The Anne Boleyn Collection II: Anne Boleyn & the Boleyn Family (36 page)

We don't know what she looked like, what her personality was like, who the father of her children was, the nature of her relationships with Francis I and Henry VIII (or even if she slept with Francis), her whereabouts at various times of her life, her relationship with her family… Mary is, in fact, the perfect blank canvas for an historical novelist. Her life and story, as we know it, is, in short, one big myth.

Notes and Sources

1 "Letters and Papers, Foreign and Domestic, Henry VIII, Volume 3: 1519-1523," 1539, The King's Book of Payments, 1519.

2 Hall, Hall's Chronicle, 630.

3 "Letters and Papers, Foreign and Domestic, Henry VIII, Volume 5: 1531-1532," n. 11.

4 "Letters and Papers, Foreign and Domestic, Henry VIII, Volume 4: 1524-1530," n. 4410.

5 "Letters and Papers, Foreign and Domestic, Henry VIII, Volume 5: 1531-1532," 306.

6 Ibid., n. 686.

7 Ibid., n. 1484.

8 Wilkinson, Mary Boleyn: The True Story of Henry VIII's Mistress, 137.

9 "Letters and Papers, Foreign and Domestic, Henry VIII, Volume 7," n. 1554.

10 Ibid., n. 1655.

11 "Letters and Papers, Foreign and Domestic, Henry VIII, Volume 14 Part 2: August-December 1539," n. 572.

12 Ibid.

13 "Letters and Papers, Foreign and Domestic, Henry VIII, Volume 18 Part 1: January-July 1543," n. 623.

14 Weir, Mary Boleyn: The Great and Infamous Whore.

15 Wilkinson, Mary Boleyn: The True Story of Henry VIII's Mistress.

16 Loades, The Boleyns: The Rise and Fall of a Tudor Family.

17 Round, The Early Life of Anne Boleyn: A Critical Essay.

23.
The Boleyns and Religion

In running The Anne Boleyn Files, I regularly encounter confusion regarding Anne Boleyn's faith and that of her family. People want to label her "Protestant" or "Catholic", but she doesn't seem to fit either label neatly. Even historians are divided on the subject.

Those who label Anne "Protestant" back up their arguments with sources like martyrologist John Foxe and the writings of Eustace Chapuys, who was imperial ambassador while Anne Boleyn was Queen. Foxe was writing during Elizabeth I's Protestant reign and he presented Anne Boleyn as a Protestant martyr. He praised her for her modesty, goodness, charity, and her "fervent desire" for "setting forth of sincere religion." He believed that her execution was caused by "secret practising of the papists", "wily papists" who whispered in the King's ear.
¹
Chapuys referred to the Boleyns as "more Lutheran than Luther himself",
²
and spoke of how, when he met with George Boleyn in April 1536, Chapuys avoided "all occasions of entering into Lutheran discussions, from which he [George] could not refrain".
³
Of course, in Chapuys' view, anyone who was not a conservative Catholic was probably a Lutheran. When Chapuys heard about the plot against Anne in 1536, he wrote to the Emperor saying that it was "a remedy for the heretical doctrines and practices of the concubine – the principal cause of the spread of Lutheranism in this country."
⁴

Historians Eric Ives,
⁵
James Carley
⁶
and Maria Dowling
⁷
don't see Anne as a fully-fledged Protestant or Lutheran, but as an evangelical, a woman with a personal faith who believed in justification by faith, in relief of the poor, in the dissemination of the Bible in the vernacular, and in the reform of the Church. I agree and I would also say the same of Anne's father and brother, Thomas and George Boleyn. Historian G. W. Bernard, however, challenges the views of Foxe, Chapuys, Ives and Dowling, arguing that "there is nothing that clinches the case for Anne as evangelical or proto-protestant."
⁸
He concludes that Anne was actually a conventional Catholic and that "dabbling with the new sects may for both Rochford and Anne have been more a matter of politics and radical chic than a matter of religious conviction." Carley, Dowling and Ives argue that George Boleyn's translation of two reformist manuscripts for Anne show that the siblings were evangelicals, but Bernard dismisses this view, saying that the privy purse expenses show that George had a busy social life, winning money from various people at shuffleboard, shooting, cards etc. He adds that "Rochford's interests were more those of a courtier-nobleman than of a scholar" and that "there is no evidence of Rochford's literary activities." In other words, George was a fun-loving guy far too busy for reading, writing and religion.

