Anne Boleyn (Joanna Denny Biography)

Author: Joanna Denny
Publication Date: 2004
Length: 327 pages with endnotes and an index
Cost: $26.00 for the hardcover, between $15.00 and $17.00 for the paperback, and on the Kindle for $9.99
Where Did I Hear About It: I actually found this in the library in the biography section.

The Backstory

There has never been a character who has fascinated the imagination and polarized historians more than Anne Boleyn.

Anne was born sometime between 1501 and 1507 to Thomas Boleyn and Lady Elizabeth Howard. The family home was Hever Castle in Kent, and Thomas regularly visited the continent during his career as a diplomat. Anne had two siblings--Mary, believed to be the eldest, and George, who may have been older or younger than Anne depending upon the year of her birth (he was born around 1504). Thomas' familiarity with foreign courts and positive reputation led to an offer made by Archduchess Margaret of Austria to have Anne as a part of her household. In 1514, Anne moved on to France to attend Henry VIII's sister, Mary, as Queen of France. Anne later transferred into the service of the new Queen Claude at the accession of King Francis I. In 1521, Anne's father recalled her to England in the hopes that her marriage to her cousin, James Butler, would end a dispute in the family over the Earldom of Ormonde in Ireland.

When these marriage plans fell through, Anne became more of a fixture in the English court. She made her first recorded appearance there sometime in 1522, and she participated in a pageant, much noted because of her appearance as "Perseverance" in it. She was, supposedly, briefly betrothed to Henry Percy, the future Duke of Northumberland, but a combination of forces (may have) worked against this match, including Henry Percy's father and even Cardinal Wolsey, then Henry VIII's chief advisor.

Anne came to Henry VIII's attention sometime between 1525 and 1526. Anne refused to submit to his advances, which only inflamed his infatuation with her. The result, often termed the King's "Great Matter" dragged on for years. It included Henry's multi-front attack on his marriage to Katherine of Aragon--his attempt to draw the French clergy to his side of the matter, his attempt to persuade the Pope to annul this union, and a trial in a public court in England. The result was Henry's decision to declare himself head of the English church, to sever from Catholicism, and to declare is marriage to Katherine null and void because of her previous marriage to his long-dead older brother, Arthur.

After meeting with Francis I in Calais, Henry and Anne married quietly, somewhat secretly, but with intent to legitimize an increasingly visible pregnancy. The date is generally given as January 25, 1533. On June 1, Anne was crowned and anointed Queen in a way never seen before or since--using the same crown of Edward the Confessor that was used to crown reigning monarchs (which at that point, had all been male--this crown was lost, supposedly during the Commonwealth under Cromwell).

Anne didn't last long as wife or Queen. Her first child, Elizabeth, was certainly a disappointment, but a succession of three other failed pregnancies was enough to parallel his failed marriage to Katherine in Henry's mind. In May 1536, she was arrested, taken to the Tower of London, and accused of adultery with five men, one of whom was her brother. The men were tried first and all found guilty. The verdict a foregone conclusion, Anne was sentenced to death at her own trial. Her alleged partners in crime were executed on May 17, 1536, and she was beheaded by a swordsman from Calais two days later.

On May 14, Archbishop of Canterbury, Thomas Cranmer, declared Henry VIII's marriage to Anne null and void--Elizabeth was a bastard and Henry went on, 11 days later, to marry his third wife, Jane Seymour.

What About The Book?

This book is very readable. Denny explains people, situations, and events very clearly without entangling herself in the details of the history or the sources. The biography covers the whole history of Anne's life, and it puts forth a number of new theories. Most striking is Denny's assertion that Thomas Boleyn was not the grasping, ambitious man without a care for his children that is often portrayed elsewhere. She makes a very convincing case for his having been a very prudent and loving father--a more compelling case than ever was made to the contrary. Denny reveals that Thomas was not in favor of Mary becoming Henry's mistress, and that he may have even recalled her from her service in France because of her licentious reputation there.

