Jnl of Ecclesiastical History, Vol. 62, No. 4, October 2011.

f Cambridge University Press 2011 763

REVIEW ARTICLE

Anne Boleyn on Trial Again

Anne Boleyn. Fatal attractions. By G. W. Bernard. Pp. x+237+16 plates. New

T radition credits King Solomon with the comment that ‘of the making
of books there is no end ’. Of nothing is that more true than books
about Anne Boleyn. In 2008 came two new biographies – Elizabeth
Norton’s Anne Boleyn: Henry VIII’s obsession, and Alison Weir’s Lady in the
Tower – to say nothing of Suzannah Lipscomb’s excellent 1536. In 2010
imaginative fiction tackled Anne’s early life in France (Robert Maxwell,
Mademoiselle Boleyn) and Howard Brenton’s Anne Boleyn was a sell-out when
premiered at the Globe Theatre. Now George Bernard has come up with
Anne Boleyn: fatal attractions, and no doubt Anne will figure significantly in
David Starkey’s forthcoming biography: Henry VIII (part II).
So what new has Bernard to offer? Not a great deal for those familiar with
the literature. The book restates, at greater length, hypotheses advanced in
the early 1990s, indeed sometimes it does show signs of age.1 Essentially it is
an attempt to demolish the picture of Anne which I and others drew, and this

CSPSpanish=Calendar of state papers, Spanish, ed. G. Bergenroth and others, London 1862–1954 ;
LP=Letters and papers, foreign and domestic of the reign of Henry VIII, 1509–47, ed. J. S. Brewer and
others, London 1862–1932.
1
Some 1,200 words are devoted to Retha Warnicke’s views on Anne’s miscarriage which were
exposed twenty years ago, for example in J. Loach, ‘The usurped and unjust empire of women’, this
JOURNAL xlii (1992), 287. There is no engagement with E. W. Ives, ‘The fall of Cardinal Wolsey’, in
S. J. Gunn and P. G. Lindley (eds), Cardinal Wolsey : Church, State and art, Cambridge 1991, 286–315. Bernard
(p. 218) draws attention to my Anne Boleyn (Oxford 1986), 376, where I dismissed comments by de Carles
(and others) as popular gossip, and contrasts my conclusion in The life and death of Anne Boleyn, Oxford 2004,
60, that the poem versified Cromwell’s media message. He has forgotten that I changed my view in 1992
because he had drawn attention to the description of de Carles as ‘attendant and neer about
thambassador ’ : ‘The fall of Anne Boleyn reconsidered’, EHR cvii (1992), 659.

Downloaded from [Link] 17 Nov 2020 at [Link], subject to the Cambridge Core terms of use.
 764 JOURNAL OF ECCLESIASTICAL HISTORY
makes the book determinedly negative and hard for a reader unfamiliar with
the views being attacked.2 The one new element is that he has been able to
make direct use of the letters of Eustace Chapuys, Charles V’s ambassador in
London (now at Vienna). This has long been desirable – an edition of the
whole correspondence is much needed – but the principal conclusion from
Bernard’s work is that the various PRO calendars of a century ago were well
done.
Readers of this JOURNAL will be drawn to Bernard’s substantial discussion
of Anne’s religion. He repeats his long-held view that the queen’s reputation
as a reformer was manufactured in the reign of Elizabeth, principally by John
Foxe and William Latymer who were concerned to put pressure on Anne’s
daughter to promote a more Protestant regime (pp. 92–5). That Foxe and
Latymer were aware that Anne’s story had a current relevance is beyond
question, so too her Catholic critics, but compelling evidence from Anne’s
own lifetime puts her reputation as a reformer equally beyond question.
A good starting point is a manuscript treatise on letter-writing – ‘Vng Petit
Traicte en Francoys’ (which Bernard appears not to have consulted). The
author, Louis de Brun, dedicated this to Anne at the start of 1531 and gives
the earliest first-hand account of her personal religious practice:
When I consider the great affection and real passion which you have for the French
tongue, I am not surprised that you are never found, if circumstances permit,
without your having some book in French in your hand which is of use and value in
pointing out and finding the true and narrow way to all virtues, as, for example,
translations of the Holy Scriptures, reliable and full of all sound doctrines, or,
equally, of other good books by learned men who give healthy advice for this mortal
life and consolation for the immortal soul. And most of all, last Lent and the Lent
before [i.e. 1530 and 1529], when I was attending this magnificent, excellent and
triumphant court, I have seen you continually reading those helpful letters of St Paul
which contain all the fashion and rule to live righteously, in every good manner of
behaviour, which you know well and practice, thanks to your continual reading of
them.3
Since the purpose of a dedication was to secure reward, de Brun could not
have risked this personal observation unless (a) it was true and (b) Anne was
open about her commitment to the Bible and her interest in the Pauline
letters. After all, the writing of St Paul was the Semtex of the Reformation.
Where then can Anne be placed religiously ? Bernard objects to the label
‘ evangelical’ which most historians use to describe her today. ‘More [than
interest in the Bible] is needed convincingly to make Anne out as an
‘‘ evangelical’’ if by evangelical is meant someone who was opening the
floodgates to the ideas of Martin Luther or Huldrych Zwingli, the fathers of

2
It especially targets Ives, Life and death of Anne, and David Starkey, Six wives of Henry VIII,
3
London 2003. BL, MS Royal 20. B xvii, fo. 1.

