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The fall of Anne Boleyn revisited

Autor: Retha M. Warnicke
Data: July 1993
From: The English Historical Review(Vol. 108, Issue 428)
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Tipo de documento: Article
Length: 6.836 words

Resumo:
Anne Boleyn, a wife of King Henry VIII of England, was executed on May 19, 1536, and the London embassies of two foreign powers
gave opposite reports of the execution. A theory refuting the validity of both these accounts is proposed. The new theory declares it
was the Queen's miscarriage in Jan 1536 that resulted in her execution. The Queen gave birth to a deformed fetus which was viewed
as a harbinger of evil. The King assumed that his wife was a witch and an adultress as no Defender of the Faith could produce a
monster. Five men with lecherous reputations were forced to confess to illicit relations with the Queen and were executed with her.

Texto completo:
AT the Tower Green on 19 May 1536, Queen Anne, the second wife of Henry VIII, was heard to pray, as the hangman from Calais
was ending her life with a stroke of the sword, 'To Jesus Christ I commend my soule; Lord Jesu receive my soule.'(1) This prayer for
salvation was consistent with the Queen's dying speech and with the plea of innocence entered at her trial only a few days earlier. It
was also consistent with the shocked response of Thomas Cranmer, Archbishop of Canterbury, when he was told of the charges of
incest and adultery directed against her and against the five men who were also executed. Some twenty-five years after her death,
John Foxe, a former client of Mary Howard Fitzroy, Duchess of Richmond, the Queen's attendant in 1536, claimed that an
impenetrable mystery surrounded her death.(2) That the mystery has endured is not surprising, since it was the government's
deliberate policy both to be secretive about the royal marital problems and to leak conflicting reports about them. Indeed, the London
embassies of two major foreign powers gave diametrically opposed accounts of the tragedy. Eustace Chapuys, the imperial
ambassador and good friend to Catherine of Aragon's daughter Mary, having been misled by the confidences of the royal secretary,
Thomas Cromwell, wrote in his dispatches that Anne was an innocent victim of murderous court factions. On the other hand, Lancelot
de Carles, who was secretary to Anthony Castelnau, Bishop of Tarbes, composed a poem in which he reproduced the government's
official line that she and the five men were guilty as charged.(3) In recent historical debate, Professor E. W. Ives has accepted much
of the imperial position and Dr G. W. Bernard has furthered the French view, although from time to time he has also eclectically
drawn on Chapuys's dispatches to support his views. In contrast to their theories, a third position put forward by the author of the
present essay is that the members of neither embassy may be relied upon for an understanding of the royal family's private concerns,
and that it was the Queen's miscarriage in January 1536 which triggered the events culminating in her death.(4)

Neither Ives nor Bernard has analysed the evidence from the critical standpoint of whether it was actually possible for these
diplomats to learn facts about intimate occurrences in the royal privy chambers or whether, as is more likely the case, their comments
mainly reflected the official line, rumour and innuendo, deliberately leaked disinformation, and speculation. Scholars, such as Donald
Queller, who have studied the development of the diplomatic corps, have long maintained that host governments expected resident
foreign ambassadors to act as spies for their kingdoms. They were often, like Chapuys, low-level, underpaid agents, who were out of
touch with their country's policies because of primitive communication systems.(5) Immediately before the events chronicled by
Chapuys which Ives has cited to support the factional theory, Cromwell had ordered Stephen Vaughan, his agent, to spy on the
ambassador. A few years later, Vaughan was to write to Cromwell about another encounter with Chapuys, pointedly promising the
Secretary that he was cunning enough not to be taken in by the ambassador's rhetoric. In short, during the spring of 1536, it is more
likely that instead of revealing valid information to Chapuys about the Queen's fall, Cromwell had taken the opportunity to leak false
news to him in order to obscure the reasons for her death. The Secretary could thereby succeed in getting conflicting stories about
those tragic events spread abroad through diplomatic channels. By promoting friendly relations with the ambassador, he could also
hope to win imperial support in persuading the reluctant Princess Mary to recognize her father as supreme head of the Church of
England.(6)

To buttress his factional theory, Ives draws upon an antiquated version of the code of courtly love to argue that the Queen had made
herself vulnerable to political manoeuvring because, like other mistresses of noble or royal households, she had followed prevailing
social conventions and had indulged in innocent flirtations with young men to while away the empty hours. He cites as his authority
for this courtly behaviour a 1979 Cambridge reprint of John Stevens' masterful Music and Poetry in the Early Tudor Court, which,
originally published thirty years ago, is some-what out of step with today's scholarly literature on courtly love.(7) This essay is not the
place to enter into a detailed review of recent scholarship. Suffice it to say, the preponderance of literary criticism today doubts
whether courtly love, that is the adoration of a young, lowly knight for a high-born and well-placed mistress/patroness that inspired
him to accomplish great chivalric deeds, ever existed outside the literary world in which it was first popularized in the twelfth century.
These scholars have further pointed out that the authors of the prose romances written in the thirteenth century not only condemned
love affairs like that of Lancelot and Guenever, but also used the courtly conventions to explore and promote relationships between
spouses or between single people which could lead to marriage.(8) Subsequent writers, such as Christine de Pizan(9) and Thomas
Malory, incorporated the thirteenth-century condemnations in their narratives, Malory specifically pointing to the affair of the two
famous Arthurian lovers as a major reason for the tragic demise of their world. Tudor authors also failed to validate their relationship
as a model for aristocratic behaviour. When Lancelot is mentioned in original sixteenth-century English literature, it is always as a
valiant warrior; his passion for the queen is either ignored or suppressed.(10)

