Dan Snow's History Hit - Henry VIII and Anne Boleyn

Episode Date: September 20, 2023

This is the story of Henry VIII and Anne Boleyn as you've never heard it before. From their childhoods and courtship through to their union and Anne's brutal execution, we'll peel back layers of historical myth to find out how this marriage changed England forever.Dan is joined by the Tudor historians John and Julia guy, authors of Hunting the Falcon: Henry VIII, Anne Boleyn and the Marriage That Shook Europe, to examine one of the most famous and consequential marriages in history.Produced by James Hickmann and edited by Ella Blaxill.Discover the past on History Hit with ad-free original podcasts and documentaries released weekly presented by world-renowned historians like Dan Snow, Suzannah Lipscomb, Lucy Worsley, Matt Lewis, Tristan Hughes and more. Get 50% off your first 3 months with code DANSNOW. Download the app or sign up here.PLEASE VOTE NOW! for Dan Snow's History Hit in the British Podcast Awards Listener's Choice category here. Every vote counts, thank you!We'd love to hear from you! You can email the podcast at [e-mail] can take part in our listener survey here.

Hi everyone, welcome to Dan Snow's History Hit. This is the story of Henry VIII and Anne Boleyn as you have never heard it before. It's so exciting. This is Henry as an insecure man, desperate for the love he'd felt from his mother, very aware of the generations of civil wars that had so recently ended, feeling insecure on his throne and above all desperate for a male heir and also a victim of the information that he received from courtiers in this complex web who all were settling their own scores, all had their own agenda.

And then it's a portrait of Anne as well, a very brilliant young woman, astonishing access to power and influence in France, a really extraordinary political education there. How she arrived at court in the early 1520s. An observer wrote that she was the perfect woman courtier. Her energy and vitality made her the centre of attention at any social gathering. But as John and Julia Guy, two superb Tudor historians have recently uncovered,

she was more than just the perfect woman courtier. She was the perfect courtier, full stop. She would not become Henry's lover and wife after a few years at court, but she was an essential counsellor. They described her almost as his first minister. Their relationship and their eventual marriage was an expression of England's strategic orientation. Europe at the time was divided, finely balanced between two powers. The Empire, one of my favourite European polities in history, great name, the Empire, led by Charles V, covering much of southern Italy, Spain, central Europe, up into the low countries, and then France under King Francis. Anne had spent her formative years in France. She

loved France. She represented the French. She was effectively the French ambassador in the British court, fighting the French corner. But she also became Henry's wife. She was supposed to renew his dynasty, bear him a nursery full of lusty, fat-limbed sons. Now John and Julia Guy, who've taught and written dozens of Tudor history books between them, have unlocked wonderful new research. And they've written a fabulous book called Hunting the Falcon, Henry VIII and Anne Boleyn, the marriage that shook Europe. And they show how Anne, a commoner, married Henry. And she was crowned, not as a consort, as a monarch. She sat on the same throne that recently King Charles III sat on in Westminster Abbey.

She was crowned with St Edward's crown, not the consort's crown, the crown of the sovereign. She was crowned as an equal to Henry. Was this the dawn of a new age a new age of co rulers well things didn't quite work out as you may well know this is the story of how anne berlin shaped the course of the nation she rose she eventually catastrophically fell and henry swore he'd never trust another woman again. Enjoy. T-minus 10. The atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima. God save the king.

No black-white unity till there is first and black unity. Never to go to war with one another again. And lift off, and the shuttle has cleared the tower. John and Julia, thank you very much for coming on the podcast. You're very welcome. We're delighted to be here. We're going to look at the backstory, as you guys do in your brilliant book. I mean, Henry VIII's backstory is pretty well known to this podcast and history fans generally. Take us through the young prince to the young king in his prime. I think if you look at Henry, yes, it's well known, but people tend to look at episodes rather than looking at

the whole thing. And with Henry VIII, I think there are two or three things that you have to bear in mind before he comes to the throne. The first is his relationship with his mother. He is the spare, not the heir. He really didn't think he would become king. And so he has those early years with Elizabeth of York, growing up with his two sisters, Margaret, who marries James IV of Scotland, Mary, who we like the best, who married the King of France, searched for for the rest of his life, because he always wanted, if you like, the love he felt he needed, the love he wanted. So you've got Elizabeth. And when she dies, the shock of it stays with him. And he never, ever forgets how he felt. Henry VIII, you know, people tend to think he's a bit of a monster, etc, etc. But there's a lot more to him than that. And when you think of his relationship with Elizabeth,

