Women of the Italian Renaissance 1

Women of the Italian Renaissance: Giulia Gonzaga (1513-1566)

Giulia Gonzaga (1513-1566) was the daughter of Ludovico Gonzaga, lord of Sabbioneta and Bozzolo, and his wife Francesca Fieschi. At the age of fourteen, Giulia was married to Vespasiano Colonna, count of Fondi and duke of Traetto. Their marriage was destined to be a short one, for Vespasiano died only three years after their wedding. At the age of twenty-two, Giulia joined a convent in Naples and was acquainted with the Spanish religious exile Juan de Valdés. Members of the Italian nobility, including Giulia and her cousin by marriage, Vittoria Colonna, were admirers of Valdés. Diarmaid MacCulloch has noted that this elite support meant that ‘there was a ready entry to the courts and noble palaces of northern Italy [while] Valdesian ideas in turn filtered into the lively world of humanist discussion in Italian cities’.

Above: Gazzuolo, where Giulia was born in 1513.

Camilla Russell has argued that Giulia was one of Valdés’ most prominent dedicated and enduring disciplines. Her social position, her vast social links and her personal influence means that she was one of the most important heterodox figures in sixteenth-century Italy. Valdés’ ideas were appealing to members of what has been called the spirituali movement, which was active in mid sixteenth-century Italy. This movement is both enigmatic and difficult to define. It sought spiritual and organisational Church reform, and some of its members sympathised with reformed doctrines. Several of the ideas embraced by the spirituali, including organisational Church reform and the pursuit of a personal relationship with God, were gaining currency across Europe. They were familiar with, and were in some respects influenced by, the works of northern reformers, including Luther and Calvin. Elements of Calvin’s Institutes, for example, can be traced in the anonymously published Beneficio di Cristo (1543), which was the most significant literary product of the spirituali, and has been described by Dermot Fenlon as ‘the most revolutionary product of Italy’s unaccomplished Reformation’. The spirituali sought the abolition of superstitious forms of religious practice, while abhorring the widespread corruption and ignorance of the clergy. However, unlike the northern reformers, most of the spirituali wished to remain in communion with the Roman Catholic Church.

Above: Vespasiano Colonna, husband of Giulia (left). Pietro Carnesecchi, Giulia's friend (right).

Giulia is also known for her friendship with the humanist Pietro Carnesecchi (1508-67). Carnesecchi’s beliefs were undoubtedly heterodox, for he believed in justification by faith alone and viewed the Scriptures and leading doctors of the Church as the only authorities on matters of doctrine and spirituality, while rejecting the sacrament of confession and the doctrine of purgatory. Carnesecchi was investigated by the Roman Inquisition between 1546 and 1567, and was eventually imprisoned, convicted and executed. The records of his trial illuminate his religious activities, as well as those of Giulia, who experienced ‘disquiet’ and ‘contradiction’, perhaps in relation to the teachings of the Church and those of Valdés, who encouraged her to embrace ‘the idea of Christian perfection’. 

These records are useful, given that Giulia wrote no religious reflections or treatises of her own (or, at least, none that survive). She did not explicitly express religious sentiments in her letters, which contain oblique, cautious references to her beliefs. Certainly Giulia acknowledged that her beliefs were not orthodox. In June 1558, she wrote to Carnesecchi saying that she needed to ‘watch out, otherwise she could fall into the net’ of the Inquisition. Eventually, the letters between Carnesecchi and Giulia were used as evidence against Carnesecchi during his trial for heresy. Carnesecchi was certain that his and Giulia’s actions were correct. He wrote to her in 1557 claiming that ‘there is no doubt that God permits everything, with just (although to us obscure) reason, and that from everything he will draw his glory, to the edification and profit of his elect’. The term ‘elect’, of course, has reformed, specifically Calvinist, connotations. Giulia died in 1566 at the age of fifty-three, the year before Carnesecchi's execution. The timing of her death ultimately prevented her from sharing her friend's fate, or at the very least, a trial for heresy.

The Birth of Elizabeth Tudor

On a late Sunday afternoon in September 1533 at Greenwich Palace, Queen Anne of England was delivered of a healthy, beautiful child. Everything about the child was perfect, but for its sex. It was a girl. Henry VIII had been assured by his friends, advisers and astrologers that his second wife's child was certain to be the male heir for which he had broken with the church of Rome and annulled his marriage to the resourceful Katherine of Aragon. However, pregnancy was an inexact and uncertain science in the sixteenth-century, and the child conceived in late 1532, weeks after her parents' secret wedding in Dover, was female.

Almost certainly named after her paternal grandmother Queen Elizabeth of York, and perhaps also for her maternal grandmother Lady Elizabeth Howard, the new princess was red-haired, coal-eyed and perfectly formed. She grew up to be a charismatic, shrewd and fiercely intelligent young woman who, despite her small stature, was able to cut hardened politicians down to size. Princess Elizabeth embodied both the best and worst traits of her parents: she inherited her father's charisma, warmth, fieriness and cunning, while inheriting her mother's wit, sensuality and deep-seated charm. The new princess, despite her obvious appeal, was not the male heir so longed for by both Henry and Anne. 

