Anne Boleyn: Temptress, Mistress, Feminist (Very Short History Book 9) by Tristan Clark

Author:Tristan Clark
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Published: 2015-06-24T23:00:00+00:00

6. Married Life, King Henry-Style

While Anne threw herself into the public aspects of queenhood, not all aspects of marriage and motherhood were as easy as she’d imagined. Not only did she have to cope with the unfriendly sentiment of the general public, but also with the change from being the mistress in favor, the object of forbidden love, to being the one now safely possessed by Henry. The two of them are known to have clashed from time to time. Being very bright and witty and well educated may have made the mistress Anne more popular with the king than the wife Anne. Historians conclude that Henry valued subservience in a wife, seeming to view married life as quite different from romance. Catherine is known to have been subservient and not a matcher of wits with the king.

As for the life of a mother, Anne had to face the very odd circumstances surrounding a child born into royalty. Her daughter, Elizabeth, in the custom for princesses (or princes, for that matter) was sent outside of London to her own castle when she was only a few months old. Anne would have to settle for frequent visits. Even if she came from a family of social climbers and did want to be queen, she couldn’t have been expected to be any more ready for such a thing than anyone else.

But this pales in comparison to the well-known burden of producing a male heir. Though the couple was relieved that Elizabeth had survived and was perfectly healthy, they did wish to have a son. Naturally, at that time, medical science had little to say about the causes for miscarriages or for stillbirths, both of which happened frequently. No doctors could diagnose some condition of Henry’s as the cause, and he would’ve sooner blamed divine intervention. When the ambassador Eustace Chapuys merely mentioned to Henry that being married didn’t necessarily guarantee a son, the king bellowed, “Am I not a man like other men? Am I not? Am I not? Am I not?”

Anne became pregnant for the second time in December of 1532. Once again, Henry convinced himself the child would be a son. But tragically, Anne miscarried. In addition to the grief she felt—a grief that readers five hundred years hence must simply grant her, with no access to the details—she also had to have feared that Henry might grow disenchanted with her as he had Catherine.

A letter from Chapuys to the emperor revealed that the king had taken a mistress. We don’t know much about who she was or how lasting was their liaison, or whether or not Anne found out about it.

We know that she did find out about a different sort of calamity involving Henry. On January 24, 1536, during one of his beloved jousts, this one at Greenwich, his horse was struck and toppled to the ground, taking Henry with it. The large man and his armor crashed mightily, and he was unconscious for two hours.

At the time, Anne was pregnant for the third time.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.