how he can say later on that if somebody says something that reminds him, it's like a raw wound. It's like an open sore. He's still got it. It's like pulling off an elastoplast and the wound hasn't healed beneath. Well, it's very interesting, Julia. You're making him out as a kind of romantic. I guess we associate him with womanising because of his number of wives, but actually he was quite different to his grandfather at the fourth or Charles II, was he? I mean, he was looking for love. Oh, I think so. I think so. If you actually look at him, he's not this great superstar. He's not like Francis I, who's got the proverbial woman in every little hamlet town, etc., etc. He's not like that. He doesn't go from affair to affair to affair to affair. That's not Henry. He's actually a fairly faithful husband, rather like his father. Henry VII was faithful to Elizabeth of York, and Henry is the same. Okay, he has the odd mistress. He's got Elizabeth Blunt, by whom he has his illegitimate

son. He's got Mary Boleyn, Anne's sister. He may have somebody else a bit later on, but he's not flitting from one bed to another. He's not. He is a faithful husband on the whole. There's certainly something that he's looking for and he's not getting. And of course, one of the things when we got into this, of course, Anne's backstory is a very crucial part of our story. But when Henry first does notice Anne, I mean, I've been teaching this for 40 years before we started working on this book. And it never really occurred to me to ask till we started this, how was it that Anne comes back from that French experience just before Christmas of 1521? And it takes Henry, you know, the best part of, well, over four years to even really notice her. And that's when we first got the idea of France being, if you like, some sort of trigger.

being, if you like, some sort of trigger. And then, of course, it dawns on you that because at that time, the switch was away from what we call the Anglo-Habsburg alliance, that is with then the Emperor Charles V, who was King of Spain. He was also the Duke of Burgundy. By Burgundy, we don't mean where Burgundy is now in France. We mean what's essentially Belgium, what was left of the old Burgundian Empire. Also quite important as a subset of the story is that then Antwerp was, if you like, the great Northern European metropolis for trade and credit, which was so important to London. And London was almost a sort of satellite of Antwerp. That becomes quite important later in the story. But in terms of Henry's character, this is a guy who is so potentially powerful. He certainly, by the 1530s, when the monastic lands come into the crown, he's one of the wealthiest kings, if not the wealthiest

king, in terms of the realizable assets and cash flow. But this guy is so personally insecure. But this guy is so personally insecure. And there's this evolving narcissism the skin of his teeth, and he held it practically by his fingernails. And when Henry VIII was a little boy, he saw that in action. When he was about, I can't remember now, about three, I think, there was a rebellion, the Perkin Warbet rebellion, and little Henry was rushed off with Elizabeth of York to the safe walls, behind the safe walls of the Tower of London. So he saw what a rebellion can do. And he also, of course, was dragged out and had to ride this wonderful war horse through the streets of London. He's three at the time, to be shown as the Duke of York, because somebody was pretending to be the Duke of York. And this is a little three-year-old on a great big war horse. We're not talking Shetland ponies here. We're talking great big war horses. And he controlled that beast and he waved to the crowds and he was wonderful.

And he sees the way his father rules. And his father rules with a mixture of fear because you may get chopped or fear because you might get ruined through fines. And he has these two henchmen, really, Empson and Dudley, who go out and traipse at everything, trawl through all archives to find minor little infringements of laws that you might have made 50 million years ago. And they can now be dredged up and you can be threatened with a massive fine. So Henry VIII sees how his father rules. And he sees how his father never feels 100% safe. And there's that, I think, that goes through his life, wouldn't you say?

Yes. He's always on the lookout for some sort of opposition, even when he's not there. But that was so with Henry VII very much so. I mean, when Elizabeth York died, Henry VII, then Henry the future eighth, was the heir. He was brought to the male side of the court. He was basically watched by his father. He was kept in an innermost part of the King's Privy Chamber. If he wanted to go out, he went through a door that was essentially policed. This is the sort of the world people in Calais having, you know, when they got a little bit tipsy in the guard room in Calais, they were talking about the succession

and said, it's not going to be the young Henry. No. Don't think it's going to be him. Anybody but. Could be the Duke of Buckingham. It could be, you know, X, Y, or Z. What Henry also learns, and I think it's important for our story,

and this had come from his father, that you're not actually secure, never mind Bosworth, never mind essentially, you know, more than 20 odd years of Henry VII's semi-police state. You're not actually secure until you yourself have married and had an heir. And that is why it was so important to Henry's psychology two years after he marries Catherine of Aragon. They do have a son, the little Prince Henry, who just lives just a few days, couple of weeks, and then dies, which of course was an absolutely phenomenal blow. And after that, to close the loop that I started when I entered the conversation, when he meets Anne, of course, Catherine by then is older, if you like, flabbier,

as we know from her. She hasn't had a pregnancy for a while. Henry is having the equivalent of the male sort of midlife crisis, an adolescent marriage. These days, we would say they were too young. They didn't really know each other, even though Catherine had been around for a while and previously married to Prince Arthur. But by the time that Henry meets Anne, he's looking for something new. He's looking for the love he always thinks he needed, the love he really wants. But he's also looking for somebody who is jointly invested in his enterprise. Not just a trophy wife, but a clever woman

who is also invested in his enterprise. And of course, that's again where the French side of things comes in. It's the 1520s. Henry's having his midlife crashes, but he's still outwardly beautiful, athletic. He's a hunter. He's a dancer. Very impressive. Like many people, he's got internal crushing insecurities. But let's come to Anne's backstory because you've mentioned her a couple of times and it's so interesting to hear that she was a fellow traveller on an intellectual level as well as a physical one. Talk to me about

