder then and consequently people did age faster than what we see today in the Western world.
Mary Stuart, forty-four at her death, suffered with rheumatism for years prior to her death and was found to have mostly grey hair after her execution. By his forties, gout already caused great daily agony to William Cecil, later crippling him as an old man.
Elizabeth, in her late thirties, whose constitution as Queen was generally sound, developed a painful leg ulcer, which caused one suitor to offend her by calling her “an old creature with a sore leg” (Weir 1998, pp. 274–5). When Robert Dudley died at fifty-five he was almost unrecognisable as the handsome, dark “Gypsy” who had come as close as any man to marrying Anne Boleyn’s daughter. That same daughter, after her recovery from smallpox at twenty-nine, said to a deputation who petitioned her to marry and thus safeguard the realm with heirs of her body, “The marks they saw on her face were not wrinkles, but the pits of smallpox, and although she might be old, God could send her children as He did to St. Elisabeth” (Weir 1998, p. 138). Keeping in mind the cadence of the time, I construe her response in that Elizabeth is referring to a time in the future, when she would indeed be “old,” but still the unspoken concern about the “delay of the ripe time for marriage” (Jenkins 1959, p. 175) is apparent. By thirty-seven, Elizabeth, no doubt seeking reassurance from her courtiers to the contrary, was indeed protesting that she was too old for marriage (Weir 1998, p. 216). We even have the utterance of her father to reflect upon, when he said: “I am forty-one years old, at which age the lust of man is not so quick as in lusty youth” (Fraser 1992, p. 220). Thus, it is clear that they, like us, were aware of “youth” as compared to “maturity.” With so many children and teenagers scythed down by the grim reaper, probably more so.
There is little doubt that Henry VIII’s passion for Anne Boleyn was the “Grand Passion” of his life. But Henry was a King, only the second of his dynasty, desperately in need of a son to secure the succession of his crown. To turn his kingdom upside down to achieve his marriage with Anne Boleyn, he must have felt confident of her ability to bear children, and healthy children at that. Cardinal Wolsey attempts to wave a French princess under his King’s nose were not helped by the fact that Renée of France, like her mother before her, had a physical defect, which resulted in her walking with a limp and caused expression of doubts about Renée’s suitability to bear children (Warnicke 1989, p. 63). But such a woman also would not have appealed to Henry, who took great pride in not only his physical appearance, but that of his children too. Early in 1528, Wolsey wrote to the Pope defending the King’s choice of Anne on the grounds that she was likely to have children (Warnicke 1989, p. 77), which suggests Anne Boleyn was youthful.
When it is considered that Katherine of Aragon was only thirty-two when brought to bed of her last child, a still-born daughter, it seems very unlikely that the King would place his hopes and faith in the ability of a twenty-eight-year-old woman to give him sons.
Anne Boleyn came from a class that generally married young in England (Harris 2002, p.56), though admittedly not as young as did princesses of the time, often married not long into their teenage years, after infant or childhood betrothals. Anne’s own mother married by the time she was seventeen, her sister Mary probably married William Carey in her teenage years. Anne herself would have expected to be wed by her very early
twenties, the “ripe time” for marriage. In 1519, aged only thirty-three, Catherine of Aragon was described as “the King’s old deformed wife” (Fraser 1992, p. 76).
Of course, by then, Catherine, in ten years of marriage, had given birth at least six times, resulting in only her daughter Mary surviving beyond the first weeks of infancy. Grief and the constant strains of pregnancy can swiftly age any woman. But Anne Boleyn had, physically and psychologically, a great deal to cope with too. Even so, on the day of her execution a witness said Anne Boleyn “never looked more beautiful.” On the scaffold, when she removed her pearl-encrusted coif to replace it with a simpler head covering, Anne Boleyn revealed her hair to be as black as ever. Do these descriptions gel with a woman of thirty-six—decidedly middle-aged by the times—who had been through the terror of imprisonment, a trial for her life, months of fear and uncertainty while her husband and his ministers plotted to get rid of her, and a tragic second miscarriage barely four months before her death? I don’t believe so.