The majority of the English population, while swearing the oath demanded by the king that recognised his second marriage as lawful, continued to regard the beleaguered Mary Tudor, eldest daughter of Henry VIII, as the rightful heir to the throne. Katherine of Aragon was highly popular in England, especially among aristocratic women, and the new queen tended to be regarded as a scheming parvenu or a heretic responsible for her husband's increasing bloodthirstiness. Elizabeth was feted by her parents' supporters as the rightful heir to the throne, a promise of hope for the future, but those who opposed the break with Rome were unanimous in declaring the new princess a bastard undeserving of royal honours. 

Above: A later, fanciful artistic depiction of Henry VIII and Anne Boleyn.

At the time, no-one expected Elizabeth to become queen regnant of England. It was both hoped and expected that Queen Anne would shortly bear the longed-for male heir, but as all students of history know, that was not to be. Elizabeth was cruelly deprived of her mother before her third birthday. Anne was sacrificed to the brutality of realpolitik, the increasing paranoia of her husband, and a climate of misogynistic vitriol that ended not only with her beheading but the deaths of five (almost certainly innocent) courtiers, including her own brother, Elizabeth's uncle. Elizabeth was shortly afterwards deprived of her place in the succession and was, like her half-sister Mary, declared illegitimate. Their half-brother Edward, born in the autumn of 1537, replaced them as heir to the throne. However, Elizabeth was to emerge triumphant in November 1558. At the age of twenty-five, this brilliant and hardened young woman became queen of England. Her reign has been immortalised ever since as the golden age of Gloriana, a possibility no-one could have foreseen in September 1533. 

The Birth of Mary Tudor, Queen of England

Above: Mary Tudor, 1544.

On this day in history, 18 February 1516, Katherine of Aragon gave birth to her only surviving child Mary at the Palace of Placentia at Greenwich. It was Katherine's fifth pregnancy - she would endure a final stillbirth in November 1518. Understandably Henry VIII was disappointed by the birth of a daughter, and at thirty it appeared unlikely that Katherine would bear a male heir. The king did put a brave face on it, however, informing the Venetian ambassador that "sons will follow" by God's grace.

After a promising childhood, Mary's world was plunged into difficulties in 1527 when her father decided to annul his marriage to Katherine, for he was in pursuit of the attractive Anne Boleyn and hoped that she would provide him with a son. Understandably, Katherine refused to accept that she had been little more than Henry's whore since 1509, and by her stubbornness contributed significantly to the English Reformation which was to gather storm in the 1530s. Cruelly, mother and daughter were separated after 1531 and never saw one another again. This deeply affected Mary, and when she finally accepted Henry's religious and political changes under coercion in 1536, she viewed herself as betraying Katherine.

Mary is now remembered as "Bloody Mary" because of the perceived bloodiness of her reign. I have argued elsewhere, following the views of most modern historians, that this is an unfair view. If Mary had been born a son in 1516, it is almost certain that her parents would have remained together, and the history of England would have been very different. As it was, she was born a girl, a heartbreaking event for her father although Katherine unconditionally loved her.

Anne Boleyn and Spanish Sources

Above (left): Queen Anne Boleyn, accessed online at the Daily Mail.
Above (right): Pedro Calderon de la Barca (1600-1681); Spanish playwright, dramatist and poet.

The Spanish ambassador at Henry VIII's court, Eustace Chapuys, and Nicholas Sander, writing in the reign of Elizabeth I, were two individuals who notoriously slandered and criticised Queen Anne Boleyn, second consort of Henry and mother to Elizabeth. While Sander believed she was a witch and a monster, Chapuys characterised her more in the guise of a manipulative, murderous shrew who bullied her husband, poisoned her rival Katherine, and plotted the death of her stepdaughter Mary.

Yet, as Paula de Pando makes clear in her essay 'Unqueening the queen: the Spanish image of Anne Boleyn', Chapuys was hardly the only Spanish writer who created a monstrous depiction of the queen. In Spain, particularly as the European Reformation further developed and relations between England and Spain soured and complicated, Anne came to be more and more attacked. One such example is the play La cisma de Inglaterra (The Schism in England), created by Pedro Calderon de la Barca, dating from c.1627, long after her death.

Relying on the Spanish Jesuit Pedro de Ribadeneyra (1587)'s history Historia eclesiastica del cisma del reino de Inglaterra (Ecclesiastical history of the schism in England), de la Barca set out to create a play which, occurring in context of worsening relations between England and Spain, encouraged an invasion of England while celebrating the reign of Queen Mary Tudor. The play initially introduces Anne as a seductive but ambitious woman who seduces the French ambassador Charles while a lady-in-waiting to Katherine of Aragon. de la Barca characterises her as de los hombres bellisima sirena / pues aduerme a su encanto los sentidos / ciega los ojos y abre los oidos ('that siren who enchants men's quietened senses / Blinding their eyes and opening their ears'). Clearly, like both Chapuys and Sander, de la Barca believed that Anne's unnatural sexuality was lethal to unsuspecting men.