Alison Weir regards Anne and her father, Thomas Boleyn, as "orthodox Catholics" but feels that George Boleyn's collection of books show that he was "quite near to becoming a Lutheran." She concludes that "the Boleyns were zealous for the cause of reform within the Catholic Church."
⁹
David Loades sees it slightly differently. In his view, Thomas Boleyn was a religious conservative who fell out with Anne and George over their "evangelical programme".
¹⁰
So, even the historians cannot agree on the Boleyns' faith.

I was lucky enough to discuss the Boleyns and their faith with Eric Ives. He felt that the labels "Protestant" and "Catholic" just cannot be used for people in the 1530s because it was too early in the English Reformation for people to have formed set religious ideas. It was a time of immense upheaval in the Church, due to the break with Rome, and a time when new religious ideas and teachings were coming over from the Continent. There were also various types of reform, ideas from very different scholars and teachers. Anne Boleyn had spent around seven years in France and thus was influenced by French reform, not German reform. In this sense, her beliefs would not fit our usual understanding of "Protestant". However, it also doesn't mean that she was a conventional Catholic. I feel that "evangelical" would be the best label.

In my research on the Boleyns, I've realised that you cannot look at or write about the family without considering their religious beliefs. Whatever you think about the cause of the coup against Anne, her family and supporters in 1536, religion was a factor, as is shown by the gleeful dispatches of Chapuys. Of course, it is not accurate to describe the coup as simply a battle between the religious reformers and the Catholic Conservatives, but there was that part to it. Anne Boleyn, Cranmer and Cromwell all had an influence on the King during Anne's time as Queen, and Henry's relationship with her had led to him breaking with Rome. He may well have broken with Rome at some point anyway; but his relationship with Anne was the catalyst, and the reformist literature Anne shared with him helped him to justify his actions in a theological way.

Religion was also immensely important in Tudor times. It was important to everyone – the laws of the land were based on it; you lived your life according to the Church calendar and participated in religious rituals. It defined who you were and what you did, and the new religion was even more personal in that it was about you having a personal relationship with God. Religion and the Boleyns are also inseparable when you think about the influence Anne had as queen. Not only did she have the ear of her husband, Henry VIII, but she was able to act on petitioners' requests and had influence on policy, on ecclesiastical appointments and on those around her. Her father and brother were also very influential men and George played an active role in Parliament.

As there are so many different points of view out there regarding the religious views of the Boleyns, we have to make our own minds up and we can only make an informed decision if we investigate it. Because the Boleyns died so early on in the English Reformation, it is hard to say what they really thought, what faith they held, and what was in their hearts. However, we can find clues and piece them together to give us some kind of picture. Clues include:

• • What was said about them by their contemporaries
  
• • Their actions
  
• • The books they owned
  
• • The things they said
  
• • Reformers they had links with
  

Thomas Boleyn

Let us first consider Thomas Boleyn, head of the Boleyn family and a man who Joanna Denny
¹¹
sees as an advocate of the New Religion but who David Loades sees as a conservative Catholic. What clues do we have about him? Well, we know that he was a Francophile and a real Renaissance man with a deep interest in Christian humanism. He commissioned religious works from Erasmus, showing his interest in religion, and he had links with French Reformers. Eric Ives mentions Thomas Boleyn's links with Thomas Tebold, so I did a bit of digging into this relationship to find out who Tebold was.

