Anne Boleyn was found guilty of adultery, incest and conspiracy – all, almost certainly, false charges trumped up by Henry VIII – and then executed. For centuries, her reputation was that of a scheming seducer.
Now Anne is being recast as a deeply religious woman who, far from plotting to become Henry’s second wife, bided her time for six years as a lady-in-waiting to the king’s consort, Catherine of Aragon. She deliberately never consummated her relationship with Henry until their “unofficial” marriage in November 1532 – just two months before their formal wedding.
An exhibition at Hever Castle in Kent of the prayer books of both Anne and Catherine, brought together for the first time in nearly 500 years, along with research by its co-curator, Kate McCaffrey, shows the two women had much in common rather than being “love rivals”. Both found solace in godly devotion, and Anne was highly respected by Catherine, according to the findings.
This view is backed by Professor Suzannah Lipscomb, whose book, Six Queens: The Wives of Henry VIII, will be published later this year. “For centuries, there was this alleged rivalry,” she writes in the exhibition catalogue. “In fact, there were many more similarities in these intelligent, educated and determined women, whose learning favoured expression in their piety.
“Catherine’s religion is often used as a code for dutiful dullness whereas Anne is seen as a sexy siren to whom God meant little. This is not accurate.”
During three years of research on the two queens, McCaffrey examined their individual books of hours, which included prayers, psalms and scriptures that they read at set hours of the day. Both were printed in Paris in 1527. Anne’s, lost for many years, was bought in 1910 by the American-born magnate William Waldorf Astor who had just become Hever’s owner. Catherine’s was purchased by the financier John Pierpont Morgan, also in the early 20th century. The Morgan library in New York has lent it for the Hever exhibition.
“But there are differences in these books,” says McCaffery. “Anne’s is better quality and more colourfully decorated, which shows her as the coming woman. It is quite possible that Henry himself gifted it to her.”
Anne even took her book of hours to her execution, handing it to a lady-in-waiting just before the sword struck her neck. It contains several inscriptions of her own in the margins, including one where she wrote: “Remember me when you do pray that hope dothe led from day to day.”
McCaffrey’s research with ultra-violet light and photo-editing software also reveals names of several local family friends to whom her book of hours was passed for safekeeping to preserve the memory of Anne.
Catherine had been raised in a fervently Catholic family as the daughter of King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella of Spain. Anne spent much of her youth in France before returning to her family home of Hever. As teenagers, both learned languages, humanism, literature and theology.
An irony is that Catherine and Anne had their books printed by the same French publisher in the same year, though Catherine was a devout Catholic and Anne became very much involved in establishing the Church of England. She introduced Henry to the works of William Tyndale, the biblical scholar, who argued that kings were accountable to God, not the pope.
While it is thought that Anne agreed, in principle, in 1527 to marry Henry, she was probably wary, as her older sister Mary had already had an affair with the king. “Watching her become the king’s mistress and then be unceremoniously cast aside influenced Anne’s decision to hold out,” says McCaffrey.
The long-time misrepresentation of Anne comes from history books as well as portrayals on television and in films such as Charlotte Rampling in Henry VIII and his Six Wives from 1972 or Natalie Portman in The Other Boleyn Girl. The most recent, and more nuanced, portrayal was by Claire Foy in Wolf Hall.
“The scholarly narratives of the Victorian era perpetuated the sinner Anne versus the saint Catherine idea,” says McCaffrey. “Demonising Anne was not hard because of the scandalous charges against her, and Anne as the bewitching temptress is more compelling.”
The Hever exhibition also includes a previously unseen panel portrait of Catherine and replicas of the coronation robes of the queens. Both McCaffrey and Lipscomb hope all the works and new research will show how much the two women had in common, despite being love rivals as Queen and Queen in waiting.