Downloaded from [Link] 17 Nov 2020 at [Link], subject to the Cambridge Core terms of use.
 765
REVIEW ARTICLE
what became known as protestantism ’ (p. 97). But the term ‘evangelical’
is used today precisely to avoid the stale old confessional pigeonholes:
Lutheran, Zwinglian, Calvinist, Catholic, Protestant. As long ago as 1957
Lucien Febvre warned us to see the early years of the Reformation as a
period of ‘ magnificent religious anarchy’.4 Research since has massively
endorsed his dictum. Late medieval Europe was in the grip of one of the
religious revivals characteristic of Christianity. In country after country there
is evidence of men and women who sought a more personal Christocentric
experience. Sometimes this took forms which may later appear quintessen-
tially Catholic, such as devotion to the Holy Name or the Five Wounds or to
Corpus Christi. It is equally evident in an enthusiasm for the Bible in the
vernacular which became a hall-mark of [Link] initially Thomas
More approved of the controlled distribution of the Bible in English.5
Erasmus expected More to welcome the Ninety-Five Theses and it was
More whom he probably had in mind when in May 1519 he told Luther that
‘ You have many in England who think the best of your writing, and amongst
them are some great men.’6 The ground on which men and women could
be justified before God was an unresolved issue, regularly debated in
universities. St Augustine’s total rejection of any role for the individual was
the view of a minority, but not a negligible one.7 Reginald Pole experienced a
spiritual crisis and became convinced of justification by faith, and his circle
was responsible for the hugely popular tract known as the Beneficio di Christo,
published in 1543. Taken in significant measure from Calvin’s Institutes,
reputedly it sold 40,000 copies in the Venetian Republic alone.8 In the first
half of the sixteenth century committed Christians were not either round
pegs or square pegs.
George Bernard sometimes shows awareness of this anarchy but he
persists in attacking the Aunt Sally of ‘the case for Anne as evangelical or a
proto-protestant’ (pp. 103, 115, 117–18, 124). An evangelical is not a ‘ proto-
Protestant ’ unless we are going to say that someone like Cranmer (or even
Pole) was a proto-Protestant in the 1530s. In the English context, historians
use the term ‘ evangelical’ simply to describe an individual who is
sympathetic to an agenda of real spiritual experience, the priority of faith,

4
L. Febvre, Au Coeur religieux du XVIe siècle, Paris 1957, 66.
5 6
R. Marius, Thomas More, Cambridge, MA 1984, 347–9. Ibid. 269–70.
7
A. McGrath, The intellectual origins of the European Reformation, Oxford 1987, 79–93, and
Reformation thought, 3rd edn, Oxford 1999, 31–3, 72–7, 104–5 ; D. Bagchi, ‘Catholic theologians
of the Reformation period before Trent ’, in D. Bagchi and D. C. Steinmetz (eds), Cambridge
companion to Reformation theology, Cambridge 2004, 228–9.
8
E. Cameron, ‘The Reformation in France and Italy to c. 1560 ’, and J. J. Martin, ‘Elites
and reform in northern Italy ’, in P. Benedict, S. Seidel Menchi and A. Tallon (eds), La Réforme
en France et en Italie, Paris 2007, 26–7, 316–17 ; cf. K. Austin, ‘Immanuel Tremellius and the
avoidance of controversy ’, in L. Racaut and A. Ryrie (eds), Moderate voices in the European
Reformation, Aldershot 2005, 73–6.

Downloaded from [Link] 17 Nov 2020 at [Link], subject to the Cambridge Core terms of use.
 766 JOURNAL OF ECCLESIASTICAL HISTORY
access to the Bible, and reform of abuses and superstition.9 Significantly this
was the religious emphasis in the court of Queen Claude of France where
Anne served between 1514 and 1521 and, as de Brun has told us, Anne’s
taste was for religious literature in French. Claude’s household was much
influenced by reform (as also the entourage of her sister-in-law Marguerite of
Navarre).10 The leading figure in that reform was Jacques Lefèvre d’Étaples.
His Commentary on the Epistles of St Paul, published in 1512, abandoned the
established way of interpreting Scripture through allegory, tropology and
anagogy in favour of the literal sense understood through the guidance of the
Holy Spirit.11 In successive works he moved steadily to the conviction that for
a Christian the Bible was the only authority, not Scripture as interpreted by
the faith of the Church.12 In 1523 the introduction to his translation of the
Gospels into French would claim ‘ that men and their doctrines are nothing,
except insofar as they are corroborated and confirmed by the word of God’.13
As well as this Reformation principle of sola scriptura, Lefèvre taught
justification by faith long before Luther. His 1512 commentary on St Paul’s
Epistle to the Romans explicitly stated that it is impossible for men ‘to be
saved of themselves and their good works’.14 Human effort has no part in
justification:
[He] who keeps the works of the law throughout his life … is still not justified, still
not the possessor of that righteousness from which he is able to have eternal life ; for
it is God only who provides this righteousness through faith and who justifies by
grace alone unto life eternal.15
With Anne spending her teenage years in this atmosphere, it can hardly be
accidental that among her surviving books is a personal manuscript text
of Lefevre’s Épistres et évangiles pour les cinquante et deux sepmaines de l’an, each
passage accompanied by an explanatory homily.16 The homilies were
reformed, through and through: ‘not a father of the church, not a holy

9
Bernard (p. 115) claims that ‘ all of this was essentially Henry’s policy ’.Yet what Henry
understood by it was very different. To him, Christianity was a matter of moral living and
correct liturgical performance, and faith was the acceptance of propositions, not a personal,
life-changing commitment. Cf. ‘Luther’s Catholic opponents … understood sola fide as
implying exclusive reliance on a human mental faculty ’ : Bagchi, ‘Catholic theologians ’,
228–9.
10
Nicole Lemaitre, ‘ Les Évêques réformateurs français’, in C. Giry-Deloison (ed.), François
Ier et Henri VIII, Lille 1996, 102–19 ; Guillaume Briçonnet et Marguerite d’Angoulême : correspondence, ed.
C. Martineau and M. Veissière, Geneva 1975, i. 124; ii. 64. Anne was looked up to by Claude’s
younger sister Renée whose interest in reform developed into full-blown Protestantism :
Calendar of state papers, foreign series of the reign of Elizabeth, ed. Joseph Stephenson and others,
London 1863–1950, 1560–1, in progress, no. 870.
11
‘ the literal sense and the spiritual sense coincide ’ : P. E. Hughes, Lefèvre, pioneer of
ecclesiastical renewal in France, Grand Rapids, MI 1984, 56.
12
McGrath, Intellectual origins, 140–8. 13 Hughes, Lefèvre, 157. 14 Ibid. 75. 15 Ibid. 74.
16
BL, MS Harleian 6561.