From about the fourteenth century, the aristocracy began to imitate a few of these literary conventions, and some vestiges of the
courtly love tradition can still be discovered in the Tudor century in both the private and public spheres: its rhetoric was adopted by
couples involved in courtship exchanges that had the potential to end in marriage; and some of its rituals and conventions formed
integral parts of public rites and splendid chivalric ceremonies, the display of which was not ordinarily intended to celebrate or to
reflect actual romantic relationships between individuals.(11) Some of the behaviour aristocratic women were admonished to adopt,
which was in line with the accepted heritage of courtly love, can be found in popular advice and courtesy books. In Les
Enseignements d'Anne de France, which structured the educational atmosphere at the French court where Anne Boleyn resided
between 1514 and 1521, Anne de France warned married women, as well as young virgins, against indulging in light-hearted or
meaningless flirtations. In their description of an ideal court lady, Castiglione's courtiers also, while advising only chaste
conversations between gentlemen and lady courtiers, warned all women to guard their reputations vigilantly, for 'men can display
their affection with far less risk than women'.(12) In short, no social convention reproduced with approval the twelfth-century literary
model best known by the Lancelot--Guenever example. If a young bachelor knight and an older royal mistress in Tudor England can
be found to have carried on an amorous, private affair that could not lead to matrimony, they must be viewed as having violated
approved social norms.

Ironically, at least two of the romances Ives incorporates as part of his proof for the existence of courtly love reveal insights into the
actual courtship practice between single people, and not the artificial model which he defines as a usually platonic but potentially
erotic liaison between the mistress and her lowly knight who worships her as her servant. Among his evidence can be found the
Devonshire Manuscript's courtly verses written by Lady Margaret Douglas and Lord Thomas Howard, and the celebrated meeting of
Charles Brandon, future Duke of Suffolk, and Margaret, Regent of the Netherlands. It is somewhat surprising that the poetic
exchanges of Lady Margaret and Lord Thomas, whose flirtation led to a clandestine marriage in 1536, are cited by Ives, since he also
claims that 'courtly love and true love were different coin'. Another exchange he discusses, that between Brandon and the Regent,
took place during some Anglo-Burgundian negotiations in 1513. An astute politician, the Regent may have intended only to distract
the English, including Henry VIII, from more serious business, but it is clear that both the King and the future Duke, who like the
Regent was single, hoped she would agree to marry him. This was not the ongoing, private flirtation of a lowly knight seeking the
patronage of a high-placed mistress, but an international incident with Brandon playing for high stakes, the hand of the Regent
herself. She was neither the first nor the last unmarried ruler to use his/her sexuality in a diplomatic ploy or manoeuvre.(13)

Historians will search in vain for evidence at the Tudor court of exchanges which Ives has described as play-acting, as innocent,
artificial flirtations, and which, he warns, 'could be the channel for real passion', albeit not 'true love', between Queen Anne and
younger, single men of lower, but at least gentle, status. According to Cranmer and to the later testimony of other witnesses, she had
consistently and vigilantly protected her honour. Indeed, no rumours linking her to potential lovers seem to have circulated at court
during the period between her marriage in 1533 and the spring accusations of 1536. Even the rumourmonger Chapuys, whose major
contribution to English scholarship during those years may be the salacious gossip he dispatched to the Emperor, Charles V, was
silent on this score. He did speculate, however, that the King himself had taken illicit lovers.(14) After her imprisonment in the Tower,
the Queen revealed information which Sir William Kingston, the constable, forwarded in six extant letters to Cromwell. In response to
questioning, she admitted that she had a few days earlier requested Henry Norris, a gentleman of her husband's privy chamber, to
swear an oath to her almoner that she was a 'good woman'. In addition, she had, she said, inquired of Norris why he had not wedded
Mary Shelton, her young maid of honour, and whether, if something were to happen to the King, he would 'look for dead men's
shoes': In other words, would he wish to have her for a wife? These remarks were not courtly; no model in romance literature exists
for the language of that confrontation. She seems to have initiated this desperate exchange with Norris because of rumours that her
honour was under attack; she probably suspected that he was somehow involved.(15)

