616. Elizabeth I: The Fall of the Axe (Part 1)

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Speaker 1 High above all a cloth of state was spread, and a rich throne as bright as sunny day, on which there sat, most brave embellished with royal robes and gorgeous array a maiden queen that shone as titan's ray in glistering gold and peerless precious stone

Speaker 1 so that was the great poem the fairy queen by edmund spencer and he is really laying it on isn't he tom in praise of perhaps the greatest of all english monarchs elizabeth the first gloriana as he calls her in the poem a queen famous for her willpower, her courage, her beauty, and her dedication to England and England's glory.

Speaker 2 Yeah, well, I mean, the name Gloriana suggests it, that this is a queen who's all about glory. You know, that is absolutely the image that she still has today.

Speaker 2 And it derives from poems like the fairy queen. Elizabethan propaganda was incredible.
And we would associate her with, I guess, a kind of golden age, the spring flowering of English literature.

Speaker 2 So Shakespeare and Spencer, of course, and Marlowe, and the exploration of the globe by English sea dogs. So Sir Francis Drake and Sir Walter Raleigh.

Speaker 2 And of course, the defeat in 1588 of the Spanish Armada.

Speaker 2 And I guess that that is a triumph for English arms that ranks in the national mythology alongside, I guess, Trafalgar, which we've just been doing recently, and the Battle of Britain, wouldn't you say?

Speaker 1 Yes.

Speaker 2 I mean, it's kind of up there in the pantheon.

Speaker 1 She's one of the genuinely titanic figures of English history.

Speaker 1 I mean, the comparison with Nelson and Churchill is a good one because, in each of those cases, they define themselves against what appears to be an overwhelming foreign adversary with a threat of invasion.

Speaker 2 They do, yes. And more than that, they, like Nelson, like Churchill, Elizabeth finds the words of defiance

Speaker 2 that inspire her people and which I think still kind of have a power to stir the blood of a patriotic Englishman today. And Dominic, I see you smiling as I say that.

Speaker 2 So she has this thrilling peroration.

Speaker 2 I know I have the body of a weak and feeble woman, but I have the heart and stomach of a king and of a king of England too, and think foul scorn that Palmer or Spain or any prince of Europe should dare to invade the borders of my realm.

Speaker 2 And so she is speaking those words in August 1588 as she rallies troops who've gathered at Tilbury in Essex in readiness for a landing on English soil of a Spanish army led by the Duke of Palmer, who is the most feared general in Europe.

Speaker 2 But of course, Dominic, that landing never happens.

Speaker 1 It doesn't happen, but I mean, that's like saying Bonaparte's invasion never happened. And that doesn't diminish Nelson's greatness.

Speaker 2 No, because

Speaker 2 the Spanish Armada is defeated first of all by Protestant ships and then by Protestant wind.

Speaker 1 Right. And by Protestant rhetoric before that, thanks to Elizabeth, surely.

Speaker 2 Absolutely.

Speaker 1 And I guess that moment, so just as if you take the example of Nelson or the example of Churchill, both of those become legendary immediately.

Speaker 1 They become folk stories that become foundational moments in Britain's national identity. That's true of Elizabeth at Tilbury and England's national identity, isn't it?

Speaker 1 Right away, it is embedded in the national imagination.

Speaker 2 Yeah, well, it's, I mean, it's Aaron Spencer, who's writing The Fairy Queen in the 1890s. So, you know, less than a decade after that speech.
And he portrays Elizabeth in all kinds of different ways.

Speaker 2 So there's Gloriana, but there is also this kind of Amazonian figure called Britamart, who is a, she's a kind of peerless female knight, much better than

Speaker 2 most of the male knights in the poem. And all who see her are awestruck by her.
So to quote Spencer, it seemed that Bologna, in that warlike wise, to them appeared with shield and armor fit.

Speaker 2 And this sense of Elizabeth as a warrior queen, you get it in paintings, in dramas, in novels and films.

Speaker 2 So most recently, I guess, 2007, Kate Blanchette going the full gladryl in Elizabeth the Golden Age. So

Speaker 2 I think that four and a half centuries on,

Speaker 2 She remains definitely, I think, the most generally admired of England's rulers. But I think also she's kind of loved in a way that most English kings and queens tend not to be.

Speaker 2 So if you think of Judy Dench winning an Oscar in Shakespeare and Love, I mean, she's literally on the screen for about three minutes.

