I read Hayley Nolan’s new book, Anne Boleyn: 500 Years of Lies, a new take on the second wife of Henry VIII, it is a great book and here is my take on it.
In history, as elsewhere, fools rush in, and angels may perhaps be forgiven if rather than treading in those treacherous paths, they tread on fools instead.
Direct causes explain why the events actually happened; situation causes explain why direct causes proved effective.
Since historical reconstruction is a rational process, only justified and indeed possible if it involves the human reason, what we call history is the mess we call life reduced to some order, pattern, and possible purpose.
The future is dark, the present burdensome. Only the past, dad and buried, bears contemplation.
G. R. Elton
The past is never dead. It is not even past.
William Faulkner
As human beings, we suffer from an innate tendency to jump to conclusions, to judge people too quickly, and pronounce them failures or heroes without due consideration.
Charles, Prince of Wales
Hayley Nolan. Anne Boleyn: 500 Years of Lies. New York: Little A. 2019.
Hayley Nolan begins her book on Anne Boleyn, the second wife of Henry VIII and the mother of Elizabeth I, with this: “This is not a love story. I hate to be the one to break the news, but epic love stories don’t end with one partner decapitating the other.” (Nolan. 1) She continues:
We’ve been sold a lie. All these years. It’s been one vamped-up story after another in a desperate bid to keep the ever growing legend of Anne Boleyn alive. But the lies don’t add up. So many of the stories that have been spun just don’t make sense – in the media and movies, but even more shockingly, in the hallowed history books by those we’ve come to trust. I’m angry and you should be too. Anne Boleyn has been wrongly vilified for five hundred years, her truth silenced and suppressed, with no one revealing the full, uncensored evidence of this complex, convoluted and contradictory story. Until now.
(Ibid)
Nolan researched Anne for four years and come to this conclusion: “After four years of rigorous and exhaustive research, the archives have begrudgingly revealed that, contrary to popular belief, Anne Boleyn was not the smarmy and smug, cold-hearted scheming seductress we’ve so often been assured she was, in everything from sixteenth-century propaganda to modern-day mass-market history.” (Ibid) The presenter of The Historical Review paints a very different tale of the mother of Elizabeth I, not a seductress, but a powerful social and religious reformer who tried to lead a revolution in Tudor England. She uses many original sources to make her argument and it is a very convincing one.
The Tudors have been the subject of many films and books. Famously William Shakespeare plays, Richard III, with a cameo by Henry VII the first Tudor and his last historical play, Henry VIII. In that play Cardinal Wolsey proclaims had he served God as well as Henry VIII he would not be “left naked for to mine enemies.” At a performance of the play in 1613 a cannon shot during the play ignited the roof of the Globe theater causing the original building to be burned to the ground. The earliest films of the time would have been silent ones, 1911, Henry VIII, Queen Elizabeth (Les armours de la Elisabeth) starring Sarah Bernhardt in 1912, and the 2913 Anne De Boleyn. An iconic portrayal of Henry VIII was done by Charles Laughton in 1993’s film, The Private Life of Henry VIII. In this film actress Merle Oberon playing Anne Boleyn and the future Bride of Frankenstein, Elsa Lanchester as Anne of Cleves. On TV Keith Mitchell became an iconic Henry VII in the PBS Six Wives of Henry VIII while Glenda Jackson did the same with Elizabeth R both in 1971.
In 2007 Showtime presented its drama of the Tudors with its show, The Tudors, (2007-2010) starring Jonathan Rhys Meyers as a very sexy Henry VIII and Natalie Dormer as an equally sexy Anne Boleyn. The series had many historical inaccuracies, one was the character of Henry’s sister, called Margaret in the show and played by Gabrielle Anwer. In real life he had two sisters, one named Mary and the other Margaret, the shows producers combined them and used Margaret to as not to confuse viewers with Henry’s daughter Mary. By having her die childless, they basically eliminated the entire line of British monarchs down to Elizabeth II. The also portrayed Henry’s illegitimate son Henry Fitzroy dying at six, when the real Henry Fitzroy died soon after turning sixteen. In defense of this, writer Micheal Hirst said that Showtime hired him to write an entertaining soap opera and not history. He further argued that any confusion created was offset by creating more interest in the period and the people of the time.
What Nolan is confronting in her book is the myths of Anne Boleyn, and myths are a powerful force in history and cultures. In his book, Custer’s Last Stand, Brain Dippie defines myth in the following:
In using the term “myth” here, I mean to elicit its richest connotations. For Americans, the word myth implies everything from the hero tales of preliterate cultures through to the ideological fallacies held by advanced societies, and, in its plainest sense, refers to “a notion based more on tradition or convenience than on fact; a received idea.”
Henry Nash Smith, in his provocative study of the West in the American mind, Virgin Land, employed “myth” and “symbol” to designate “larger or smaller units of the same kind of thing, namely an intellectual construction that fuses concept and emotion into an image.” Myths exist only in our minds. They are, in effect, the fusion of what we see and what we want to see, the end product being that reality upon which we act, what we believe we see. In cultural terms, they are ingrained beliefs shared by the whole society. As Smith defines it, myth is essentially static, although capable of inspiring action. Myth also, and more familiarly, involves movement. As another scholar has written, “a myth is a story, a narrative, a plot, an explanatory account; it may be historically true,legendary, or invented; but for the believer, it is ‘turer than truth’ and therefore highly impervious to refutation by a show of facts to the contrary.” In short, it “conveys a poetic truth more majestic and significant than mere fact.” For my purposes, the word embraces the whole concept of Custer’s Last Stand, a static image within a frame of story. The frame can be altered to meet changing conditions, but the image is immutable.
(Brian W. Dippie. Custer’s Last Stand: The Anatomy of an American Myth. Lincoln, Nebraska: University of Nebraska Press. 1976.
The myth of Henry and Anne is a famous and often told one. her ruthless and ambitious father placed her in the court of Henry VIII to seduce him and gain the crown. She refused to be his mistress and insisted he divorce Katherine of Aragon and make her queen. To do this Henry broke with the Catholic church and the Pope and become a leader of ht Protestant Reformation in England. Theirs was a great love story ruined by the factionalism of the Tudor court and produced England’s greatest ruler, their daughter Elizabeth I, or better known as Gloriana. It is an old myth, one that began while Anne was alive, concocted by those who opposed her at court. Ms Nolan puts it this way:
Of course, the age-old story you’ll be familiar with, straight from the trusted wisdom of some historical sage, goes like this: Anne and her father scheme to place her in the king’s path, whereupon she oozes sexuality, her wit and foreign charm seducing the hapless Henry VIII. Then, being the devious mastermind that she is, Anne plays a blinder, telling the king that she won’t be his mistress. Oh no, if he wants her… he’ll have to divorce his queen and marry her.
(Nolan. 2)
Ms Nolan says in the telling of this myth Anne’s motives are clear, “For mindless power and selfish gain, of course; Tudor villains don’t need any more motivation than that.” (Ibid) It is a common theme in much Tudor myth and writings, the best example is Shakespeare’s play, Richard III, where Richard says he motivation is simple:
And therefore, since I cannot prove a loverTo entertain these fair well-spoken days,I am determinèd to prove a villainAnd hate the idle pleasures of these days.Plots have I laid, inductions dangerous,(Richard III Act 1 Scene 1)
To bolster their claim to the throne, the Tudors painted a world in black and white, there were villains, and then there was the Tudors. You were either totally for them, or you were the enemy, and they persecuted their enemies with a ruthless mindset. The best example of this is the persecution done by Elizabeth I to the sisters of Lady Jane Grey, as both died basically in exile and under royal scrutiny. (see Leanda DeLisle. The Sisters Who Would be Queen: The Tragedy of Mary, Katherine & Lady Jane Grey. London: Harper Press. 2008) Or even the way Henry VIII treated his daughter Mary, after he divorced her mother Katherine of Aragon. In the mythology of the Tudors are several villain and hero scenarios, such as in the reign of Edward VI was the battle between the Good Duke Somerset, Edward Seymour and the evil John Dudley, Duke of Northumberland. It makes for great drama but the reality is much different and more complex. When one looks at the sources with a deeper eye one finds, as Ms Nolan says of Anne, “Indeed,it does, and as you will discover within the pages of this new analysis, every single one of Anne’s royal missions had charity,education or religion at the heart of it.” (Nolan. 2)
Tudor history is almost a battle ground of opinions and new arguments ever since the death of Elizabeth I in 1603. Historian Stephen Alford says of Tudor history, “Tudor historians saw history as the active contact between past and present as well as a dialogue between the people of the present and those of the past.” (Stephen Alford. Kingship and Politics in the Reign of Edward VI. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 2002. 5) Those of the time, such as John Fox, wrote with idea of proving the side they were on was the right one. The Protestant Reformation in England was to Protestants, God moving the nation to the right, while to Catholics it was the devil taking the nation to hell and their writings reflect this chasm. (see Fox’s Book of Martyrs) For historians of the Stuart Era, they gave the Church of England a bigger role in the reformation as the elect body doing battle with the devil. The Foxean view and that of the Stuarts would battle over the sixteenth century. In the seventeenth century historian David Hume cast the period as a time of trouble, bigotry , and superstition under a cloud of political violence. This view would hole until well into the twentieth century, with J A Froude casting the Duke of Somerset, Edward Seymour as a champion of liberty, as the Whig tradition of history with its idea that all was progressing to the constitutional democracy of the Victorian age was in effect. The culmination of this view was in the 1960 with the historians A G Dickens and G R Elton presenting the new view of the Tudor age.
