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ANNE BOLEYN

Anne Boleyn (Anne Bullen) was the second wife of Henry VIII. She was born in 1501 or 1507 and died in 1536. She was the eldest daughter of Sir Thomas Boleyn and Elizabeth Howard, daughter of the Duke of Norfolk.

She attended Mary, sister of Henry, on her marriage with Louis XII., to France, as lady of honour, returning to England about 1522, and becoming lady of honour to Queen Catherine. The king, who soon grew passionately enamoured of her, without waiting for the official completion of his divorce from Catherine, married Anne in January, 1533, having previously created her Marchioness of Pembroke. When her pregnancy revealed the secret, Thomas Cranmer declared the first marriage void and the second valid, and Anne was crowned at Westminster with unparalleled splendour. On September the 7th, 1533, she gave birth to a baby girl who was to become Elizabeth I.

She was speedily, however, in turn supplanted by her own lady of honour, Jane Seymour. Suspicions of infidelity were alleged against her, and in 1536 the queen was brought before a jury of peers on a charge of treason and adultery. Smeaton, a musician, who was arrested with others, confessed that he had enjoyed her favours, and on May the 17th she was condemned to death. The clemency of Henry VIII went no further than the substitution of the scaffold for the stake, and she was beheaded on May the 19th, 1536. Whether she was guilty or not has never been decided; that she was exceedingly indiscreet is certain. Five hundred years later demands were made for her to be granted a royal pardon on the grounds that charges against her were obviously fabricated by the king who simply wanted to be rid of her.
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