Speaker 2 And that Oscar, I think, in part was for Elizabeth as well as for Judy Dench.

Speaker 2 And the idea is of her as a virgin queen who's married to her people, keeping England's enemies at bay, guarding them from civil war, good Queen Bess, all of that. Don't you think?

Speaker 2 I think she's kind of loved as well as admired?

Speaker 1 I totally do. And putting my cards on the table, I think she is easily one of the most adept and most effective of England's rulers.

Speaker 1 And we did a series about Mary, Queen of Scots, you know, another woman ruling at a similar time who makes very, a series of very bad choices. Elizabeth makes a series of very good ones.

Speaker 1 She's very good at politics. That said, there is a counter-argument which some historians, you know, in in the late 20th century began to develop that actually she's indecisive, she's vindictive.

Speaker 1 You know,

Speaker 1 this is the sort of portrait of Elizabeth that you get with the kind of, you know, she hasn't got any teeth.

Speaker 2 Yeah, she's smelly.

Speaker 1 Yeah, all of this kind of stuff, which is very much the late Elizabeth.

Speaker 1 But I suppose, you know, there is this tension between the two visions of Elizabeth I.

Speaker 1 On the one hand, she's brilliant, she's Gloriana, and then the other actually knows she has feet of clay and she creates problems that end up, you know, escalating into the civil wars of the 17th century.

Speaker 1 That's the counter argument.

Speaker 2 I mean, I think that in whether you're lauding her or damning her, I mean, I think there is no doubt that the best way to understand what makes her tick, what her kind of approach to politics and religion,

Speaker 2 to marriage, to parliament, to all these kind of strands within the Tudor polity, The best way to understand what makes her distinctive is actually to look at her upbringing.

Speaker 2 Because one of the most extraordinary things about Elizabeth is that she ever gets to sit on the throne in the first place. So she becomes queen on the 17th of November, 1558, and she's 25 years old.

Speaker 2 But for most of those 25 years, the prospect of her ascending the throne would have seemed an incredibly remote one because her infancy, her childhood, her adolescence, her early adulthood kind of have the quality of a hideous fairy tale.

Speaker 2 So she's three when mummy has her head chopped off by daddy. Yeah.
So that's not a good start. I mean, imagine growing up and finding out that that's, that's what's happened.

Speaker 2 She then ends up with a stepfather who sexually abuses her.

Speaker 2 And she is then menaced by a half-sister who locks her up in the Tower of London. And Killie wants to chop her head off as her mother's head had been chopped off.
But I think these traumas,

Speaker 2 these kind of the danger that she was kind of repeatedly in through her childhood and so on, I think it matters because, you know, the girl is mother to the woman.

Speaker 2 And they massively influence the kind of monarch that Elizabeth becomes.

Speaker 2 And they matter because, you know, Elizabeth ends up setting England on a course that will be massively decisive in the growth of England and of Britain and in the long run of the colonies that Britain establishes across the world.

Speaker 2 And of course, Roanoke, the first English foothold in the New World, even though it doesn't last. But it is set up in Elizabeth's reign, and Virginia is named after Elizabeth.
She's the Virgin Queen.

Speaker 1 But you know what? You mentioned Britamart.

Speaker 1 We've stayed in the Hotel Britamart in New Zealand when we were on tour. So Elizabeth's imprint is still, you know, is there on the other side of the world?

Speaker 2 Yeah. So I think that tracing the young Elizabeth before she becomes Elizabeth I, I think it's well worth doing.

Speaker 2 And we'll set up some episodes that we'll be doing in due course on the Tudor Cold War, the Spanish Armada,

Speaker 2 maybe Shakespeare.

Speaker 2 We've got lots to come on that. So as we say, it is amazing that she ends up becoming queen.
But it is true that she is born a princess, the daughter of a king.

Speaker 2 And not just that, when she's delivered on the 7th of September, 1533, between three and four o'clock afternoon, she does rank as... the immediate heir to the throne.

Speaker 2 So at the beginning, she does seem destined to become queen. Everything that could properly have been done to prepare her for her arrival had been done.

Speaker 2 So on the 26th of August, 1533, her mother, she was in the palace of Greenwich downriver from London. She's gone to a very luxuriously appointed chamber.