Dickens argued that the Reformation in England was based in the medieval movements of the Lollards and John Wycliffe, while Elton argued that Henry VIII and his counselor Thomas Cromwell took England from a medieval state to a new modern bureaucratic state in a revolution in governing. He argued that Cromwell was the mastermind behind the creation of the creation of the bureaucratic department of state to run the nation and ended the primacy of the King’s privy and household counsel. To both the period between the great and glorious reigns of Henry VIII and Elizabeth I was the troubled mid Tudor time of weakness and turmoil. Elton called both Edward and Mary bigots and argued it was best for the nation that both had short reigns. Ms Nolan is part of a new look at the time as more than just Henry and Elizabeth but a great many people who shaped our modern era.
Ms Nolan takes another look at the relationship between Anne Boleyn and Henry VIII, she says, “As a result, I’ve found myself tackling the first Tudor biography that mixes historical fact with psychological analysis; this, I’ve discovered, is vital to finally understanding the two Tudor monarchs with whom society has had a mild obsession for several centuries now.” (Nolan. 2) She goes on to say:
Already I can hear the academic reader guffawing at such a statement: we only deal with facts and evidence her , Ms Nolan!
Well sure, if we’re talking about a study on the interaction of robots. But if we want to understand the human beings that Anne Boleyn and Henry VIII, complete with all their seemingly irrational and nonsensical actions, then we must also take into account the one thing historians tends to dismiss, and that is the screwed -up enigma of the human psyche. I mean, let’s face it, no one makes the monumental decision to divorce a queen, start an international war, relentlessly pursue an annulment for seven years and fight to change the religion of an entire country without little things like emotions coming into play. Or an alarming lack of emotion, as you will come to see in the case of Henry VIII.
(Ibid. 3)
Ms Nolan goes on the argue that a story of true love is not one that ends in decapitation. She state that one has a choice, a man with a so all-consuming love ends with the man cutting off his lovers head because she broke his heart or maybe they were never in love and something else drove the relationship that brought the Reformation to England. One that brought to the most conservative Catholic nation in Europe the Protestant Reformation that at the time was dividing all of the Western nations. To see the depths of the radical change and understand the mindset of the people, we must look at what was the culture and society of the time. How did the people of he sixteenth century view the world? This was their overview of creation:
God, the Prime Mover, brought peace and order to the darkness of the void as the cosmos was born. Everything, spirit or substance, was given its place according to its worth and nearness to God. Above the rocks, which enjoyed mere existence, were plants, for they enjoyed the privilege of life. Trees were higher than moss, and oak the noblest of the trees. Superior even to the greatest tree were animals, which had appetite as well as life. Above the animals, mankind, whom God had blessed with immortal souls, and they too had their degrees, according to the dues of their birth. This was the Great Chain of Being, through which the Tudor universe was ordered, and at its top, under God, stood Henry VIII. It was a place he held convincingly.
(De Lisle. xxv)
As for the position of women in that society, it best summed up in the following:
Women were believed to be the weaker sex, not only in the terms of their physical strength, more significantly, they were judged to be, like Eve, morally frail – a belief so deeply held it has underpinned attitudes to women and power into modern times. While reason and intellect were associated with the male, women were considered creatures of the body: emotional, irrational and indecisive. As such they were ranked below men in the Chain of Being.
(Ibid. xxvii)
As for the religious mindset, it may be summed up by Eamon Duffy in his book, The Stripping of the Alters, he states:
In is the contention of the first part of the book that late medieval Catholicism exerted an enormously strong, diverse, and vigorous hold over the imagination and loyalty of the people up to the very moment of Reformation. Traditional religion had about it no particular marks of exhaustion or decay, indeed in a whole host of ways, from the multiplication of vernacular religious books to adaptations within national and regional cults of saints, was showing itself well able to meet new needs and new conditions. Nor does it seem to me that tendencies towards the “privatizing” of religion, or growing lay religious sophistication and literacy, or growing lay activism and power in gild and parish, had in that drive towards Protestantism which some historians have discerned. That there was much in late medieval religion which was later developed within a reformed setting is obvious, but there was virtually nothing in the character of religion of religion in late medieval England could only or even best have been developed within Protestantism. The religion of Elizabethan England was of course full of communities with and developments of what had gone before. Even after the iconoclastic hammers and scraping tools of conviction Protestantism had done their worst, enough of the imagery and resonances remained in the churches in which the new religion was preached to complicate, even in the eyes of some, to compromise, the new teachings.
(Eamon Duffy. The Stripping of the Alters: Traditional Religion in England, C. 1400 – c. 1580. New Haven, Connecticut: Yale University Press. 1992. 4)
Duffy argues that, “Yet when all is said and done, the Reformation was a violent disruption, not the natural fulfillment, of most what was vigorous in late medieval piety and religious practice.” (Ibid) He says that preceding the Reformation,
The Henrician religious revolution had been preceded by a religious campaign against heresy, in both the familiar Lollard and its newer Lutheran forms. Specifically, the heretics of the late 1520s were pursued for their attacks on the traditional cults – the observation of fast, and holidays , the invocation of saints, the veneration of images and relics, pilgrimages , and the cult of intercession on behalf of the dead in Purgatory. Henry retained an aggressive dislike of the views of “the new learning” on these issues and the renunciation of Roman obedience was not at first intended as a retreat from the attack on heresy. However, as the stoutest defenders of traditional doctrine and practice all to often proved to be the least enthusiastic supporters of the supremacy, heterodox views gained ground and increasing countenance from authorities. The pattern of later developments was already evident before the final break with Rome, in the spring of 1533, when the radical preaching of Hugh Latimer plunged the town of Bristol into bitter conflict over the meaning and legitimacy of traditional piety.
(Ibid. 379)
Sir Thomas More conducted a rigorous and completely approved campaign against heresy from 1529 until his resignation as Chancellor in 1533. The Protestant Church of England was not totally embedded in the nation until late in Elizabeth’s reign. (for complete description of this process see: Ethan Shagan. Popular Politics and the English Reformation. Cambridge Studies in Early Modern Britain. New York: Cambridge University Press. 2003) The disruption and unrest in England from Henry’s break of the church would lead people to find a scapegoat and Anne Boleyn provided that symbol for opponents of the Reformation and those who were uncertain of the goals of the top down Reformation in England. From the mindset of the people and the turmoil of the times would lead to the myth of Anne Boleyn, the myth that Haley Nolan takes down in her book.
The myth, according to Ms Nolan, comes from a long standing problem in history. She says, “The problem is history is written by the winners. The story the world was told of Anne Boleyn in the sixteenth century was carefully stage-managed by those who killed her, so is it any wonder that was filtered down is a warped and perverted version? This great legend has now been passed down from generation to generation, evolving along the way. Snippets of her story were told by those who knew her best, but the majority has been told by the people who hated her the most.” (Nolan. 5) The problem Ms Nolan’s points out is that much of the information about Anne came from those who opposed her, such as Eustace Chapuys, the Spanish ambassador and close friend of Katherine of Aragon. Other sixteenth century accounts tend to paint her as a martyr her in an attempt to please and gain favor with her daughter, Elizabeth I.
Anne was brought up in the royal courts of the Low Countries and France in the mist of Reformation thought and conflict. Ms Nolan says of her upbringing, “Anne was taught instead to fight back against the questionable authority of Rome by the very activist who kick started the Reformation.” (Ibid. 11) She was surround by the very thoughts and conflicts that were beginning to move across Europe. Sent abroad in the typical fashion of the elite of the day, she was immersed in the court of Margaret, Archduchess of Austria, daughter of Holy Roman Emperor Maximilian I. As governess of the Low countries and overseeing the education of the future King Charles V of France. Here she became close to Margaret and a lifelong friend. Ms Nolan contends that the impact of the works that Margaret sponsored, much of it intellectual, religious, and cultural books in her library may have formed Anne;’s more radical belief system. One of Margaret’s guest was Erasmus of Rotterdam, a reformist Catholic whose writings were favored by both sides of the religious divide in England. Ms Nolan theorizes that it was during this time Anne and Charles Brandon met and the animosity between them may have began.