Although Ives has asserted that the Queen was 'flinging away the safety of courtly convention' by berating Norris, the only evidence
of any other association with him that might remotely be defined as courtly derives from her further reference at the Tower to a
conversation she had held one year earlier with Sir Francis Weston, another gentleman of her husband's privy chamber. It may even
have been her memory of this year-old conversation which led her to confront Norris in 1536. She recalled that in 1535, when she
had rebuked Weston, a married man, for flirting with Shelton, he had retorted, perhaps to protect the honour of the maiden or perhaps
even to distract the Queen from questioning him further about what must have been an attempt to seduce her attendant, that both
Norris (who had been courting Shelton) and he had been visiting the royal chambers to see her rather than her maiden. It is
significant that the Queen's intention was to chastise Weston, for clearly, since he was a married man, he was not qualified to
participate in the courtly pastime either as it is portrayed in twelfth-century poetry or as it actually operated in Tudor England. The
Queen's primary goal in 1535 had obviously been to protect the honour of the young lady who was her cousin and whose liaison with
Weston definitely could not lead to marriage. Early modern advice books, specifically Les Enseignements, it must also be noted,
warned noblewomen that their own reputations would suffer greatly if they permitted the female members of their household to
engage in amorous affairs.(16)
The speculation that the Queen and Norris had been courtly lovers thus rests on shaky ground. During the week before her arrest,
the only data Anne Boleyn could uncover concerning the possible romantic admiration for her of any man other than the King seem to
have boiled down to Weston's year-old retort. Evidently (it is implicit in her actions), in 1536 she dismissed the married Weston's
intentions toward her, although she seems to have feared that he might repeat his stale allegation about Norris's and his visits to her
household. It was deep concern about the intentions of Norris, the bachelor, that caused her to inquire if he hoped to become her
husband's replacement. A prevailing expectation concerning virtuous female behaviour, which was impressed upon the
consciousnesses of all well-educated ladies, it must be re-emphasized, was that they should avoid trivial flirtatious relationships, not
merely carnal liaisons, with all men except their husbands or future husbands.(17) Moreover, the fact that Norris was older than the
Queen and a widower makes it difficult to identify him as her courtly lover by Ives's guidelines. Even if Ives's dubious claim that she
was as old as 35 in 1536 is accepted, Norris was still her senior, for he must have been at least 21 in 1516, when he became keeper
of the park of Foley John which had formerly been held by his deceased father. In 1536 he was over 40 and had been a widower with
two children for five or six years.(18)

If the January miscarriage at Greenwich were the reason for the Queen's fall rather than a factional political conspiracy led by
Cromwell, the question might well be asked why the Secretary waited until April, as both Ives and Bernard have maintained, to initiate
the proceedings against her.(19) Cromwell, based in London during the last session of the Reformation Parliament which was not
recessed until April, did, of course, begin the conspiracy in January with his deceptive leaks to Chapuys, but it was almost impossible
for the government to proceed against the Queen directly at that time for two reasons. First, childbirth customs precluded her from
making a public appearance at Greenwich until she was churched, a ceremony that took place between thirty and forty days after the
delivery. Secondly, as soon as Hilary term was over, the entire legal profession deserted Westminster for the provinces where they
attended to the assizes until Easter term. Not one of the treason trials throughout Henry's entire reign was held at Westminster
between the end of Hilary and the beginning of Easter.(20)

Bernard, as we know, rejects Ives's theory that the Queen had engaged in courtly-love exchanges with Norris and Weston, and
insists that sufficient proof exists to condemn her of illicit sexual behaviour with at least two of the five alleged lovers.(21) Besides the
report that Mark Smeaton, a groom and musician, had confessed to the crimes, the only documents which Bernard can cite as
without doubt containing at least a second-hand eyewitness account of the interaction of Anne with these men are the letters of
Kingston, with their selective information from the revelations of the newly-imprisoned and frightened Queen. Interestingly, these are,
indeed, the same documents which Ives uses to prove that Weston and Norris were her courtly lovers. A better suggestion than these
problematic claims about the letters is that they in fact relay admissions of the Queen which were intended to persuade the
government of her innocence by detailing every conversation with the accused she could recall that might possibly be construed by
anyone as guilty behaviour on her part. Only if they are taken out of social and cultural context and then given the worst possible
interpretation can the few, even meagre, exchanges which Anne Boleyn could remember be cited as evidence of her promiscuity or
of her careless disregard for her reputation.

