One can only understand the courtships of Anne Boleyn in the context of the game of courtly love, which is explained in the book and is an ongoing theme that dominates the relationships between the male and female characters.
Seventeen of Henry VIII’s love letters to Anne survive in the Vatican library. Given the couple’s long separations—I was struck afresh by how long they actually were—I am convinced that there must have been more letters, and I have invented or referred to others in this novel. Anne’s replies are lost. If we had them, we would have more insights into her character and her feelings for Henry VIII. In her indictment, it was alleged she had said she had never wished to choose the King in her heart, and while that was an accusation against her, along with other accusations that can be proved false, I think it might have been true. It chimes with what we know of their relationship. It made writing this book from that angle a more seamless task than portraying Anne as being in love with Henry. I think it was all about power on her side. Of course, this is only a theory, and no doubt some will disagree with it, but it was interesting to tell the story from this perspective. It makes it even more poignant.
To add further poignancy, there is the unacknowledged—until near the end—attraction between Anne and Norris. This was suggested by the wording of her last confession. From her insistence that “she had never offended with her body” against the King, it might be inferred that she had offended in her heart or her thoughts, and that she had secretly loved another but had never gone so far as to consummate that love. The evidence suggests that, of the men accused with her, Norris was the likeliest object of her affections. Again, it’s just a theory, but a compelling one. Norris did confess to something after his arrest—we don’t know what—but later retracted it.
Sources hostile to Anne mention her sixth fingernail, but it is also mentioned in a laudatory memoir by George Wyatt, grandson of the poet Thomas Wyatt. George Wyatt spent his life researching Anne Boleyn, drawing on his family traditions and the firsthand reminiscences of people who had known her, among them Anne Gainsford. He should be accounted a generally reliable source.
There is evidence, discussed in my biography Mary Boleyn: The Great and Infamous Whore, that Mary Boleyn was forced to become Henry VIII’s mistress. In that same book, I argued the case for Elizabeth Howard having a poor reputation. Some have inferred, from passages in The Heptameron, her collection of novellas, that Marguerite of Navarre was raped, although others have seen this as a literary conceit. The man, who is not named in the text, was Guillaume Gouffier, Sire de Bonnivet.
The rivalry between Anne and her sister Mary is implicit in the letter Mary wrote to Thomas Cromwell in 1534. The attitudes toward sodomy expressed in the book reflect the contemporary opinion, for it was then held that sexual intercourse was intended for procreation, and that preventing conception was sinful.
Studying Henry VIII’s love letters to Anne, it struck me that they fall into three categories: those importuning her to be his mistress in the physical sense, which belong to the initial phase of his courtship; those urging her to be his mistress in the courtly sense; and those in which he is longing to marry her and consummate their relationship, in which he is importuning her no more. It has long been asserted, by me in earlier books, and by many others, that Anne held Henry off for seven years, but this reading of the letters strongly suggests that it was Henry who made the decision not to sleep with her lest she become pregnant, which would have caused an embarrassing scandal at a time when he was trumpeting her virtue to the Pope.
I do not think the wording of the dispensation issued in 1528, specifically allowing Henry, whenever he was free to marry again, to take to wife any woman, “in any degree [of affinity], even the first, ex illicito coito [arising from illicit intercourse],” implies that Henry had already had intercourse with Anne; rather, it refers to his illicit intercourse with Mary Boleyn. There is nothing in Henry’s letters to Anne to suggest that they had briefly become lovers in the fullest sense.
There is no doubt that Anne Boleyn was an unpopular queen. The state papers contain many libels or slanders. All those mentioned in the novel come from contemporary authentic records.
The identity of the mistresses Henry VIII took in 1533 and 1534 remains unknown. It’s been conjectured that Elizabeth Carew was the first, and I’ve speculated here that Joan Ashley was the second. She was unmarried, and did serve Anne Boleyn as a maid of honor.
Much has been made of Anne leaving behind a motherless child of two years and eight months. In fact, Anne saw very little of her daughter, the future Elizabeth I. Elizabeth had her own separate household from the age of three months, and Anne visited infrequently, while Elizabeth was at court only on rare occasions. Tudor queens were not required to be hands-on mothers, although in the novel, we see Anne interesting herself in Elizabeth’s marriage, as was expected of her. We have a record of items of clothing she bought for Elizabeth. Her involvement in her daughter’s life doesn’t amount to much, which suggested to me that, disappointed by Elizabeth’s sex, Anne found it hard to bond with her or love her. In the novel, this only adds to her unhappiness.
Some readers may wonder at my suggestion that Jasper Tudor built the banqueting hall range at Sudeley Castle, which has traditionally been said to have been the work of Richard III; but while Richard did own the castle, there is no evidence that he ever visited. Jasper Tudor held it from 1486 to his death in 1495, so it’s more likely that he was responsible.
There is no historical evidence linking George Boleyn to Katherine of Aragon’s death. Readers who are interested in reading more of this tale might enjoy my e-short, The Blackened Heart, which continues a story thread only hinted at in the first novel in this series, Katherine of Aragon: The True Queen. There were rumors of poison after Katherine’s autopsy, the report of which was suppressed. There was a poison attempt on Bishop Fisher (although Richard Rouse was actually a friend of the Bishop’s cook), and the Boleyns were suspected of having been behind it. Anne Boleyn did warn the Bishop not to attend Parliament in case he should suffer a repetition of the sickness the poison had caused. Certainly Katherine’s death was timely, given the need for Anne, who was pregnant, to bear an indisputably legitimate heir. On hearing of Katherine’s death, Anne did weep in her oratory. But the sum of these parts does not amount to good evidence that the Boleyns poisoned Katherine.