In 1514 Anne moved from the Low Countries to France and joined the court of the new French king, Mary Tudor, the sister of Henry VIII. In January 1515, King Louis XII died and Mary returned to England, and married Charles Brandon. Anne stayed behind and became part of the court of Francis I and his wife, the 15 year old Claude, daughter of Louis XII. Here she lived a sheltered life and never exposed to the womanizing court of Francis I. She also developed a friendship with Marguerite d’Angouleme, a noted French reformist and supporter of the leader of French reform movement, Jacques Lefevre d’Etaples. Ms Nolan describes Marguerite as:
Marguerite was only twenty-two, yet already known to be “learned and witty”. She called herself the “prime minister of the poor,” something you’ll come to see Anne Boleyn could easily called herself later in life. Marguerite was a woman of high moral standard; even though she was in an infamously unhappy marriage, she apparently never took a lover, when it was ll the rage in sixteenth century Europe. She was to fill the French court at Blois over the years with religious activist who would go on to be major players in the rebellion against the Catholic Church. These are the very people with whom Anne Boleyn would have bee interacting on a daily basis and found herself inspired and influenced by.
(Ibid. 19)
It was during this time Anne would give royal protection to Clement Marot, a renown French reformist who translated the Psalms. He was one of many in the French court that was a hotbed for reformist thought and ideology. Her father lived with her for two years while she was at the French court. Ms Nolan says of this time, “The religious revolution that was brewing during Anne’s years in France was inescapable. It was at the forefront of everyone’s mind, and everyone had an opinion. It would divide not just the country but the whole of Europe.” (Ibid. 25) While the Reformation exploded in Europe in 1517, it did not reach England, here “Like their rulers, the people of England and Europe lived for Catholicism and all its so-called ‘superstitions’ that he new reformist were opposed to.” (Ibid. 26) In the deeply religious sixteenth century, it was not the Church and God the people rebelled against but some of the officials that ran the Church. In October of 1517, Martin Luther and his Ninety Five Theses were not meant as a war cry, but rather a one page paper on how Luther thought the Church should be run. It was his idea for a debate with the officials at Wittenberg on church administration, not the launching,in Luther’s mind, of an all out war on Rome.
What had set Luther off, that is seen in the alternate title of his famous theses, Disputation of the Power of Indulgences. The idea that one could pay for the forgiveness of sins and shorten the stay in Purgatory was a long held Catholic doctrine. Founded on the scriptures in Matthew (16:19; 18:8) John (20:2-3) and the teachings of Paul (1 Corinthians 5: 3-5 and 2 Corinthians 2: 6-8 and 10-11) as Jesus gave the power of forgiveness to his disciples which the Church believed was transferred to the Church and its priest. In 1515, Pope Leo X decided to fund the refinishing of the rebuild St. Peters Basilica Rome, started by Pope Julius II in 1506 and included the famous painting of the Sistine Chapel by Michelangelo. To do this he authorized a funding campaign which in Germany was headed up by the Dominican Friar John Tetzel, who also was the Inquisitor for Poland and Saxony. While indulgences had been protested by John Wycliffe, Jon Hus and others, it was a popular way for the Church to raise funds, and local rulers got portions of them which helped to fund may local religious and secular building projects. An example is the university in which Luther taught that had been funded by indulgences in 1502.
Tetzel, which many consider to be the father of modern sales campaigns, is credited with inventing the slogan:
As soon as the gold in the casket rings;
The rescued soul from Heaven springs.
This incensed the devout Luther in such a way that he posted his theses and drove himself into a war with the Great Church of Rome who had been the Christian Church in Western Europe since the days of the Roman Empire. Ms Nolan cites Erasmus as one who mocked this practice, she states, “Early modern humanist Erasmus famously mocked those who ‘enjoy deluding themselves with imaginary pardons of their sins’ in his satire In Praise of Folly.” ( Nolan. 28) It was also believed that the saints in heaven would pay more attention to prayers that were given over holy relics, which one had to pay to gain access to, and were common across Europe. These sites were the center of pilgrimages by many and created an extremely lucrative economic bonanza for towns and the Church. Ms Nolan comments, “And let’s just say that the authenticity of some of them was somewhat questionable – this, in particular, is an issue we will see Anne Boleyn personally fighting against during her time as queen.” (Ibid) Ms Nolan goes on to state the other goal of the reformers in this time.
Another area where the bothersome evangelicals were demanding reform, and one Anne Boleyn was to be heavily involved with in her lifetime, was how the Bible should be read; they claimed it should be available in all languages for everyone to read and understand. This was opposed to hearing it only in Latin from a priest. Given that the majority of people couldn’t understand Latin, this made the language barrier in daily Mass somewhat tricky. Yet the pope was adamant that Latin was the only official language of the Church, and the only language the Bible should be read in.
(Ibid. 29)
This was despite that originally the Old Testament was in Hebrew and the New Testament was in Greek, both translated into Latin by St Jerome, authorized by Pope Damasus I and was done between 382-405. Many reformers believed that the people need to read the Bible in their language to gain a better understanding of God’s word. (Bible translation has a long history, for a detailed look at English translation see, David Daniell. The Bible in English: Its History and Influence. New Haven Connecticut: Yale University Press. 2003) Ms Nolan says of this :
The Old Testament was originally written in Hebrew, and the New Testament in Greek. It was only from there that they were both translated into Latin. But, unable to understand it, the majority had no idea what was being preached to them; so the reformist wanted this changed in order for the people to have a more meaningful connection with God’s word. These may sound like pretty reasonable request now, but in 1517 they were radical and dangerous thoughts.
But why would the Church be so scared of the people reading the Bible in their own language?
Some claimed it was so the priest could have more power over them. This way they could twist the scripture to suit their own agenda regarding the sale of indulgences and exactly who was responsible for a soul’s forgiveness. After all, if the people didn’t understand what was written in the Bible, they couldn’t challenge what they were being told.
(Ibid. 29)
This all exploded on 31 October 1517 when Luther posted his Ninety Five Theses along with a polite letter to the Bishop of Mainz drawing the Bishops’s attention to Tetzel claim that the latest indulgence he was selling was of such great power that it could even forgive a sinner from violating the virgin Mary. Nobody expected the reaction from the people to his ideas for stirring debate in the Church. To Luther shock, his little statement went viral and it spread quickly through Germany and all of Europe. It became the hot topic in all the royal courts of Europe, including the French court where Anne resided and the English court where it was seen by Henry VIII and his chief counselor and friend, Sir Thomas More. Ms Nolan describes the result in the following:
The people’s army of rebel “Lutherans” grew so fast in Europe that by June 1518 the pope was forced to react.He authorized a judgement saying that, “Whoever says regarding indulgences that the Roman church cannot so what it de facto does, is a heretic.”
This wasn’t just a threat against Luther but all reformist who took issue with indulgences, making it incredible dangerous for the likes of Anne Boleyn and Margaret d’Angouleme to go on support such radical thinking. A line in the sand had been drawn.
The pope’s judgement also stated, quite incredibly, that his authority was greater than that of the Bible.
(Ibid. 31)
This drove Luther to break with the Church, declaring that four of seven sacraments where invented, he published his tract, “Assertion of All the Articles Condemned by the Last Bull of Antichrist.” The pope responded and excommunication Luther and the Protestant Reformation went into high gear. As for Anne Boleyn, Ms Nolan says this:
And so, you see, this was the explosive religious climate in which Anne was being raised in Europe. After seven years of a radical religious upbringing, in which she was taught to question the authority of those she had been conditioned to follow blindly, and made aware of how she and the people were being manipulated and taken advantage of, like most of her generation she was ready to join the crusade: fight with the people for the people in order to reconnect with the undiluted doctrine.
(Ibid. 32)
While Anne was in the mist of the radical thought of Reformation, what was Henry’s reaction and mindset as Luther ‘s revolution spread across Europe. It was a time when the idea of the new learning, the rise of humanism, was taking hold in England. The philosopher Petrarch was the main proponent of this and it proclaimed that a proper education would lead to a good life. It was a rediscovery of old Greek and Roman text, many translated by Jews and Moors in Spain who had converted to Christianity during the Spanish Reconquista. In England the greatest proponent of this was the Dutch Desiderius Erasmus, who was courted and admired by both sides of the religious divide of the reformation in England. In England it created an idea of commonwealth, best described by Edmund Dudley (who was a counselor to Henry VII and executed by Henry VIII) in his Book, The Tree of Commonwealth in 1509.
The commonwealth was a term that meant the body politic, the whole of the realm, as well as the common good, the common interest, the public welfare of society. Using the allegory of a tree, Dudley argued that it had four roots; love of God, justice, trust, and concord. The tree bore four fruits, which were ; tranquility, good example, worldly prosperity, and the honor of God. all of society was live harmoniously enjoying these fruits under the guiding hand of the king. Society had four groups of people, first was the king and his family, who were to rule the nation and all were give them total obedience. Next was the clergy, who were to pray for good of the nation and sustain Christian values. Next was the chivalry, the noble elite who were to defend the kingdom in war and govern justly in peace under the king. Finally, was the commonality, the rest of society whose duty was to work and earn a living while living appropriately in their place in society. They were to avoid covetous, idleness, and never aspire to any position above their station and stay in their place in society.