With these conversations and other equally problematic evidence in mind, nevertheless, Bernard proclaims the guilt of Smeaton and
Norris and declares that 'there was enough circumstantial evidence to cast reasonable doubt' on the denials of the remaining three
men. The Queen gave statements, which are reported in Kingston's letter to Cromwell, about her exchanges with Smeaton, Norris,
and Weston. Smeaton, who was of lower-class origins, had been to her apartments only twice, she said: once at Winchester in 1535
when she had summoned him to play for her; and secondly the day before his arrest, when she had found him in her presence
chamber and had rebuked him as an 'inferior person' for attempting to speak with her. Bernard has neglected to deal with the
significant issue that her refusal to carry on a conversation with this 'inferior person' might well indicate an unwillingness, if given the
opportunity, to be more intimately involved with him. In the case of Norris and Weston, Bernard claims that the evidence for the guilt
of Norris is 'rather stronger' than for Weston. The proof for this dubious assertion lies principally in the Queen's two conversations
with them, one in 1535 and one in 1536. She recalled the allegation of Weston in 1535 that Norris and he had been visiting her
chambers to see her rather than her maiden, and revealed the later comments of Norris to her which actually seem to contradict the
gist of Weston's assertions. In 1536 Norris stated that he had decided to wait awhile before marrying Shelton, thus admitting his
interest in the maiden, and that he was not seeking 'dead men's shoes', therefore denying any romantic or marital aspirations
concerning the Queen.(22) Neither this letter nor any other document corroborates the claim that she had encouraged, or indeed
been involved in, continuing flirtatious or carnal relationships with these men. Only Smeaton confessed to the charges, and it is his
word against hers. When scholars do take the time to heed Anne's voice, they will hear the force of her assertions, even filtered
through Kingston's hostile reports, that she had defied Weston, rebuked Smeaton, and berated Norris, demanding of the latter a holy
oath upholding her good name.

In addition to Kingston's letters, Bernard relies on diplomatic evidence for his claim that she had committed sexual crimes. He cites a
poem written by the French secretary, de Carles (later the Bishop of Riez), about Anne's life in which the diplomat confused the
timing of the trials of her and her brother, a rather major lapse considering that the verses are thought to have been written in June,
shortly after the executions. Bernard justifies validating the poet's references to intimate privychamber events with the observation
that he is certain that de Carles, as well as other diplomats, was 'keen to gather reliable information'. 'Keen' they may have been, but
the evidence they collected was not necessarily reliable. Perhaps, as Ives has suggested, de Carles simply relied on poetic licence
when he gave inaccurate data about the trials. Scholars might well wonder why the entire poem should not be viewed from the
perspective of poetic licence.(23)

The assumption that de Carles had privileged information about the royal family may be based on the misguided notion that the
Queen was especially partial to France. From 1534, no evidence exists that she favoured the French diplomats as she had before her
marriage, for no longer were they invited to special dinners in her apartments, nor were they present on hunting expeditions. Indeed,
her cool and aloof behaviour may be explained by the decision of Francis I to consider the possibility of marrying one of his sons to
her stepdaughter Mary.(24) Historians who have studied the French poem, which has not been translated into English, are well aware
that, in line with this decision of Francis, de Carles expressed great sympathy for the older princess.(25) Given the concern of the
French for her stepdaughter, surely the Queen and her friends were not relating secret information to them. Henry and Cromwell
were also far from favouring the cause of Francis. Following the death of Catherine of Aragon, they had been attempting to create
closer ties with the Emperor, although Cromwell was not as deeply committed to supporting Mary's pretentions to the throne as Ives
has maintained in his analysis of the Secretary's negotiations with the imperial ambassador during the spring of 1536.(26)

Since the diplomatic evidence is contradictory, probably because the English government intended to create confusion, and the
Kingston letters are open to conflicting interpretations, the other sparse evidence must be more carefully scrutinized for insights into
the events of 1536. Clearly, Bernard is correct in asserting that the King did not act like someone who had signed a warrant which
condemned six innocent people to their deaths.(27) He also did not act like a man outraged because his honour had been stained by
his wife's alleged sexual crimes. He permitted her alleged adulterous acts to be publicized in trials and executions, a decision that
was extraordinary unless something more serious than the personal royal honour was at stake. According to Sir John Russell, who
attended the fearful King that spring, Henry had only 'cursedness and unhappiness' in his marriage.(28) In May, after the legal action
had commenced, a good way of describing royal reaction to the events is to say that he was simply relieved.

In contrast to the speculations of Bernard and Ives, the suggestion which best fits the known facts is that in mid- to late January the
Queen gave birth to a deformed foetus, a natural occurrence in some early miscarriages. When Henry learned of the tragedy, he
would have been horrified, for these poor creatures were then viewed as monsters and as evil omens. Since he bore the title of
Defender of the Faith and was a regular communicant of the Church, he would not, even could not, consider the possibility that the
foetus had sprung from his loins. Amidst rumours that he had been stricken by impotence and that the Queen had bewitched him into
marriage, he seems to have had his master Secretary search for men, especially those with lecherous reputations, who could be
charged with having committed sexual crimes with his consort. As an amateur theologian, the King could readily accept the theory
that this wife, whom he believed to be an adulteress, was, in fact, a witch, whose essence was lust and illicit sexuality.(29)

