Queen Anne Boleyn’s execution – Anne Boleyn Week 2024 – Day 7

Anne Boleyn had been a most remarkable woman, gifted with intelligence wit and supreme self confidence and courage, her physical attributes are more difficult to define, slight dark and elegant her most arresting features were her distinctive eyes and long dark hair, several men fell under her spell, there could have been more born as she grew out of childhood into womanhood, born into the nobility her paternal lineage was the Earls of Ormonde and her maternal lineage was of the Dukes of Norfolk, her uncle was Earl Marshal and she was descended from Edward 1st, her upbringing was different from other girls her age, for her father a court diplomat sent her abroad to Savoy where she enjoyed a most envied tuition in the most cultured and renaissance court in Europe, she was then sent to France and entered the court of the ailing King of France who had married the English princess Mary Tudor, there she stayed and thus Anne was surrounded by the most intellectual women of the age, they must have inferred on her the knowledge that women were not mere chattels but were as intelligent as bold as they could be, this thinking was completely against the 16th century mind but Anne did develop into a woman ahead of her time, she refused to become a kings mistress, and ended up a queen, she was no passive queen either, but became an active player in politics which dangerously made her enemies, she was involved in a power struggle with the kings chief adviser Thomas Cromwell and they clashed over the revenues taken from the dissolution, there was the Catholic faction waiting to take her down but her one tragedy, was she failed to give the king a prince, and the obsession Henry V111 once had for her died.
She lost her life whilst still a young woman, but she left behind an England completely changed, in marrying her Henry V111 broke with Rome and set himself up as head of his own church, no more would England be answerable to Rome and Anne was seen as a wicked woman a heretic, the reform which she was so interested in flourished strangely enough in the reign of Jane Seymour’s son, Jane had been Catholic but dying young she had no influence on her sons religion, Elizabeth 1st was Anne’s greatest legacy and she became our best loved queen, after her brutal end Anne was obliterated from Henry V111’s mind and every picture of her was taken down and either destroyed or hidden, her emblems were chiselled away by the stone masons in the many palaces she had frequented, when Jane Seymour became queen she forbade her women to wear the French hood of which Anne had been so fond and her name was never spoken of again by the king, it was as if she had never existed and her daughter was mostly ignored, her father left court and returned to the family seat in Hever where he and the remainder of his family grieved in private, a year later his wife died possibly from TB and Thomas followed her soon after, Mary Boleyn inherited her fathers property and enjoyed the rest of her days in rustic solitude but she too died several years after, her children became firm favourites at the court of their cousin and were showered with honours and privileges, Sir Henry Norris his son became a favourite also of Elizabeth for the honour his father did to her mother by declaring her innocence, his fiancés never married, William Brereton has descendants today through his children and Weston’s widow married again and had a son and daughter, and Weston’s son inherited his grandfathers wealth, Jane Boleyn never married and that she mourned her husband is evident in the inventory of her wardrobe that was mostly made up of black garments, sadly she to was destined to lose her life as violently as her husband and sister in law when she became involved in Catherine Howard’s fall, whatever Henry V111 thought he achieved in having his queen murdered and four companions plus a young boy is open to question, did he fear her so much she had been a most influential woman, and kings do kill their enemies it is something that his ancestors did and they could not be called into account for it, but his conscience ever there, must have tormented him over the years, and as Eric Ives stated, his next voyage into matrimony brought him little happiness, he lost his revered queen Jane Seymour, was that also a sign of gods displeasure? He must have asked himself that, what I find most poignant is the crude rough carving of a falcon, Anne’s personal emblem that can be found in the Tower of London i one of the cells, it is believed it was carved by her brother and is a sad reminder of a love that died.