Above: Anne Boleyn the seductress? The Other Boleyn Girl (2008) certainly encouraged this view.

In the play, de la Barca was also careful to present Anne as 'mujer altiva. Su vanidad, su ambicion, su arrogancia y presuncion la hacen, a veces, esquiva, arrogante, loca y vana'. ('Anne is proud; her vanity, ambition, and presumption make her at times disdainful, arrogant and wild, as well as being frivolous'.) Spanish audiences are also encouraged to react hostilely to the presentation of this woman as 'en secreto luterana' ('in private a Lutheran'). As Paula de Pando notes in relation to these and similar verses: 'This is where we see the myth of the evil temptress at is best, encapsulating all the negative stereotypes which were spread by Catholic writers and which even pervaded many supposedly canonical Protestant writings'.

Eventually, having married her and discovered her supposed adulteries, the king rejects Anne in horror and orders her execution. Afterwards, her bloodied corpse is lain at the feet of her rival, Mary. In context of Anglo-Spanish relations: 'Anne's exemplary punishment becomes a spectacle intended to incense the masses and encourage them to fight against the enemy.... Anne's transgression is portrayed as a crime that perverted the whole country: taking her revenge on the corpse of the offender, Mary is restoring the peace of the kingdom and restating 'the true faith''. De La Barca knowingly portrays Anne as an evil usurper who has brought heresy to the realm, while mistreating the Spanish (Katherine and Mary). The play encourages a Spanish invasion of England in order to restore Catholicism to the realm.


Above: the play was written in context of worsening Anglo-Spanish relations, which had begun deteriorating in the reigns of Elizabeth I (above left) and Philip II (above right). 

Clearly, Eustace Chapuys was not the only Spaniard to violently disparage Anne Boleyn, casting her as a heretic, poisoner, witch and adulteress. Spanish playwrights encouraged a hostile and licentious picture of the queen in their writings in order to support an invasion of England, to rid the realm of heresy and restore Catholicism. Drawing on religious stereotypes, gender beliefs, and cultural views, they created monstrous depictions of those they held responsible - including Anne Boleyn, mother of the Protestant queen, Elizabeth I.

"A Shapeless Mass of Flesh" or a "Beautiful Son"? Anne Boleyn's Mysterious Pregnancy in 1536

In late January or early February 1536, Anne Boleyn, second queen of Henry VIII of England, suffered a miscarriage, believed to be of a male child, at Greenwich Palace. This failure has since been shrouded in mystery and controversy, with a series of myths surrounding the tragic loss of a male heir which, almost certainly, would have guaranteed Anne's personal safety as queen and confirmed in the eyes of her husband that his second marriage was valid and his first one unlawful. Some scholars have seen Anne's pregnancy as the direct reason for her downfall, while others suggest that it considerably weakened her position but stress that she was not in fatal danger. So what is the truth of what happened to that tragic, if mysterious, pregnancy? Attempting in this article to separate fact from fiction, and viewing events through the eyes of sixteenth century social and cultural norms, a reasonable explanation will hopefully be offered.

According to later comments, it seems likely that the queen had become pregnant for the third time in mid-October 1535, when travelling with her husband on the annual summer progress.[1] Following another failure in pregnancy in the summer of 1534 – historians debate whether the queen suffered a phantom pregnancy, a miscarriage, or a stillbirth in July or August 1534[2] - both Anne and Henry must have been considerably relieved, because, as has been argued, no queen consort was ever really safe until she gave birth to the highly desired male heir, as conveyed strongly in the king’s first marriage to Katherine of Aragon. Unfortunately, Anne miscarried her child in early 1536, although what happened has been surrounded with fantastical stories born out of hindsight.[3] It is almost impossible, readers should note, to penetrate both contemporary and later sources in order to discern what really happened.

It seems logical to begin with the reports of contemporary observers who were well placed at court, although according to the divided nature of the palace according to royal protocol, status and occupation none of them were actually in the queen’s privy chamber when she suffered this calamity. Eustace Chapuys, the Imperial ambassador and a personal enemy of the queen, wrote that: “on the day of the internment (the funeral of Katherine of Aragon, 29 January), the Concubine [Anne] had an abortion [a miscarriage] which seemed to be a male child which she had not borne 3 ½ months, at which the King has shown great distress. The said concubine wished to lay the blame on the duke of Norfolk, whom she hates, saying he frightened her by bringing the news of the fall the King had six days before.”[4] Chapuys went on to write that it was well-known that this was not the cause of Anne’s miscarriage, and that others at court had speculated that, medically, she was unable to bear male children. Some historians have developed this point and suggested that Anne was rhesus negative, meaning that, following her first successful pregnancy (giving birth to Elizabeth in September 1533), she would never again have been able to bear a healthy child.[5] On a different note, Raphael Holinshed, a Tudor chronicler, also wrote that Anne’s miscarriage occurred on 29 January.

