K.O.A probably did feel pity for Anne, because all the while Henry and Anne were courting, he played the court Gallant, the old knight in shining armour, bit. Oh yes they had rows but if you notice it was always Henry who blubbed and pined for Anne when she went back to Hever, and begged her forgiveness etc.

K.O.A knew the real Henry under the the theactic make up of gallantry and TLC.. to borrow a line from Anne of a Thousand days. “I’ve seen what you are, you are spoilt, vengeful and bloody. You make love as you eat with a great deal of noise and no subtlety.

K.O.A had lived with that Henry for almost 20 years, and to be honest could handle him better than any of his other wives. She had seen him grow from a spolit child, to an impetuious, ill tempered and bombastic man. The pity K.O.A felt for Anne could well have been something along the lines of “The poor girl doesn’t know what she’s letting herself in for”

Henry’s love for Anne in my opinion started to wane, from the time of Elizabeth’s birth. He put a brave face on it and swallowed his pride and disappointment, but he showed his disappointment in other ways. I.E the magnificent celebrations and a jousting event he had planned for the birth of a son were cancelled, and although Elizabeth’s christening was magnificent I feel that they were perhaps somewhat muted.
I also feel that those celebrations was when Anne realised that Henry wasn’t quite as saintly and gallant as he pretended to be, and she saw beneath the surface to what he truly was. A selfish pig, who only true love was himself.
This was said in Ray Winstone’s version of Henry 8th, as Anne waited for the executioner to strike she uttered “Forgive me Mary if I spoke with a sharp tongue” I’d like to think that she meant Mary Tulip, as Anne did give the poor girl a bit of hard time. In that I have to give Mary Tulip some brownie points because she too dug her heels in and resolutely refused to give Anne any hint of acceptence as her stepmother or as her Queen.

I don’t think K.O.A felt pity for Anne but if she did it would be from the point of view of that Anne didn’t understand what she was taking on.
Yes Henry was the playing the Prince Charming all the while he was courting Anne etc. But the reality of Henry’s fantasy world of love, was very different, and K.O.A had lived with Henry’s temper tantrums and fickle shows of love for almost 20 years.
Anne did perhaps feel relief that K.O.A was dead, but I also think she realised just how important it was for her to fulfil the whole reason for her being Queen too. I.E to produce a living healthy son. With K.O.A dead failure this time wasn’t an option, as K.O.A life guarenteed her own so to speak.
Elizabeth’s birth was perhaps the turning point in Henry and Anne’s marriage, and Anne began to see Henry in the same light as K.O.A did.
Perhaps the best way to describe it was marriage with Henry was hard work, and you never knew when he would flip out even over the simplist of things going wrong for him. Be that foriegn policy or matters at home to be dealt with.

The only thing Anne had to apologise to KoA was not becoming Henry’s mistress.

If it wasn’t Anne in 1526, it would have been another woman sooner or later as Henry’s over-wheling desire was for a living son and possibly more legitimate off-spring. KoA wouldn’t have been the first royal wife cast-aside for a younger model capable of producing children.

While I can’t see KoA being enamoured over being replaced by a forgein princess, I doubt it would have hurt her pride as much as being replaced by her own serving woman.

No Kylie, they did not make up at any point. Sadly Katherine still believed that Anne Boleyn was the root of her problems with Henry, and I think that she thought if Anne was removed Henry would come back to his senses and take her back. Her last letter to him is heartbreaking.