Anne. Where does she come from and what's going on with her in France? Oh, I think that's really key and central to our whole book, actually, because what happens to her in France colours her life. I mean, we very much believe that character is so often formed in childhood and adolescence. And you can see what happens to Anne in France reflected completely in what she does when she comes back to England and in her beliefs. Well, the Boleyns are, if you like, born to marry upwards. The Boleyns were almost like a family firm. The most important founder of the firm was Anne's great-grandfather, Sir Geoffrey Boleyn, who was a mayor of London, very successful merchant, became effectively a banker in his later years. He married upwards into the peerage. And then

after that, you get the succeeding generations. For this reason, Thomas Boleyn, who has got a position at Henry's court and is used as a diplomat, he's a fluent French speaker. He gets Anne first a position at the court of Margaret of Austria, which is in Mechelen, which in the French is Moline. Anne of Margaret's court also is sometimes in Brussels. She's there for almost a year. She almost perfects her French. She learns courtly manners.

But in 1513, because of the changes in the European scene and Henry falls out big time with the Habsburgs at that moment, she's moved to the court of France and arrives, we think, just shortly after Mary Tudor and Henry's younger sister became Queen of France for a little while. She's found a position in the court of Queen Claude, who is the young wife of Francis I, very much the same age as Anne, actually. And she's got a position as a demoiselle. Now, this was the most exciting area in many ways to research because what you could actually say about Anne's experiences in France in those seven years,

because she was there for seven years, the best attempt before we sort of turned our hand to this was Eric Ives' wonderful book on the life and death of Anne Boleyn, but where the French experience is covered in just 10 pages. By basically trawling the French archives, trawling all the local and archaeological 19th century publications that we could find, French municipal archives, all of that sort of stuff. By discovering an independent itinerary where Queen Claude was, there her women were, there the demoiselles were. And we were able to remove all this nonsense that's accumulated, a romantic legend about Anne owning property in France and being some sort of descendant of an old Norman knight.

Where Claude was, then there was Anne. And we were able to work out an itinerary of her movements in France, what she did, who she would have been with, because if she was with Claude, she was with those people. The demoiselles sat on cushions in the Queen Chambre de de Retreat or were close to the Queen. They were always nearby. The bottom line is that in this way, Anne was able to see really powerful women, Francis's mother, Louise of Savoy, Francis's sister, Marguerite of Angoulême, in action. They were allowed a far greater say in political life. Louise of Savoy conducted an independent diplomacy all over Europe,

quite separately from her son. Marguerite van Golem did the same, if on a smaller scale. Queen Claude was especially active, as was indeed Louise of Savoy, in things like religious reform and protecting the early naissance French reformers. If we just sort of condense it to two particular examples. First of all, in 1517, Anne is present with Queen Claude when they all go to Greta Angoulême's country estate at Argentin, and it's there that Frances makes Marguerite Duke of Bury in her own right. In her own right, she has this ducal peerage. She can sit on the Privy Council. She can sit on the King's Secret Council. She gets estates. And the grant specifically specifies that she has all this in her own right. And although she's married at the time, the husband has no stake in this whatsoever. Her children can inherit it and so on. Well, Henry VIII. Again, the male title, you see. It's a male title.

The grant is modelled very directly on a template of Marguerite's ennoblement as Duke of Bury. And what's more, it's on the very same day as the next ceremony, which is the ratification of the most important Anglo-French treaty ever in English history so far. There's since, you know, the Norman Conquest, a treaty of mutual aid in which Francis and Henry agree not just to support each other in any sort of moral and more general sense, but actually to provide offensive and defensive support, including arms, soldiers, ships, and so on in defense of the other country if they're attacked. And the guest of honor at Anne's ceremony as Marquess de Pembroke

is the French ambassador. And then the second example would be that after the Battle of Marignano, Louise of Savoy, Marguerite, Claude, and with Anne go south to meet Francis and welcome him back from Italy into France. Along the way, they decide to visit the various shrines in the south of France of Mary Magdalene, who's a very popular saint in France. And they're curious about these legends. And they go to St. Maxim and La Sainte-Bombe, and they see the grotte and the shrine. And afterwards, Louise is very curious about these miracle stories of this extraordinary saint who can save all sorts of people, you know, even if they've lived lives of debauchery or committed murder and whatnot. She can sort of press a button and that's all okay. And she called in expert help. And surprise,