In his discussion of childbirth and of Henry's likely reaction to the news that his consort, who was formally charged with witch-like
activities, might have miscarried a deformed infant in January of 1536, Bernard reveals some misunderstanding about the history of
sexuality when he questions why the King should have found impotency 'less humiliating than the paternity of a deformed foetus' and
when he raises doubts about whether witches gave birth to monstrous infants. Modern men, who fear that impotency is rooted in
some internal psychological problem, might well prefer public recognition as the father of a deformed foetus. However, for Henry the
choice was clear: impotency did not threaten his manhood when it occurred with only one woman, as was rumoured about him,
because in such cases witchcraft was almost always faulted: it was a popular scapegoat for many sexual dysfunctions. The birth of a
deformed child in the royal privy chamber, on the other hand, especially if it was bruited to be a divine response to Henry's illicit or
sinful behaviour, could throw not only his honour, but also that of his kingdom and his schismatic Church, into great disrepute. An
example of this belief can be found in John Ponet's warning in A Short Treatise of Politic Power, published in 1556, that the many
monstrous births recorded in the kingdom constituted portents of doom for Mary and her government.(30) After the Reformation,
many clerics continued to agree with earlier Catholic priests that God did punish adulterers with 'strange and monstrous births'. These
same children were sometimes viewed as especially evil because of the fear that they might well have resulted from demonic rather
than divine interference in natural events. According to the Malleus Maleficarum, 'in the case of a married witch who has been
impregnated by her husband, the devil can, by the commixture of another semen, infect that which has been conceived.'(31)

Clearly, the King's preference was to blame his consort and the devil for the tragedy, and, indeed, signs of his anxiety about
witchcraft are evident in the documents. Even if the Queen's foetus in 1536 were not deformed (and it probably was), something
about the delivery triggered a fearful reaction in the royal father who had long viewed even the most uncomplicated miscarriage as an
evil omen.(32) In 1536 no one had to be designated, as Archbishop Cranmer was to be during the Katherine Howard crisis, to inform
the King about the Queen's alleged sexual lapses. Instead, it was the women of Anne's privy chamber, including Elizabeth, Countess
of Worcester, even though they were her close friends, who were called upon to testify about the Queen's miscarriage. It was the
women's duty; that is why, in addition to assisting at the delivery, they were in attendance. Witnesses were always asked and
required to answer questions about the shape and size of the foetus and whether, if it died, the mother was culpable. As Jean
Donnison explains: 'The whole process of childbirth was the focus of a mass of ancient superstitious beliefs which still played an
important part in Christian thinking'.(33) Henry learned about the circumstances of the miscarriage in January before he left for
Westminster where he was in residence until Easter. It was all the proof he needed of her guilt.

The indictments, which described the Queen's 'pigeon' [French] kisses that were said to have lured five men into having intercourse
with her at least ten times in about a two-year period, and identified dates, many of which seem to have coincided with holidays
marked by transvestism and gender reversal, abounded with signs of witchcraft. That she was not at the place cited on many of the
dates seems to have reflected the belief that witches regularly flew to their assignations. Given the state of the roads in Tudor
England, Bernard's suggestion that Anne might have actually travelled to these rendezvous is incredible. A knowledge of Erasmus's
harrowing, daytime journey in 1511 to Cambridge on horseback, the best way to travel at that time, suffices to indicate how
problematic Bernard's claim is.(34) In November of 1535, for example, the Queen, who was in the early stages of pregnancy, would
have had to depart from Windsor Castle, where she was in residence, gallop over winter roads to Westminster for the amorous affair
and then hurriedly return that same evening to Windsor so as not to be missed.(35) No one was charged with aiding and abetting her
on this or the other alleged trips, and surely it cannot be believed, even if what seems impossible did occur, that she actually set out
on such adventures without at least one female attendant. It is significant that no woman was charged as an accomplice in the
crimes, an omission which emphasizes the contention that she was innocent of having arranged secret meetings with the alleged
lovers.(36)

Reading modern political conventions and sexual practices back into sixteenth-century occurrences will, when combined with the
adoption of antiquated and confusing notions of courtly love and the uncritical acceptance of dubious statements of the diplomatic
corps, not only fail to make any sense out of the events of 1536: it will actually add to the mystery Foxe described in his 'Book of
Martyrs'. As I have asserted in my study of the Queen, it is high time that the figments of, on the one hand, Anne the witch, and, on
the other, Anne the victim whose flirtatious behaviour was in part responsible for her death, are discarded.(37) In the presence of
abundant evidence that in the early modern period witches were viewed as sexual predators and that miscarriages were accepted as
evil omens, those beliefs ought not to be dismissed as irrelevant evidence simply because modern scholars do not share in them.
Indeed, if the fall of Anne Boleyn is to be understood, the references to witchcraft and the evidence of her miscarriage must be
analysed in the context of Tudor beliefs. As long as the lurid charges against the Queen exist only in unsubstantiated indictments and
contradictory diplomatic writings, historians ought to remain sceptical about theories of her adulterous guilt or of factional politics. At
the least, they owe it to the past not to further obscure the facts.