Speaker 2 So David Starkey, in his great book on the young Elizabeth Elizabeth apprenticeship, describes it as a cross between a chapel and a luxuriously padded cell. So there are carpets everywhere.

Speaker 2 There are tapestries on the walls. There's an absolutely massive bed that amazing, I kind of read up on it.

Speaker 2 It had belonged to the younger brother of the Duke of Orleans, who was captured at Agincourt. Do you remember? Yeah.

Speaker 1 So he was a hostage, right?

Speaker 2 Yeah, forever. And he kind of ends up writing poetry in English as well as French.

Speaker 2 But it was his younger brother and his, and this, the younger brother, the Duke of Orleans, had been a hostage in England since 1412 himself.

Speaker 2 So he'd obviously left this massive bed, which was nice of him. No men are allowed into this chamber.
All the companions, the attendants, the midwives, they're all women. And so beyond

Speaker 2 this very female space, all the men are waiting. The king, the court, England, Europe, they're all on tenter hooks.

Speaker 2 And letters have been written ready to proclaim the birth of what is hoped is going to be a prince to the other courts of Europe. The king of France has been squared as a godfather.

Speaker 2 A massive tournament is scheduled to be held in celebration. But in the event, of course, they're all cancelled, there is no national rejoicing.
I mean, it's true, the baby is healthy.

Speaker 2 The mother hasn't died in childbirth. But these pluses do not make up for the fact that it's a crushing disappointment that the newborn baby, the heir to the throne of England, is not a boy.

Speaker 1 It's a girl. And what is worse, the mother has promised her husband that it will be a boy.

Speaker 1 And the baby being a boy has been central to the relationship between the mother and father and indeed to England's history, as we'll see, because of course you haven't named the parents yet, Tom.

Speaker 1 I know you've done that deliberately as an exciting reveal for the audience.

Speaker 1 So to explain why it matters so much that the child is a boy, that Elizabeth, and in fact Elizabeth isn't a boy, we need to go back to the parents, don't we?

Speaker 2 So let's kick off with the father.

Speaker 1 Who's the father?

Speaker 2 Well, the father, Dominic, it will amaze you to learn, is Henry VIII.

Speaker 2 And I guess he's the only English monarch who can rival his daughter for kind of instant recognisability, wouldn't you say?

Speaker 1 I would say not only instantly recognisable, I would say the single most important ruler. I mean, not necessarily the best.
I think Elizabeth has a good claim to be the best.

Speaker 1 but he's the one that matters.

Speaker 2 The most consequential, isn't he?

Speaker 1 Yeah, the most consequential ruler in England's history, and indeed in Britain's history, I would say.

Speaker 2 So when Elizabeth is born, he is 42 and he's a man of very imposing charisma and accomplishment. So he's been on the throne for 24 years since he was a very young man.

Speaker 2 When he came to the throne, he was renowned as a kind of an elite sportsman.

Speaker 2 People went into rhapsodies over his athletic achievements. By now he is starting to run to fat.
He hasn't gone the full obesity, but he's still a very imposing figure.

Speaker 1 His poise between Damian Lewis and Charles Lawton, isn't he? He's not quite one or the other.

Speaker 2 So he's got red hair, he's very athletic, he's described as having an extremely fine calf to his leg, which obviously matters in the Tudor Court, where a fine calf is very important.

Speaker 2 And the presence of Venetian ambassadors at the Tudor Court is tremendous for historians because they give very kind of detailed accounts.

Speaker 2 So one of the Venetian ambassadors describes Henry as gifted with mental accomplishments as he is most excellent in his personal endowments. So he's fluent in Latin, in French, in Spanish.

Speaker 2 He has very good Italian. He's kind of got rudimentary Greek.
He's very musical.

Speaker 2 Sadly, he didn't compose green sleeves, but he is a composer. He plays the harp, very good on the keyboards.
So that's very impressive. And he also fancies himself as a theologian.

Speaker 2 So he had written a takedown of Martin Luther. And the Pope had named him defender of the faith for this in 1521.

Speaker 2 And this is a title of which he's inordinately proud and which the British monarch still has to this day.

Speaker 1 Yeah, it's the same the popes let themselves down after that, didn't they? But we've kept the title, which is important.

Speaker 2 This is, yeah. So yeah,

Speaker 2 there's lots to come on that score.

Speaker 1 So he's often seen, isn't he, as part of a trio of slightly larger than life monarchs who dominate Europe. But of the three of them, he is the junior, isn't he?

