When Henry VIII sought to annul his marriage to Catherine of Aragon to wed her maid-of-honour, Anne Boleyn, Catherine famously referred to Anne as “the great scandal of Christendom.” It was a remark born from hurt and betrayal, but it’s a sentiment that many in Anne’s time—and even now—would agree with.
So, what did Anne Boleyn do to earn this title? Let’s explore…
Transcript:
Anne returned to England from France in 1521/1522 and made her first recorded appearance at court during the Shrovetide pageant in March 1522. With her education at the sophisticated courts of Margaret of Austria and France, her noble lineage, and her father’s role as a key diplomat, she was well-placed to join Queen Catherine’s household.
However, Anne’s time at court quickly became embroiled in scandal. According to George Cavendish, the gentleman usher to Cardinal Wolsey, Anne fell in love with Henry Percy, heir to the Earl of Northumberland, and he with her. Their secret romance caused uproar: Percy’s father had arranged his marriage to Mary Talbot, Anne herself was being considered for a match with James Butler, and Percy’s noble status required the king’s consent for any union.
When Cardinal Wolsey discovered the affair, he berated Percy in front of his household, referring to Anne a “foolish girl.” Percy’s father also intervened, shaming his son into obedience. Their romance was forcibly ended, Anne was sent back to her family home at Hever Castle, and Percy was swiftly married to Mary Talbot. It was a court scandal that sparked gossip and placed Anne firmly in the spotlight.
Now, I’m not sure whether George Cavendish was writing with the benefit of hindsight, but he claimed that another factor in the break-up of Anne’s romance with Percy was the king’s own interest in her, writing that when Anne joined the queen’s household, she “did excel all other; in so much, as the king began to kindle the brand of amours; which was not known to any person, ne scantily to her own person”.
Frustratingly, we don’t know when Percy and Anne were involved, only that it was sometime after her return to England in 1522, and we don’t know for sure when the king noticed Anne. His love letters to her are undated, so the start of his pursuit of his wife’s maid-of-honour in unknown. I expect, though, that the romance was broken up because of other marriage negotiations, and nothing to do with the king’s feelings.
Then, at some point, poet and diplomat Thomas Wyatt the Elder fell for Anne. He was a married man, so it would have been scandalous if Anne had been involved with him, but there’s no evidence that she reciprocated his feelings in any way. She simply appears to have been his muse, or perhaps the lady her served in a courtly love way, writing poems about her, reading poetry to her, and stealing a jewel from her to keep as a trophy. Anne doesn’t appear to have done anything, but Wyatt’s actions did cause scandal for her when she was involved with the king. The king and Wyatt were playing bowls, when an argument broke out over a shot. Wyatt declared that the shot was his, but the king declared, “Wyatt, I tell thee it is mine”, pointing to the wood with a finger. On that finger, was a ring that had belonged to Anne. Wyatt, on seeing Anne’s ring, said to the king, “If it may like your majesty to give me leave to measure it, I hope it will be mine”. He took a ribbon from his neck, on which Anne’s jewel was hung, and began to measure the cast with the ribbon. The king recognised Anne’s jewel and was furious. He broke up the game and then went in search of Anne for an explanation. She was able to explain it all to the king’s satisfaction, and all was well.
Now let’s consider Anne’s relationship with the king. This was truly scandalous. The king had been unfaithful to his queen before, with Elizabeth/Bessie Blount and Anne’s own sister, Mary Boleyn, but Anne Boleyn was different – she said no to being his mistress. That’s not scandalous at all, is it? But, of course, the king appears to have been obsessed with her and he proposed marriage, a proposal that Anne accepted. That can definitely be seen as scandalous. Henry VIII was not in a position to propose to her, he was married. For Anne to accept, was scandalous. She was agreeing to be his queen, when he already had a queen, her employer/mistress. But then, actually, was it any more scandalous than Anne of Brittany agreeing to marry Louis XII if he could get his marriage to Joan of France annulled within a year. No.