Above all, one was to avoid at all cost any kind of rebellion against the society, as it was stated in Paul’s letter in Romans 13, were it states that to rebel against the authority place above one by God was to rebel against God himself. Henry VIII would have believed himself to have been selected by God to rule over England in both secular and spiritual matters. Henry was a conservative and devout Catholic who approved of Thomas More’s persecution of heresy in England. His response the the Protestant Reformation came in 1521, in his tract, dedicated to Pope Leo X, Defense of the Seven Sacraments (Assertio Septem Sacramentorum) which he wrote with assistance (just how much is a long standing argument) of Sir Thomas More. Historian J J Scarisbrick said of the tract it was, “one of the most successful pieces of Catholic polemics produced by the first generation of anti-Protestant writers.” As a result of this tract, Henry was awarded the title of Defender of the Faith (Fedei Defensor) by Pope Leo X in 1521. Luther countered with his answer, Assertio (Against Henry King of the English) and Thomas More responded with his answer to Luther, Respnsio ad Lutherum. (all of More’s writings are in Latin as he considered English too barbaric a language to be used to express high intellectual thought) The title Defender of the Faith was revoked when Henry broke with the Catholic Church in the 1520s, but restored to Edward VI by Parliament during that king’s reign and is still held by Elizabeth II.
England was one of the most loyal and conservative Catholic nation in Europe. England had stayed loyal to Rome during the Western or Great Schism (1378-1417), ignoring the French popes in Avignon. The English stayed loyal even when the only English Pope, Adrian IV (also called Hadrain IV, Nicholas Breakspear 1100-1159/ 1154-1159) was not treated well in Rome, despite crowning Frederick I Barbarossa Holy Roman Emperor. Despite this loyalty, England did produce two clerics who challenged some of the teachings of Rome, William of Occam who dared suggest one could disobey a ruling authority and Roger Bacon, who pushed the idea that one could find belief through science. (perceive so you may believe)
So why did this conservative Catholic king, leader of this very conservative Catholic kingdom, called the epitome of a Renaissance ruler, the one who was to led the nation to a more enlightened day, after the darkness of his father, overturn the Church of his birth and bring the Reformation to England? Ms Nolan believes it was something inside of Henry, a disturbance in the mind of this king. She says of Henry:
Historians have delighted in casting Henry VIII as the ultimate one-dimensional Tudor villain almost as much as they have Anne Boleyn, simplistically explaining away his actions as those of a narcissistic pampered prince. They’ve called him a tyrant, a murder, an obsessive paranoid, heartless egotist. And he clearly was. Don’t worry, I’not here to defend him and claim he too has been misrepresented all these years. But his behavior has been misunderstood.
He harbored all these complexities and more. But what makes such traits manifest so cataclysmically in one person? What makes Henry’s destructive patterns of behavior, with all those seemingly irrational and evil decisions. slowly evolve his story from one of many brutal tales in history into a psychological evaluation?
The answer is mental illness.
(Ibid. 53)
She argues that Henry was an undiagnosed sociopath, whose jousting accident in 1536 exacerbated his preexisting lifelong mental illness. An illness she believes can be traced back to his childhood, one that led to Anne’s death in 1536 and effected England and its people until Henry’s death in 1547. She argues that his entire relationship with Anne is not an unconvincing love story but the chilling case of a sociopath. This, she argues, sheds new light on his life and his relationship with Anne Boleyn. Instead of trying to find some rational reason for the actions he took in their relationship, one needs to apply the key traits of these mental illnesses to all of the actions of Henry VIII. The main point of her argument is, “But the vital point to understand about sociopathy is that there is no rational.” (Ibis. 54) She argues to fully understand the relationship between him and Anne, and his Great Matter, one must look at the entire thing through the prism of Henry’s mental illness. Henry may have been chained to his behavior by his disability, and chained to the bitter end. In Henry’s case, Ms Nolan says the overall:
The first thing you need to understand about a sociopath is that they have no conscience. As though someone flicked the switch on this part of the brain, giving them the emotional freedom to do whatever the hell they want, without that irritating voice of reason ruining all the fun. This means a sociopath is able to hurt those they supposedly love without a hint of guilt or a morsel of regret. It’s almost incomprehensible to us that a person could never never experience guilt, yet this we shall unfathomably witness, time and time again, in the story of Henry VIII and Anne Boleyn. It’s not a case of the king’s stubborn reluctance to experience true emotions; a sociopath’s brain simply does not possess the capacity to process them. It is science, not logic. It’s the kid who doesn’t lose sleep over getting a co-worker fired and taking their job. It’s the king who can order the brutal death of the love of his life and get engaged to someone else the very next day. It’s a liberating prospect as it is as it is a horrifying one.
(Ibid. 55)
Ms Nolan believes Henry fits in the sociopath category and not the psychopath is that while both are very similar, the psychopath has no fear, but the sociopath can be driven by fear, and Henry VIII in the majority of his action were driven by fear. In his case, “The fear of God; fear of losing the throne – after all, it was only his father, Henry VII, who defeated King Richard III in battle and took the crown. So, it was an inbuilt family fear throughout the Tudor’s reign that there would be an uprising and the throne would be taken back by a more rightful heir.” (Ibid. 56) He was also excessively afraid of illness and death, as well as many other things. Another difference between the sociopath and psychopath is that the sociopath can form attachments while the psychopath cannot. But for the sociopath, the person that they, “see the object of their desire as just that: an object they must win, not a person for whom they have developed deep emotions.” (Ibid) Also Ms Nolan argues:
It will come as no surprise to anyone familiar with Henry’s story that sociopaths are less emotionally stable than psychopaths. Where a psychopath can plan every last detail of a murder with a chilling sense of calm, sociopaths are highly impulsive and display erratic behavior – like, say, ordering the murder of their wife within a matter of days after deciding they should break up. The lack patience. Act on compulsion. All sounding a little familiar?
(Ibid. 56)
Ms Nolan goes on to say that psychopaths are born, while sociopaths tend to develop from from childhood tram, such as abuse or neglect. She argues that Henry’s childhood, surrounded by yes men and a deeply traumatic childhood, losing both his brother and mother at a young age. After his brother’s death, Prince Arthur of Wales, he was kept isolated at court and had a dysfunctional relationship with his father. At the time of Henry VII’s death in 1509, Henry was eighteen, born the year before Columbus sailed to America. He married Katherine of Aragon, daughter of King Ferdinand II of Aragon and Isabella of Castile, who had led the Spanish Reconquestia that pushed the Moors out of Spain and united the Iberian peninsula. Katherine was first married to Henry’s brother Arthur, Prince of Wales and named for the legendary King Arthur, as the Tudors were celebrating their Celtic roots. (they were originally from Wales and the founder of the dynasty, Owen Tudor, was the wardrobe manger of the widow of Henry V, Katherine of Valois and her lover) After Arthur’s death in 1502, Henry VII did not wish to give back her dowry and kept her in England promising Ferdinand either his son Henry or himself as a marriage partner.
After the death of his father, Henry VIII married Katherine soon after his coronation. His father, Henry VII, was an introverted and at times paranoid man, who personality was close to that of TV Dallas character JR Ewing, and was sometimes called the Winter King. Henry VIII was seen as the dawn of a new era, one that would be brighter and greater than that of his father’s tight fisted rule. Henry VIII was one generation removed from the bloody civil war known as the War of the Roses and was the first English King to peacefully come to power since Henry VI in 1422. Surrounded by intellectuals like Sir Thomas More many believed it would see the flowering of the Renaissance in England. Henry was disinterested in the day to day business of state, thus Cardinal Thomas Wolsey was able to quickly move into a position of power and basically ran the county for the first decades of his reign.
The kingdom Henry inherited was a rich and prosperous place, mainly through the efforts of his father, who lead the recovery from the decades long War of the Roses. Where his father was misery with gold, Henry spent lavishly and his court was one of the most celebrated in all of Europe. He had the two very unpopular officials of his father, Richard Empson and Edmund Dudley, who mastermind many of the tax policies that had enriched his father, arrested and tried for treason and executed. Henry saw himself as one of the major players in Europe, but there were troubles in the air. One of them was the five miscarriages suffered by his wife Katherine. In 1511, he did have son, named Henry, Duke of Cornwall, who died before the boy was even a month old. His only surviving child was his daughter Mary, born in 1516. Henry, as Ms Nolan points out, “It is no secret that he believed he was personally chosen by God to be King of England; for this reason he felt himself closer to the Almighty than everyone else.” (Ibid. 63) It was this time he had this passage in Leviticus brought to his attention:
If a man shall take his brother’s wife, it is an unclean thing; he hath uncovered his brother’s nakedness, they shall be childless.