In an index of Kent wills,
¹²
Tebold is listed as a vicar, scholar and godson of Thomas Boleyn. Eric Ives writes, "There is even a possibility that the Boleyns sought, or maintained, private links with reformers abroad. In 1535 and 1536 Master Thomas Tebold, later known as one of Cromwell's continental agents, was travelling in Europe, supported by the earl of Wiltshire with some assistance from Cranmer."
¹³
Tebold reported on the current state of religious persecutions in France, after the Affair of the Placards in Paris, and was "spreading the idea that Thomas Boleyn was a promising patron of works - theological and other..." Tebold also sent Thomas Boleyn an epistle by French Reformer, Clément Marot, who had been forced to flee France due to his religious views. In one letter, Tebold says that he hopes to hear from Boleyn via "Reygnard Wolf, bookseller, of St Pauls Churchyard, London, who will be here in two days".
¹⁴
So I also did some digging into Reginald (or Reyner/Reygnard) Wolf.

Wolf was born in Gelderland in the Netherlands but settled in Strasbourg, where he learned printing and where he set up connections in the printing trade. He knew Simon Grynaeus, the German reformer, and it appears that Wolf got to know Thomas Cranmer through him. Wolf settled in England around 1533 and worked as a bookseller in London. In his article on Wolfe, Andrew Pettegree writes of how Wolf travelled annually to the Frankfurt am Main book mart, which allowed him to work as an agent for the English government. For example, in 1536 he conveyed a message from the Swiss reformer Heinrich Bullinger to Cranmer and in 1539 he carried messages from Henry VIII to Christopher Mount, an agent in Germany. In 1536, Anne Boleyn supported him in becoming a freeman of the City of London's Stationer's Company and in 1542 he printed his first work in London. In 1543, he set up his printing press in St Paul's Churchyard. The press could be identified by the sign of the Brazen Serpent, a device used by Strasbourg printer Conrad Neobarius. Wolf went on to publish works by Archbishops Cranmer and Parker, the antiquarian John Leland and a 1544 account by Edward Seymour of the expedition into Scotland. Andrew Pettegree writes of how he cemented "ties with the reformist political elite".
¹⁵

Going back to Thomas Tebold, there are four letters written by him in Letters and Papers: one to Thomas Cranmer and three to Thomas Boleyn. Having read Tebold's letters and having found out about Wolf, I just cannot see how Thomas Boleyn can be described as a conservative Catholic or as disagreeing with Anne and George's reformist beliefs. On the contrary, I feel that he was actually their influence. I can't see how Tebold would risk sending Thomas Boleyn a work by Marot or writing to him about the religious situation for reformers on the Continent if Thomas Boleyn was not a fellow reformer. It doesn't make sense.

Anne Boleyn

As far as books are concerned, Eric Ives writes of how we know about the existence of nine books related to Anne and George Boleyn. He says "Seven are religious and six of those are reformist in character; the one exception is an early and somewhat inferior Book of Hours. Five are editions of the Bible or parts of it (including a Tyndale New Testament)... Anne's own books, therefore, demonstrate reformist sympathies and particularly enthusiasm for the Bible." Anne and George would never have risked owning books viewed as heretical if they were not interested in reading them and learning from them.

As well as having a copy of Tyndale's English Bible, which she kept available to her household, Anne owned five French reformist books:-

• •
  La Saincte Bible en Francoys
  (Antwerp 1534). – This was the first French translation of the Bible and was produced by the French theologian and humanist Jacques Lefèvre d'Étaples.
  
• •
  The Pistellis and Gospelles for the LII Sondayes in the Yere
  , by Lefèvre d'Étaples (Paris, ca.1525) – Ives describes this as a part copy, part English translation of Lefevre's
  Epistres and Evangiles des cinquante et deux semaines de l'an
  or "Epistles and Gospels for the 52 weeks of the year". A book of Bible readings to take the reader or preacher through the year.
  
• •
  Le livre des psaulmes
  - A book of Psalms thought to have been translated into French by Louis de Berquin who was burned at the stake after being accused of heresy by the Sorbonne. "Berquin would have been a second Luther, had he found in Francis I. a second Elector," said Theodore Beza, the French theologian who was a disciple of John Calvin.
  
• •
  L'Ecclesiaste
  , or The Ecclesiaste, (Alençon, 1530) which Ives describes as a "hybrid version of a Lefèvre publication, his translation of a commentary by Johannes Brenz.
  
• •
  Le pasteur évangélique
  (Le Sermon du Bon Pasteur) – by Clément Marot, the famous French Reformer.