Read Online The Lady in the Tower: The Fall of Anne Boleyn by Alison Weir - Free Book Online
Authors: Alison Weir
Tags: General, Historical, History, Biography & Autobiography, England, Biography, Europe, Great Britain, Autobiography, Royalty, Biography And Autobiography, Historical - British, Queen; consort of Henry VIII; King of England;, Anne Boleyn;, 1507-1536, Henry VIII; 1509-1547, Queens, Great Britain - History
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Morte della Regina de Inghilterra con il consenso del Consiglio di S.M., et la Morte di IIII gran Baroni del Regno
(Bologna, 1536). It is reproduced in Alfred Hamy’s
Entrevue de François Premier avec Henri VIII a Boulogne
.
3. Anonymous letter written in London, June 10, 1536, translated from a Portuguese original in the convent of Alcobaca . This is reproduced in
Excerpta Historica
(261) and given at
LP
1107, which also mentions the Italian tract referred to above.
Pierre de Bourdeille, Seigneur de Brantome
(ca
. 1540 1614) was a widely traveled soldier with close links to the French court, and knew many of the famous personages of his time. His rambling memoirs, which were not published until 1665-66, run into many volumes, and are witty, frank, sexually explicit, and somewhat disjointed and unreliable, being a series of observations and random anecdotes, yet they provide a vivid picture of the licentious French court.
Lancelot de Carles . Epistre contenant le proces criminel faict a l’encontre de la royne Anne Boullant d’Angleterre . French poem describing the life of Anne Boleyn.
LP
1036 is a translation from the French. Carles, later Bishop of Riez (d. 1568/c. 1570), was almoner to the Dauphin of France (the future Henri II), a renowned poet and man of letters, and the author of blazons and sacred poetry. In 1536 he was a diplomat attached to the French embassy in London, lodging in the house of Antoine de Castelnau, Bishop of Tarbes, the French ambassador. His letter describing Anne’s fall was written in that city, in French verse, on June 2, 1536, within two weeks of her death, when Carles was still conscious of its impact. It was addressed to the dauphin. Carles, who was present at Anne’s trial, presents the charges against her as factual. His account was examined by Meteren, Burnet, and his editor, Georges Ascoli, and has been reexamined by Professors Ives and Bernard.
Ives suggests that Carles’s poem be treated with caution, since it reflects the official government line. That has been questioned by Professor Bernard. It is true that in 1537, Henry VIII was presented with a “French book written in the form of a tragedy [by] one Carle[s], being attendant and near about the ambassador.” 1 But was this the poem describing Anne Boleyn’s fall? Certainly in that poem Henry VIII is generally portrayed in a sympathetic light, but would it have been politic of Carles to have asserted that on Anne’s arrest, the Londoners rejoiced, hoping that Lady Mary, the King’s bastardized daughter, who was out of favor for defying her father, would be restored to the succession? Or that everyone was moved at the condemnation of the Queen’s alleged lovers, and that even Anne’s bitterest enemies pitied her? Would it have been tactful to have referred to Anne’s “fearful beauty,” or to her giving voice to her suspicion that there was some other reason for her condemnation than the charges that had been preferred? Carles also has Lord Rochford complaining that he had been condemned on the evidence of only one woman, and Anne stating her conviction that she and her brother would be together in God’s presence after their deaths. He states too that the people watching her execution were moved to tears. Taken together, much of this implied serious criticism of the King and his justice.
It may be, therefore, that the verse tragedy presented to Henry VIII by Lancelot de Carles in 1537 was not the poem he wrote on the fall of Anne Boleyn, but another work entirely, and that the former, based probably partly on sound intelligence and partly on official information leaked to the French embassy, was also a more objective work than has hitherto been suspected.
George Cavendish
(ca
. 1500-61/2) was gentleman-usher to Henry VIII’s chief minister, Cardinal Wolsey, from 1522 to 1530, and between 1554 and 1558 wrote the earliest biography of his late master. This is particularly useful for the early career of Anne
(Bologna, 1536). It is reproduced in Alfred Hamy’s
Entrevue de François Premier avec Henri VIII a Boulogne
.
3. Anonymous letter written in London, June 10, 1536, translated from a Portuguese original in the convent of Alcobaca . This is reproduced in
Excerpta Historica
(261) and given at
LP
1107, which also mentions the Italian tract referred to above.
Pierre de Bourdeille, Seigneur de Brantome
(ca
. 1540 1614) was a widely traveled soldier with close links to the French court, and knew many of the famous personages of his time. His rambling memoirs, which were not published until 1665-66, run into many volumes, and are witty, frank, sexually explicit, and somewhat disjointed and unreliable, being a series of observations and random anecdotes, yet they provide a vivid picture of the licentious French court.
Lancelot de Carles . Epistre contenant le proces criminel faict a l’encontre de la royne Anne Boullant d’Angleterre . French poem describing the life of Anne Boleyn.
LP
1036 is a translation from the French. Carles, later Bishop of Riez (d. 1568/c. 1570), was almoner to the Dauphin of France (the future Henri II), a renowned poet and man of letters, and the author of blazons and sacred poetry. In 1536 he was a diplomat attached to the French embassy in London, lodging in the house of Antoine de Castelnau, Bishop of Tarbes, the French ambassador. His letter describing Anne’s fall was written in that city, in French verse, on June 2, 1536, within two weeks of her death, when Carles was still conscious of its impact. It was addressed to the dauphin. Carles, who was present at Anne’s trial, presents the charges against her as factual. His account was examined by Meteren, Burnet, and his editor, Georges Ascoli, and has been reexamined by Professors Ives and Bernard.
Ives suggests that Carles’s poem be treated with caution, since it reflects the official government line. That has been questioned by Professor Bernard. It is true that in 1537, Henry VIII was presented with a “French book written in the form of a tragedy [by] one Carle[s], being attendant and near about the ambassador.” 1 But was this the poem describing Anne Boleyn’s fall? Certainly in that poem Henry VIII is generally portrayed in a sympathetic light, but would it have been politic of Carles to have asserted that on Anne’s arrest, the Londoners rejoiced, hoping that Lady Mary, the King’s bastardized daughter, who was out of favor for defying her father, would be restored to the succession? Or that everyone was moved at the condemnation of the Queen’s alleged lovers, and that even Anne’s bitterest enemies pitied her? Would it have been tactful to have referred to Anne’s “fearful beauty,” or to her giving voice to her suspicion that there was some other reason for her condemnation than the charges that had been preferred? Carles also has Lord Rochford complaining that he had been condemned on the evidence of only one woman, and Anne stating her conviction that she and her brother would be together in God’s presence after their deaths. He states too that the people watching her execution were moved to tears. Taken together, much of this implied serious criticism of the King and his justice.
It may be, therefore, that the verse tragedy presented to Henry VIII by Lancelot de Carles in 1537 was not the poem he wrote on the fall of Anne Boleyn, but another work entirely, and that the former, based probably partly on sound intelligence and partly on official information leaked to the French embassy, was also a more objective work than has hitherto been suspected.
George Cavendish
(ca
. 1500-61/2) was gentleman-usher to Henry VIII’s chief minister, Cardinal Wolsey, from 1522 to 1530, and between 1554 and 1558 wrote the earliest biography of his late master. This is particularly useful for the early career of Anne
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