Leviticus 20:21
He saw this as pertaining to a son, as his only surviving child, his daughter, Mary, had been born in 1516, and he felt since Katherine was beyond childbearing stage it was a sign of God’s anger he had no son with her. In 1519 his mistress Bessie Blount presented him with a son, Henry Fitzroy who had openly recognized, and many thought he might have legitimized and left the throne to if he had not died in 1536. Despite a verse in Deuteronomy (25:5) that seems to counter-dict this, some at court such as the Archbishop of Canterbury, William Warham had originally been against the union because of the verse in Leviticus. Ms Nolan comments that, “In this attention to detail that kept Henry VIII consumed with the fear that he had gone against God’s word and needed to correct his sin.” (Ibid. 64) She says of this fear:
So, while it may have been repeatedly sold to us as Henry VIII divorced Katherine and broke from Rome in order to marry Anne Boleyn while citing Leviticus as the ultimate get-out-of-jail-free card, that doesn’t appear to be the case. In fact, we have evidence that Henry was making secret inquiries about divorce long before he had the end goal of marrying Anne.
(Ibid. 65)
Ms Nolan cites his inquires with the sister of Queen Claude and his instructions to Wolsey about looking into an annulment. She also cites the report of the bishop of Lincoln, John Longland who said in 1532 he had heard the king speak of divorce “nine or ten years ago.” Another cause of his move was his lack of a male heir, Ms Nolan feels that this may have started the move to divorce, and combined with his deteriorating mental health the matter took a more ominous meaning as the years progressed. She states, “The idea that Henry’s quest for a male heir was driven by a fear of God’s wrath than the good old Tudor misogyny is further supported by the fact that it doesn’t appear he was all too intimidated by the concept of ma woman ruling England.” (Ibid) She cites the fact that in 1513 as he was at war in France, he left Katherine of Aragon in charge of the kingdom and allowed her to conduct a very successful war against the Scots, a war in which the Scots were defeated at Flodden. He also decreed in the 1535 Act of Succession that in the case of his death, Anne Boleyn, and not his legitimate heir was to rule as sole queen. In later Acts of Succession he allowed his daughters, Mary and Elizabeth, to succeed his son Edward VI, if he had no heirs, despite that fact he never repealed the acts that declared both illegitimate. Ms Nolan argues that:
If Henry was opposed to the idea of a female heir for purely misogynistic reasons, he could have easily done some fancy footwork to ensure the crown went to another, albeit obscure relative, as many a monarch has done before or since. Case in point: there was serious talk at one time of him making his illegitimate son Henry Fitzroy, his legal heir. He was King of England; he could do what he wanted, as the Reformation proved. But in vitally in these case he didn’t, showing that he wanted that male heir born to confirm God had not forsaken him.
(Ibid. 66)
Seventeen years alter the idea that a king could do with the crown as he pleased again played a role in Tudor history. Here again, myth had clouded the historical fact. The myth that Edward VI changed the line of succession only by manipulation of the Duke of Northumberland, has now been challenged. if one reads the Device for Succession, written by the young king, and one he was the driving force behind, it does not, as the myth says, excludes his sister Mary for religious reasons, no, one term, seen in every sentence dealing with each successor, that phrase is male heir. In effect, Edward, who believed that, just as he father believed, he had the right to leave the crown to whomever he pleases, was attempting to establish the English equivalent of the French Saltic law. (Eric Ives. Lady Jane Grey: A Tudor Mystery. John Wiley & Sons. 2011. Loc 3452)
Ms Nolan argues that in the mist of this great dilemma, Henry zeroed in on Anne Boleyn in 1526 and began the relationship that would explode the conservative Catholic land of angels. She argues that Henry never really loved Anne, but that his mental state, which included borderline personality disorder, a person who could see one as a friend one day and an enemy the next, and all are either all good or all bad, and the position of that person could change daily. She bases her argument on the work of Dr. James Fallon, a neuroscientist, who said Suffers will idealize someone. they will be the most wonderful person they ever met. But inevitably, for any unpredictable reason, they will get disappointed, at which point they will devalue and then discard them.” (Nolan 66) A cycle that Henry followed for six of his wives, and most importantly with his relationship with Anne Boleyn. For Ms Nolan, this pattern of “idealize, devalue, discard,” fills in the blanks and explains most of the king’s inexplicable actions in his lifetime. She contend that since sociopaths are some of the finest method actors, Henry could be the charming lover that would attract Anne, or any other woman in the Tudor court. He would not love Anne, or anyone else, but objectify them and make them an object of desire, one to be won and owned, much like the prize in some game.
Since Anne also was unable to provide him with a male heir, the two male births were both still born, and the only surviving child was his daughter Elizabeth, born in 1533, that would rekindle his old fears that God was angry with him. This would trigger the devalue and discard phases of his relationship, and one emotion that a sociopath did have was contempt, so the end came quickly for the second wife of Henry VIII. The early phases of his pattern, the idealizing, brought Henry a woman who held near to her heart almost everything he was vehemently against, mainly the new cause of evangelicalism and the ongoing Protestant Reformation. At this point of the book, Ms Nolan details the courtship of Anne and shows that she was not playing some long game to be queen, but fending off the advances of an unwanted suitor.
She goes through the events of 1527, when Henry told Katherine of Aragon he was divorcing her and proposed to Anne, a commoner. Ms Nolan says of Anne acceptance that was not the ultimate success of some scheme, but, “Anne could see that the reformist needed protection from someone a position of power. Everywhere around her there were reports of people lying down this lives for their religious beliefs. So, it is any surprise that when the king proposed marriage in the midst of this growing unrest Anne realized just how much she could do for evangelical reform from the position of queen?” (Ibid. 91-92) It was during this time moves were made that looked as if he might declare Henry Fitzroy his heir and he had Wolsey inquire of a marriage to Lady Renee. For Nolan this showed Henry was adamant in ending his marriage with Katherine of Aragon, with or without Anne, and thus he did not undertake the divorce with the prime goal of marrying Anne Boleyn. As for Anne, Ms Nolan says, “Well, let’s be honest, feeling that you were brought together by God probably goers a long way to making you fall for a person.” (Ibid. 93) Thus they bonded against the world, but Ms Nolan cautions, “But let’s not fool ourselves. As much as they were similar in their love of fiery debate and a fight against the pope, they constantly clashed over their religious beliefs and political views.” (Ibid. 95)
Henry liked the new power he gained from separating from Rome, but in the end he basically set up the Catholic Church in England with him at the head instead of the Pope. Ms Nolan attributes most of Anne’s bad press to her enemies, such as the Spanish ambassador Chapuys and those in Henry’s court, such as her former ally, Thomas Cromwell. She also described a double standard, noting that many men who climbed up the social ladder are not accused of using sex, or being underhanded , or scheming, or using witchcraft to gain their positions. She states that , “Henry and Anne’s story is one of the most dark and perverse that history can provide.” (Ibid. 101) She further states:
It was Anne, as an impassioned evangelical, who dared to introduce the king to the heretical religious works of the Bible translator Tyndale, prompting Henry VIII to have an epiphany: as King of England, he was answerable to no man on earth. No, not even the pope. Only to God. Vitally, this meant that Henry’s seven-year fight to marry Anne was not so much about love (that much I think we can agree on by now) or even a sociopathic obsession to win his prize, but instead had quickly developed into his proving his God-given power as king over that of the pope. Who, it has to be said, was having none of this divorce malarkey, and told Henry his marriage to Katherine of Aragon could not be annulled.
So if Anne Boleyn is to be blamed for the break from Rome, then let’s give the woman the credit she deserves; for she was not just an accidental catalyst for reform, a Helen of Troy who face launched a thousand ships but left the real work to the men. No, Anne Boleyn was a key fighter for religious change, and it began with her marriage to the king.
(Ibid. 103)
Anne, Ms Nolan argues was, “one of the most ferocious political figures in Tudor England.” (Ibid. 104) She introduced Henry to the new reformed intellectual thought and was an early support of Thomas Cranmer, who later became Archbishop of Canterbury. Because of Anne support he went from an obscure Cambridge scholar to a man who at one point, in Edward VI’s reign looked to maybe set himself pas the Protestant Pope. She, Nolan argues, may have been one of the forces behind Henry’s decision to bring Melanchton to England and open dialog with the German Lutheran League. Henry, who desperately wanted to end what he saw ass a heretical marriage to Katherine of Aragon, needed the Pope’s approval, but at this point in time, the pope had been captured and held hostage by Katherine’s nephew, the powerful Charles V. Charles was the Holy Roman Emperor and King of Spain, he was the most powerful leader in Europe at this time, despite the views of Francis I of France and Henry VIII of England, who saw themselves as his equal.
Henry was dedicated to the Catholic Church and he bowed in submission to the Pope, but these beliefs were overcame from his deep fear that in his marriage to his brother’s widow, he had offend God. To gain this divorce, Henry broke with Rome, joined the Protestant Reformation and sought alliances with the powerful German Protestant nobles to counter the the power of Charles V. This was not done in an effort to marry Anne Boleyn, Ms Nolan contends, but to end the marriage he considered to be an abomination to God. She also considers his counselor, who many given the lion’s share of credit in this, Thomas Cromwell.
