The Anne Boleyn Collection II: Anne Boleyn & the Boleyn Family (21 page)

1. Figure 20
   - St. Peter & St. Paul, Salle, Norfolk
   

That all sounds rather far-fetched, but reputable historian Retha Warnicke
⁵
also mentions witchcraft in her book on Anne. Warnicke writes that sodomy and incest were associated with witchcraft. Warnicke believes that the men executed for adultery with Anne were "libertines" who practised "buggery". In addition, of course, Anne and George were charged with incest. Warnicke also thinks that the rather lurid mentions in the indictments of Anne procuring the men and inciting them to have sexual relations with her was "consistent with the need to prove that she was a witch". She continues, saying that "the licentious charges against the queen, even if the rumours of her attempted poisonings and of her causing her husband's impotence were never introduced into any of the trials, indicate that Henry believed that she was a witch."
⁶
Now, Henry VIII may well have said that he had been "forced into this second marriage by sortilèges and charms",
⁷
but I don't for one second believe that Henry was convinced that Anne was a witch. If he had believed it, then surely Cromwell would have used this claim to get Henry's marriage to Anne annulled. If Anne was a witch, then it could have been said that Henry had been bewitched and tricked into the marriage, that the marriage was, therefore, invalid. Anne Boleyn was charged with adultery, with plotting the King's death and with committing incest with her brother, George Boleyn, Lord Rochford. There was no mention or suggestion of witchcraft or sorcery in the Middlesex or Kent indictments. What's more, at her trial, Anne was found guilty of committing treason against the King – again, no mention of witchcraft. Although witchcraft was not a felony or a crime punishable by death until the act of 1542, a suggestion of witchcraft could still have helped the Crown's case and served as propaganda. I believe that the details of the indictments were simply there for shock value, rather than to prove that Anne was a witch.

So, where does the whole witchcraft charge come from if it was not mentioned in 1536? Well, I think we can put some of the blame on the Catholic recusant Nicholas Sander who in 1585 described Anne Boleyn as having "a projecting tooth", six fingers on her right hand and "a large wen under her chin" – very witch-like! He also wrote that Anne miscarried "a shapeless mass of flesh" in January 1536. This "shapeless mass" was turned by historical fiction writer Philippa Gregory into "a monster", "a baby horridly malformed, with a spine flayed open and a huge head, twice as large as the spindly little body", and was used to back up the idea that Anne had committed incest and dabbled in witchcraft. However, Sander's words have to be judged as Catholic propaganda, as an attempt to denigrate Elizabeth I by blackening the name of her mother. Sander was only about six years of age when Anne died, so he could hardly have known her, and he was a priest, not a courtier, so would not have been privy to court gossip about Anne. None of Anne's contemporaries mention an extra finger, projecting tooth or wen; even Anne's enemy, Eustace Chapuys, describes her miscarriage as the loss of "a male child which she had not borne 3½ months". If the baby had been deformed, Chapuys would surely have mentioned this; he would also have recorded any physical deformities that Anne possessed. He nicknamed her "the concubine" and "the putain", or whore, so he wasn't afraid of saying what he thought.

While I cannot prove that Anne Boleyn was not a witch, I can cast doubt on this belief. Norah Lofts' claims can easily be refuted. Anne's mole was simply a mole. Her dog was named after Urian Brereton (brother of William Brereton, who gave the dog to Anne). Anne's mention of the weather in the Tower was simply the ramblings of a terrified and hysterical woman. Finally, the hare was simply a hare! As for Retha Warnicke's views, I have found no evidence to prove that the men executed in May 1536 were homosexual; and the only evidence for the deformed foetus is Nicholas Sander. Also, Henry's words concerning "sortilèges and charms" were more likely to have been bluster than a serious accusation. He also said that Anne had had over a hundred lovers and that she had tried to poison his son, Fitzroy, and his daughter, Mary. I believe this to be the bluster of an angry and defensive man, rather than something to take seriously.

In conclusion, witchcraft was not something that was linked to Anne Boleyn in the sixteenth century, so I feel that it is about time that people stopped talking about Anne and witchcraft in the same breath. Let's get the facts straight.

Notes and Sources

1 Mantel, "Anne Boleyn: Witch, Bitch, Temptress, Feminist."

2 Gregory, The Other Boleyn Girl.

3 Bevan, "Anne Boleyn and the Downfall of Her Family."

4 Lofts, Anne Boleyn.

5 Warnicke, The Rise and Fall of Anne Boleyn: Family Politics at the Court of Henry VIII.

6 Ibid., 231.

7 "Calendar of State Papers, Spain, Volume 5 Part 2: 1536-1538," 28.

16.
Anne Boleyn, Mary Boleyn and Little Henry Carey

I'm often asked about Anne Boleyn's relationship with her sister Mary and the claim made in the book
The Other Boleyn Girl
that Anne stole Mary's son, Henry Carey, from her.

Now, it's impossible to know exactly how close the sisters were and how their relationship was; we just don't have the evidence. What we do know is that they were relatively close in age, if you take 1501 as Anne's birthdate and 1499/1500 as Mary's. They would have also been educated together at home until Anne was sent to the Low Countries in 1513. Anne and Mary would surely have been playmates and friends, but we know nothing about that early sibling relationship; all we can do is guess.

In 1514, Mary Boleyn was chosen to accompany Mary Tudor, sister of Henry VIII, to France. Anne was also recalled, from the Low Countries, to serve Mary Tudor. It is likely that Anne arrived in France in late 1514, so the sisters would have spent a few months together serving Mary Tudor before the Queen went back to England in April 1515. We know that Anne stayed on in France to serve Francis I's wife, Queen Claude, but we do not know what happened to Mary Boleyn. It does appear, however, that the sisters were separated until Anne's return to England in late 1521.