(1.)Retha M. Warnicke, The Rise and Fall of Anne Boleyn: Family Politics at the Court of Henry VIII (Cambridge, 1989), p. 233.

(2.)Gilbert Burnet, The History of the Reformation of the Church of England (3 vols. in 6 pts., new edn., Oxford, 1816), I, i. 364--7;
The Acts and Monuments of John Foxe, ed. G. Townsend (8 vols., repr., New York, 1965), v. 136.

(3.)Cal[endar of Letters, Despatches, and] S[tate] P[apers, Relating to the Negotiations between England and] Spain, ed. G. A.
Bergenroth, et al. (13 vols., 2 supplements, London, 1862--1954), especially V, ii. 29; Epistre contenant le proces criminel faict a
l'encontre de la royne Anne Boullant d'Angleterre (Lyons, 1545), printed in Georges Ascoli, La Grande-Bretagne devant l'opinion
francaise (Paris, 1927), ll. 231--73. 679--1038.

(4.)G. W. Bernard, 'The Fall of Anne Boleyn,' ante, cvi (1991), 584--610, especially 586, where he cites Chapuys as 'strong
contemporary evidence' that the foetus, which was never actually examined by the ambassador, was not deformed; and id., 'The Fall
of Anne Boleyn: A Rejoinder', ante, cvii (1992), 665--74; E. W. Ives, Anne Boleyn (Oxford, 1986), and id., 'The Fall of Anne Boleyn
Reconsidered', ante, cvii (1992), 651--64; Warnicke, Rise and Fall of Anne Boleyn, pp. 191--233.

(5.)Retha M. Warnicke, 'Anne Boleyn Revisited', Historical Journal, xxxiv (1991), 953--4; Donald Queller, The Office of Ambassador
in the Middle Ages (Princeton, 1967), pp. 89--90; see also Warnicke, 'Family and Kinship Relations at the Henrician Court: The
Boleyns and the Howards', in Tudor Political Culture, ed. Dale Hoak (Cambridge, forthcoming, 1993).

(6.)State Papers of Henry VIII (II vols., London, 1830--52), viii. 197; W. C. Richardson, Stephen Vaughan: Financial Agent of Henry
VIII (Baton Rouge, La., 1953), p. 67.

(7.)See Ives, Anne Boleyn, p. 86, no. 20, where he neglected to indicate that the book, which was first published in London in 1961,
was a reprint with corrections. These ideas about courtly love are based in part on C. S. Lewis, The Allegory of Love: A Study in
Medieval Tradition (Oxford, 1938), pp. 2--4.

(8.)Peter S. Noble, Love and Marriage in Chretien de Troyes (Cardiff, 1982), pp. 2--6; Edmund Reiss, 'Chaucer's fyn lovyne and the
Late Medieval Sense of fin amor', in Medieval Studies in Honor of Lillian Herlands Hornstein, ed. Jess B. Bessinger and Robert R.
Rayno (New York, 1976), pp. 182--3; W. T. H. Jackson, 'The Court of the Poet and the Court of the King', The Medieval Court in
Europe, ed. E. R. Haymes (Munich, 1986), pp. 29--30; Terence McCarthy, Reading the Morte Darthur (Cambridge, 1988), pp. 4, 24;
Aldo Scaglione, Knights at Court: Courtliness, Chivalry, and Courtesy from Ottonian Germany to the Italian Renaissance (Berkeley,
1991), pp. 122--250.

(9.)Christine de Pizan, A Medieval Woman's Mirror of Honor: The Treasury of the City of Ladies, tr. Charity C. Willard, ed. M. P.
Cosman (New York, 1989), pp. 43, 90--9, 106--13. De Pizan's work was extremely popular. Louis XI's daughter, Anne de France,
drew inspiration from it for the advice book she wrote for her daughter, Suzanne: see Les Enseignments d'Anne de France, duchesse
de Bourbonnois et d'Auvergne a sa fille Suzanne de Bourbon, ed. A. M. Chazaud (Moulins, 1878), pp. i--xxxii, 11--25, 35--7, 80--1.
Louis XII's wife, Anne of Brittany, in whose household Anne Boleyn lived, patronized the printing of it three times. Louise of Savoy
also owned a copy. These Frenchwomen were important role models for Anne Boleyn during her formative years. See also Willard,
'Anne de France, Reader of Christine de Pizan', in The Reception of Christine de Pizan from the Fifteenth through the Nineteenth
Centuries: Visitors to the City (Lewiston, NY, 1991), p. 62, where it is noted Louis XII proposed that Anne of France instruct his new
consort Mary Tudor in the 'modes et facons' of her adopted country. Anne Boleyn, of course, was one of her attendants.