Edward Hall, who wrote a celebrated chronicle of Henry VIII’s reign, stated that: “And in February folowyng was quene Anne brought a bedde of a childe before her tyme, whiche was born dead”.[6] Hall had previously asserted that, following Katherine’s death, Anne had worn yellow in celebration – or possibly in mourning, since yellow was Spain’s national colour of mourning – of the former queen’s passing. Charles Wriothesley, a prominent court observer, wrote: “This yeare also, three daies before Candlemas [ie. 2 February], Queene Anne was brought a bedd and delivered of a man chield, as it was said, afore her tyme, for she said that she had reckoned herself at that tyme but fiftene weekes gonne with chield...”[7] Lancelot de Carles, who wrote a controversial poem about Anne’s downfall in June, wrote that the king’s jousting accident – thus agreeing with Chapuys’ sentiments – caused the queen to miscarry in shock, delivering “un beau filz”, a beautiful son, prematurely.[8]

As can therefore be recognised, there was near universal confusion surrounding the date of the miscarriage, but what can be determined is that the queen: suffered a miscarriage of a male child, at around three and one half months (or 15 weeks), at the end of January or early February 1536. Some actually doubted that the queen had been pregnant at all. The Bishop of Faenza wrote to Ambrogio in March 1536 that the French King had commented that Anne had pretended to be pregnant and her sister Mary was her only attendant, in order to maintain the pretence.[9] Dr Ortiz also wrote to Emperor Charles that month that Anne pretended to be pregnant due to her fear that the king would leave her, hoping to convince him that she was still capable of bearing a male heir.[10] Such statements are clearly garbled with rumour and can be dismissed. Nicholas Sander, a Catholic Reformation historian who wrote a damning portrayal of Anne, suggested that she had given birth to “a shapeless mass of flesh” in 1536, with connotations of deformity – which will be later discussed.[11]

What caused her miscarriage? Sensational stories created by hostile Catholics offered scandalous reasons for the queen’s miscarriage, which they delighted in. According to Jane Dormer, duchess of Feria and a personal friend of Mary I, and thus no admirer of Anne Boleyn, the queen had discovered her husband with Jane Seymour, his mistress, seated on his lap in January 1536 and had flown into a rage. Sander wrote something similar, suggesting that Anne had found her husband with Jane one afternoon in an intimate position, leading Anne to suffer a miscarriage from shock and distress and subsequently blaming her husband for her mishap: “See, how well I must be since the day I caught that abandoned woman Jane sitting on your knees”. Chapuys later commented that Anne had “miscarried of her saviour”. As has been observed, some believed that the queen suffered from a defective constitution and so would never be able to bear male children. Chapuys later spitefully alleged that the queen could not have a male child, which has led some writers to believe that the mysterious miscarriage in the summer of 1534 was also of a boy.[12] A reasonable suggestion would be that the king’s shocking jousting fall a few days earlier on 24 January had caused the queen to experience shock, horror and bewilderment, perhaps directly influencing what later occurred. However, Chapuys stated that she was indifferent to the king’s fall when told.

Whatever did happen, historians have advanced several theories as to this miscarriage, concerning how it impacted upon the queen’s personal relations with her husband, and how it damaged – either fatally or merely badly – both her political position and her personal security. Retha M. Warnicke, an American historian, is perhaps the best known scholar for her controversial, if intriguing, theories on Anne’s final pregnancy. Believing that the Spanish ambassador Chapuys was deliberately misinformed by Master Secretary Thomas Cromwell and other English officials as to both the date of Anne’s miscarriage and the nature of that miscarriage, Warnicke asserts that Anne delivered a deformed child in mid-January 1536, which was the ‘sole reason’ why she was executed four months later, because the birth of deformed children, apparently, was associated with witchcraft and sexual misbehaviour, thus convincing Henry that his wife was both a witch and an adulteress.[13] Warnicke believes that Sander’s comment, that the queen delivered “a shapeless mass of flesh” – written, by the way, some fifty years after that tragic event by someone who was a toddler at the time of Anne’s execution – reflected the truth of what happened to Anne’s pregnancy. This claim was spectacularly developed in Philippa Gregory’s wildly inaccurate novel The Other Boleyn Girl (2001) where Anne gives birth to a shockingly malformed foetus with a splayed spine and a giant head.