Downloaded from [Link] 17 Nov 2020 at [Link], subject to the Cambridge Core terms of use.
 767
REVIEW ARTICLE
exegete, not a doctor [of the church] is mentioned, [Lefevre] makes an
absolute distinction between the bible and tradition’.17 The Paris theologians
claimed to find forty-eight errors in the book, most of them damnable
heresies, including justification by faith alone and a denial that good works
are necessary for salvation.18 Anne’s own manuscript retains the bible
readings in French but the commentary is in English. Professionally copied
and illuminated, it had been translated by her brother George, Lord
Rochford, and was presented to Anne in the autumn or winter of 1532–3.19
George was a keen reformer – Chapuys hated being escorted by him because
he insisted on discussing religion – and the dedication specifically says that he
was responding to a ‘ commandment’ from Anne.20 What is more, the actual
copy of the 1530–2 Alençon edition, which George used for the translation,
is known to have been already available at court.21 Thus for Anne to call for
an additional copy and a personal one at that, must mean that the Épistres
et évangiles had a special significance for her. Even more lavish was her
manuscript copy of a French reformist commentary on the Old Testament
book of Ecclesiastes. It was again a French/English hybrid attributable to
Rochford, and justification by faith comes through loud and clear:
faith in God, and in our Lord Jesuchrist is it which chiefly doth relieve us from the
transgressions that be passed of the sentence of the law, and yieldeth us innocents,
and in such manner that none can demand of us anything, for because that faith
hath gotten us Jesuchrist, and maketh him our own, he having accomplished the law,
and satisfied unto all transgressions.

17
Jacques Lefèvre d’Étaples, Épistres et évangiles pour les cinquante et deux dimanches de l’an,
facsimile of the Lyons printing (Etienne Dolet, 1542), ed. M. A. Screech, Geneva 1964, 13.
There are, in fact, seven citations of Augustine and one of Jerome : Jacques Lefèvre d’Étaples et ses
disciples : épistres et évangiles pour les cinquante et deux dimanches de l’an, ed. Guy Bedouelle and
F. Giacone, Leiden 1976, 403. The earliest edition is Simon du Bois, conjecturally Paris
1525–6.
18
Épistres et évangiles (Screech edn), 41–51, for example ‘ Propositio xvii’, ‘For from the will of
God alone comes our salvation, without any benefit of so great goods [‘ biens’] or merits from
us. Censura : This proposition, that merit arising from good works is not necessary for salvation
and has no part in it, is heretical.’ By 1525 Lefèvre had also abandoned the cult of saints along
with belief in purgatory and had reduced priestly authority to expounding the Scripture : ibid.
pp. xxiii–xxiv, clxx v, ccxxiv; Épistres et évangiles (Bedouelle and Giacone edn), 31–2, 227, 297.
19
J. P. Carley, ‘Her moost lovyng and fryndely brother sendeth gretyng ’, in M. P. Brown
and D. S. McKendrick (eds), Illuminating the book : makers and interpreters, London 1998, 267–8;
The libraries of King Henry VIII, ed. J. P. Carley, London 2000, pp. lvii–lviii ; M. Axton and
J. P. Carley (eds), The triumph of English : Henry Parker, Lord Morley, London 2000, 37; J. P. Carley,
The books of King Henry VIII and his wives, London 2004, 126–7, 131 and plate 121. Bernard (p. 100)
nevertheless regards Rochford’s involvement as ‘implausible ’.
20
CSPSpanish, 1536–8, 91; LP x, no. 699. Bernard questions Rochford’s reformist
credentials on the ground that he gambled (p. 99). On the problem that gambling posed for
reformers see E. W. Ives, Lady Jane Grey : a Tudor mystery, Oxford 2009, 74–5. See also Ives, Life
21
and death of Anne, 263, 272. Libraries of King Henry VIII, p. lviii.

Downloaded from [Link] 17 Nov 2020 at [Link], subject to the Cambridge Core terms of use.
 768 JOURNAL OF ECCLESIASTICAL HISTORY
And the commentary is careful to guard against the accusation that the
doctrine of justification by faith alone undermines morality – a charge which
Henry VIII would always make:
faith having reconciled us unto the Father, doth get us also the Holy Ghost.
Which … sheddeth in our hearts the fire of love and dilection, by the means whereof
we be well prepared for to keep the law of God, which is but love : and without the
which it is aswell possible for us to keep the said commandments, as unto the ice to
abide warming and burning in the fire.22
It is, however, important to qualify the parameters of this early French
reform. Lefèvre remained throughout persona grata with Francis I and
Marguerite of Navarre, and the crucial difference between the acceptable
Lefèvre and the unacceptable Luther was that his homilies ‘were in no
way intended to be schismatic’.23 On the key issue of Christ’s presence
in the eucharist, he seems to have believed this was true materially:
‘ The appropriation of his body and blood is the most profound uniting of
Christ with those who receive him and the closest binding of his ineffable love
to us. ’24
Anne’s insistence on having access to the sacrament when she was in the
Tower is not, therefore, proof that she was no evangelical (as Bernard thinks,
p. 107). Like Lefèvre, Cranmer would then have accepted the host as the
‘ body of Christ’. Bernard also lays stress (pp. 106–7) on the report that, in the
Tower, Anne said ‘ I shal be in heaven, for I have done mony gud dedys in
my days’, interpreting this as a clear repudiation of the doctrine of
justification by faith.25 But no orthodox Christian would ever have said
such a thing. Only a heretic would claim justification by works alone. What is
more, conventional belief would have anticipated purgatory, not heaven.
The remark is, however, fully intelligible in the light of the reformed
distinction between ‘justification’ and what became known as ‘ sanctification’
(i.e. good works which all reformers agreed was the response to being justified
by faith). As Lefèvre wrote: ‘Whoever sows in the spirit, that is to say who
does the works of the spirit, he will receive life eternal in his spirit. Thus now,
while we have time to sow, let us sow in the spirit and do good … and
without doubt we will receive in opportune time a good and full harvest in life
eternal to the glory of the eternal father.’26