And, once she accepted, she put her all into making it happen, and supported the king’s ill-treatment of his defiant wife and daughter. Something else that was scandalous.
It was a long and hard road for Anne and the king following her acceptance of his proposal. The king believed that the pope would agree to the annulment, that his argument regarding the invalidity of his marriage would be acceptable, but he didn’t count on Catherine opposing it and the pope being caught in the middle of the emperor and the king of England. Something that should have been sorted out within months, if not weeks, took six years, and the pope never did grant the annulment.
In the meantime, Anne created even more scandal by becoming the king’s consort. While Henry sought an annulment, Anne stepped into the role of queen-in-waiting. Catherine was banished from court, and Anne took her place at Henry’s side. Anne wasn’t queen, but she was treated as such. She became the king’s partner, she was queen in all but name. And then she accompanied him on a visit to Calais, and the queen’s jewels were taken from Catherine for Anne to wear on the trip – scandalous! And she hosted a masque in honour of the King of France! The Queen of France chose not to attend, but Francis I did, and gave Henry and Anne his support.
Henry and Anne were ecstatic that Francis I had agreed to support them and they felt so confident that they either got secretly married, or went through some kind of betrothal ceremony and started sleeping together. The exchange of promises followed by consummation constituted a marriage in those times, but there was one problem – Henry was still legally married, although he viewed his first marriage as invalid. Them marrying and sleeping together was scandalous, and then Anne got pregnant – even more scandalous. They had a more official marriage ceremony a few months later, in January 1533, but the king was still married, so this could be viewed as bigamous, but then his first marriage was eventually annulled.
And Anne played a huge part in this. It was Anne who showed him the work of reformer William Tyndale, a work that argued that rulers were on a par with the pope, they were answerable only to God. This changed things. Henry VIII didn’t need the pope to annul his marriage and, in fact, he didn’t need the pope at all. He could make himself head of the church in England and get his annulment granted, while also getting his hands on the church’s wealth – win-win! So, the king’s Archbishop of Canterbury was tasked with investigating the king’s first marriage, i.e. getting it annulled. But before he’d even ruled on the king’s great matter, Henry and Anne jumped the gun. At Easter 1533, Henry instructed his royal council to recognise Anne as his queen, and Anne created a spectacle at court on Holy Saturday by attending mass as queen, accompanied by no less than sixty ladies and being, as Chapuys described, “loaded with jewels, clothed in a robe of cloth of gold friese”. This caused quite a stir, another scandal.
Just over a month later, Archbishop Cranmer ruled the king’s first marriage invalid and pronounced his second marriage valid – something that was scandalous to many. How could the king annul a marriage that the pope, God’s representative on earth, had issued a dispensation for, a marriage of 20+years, and how could he break with the authority of Rome and make himself head of the church?! Scandalous.
And, just a few days after her marriage to the king was proclaimed valid, Anne was crowned queen after a few days of lavish celebrations fit for a monarch. The Milanese ambassador estimated that the celebrations cost the City of London around £46,000 and Henry half that again. That was a huge amount. But not only were the celebrations completely OTT for a queen consort, Anne was not treated like a queen consort, she was crowned with the crown of St Edward, a crown usually reserved for crowning the reigning monarch. Scandalous! Her coronation celebrations were an exercise in propaganda, Henry pulling out all the stops to show everyone that Anne was the only rightful Queen of England and that the child she was carrying was his only rightful heir.
Anne was queen for just three short years, but during that time she acted in ways that many in England would have viewed as scandalous – she supported reform – she acted as patron to evangelicals at court and in the church, she supported the dissemination of the Bible in English and kept a copy of the New Testament in English in her apartments and encouraged her ladies to read it, and she had books that were deemed heretical imported from the Continent. Anne’s evangelical beliefs and her patronage of reformers made her a polarising figure, especially for those loyal to Rome.
