The Creation of Anne Boleyn (47 page)

Thanks to a generous endowed professorship from the University of Kentucky, I was lucky to have two splendid research assistants. Michelle Del Toro, my staff assistant and go-to for popular culture information and insight, also read through a draft of the manuscript and told me where more information and background was needed for the “general” reader. Natalie Sweet did endless hours of research into the original documents, delved fearlessly and knowledgeably into the thorniest of historical controversies, prepared the citations for the book, made sure that I had committed no huge historical blunders, and offered advice at every stage of the process. Natalie also came up with the inspired idea of creating a Facebook page for the book, a site that became home base for interviews and discussion with other Tudorphiles and scholars. She continues to co-manage this page with me, as well as a website that she designed and administers.

This project turned an important corner when, on George Hodgman’s urging, I contacted Geneviève Bujold, Natalie Dormer, and Michael Hirst, all of whom, to my amazement and delight, granted me lengthy candid interviews—as did Howard Brenton, who met with me in the cafeteria of Shakespeare’s Globe Theatre just after the opening of his acclaimed play,
Anne Boleyn
. I am also grateful to the novelists and historians who spoke to me on the phone or via e-mail—Robin Maxwell, Hilary Mantel, Margaret George, David Loades, Alison Weir, Suzannah Lipscomb, and Nell Gavin—and to those leading lights of the Tudor Facebook “community” who provided support, enthusiasm, and shared their stories with me: Sue Booth, Lara Eakins, Claire Ridgway, Barbara Conn Alexander, Natalie Grueninger, Sylwia Sobczak Zupanec, Jessica Prestes, Sarah Morris, and Sarah Bryson.

It’s impossible to adequately describe or enumerate the contributions of the members of
The Creation of Anne Boleyn
Facebook page. Special thanks go to Rhys Tudor, Jéssica Prestes, and Cris Gomes, who helped me trace the beautiful portrait on the cover of this book and contact the artist, Alexandre Jubran. Many thanks also to the page members who responded to an e-mail questionnaire about the appeal of Anne Boleyn to younger women: Raven Allen, Karissa Baker, Iliana Begetis, Haven Carlson, Makenzie Case, Sara Compton, Jessica Crowley, Memory Michelle Gargiulo, Cris Gomez, Brittani Hall, Robyn Heisel, Cailin Humphrys, Kayla Johns, Michelle Kistler, Angel Marks, Ilana Redler, Helen Reeves, Chrystina Rice, Elizabeth Schulz, Lynn Seitadi, Simone Shahid, Katherine Stinson, Marlessa Stivala, Elle van Petersen, Sophie Walker, Nicole Wheeler, and Casey Wilson. With advance apologies for those I am certain to miss, I’d also like to single out some of the earliest supporters and most frequent contributors to the page: Jan Abraham, Valerie Abrams, Valerie Adams, Ingibjörg Ágústsdóttir, Tammy J. Banks, Toni Frazer Barber, Lois Bateson, Anne Barnhill, Courtney Beatty, Claire Biggs-Tandy, Charna Baronoffsky Blumberg, Felicity Kate Boardman, Bollie Smit-Bolhuis, Sue Booth, Sarah Bryson, Susan Buffano, Becky Bunsic, Sarah Butterfield, Daphnée Diane Callas, Marina Camp, Bess Chilver, Cate Clement, Jessica Crowley, Howard Dalton, Holly Davis, Lisa Davis, Adrienne Dillard, Cynthia Carlin Drake, Cheryl Esselman, Donna Fagan, Isabelle Fallon, Emma Fuery, Jilly Fullerton-Louth, Cris Gomes, Clare Hancock, Denise Hansen, Susan Higginbotham, Lesley Holmes-Gurney, Fran Jablway, Cynthia Jokela, Pamela Kapustka, Binnie Klein, Ralphine L. Lamonica, Karissa Larsen, Linda Lofaro, Angel Marks, Jasmine Marrero-Pratt, Clive Morgan, Samantha Morris, Sarah Morris, Joanna Moore, Vicki Munden, Eliza Na, Fiona Orr, Robert Parry, Opal Crews Phelps, Jéssica Prestes, Tiffany Reddy, Krystel Marie Rivera, Jessica Rodriguez, Gareth Russell, Sandi Teresa Salas, Jessica Scarlett, Libby Schofield, Heidi Smith, Danielle Stasko, Katherine Stinson, Matthew Sweet, Sara Thornton, Lisa Tecoulesco, Rhys Tudor, Elle van Petersen, Sophie Walker, Emma Watson (with special thanks for the beautiful Anne scrapbook), Samantha Weber, Hope Olivia Elizabeth Wells, and Jenny Zeek-Schmeidler.