surprise, that expert help turns out to end up with Jacques Lefebvre de Tartel, the most important of the leading reformers in France. He had protégés who were also in the circle, Denis Brissonnet, the brother of Guillaume Brissonnet, who becomes then the leader of the Cercle de Meaux, it's the French reforming circle. They are not Lutherans. They want to reform, if you like, the over-ritualization of the Catholic Church and bring it truer to the Gospels and back to the spirit of the original Testament or the Gospels in the Acts of the Apostles. But they are not Lutherans. They are interested in religious reform and welfare, all of those things. Surprise, surprise, all the things that Anne is later

interested in. She's hearing these conversations on her cushion. In future, she always looks to France. Her library is packed with French books, especially French religious books. This is remarked on in England after she gets back. People like the wonderful James Carley, expert on Henry VIII's library and books, shows exactly which books by these particular Lefebvre's printers and authors ended up in Henry's library. Probably there are more objects connected with Anne that still survive given Henry's destruction of almost everything to do with her, including portraits, letters, and so on. The books actually got into Henry's library. So all this almost sort of 100 years of argument about exactly what sort of religion Anne had. Was she a Catholic? Was she

a Protestant? What sort of reformer was she? You can answer this contextually in relation to the backstory. Well, thank you for doing that. So I think I know the answer to this. So France and Henry's diplomatic posture towards France is essential to starting that relationship. As you hinted earlier, they did know each other. So Anne returns from France, gets a position at the English court, and it isn't love at first sight, is it? Well, is it love? You're rather begging a question there, aren't you? Henry certainly doesn't fall for her hook, line and sinker, if you like, when he first sees her. I mean, she is a lady of the court. But when things go sour with the Habsburg and he's turning towards France. Suddenly everything French is fashionable and Anne is fashionably chic, speaks perfect French. And Henry fancies her like mad.

She's the epitome of everything French. And also she's invested in his enterprise. I mean, the French ambassador will later say, and Anne treated these French ambassadors, a succession of ambassadors as personal friends. And Anne treated these French ambassadors, a succession of ambassadors, as personal friends. She would come down from her apartments down to the stairs at Whitehall or wherever to greet them and kiss them on the cheek in the French manner. That was thought to be rather scandalous that she would be so familiar with these people. I think it's Jean du Bellé, one of her really favourite French ambassadors, who says that you don't need a French ambassador in England. You've got Anne. I mean, she's the best possible advertisement for France that you could have.

And my master, the king, that's Francis, owes really everything to Anne. I mean, they were terribly pleased, actually. They saved an awful lot of money because there's this wonderful dispatch in which somebody says, well, you know, this is great. We used to spend a fortune bribing English nobles to try and support us at the court of Henry VIII. And now we've got Anne. We've saved a mint. It's great. I mean, this is where the research again kicked in because if you're going to research Henry and Anne, I mean, obviously, there's a limit to the number

of new things you're going to find in the British archives, although there were new things to find in the London archives, mostly in the financial accounts. But we'd somehow latched onto this right at the time that we were pitching the proposal. And in fact, researching the French archives, once again, it absolutely paid dividends. I mean, there are hundreds of French diplomatic manuscripts in the Bibliothèque Nationale in Paris, but there are also a run of documents in the Archive Nationale, that's the French National Archives. But also, of course, still, although they've moved them recently to a Paris suburb, there is tons of stuff regarding usually more formal things like treaties, including treaties involving England and France that are now lost in England. Henry's copies were lost, but Francis's copies survive, which were in the basement of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs just by the side of the Seine, which have now got moved to a Paris suburb.

And of course, we started this really just as the pandemic started. And we have to say in the gold star to the French archivist because they were absolutely brilliant they digitized loads of our stuff. You're listening to Dan Snow's History we're hearing all about Anne Billion and Henry VIII they feature prominently our new book history hit Miss Eleni we talk about Anne's trial how her brother humiliated Henry VIII by saying he had little potency in the bedroom department but we also bring in lots of other stories and facts and figures from other parts of history. Was Napoleon really short, for example? Who said, pardon me, sir, I didn't mean to, just before they were

executed? And when was the oldest known shark attack? History Hit Miscellany, available on our website, coming to all good bookshops soon. More Henry and Anne after this. coming to all good bookshops soon. More Henry and Anne after this. I'm Matt Lewis. And I'm Dr. Alan Orjanaga. And in Gone Medieval, we get into the greatest mysteries.

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Rebellions. And Crusades Find out who we really were By subscribing to Gone Medieval from History Hit Wherever you get your podcasts The story of Henry and Anne has been couched in different ways over the centuries as one of sort of witchcraft but sex and attraction and affairs of state being dependent on Henry's sort of animal sexual desire for this person in fact we're saying something quite different it strikes me and actually this should be equally a story of the role of a powerful intelligent woman at court

have sort of lost impact on policy making, on diplomacy and on religious matters. That story is then interweaved with one of their physical relationship as well. That's absolutely true. You've just given us a sort of brief synopsis. You have. In fact, this is basically a brief synopsis of the book. Yeah, that's exactly what it does. Yes. And when Wolsey falls, it's common to think that Thomas Cromwell suddenly magically appears and becomes Henry's chief minister. No. If you have a chief minister after Wolsey, it's Anne. Ministers would report to her. They would have dispatches sent to her. Henry would send ambassadors to give their reports to her even before they gave them to him.