Anne also defied expectations of a queen consort. She was a political animal. She was outspoken in her views on foreign policy – advocating for an alliance with France rather than the Empire, and attacking those who advised her husband to fill royal coffers with the proceeds from the dissolution of the monasteries instead of spending the money on charity and education. A queen consort was supposed to be an intercessor, a help-mate for her king, but Anne expected to be Henry’s partner in crime. She was quite a different queen.
And the relationship between Henry and Anne was very different to other kings and queens. It wasn’t based on diplomacy, it was based on passion, and it was lived out in public. Anne seems to have had no qualms about losing her temper with the king in public, or at least in front of some witnesses. Their relationship was volatile and everyone knew it. It wasn’t exactly very royal.
And Anne was surrounded by scandal as queen-in-waiting and queen regarding her feelings about her predecessor, Catherine, and Henry’s eldest daughter, Mary. Like the king, she viewed them as defiant and disobedient, and when Mary rebuffed her and refused to acknowledge her as queen, she supported the king in his banishment of his daughter, in him making her illegitimate and punishing her. Anne obviously made her anger and frustration clear to others, for Chapuys reported that she wished all Spaniards were at the bottom of the sea and that she’d prefer Catherine hanged than to acknowledge her as her mistress – you were meant to only think these things, not say them out loud – scandalous! And, then, she was also accused of wanting to poison her enemies. When, during the great matter, Bishop Fisher’s cook Richard Roose was found guilty of trying to poison the bishop and his household, it was rumoured that the Boleyns were behind this attempted assassination of the bishop who supported Catherine of Aragon.
Chapuys also wrote of there being rumours that Anne wanted to poison Mary, and when Catherine of Aragon died in January 1536, it was rumoured that it was the result of poisoning.
Anne’s fall was the most scandalous chapter of her life. The queen was accused of committing adultery with four men, including the king’s good friend and groom of the stool, Sir Henry Norris, and a lowly court musician, and committing incest with her brother. She’d been carrying out these affairs for over two years and had also plotted with these men to kill the king. The charges listed in the indictments drawn up against Anne and the men were truly scandalous, describing how the queen had “seduced by evil and not having God before her eyes, and following daily her frail and carnal appetites […] falsely and traitorously procure by base conversations and kisses, touchings, gifts and other infamous incitations, divers of the King’s daily and familiar servants to be her adulterers and concubines, so that several of the King’s servants yielded to her vile provocations”. And that she had “incited her own natural brother, George Boleyn, knight, Lord Rochford, to violate her, alluring him with her tongue in the said George’s mouth, and the said George’s tongue in hers, and also with kisses, presents and jewels, against the commands of the Almighty God, and all laws human and divine, whereby he, despising the commands of God, and all other human laws […] violated and carnally knew the said Queen, his own sister.” The charges against her were shocking and disgusting.
And shortly before her fall, Anne had had a scandalous conversation with Sir Henry Norris. What started out as some kind of courtly love flirtation, ended up with Anne rebuking him and unwisely saying, “You look for dead men’s shoes, for if aught came to the King but good, you would look to have me”, mentioning the king’s death, something that could be viewed as treason. She’d gone too far.
Anne was arrested, imprisoned in the Tower of London, and beheaded as a traitor – a Queen of England executed for treason! The evidence against her was non-existent or fabricated. Nevertheless, she was tried, condemned and executed. It sent shock waves around Europe. And Henry VIII embellished things, claiming that Anne had had over 100 lovers and that she’d sought to poison not just Mary, but his illegitimate son, Henry Fitzroy. Scandalous. But wasn’t it more scandalous than the king became betrothed to another woman the day after his second wife’s execution and married her ten days after that, plus the fact that he’d been involved with her for months!
Phew! All that scandal! And it doesn’t end there. Anne’s reputation continued to be vilified long after her death. Over the centuries, her detractors have made Anne even more scandalous, claiming that she had an extra finger, that she was a witch, that she had a reputation for bad behaviour in France, that she had a fling with Wyatt, that she set out to trap the king and used her sexuality to manipulate him, that she hid her lover, Mark Smeaton, in a marmalade cupboard, that she truly was guilty of everything she was accused of, that she was a murderer, a woman whose ambition knew no bounds etc. etc. Even today, Anne is contrasted with Catherine of Aragon, the “saintly” queen, making her appear all the more scandalous by comparison.