Thomas Cromwell has had many images in history, and many are not complimentary. In Hilary Mantel’s books, Bringing Up the Bodies and Wolf Hall, both made into a PBS series (2015) Cromwell is seen as one who approaches problems rationally and at times coldly, but is devoted to his family and his mentor, Cardinal Wolsey. Wolsey in this line is a sympathetic character trying to negotiate the will and desires of King Henry VIII. Cromwell is pictured as a complex and enigmatic individual who in many senses is an admirably modern individual, and not the self center political fixer of a selfish king. He is portrayed as a sensitive gregarious,talented family man who is determined to serve his king. The villains here are the dogmatic, uncompromising enforcer of doctrine, Sir Thomas More, who is usually seen in a much more sympathetic light in history and fiction, and Anne Boleyn is seen as a cold calculating woman who seduces the king.
To G. R. Elton, who was the authority on the Tudors in the mid twentieth century, Cromwell was an administrative genius and Erasmain Protestant who revolutionized the state bureaucracy, taking from the king’s household councils and turning it into the modern bureaucratic state. He worked a master plan to create the modern government of the present time. To J J Scarisback, he was the prime mover behind the idea of a high concept of the national state and sovereignty enshrined in Parliament and the law. To A G Dickens, he was the one who transformed the medieval state into the modern one, but historian Robert Hutchinson called him ambitious and totally corrupt. Alison Weir said of him that he was lacking of any scruples and an efficient model for the future faceless bureaucrat.
Ms Nolan pictures him as a complex man who may not have been a supporter of reform early on in the period and credits Anne with many things now credited to Cromwell. She speculated that his ease in manipulating the pope may have led him to finally urging a break with Rome. If this is not the case, she goes on to argue that we may be, “left with the distasteful story of an impoverished Putney lad who was willing to rip off his fellow common man to make a quick buck for himself.” (Ibid. 106) Ms Nolan contends that the final break between Anne and Cromwell came over the dissolution of monasteries, as Anne was in favor of retaining many because of their service to the poor, but Cromwell was more interested in the profit gained by dissolution.
As for the underlying reason that the battle between the pope and Henry over his divorce, which went on for seven years. (1529-1532) It was called the Great Matter and it dominated the early part of the sixteenth century. There are two trains of thought over the reason for the long battle. One group sees it was because of the Catholic Church’s opposition to divorce, while others argue it was that the pope just not buy Henry’s claim he had violated Biblical law in marrying his bother’s wife. It was not helpful that Katherine’s nephew was Charles V of the Holy Roman Empire either. The problem stems as Ms Nolan points out, that originally there had been a papal bull issued making it legal for Henry to marry Katherine. As Ms Nolan states, “So, Henry was effectively asking the pope to admit the Church was wrong and that it was all their fault, which, let’s be honest, they were never going to do.” (Ibid. 116) She also points out that now Henry was going to replace his Catholic queen with an evangelical reformer, which the Church would oppose as well.
Ms Nolan details the divorce and all the actions that Anne was suppose to have done, but as she insists, did not. Using original sources and her ideas that Henry was mentally ill, she presents a solid argument that Anne was not some cold hearted schemer, but in fact, a forward thinking religious and political reformer. One who should a much better fate than the one history, fiction, and myth had assigned her. In the end her downfall was more about court politics than any thing else. She argues, “Everyone’s loyalties and religious beliefs were being put to the test; were they for or against, not only the rise of this powerful and strong woman but the rise of evangelism.” (Ibid. 129) With her new found power she had many enemies at court, like Charles Brandon, the duchess of Norfolk, and even Thomas Cromwell, all stemming from the usual intrigues of a court where the king is an absolute ruler. She argues his final decision to break with Rome came from the Pilgrimage of Grace and the opponents of the new Protestantism that turned him to become the champion of the movement. Nothing moved any Tudor monarch than a rebellion against them.
Anne and Henry were married in secret in Calais on 25 January 1533, and in September (7) the future Queen Elizabeth I was born. On 5 January 1531 Pope Clement VII declared their marriage invalid and excommunicated Henry. Ms Nolan comments that, “So, contrary to popular belief, in the end, it was actually Rome that broke from England, not England that broke from Rome.” (Ibid. 138) Henry believed he was on the right side of his argument and moved forward, presuming that the English reformist would be happy with any religious regime that was not Catholic. In effect, Henry set up the Catholic Church in England as nothing more that the Church with him at the head instead of the Pope. The English Reformation was plunged into the troubled waters of a new religious institution that would not be resolved until late in the reign of his daughter Elizabeth. Ms Nolan asserts of Anne that:
Anne spent her time on the throne fighting for what she believed in: championing the young and the poor, placing key evangelicals in high-profile religious roles around the country and becoming the patron to a long list of reformist, even bringing them into the inner circles of the royal court to work directly with her. This is what she fought for seven years for- as revealed by the overwhelming amount of evidence that gets buried deep beneath the tales of debauchery.
(Ibid. 140)
She was also a champion of the Bible in English, as a patron of Tyndale, who she tried to keep from being executed, and others would championed the idea that all should be able to read the Bible in their own language and not be told what it meant by a priest. Ms Nolan goes on, “Though Anne’s religious work was clearly her driving force, it would be matched only by one other passion, and that was her extensive work in poverty relief.” (Ibid. 1512) Influenced by Jacques Lefevre d’Etaples’s book, The Ecclesiaste, which urge those in power to be generous to the poor, did much work to relieve the burdens on the poor in England. Ms Nolan also asserts that she, and not just Thomas Cromwell, were behind the first poor laws in England. So what went wrong, it began with the birth of Elizabeth, a girl and not a son. Ms Nolan says of the birth of Elizabeth, “However, I would argue that in 1533 the problem wasn’t that Henry saw this as Anne’s failure. It was much more catastrophic than that. It was God who had once again denied him a son. (Ibid. 162) The following miscarriages of two boys would only make this fear greater. In 1989, Ruth Warnicke argues that the last miscarriage was of a deformed fetus that would have confined in Henry’s mind that he had violated the law of God, but this is disputed. ( Ruth Warnicke. The Rise and Fall of Anne Boleyn: Family Politics in the Court of Henry VIII. New York: Cambridge University Press. 1989) Ms Nolan also tells of another enemy of Anne, one know only as the Imperial Lady, because of her staunch support for Katherine of Aragon, was also in the background of this period. She was part of the many who opposed to the reformist religion that was now in England. The appearance of this Imperial Lady gave these opponents hope that the new reforms were not long to be in vogue. It also made an enemy of sister-in-law Jane Rochefort.
According to Ms Nolan the final breaking point was Henry’s brutal execution of the Charterhouse monks. Anne champion, Thomas Cramner, made an impassioned plea for clemency that was ignored. It was during this time that the Lady Jane Seymour came into the picture. Ms Nolan disputes the story that Anne wore yellow, a festive color, upon hearing of the death of Katherine of Aragon.
She asserts only Henry did this and her story is backed up by the Spanish ambassador, Chapuys, who reported at the time that her reaction upon hearing of the death was of a caring parent and not an evil stepmother. As for her daughter, Ms Nolan says that, “So it would appear that Anne dealt with Mary as immaturely as Mary dealt with Anne.” (Ibid. 191) both had dehumanized the other and both handled the situation badly. This places us in the year 1536, the year Anne Boleyn would be executed and many note a change in Henry VIII. In her book, Blood Will Tell, Kyra Kramner says this of Henry:
Henry is popularly remembered as a fat, covetous, and womanizing lout, but this image is less than half of the story. The aged King, with his cruel disdain for others and his harsh authoritarianism, is very different from his younger self. When Henry first ascended the throne he strove to bring harmony and chivalry to his court; he was not the contentious and brutal man he was to become. It was not until he was in his forties that Henry of the popular myth emerges, the caricature of a corpulent, rancorous King with a disturbing habit of executing his subjects for little or no reason. By the time Henry was fifty, he had indeed turned into the savage behemoth of legend. The kind-hearted and loving monarch transformed into someone who could routinely behead friends, family, and wives without remorse. No one was safe; he was utterly merciless. When faced with multiple atrocities he committed, it is hard for most people to imagine what a true Renaissance man Henry was when he was younger.
(Kyra Cornelius Kramer. Blood Will Tell: A Medical Explanation of the Tyranny of Henry VIII. Bloomington, Indiana: Ash Wood Press. 2012)
Ms Kramer asks why this dramatic change happened, while Ms Nolan wonders if it happened at all. Were the early accounts of Henry, as Ms Nolan contends, the result of sycophants in court saying what they thought Henry wanted to hear in an attempt to gain higher position in court, or were they the truth. Ms Kramer says, “Many historians argue that there was no sudden and abrupt change in the King’s personality, maintaining that Henry simply grew older and more aware of his power, or his failing health made him more irritable, and that the real cause of his tyranny. (Scarisbrick, 1970; Smith 1982) (Ibid. 18-19) Others argue it was the times and the threats to his rule made him more ruthless while still others contend that he was always narcissistic and before his wish to divorce Katherine of Aragon, nobody really challenged him. Over the years many other reasons were brought up, physical and diet issued have been put forward. Ms Nolan contends because of his upbringing, Henry suffered from mental illness and may have been unable to actually feel normal compassion for people.