Warnicke puts forward several pieces of evidence to support her argument: Anne’s comments when imprisoned in the Tower of London suggested that her miscarriage was unusual, contemporary observers at court wrote that that spring the king was acting as if he was “accursed” and “living in hell”, rumours of witchcraft circulated a few days after the miscarriage, Anne was accused of committing incest with her brother and adultery with four men – in Warnicke’s eyes, had the foetus been normal, there would have been no need to go to such lengths to prove the king was not the father, there was a delay between the miscarriage and when it was reported (around 2 weeks in the case of Chapuys), the nature of the crimes alleged to have been committed by Anne, the fact that all five men were supposedly “libertines” – ie. homosexuals – and thus viewed as monstrous, and the fact that efforts were made to see what Mary, Anne’s stepdaughter, knew about the pregnancy.[14] Warnicke’s argument has proved convincing, with scholars such as John Guy crediting Anne’s downfall in 1536 with the birth of a deformed foetus in January. But can Warnicke’s arguments be supported, and do they suggest that Anne did miscarry a deformed child?

Nicholas Sander did assert that the queen had miscarried “a shapeless mass of flesh”, but we must remember that his work was published fifty years after these events, he never met Anne, and as a Catholic Reformation scholar, portrayed the queen as a monstrous being, with a witch-like character, deformed appearance, and insinuated that she was the daughter of Henry VIII. His account, therefore, is untrustworthy at best, slanderous and venomous at worst. No other contemporary Catholic sources referred to this supposed monstrous pregnancy, when they surely would have exploited such scandalous news to further blacken Anne’s reputation. Chapuys, who loathed the queen, simply described the miscarried child as being male and of around three and a half months in age. The notorious Chronicle of Henry VIII, which asserted incredulously that the queen was guilty of multiple adulteries and contains multiple inaccuracies, did not refer to the pregnancy at all. Neither did Jane Dormer. During Mary I’s reign, when Anne was publicly referred to as being an adulteress, there was no mention made of the deformed foetus. If this really did have connotations of witchcraft, consorting with the Devil and sexual immorality, why was no mention made of it and, more to the point, why was Anne’s daughter Elizabeth not publicly debarred from the succession on account of being the daughter of a witch? Warnicke herself has shown that contemporaries believed that daughters of witches were viewed as witches themselves, but no mention was made of this. What may both convince readers about the dubious nature of this theory – and is yet disturbing for so many people contain to believe it is true – is that there is no mention of a deformed child. As has been shown, contemporary comments only referred to the miscarried child as being male, while de Carles stressed that it was “beautiful”. Furthermore, rumours of witchcraft circulating in February, made by the Imperial ambassador, have been severely and critically questioned by historians, who conclude that this information was at best third-hand. No mention of witchcraft was made in the indictments against Anne and her lovers; the crimes were overwhelmingly sexual, not supernatural in basis.

More to the point, historians have not considered the thriving broadside ballad culture in early modern England, and how this may have been exploited with salacious details about Anne’s supposedly monstrous pregnancy. Particularly in the late sixteenth and early seventeenth century, ballads became increasingly interested with monstrous births and deformed children, as numerous ballads of this nature attest. A W Bates has written that “monstrous births... were popular subjects for ballads”.[15] There were, apparently, 250 monstrous births between 1503 and 1700, often reported in scandalous detail in early modern ballads.[16] The birth of deformed children, more to the point, was not necessarily believed to have been the result of witchcraft or sexual misbehaviour. A woman’s disturbed imagination could be viewed as leading to her child being born with defects. Other factors could be at work. Couples who had sexual intercourse during menstruation were believed capable of producing a deformed child. Religious differences in belief could be important too. It has been argued, for instance, that whereas Catholics – ie the king and his consort – interpreted a deformed foetus as being the result of natural forces, later Protestants chose to view it as being a sign of God’s direct intervention in the natural world.[17] Historians who support the deformed foetus story therefore fail to answer the simple question: how could a government, no matter how powerful or efficient the ministers and officials, successfully conceal from both country and continent the news of such a monstrous happening as the birth of a deformed child, particularly one born to the most powerful woman in the country, which would surely have invited scandal? This has never been adequately explained. Warnicke claims that the charges of adultery and incest were brought against the men to try and conceal all news of the deformed child, which apparently was more disparaging to the king’s honour than the fact that his wife was apparently violated by five men, one her own brother. This is an unconvincing and dubious argument. No individual, or group of individuals, could successfully conceal such a monstrosity, only for a scholar to ‘discover’ it 450 years later. As Eric Ives has commented, this invites more than a raised eyebrow.[18] To conclude, there is no evidence that a deformed child was born to Queen Anne, so this suggests that there was no deformed child at all. No mention was made of it during the queen’s downfall, no hostile Catholic (or Protestant, for some also opposed Anne) ever scandalised it in literature, no evidence of Anne’s association with witchcraft was brought forward, and claiming that Anne’s conversations in the Tower, the charges that she kissed and seduced courtiers, and the fact that her lovers were supposedly libertines are evidence of a deformed foetus cannot be substantiated.