(10.)The Works of Sir Thomas Malory, ed. Eugene Vinaver (3 vols., 2nd edn., Oxford, 1967), pp. 1255--60; McCarthy, Reading the
Morte Darthur, p. 8; Felicity Riddy, Sir Thomas Malory (New York, 1987), pp. 23, 103; August J. App, Lancelot in English Literature:
His Role and Character (New York, 1965), pp. 102--12. See also The Book of the Knight of the Tower, tr. William Caxton (Early Eng.
Text Soc., New York, 1971), pp. 168--72.

(11.)Larry D. Benson, Malory's Morte Darthur (Cambridge, Ma., 1976), pp. 142--62. Henry VIII, who planned to divorce Catherine of
Aragon, used this language in his courtship of Anne Boleyn. Ceremonial display was also put on by him and other monarchs to
impress visitors with the power and wealth of their kingdoms: see Christopher Dean, Arthur of England: English Attitudes to King
Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table in the Middle Ages and the Renaissance (Toronto, 1987), p. 41.

(12.)A Medieval Woman's Mirror of Honor, pp. 109--13; Ann Rosalind Jones, 'Nets and Bridles: Early Modern Conduct Books and
Sixteenth-Century Women's Lyrics', in The Ideology of Conduct: Essays on Literature and the History of Sexuality, ed. Nancy
Armostrong and Leonard Tennenhouse (New York, 1987), p. 43; Baldesar Castiglione, The Book of the Courtier, tr. George Bull
(repr., New York, 1988), pp. 260--2; Les Enseignements, pp. 80--1; see also supra, p. 655, n. 3.

(13.)Ives, Anne Boleyn, pp. 32, 35, 87--8, 97--8, 368. These two examples highlight how Ives, having defined courtly love narrowly to
follow twelfth-century literary convention, then refers to romantic and carnal relationships as courtly that do not meet the constraints
of his definition.
(14.)Ibid., pp. 85--7. Two who defended her character were Cranmer and William Latimer: see Burnet, loc. cit.; Maria Dowling (ed.)
'William Latymer's Chronickille of Anne Bulleyne', in Camden Miscellany (4th ser., vol. xxxix, London, 1990), pp. 62--3; Cal. S. P.
Spain, IV, ii, ii. 1123 (p. 788), for example; Warnicke, Rise and Fall of Anne Boleyn, pp. 166--8.

(15.)For my discussion of these incidents, see ibid., pp. 211--13. The letters have been reprinted several times. See, for instance,
George Cavendish, The Life of Cardinal Wolsey, ed. George Singer (2nd edn., London, 1827), App., pp. 451--60.

(16.)Ives, Anne Boleyn, p. 365, and id., 'Fall of Anne Boleyn Reconsidered', 655; see also supra, pp. 655, n. 3, 656, n. 2.

(17.)Les Enseignements d'Anne de France, pp. 11--25, 35--37, 80--1; Castiglione, Courtier, pp. 260--2.

(18.)Ives, Anne Boleyn, p. 21; Warnicke, Rise and Fall of Anne Boleyn, pp. 12--13; for Norris, see Dictionary of National Biography,
s.v. In 'The Fall of Anne Boleyn Reconsidered', 651, Ives dismisses William Brereton as a 'gallant' around Anne partially on the basis
of his age, 'nearly fifty'.

(19.)Warnicke, 'Anne Boleyn Revisited', 953--4, and ead., 'Family and Kinship Relations at the Henrician Court'.

(20.)Ibid.; J. S. Cockburn, A History of English Assizes, 1558--1714 (Cambridge, 1972), pp. x--xii, 1--23, 49. Normally the accused in
these trials were held in prison, as was Anne Boleyn, for only a few weeks.

(21.)Bernard, 'Fall of Anne Boleyn', 605.

(22.)Loc. cit.; Ives, Anne Boleyn, p. 365, n. 20, suggests that the conversation with Norris must have been acrimonious enough to be
overheard by others, primarily because her own vice-chamberlain referred to it in a letter independently of Kingston. Perhaps she or
her almoner had told him about it. The constable's letters do not reveal meetings between her and the other two accused men,
William Brereton and her brother, George, Lord Rochford.

(23.)Bernard, 'Fall of Anne Boleyn: A Rejoinder', 665; Ives 'Fall of Anne Boleyn Reconsidered', 658; see also T. B. Pugh in Welsh
Historical Review, xiv (1988--9), 639--40.

(24.)Warnicke, Rise and Fall of Anne Boleyn, pp. 179--82; L[etters and] P[apers, Foreign and Domestic of the Reign of Henry VIII],
ed. J. S. Brewer et al. (21 vols., London, 1862--1932), vii. 1060, 1369, 1425, 1482, 1483, viii. 896, 1104--5, ix. 566, x. 25.

(25.)De Carles, Epistre, ll. 239--60, 679--1038.