22 23
Alnwick Castle, Percy MS 465, fos 147–8. Épistres et évangiles (Screech edn), 16.
24
He did, however, describe that union as spiritual, said that the eucharist contains no
‘ mystery other than the remembrance effected by the presence of the body and blood formerly
offered … which is all sufficient for salvation ’, and that ‘ the sacrament does not effect
anything without faith’ : Hughes, Lefèvre, 87, 89.
25
BL, MS Cotton Otho Cx, fo. 224v (LP x, no. 797).
26
Épistres et évangiles (Bedouelle and Giacone edn), 309. This follows St Paul : ‘work will be
shown for what it is because the Day [of Christ] will bring it to light. It will be revealed with
fire and the fire will test the quality of each man’s work. If what he has built survives, he will

Downloaded from [Link] 17 Nov 2020 at [Link], subject to the Cambridge Core terms of use.
 769
REVIEW ARTICLE
If Anne Boleyn’s religion belongs in the context of early French
reform – and we know that until the final catastrophe she was continuing
to collect religious works from France – what influence did she exert ?27
That, too, Bernard, seeks to minimise. He even suggests that, if a true
evangelical, Anne would have secured changes in the coronation service
(p. 107). The whole reason for the traditional ceremony was, of course, to
demonstrate that Anne was in the direct line of legitimate queens consort.
As Edward Baynton, her vice-chamberlain, wrote to her brother, it was
performed ‘honourably … as ever was, if all old and ancient men say true ’.28
So what is the evidence which Bernard will have none of? In 1528 a heretical
cell was discovered in Cardinal’s College, Oxford. Anne intervened with
Wolsey on behalf of one of the principal accused and she would later appoint
William Betts, another of those involved, as her chaplain.29 In 1534 (when
Tyndale’s New Testament was still banned) she moved to have Richard
Herman readmitted to the house of the English merchants at Antwerp from
which he had been expelled ‘ only for that, that still like a good Christian man
did both with his goods and policy, to his great hurt and hinderance in this
world, help the setting forth of the New Testament in English’.30 In the same
year she presented Edward Crome to the London living of St Mary
Aldermary, a man who had twice been forced to recant heretical opinions.31
Matthew Parker, Elizabeth’s first archbishop, was another of Anne’s
chaplains and she appointed him as dean of the college of Stoke by Clare
which he proceeded to reform with Anne as the new founder.32 Several
reformist bishops had links to her. She was the patron of William Barlow, lent
money to Latimer and Shaxton and clearly had ties with Edward Foxe, as is
evident to this day in the profusion of her monogram and badge which

receive his reward. If it is burned up, he will suffer loss; he himself will be saved, but only as
one escaping through the flames ’ : 1 Cor. iii. 12–15 ; cf. ‘Certain it is that if we desire to follow
him in all humility (which is to us necessary to have salvation) we will not be without reward
but we will be exalted in eternal glory with him’ : Épistres et évangiles (Bedouelle and Giacone
edn, 149).
27
LP x, no. 827. A significant number of other French reformist texts in the sixteenth-
century royal collection can be associated with the Boleyns : Libraries of King Henry VIII, p. lviii.
28
LP vi, no. 613.
29
M. Dowling, Humanism in the age of Henry VIII, London 1986, 81–2. It is not clear whether
Anne was interceding for Thomas Garrard or the equally suspect Dr Robert Forman of
Queens’ College, Cambridge.
30
Original letters illustrative of English history, ed. H. Ellis, London 1824–46, i/2, 46.
31
Letters of royal and illustrious ladies, ed. M. A. E. Wood, London 1846, ii. 188–9 (LP vii,
no. 693).
32
Correspondence of Matthew Parker, ed. J. Bruce and T. T. Perowne (Parker Society, 1853),
1–2, 4–5 ; John Strype, Life and acts of Matthew Parker, Oxford 1821, 16–18.

Downloaded from [Link] 17 Nov 2020 at [Link], subject to the Cambridge Core terms of use.
 770 JOURNAL OF ECCLESIASTICAL HISTORY
decorates the organ screen of King’s College, Cambridge.33 Anne’s support
for reform was known in France, and the Latin verses of the reformer
Nicholas Bourbon (Borbonius) make it clear that he took refuge with Anne
from the attentions of church authorities in Paris.34 In 1538 Etienne Dolet,
the Lyons printer (and future martyr), included in his epigrams one on
Anne’s death entitled Reginae utopiae falso adulterii crimine damnatae et capite
mulctatae epitaphium, punning on the ambiguity of ou-topos (no place) and
eu-topos (happy place).35 Cranmer’s famous letter to Henry after Anne’s
arrest has
I loved her not a little for the love which I judged her to bear towards God and His
Gospel ; so if she is proved culpable, there is not one that loveth God and His Gospel
that will ever favour her, but must hate her above all other ; for then there was never
creature in our time that so much slandered the Gospel ; and God hath sent her this
punishment, for that she feignedly hath professed His Gospel in her mouth and not
in heart and deed.36
Nicholas Shaxton wrote to Cromwell urging him to be as active in promoting
‘ the honour of God and his holy word than when the late queen was alive
and often incited you thereto ’.37 Why should the two bishops write as they
did if Anne had not actively supported the evangelical cause ? All in all, the
evidence in Anne’s own lifetime for her reformist credentials (and there is
more38), reminds one of the saying that ‘if it looks like a duck, walks like a
duck and quacks like a duck, it’s a duck’.
Bernard appears to fear that if Anne is allowed any influence, it will
undermine his thesis that Henry was the architect of the Reformation. But it
is hard to see how Anne Boleyn, or for that matter Cranmer and Cromwell
could occupy the positions that they did without having some influence.
Even the mouse-like Jane Seymour tried to intervene on behalf of the