What's wrong with this biography? It is one of the most unapolegetically biased histories of anyone or anything I have ever read. Denny has no love for Katherine of Aragon or her daughter, Mary. She views Eustace Chapuys, the Holy Roman ambassador to England with equal scorn. Her theory is that Anne was an ideal paragon of Christian virtue and that she viewed herself, and her elevation to queenship, as her being anointed by God to promote the cause of Protestantism in England. Katherine and Mary just didn't lay down all to pave the way for Denny's heroine, and they are branded as traitors and plotting the death of King Henry.

Anne was clearly debased by her detractors after her death, and the fact that all of the sources available do not paint her in a particularly good light is a symptom of this. Denny is right to question these interpretations of Anne as spiteful, cruel, and ambitious. However, she swings the pendulum too far in trying to rehabilitate her reputation by trying to make a case (a poor case) for her having been all good instead. A lot of evidence to the contrary is famously written out of this biography--for example, Denny gives no time to Anne's arguments with Henry after their marriage, which seem to be a fairly well-known fact. She also refuses to detect any sign that Henry was tiring of Anne going into the third year of their marriage. As a result, Anne's fate appears to come a little too much out of nowhere.

Denny also sees Anne as a full-fledged Protestant--a fully developed version of what a Protestant may be today. This is short sighted. Although Anne clearly was sympathetic to the ideals of Protestantism, including the availability of the Bible in English, Denny forgets that Protestantism was a mere embryo of itself in the 1530s, between 10 and 20 years after Luther's fated nail affixed his premises to the church door. To claim that anyone was a Protestant, foregoing all of the trappings of long-standing, traditional Catholicism, in this period is in error. Denny claims that as much as half of London was Protestant by the time Anne was executed, and she uses this statistic as proof that Anne couldn't possibly have been as disliked by the people as others believe she was. There are too many reasons to enumerate why this is impossible--it just presumes too much.

One very positive thing that comes out of this is an understanding of just how few sources there are that really shed light on who Anne was. The same sources have been picked over and over again, but they must not be particularly revealing--especially if Denny managed to find enough in them to support a number of her very questionable, very two-dimensional theories.

Rating: Sadly, I have to give it a 3. The bias and presumptions that Denny makes in this biography invade the text too far to allow one to gain much by trying to wade through them.
Buy It or Borrow It: Just don't, either way. Although not focusing on her, you'll get more out of David Starkey's Six Wives on Anne than you will get out of this biography.

The First Queen of England: The Myth of "Bloody Mary"

Author:Linda Porter
Publication Date:2008
Length:About 418 pages, not including Index and Bibliography
Cost:List price is $27.95
Where Did I Hear About It:Browsing through the Biography section of the local library

The Backstory

Mary Tudor, later Mary I of England, was the only living child produced by the union of Henry VIII and Katherine of Aragon. She was born in 1516, the first child to survive after her mother's four miscarriages, one stillbirth, and the death of an infant son in his second month of life. At first, the fickle Henry was encouraged by his little daughter, taking her as a sign of healthy sons to follow. When he eventually lost all hope of other heirs by his wife, he took steps to have his marriage to Katherine annulled, and later, Mary bastardized. Mary and Katherine, physically separated but in regular correspondence, were suddenly thrust backstage. Henry severed England's ties to the Roman Catholic church, thereby allowing him to put away Katherine and take a new wife in the form of the much maligned Anne Boleyn. In the meantime, Mary was urged, coaxed, and threatened into renouncing her titles and rightful place in the English succession. Upon the birth of her sister, Elizabeth, she was sent to live in her household and serve her as one of her maids of honor--an unprecedented move against the heir presumptive to the throne. After her mother's death, she bowed to pressure from all sides and admitted the illegitimacy of her parents' marriage and thus, her own illegitimacy.

Relations between Mary and her father improved through the intercession of three of his subsequent wives, Jane Seymour, Anne of Cleves, and Katherine Parr. Upon Henry's death in 1547, both Mary and Elizabeth were still considered illegitimate, but they were written into the succession after their brother, Edward. Edward, a fervent Protestant, was extremely hard on Catholic Mary, desperate to make her conform to the laws of the land. Mary, conscious of having bowed to pressure regarding her legitimacy, was unwilling to breach her conscience a second time. Equally heavy coercion had no effect on the practice of her religion. However, things were bad enough that Mary considered escaping from England to her Hapsburg relations on the Continent. It is fortunate that she did not take this course of action--Edward was dead in 1553, the victim of a respiratory infection. Edward and his council attempted to subvert Mary's succession by declaring her cousin, Jane Grey (see above) queen, but this was short-lived.