(26.)Ives, 'Fall of Anne Boleyn Reconsidered', 663--4, maintains that Cromwell's disagreement with Anne was basically over the
question of Mary's rights to the succession. It seems disingenuous to claim that Cromwell broke his alliance with Anne in April 1536
because of her opposition to Mary's pretentions to the throne, since it is well known that only two months later, in June 1536, he
harassed this princess into submitting to her father's royal supremacy and accepting her own illegitimacy, which at this stage barred
her from the succession.

(27.)Bernard, 'Fall of Anne Boleyn: A Rejoinder', 671; LP, x. 908; Cal. S. P. Spain, V, ii. 55 (pp. 127--8).

(28.)LP, x. 1047; Cal. S. P. Spain, V, ii. 54 (p. 121).

(29.)Warnicke, Rise and Fall of Anne Boleyn, 191--4, In 'Stress, Faction and Ideology in Early-Tudor England', Historical Journal,
xxxiv (1991), 198, Ives points out that a letter of 3 March from Chapuys mentioning the miscarriage was miscalendared and should
have been dated 3 February. Even if Chapuys did know about the miscarriage earlier than 10 February, the date I accepted, my
conclusions are not overturned. Cromwell certainly kept the miscarriage secret for several days after it had occurred on, probably, as
I conjecured, 19 January. On 29 January, when Chapuys heard rumours that the King had been bewitched into the marriage with
Anne, I argued that the miscarriage must have already occurred. Whether Chapuys learned about it five or twelve days after it
happened does not affect the more important issue that he learned about it well after the fact. It comes as a surprise then to find Ives,
in 'The Fall on Anne Boleyn Reconsidered', 659, asserting that my 'redating of Anne's 1536 miscarriage derives from an error in the
Calendar of State Papers Spanish', concerning the 3 February letter.

(30.)Bernard, 'Fall of Anne Boleyn', 586--7; Winifred Schleiner, 'The Nexus of Witchcraft and Male Impotence in Renaissance
Thought and its Reflection in Mann's Doktor Faustus', Journal of English and Germanic Philology, lxxxiv (1985), 166--87; George L.
Kittredge, Witchcraft in Old and New England (repr., New York, 1958), p. 113; John Ponet, A Short Treatise of Politic Power, 1556
(Menston, Yorks., 1970), sig. Kiiii.

(31.)Thomas Cooper, The Mystery of Witch-Craft (London, 1617), pp. 123--4; The Malleus Maleficarum of Heinrich Kramer and
James Sprenger, ed. M. Summers (New York, 1971), p. 113.

(32.)Cal. S. P. Spain, ii. 43, Displaying some misunderstanding of the history of witchcraft, Bernard, 'Fall of Anne Boleyn', 586,
queries why, if she were a witch, she did not use her powers to 'beget' a healthy child. In fact, the devil and his agents were thought
capable of interfering with normal childbirth, but not of creating perfect life.

(33.)Jean Donnison, Midwives and Medical Men: A History of Inter-Professional Rivalries and Women's Rights (New York, 1977), pp.
1--9. Ives, 'Fall of Anne Boleyn Reconsidered', 656, doubts that the Countess, who was her friend, would have revealed derogatory
information about Anne; but as a witness to the birth, she would have had no choice. Bernard, 'Fall of Anne Boleyn', 598, n. 1, agrees
with Ives and suggests that Anne, the daughter of the Countess, may have been named in memory of the dead Queen. Since
godparents named the infants at their christenings, the sympathy of the Countess could have played little part in the naming of her
child. It was this custom that led some families (at the whim of godparents) to have two children called by the same first name.

(34.)For the indictments, see Charles Wriothesley, Chronicle, ed. W. D. Hamilton (2 vols., Camden Soc., 2nd. ser., vols. xi--xii, 1875-
-7), i. 189--226; see also Warnicke, Rise and Fall of Anne Boleyn, pp. 203--4, 215, 301, n. 50; Malleus Maleficarum, pp. 25--55;
Bernard, 'Fall of Anne Boleyn: A Rejoinder', 667; D. F. S. Thomson (ed.), Erasmus and Cambridge (Toronto, 1963), pp. 103--7.

(35.)Warnicke, Rise and Fall of Anne Boleyn, p. 215.

(36.)Ives, 'Fall of Anne Boleyn Reconsidered', 652.

(37.)Warnicke, Rise and Fall of Anne Boleyn, pp. 57--8, 212--13, 241.

Copyright: COPYRIGHT 1993 Oxford University Press

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Citação da fonte (MLA 8)
Warnicke, Retha M. "The fall of Anne Boleyn revisited." The English Historical Review, vol. 108, no. 428, 1993, p. 653+. Gale
Academic OneFile, https://link.gale.com/apps/doc/A14374151/AONE?u=capes&sid=AONE&xid=44c8e2f7. Accessed 16 Nov.
2020.
Número do documento Gale: GALE|A14374151