And then, of course, those who didn’t or don’t agree with the break with Rome heap all of the blame for that on Anne too. The break with Rome changed English history for ever.
So Anne has become this divisive figure, and yet, shouldn’t Henry VIII take some responsibility for it all?
Anne’s life and after-life is full of scandal, but was Anne truly “the great scandal of Christendom”? Or was she a product of Henry VIII’s ambition, the politics of her time, and a society that vilified strong, opinionated women? Whatever the answer, Anne’s story is undeniably fascinating and continues to captivate us today.
What do you think? I’d love to hear your views.
I was thinking the very same as you Claire, ‘what about Henry V111 himself becoming betrothed to Jane Seymour within twenty four hours of his queen having lost her head’, what about himself openly pursuing Anne whilst his first queen was alive, she herself being most reluctant and then having agreed to marry him, allowing herself to hold court as if she was queen already at Christmas and other events, banquets etc, entertaining guests and ambassadors, Henry was the one who made all that possible and like in Jane Seymour’s case, he showed he did not care that he still made headlines around the world, had he left Anne alone, accepted her refusal to become his mistress, Anne would have made no impact on English politics and the ‘ great scandal of Christendom’ would have married eventually and quietly a nobleman at court and England would have remained a catholic country, Anne is unique amongst other women in history as David Starkey said, ‘ she broke all the rules’, she effectively ousted a queen from her position as consort and took her place, she was the catalyst for the break from Rome she heralded in the new religion, and her ending, in accordance really with her life, was just as volatile just as turbulent, but does that earn her the title of scandalous?, to the catholics she certainly was an evil scandalous woman, but what of Alice Perrers the mistress of Edward 111, what of Diane De Poiters who was gifted with the Crown Jewels of France which should rightly have been bestowed on Henri 11’s wife, Catherine de Medici, true these women did not involve themselves in court politics unlike Anne who saw herself as a prime mover, but their behaviour was immoral to say the least, Anne was not immoral but Englands queen consort, but to her enemies she was and later, it was her unconventional behaviour which did seal her fate at the end, this volatile this ambitious and fiery woman could be made out to be seen as the devil incarnate by the kings clever lawyer and there would be many who would believe it, purely because she was hated, and out of necessity by her husband who wanted her gone, really Henry V111 was more scandalous than his second queen, his marriages were the talk of Europe, but because Anne was a woman, and a 16th century woman at that, she defied all the morals and conventions of her age, she was not meek suppliant and malleable, maybe the education she had received in her youth in Savoy and France where she was surrounded by clever and sophisticated women moulded her into the belief that women were just as clever as men, in our own time that is acceptable and rightly so, add that belief to her own ambitious and bold nature – a dazzling combination and thus she made history, but when she became queen she continued to act as Henry’s adviser which was something he did not like, he had married her purely as a breeding machine, fostered by the great passion he had once felt for her, today Anne would not be considered a scandal, the Profumo affair was a scandal and it ruined the lives of several people as a result, President Trump is called a scandal by his detractors, there are always scandals because the human race is like that, but Anne Boleyn truly was a remarkable woman, the way she kept a king obsessed for so many years, and the impact she had on England, her religion and new church, her daughter became our best loved monarch, it was the way she was portrayed at her trial was scandalous, and a much weaker less courageous woman would have broken down, she went to her death with the blackest of charges laid at her door, but she died boldly and left a question mark amongst peoples lips, was she innocent or guilty? Well in the case of so many prominent people over the centuries, history has been her judge and she has been clearly vindicated ! It is up to the individual if she was a scandal or not, certainly her great rival Katherine of Aragon thought so but she had every right to believe that, she had ruined her life her very existence and her position as Englands queen!