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The Age of Anne Boleyn. V

© Wendy J. Dunn

There is little doubt that Henry VIII passion for Anne Boleyn was the 'Grand Passion' of his life. But Henry was a King, only the second of his dynasty, desperately in need of a son to secure the succession of his crown. To turn his kingdom upside down to achieve his marriage with Anne Boleyn, he must have felt confident of her ability to bear children, and healthy children at that.

Cardinal Wolsey attempts to wave a French princess under his King's nose were not helped by the fact that Renèe of France, like her mother before her, had a physical defect, which resulted in her walking with a limp and caused expression of doubts about Renèe's suitability to bear children(21) . But such a woman also would not have appealed to Henry, who took great pride in not only his physical appearance, but that of his children too.

Early in 1528, Wolsey wrote to the Pope defending the King's choice of Anne on the grounds that she was likely to have children, (22) which suggests Anne Boleyn was youthful. When it is considered that Catherine of Aragon was only thirty-two when brought to bed of her last child, a still born daughter, it seems very unlikely that the King would place his hopes and faith in the ability of a twenty-eight-year-old woman to give him sons.

Anne Boleyn came from a class that generally married young, though admittedly not as young as did Princesses of the time, many of whom married not long into their teenage years, after infant or childhood betrothals. Anne's own mother married by the time she was seventeen, her sister Mary probably married William Carey in her teenage years. Anne herself would have expected to be wed by her very early twenties, the 'ripe time' for marriage.

In 1519, aged only thirty-three, Catherine of Aragon was described as the 'King's old deformed wife.'(23) Of course, by then Catherine - in ten years of marriage- had given birth at least six times, resulting in only her daughter Mary surviving beyond the first weeks of infancy. Grief and the constant strains of pregnancy can swiftly age any woman.

But Anne Boleyn had, physically and psychologically, a great deal to cope with too. Even so, on the day of her execution a witness said Anne Boleyn 'never looked more beautiful.' On the scaffold, when she removed her pearl encrusted coif to replace it with a simpler head covering, Anne Boleyn revealed her black hair to be as black as ever. Do these descriptions gel with a woman of thirty-six, decidedly middle-aged by the times-who been through the terror of imprisonment, a trial for her life, months of fear and uncertainty while her husband and his ministers plotted to get rid of her, and a tragic second miscarriage barely four months before her death? I don't believe so.