Did his absolute power and upbringing create mental issues that created the historic monster of legend? There is a problem with the power that comes from governing, Andrew Lobaczewski explains it this way, “All governments suffer a reoccurring problem: Power attracts pathological personalities. It not that power corrupts, but it is magnetic to the corruptible.” It is an old problem, Lord Acton famously proclaimed that power corrupted and absolute power corrupted absolutely. He went on to comment that all great men in history tended to be bad men. Abraham Lincoln said to see person’s character, give that person power. Robert Caro said power reveled and that once given enough power to do what one wanted one then finds out what one always wanted to do or be. Henry was brought up with absolute power, and being narcissistic might have been almost inevitable. Ms Kramer then says, “Could there be a medical reason to account for the high rate of miscarriage and stillbirths experienced by Henry and his unfortunate wives, as well as for his emotional instability and physical decline after midlife? Interestingly enough, there is something that could provide an answer all these questions – and it involves Henry’s blood.” (Ibid. 19) She argues that Henry may have the Kell positive blood type. She argues that “The Kell blood type, which the King would have inherited from his mother, was probably the cause of the troubles that have made him so prominent in the public imagination.” (Ibid) (for a complete discussion of this malady see: Catrina Whitley and Kyra Kramer. “A New Explanation for the Reproductive Woes and Midlife Decline of Henry VIII.” The Historical Journal. Vol 53 Issue 14, December 2010. 827-848) Kyra Cornelius Kramer. Blood Will Tell: A Medical Explanation of the Tyranny of Henry VIII. Bloomington, Indiana: Ash Wood Press. 2012. Kyra Kramer. Henry VIII’s Health, In a Nutshell. History in a Nutshell Series. MadeGlobal Publishing. 2015) Much of Henry’s obstetrical losses suffered by Henry’s first two queens fit he documented cases of Kell affected pregnancies. A Kell negative (very normal) whose partner is Kell negative (rare) will suffer from latte term miscarriages and newborns dying soon after delivery.
Ms Kramer also says, “A miserable history of lost babies is not the only thing a Kell positive blood could have given Henry. If the King was Kell positive, then it would be possible that he developed a rare disease called McLeod syndrome, which occurs when a person has the ‘McLeod phenotype’ of the Kell blood group.” (Ibid. 22) The effects of this condition is mental and health deterioration and are usually felt by the suffer around their fortieth birthday. In 1531 Henry VIII turned 40.
Ms Kramer further explains her theory:
While the theory that Henry VIII was Kell positive is based primarily on the fact that the reproductive patterns of his partners are consistent with that of a Kell positive father, there is nevertheless at least one other source that provides evidence for the theory: Henry’s family tree. In family trees carrying the Kell positive gene the daughters are able to reproduce successfully but male lines tend to die out. This is precisely what occurred in the offspring of Henry’s maternal grandmother, Jacquetta Woodville.
Jacquette of Luxembourg came to England to marry royalty but fell in love with and married Richard Woodville, a mere earl, after she was widowed. It was all very scandalous at the time. She and Richard had fourteen children, and all were able to reproduce, but Jacquetta’s sons were mostly childless. Henry VIII’s mother was one of Jacquetta’s granddaughters, and Henry’s maternal cousins descended from his Woodville grandmother had similar reproductive troubles to his own.
(Kramer. Henry VIII. 23)
There are no direct descendants of Henry VIII today, but there are survivors descended from Henry’s sisters. From Margaret, we see the present Queen, Elizabeth II and from Mary the present day Dukes of Somerset. All in line with Ms Kramer’s theory. Another clue comes from the deaths of the three Tudor princes, Henry’s brother Arthur, Prince of Wales, (1486- 1502) his illegitimate son, Henry Fitzroy, (1519-1536) and finally his legitimate son and successor, King Edward VI, (1537-1553) all three died around their sixteenth birthdays of a mysterious respiratory aliment, one whose cause and diagnosis are still debated today. Ms Kramer points out that the condition of their health before they died is also been debated, with an early description of frail sickly boys giving way to modern well researched, evidence that all three were very healthy and active until the final disease struck them down. She says, “In summery, Arthur Tudor, Henry Fitzroy and Edward VI seem to have been normal healthy teens who each died of a progressive and fast acting pulmonary disorder resembling tuberculosis that does not fit into the common parameters of TB presentation.” (Krya Kramer. Edward VI in a Nutshell. MadeGlobal Publishing. 2016. 63) Ms Kramer argues that all three fit the diagnosis of non-classic cystic fibrosis, (for a complete discussion of his see Edward VI in a Nutshell. 55-70) She points out,
Additionally, there may a link between cystic fibrosis and the theory that Henry VIII was positive for the Kell blood group. The Kell blood group locus is close on the long (q) arm of chromosome 7 at the position 31.2 and the Kell cryogenic location is also on the long (q) arm of chromosome 7 but at position 33.
(ibid. 69)
With closeness of the genes one could see how an anomaly in one could affect the other. She also points out that the Kell blood group is most frequent in Northern Europeans as is the genes that cause cystic fibrosis. She wonders, “Could the reason for the relative high percentage of Northern Europeans positive for the Kell antigen be connect to the prevalence of the CFRT genetic mutation in the population, or vice versa?” (Ibid. 70)
Before one starts to argue whether Ms Nolan or Ms Kramer is right about Henry, one must consider this: they both may be right. Henry could have had sociopathic tendencies from his childhood and been the victim of a genetic disorder. Imagine a sociopathic brain then suffering the degeneration from a genetic disease, with the sociopathic tendencies being exasperated by the miscarriages brought on from one’s own blood type. Henry would not have known of his genetics or blood type, these were far beyond the medical knowledge of the sixteenth century, as was the disease that killed his sons and brother. In the present day, both are able to be treated and many of the problems either resolved or at least manage. But in sons and brother’s case, the diseases were a death sentence in the sixteenth century and Henry’s makeup may have led to the creation of the monster of legend, known as Henry VIII. With his mental illness, being ramped up by his genetic condition, all may have been exasperated by his famous jousting accident on 24 January 1536. An accident that many historians believe he never completely recovered from.
The accident , along with other betrayals facing Anne in 1536 is what Ms Nolan believed was the cause of her miscarriage and the beginning of her downfall as queen. It gave the anti-Boleyn opponents their opening to bring the reforming queen down, and they did just that. It was at this time Anne, Ms Nolan believes, finished the work on the Tudor Poor Law. This is usually ascribed to Thomas Cromwell, but actually came from a draft by William Marshall, an ardent reformer and one whose patron was Anne Boleyn. It even included was radical Tudor version of the National Health Service along with other provisions for the poor of Tudor times, which came with very strict work requirements as well. Ms Nolan believes that Cromwell encouraged Anne to push for the most radical proposals knowing that parliament would reject them for bills he favored. In the end the poor law just encouraged local officials to find work for the poor. The poor were seen as more morally deficient than victims of circumstances, a mindset that would come to America as well. G. R. Elton points out that the poor law passed by Elizabeth I was almost word for word the law that her mother Anne championed in 1535.
It was at this time Anne and Cromwell clashed over the dissolution of the monasteries, Anne wishing to save some to keep on their relief missions and Cromwell only looking at the profits gained by their closures. It was this battle and her loss in it that led to her execution. It is at this point Ms Nolan looks at Anne’s successor, the pious Jane Seymour. Ms Nolan contends that Jane was not the reason for Anne downfall, but a large part of the final act. Ms Nolan states of Jane, ” History had been complicit in promoting the royal propaganda, painting Jane as the simple, submissive wife, who somehow floated into the king’s life in an unassuming cloud of moonbeams and innocent virtue.” (Nolan. 217) She argues that, “But we still can’t escape the unsettling fact that everything we previously believed to be true of Anne Boleyn – that she calculating pursued and played the king to secure the crown – is ironically what Jane Seymour did.” (Ibid. 218)
Could Jane Seymour been a cold calculating, ambitious woman, who saw a chance to be queen and took it, the answer may lay in her family. The ambitions and greed of Edward and Thomas Seymour are legendary in Tudor history. Edward Seymour overturned Henry’s will and made himself Protector for his nephew Edward VI, and despite his Victorian image as a champion of the poor and for social justice, he amassed almost as much power as any king. His wife took the jewels that Henry had left to his last wife, Katherine Parr, and was known for her conceit and pride. Thomas Seymour basically had the two most dangerous traits one could have in the Tudor court, he was ambitious and a fool. Their split and greed led to this downfall and allowed John Dudley to assume the reigns of power in the last years of Edward VI.