He sent state papers to Hever while drawing the sweat, which was the equivalent of a pandemic. It was a pulmonary disease, which you caught rather like COVID actually, although it's not COVID related. This was a very ironic because we were writing this during the lockdowns. There was lockdowns and social distancing was discovered at the court of Henry VIII. And Anne went back to Hever. But of course, he was sending state papers down to Hever to vet. The fascinating thing, though, of course, is that that's while the joint enterprise is in progress, while they're both working to get the divorce from Catherine of Aragon that Henry needs in order legally to marry Anne. But once an annulment, once a divorce

is obtained, of course, not with papal consent in defiance of the Pope and Henry broke with Rome. But after that, and once Anne becomes queen, yes, you see her doing quite a number of the things that she aspired to do, especially in religion and social welfare. But the sort of key political things increasingly, Henry asserts control. It was one thing to do it in the joint enterprise, but once she is queen, and he's got what he wants, and he's sleeping with her, and, you know, I mean, she was pregnant with Elizabeth. I mean, Henry wasn't initially angry about that, rather like Francis I, whose first two children were daughters. Henry said, okay, well, we're still relatively young. It can still happen again. It's when it happens three times as it happened with Francis's wife, Claude.

In Anne's case, a daughter, a miscarriage stroke, stillbirth, and the third time a miscarriage. And he's more interested in asserting control and it becomes much more difficult for Anne to get her way. Meanwhile, Cromwell has these oceanic ambitions. And I actually, Dermot McCullough, who did this magisterial biography of Cromwell not so very long ago, he was the first person to really figure, as indeed is the case, he's absolutely right, that Anne and Cromwell were closer to being enemies than allies,

even though they had many of the same religious takes and the same outlooks on things like the script in English. Cromwell had been, in his earlier life, apart from working for the Fresco Balgi Bank in Florence, he had worked for the Merchant Adventurers of London in Antwerp in the cloth trade. Even after he comes back to England, until he becomes totally involved in working for Woolsey, he's got, I suppose, what today would be called a side hustle in cloth exporting and in the Antwerp market, which he knows intimately. And he knows the economic interests of the country, as opposed to, if you like, Henry's foreign policy ambitions, is based on the Habsburg alliance because of the trade and banking connections with Charles V's dominions.

And in fact, one of the things that really struck me, actually, when I was looking over the inventory of the property that Cromwell had in his house at the Austin Fries, he's got a portrait of Charles V, but not one of Henry. And Charles V, 30 years ago, when I used to work with Geoffrey Elton, and his seminar was going strong in Cambridge, Geoffrey was hugely taken with the fact, because he didn't like Moore very much, that Charles V sent a secret letter to Moore thanking him for his good offices on behalf of Catherine of Aragon. A letter Moore, I have to say, refused to receive, although he was told about it. But actually, Charles, in the period that we're dealing with, also wrote to Cromwell saying, well, I really appreciate what you're doing, you know, for the

imperial cause in England. And Cromwell then tells the imperial ambassador in reply, well, yes, I'm doing my best. And also, I'm going to make sure that George Boleyn, Anne's brother, whom she uses as an absolutely key cog in the diplomatic network. And he goes to France on six missions. He says that I make sure that Anne never gets to send George to France, to France ever again. I was only going to throw in something that I think is very important that we didn't say. And that was Anne's coronation. Because Anne was crowned as a reigning monarch, not as a consort. She sat in St. Edward's chair, the very chair that Charles was crowned in just a little while ago. And when the crown was placed on her head by Cranmer, it almost makes me cry actually, because I think it's so important. The crown that was placed on her head was St. Edward's crown.

The sovereign's crown. The sovereign's crown. Not the consort's crown. And there is perhaps a possibility, and I think she thought that this could happen, that Henry might actually, from the beginning, have joint sovereignty with her. We have, sadly, only one page of his revisions of the coronation oath. So maybe he might allow her more say in the running of the country than actually he did. Whether he would have done that, of course, knowing Henry who liked to keep control is another matter. But I think Anne, from the beginning,

really did want to play her part in, if you like, transforming England. And expected to do so. And expected to do so. On the lines of what she had seen in France. And in fact, I think we sort of, sometimes you can't say things in print that you sort of suspect or have a hunch about because you just don't have the evidence. And the problem with this revision of the coronation oath is that we only have the first page surviving. We don't know what was in the rest of it. But there is mileage in

the theory, which we don't really push in the book because it's a little bit too speculative. But there's mileage in the theory that Henry planned a joint coronation for himself and Anne. That had been done before. And of course, he'd been crowned jointly with Catherine of Aragon. She was crowned as a consort. So this was going to be a fresh start with a joint coronation and possibly a sort of much greater share in a more formal sense for Anne as queen. And what got left over from this, it couldn't happen because there wasn't the time to arrange it. Anne was already heavily pregnant. It was remarked on by those who didn't like her that she was bulging.