I rather think that K.O.A realised the truth of great matter of the divorce after Wolsey had died. But stubbornly refused to except that it was all Henry’s idea, blaming Anne or Cromwell or the influence of Cramner instead.
I agree Anyanka she had in my opinion a very blinkered view in the sence that she felt she still had some influence in Henry’s life. The saying just 5 minutes alone with him/her I could change their mind.
Could she though? Given that he had been given the key to real power I.e Tindale’s book, I doubt he would want to throw away the chance to Lord it over everyone. Again in my opinion, he had always felt, he was the little fish in the big pond called life. His French conquests had acheived very little, his father in law, Ferdinand and his Nephew Charles, had both let him down, and had actually made treaties with King Francois. Granted Charles held Francois eldest son as guarentor that Francois followed through with his promises and to doubly make sure Charles had insisted that Francois married his sister Eleanor. The Emperor Charles had stuck 2 fingers up at Henry, concerning the marriage of his daughter Mary, and had instead chosen to marry Isabella of Portugal, basically because Charles wanted a bit of money, well a lot of money actually and Isabella had a lot of it. Henry was skint as well having squandered his father’s vast accumilated fortune, in little over 2 or 3 years when he came to throne, so monatary wise he couldn’t hope to give Mary anywhere as near the dowry she deserved as a royal princess, plus he knew that his English subjects would never tolerate a foriegner ruling any part of England, even if his wife was a English Princess. So really England had little to offer anyone outside of the country itself. The last insult (loosely worded) to Henry was that K.O.A who won the battle with Scotland at Flodden, not him. What was he doing at that time? Ponching about France playing or trying to play a jumped up tin pot Napoleon, and cover himself with glory and be hailed the conqueroring hero when he came home, that really didn’t happen did? Yes I agree he captured a few French cities/towns but it availed him nothing in the end anyway, as he got the assurances that in the following campaign season Ferdinand would help him beat Louis (the spider) all that happened there was he married his sister Mary to Louis to try to keep the peace, so to speak. I believe Ferdinand received Navarre in return for not attacking France as he and Henry had agreed. I should think that given all the time an effort he had put into the French Campaigns etc in his quest for glory it would have gone down like trying to swallow a hedgehog. In short painfully. He had shown to everyone just how weak he truly was, and had been made a fool of by the big players in the game called political and dynastic life. So how to solve this problem? Answer: make yourself powerful by any and every means possible, even if it means lopping heads off and kicking out the relics of the past I.e K.O.A and everything to do with foriegn origin. The foriegn people had failed him over and over again so therefore couldn’t be trusted to keep their word. Even K.O.A had failed him by not giving him the son he so wanted, well she had but it had died, as had it’s brother’s usually within hours of their birth. All he had to show for his marriage to K.O.A was a girl, which was of little use in the game of courtly politics, as most if not all of the eligable bridegrooms, would have wanted too much, money in a dowry payment. and Money was the one thing England hadn’t got.
So in answer to my own question, could K.O.A change Henry’s mind? She may have slowed him down a little but I don’t think she could have stopped him and she certainly wouldn’t have stopped his quest for power, that would have happened divorce or not. K.O.A stood in his way no matter how you look at it. If he had stopped the divorce etc and stayed with her until she died, England would have still changed, at a slower rate perhaps, but that’s all. Thomas More I believe said “If the lion knew his own strength, no man could hold him” and he was right. Tindale’s book changed everything, but I believe that Tindale’s book only reinforced the supposed ill feelings and forebodings he had about his marriage, the universe and everything within it in 1512/13. He had read or must have read Martin Luther’s slanderous (back then) attack on the church and understood it enough to defend the Catholic doctorine etc. What is read and heard cannot be unread and unheard.

I agree Anyanka. England was of no importance to him, he would gain nothing from coming to his aunt’s aid, and I feel that his token gestures of defending K.O.A were perhaps purely because of family loyalty.
I agree that yes he attacked Rome and tried to make the Pope his prisoner, but I don’t feel that it was in defence of his Aunt. Charles really wasn’t interested in what was happening in England. K.O.A belonged to the past so to speak, and in anycase he knew the English would never tolerate foriegn interference in the politics of their country. If she had agreed with Chapuys request of begging Charles for men and motors to come and give Henry a good kicking where it hurts I.e his money bags, and take control of the country as regent for Mary. Henry deserved a good kicking for his treatment of K.O.A.
K.O.A was beloved of the people that’s true, but she was still a woman born out of the English dominions,and the people would never allow a foreign ruler to take control of England, and I think that the sympathy she had at that time from the people would turn against her, and quite possibly a civil war might have broken out.

I feel that again he was really never serious about his betrothal contract with Mary. He just went through with it because he knew that Mary was at one time betrothed to the French Dauphin, and agreed to a match with Mary to annoy Francois, who at the time he was having serious issues with. Which of course ended with Charles defeating Francois in 1525 at Pavia, and Francois then signing the Treaty in Madrid to go home but only after Francois had handed over to Charles his 2 sons to be held hostage to make sure Francois kept the peace and honoured the Treaty.