Nicole Angeloro, who came to the project late but has been essential to its completion, read the entire manuscript with more care, editorial wisdom, and affection than I could have hoped for. The final book has benefited greatly from her guidance. David Hough was the most meticulous and knowledgeable copy editor I could have asked for. Thanks to him, I send this book into the world unafraid of source scrutinizers and punctuation police.

A project that takes as long as this one is never written uninterrupted or sheltered from personal difficulties, unexpected delays, and professional obligations of life outside the writer’s cave (in my case, a tiny study—formerly a dining nook—next to the kitchen, where I can make five
AM
coffee without waking up the rest of the house). There were times when I seriously doubted whether “my life” would allow me to finish my book. For helping me through those times, I thank my husband, Edward Lee; my sisters, Binnie Klein and Marilyn Silverman; Cristina Alcalde; Kate Black; Michelle Del Toro; Donna DePenning; Janet Eldred; George Hodgman; Kathi Kern; Ellen Rosenman; Natalie Sweet; and Lee Ann Whites.

My little study is the only room on the first floor of our house that can be closed off to dogs and other people, thanks to a door I installed; to press the point home, I put a sign up:
DO NOT DISTURB: WRITER AT WORK
. The sign means nothing to my daughter, Cassie, who barges in as she pleases, to describe the latest gruesome episode of her favorite television show or insist that I watch how many push-ups she can do. She thinks I’m a relic of another era, finds it quaintly amusing that someone would voluntarily sit writing, surrounded by books, when there are horses to ride, hoops to shoot, friends to text. She finds it a symptom of my derangement (“Mom, you
concern
me”) that I consider her the inspiration for a book about a sixteenth-century queen. She doesn’t know yet that there are many ways to be fierce and strong, and that I find her push-ups less stirring than her insistence, day after day, on being herself in every way.

Susan Bordo

Lexington, Kentucky

September 2012

Notes

Introduction: The Erasure of Anne Boleyn and the Creation of “Anne Boleyn”

1. Lord Cromwell to Sir William Kingston, May 18, 1536, in Norton 2011, 248.

2. Sir William Kingston to Lord Cromwell, ibid. Modern spelling applied.

3. Actually, Katherine Howard was also beheaded for adultery. As with Anne (who was, in fact, Katherine’s cousin), this marriage began with passionate infatuation on Henry’s part and ended with his former beloved on the scaffold. Barely a year after the marriage, Katherine (who likely did have at least one adulterous relationship) was placed under house arrest at Hampton Court and accused of leading “an abominable, base, carnal, voluptuous, and vicious life, like a common harlot, with diverse persons.” Katherine tried, unsuccessfully, to see Henry in person and talk him out of it. (Henry’s policy, perhaps because he feared he would be vulnerable to in-person pleas, was always to make sure that those he wanted dispensed with remained “out of mind” by keeping them “out of sight.”) She was executed on Tower Green in 1542.

4. Goodman 2005.

5. de Carles 1927, 234. Original:
En ce pays, elle fut retenue/Par Claude
,
qui Royne après succedda:/Ou tellement ses graces amenda/Que ne l’eussiez oncques jugee Anglise/En ses façon, mais nifve Françoise
.

6. She later became a passionate admirer and defender of William Tyndale’s English-language Bible, at the time banned in England but smuggled in for Anne, who had her ladies-in-waiting read it daily.

1. Why You Shouldn’t Believe Everything You’ve Heard About Anne Boleyn

1. Starkey 2004, 443.

2. Friedmann, vol. II, 1884, 297.

3. Froude 1891, 324.

4. Herbert 1855, 171.

5. Starkey 2004, 524.

6. Ibid., 421.

7. Ibid., 510.

8. Ibid., 361

9. Ibid., 527.

10. Bennett 2012.

11. Mattingly 1932, 178.

12. Ibid, 184.

13. Pascual de Gayangos (editor), “Spain: September 1529, 1–10,”
Calendar of State Papers, Spain
, Volume 4, Part 1: Henry VIII, 1529–1530, British History Online,
http://www.british-history.ac.uk/report.aspx?compid=87687
.

14. Pascual de Gayangos (editor), “Spain: May 1536, 16–31,”
Calendar of State Papers, Spain
, Volume 5, Part 2: 1536–1538, British History Online,
http://www.british-history.ac.uk/report.aspx?compid=87961
.