She processed from Westminster Hall. There just wasn't time to arrange it. But what got left of all that was the full coronation panoply of the Cosmati pavement, the coronation chair, Sir Edward's crown, and the full whack of four or five days celebrations afterwards. Well, you mentioned her being pregnant there. It strikes me that it's, again, the complex nature of power in a court. Her career as a statesperson was destroyed by her need to make babies, by the kind of baby-making business. And physically, she's off her feet. She's going through the trauma of difficult childbirth, but also of losing children, late-term pregnancies. This is where the more traditional role of

queenship, I guess, takes over and indeed where criticism of those arrayed against her can really bite because she's not doing that kind of more primeval thing of just producing an heir for Henry. That does matter terribly. And I think Anne is constantly vulnerable because of that. And you can't get away from it. But she's not constantly pregnant, of course. And remember, she's only queen for three years before she's executed. So she's not sort of producing child after child after child, not like Catherine, who had more failed pregnancies. But certainly biology is terribly important. And she worried about it. And she worried so much about it. She actually said at the beginning, during the joint enterprise, when they were trying to get this divorce, she kept saying, look, we've got to get on with it.

We've got to get on with it. What about my fecundity? That's right. Getting older. It did make her vulnerable and could have a sharp tongue. And she could become quickly jealous, unlike Queen Claude, who just knew you tolerated Francis's mistress as it went with the territory. But she's got sight. If Henry looks at another woman, even only fleetingly and possibly without intent,

she can get a little bit anxious. And there are instances where that happens, which we described. But of course, far from basically making this some sort of harridan, actually, we think it reflects her vulnerability, because this was not an equal relationship in the sense that she was a commoner. And she married, you know, a king. I mean, okay, Elizabeth Woodville had done that. She'd married Edward IV, but she produced, I mean, plenty of babies.

All the time. And so the fecundity protected her. Also, what you've just mentioned, Dan, it also throws an aspect into light of the relationship, which, although this is often depicted as a marvelous love story, and on Henry's side, it certainly began that way in a very big way. On Anne's side, we're not entirely sure. What she wrote to Henry, although it still survives, for example, when she sent him this little message in a book of hours during their initial courtship, she writes, By daily proof you shall me find, to be to you both loving and kind.

And rather interestingly, she writes it beneath a depiction of the Annunciation, the angel Gabriel telling the Virgin Mary that she would bear a son. I mean, that tells you two things. One, what she's saying to him is, I'm saying to you that I'll be a dutiful wife, but I'm not committing myself quite yet to actually follow the passionate love that you're showing to me. It's also showing that this relationship at base is also, at least in part, transactional. I mean, basically, you give me your love, I give you the son.

What Henry wrote in the same book of ours. Yeah. His is such a contrast to Anne's. Anne's is a much more practical, almost, you know, love, serve and obey. But Henry writes in French, if you remember my love in your prayers, as strongly as I adore you, I shall hardly be forgotten, for I am yours, I shall hardly be forgotten, for I am yours, Henry R. always. He's besotted. She, by daily proof, you shall me find to be to you both loving and kind. There's a difference. And your listeners actually can all now see Henry's original 17 love letters to Anne on the Vatican Library webpage. They're beautifully digitized.

They are fabulous. I mean, they're not so easy to read, but Henry's hand, you soon get used to it. I mean, what they say is absolutely astonishing. The problem is we don't actually have her replies, even though much of the content of her replies can be deduced by inference from what Henry says in the next letter.

So in the end, is it ironically, Anne was right. Is it actually she realized this was transactional? Henry was blinded by love and passion. But in the end, whenans, Kings and Popes, who were rarely the best of friends, murder, rebellions, and crusades. Find out who we really were by subscribing to Gone Medieval from History Hit, wherever you get your podcasts. And, or as you could say, prediction came true, which is that Henry realised that he needed to move on. Up to a point. But what is interesting is that when Henry does decide that he needs to move on, it coincides with several things.

It coincides, firstly, with the international situation changing, he falls out with Francis I. He goes more towards Charles V, who, of course, is Catherine's nephew. By the time this happens, which is more or less the same time that Anne is about to be arrested, Catherine of Aragon is dead. And Charles was actually prepared to allow Anne to remain on the throne through gritted teeth, I think. Which very few people know. Providing she shut up about religious reform because he's an avid Catholic. But also, and here's your rub, also that she allowed Catherine's daughter, Mary, to be the rightful

heir. And that cuts out Elizabeth. And Anne would never do that. Anne is, I mean, she's born to marry up. She's born to think about dynasty. She thinks she's a dynast just as much as Henry. She would not cut off her daughter. So what we're also saying is that as with Henry and Anne first sort of getting together, there is an absolute symmetry between the final weeks of Anne's queenship and the international situation. Because once Catherine of Aragon is dead, Henry opens up a bidding war between Francis and Charles as to who's going to give me the most in return for my support. And of course, each of them wants Henry's support because Francis and Charles are more or less equally balanced. And especially Henry's cash

