Read Online The Lady in the Tower: The Fall of Anne Boleyn by Alison Weir - Free Book Online Page A
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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Boleyn, as Cavendish was a well-placed eyewitness during this period to record events. However, his admiration for Wolsey, his attachment to the old faith, to Katherine of Aragon and to Mary I, and his hatred for the Boleyn faction, all made him a biased observer, and his work has been challenged in parts by modern historians.
Cavendish is thought to have been the author of a series of tragic poems entitled
Metrical Visions
(Egerton manuscript 2402), being the lamentations of fallen courtiers. Among the latter are Anne Boleyn’s alleged lovers, whom Cavendish clearly believed guilty as charged. Given that he retired from court in 1530, it is not known how he got his information, which is that of someone who was very well informed and knew his subjects personally.
George Constantine wrote a memorial to Thomas Cromwell in 1539, detailing the fall of Anne Boleyn and her alleged lovers in 1536. The original document does not survive, and is known only through the transcript sent in 1830 by the journalist, essayist, and critic John Payne Collier to Thomas Amyot, Treasurer of the Society of Antiquaries. Branded as an outrageous forger in his lifetime, Collier’s reputation has never recovered, despite the informed conclusions of Dewey Ganzel in
Fortune and Men’s Eyes: The Career of John Payne Collier
(Oxford, 1982). According to this, Collier was largely innocent of those charges, and the defamation of his reputation was perhaps the most successful conspiracy in literary history. In fact, he was one of the foremost scholars of his age, and claims that he forged or embellished Constantine’s memorial may not be well founded.
Jane Dormer (1538-1612) served as one of the future Elizabeth I’s companions in childhood and adolescence, and later became one of Mary I’s maids-of-honor and confidantes. When the Duke of Feria came to England in 1554 in the train of Mary’s future husband, Philip of Spain, he fell in love with Jane and took her back to Spain as his wife. Many years later she dictated her memoirs to her English secretary, Henry Clifford, who published them after her death, in 1643. They remain one of the best later Catholic sources, although allowances must be made for a natural bias and an old lady’s failing memory.
Edward Hall
(ca
. 1498-1547) was a Cambridge-educated lawyer. His chronicle has a strong patriotic bias in favor of Henry VIII, and a tendency to gloss over controversial issues. His true value is as an annalist, and his descriptions of state occasions and pageantry are informative and colorful.
Nicholas Harpsfield (1519?-75) was a Catholic propagandist who wrote two important works in the reign of Mary I:
A Treatise on the Pretended Divorce between King Henry VIII and Katherine of Aragon
(1556) and
The Life and Death of Sir Thomas More (ca
. 1557). Some of his material has been shown to be apocryphal.
Sir John Hayward (1560?-1627), a Cambridge-educated historian, wrote
The Life and Reign of King Edward the Sixt
, which was published in 1630 and is generally considered to be his masterpiece. He was conscientious and diligent in sourcing his information, researching from unpublished works, and a master of description who was impressively knowledgeable and impartial.
Sir William Kingston, Constable of the Tower: five letters to Thomas Cromwell concerning the imprisonment of Anne Boleyn, written in May 1536. The antiquary John Strype saw these letters before they were damaged in the disastrous Cottonian Library fire at Ashburnham House in 1731, and reproduced long extracts from them in his
Ecclesiastical Memorials of the Church of England under King Henry VIII
in 1721. The mutilated texts were printed in Singer’s edition of Cavendish’s life of Cardinal Wolsey in 1817, and they are also to be found in Ellis’s
Original Letters Illustrative of English History
and in the
Letters and Papers of the Reign of Henry VIII
. The originals, with their charred margins, are now in the British
Cavendish is thought to have been the author of a series of tragic poems entitled
Metrical Visions
(Egerton manuscript 2402), being the lamentations of fallen courtiers. Among the latter are Anne Boleyn’s alleged lovers, whom Cavendish clearly believed guilty as charged. Given that he retired from court in 1530, it is not known how he got his information, which is that of someone who was very well informed and knew his subjects personally.
George Constantine wrote a memorial to Thomas Cromwell in 1539, detailing the fall of Anne Boleyn and her alleged lovers in 1536. The original document does not survive, and is known only through the transcript sent in 1830 by the journalist, essayist, and critic John Payne Collier to Thomas Amyot, Treasurer of the Society of Antiquaries. Branded as an outrageous forger in his lifetime, Collier’s reputation has never recovered, despite the informed conclusions of Dewey Ganzel in
Fortune and Men’s Eyes: The Career of John Payne Collier
(Oxford, 1982). According to this, Collier was largely innocent of those charges, and the defamation of his reputation was perhaps the most successful conspiracy in literary history. In fact, he was one of the foremost scholars of his age, and claims that he forged or embellished Constantine’s memorial may not be well founded.
Jane Dormer (1538-1612) served as one of the future Elizabeth I’s companions in childhood and adolescence, and later became one of Mary I’s maids-of-honor and confidantes. When the Duke of Feria came to England in 1554 in the train of Mary’s future husband, Philip of Spain, he fell in love with Jane and took her back to Spain as his wife. Many years later she dictated her memoirs to her English secretary, Henry Clifford, who published them after her death, in 1643. They remain one of the best later Catholic sources, although allowances must be made for a natural bias and an old lady’s failing memory.
Edward Hall
(ca
. 1498-1547) was a Cambridge-educated lawyer. His chronicle has a strong patriotic bias in favor of Henry VIII, and a tendency to gloss over controversial issues. His true value is as an annalist, and his descriptions of state occasions and pageantry are informative and colorful.
Nicholas Harpsfield (1519?-75) was a Catholic propagandist who wrote two important works in the reign of Mary I:
A Treatise on the Pretended Divorce between King Henry VIII and Katherine of Aragon
(1556) and
The Life and Death of Sir Thomas More (ca
. 1557). Some of his material has been shown to be apocryphal.
Sir John Hayward (1560?-1627), a Cambridge-educated historian, wrote
The Life and Reign of King Edward the Sixt
, which was published in 1630 and is generally considered to be his masterpiece. He was conscientious and diligent in sourcing his information, researching from unpublished works, and a master of description who was impressively knowledgeable and impartial.
Sir William Kingston, Constable of the Tower: five letters to Thomas Cromwell concerning the imprisonment of Anne Boleyn, written in May 1536. The antiquary John Strype saw these letters before they were damaged in the disastrous Cottonian Library fire at Ashburnham House in 1731, and reproduced long extracts from them in his
Ecclesiastical Memorials of the Church of England under King Henry VIII
in 1721. The mutilated texts were printed in Singer’s edition of Cavendish’s life of Cardinal Wolsey in 1817, and they are also to be found in Ellis’s
Original Letters Illustrative of English History
and in the
Letters and Papers of the Reign of Henry VIII
. The originals, with their charred margins, are now in the British
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