There is an interesting letter linked to Anne Boleyn. It’s known as the “From the Lady in the Tower” letter and was said to have been found amongst Thomas Cromwell’s papers. It was said to be a copy of a letter either written by or dictated by Queen Anne Boleyn to her husband the king when she was imprisoned in the Tower of London in May 1536.
But what do we know about this letter?
I interviewed Amanda Glover who has done ground-breaking research into this Anne Boleyn letter…
You can read Amanda’s guest article on her research over on the Tudor Society – click here.
I have often read scholars’ laments over the destruction of the Library of Alexandria, but my tears are reserved for the documents destroyed in the Cotton Fire!
I also posted this comment on Facebook. Which place do you prefer comments to be posted?
I thoroughly enjoyed watching this video interview you gave with your friend and researcher Amanda Claire, she really has done her work well on the age of the letter the watermarks etc yet still we are left baffled, but Amanda raised some very good points , it all boils down to one fact, why should anyone forge a letter from the queen to the king? As she said there was no gain no purpose to it, but we can now safely attest to the fact that it was not written in 1536 so must therefore be a copy of the original, if ever the original ever existed! I feel sadly that the provenance of this document will never be known, which is a very real blow to the history of Henry V111 and his second wife.
I read a comment Retha Warnicke had written about three other forged letters from Anne Boleyn, she also came to the conclusion that this letter is nothing more than a forgery also, her strongest argument is her signature at the end which says nothing more than a bland Anne Bullen, instead of her cherished Anne the Queen which is how she ended the few cherished pieces of correspondence we have from her , the other points she refers to is the rebuke in the letter where she accuses the king she is in the Tower because he wants another woman, which must surely be Jane Seymour, and also she speaks of how he wishes her to confess her guilt for a free pardon, as Warnicke states, Henry V111 would never pardon a queen of his after admitting to such vile crimes as the ones Anne was accused of, I agree with all of these just as I agree with other historians views of this mystery letter which continues to perplex and baffle us from the day it was found, after her arrest Henry V111 said he believed Anne must have slept with a hundred men which showed how little was the regard he held her in, why would he then have said to her he would show her mercy if she confessed, I believe he would not have troubled himself too much about gaining a confession from her, he had Mark Smeaton’s, and his jovial behaviour during the whole sorry tale shows he was a man very pleased with himself who did not care what his subjects thought of the way he conducted himself, why would he need the queens confession to bolster his claim what a wicked woman she was? Warnicke then goes to deride Sander who made insulting remarks about her appearance, she was tall whereas Anne was in fact about five foot three which was normal height for a woman of the time, and she had sallow skin and a protruding tooth, and moles as well, these remarks she dismisses but goes on to say this description arose from the fact that Anne had miscarried of a deformed child and the general view of the time was she had indulged in ungodly practices, for eg incest quadruple adultery, we have debated Miss. Warnicke many times on this site and still it astonishes many that this tragic queens last infant was a shapeless mass of flesh instead of a normal infant who sadly lost his life and who could have saved his mothers, however her belief about Anne’s so called letter from theTower I feel is correct, Alison Weir states that she had never been afraid to speak her mind and yet her barbed remarks to the king in this hotly debated letter are accusatory and every word is a sting, would she have dared to tell the king she was in the tower because he wished her to be there, (a hint about Jane Seymour again), also like Warnicke she brings up the remark Anne made about she never wished to be elevated, ‘far above my desert or desire’ was how it was written, we know Anne’s driving ambition was to be Henry’s consort, there are too many inconsistencies from what we do know about Anne Boleyn and her history, she turned completely against Queen Katherine and her daughter because they were the main obstacle to her becoming queen,, like Warnicke Weir she does not feel there is enough argument for the validity of the letter, Lacey Smith hardly writes two sentences on it and from what I remember I think Professor Eric Ives (my hero and Claire’s), gives it not much credence either, maybe it is about time we stopped debating about this fascinating but baffling scrap of burnt parchment and consign it to the scrap heap of fantasy.