As daft as this sounds is it possible that Charles agreed to be betrothed to Mary, as a way of making sure that Henry kept out of his business to do with France. Once he acheived what he wanted I.e Francois’s signiture on the Treaty of Madrid, he had no further use for the alliance with England. Besides which he needed money and he certainly wouldn’t get it from England seeing as England was in financial trouble because of Henry’s vast spending sprees.

I agree that Anne and K.O.A were in direct competition with each other over their daughter’s rights to the throne, and certainly that would make
Anne angry enough to say something inappropiate, and it’s entirely possible that Anne’s supporters may have also made remarks about K.O.A, but they were said by them and were their own opinions of K.O.A. Anne should not have been blamed for their opinions about the situation with K.O.A. In fact if my lousy memory serves there was a situation similar to Anne’s going on in K.O.A household. Her ladies in waiting made certain remarks about Anne I.e “That bloody wh*re should be hung” K.O.A simply answered that “Anne Boleyn should be pitied, and they should pray for her”
I mean I could call the neighbour down the the road a trogladite, whilst everyone else might call him an all round nice guy. 2 different opinions of the same person. Does that mean that I should be hanged for expressing my own opinion about the neighbour?

I have no basis for Cramner or one of his squirrels diddling with the K.H/Culpepper letter, it’s mearly an opinion. We know at the time the Catholic faction was in favour when Henry was married to K.H. Cranmer’s whole future depended on Henry. If the Catholic faction managed to get a strangle hold back on Henry, Cranmer could have quite easily gone the way of the dodo, he couldn’t let that happen. Henry had warned him on more than one occation that he was sailing a little close to the wind concerning his religious views, and certainly I feel that Cramner’s religious opinions were extremely radical, these opinions showed their colours more in Edwards reign more than they ever did in Henry’s reign.
Cranmer knew that, Henry still saw himself as Catholic, and observed some if not most of the Catholic practises. Henry saw himself as both Pope and King in England, but surrounding himself with those who were solely Catholic I.e Gardiner/ the Howards etc, it was to Cramner’s mind at least that Gardiner might well persuade Henry to go back cap in hand to the Pope in Rome, and ask him to forgive him etc, and with a Catholic wife by his side the Pope may be persuaded to say “Ok. fat boy all is forgiven and welcome back” I don’t think he would have done that personally but Cramner didn’t know that, but Henry liked to play Gardiner and Cramner off against one another. It was his way of keeping control on both of them, so that neither of them got a little to big for their boots. I also think Henry got a perverted sence of pleasure out of watching both men shaking in their boots, never knowing what would happen.
The letter just seems as if it’s been cobbled together from other letters, and in places the handwriting doesn’t look the same to me at least. One also has to ask, why did T.C keep such a letter knowing the dangerous game he was playing with K.H. I just find the whole letter so false and incredulous. I don’t believe K.H would take such a risk to write such a letter knowing that walls have ears and eyes in court, and that her every move, word, action and deed was being watched and heard. T.C wasn’t an idiot he would have known that keeping such a letter would have meant his death, as indeed it did.
K.H is sometimes portrayed a simple little empty head. Actually she was naive, and perhaps a little too trusting, and picked freinds who were very bad for her, but she had a good heart, and showed much kindness to those less fortunate, certainly her kindness towards Margaret Pole shows that. A little old lady shut up in a cold dungeon in the tower, in the middle of winter, with very few warm clothes etc, and K.H sends her warm clothes and money to buy a few comforts, to help ease her suffering. I think she also tried to appeal to Henry to spare Margaret’s life on the account of her age and ill health, and wept bitterly when she was told that Margaret had been executed.
I don’t think Cranmer set out to destroy K.H so dramatically, her death was solely down to Henry. but I think Cranmer hoped that he could perhaps persuade K.H to say she had been pre-contracted to Dereham and therefore was not free to marry the King. If she had agreed to just that I think Henry might have just divorced her and sent her to live in exile somewhere with Dereham. But when the business with T.C came out, (by the way who told Cramner or whoever, about K.H’s love affair with T.C) and Henry got to hear all the mucky details she was toast. She is perhaps the saddest of all Henry’s Queens in my opinion, all she ever needed was someone to love her for her, if that makes sence. Her uncle Thomas (the odious jumped up cretinous poppingjay) used and abused her far worse than anyone else ever did, he threw her into the lions den and then cruelly abandoned her to her fate, where she was devoured with neither grace or gravy.