33
For Barlow see Ives, Life and death of Anne, 262 ; for Latimer and Shaxton see LP x, no. 1257
(ix). Bernard (p. 111) queries ‘ any direct involvement’ of Anne in Foxe’s career, but the
numerous Boleyn devices on the King’s College organ screen (erected when he was Provost)
point to a close link : Ives Life and death of Anne, 243, 249–50 and plate 34. For Foxe’s strong
credentials as a reformer see J. V. Pollet, Martin Bucer, Paris 1962, ii. 456, and C. Hopf, Martin
Bucer and the English Reformation, Oxford 1964, 199, 251.
34
Borbonius [Nicholas Bourbon], Nugarum libri octo, Lyons 1538, vii. 90, p. 402.
35
Étienne Dolet, Deux Livres d’ epigrammes, Lyons 1538, bk III, p. 162.
36
Miscellaneous writings and letters of Thomas Cranmer, ed. J. E. Cox (Parker Society, 1846),
37
323–4. LP x, no. 942.
38
For example see ‘Le Pasteur Évangélique ’; Psalter (translation attributed to Louis de
Berquin who was martyred in 1528) ; New Testament, trans. William Tyndale (1534) ; Bible, trans.
Jacques Lefèvre d’Étaples (Antwerp 1534), stamped with ‘HA ’ ; and evangelical texts, viz.
vol. i : ‘Ainsi Que Tovs Mevrent Par Adam : Avssy Tovs Seront Vivifies Par Christ [1 Cor. xv.22] ; vol. ii :
La Loy A Este Donnee Par Moysse : La Grace Et La Verite Par Iesv Christ [ John i. 17] : see Ives, Life and
death of Anne, 240, 242–3, 269, 270, 273–4, and plates 23, 28, 29, 45.

Downloaded from [Link] 17 Nov 2020 at [Link], subject to the Cambridge Core terms of use.
 771
REVIEW ARTICLE
39
monasteries. Modern research on leadership points to the authority which
comes with status, charisma and the ability to reward and coerce – all of
which Henry had in plenty – but also to the potential importance of access to
expert knowledge, intimate support and information.40 As I wrote in 1991,
‘ there is no contradiction between a dominant Henry and a Henry
dependent on others for information and advice’.41 The pope can speak ex
cathedra but does anyone imagine that he does so entirely on his own
initiative?
With hindsight I regret that when in 1972 I reopened the issue of Anne’s
fall, I used the term ‘ faction’.42 I envisaged this as an organic and fluid
phenomenon and did not appreciate how entrenched was the assumption
that faction is necessarily organised and political. It would have avoided
much misunderstanding if I had used some such ugly neologism as
‘ unstructured interest group’. Such groups can and commonly do exist in
any kind of organisation, and certainly at the Tudor court in 1536. Chapuys
tells us so, and he was a professional observer of court life and had good
sources.43 There is no reason to reject ex hypothesi his report that a group of
courtiers wanted to see Anne removed. Indeed some of them reappear in the
summer, pressing for the rehabilitation of Princess Mary.44
Bernard’s rejection of the role of interest groups in 1536 is revealing. He
refers to ‘ the factional historians’ claim of an active, intriguing manipulating
conservative ‘ Aragonese’ faction’ (p. 139). These ‘factional historians’ are a
construct of his imagination. A number of historians believe that interest
groups were involved in 1536, but they differ as to how, and their views have
been refined and changed over time. Bernard quotes from whichever writer
and date suits his purpose and so creates a chimera. He is also anything but
subtle. He says that ‘there is nothing to support the notion of the Poles and
Exeter as in any sense political leaders in 1536 ’ (p. 137) ; ‘ nothing in the
sources justify seeing Carew as an active political figure, a leader of a faction’
(p. 138). He concludes that it is ‘ hard to detect a conservative party in the

39
LP xi, nos 860, 1250.
40
P. J. Montana and B. H. Charnov, Management, New York 2008, 253.
41
E. W. Ives., ‘Stress, faction and ideology in early-Tudor England ’, HJ xxxiv (1991), 134.
42
Idem, ‘Faction at the court of Henry VIII : the fall of Anne Boleyn’, History lvii (1972),
169–88; cf. J. E. Neale, ‘The Elizabethan political scene’, in his Essays in Elizabethan history,
London 1958, 59–84 ; G. R. Elton, ‘ Sir Thomas More and the opposition to Henry VIII ’, and
‘Thomas Cromwell’s decline and fall’, in his Studies in Tudor and Stuart politics and government, i,
Cambridge 1974, 155–72, 189–230.
43
CSPSpanish, 1536–8, 85, 106; LP x, nos 601, 752. For faction at work see TNA, PRO, SP1/
59, fos 141–2 (LP iv, app. no. 235(1)) ; BL, MS Stowe, 141, fo. 33 ; Letters and accounts of William
Brereton of Malpas, ed. E. W. Ives (Lancashire and Cheshire Record Society cxvi, 1976), 75, 93.
44
Ives, Life and death of Anne, 361–2, and ‘The fall of Anne Boleyn reconsidered ’, 660. Henry
was determined to break Mary’s will, and it is hard to see why the arrest of various courtiers
should put pressure on the princess unless they were known as her supporters.

Downloaded from [Link] 17 Nov 2020 at [Link], subject to the Cambridge Core terms of use.
 772 JOURNAL OF ECCLESIASTICAL HISTORY
ascendant, certainly not one becoming so powerful that Thomas Cromwell
would have found it imperative to join with it ’ (p. 141). And he is of
course right; it would be both wrong and anachronistic to talk of ‘ political
leaders’ or ‘ a conservative party’. Influence was individual, but people could
and did think alike and work together: ‘gyff good attendaunce by youre selph
and other of your frendes aboute the Kyng ’.45 Influence called for
diplomacy: lobbying at an opportune moment, silence or a raised eyebrow,
a comment, suggestion or recommendation moderately expressed. It still
does.
Central to Bernard’s position is his refusal to accept that Cromwell
engineered Anne’s destruction, even though the minister told Chapuys that
he had done so.46 Bernard glosses this as diplomatic double-talk as he does
whenever Chapuys’s evidence is inconvenient (pp. 143–6). For the seeds of
Anne’s destruction by Cromwell we have to start with her closeness to
Henry.47 That was an asset to the minister so long as he was on good terms
with Anne, but if the two were to clash, it might impede or even jeopardise
his position. In the late spring of 1536 a clash did occur. The evidence for this
is the sermon delivered by Anne’s almoner, John Skip, in the royal chapel on
Passion Sunday 2 April. It caused almost a riot and resulted in Skip being
hauled before the council and forced to explain himself.48
The text was John viii. 46, ‘ Which of you can convict me of sin’, and Skip
took ‘ me ’ as applying to the clergy and ‘ you’ to his lay hearers. He is unlikely
to have spoken without Anne’s support and Bernard wants us to see the
sermon as further evidence that the queen was no evangelical. In particular
he points to the sermon’s endorsement of ‘ the little ceremonies of the
church ’ – holy water, holy bread and the like – and concludes that ‘ Skip’s
stance was that of a conservative trying to block change ’ (p. 121). But Skip
defended the ceremonies as symbols, not because they had apotropaic
powers. That is exactly what the ninth of the Ten Articles would say three
months later, an article which Bernard himself asserted in 2005 ‘reflects the
king’s attitudes and in particular his determination to purify religion’.49 Thus
he must accept that far from being ‘ a conservative trying to block change’,
Skip (and Anne) was endorsing reform as far as Henry would allow. Skip also