Mary was queen for a very short time, but she was England's first woman monarch in her own right. She and her council ruled the country effectively, attempting to adapt an English version of Catholicism to the changes that had already taken place in the church. She had a very effective council, and her many years of struggle had produced a capable, strong woman with the resolve to lead the country. She married Philip of Spain in 1554, but Philip's priorities were in the Low Countries, and although he was kind to Mary, he was less-than-content with a bride 11 years older and having remained so long content single. Mary suffered two "phantom pregnancies," and she died in 1558. Philip and Mary never had children, so she was succeeded by her younger sister, Elizabeth.

Mary is a much maligned character in English history, often viewed by seemingly objective historians as both a less-desirable precursor to the more famous Elizabeth and as a momentary set-back to England's inevitable course towards patriotic Protestantism. She earned the nickname "bloody Mary" after sentencing 300 Protestants to death by burning for heresy.

What About the Book?

This was an exceptionally enjoyable book, which I didn't expect. I figured that Mary's life would be a good follow-up to Jane Grey, and I enjoyed this biography far more. Linda Porter is a very good writer--capable of taking complicated historical documents from the period and transforming them into a coherent narrative, easily readable by the least proficient historians. Although over 400 pages long, it doesn't feel that way to the reader--the reader is constantly seeking to learn more, to read one last page, and it is a hard book to put down.

The history is good in this book--Porter clearly takes her information from existing sources. She is mindful of the weaknesses of some of these sources and the authors who composed them, and this is a point she makes often to her readers. However, this is a biography of Mary and not an examination of why Mary obtained the nickname "bloody Mary," which makes the title deceiving. She does flesh out Mary's character in ways that other authors have entirely ignored--Porter did not come to the table having formed any opinions about Mary, and she allowed the available sources to tell her who Mary was rather than relying upon the prejudices of generations of previous historians, colored by the magnificence of Elizabeth's reign.

There is the occasional flaw in her work--on the minor side, she includes a portrait that probably isn't Mary and identifies it as the queen about 7 years before she was crowned. The sitter is a very matronly, but very attractive woman, who bears no resemblance to portraits of Mary known beyond a doubt to be her. Given there are so many likenesses of Mary to choose from, this choice seems a poor one. In addition, the end of the book wasn't quite as good as the rest. Porter covers Mary's reign in the context of its events. It reads like a chronology rather than a biography, with fewer insights into Mary and her view of the events of the day. She indicates that Mary wrote often to her husband, Philip, but she doesn't reference many, if any, of those letters, and they are probably the key to seeing events from Mary's point of view. Porter also asserts that Mary died of a viral fever that was widespread in 1558, and other biographers seem to believe that Mary had some form of cancer as evidenced by her last phantom pregnancy.

The Epilogue of the book was probably the biggest let down. Rather than examine the development of the myth of "bloody Mary," like the title implies, Porter gives a rundown of what happened to each of the biography's characters in a post-Mary world. Although interesting, I think that the reader would have been more interested in how Mary's reputation was blackened in subsequent years. Porter does touch upon this in the narrative, but only one source is referenced several times without further examination.

Overall, this is an exceptional read--it puts Mary in a whole new light, even for people who have been studying the Tudor age for some time. It also breeds a sense of respect and understanding for Mary in the reader that has hitherto been undeveloped and even stifled by our perception of Elizabeth, constructed by countless histories, biographies, TV miniseries, and movies.

Rating:8.5, maybe even a 9
Buy it or Borrow it:This is a tough one. I liked it enough that I wouldn't have minded adding it to my library, and I will probably read it again somewhere along the line. If you find a good used copy of this, it will probably go for under $10, and if so, it is well worth opening your wallet. You probably can find a softcover edition of this, too--if not now, then, soon--and that would be worth it. However, if you're skeptical about the content, and perhaps even don't like Mary much, you may want to scout it out in a library first, just to make sure you'll like the content.