However, Warnicke’s arguments that fertility and its related matters, such as impotence, were crucial to this miscarriage and its role in Anne’s downfall are somewhat more convincing, and something perhaps neglected by political historians who emphasise the factional nature of Anne’s downfall. The indictments drawn against her did emphasise that “certain ills had befallen” the king’s body, implying impotence – which, interestingly, was a significant issue in his later marriages to Anne of Cleves and Katherine Howard – and it was suggested that he had been bewitched into marriage by the queen. I would cautiously suggest that strenuous efforts were made to deny the king’s paternity of Anne’s last child, not because it was deformed, but because it was believed that during the period 1533-35 Anne had rapidly turned to five lovers in desperate attempts to become pregnant, and therefore the king was not the father. Similar issues were addressed in Katherine Howard’s downfall, when her probably innocent meetings with Culpeper and former relations with Dereham were viewed as evidence that she intended to fall pregnant by either in order to provide her impotent husband with an heir.

If it was believed that the queen had turned to other male lovers, as hostile Catholic sources alleged in scandalous detail – possibly due to Henry VIII’s developing impotence – then it makes sense why strong efforts were made to suggest that during a period of two years Anne had enjoyed sexual relations with five men. However, this was only to occur significantly later on. With no evidence of deformity, one cannot argue that Anne’s last miscarriage was the ‘sole reason’ why she was executed four months later. I would tentatively agree with Ives, and other historians, who have argued that ‘the miscarriage of 29 January was neither Anne’s last chance nor the point at which Jane Seymour replaced Anne in Henry’s priorities. It did, nevertheless, make her vulnerable again’.[19] An issue which historians should perhaps consider further is that of the queen’s age. Disagreeing with those who believe Anne was born in 1507, I have argued that she was born most likely during 1501.[20] If the king was aware that his queen was approaching her thirty-fifth birthday, it makes considerable sense why he voiced dissatisfaction and dismay with her second failure in pregnancy. Surely, if she was aged twenty-eight, his reaction would not have been as severe or devastated, for Katherine of Aragon had been pregnant consistently until the age of thirty-three, while Jane Seymour bore her son aged twenty-eight. Since the Imperial ambassador spitefully referred to Anne around this time as being “a thin, old woman” and emphasising that her rival was “a young lady”, it is possible that the queen’s age provoked the king’s concern that, married to Anne, he would never beget a healthy male heir.

This article has indicated how suspect sources which detail Anne Boleyn’s final miscarriage in 1536 are. Many of them are Catholic, written from a hostile perspective designed to disparage the queen and the circumstances of her rule. Many were written much later than the events they describe, and must be viewed with a critical and sceptical eye. Yet the fact that they knew of this miscarriage in the first place suggests that it was significant. Other, perhaps less unsympathetic, court observers simply stated that the queen had aborted a male some three months after conception, making no reference to either a deformity or to a violent separation between the couple. They do, however, suggest that the king was devastated and blamed his queen, fearing that he would never father a male heir by her, while they also show Anne’s grief at following a second unsuccessful pregnancy. In the long term, this miscarriage certainly played an important role in Anne’s downfall. Yet it was not the sole cause, as some historians have suggested. Although an uneasy, even tragic, estrangement between the couple seems to have shortly followed, it was not until late April 1536 that Anne fell into severe royal disfavour, only indirectly influenced by the loss of her son earlier that year.

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[1] Charles Wriothesley, a contemporary observer, wrote that Anne believed herself to be ‘but fiftene weekes gonne with chield’, while the Spanish ambassador Eustace Chapuys also stated that the child had been conceived three and a months previously.

[2] G. W. Bernard, Fatal Attractions (Yale, 2010) advances the claim that Queen Anne was never pregnant and was suffering from a phantom pregnancy, which her stepdaughter Mary later infamously experienced in 1554-5. Eric Ives, The Life and Death of Anne Boleyn (Oxford, 2005) suggests that Anne suffered a miscarriage in the late summer of 1534, stating that it could not have been a stillbirth because she never took to her chamber. Retha M. Warnicke, The Rise and Fall of Anne Boleyn (Cambridge, 1989) believes that the queen gave birth to a stillborn child in late June 1534. Other historians identify with one of these theories – I believe it is most likely Anne suffered a miscarriage.

[3] Cited by Joanna Denny, Anne Boleyn: a New History of England’s Tragic Queen (London, 2004).

[4] Letters and Papers, Foreign and Domestic, of the Reign of Henry VIII, x.282.

[5] Such as A. Weir, The Lady in the Tower: the Fall of Anne Boleyn (Jonathan Cape, 2009).

[6] Hall’s Chronicle, p. 818.

[7] C. Wriothesley, A Chronicle of England during the reign of the Tudors, from A.D. 1485 to 1559, p. 33.

[8] Poème sur la Mort d’Anne Boleyn, Lancelot de Carles, lines 317-326, in La Grande Bretagne devant L’Opinion Française depuis la Guerre de Cent Ans jusqu’a la Fin du XVI Siècle, George Ascoli.

