Home » History » Tudor History » Before the Glory: Anne Boleyn Before Henry VIII - Page 6

Before the Glory: Anne Boleyn Before Henry VIII - Page 6

© Ellen McDaniel-Weissler

Whether motivated by greed or love, Anne hardly deserved that nickname of "the great whore". She probably began her relationship with Henry as his flirt in the constant game of courtly love so popular in this time; she was also involved with her cousin, the poet Thomas Wyatt, although nothing ever came of that romance and it was apparently never consummated. Two attractive people, although king and subject, might easily fall in love with one another in the romantic atmosphere of the court, in spite of obstacles - especially if one, approaching middle age, was desperate to end a fruitless marriage and beget an heir, and the other was still mourning a lost love and a broken engagement. Whatever the cause, Henry became visibly enamoured of Anne somewhere around 1525; we have no record of her feelings, but we know that he was forced to pursue her most rigorously, constantly showering her with gifts and attention, while she steadfastly refused, no matter how much she might have loved him, or wanted his favors, to give him her body until he made her a wife.

Where was Catherine during all this? When the evidence appeared that Henry was setting up another flirt - possibly even another mistress to supplant Mary Boleyn - Catherine probably sighed the sigh of the resigned and took up her embroidery philosophically. Henry was a man and a king; it was not in Catherine's nature nor in her training to deny him his pleasures, nor to question his preoccupations. She was still his beloved wife, adored by his subjects and acknowledged as queen, despite the cessation of their physical relationship. In her wildest imagination she never dreamed that future years would see her set aside and banished in favor of a usurper. Her own eyes told her that Anne was taking precedence in the king's estimation, but the patient and forgiving Catherine merely informed others that she held Anne "in more estimation for the King's sake than she had before." She assumed that Anne, like her sister Mary and Bessie Blount, would go the way of the discarded mistress in time, leaving Catherine's position as queen and wife unassailed.

She was disabused of her complacency in May of 1527 when Wolsey managed to convene a secret ecclesiastical court at Westminster to try the legality of the king's marriage. Henry himself did not confess the true state of matters to her until 22 June, and even then he only informed her that his conscience was troubled, and that he would separate from her until matters could be sorted out. Catherine was shattered, but the king was not to be foresworn. In spite of every evidence that Henry was following his heart, Catherine refused to the very end to believe that Henry no longer loved her, and chose instead to believe that he was being led astray by Anne, by Wolsey, by unnamed evil sources - but never that he was acting of his own accord, even when his personal animosity over his intransigence grew great, and he separated her forever from their daughter and banished her from court.

The copyright of the article Before the Glory: Anne Boleyn Before Henry VIII - Page 6 in Tudor History is owned by Ellen McDaniel-Weissler. Permission to republish Before the Glory: Anne Boleyn Before Henry VIII - Page 6 in print or online must be granted by the author in writing.