45
SP 1/59, fos 141–2 (LP iv, app. no. 235(1)) ; Letters and accounts of William Brereton, 75.
46
CSPSpanish, 1536–8, 137 (LP x. no. 1069).
47
Bernard (pp. 133–4) now accepts my conclusion that Henry’s public commitment to
Anne was demonstrated on Easter Tuesday (18 April) when a confrontation was set up to get
Charles V’s ambassador to acknowledge her for the first time.
48
The material on the sermon consists of two hostile summaries and a set of
interrogatories : SP 6/1, fos 7–11v ; SP 6/2, fos 11–13; SP 1/103, fos 78–84. There are related
MSS : SP/2, fos 18ff. and SP 6/6, fos 70ff.
49
Documents of the English Reformation ed. G. Bray, Cambridge 1994, 173 ; G. W. Bernard, The
king’s Reformation, New Haven–London 2005, 288.

Downloaded from [Link] 17 Nov 2020 at [Link], subject to the Cambridge Core terms of use.
 773
REVIEW ARTICLE
said that if ceremonies were abused the king would be right to suppress
them – effectively a marker for further reform.50
What Bernard underestimates is the key passage in the sermon which
attacked Cromwell personally. This used the Old Testament story of how
Esther, wife of the Persian king, Ahasuerus, forestalled a massacre of the Jews
which had been planned by Haman, his chief minister.51 In the Vulgate,
Haman’s motive is antisemitism, and he offers 10,000 talents to pay ‘ for the
archers’, an offer that the king refuses. Skip, however, deliberately altered
this to make Haman promise Ahasuerus a huge cash gain from the intended
genocide which the king then says he could keep.52 This made Haman
‘ moyche moire crueler upon [the Jews] bycause he perceved that he should
have the xM talenttes hym selff ’.53 Skip was preaching two weeks after the
Commons had passed the bill dissolving the smaller monasteries (and before
the royal assent). The chief minister targeting the Jews, i.e. the clergy, can
only be Cromwell, and the alteration to the story specifically implied that he
was attacking the monasteries to line his own pockets.54 And ‘the good
woman (which this ientill king Assuerus loved verey well and putt his truste in
by cause he knewe that she was ever his frynde)’ who gave ‘ contrary
cownsell’? Everyone in the chapel that day knew that this was Anne Boleyn
and that Skip was speaking for her.55
Linking the sermon and the bill to abolish the smaller monasteries explains
why Skip preached as he did. Why otherwise gratuitously attack Henry’s
counsellors? Skip complained about parliament innovating, but the
dissolution bill was the only measure passed in the session which could
cause ‘ growigging of the people’.56 Skip said that a king’s ‘counsell nowadays
will move hym no otherwise vnto ony thinges butt as they see hym disposed &

50
‘The kynges office is to se thabuses taken awey and not the good thinges themselffes
except hit so be that thabuses can nott be taken awey, as Ezechias toke awey the brason
serpentt when he cowde nott take awey thabuse of hitt’ : SP 6/1, fo. 10. The reference is to 2
Kings viii. 4.
51
The story had been used against Wolsey : G. Walker, ‘Cardinal Wolsey and the satirists :
the case of Godly Queen Hester ’, in Gunn and Lindley, Cardinal Wolsey, 245–60. It would also
be used against Cromwell by the Pilgrimage of Grace : M. H. Dodds and R. Dodds, The
Pilgrimage of Grace, London 1915, i. 281.
52
For details see E. W. Ives, ‘Anne Boleyn and the early Reformation in England : the
53
contemporary evidence ’, HJ xxvii (1994), 398–9. SP 6/1, fo. 9v.
54
Cf. Alexander Ales, ‘ Cromwell, Wriothesley and certain others … hated the queen
because she had sharply rebuked them … that under the guise of religion they were advancing
their own interests [and] that they had put everything up for sale’, Calendar of state papers foreign,
1558–1559, no. 1303.
55
SP 6/1, fo. 8v. For recollections of Anne mobilising other preachers to defend monastic
assets (including Hugh Latimer) see William Latymer, ‘A briefe treatise or cronickille
of … Anne Bulleyne ’, Bodleian Library, Oxford, MS Don. C 42, fos 28v, 29, and ‘William
Latymer’s Cronickille ’, ed. M. Dowling, in Camden Miscellany XXX (Camden 4th ser. xxxix,
56
1990), 57–8 ; Ives, Life and death of Anne, 310. SP 6/1, fo. 11.

