Anne Boleyn & Elizabeth I by Tracy Borman

Author:Tracy Borman
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Grove Atlantic

If this was an open invitation for Elizabeth to patronise such a work, she did not take him up on it. Neither is there any evidence that she acted on Ales’s hint that he might be rewarded for his letter – he even included an address for any financial gifts to be sent. But his words had left a profound impression on the new queen, stoking her already fierce loyalty towards her late mother. It also strengthened her determination to avenge Anne’s death by firmly establishing the religion of which her mother had been such a passionate advocate.

Elizabeth’s accession had sparked a flurry of celebratory prose among Protestant writers, all rejoicing that at last God’s will would be done. They were also quick to praise Anne Boleyn as the inspiration for the new queen’s reformist beliefs. John Foxe, whose Acts and Monuments first appeared in 1559, proclaimed: ‘What a zealous defender she was of Christ’s gospel all the world doth know, and her acts do and will declare to the world’s end.’ He also hailed Elizabeth’s accession as ‘the evident demonstration of God’s favour’ towards Anne Boleyn ‘in maintaining, preserving, and advancing the offspring of her body, the lady Elizabeth, now queen’.20 Other Protestant writers eagerly drew comparisons between the religious stance of the new queen and that of ‘Queen Anne the mother of this blessed woman’. John Aylmer, who had fled to Switzerland during Mary’s reign and returned to England as soon as he received news of Elizabeth’s accession, praised Anne as ‘the crop and root’ of the English Reformation.21 It was a theme that continued throughout Elizabeth’s reign. Writing in the 1570s, John Bridges described Anne as ‘a sweet sacrifice to God and a most holy martyr’ whom Henry VIII had unjustly put to death, while Ralph Holinshed referred to her ‘zeal of religion’.22

William Latymer, formerly chaplain to Anne Boleyn, presented Elizabeth with an essay praising her mother’s virtues in general and her religious activities in particular.23 Latymer had suffered for his association with the fallen queen and had been arrested for importing heretical books from Flanders on her behalf. Anne had been unable to intercede for him because by then she was in the Tower, awaiting death. Upon Mary’s accession, he had lost all his preferments because of his Protestant faith, but Elizabeth restored these to him when she became queen. In his ‘Cronickille of Anne Bulleyne’, he began by drawing a direct comparison between mother and daughter: ‘When I considered with myself … the manifold gifts of nature and virtuous qualities which set forth and magnify your royal name, I could not but remember the excellent virtues, and princely qualities wherewith your majesty’s dearest mother, the most gracious lady, queen Anne, was adorned and beautified in the time of his majesty’s noble reign.’ As one of only a few people known to Elizabeth who could remember her mother, Latymer declared his determination ‘that the same might not be utterly forgotten, but be commended to immortal memory’.

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