Mary Boleyn was a married woman when Anne returned to the English court, having married courtier William Carey in February 1520. Carey was a member of the King's privy chamber and an Esquire of the Body, so he and his wife would have lived at court. The two sisters would have met again at court when Anne began her duties as a lady-in-waiting to Queen Catherine of Aragon. Both women participated in the Shrovetide Château Vert Pageant of 1522, Anne playing Perseverance and Mary playing Kindness, so they would have spent time together preparing for the pageant. It is thought that Mary began her affair with Henry VIII, Anne's future husband, around this time. Merely being in the same place at the same time is, of course, not evidence of a close relationship, but Mary accompanied Anne and Henry VIII on their trip to Calais in autumn 1532, was one of Anne's ladies in 1533 and attended her sister at her coronation in 1533. The sisters must surely have been close for Anne to choose Mary to attend her at these key events.

Anne Boleyn and Henry Carey

Mary's husband, William Carey, died of sweating sickness in June 1528, leaving his wife with their two young children, Catherine and Henry. William's death left Mary in considerable financial difficulty so she wrote to the King for help. Henry VIII obliged, securing financial help for her from her father, Thomas Boleyn, and granting the wardship of Mary's son, Henry, to Anne Boleyn. This is where the facts get twisted…

In Philippa Gregory's
The Other Boleyn Girl
, Anne Boleyn suggests to Mary Boleyn that she, Anne, should adopt Mary's son. Mary is shocked and refuses, but then Anne tells her that it is a fait accompli; she has already stolen Mary's son. The wardship is treated as something sinister and as part of Anne's plan to marry the King and provide him with a ready-made son, a son that is actually his anyway (according to the novel). The truth is not so exciting. There was actually nothing unusual or sinister about Anne being granted the wardship of Henry Carey. Mary Boleyn was experiencing financial problems and Anne was in a position to help. Anne provided the boy with a good education, appointing the French poet and reformer, Nicholas Bourbon, as his tutor. Carey was educated along with Thomas Howard and Henry Norris (son of Sir Henry Norris, Henry VIII's Groom of the Stool). It was a great start for the young boy.

Anne was not kidnapping Henry Carey, stealing him or even adopting him; she was providing for him. Wardship was standard practice in Tudor times; other examples of it include Charles Brandon being granted the wardship of the teenage Catherine Willoughby, and Lady Jane Grey becoming Thomas Seymour's ward. In the case of a woman being widowed, it was quite usual for a son who was not 'of age' to become the ward of another adult or family. Wardships could actually be purchased from the Crown and the child's property could be controlled by the holder of the wardship until the child came of age, giving the holder extra income during that time. It seems to have been a bit of a win-win situation in that the widow was relieved of some of her financial burden and may have had her child better educated and brought up in an influential family, and the wardship holder received extra income. Anne was a provider not a kidnapper.

1. Figure 21
   - Vintage engraving of Sir Henry Carey
   

Banishment and Survival

In September 1534, Mary Boleyn turned up at court pregnant and announced to her sister, the Queen, that she had secretly married William Stafford. Anne Boleyn was livid that Mary had dared to marry without her permission and had thus undermined her authority. Anne, as queen, was now head of the Boleyn family, and should have been consulted. Anne's reaction was nothing to do with spite and everything to do with protocol.

Although a report by the Bishop of Faenza
¹
places Mary at court in January 1536, attending Anne when she miscarried, it is thought that Mary was actually away from court in 1536. Alison Weir, in her recent biography of Mary, puts forward the idea that Mary and Stafford may even have lived in Calais at this time. Wherever she was, Mary was not implicated in the fall of her sister and brother in May 1536, and may not have known that her affair with the King was used to annul Henry's marriage to Anne Boleyn on the grounds of consanguinity.

Anne Boleyn was executed on 19th May 1536 and her ward, Henry Carey, went from being educated by a reformer to being educated by a staunch Catholic – quite a difference. Mary died a natural death in July 1543 and it was her children, Henry and Catherine, who carried on the Boleyn bloodline. Henry went on to serve his cousin, Elizabeth I, as a privy councillor and Catherine became Elizabeth's Chief Lady of the Bedchamber. Whatever the relationship between Anne and Mary, their children were close. Elizabeth gave Catherine a lavish royal-style funeral on her death in 1569, and Henry Carey received a magnificent tomb which is the tallest in Westminster Abbey. Today's royal family descend from Mary Boleyn.

Notes and Sources

1 "Letters and Papers, Foreign and Domestic, Henry VIII, Volume 10 - January-June 1536," n. 450.

17.
Anne Boleyn and Charity

It is impossible to talk about Anne the patron and generous giver without looking at what drove Anne to be the person that she was. Her driving force in this respect was her faith. Anne was an evangelical, one who was heavily influenced by French reformers like Jacques Lefèvre d'Étaples and Clément Marot, rather than by German reformers such as Martin Luther. In his 1512 commentary on Romans 3, Lefèvre distinguished between the justification (or salvation) of the law and that of faith, explaining that justification of the law came from works, and justification of faith came from grace.
¹
Where Martin Luther emphasised justification by faith, salvation through accepting Christ as one's saviour, Lefèvre insisted that works, or good deeds, were also important for salvation; works that stemmed from a person's faith. To put it simply, he believed that faith without works was not faith, and that works without faith were not works. They were both important and hinged on each other.