[9] Letters and Papers, x.450.

[10] Letters and Papers, x.528.

[11] Nicholas Sander, Rise and Growth of the Anglican Schism (Burns and Oates, 1887), p.132.

[12] For instance, Weir, Lady in the Tower.

[13] Warnicke, The Rise and Fall of Anne Boleyn (1989) and “Sexual Heresy at the Court of Henry VIII”.

[14] For these arguments, see Warnicke, The Rise and Fall of Anne Boleyn (1989) – Chapter 8 “Sexual Heresy”.

[15] A W Bates ‘Birth defects described in Elizabethan ballads’, http://www.jrsm.rsmjournals.com/content/93/4/202.full.pdf.

[16] http://www.h-net.org/reviews/showrev.php?id=11902

[17] http://www.h-net.org/reviews/showrev.php?id=11902

[18] E. W. Ives The Life and Death of Anne Boleyn (Oxford, 2005).

[19] Ibid.

[20] See http://www.conorbyrnex.blogspot.co.uk/2012/11/the-boleyn-marriage-and-birth-of-anne.html

Mary Boleyn

Left: Scarlett Johansson as Mary Boleyn in The Other Boleyn Girl (2008).
Right: Unknown woman, c.1525, possibly Mary Boleyn.

I was drawn to writing this blog post after reading a fascinating article by Gareth Russell entitled 'Why do we care about Mary Boleyn?' It would be fair to say that since the publication of Philippa Gregory's highly successful, if scandalously inaccurate, novel The Other Boleyn Girl in 2001, Mary has evolved into something of a historical celebrity. She represents feminism, love and bravery to many women who enjoy this period, although others continue to view her dubiously as someone who was, essentially, highly ordinary, and has only become known due to this successful book. Only a handful of her letters survive, we don't know what she looked like, when she was born, her relationships with her siblings or the nature of her childhood experiences. Rumours circulated that she was a 'great and infamous whore', but modern historians, such as Alison Weir, have questioned whether Mary was really the sexually-charged prostitute she is so often depicted as being.

Mary was probably the eldest child born to Sir Thomas Boleyn, a highly successful diplomat at Henry VIII's court, and his highborn wife Lady Elizabeth Howard. When they married is unknown, but it was before 1501 since Elizabeth's jointure was settled on her in November of that year. It is likely that Mary was born around 1500. She had a younger brother, George (born around 1504), and her infamous younger sister Anne, born either in 1501 or in 1507. Mary's appearance is unknown; she is often portrayed as being blonde, pale-skinned, blue-eyed and provocatively sexual. Rumours that she was more beautiful than Anne should be looked at sceptically, but if she attracted two kings Mary must have possessed some charm and physical attractions. Probably born at Blickling Hall, Norfolk, Mary was afforded the splendid opportunity of becoming maid of honour to Mary Tudor, queen of France, in 1514, when she was aged around fourteen. Apparently at the French court, she attracted a reputation of wantonness; some historians suggest that King Francis referred to her as 'the great prostitute' or a 'whore' who he boasted of riding. Leading many to conclude that Mary was at one point the French King's mistress, Weir has questioned whether Mary was really flighty, sceptically looking at these sources and suggesting they were written by those hostile to the Boleyns. Since Francis was a notorious womaniser, he may have been merely representing the prevailing gender beliefs of his time, in an age which identified women as sexually licentious and prone to seducing men when given the chance.

What happened to Mary next is something of a mystery, with some speculating that she returned to England. Her family afforded her a successful marriage to Sir William Carey, a courtier who served Henry VIII, in February 1520. Portrayed in The Other Boleyn Girl as colourless, dull and manipulated by her family, Mary's marriage to William may not have been a love marriage, but it is likely that she had  two children with him, Katherine (b. 1524) and Henry (b. 1526), both of whom later became favourites of their cousin, Elizabeth I. However, some historians - and Gregory portrays it in her novel - suggest that one, or both, children were fathered by Henry VIII, since it is likely that Mary became his mistress somewhere around 1522. The relationship was almost certainly not the great romance it is so often portrayed as being. Weir contends that Mary was manipulated by both her family and the king, while those who served the Pope later suggested that she had been violated, or raped, by  the King. Her husband achieved excellent rewards, probably due to his own capabilities, but his wife's pleasing nature may also have helped. How Mary we felt about this - we don't know. Her thoughts, feelings and beliefs are shrouded in mystery.

In 1526, Mary was, famously, replaced by her charismatic younger sister Anne, who attracted the king. However, unlike Mary, Anne famously refused to become his mistress; whether she actively tempted the king into annulling his marriage to Queen Katherine of Aragon or whether it was based more on his intense desire for a male heir is a matter of notorious dispute between historians. The Boleyn family gradually enjoyed greater and greater success in the late 1520s, with Anne's father becoming an earl and her brother, George, being made a viscount. Mary, however, enjoyed no such rewards. One historian speculates that she became a 'pariah', or embarrassment, to the Boleyn family. She certainly experienced some tragedy in 1528, when her husband William died from the sweating sickness. The 2008 film, with Scarlett Johansson, does not depict this. However, the novel suggests that the two may have enjoyed greater affection and intimacy after Mary was discarded by the king.

