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Defending Anne Boleyn.

© Wendy J. Dunn

January 1536 saw the death of Catherine of Aragon, the first wife of Henry VIII. The year's beginning also saw the second wife of Henry VIII, Anne Boleyn, 'big-bellied' with child, trying hard to remain hopeful of the future.

Aware of Henry's wandering eye, Anne was intelligent enough to realise her current pregnancy - most likely her third- needed the result of a living son. That and only that would secure her position as Henry's Queen. She also probably knew, with Catherine out of the picture, and a question mark lingering even to this day over the legality of her marriage to the King, if she failed to give her husband a living son it would be the death knell of her marriage. For the King's great love affair with Anne Boleyn, a love affair turning his kingdom upside down and cutting England's strong ties to the papacy, had not lasted longer than the early days of their marriage; Henry Tudor's passion now exhibited very little signs of life.

But the son Anne hoped to be her marriage's 'saviour' and her own 'protector' was born dead on the very day that Catherine's body was brought to its last resting place. After the king visited his grieving wife, he proclaimed, "I see God will not give me male children." Anne's unforgivable failure in the royal birthing chamber began the King thinking on ways to free himself from her.

Freed, the King could then seek to make a 'bon fide' marriage to another woman, and his lustful gaze and hands had already rested on Jane Seymour the previous year.

Anne Boleyn, I believe, receives a lot of bad and undeserved press from the Tudor propaganda machine. The bad press remains in place even today. Henry VIII said, not long after the last of Anne's abortive pregnancies, 'I was seduced into this marriage and forced into it by sorcery'. Anne Boleyn was no wicked witch. She was a woman who loved her daughter, a woman who said children are the greatest consolation in the world. I believe a lot of her 'bad' behaviour stemmed from living on her 'nerves', plus the immense insecurities of her position as consort to the king. Poor Anne also lacked the training of Catherine of Aragon, who had been taught to take on a Queen's mantle from time she was in her swaddling clothes. But Catherine and Anne shared one strong similarity. Both of them behaved like lionesses with claws out when it came to ensuring their daughters' rights.