15. James Gairdner (editor), “Henry VIII: April 1533, 11–20,”
Letters and Papers, Foreign and Domestic, Henry VIII
, Volume 6: 1533, British History Online,
http://www.british-history.ac.uk/report.aspx?compid=77546
.

16. Adrienne Dillard, October 13, 2011, comment on
The Anne Boleyn Files
Facebook page, “Interesting Article on Eustace Chapuys by Susan Bordo,” accessed October 15, 2011,
www.facebook.com
/theanneboleynfiles.

17. October 13, 2011, comment on
The Anne Boleyn Files
Facebook page, “Interesting Article on Eustace Chapuys by Susan Bordo,” accessed October 15, 2011,
www.facebook.com/theanneboleynfiles
.

18. Ibid.

19. Deborah Kuzyk, October 13, 2011, comment on
The Anne Boleyn Files
Facebook page, “Interesting Article on Eustace Chapuys by Susan Bordo,” accessed October 15, 2011,
www.facebook.com/theanneboleynfiles
.

20. Loades 2009, 52.

21. Ibid.

22. Tremlett 2010, 250–51.

23. Loades 2009, 16.

24. J. S. Brewer (editor), “Henry VIII: May 1529, 1–10,”
Letters and Papers, Foreign and Domestic, Henry VIII
, Volume 4: 1524–1530, British History Online,
http://www.british-history.ac.uk/report.aspx?compid=91361
.

25. Strickland and Strickland 2010, 561.

26. Herbert 1856, 317.

27. One is Annette Crosbie’s Katherine, in the first episode (written by Rosemary Sisson) of the 1970 BBC television series
The Six Wives of Henry VIII.

28. James Gairdner (editor), “Henry VIII: July 1533, 26–31,”
Letters and Papers, Foreign and Domestic, Henry VIII
, Volume 6: 1533, British History Online,
http://www.british-history.ac.uk/report.aspx?compid=77563
.

29. Rawdon Brown (editor), “Venice: November 1531,”
Calendar of State Papers Relating to English Affairs in the Archives of Venice
, Volume 4: 1527–1533, British History Online,
http://www.british-history.ac.uk/report.aspx?compid=94624
.

30. James Gairdner (editor), “Henry VIII: June 1533, 1–5,”
Letters and Papers, Foreign and Domestic, Henry VIII
, Volume 6: 1533, British History Online,
http://www.british-history.ac.uk/report.aspx?compid=77553
.

31. Pascual de Gayangos (editor), “Spain: December 1533, 26–31,”
Calendar of State Papers, Spain
, Volume 4, Part 2: 1531–1533, British History Online,
http://www.british-history.ac.uk/report.aspx?compid=87797
.

32. Pascual de Gayangos (editor), “Spain: October 1533, 1–20,”
Calendar of State Papers, Spain
, Volume 4, Part 2: 1531–1533, British History Online,
http://www.british-history.ac.uk/report.aspx?compid=87791
.

33. Pascual de Gayangos (editor), “Spain: December 1533, 26–31,”
Calendar of State Papers, Spain
, Volume 4, Part 2: 1531–1533, British History Online,
http://www.british-history.ac.uk/report.aspx?compid=87797
.

34. Lundell 2001, 77.

35. James Gairdner (editor), “Henry VIII: May 1536, 1–10,”
Letters and Papers, Foreign and Domestic, Henry VIII
, Volume 10: January–June 1536, British History Online,
http://www.british-history.ac.uk/report.aspx?compid=75429
.

36. Pascual de Gayangos (editor), “Spain: April 1533, 1–25,”
Calendar of State Papers, Spain
, Volume 4, Part 2: 1531–1533, British History Online,
http://www.british-history.ac.uk/report.aspx?compid=87778
.

37. James Gairdner (editor), “Henry VIII: July 1533, 11–15,”
Letters and Papers, Foreign and Domestic, Henry VIII
, Volume 6: 1533, British History Online, http://www.british-history.ac.uk/report.aspx?compid=77560.

38. Pascual de Gayangos (editor), “Spain: November 1535, 1–30,”
Calendar of State Papers, Spain
, Volume 5, Part 1: 1534–1535, British History Online,
http://www.british-history.ac.uk/report.aspx?compid=87926
.

39. James Gairdner (editor), “Henry VIII: February 1534, 11–20,”
Letters and Papers, Foreign and Domestic, Henry VIII
, Volume 7: 1534, British History Online,
http://www.british-history.ac.uk/report.aspx?compid=79296
.