After that, not much more is known of Mary. She accompanied Anne to France in 1532, when she entertained the French king - the one who may have boasted of Mary's sexual nature. However, a shocking event occurred in 1534, when Mary, perhaps revealing her determined personality, finally took matters into her own hands. Aged around thirty-four, she married William Stafford, a man of little wealth or lineage, and became pregnant by him immediately. Unfortunately, Mary was forced to reveal this scandalous secret to her sister, who was by now Queen, and Anne understandably reacted with fury and outrage. Not only had Mary married a mere commoner, a highly unsuitable match for a woman who was not only a relative of the powerful Howard family but sister to the Queen herself, but she had not asked royal permission to marry which, as a member of the royal family, she needed to have. Anne banished Mary from court straightaway. This is where The Other Boleyn Girl really frustrates me. Anne, probably, never saw Mary again. So realistically, the book should end there. But no, it portrays Mary as running back to court to serve Anne when Anne begins to suffer mental breakdown after mental breakdown. Readers should note that this never happened. Anne was so shocked at her sister's behaviour that she never saw her again.

Mary's new marriage appears to have been affectionate. However, any children she had by Stafford seem to have died young. They probably retired to the country, although Weir suggests that they actually moved to Calais and resided there until some years later, which I find difficult to believe. Tragically, Mary's siblings, George and Anne, were both executed on trumped-up charges of treason, adultery and incest in May 1536. How Mary reacted to this is impossible to say, but she was probably shocked at the very least, although there is NO evidence - contrary to the book - that she was ever particularly close to her siblings. Her daughter, Katherine, went on to serve Henry's fourth queen Anne of Cleves in 1540, and then her cousin Katherine Howard, before Katherine Howard was executed on similar charges to Anne Boleyn in 1542. Mary died in July 1543, aged around forty-three. What she died of we don't know. Her burial place, similarly, remains a mystery.

It can therefore be concluded that Mary's life is a mystery. We know almost nothing of her, save that she was the sister of a Queen, the wife of a successful courtier, and the aunt of Elizabeth I. The Other Boleyn Girl needs to be recognised for what it is - highly mythologised, romanticised fiction. Philippa Gregory has declared Mary to be her hero, but as Russell bluntly and scathingly points out:

"Why on earth should Mary Boleyn qualify as anyone's historical heroine, out of all the hundreds of magnificent women who have peopled the pages of history? One need not look too far in Mary Boleyn's own gene pool to find women who actually did something with their lives. In contrast, the historical Mary Boleyn did absolutely nothing unremarkable, either by the standards of her own generation or ours".

I have to agree with Gareth Russell. If it wasn't for the widespread success of Philippa Gregory's novel, I doubt that anyone would even be vaguely aware of who Mary Boleyn was, let alone idolise and romanticise about her. The fact is, nothing can be known of her. She was almost certainly not as charming, intelligent, religious, influential, charismatic or mesmerising as her sister Anne. All that she is known for, sadly but truthfully, is for being a whore, the mistress of two kings.

Alison Weir has debated and challenged this view of Mary. Her counterarguments are largely successful - Mary probably wasn't the 'great whore' she is so saliciously depicted as being. But the problems are that in going against history and portraying Mary as a naive innocent, the tool of her family, Gregory dehumanises her sister Anne Boleyn, depicting her as a witch, murderess, adulteress, and poisoner. And this is supposedly from a feminist writer. Surely if she was a true feminist Gregory would applaud Anne for being a strong, ambitious woman who sought to make something of herself in a male-dominated world. But no, she doesn't, and as I wrote on my Amazon review, she betrays both Boleyn girls. I think both Anne and Mary would be shocked and offended at how they're portrayed in her novel.

The film, produced in 2008, is even worse. All of  the actors - none of whom are British, by the way - admitted to reading nothing but the novel as part of their research. Natalie Portman even admitted she didn't identify with Anne Boleyn at all. Contrast this with the incredible Natalie Dormer, who portrayed Anne in The Tudors (2007-10), who read book after book about Anne Boleyn, and even condemned the producers for the way they were presenting her in the series (!) because she was so determined not to betray her historical heroine. The Other Boleyn Girl smacks of laziness, contempt, and a desire to make Anne a scapegoat, and her sister a heroine. Those who know better will scorn the laughable attempts in this work to do so. The sad fact remains this - contrary to Gregory's attempts, Anne is the charismatic queen adored, even idolised, by many today and seen as a romantic victim, and not as the murdering whore portrayed in the novel, while her sister Mary, far from being a heroine for modern English women, is seen at best as colourless and unremarkable and at worst as a woman of very dubious sexual morals.