Jane was also a strong supported of Katherine of Aragon, so would have felt no guilt in replacing Anne as queen. She may have seen herself as the savoir of the land and the force that could led back to Catholicism and the return of Mary to her rightful position in the royal family. If Jane’s ultimate goal was to bring the nation back to Rome, she failed miserably. She died giving birth to Edward VI, died from perpetual fever caused by the leaving of some of the placenta in her womb. Henry brought finest doctors in for the birth and imposed some of the most modern sanitary standards for Edward’s baby rooms, but doctors did not do births. (much like the Butterfly McQueen character in Gone With the Wind) In the sixteenth century midwives did birthing, and it would seem that the poorest woman in the rural areas and city may have had better medical treatment than the Queen of England.
As for her child, far from bringing England back to Rome, became one the most fervent and fanatical Protestant kings England ever had. The next most fanatical and fervent was his successor Jane. Diarmaid MacCulloch says, “What emerges from the king’s writings apart from the Chronicle is the consistent fervor of his evangelical commitment.” ( Diarmaid MacCulloch. Tudor Church Militant: Edward VI and the Protestant Reformation. London: Penguin Random House. 2001. 25) If Jane Seymour was looking to bring England back to Rome, her son tried to destroy any thing that reminded the people of the Catholic Church. As for Anne, Ms Nolan tells of her going against some of the most powerful people in the land and losing in the end. To gain the reconciliation with Charles V that Henry wanted, Mary was restored to the line of succession, but she was never legitimatized and both her and Elizabeth were declared bastards even in Henry’s final will. Ms Nolan states, “Because one thing Henry’s was game proves is that up until two days before Anne’s arrest, he was using his marriage to her as a political tool, not plotting how to get rid of her.” (Nolan. 233) She argues the decision to get rid of Anne came not from Henry, but from Thomas Cromwell. He did this to keep Anne from ever being able to make a comeback and threaten his power.
Ms Nolan details the actions and reasons behind all the characters who came together to kill the queen, and say the reason she was executed, and not just imprisoned like Katherine Aragon, was two fold. Cromwell looked to insure there would be no comeback from her and Henry feared a long drawn out battle like he had with Kathrine would cast doubt on the legitimacy of his next queen, but also might be seen as acceptance of the pope’s stance that Katherine of Aragon had be his true queen. It was something Henry, or England for that matter, could not risk accepting or seen as likely after the sacrifices that had been made to undo his first marriage. Ms Nolan states, “So, as soon as it was decided that Anne was no longer to be queen, Henry would have realized the urgent need for her to die, and unfortunately for Anne, her husband had no conscience urging his not to kill her.” (Nolan. 258) Thus Anne was sent to the Tower, and she did not enter by the infamous Traitors Gate, as she was still granted the honor of using the private Court Gate. She then details Anne’s last days before her execution.
Ms Nolan then says of her execution, by sword and not the ax, “Though Anne was initially sentenced to death by burning or beheading, in the end Henry opted for the unusual method of execution by sword.” (Ibid. 272) She disputes that this was an expression of compassion buy Henry, as many beheading with an ax would go disastrously wrong. She asserts, “Death by sword was no act of mercy. As a sociopath, he was devoid of any feelings of compassion, remorse or conscience.” (Ibid) To empathize this she cites that Henry’s betrothal to Jane Seymour was on the very day that Anne was executed. She says of Henry, “It’s not that Henry consciously chose to be as cold and evil as possible – he tyrant who just loved to hurt people. This was the science of how his brain functioned.” (Ibid) Of this Ms Nolan says:
Henry may have felt indifferent to his wife’s at the time of her murder, but that’s not how he could allow it to look to his subjects. As we have witnessed, sociopaths have an innate ability to mimic the emotions they lack, and death by sword would enable the king to appear merciful. More importantly, this was the first time a reigning queen had been executed – in fact, this would have been one of the main reasons Henry need to annul his marriage to Anne before she died, ensuring she wasn’t technically a queen at the time of her death. To the outside world, Anne still represented the monarchy, and so a noble death by sword would appear more dignified than burning her like a witch at the stake. Even Wyatt described her death by sword as “honorable.”
Of course, as the years went on and Henry’s metal health deteriorated further, the act of killing a queen evidently lost its shock value. And with Cromwell no longer around to oversee damage limitation for the monarchy, Henry was later to kill his fifth wife, Katherine Howard, employing a standard axeman.”
(Ibid. 273)
In 1536 death by sword was need to appear merciful and was part of the propaganda that emerged to to save Henry from the PR disaster of executing the Queen he broke from the Catholic Church to marry. When Cromwell himself was executed it is rumored his enemies paid the axeman to be drunk and to mess up the act, which had been recorded as botched. Cromwell may have had a measure of revenge as his sister’s grandchild, Oliver Cromwell, had Henry’s sister’s grandson, Charles I, executed in 1649. Ms Nolan concludes of the so called romantic tale of the sword, “The fact that it is still referenced by historians to illustrate the king’s mercy shows just how effective it was,” (Ibid.) Anne was executed on 19 May 1536, and the stripping of her title allowed Elizabeth to be declared illegitimate and insure Henry’s child with Jane Seymour would have no legal heir to challenge their claim. While in his will, Henry placed both Mary and Elizabeth in the line of succession after Edward VI, he never had them declared legitimate. Edward would use this to appoint Jane Grey as his successor in 1553.
Anne addressed the crowd inside the Tower witnessing her execution, echoing the words Jane Grey would utter when she was executed by Henry’s daughter Mary in 1554:
Good Christian people, I have not come here to preach a sermon; I have come here to die. For according to the law and by the law I am judged to die, and therefore will speak nothing against it. I am come hither to accuse no man, nor speak of that whereof I am accused and condemned to die, but I pray God save the king and send his long to reign over you, for a gentler not more merciful prince was there never, and to me he was ever a good gentle, and sovereign lord. And if any person would meddle of my cause, I require thee to judge best. And thus I take my leave of the world and of you all, and heartily desire yo all pray for me.
(Ibid. 273-274)
It was a standard speech and designed mainly to protect her daughter Elizabeth, which was what many did in such a situation. Her last words were , “To God I commend my soul. To Christ I commend my soul,. Jesu, receive my soul.” (Ibid. 280) She was buried with her brother George in the Chapel Royal St Peter ad Vincula (“St Peter in chains”) the chapel located in the Tower of London. She was later joined by Queen Katherine Howard and Queen Jane, as the only queens executed in the dark place. The only British King to be executed, Charles I, lies with Henry VIII and his third wife Jane Seymour in St Georges Chapel in Windsor Castle. Only a slab marks the place, as Elizabeth I never completed the burial vaults to either her father or brother.
Ms Nolan concludes her book with the fact that many in the evangelical reformist community would have mourned her as she was the only one in a position of genuine power that was working for them, as well as many of the poor and those that benefited form her educational institutions. She argues that instead of being seen as either a tragic lover or a ambitious schemer she should be celebrated as a reformer and champion of the poor. She was at the forefront of the reformed movement that would flower under her nephew Edward VI, but there was a danger to it that many in the elite power structure saw. It was seen in a warning her daughter Elizabeth I gave to James VI of Scotland, as she commented on the Presbyterian Church in Scotland. The church had been founded by John Knox, the favorite preacher of Edward VI, on the principals of the London Stranger’s Church of Polish reformist Jan Laski. (MacCulloch. 182-183) It used the idea of presbyterian order with the congregation electing church officials. Elizabeth observed, “If the people see the church can be run without bishops, they soon will believe the state can be run without princes.”
Of the new reformist thought came another, maybe more dangerous idea. “Symbolic of this excitement, but also of the dangers attache to it was the idea of liberty.” (Ibid. 127) The reformist questioned the religious order that came into being during the days of the Roman Empire. Questioning this led to the questioning of many to the ideas in the sixteenth century. Historian Diarmaid MacCulloch said this of the movement:
To set up the gospel theme of liberty as the one strand of salvation was to deny the authority of custom, throwing off the accretion of church tradition to which the old Western Church attributed an authority beyond the text of scripture: “unwritten verities,” a favorite target of evangelical attack. In turn, that rejection enabled evangelicals to discard the burden of history as it had been presented by the Western Church for centuries, a history which justified the place of unwritten verities as part of the authority of the church.
(Ibid. 134)
If one did not need a priest to tell them what was in the Bible or a bishop to tell them how things could be done, what else did they not need. If you could question the institution that survived the Fall of Rome and the Dark Ages, could you not question the state that came about through that? It gave many of Anne’s successors in the mid century the chance to replace the blind adherence to the dictates Paul laid down in Romans 13 and embrace the words of Peter in Acts 5:29. It allowed the people to question those in high places, especially if they violated God’s law. In effect, they legitimized the idea of revolution. What Anne and her reformist did was to allow people to think for themselves, something the old order found more dangerous than a king divorcing his wife to gain a male heir. The old order was based on the union between the royalty and the people, after the Reformation, the people would create a new union, one they called more perfect.
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