makes the difference and tips the scales. And so there's this bidding war that's going on all the way through. Henry is not decided. And we do a sort of, if you like, a countdown to disaster, in which almost day by day, how this situation is moving along. And it's absolutely plain, but right up till almost the eve of Anne's fall, the first arrests, Henry is still, he's undecided. They're going off the French and they're going off the French because the French won't support Henry sufficiently against the Pope, who has now not only excommunicated Henry from marrying Anne in defiance of the church and not getting a proper divorce by decree of the Church of Rome, and also this new Pope, Paul III, has declared Henry deprived of his kingdom and a heretic

and a schismatic. Now that sentence has not actually been officially published. It's been circulated amongst the courts of Europe. There are copies, you know, I mean, straight away in Paris, which you can see, but it's not publicly proclaimed. And that means it's not yet actually going to be enforced, but it's like a sword of Damocles over Henry's head. And then suddenly, just before Anne's fall, Charles, who is approaching Rome, he's marching up with his army up from the south of Italy and marching up towards Rome. Charles decides that he might get this sentence published by Paul and actually start to enforce it. And crucially, the English ambassador to Charles, who's then at Charles's court near Rome, writes to Henry and says, and the French, the French envoys in Rome are not opposing this.

Then there is fear. And if that fear was to be realized, he's better off allied to Charles than he is to front. But even then, he doesn't quite make the decision. What makes the decision is Cromwell suddenly uncovers these alleged sexual misdemeanors in Anne's privy chamber. Now, there's one thing that I should say about our book structurally and conceptually. If crucial parts of new activity are on Anne in France, on the French diplomacy and the international situation, the third is on the women in Anne's court, because nobody before has actually thought to look into who were these women? Were they Anne's supporters? Were they

Anne's enemies? Where did Cromwell get his information from? What was happening on Anne's side of the court? Was there really sex and sin going on on Anne's side of the court? When Anne was in France, she saw that the queens there manage their side of the court quite differently from what happened in England. In France, there was more intermingling of the sexes. They don't go into the bedchamber, but men could come in to meet the various demoiselles and the ladies, and there would be a bit of flirting and dancing. And it was courtly love. They always called it pastime. Wonderful word. And when she became queen, that's what she introduced here. In Catherine's time,

it wasn't exclusively female, but there were male attendants perhaps and ambassadors might come in, relatives might come in. But with Anne, there was far more to-ing and fro-ing. And there was the opportunity for those who were watching to say, what's going on here? It's certainly going to be something that isn't quite above board. The point about that is that Anne could not choose all of the women around her. This is terribly important. From day one, she has to have in her court women who, frankly, are her enemies. Some of them are career courtiers and they allied from one queen to another quite smoothly. Many of those had served Catherine for many years and saw Anne as the wicked witch of the West. Other women in that chamber were the wives perhaps of Henry's privy chamber members or some of his officials, such as Mary Kingston. Mary Kingston was the wife of the constable of the Tower, who Anne got to know very well in those last few days of her life. Sir William Kingston. And Mary Kingston was a complete supporter of Catherine. So you've got career courtiers. You've got people who are there because they are officials.

You've got some who Anne chooses who are her own relatives or supporters. Mary Howard, Mary Shelton, her own sister-in-law, Jane Boleyn. You've got those as well. But the point about it is that those women watched everything. And for some of them, they watched with disapproving eyes from day one. But once Henry has decided that maybe, or is toying with the idea of ditching Anne, he toys with that idea for a long time. He literally doesn't make his mind up until almost the last moment. Scandals can emerge. They're basically tittle-tattle. But if you've got somebody who wants to twist them, step in Thomas Cromwell, then there you go. What we found is that one of the women in Anne's chamber is Margaret Douglas, the King's niece. And she, it transpires, was conducting on Anne's watch a clandestine love affair with Thomas Howard. They were meeting in the room of Lady Boleyn when she wasn't there. Lady Boleyn is one of Anne's aunts. Anne seems to have aunts all over the show. But this particular aunt,

she loathed. It's actually infuriating because we tried and tried and tried to find out why she didn't get on with this woman. We could never find it, so we'll never know. But when Lady Boleyn, who seems to be some sort of policewoman of that side of the court, is away. Margaret Douglas and Thomas Howard nip into her room and there is a sex scandal. It does not surface till six weeks after Anne is executed. But then the two are arrested, sent to the tower. And if you read Thomas Howard's confession, what he actually says is that this had been going on for a year. So in other words, it had been going on while Anne was Queen. I don't for a moment believe she knew about it, but she should have done. If she was keeping proper control of her side of the court,