Downloaded from [Link] 17 Nov 2020 at [Link], subject to the Cambridge Core terms of use.
 774 JOURNAL OF ECCLESIASTICAL HISTORY
inclined to the same’, and few in the chapel could have been unaware of
counsellors going along with the king’s determination to cut back the wealth
of the Church.57 Skip insinuated that royal advisers were motivated by the
hope of ‘gyftes ’ and ‘ promocions’ and attacked the wholesale denigration of
the clergy by laymen who had their eyes on church wealth.58 This was less
than a month after the Compendium Compertorum scandal sheet had swung
opinion in parliament against the monasteries, and petitions seeking grants of
the abbey lands were already arriving.59
Cromwell knew what a break with Anne could mean. He had kept the
desperate letter that Cardinal Wolsey had written to him six years earlier:
‘ if the displeasure of my lady Anne be somewhat assuaged as I pray God the
same may be, then it should [be devised] that by some convenient mean she
be further laboured [for] this the only help and remedy. All possible means
[must be attempted for the] attaining of her favour’.60 Chapuys, in fact, says
that Cromwell did try to ameliorate the dissolution but incurred Henry’s
anger.61 This left the minister facing the possibility of Anne becoming ‘a
contynuall serpentyn ennemeye abought the kyng’.62 Moreover, since the
positive message in Skip’s sermon had been the need to strengthen education,
the minister may well have anticipated a future in which Anne impeded his
efforts to satisfy the king’s desire for money, by pressing Henry to save and
reform some of the condemned monasteries on the model of Stoke by
Clare.63 Indeed she had already secured exemption for the universities from
the payment of first fruits and tenths.64 In 1546 Henry’s last wife, Katherine
Parr would similarly intervene successfully to help save the colleges of the two
universities from being plundered by the king and his courtiers.65

57 58
Ibid. fo. 8. Ibid. fos 8v, 9; SP 6/2, fo. 12.
59
P. Hughes, The Reformation in England, London 1956, i. 387; Ives, Life and death of Anne, 310.
60
State papers published under the authority of His Majesty’s Commission, King Henry VIII, London
1830–52, i. 352 (LP iv, no. 6114) ; Ives, Life and death of Anne, 130. The letter must have been
among Cromwell’s papers seized in 1540. Bernard (p. 53) reads this letter as evidence that
Wolsey did not see Anne as responsible for his fall, but he did (reportedly) call her ‘the nyght
Crowe ’ : George Cavendish, The life and death of Cardinal Wolsey, ed. R. S. Sylvester (Early
English Text Society ccvliii, 1959), 137. On 1 April Chapuys had reminded Cromwell of
Wolsey’s fate : Calendar of state papers Spanish, 1536–8, 83–4 (LP x, no. 601).
61
CSPSpanish, 1536–8, 83–4 (LP x, no. 601). There were also diplomatic and political
considerations : Ives, Life and death of Anne, 312–16.
62
Cavendish, Life and death of Wolsey, 137.
63
SP 6/1, fo. 11. For Anne’s possible involvement in petitions to reprieve monasteries see
Ives, Life and death of Anne, 312. For Stoke by Clare see pp. 286–7.
64
BL, MS Cotton Faustina C iii, fo. 456 (LP x, no. 345). William Latymer reported that the
remission also covered ‘subsidies ’ : Latymer, ‘Treatyse ’, fo. 28v (Dowling, ‘Cronickille ’, 57).
65
J. E. A. Dawson, ‘The foundation of Christ Church, Oxford and Trinity College,
Cambridge in 1546 ’, Bulletin of the Institute of Historical Research lvii (1984), 208–15; A. Ryrie, The
Gospel and Henry VIII, Cambridge 2003, 164–9.

Downloaded from [Link] 17 Nov 2020 at [Link], subject to the Cambridge Core terms of use.
 775
REVIEW ARTICLE
The remainder of this book argues, as the dust jacket says, ‘ that the
allegations of adultery that led to Anne’s execution in the Tower could be
close to the truth’. This is what will sell the book. In brief, Bernard’s method
is to take evidence which he accepts appears to be in Anne’s favour, and
construct alternative interpretations one after another. For example, if the
queen was not where episodes of adultery were alleged to have occurred,
perhaps the dates ‘ were chosen by informed guesswork rather than because
there was any concrete evidence at all ’ (p. 166). Later we have ‘ let us
imagine’ seven times in one paragraph, followed by ‘let us for the sake of
argument, suppose that the dates given were correct’ (pp. 187–8). We also are
told that ‘ nothing is more difficult in historical study than imagining evidence
that does not survive, not least since such efforts at imagination are by
definition unverifiable’ (p. 170). This reminds me of Secretary of Defense
Rumsfeld: ‘Reports that say something hasn’t happened are always
interesting to me, because as we know, there are … known unknowns; that
is to say we know there are some things we do not know. But there are also
unknown unknowns – the ones we don’t know we don’t know.’66
Bernard writes as he does to justify the weight that he continues to place
on the narrative poem by Lancelot de Carles, the future bishop of Riez,
completed in London a fortnight after Anne’s execution.67 Henry VIII himself
described the author as ‘ oon Carle … being attendant and neer about the
ambassador’, which places the origin of the piece squarely in the French
embassy.68 It is, thus, hardly surprising that de Carles’s account is in outline
congruent with what Cromwell circulated on the diplomatic network.69
Bernard nevertheless believes that ‘ if the accounts given by de Carles and
Cromwell roughly agree, that might be simply because they expressed what
they thought was the truth ’ (p. 158). But the issue is not what each thought,
but what information each had access to. Cromwell’s reports were
deliberately brief and refused to go into detail.70 De Carles relied on ‘the
accounts that many have given me’, and what his version adds is the court
gossip that the principal information against Anne was supplied by her
friend, the countess of Worcester.71 De Carles amplifies this with dialogue
between the countess and her brother Sir Antony Brown describing

66
Donald Rumsfeld, US Department of Defense briefing, 12 Feb. 2002.
67
Lancelot de Carles, Histoire de Anne Boleyn jadis royne d’Angleterre, exécutee à mort à Londres, lines
1319–20. For bibliography see Ives, Life and death of Anne, 376 n. 58, and Bernard, Anne Boleyn,
202 n. 15.
68
LP xii/2, no. 78. It is noticeable that the only alleged ‘lover ’ to whom de Carles gives
much attention is Francis Weston whom the French did try to rescue : Histoire, lines 789–809 ;
CSPSpanish, 1536–38, 128 (LP x, no. 908) ; Lisle letters, ed. M. St Clare Byrne, London 1981,
69 70
iii. 695 (LP x, no. 865). LP x, no. 873. LP xi, no. 29.
71
de Carles, Histoire, lines 28, 339–74 ; Lisle letters, iii. 703a ; iv. 847 (LP x, nos 953, 964).
Roland Bulkeley said that a number of ladies were accessories, but gave no names : SP 1/103,
fo. 218 (LP x, no. 785).

