The estimation of the character of Anne Boleyn would seem to be as varied as the spelling of her name. She is believed to have been born in 1507. The Boleyns or Bullens were a Norfolk family of French origin, but her mother was of noble blood, being daughter of the Earl of Ormonde, and so a descendant of Edward I. It is a curious fact that all of Henry’s wives can trace their descent from this King. Of Anne’s early life little is known save that she was sent as Maid of Honour to the French Queen Claude. She was probably about nineteen years old when she was recalled to the English Court and began her round of revels and love intrigues. Certainly she was a born leader of men; many have denied her actual beauty, but she had the greater quality of charm, the power of subjugating, the beckoning eye. An accomplished dancer, we read of her “as leaping and jumping with infinite grace and agility.” “She dressed with marvellous taste and devised new robes,” but of the ladies who copied her, we read that unfortunately “none wore them with her gracefulness, in which she rivalled Venus.” Music, too, was added to her accomplishments, and Cavendish tells us how “when she composed her hands to play and her voice to sing, it was joined with that sweetness of countenance that three harmonies concurred.”

It is difficult to speak with unalloyed admiration of Anne’s virtue. At the most charitable computation, she was an outrageous flirt. It would seem that she was genuinely in love with Lord Percy, and that Wolsey was ordered by the then captivated and jealous King to put an end to their intrigue and their desire to marry. Anne is supposed never to have forgiven Wolsey for this, and by a dramatic irony it was her former lover, Percy, then become Earl of Northumberland, who was sent to arrest the fallen Cardinal at York. It is said that he treated Wolsey in a brutal manner, having his legs bound to the stirrup of his mule like a common criminal. When Henry, in his infatuation for the attractive Lady-in-Waiting to his Queen, as she was then, wished Wolsey to become the aider and abettor of his love affairs, Wolsey found himself placed in the double capacity of man of God and man of Kings. In these cases, God is apt to go to the wall—for the time being. But it was Wolsey’s vain attempt to serve two masters that caused his fall, which the French Ambassador attributed entirely to the ill offices of Anne Boleyn. This is another proof that courtiers should always keep on the right side of women.

Nothing could stop Henry’s passion for Anne, and she showed her wonderful cleverness in the way she kept his love alive for years, being first created Marchioness of Pembroke, and ultimately triumphing over every obstacle and gaining her wish of being his Queen. This phase of her character has been nicely touched by Shakespeare’s own deft hand. She was crowned with unparalleled splendour on Whit Sunday of 1533. At the banquet held after the Coronation of Anne Boleyn, we read that two Countesses stood on either side of Anne’s chair and often held a “fine cloth before the Queen’s face whenever she listed to spit.” “And under the table went two gentlewomen, and sat at the Queen’s feet during the dinner.” The courtier’s life, like the burglar’s does not appear to have been one of unmixed happiness.

In the same year she bore Henry a child, but to everyone’s disappointment, it proved to be a girl, who was christened Elizabeth, and became the great Queen of England. Anne’s triumph was pathetically brief. Her most important act was that of getting the publication of the Bible authorised in England. Two years after her coronation, Sir Thomas More, who had refused to swear fealty to the King’s heir by Anne, who had been thrown into prison and was awaiting execution, asked “How Queen Anne did?” “There is nothing else but dancing and sporting,” was the answer. “These dances of hers,” he said, “will prove such dances that she will spurn our heads off like footballs, but it will not be long ere her head dance the like dance.” In a year’s time, this prophecy came true. Her Lady-in-Waiting, the beautiful Jane Seymour, stole the King from her who in her time had betrayed her royal mistress.

There are two versions with regard to her last feelings towards the King. Lord Bacon writes that just before her execution she said: “Commend me to his Majesty and tell him he hath ever been constant in his career of advancing me. From a private gentlewoman he made me a marchioness, from a marchioness a Queen; and now he hath left no higher degree of honour, he gives my innocency the crown of martyrdom.” This contains a fine sting of satire. Another chronicler gives us her words as follows: “I pray God to save the King, and send him long to reign over you, for a gentler or more merciful prince was there never.” One cannot but think that this latter version of her dying words may have been edited by his Grace of Canterbury.

If it is difficult to reconcile Anne’s heartlessness with her piety, it should be remembered that cruelty is often the twin-sister of religious fervour.

Whatever may have been her failings of character, whatever misfortunes she may have suffered during her life, Anne will ever live in history as one of the master mistresses of the world.