Whenever there is confusion about something from the past I believe it best to seek out “voices” from the time, to discover whether there are voices from the past that can help untangle the confusion. Sometimes the voices are silent, leading us to conjecture, but in the case of Anne Boleyn’s age there are, I believe, enough “voices” that do speak. And not only the voices I have put already forward. Only a couple of years before her marriage to the King, Anne was described as “young” (Fraser 1992, p. 171). William Camden wrote in his Annuals Anne Boleyn’s birth date as being 1507. Jane Dormer—Lady in waiting and confidante to Catherine of Aragon’s daughter Mary Tudor—believed Anne Boleyn not quite twenty-nine when she died (Ives 1986, p. 3). Mary Tudor had many valid reasons to hate Anne Boleyn as the daughter of Catherine of Aragon, and was in the perfect position to be aware of Anne’s true age.
Jane Seymour
Mary Tudor
I want to end this investigation by comparing three portraits. Two portraits depict two women aged around twenty-seven years, one Henry VIII’s third wife, Jane Seymour, painted by Holbein and the other his daughter Mary, by the artist Master John. The third is a portrait of Anne Boleyn, a miniature by Lucas Hornebout, painted in 1526, about the time when King Henry VIII first fell in love with her. When these three portraits are studied side by side, it is clear that the Horenbout portrait shows someone who could indeed be described as a “fresh young damsel,” a young woman no more than twenty. The other two portraits show women with shadowed eyes, lines etched all around, skin—especially around Mary’s mouth and Jane’s chin—losing it elasticity, clearly much more mature women, both fast losing the freshness of youth.
Anne Boleyn
Believed to be the only period drawing of Anne Boleyn
There is a fourth portrait to consider: a drawing by Holbein depicting Anne Boleyn during her brief time as Queen. Though drawn from different angles, Holbein’s drawing clearly shows the same woman as that painted by Horenbout, but time has passed; the girl in the miniature has become the woman. But still evident is that this woman is not much older than those shown in the portraits of Jane Seymour and Mary Tudor. It is a portrait, I believe, of a woman who has not reached her middle thirties.
Notes
* Scholars dispute whether Mary Boleyn actually attended the eighteen-year-old Queen, but I think, why not? Sir Thomas Boleyn clearly had the necessary skills to develop a network of influential friends. I also believe his ambitions were such that he would have done all in his power to place both daughters in positions where they could improve the status of the Boleyn family at court and abroad.
CONTENTS
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Bibliography
Bailey, K. (Dec97/Jan98). “The coronation of Anne Boleyn.” British Heritage; 19(1):4.BritannicaOnline: http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/498078/Renee-of-France (accessed 01/08/09)
Bruce, M. L. (1972). Anne Boleyn. London, Collins
Chapman, H. W. (1974). Anne Boleyn. London, J. Cape
Denny, J. (2007). Anne Boleyn: a new life of England’s tragic queen. Cambridge, MA, Da Capo Press
Fraser, A. (1992). The wives of Henry VIII. New York, Knopf
Hanson, M. English History. http://englishhistory.net/tudor/letter6.html (accessed 22/07/09)
Harris, B. J. (2002). English aristocratic women, 1450–1550: marriage and family, property and careers. New York, Oxford University Press
Ives, E. W. (1986). Anne Boleyn. Oxford, OX, UK; New York, NY, USA, Blackwell
Ives, E. W. (1998). “A Frenchman at the Court of Anne Boleyn” History Today 48: pp. 21–26
Ives, E. W. (2004). The life and death of Anne Boleyn: “the most happy” Malden, MA, Blackwell Pub
Jenkins, E. (1959). Elizabeth the Great. New York, Coward-McCann
Lofts, N. (1979). Anne Boleyn. New York, Coward, McCann & Geoghegan
Warnicke, R. M. (1989). The rise and fall of Anne Boleyn: family politics at the court of Henry VIII. New York, Cambridge University Press
Weir, A. (2001). Henry VIII: the King and his court. New York, Ballantine Books
Weir, A. (1998). Elizabeth the Queen. London, J. Cape
CONTENTS
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Suggested reading group questions
Do you think the author successfully conveys a man’s point of view?
What about a “Tudor” man’s point of view?
Do you think Tudor times are successfully evoked in this novel? In what ways?
Why do you think Tom’s wife decided to take lovers?
Who was most at fault for their unsuccessful marriage, Tom or Elizabeth?
Which of the characters do you like/dislike the most? Why?
“I cannot help but think that the evil I planned so long ago has now caught me in its clutches.” Why do you think Anne says this?
What would you have done in Anne’s position?
What does the story tell you about the position of women in these times? How does it compare to our times?
Do you think Anne deserved her death?