Downloaded from [Link] 17 Nov 2020 at [Link], subject to the Cambridge Core terms of use.
 776 JOURNAL OF ECCLESIASTICAL HISTORY
Anne’s alleged behaviour, and between Brown and the king. Since
those conversations took place in private, what the poem reports can
only be literary construction; after all, as Henry said, de Carles was
writing ‘ in form of a tragedye ’.72 The poem claims that the king was told how
Anne
daily does not cease to find her pleasure and lustful passion with several men in the
manner of a strumpet [‘ une femme publique ’], for when one man has finished his
stint, another comes at the appointed time and then another. Thus the day is spent in
shameful and lascivious sport, and when at night you retire, she has her toyboys
[‘ mignons ’] all ready lined up.73
Even allowing for poetic exaggeration, a nymphomaniac Anne is hardly
credible. Are we to believe that her condition suddenly developed in the
second half of April 1536, or had she been conducting a successful subterfuge
for years ? In fact, the protocol of the Tudor court made it impossible for a
queen to take a lover without assistance, and no woman was ever accused of
abetting misconduct by Anne – in contrast to Lady Rochford who was
arrested and executed for assisting Katherine Howard.74 What is more, there
is nothing to corroborate de Carles’s dialogue, indeed the reverse. According
to John Spelman, one of the trial judges, ‘this matter was disclosed by a
woman called Lady Wingfield who was a servant of the queen and shared the
same tendencies. And suddenly the said Wingfield became ill and a little time
before her death she showed the matter’.75 At one time Lady Wingfield
certainly did serve Anne, but January 1534 is the last time that she is known to
have been alive.76 Bernard (p. 218) suggests that perhaps Spelman ‘intended
to write ‘‘ the Lady Worcester ’’’. However when the judge died in 1546, the
countess was still very much alive.77
Given that the more salacious material recounted by de Carles lacks
corroboration, it seems probable that what came out of the interrogation of
the countess and Anne’s other ladies were tales of ‘pastime in the queen’s

72
LP xii/2, 78. The literary character of the poem (as Bernard says, p. 159) is evident in the
construction : de Carles, Histoire, lines 16–24, 280–8, but note also the elaborate speeches, for
example at lines 348–74, 399–444, 846–79, 993–1039.
73
de Carles, Histoire, lines 420–8.
74
The force of this was recognised by the Elizabethan writer George Wyatt : The life of
Cardinal Wolsey, ed. S. W. Singer, 2nd edn, London 1827, 445–6. For Wyatt’s sources see Ives,
Life and death of Anne, 51–2. For Katherine and Lady Rochford see Starkey, Six wives, 673–84,
and Julia Fox, Jane Boleyn, the infamous Lady Rochford, London 2007, 292–303.
75
The reports of John Spelman, ed. J. H. Baker (Selden Society lxliii, lxliv, 1977–8), i. 71.
76
For Lady Wingfield see Ives, Life and death of Anne, 330–1. Edward Baynton, Anne’s vice-
chamberlain, was (unlike de Carles) at the centre of things and he reported that Margery
Horsman, another of Anne’s attendants, must have been complicit : BL, MS Cotton Otho C.x.,
fo. 209v (LP x, no. 799). Yet by 18 June, Margery was ‘in her old room with’ Queen Jane : Lisle
letters, iv. 663 (LP x, no. 1165).
77
She died in 1565 : ODNB s.v. ‘William Somerset, 3rd earl of Worcester ’.

Downloaded from [Link] 17 Nov 2020 at [Link], subject to the Cambridge Core terms of use.
 777
REVIEW ARTICLE
78
chamber’. Anne was expected to preside over the game of courtly love, a
lady desired by all but possessed by Henry alone. But the frisson in flirtation
is that it can be dangerous, and Anne’s own remarks in the Tower show that
the game had recently become more febrile than normal.79 She even accused
Norris of waiting for the king to die so that he could marry her, and then,
apparently realising how bad that sounded, told him to go to her almoner
and take an oath that she was a good woman.80 It was this exchange which
was twisted into ‘ conspiring the king’s death’ and so provided evidence of
high treason. Contrary to common belief, Anne Boleyn was not executed for
adultery – that was a sin, not a crime.81 What Spelman called ‘the evidence
of bawdy and lechery’ was nothing but a smokescreen to blanket the
accused.82
Science is said to proceed from obituary to obituary. So does history, but
Anne Boleyn: fatal attractions will not, as George Bernard intends, bury the
reformist and innocent Anne Boleyn.

78
LP vi, no. 613.
79
‘my lady Bolen sayd to hyr, ‘‘ Seche desire as you heve had to soche tales hase browthe
you to thys ’’ ’ : MS Cotton Otho C x, fo. 222 (LP x, no. 798). Bernard (p. 191) identifies the
speaker as Anne’s mother, but as a countess her title was ‘ my lady Wiltshire ’. The most
probable ‘ lady Bolen ’ is Anne’s aunt Elizabeth (née Wood).
80
MS Cotton Otho C.x, fo. 225 (LP x, no. 793). G. Walker rightly points to the importance
of ‘unguarded speech and gossip’ in the 1536 crisis, and suggests that this adequately accounts
for the episode : ‘ Rethinking the fall of Anne Boleyn’, HJ xlv (2002), 26. The drip drip of
gossip does explain the progressive arrests over more than a week : Ives, Life and death of Anne,
328, 335–6. It does not explain why the public altercation between Anne and Norris on
Saturday 29 April (the basis for the treason charge) was followed by the arrest of the
insignificant Mark Smeton. That strongly suggests an intention to extort confessions which
would turn the excuses of Anne and Norris into evidence of guilt : ibid. 325–7.
81
Ives, Life and death of Anne, 343–50. Bernard appears to believe that Anne was
condemned for adultery and also to ignore the fact that having the other co-defendants
condemned three days previously pre-judged the trials of Anne and Rochford.
82
‘so that there was never such a whore in the realm’ : Reports of John Spelman, i. 71. Henry
made adultery with a queen a treasonable offence after the Katherine Howard episode.

Downloaded from [Link] 17 Nov 2020 at [Link], subject to the Cambridge Core terms of use.