that wouldn't have happened. It enables you to document the potential extent, probably at its most extreme, of the sort of pastime and flirting that was happening on that Saturday. There is a letter sent to George Boleyn, because he's on one of his missions to France, essentially saying, think of all the fun you're missing here, you know, with pastime and dalliance in the Queen's Chamber, which is also, you know, quite revealing. To pin this down in a lot of detail is, of course, exceptionally difficult. But what is remarkable is that, or at least what was very gratifying for us, is we can build up these various components of support and opposition to Anne within her own chamber. We can document how a woman like Marjorie Horthman, who later married Michael Lister and was drawn by Holbein,

and many of these women were drawn by Holbein, and we can also identify who exactly was who. And many of these women were drawn by Holbein. And we can also identify who exactly was who. But Marjorie Horsman was one of Anne's close people early on. And she was a main source for Lady Lyle and Calais for news from Anne's chamber and so on. But in the last six to eight months of Anne's queenship, Marjorie Horsman, if she wants something, she turns to Cromwell. She doesn't turn to Anne. And she is named as a particular informant against Anne at the time of all of the trials. So this really changes the texture of what was going on here.

So Henry wants to ditch his French alliance. Cromwell brings him enough evidence to allow him to ditch his wife who embodies that alliance. Her uncle, Howard, Duke of Norfolk, having got her in trouble, is happy to step aside and watch his niece lose her head. She is executed, appropriately enough, by a Frenchman with a sword. A specially imported Frenchman who does it in the French way. I always thought it was a comfort thing. It's just nicer to have your head chopped off by a sword than an axe. But actually, your work has now given even more import and suggestion. So thank you for that. What was Henry's feelings when her head hit the turf on Tower Green as a husband, not as a strategist. Was he heartbroken? No. He really believed the charges against her. And especially the fact, the incest charge,

which brings in George, the brother, of course, was very, very clever. Incest was something that was absolutely abhorrent. And of course, it also means that Cromwell brings down George, who could have been a potential rival. He's often considered to be nothing more than a messenger. There's far more to George than meets the eye. And had Anne just been chopped or head sliced off, whichever way you want to think of it, and George had remained, he might well have plotted revenge. So Cromwell needs him gone too. But Henry actually writes a tragedy. Which he showed to the Bishop of Carlisle and was sort of brandishing round. Basically, this is a sort of account of what had happened. He genuinely believed the charge, never mind the incest,

never mind the adultery, but he believed all that. But he also genuinely believed a rumour from really Catherine's supporters that Anne had poisoned Catherine and intended to poison her daughter, Mary. He believed all that stuff. He believed himself totally vindicated by this shocking discovery, vowed never to trust anyone but himself in the future, especially not any woman, which is again quite sort of striking and quotable. But I think also, again, this is where control and vulnerability steps in. Because to those listening to all of this, what was going on in Anne's side of the court was apparently so heinous and extensive extensive that it was as if Henry

couldn't keep order in his own household. And of course, that in 16th century mindsets was a serious failure of rule. It was as if Henry wasn't fit to rule. And I feel, not just in my head, but in my heart, that they felt that way. It's because when I was working on Mary, Queen of Scots, you know, 20 years ago, and I discovered that Elizabeth had signed the warrant for Mary's death, but then recalled it and said, don't send it until I actually give you the okay to her secretary. I want to think about it a little bit more. But the Privy Council sent it anyway behind her back and didn't tell her actually until Mary was dead. Well, there was a trial afterwards in the Star Chamber of Elizabeth's secretary, William Davidson.

How would he let this warrant out of his possession? How was it that Elizabeth couldn't keep order in her own household? And Lord Lumley, who was an old peer of the realm, if you like, an ancient pedigree, he says, if she can't control her secretary and can't keep order in her own household, she's not fit to rule. And that is, I think, quite an important other dimension of looking at this. And we actually, although I don't know that everybody will read the book that way, it isn't exactly that we're expressing sympathy for Henry in his treatment of Anne really far from it, but we can sort of understand why it was that he came to

think that way, given the information feed that he was getting from Cromwell and others of Anne's enemies. What matters is keeping control, what is keeping power. This is sort of the moment when that character, which was sort of trying to outline a little bit at the beginning of the recording, those character failings, the narcissism, the insecurity, the desire for complete control, the insistence on obedience from both women and men, but especially from wives. I mean, Jane Seymour, the new wife, has only got to say, well, actually, isn't there something to be said for saving some of these monasteries? And he says, you talk like that, you'll end up like the queen before you, with your head chopped off. It was not for nothing

that her motto was bound to obey and serve. She knew exactly what to say. What a powerful combination you've both been. As powerful as Henry and Anne in the good years, when things were going well and they were steering European diplomacy in the direction they wanted it. What is the book called, everybody? Hunting the Falcon. Hunting the Falcon. Brilliant. The Falcon being Anne's badge, of course. Absolutely, John. Thank you very much for coming on the podcast. Thank you.

It's been a pleasure. Thanks for asking us, Dan. you