Speaker 1 The other two are Francis or Francois I of France, who's this sort of incredibly priapic. He's a royster in his own way, isn't he?

Speaker 1 And then Charles V, the Habsburg emperor, who's absolutely not a roysterer,

Speaker 1 he is a very melancholy brooding man, but he's probably the top dog. And then the French king.

Speaker 2 Oh, undoubtedly, I think, because I mean, he's the emperor. So he's got Germany, he's got the Low Countries, he's got much of Italy, but he's also the king of Spain.
Yeah.

Speaker 2 And of course, Spain means that he's also the ruler of vast chunks of the New World. Yeah.
So he's got all the silver coming in from the new world.

Speaker 2 So he is overwhelmingly the most powerful ruler in Europe, I think. Then Francois and then Henry.
But the thing about Henry is he's very, very good at punching above his weight.

Speaker 2 You know, he projects this kind of vibrant image. Yeah.
And his weight is quite something. So that's pretty good.

Speaker 2 And this makes him popular with the English. They feel they don't, they're not embarrassed to have him as a king.

Speaker 2 They feel he, you know, he, he, he's, he's giving them a good image, I think is what they feel.

Speaker 1 I think that's the one thing that people always get wrong about Henry VIII when they say, oh, he's a monster, he's he's this, is that at the time, people in England, they might have been frightened of him or they might have thought he was making strange and unpopular decisions but nobody ever doubted that he was good at being a king and that he was good at standing up for england and that he you know embodied english independence and defiance and all of those kinds of things i mean he's he's very good at it he is he's a massive great slab of of beef on the English throne and that's what that's what the English like to see.

Speaker 1 Heck, if Ian Botham was king of England.

Speaker 2 Well, I think Ian Botham's more Charles Brandon, his mate. Yes.

Speaker 2 Yeah, he completely is. He's an absolute ledge, Henry VIII.

Speaker 1 But there's an issue, isn't there? So he may well be a bit of a legend. And yet at the same time,

Speaker 1 he's a warrior. He's insecure, and he's insecure for good reasons.

Speaker 1 And this is the other thing that I think is, I mean, I think this is absolutely essential to understand the whole story of the Tudors, why he has six wives, why he breaks with Rome. all of this stuff.

Speaker 1 The fact is, the Tudors should not be there. They are usurpers.
And, you know, we know the Wars of the Roses are over, the civil wars, but they don't.

Speaker 1 As far as they're concerned, they could still be in the Wars of the Roses because there are a lot of other people who think they shouldn't be here. They're just parvenues.
They're nouveau riche.

Speaker 1 What are they even doing on the throne?

Speaker 2 Yeah. And so that makes it absolutely essential that every Tudor king has a male heir.

Speaker 2 Because otherwise the throne comes up for grabs again and civil war may break out. Yeah.
So Henry's father, Henry VII, had defeated Richard III at the Battle of Bosworth.

Speaker 2 His reign had been, you know, there'd been all kinds of attempted coups, rebellions. Henry had put them down.
And also he had done his duty by fathering sons.

Speaker 2 So his first son, Arthur, dies at the age of 15, but it's okay because he has a spare. And that spare, of course, is the Henry who will go on to become Henry VIII.

Speaker 2 And Henry not only inherits Arthur's title as Prince of Wales, but he also inherits Arthur's wife, Catherine of Aragon.

Speaker 2 And Catherine is the daughter of Ferdinand and Isabella, who are probably the most formidable Christian monarchs of their generation.

Speaker 1 I mean, that's a massive tribute to Henry VII's diplomacy. I mean, Henry VII, by the way, I think is a brilliant king, and he has managed to get a deal for his sons that they will marry this princess.

Speaker 2 And he's punching above his weight there, I think there's no doubt.

Speaker 1 Because Ferdinand and Isabella... You know, their reputation is well known across Europe.
They're the people who sent Columbus. They're the people who have made Spain a united country.

Speaker 1 You know, they are presiding over a country that is rising to become

Speaker 1 a genuine world power with all these holdings in the new world and stuff.

Speaker 2 Yeah, I mean, in a way, the first genuine world power in history.

Speaker 1 So this is a brilliant deal that Henry VII has got for, I mean, this is the mad thing about ditching Catherine of Aragon. You know, you've got such a great deal in marrying Catherine of Aragon.

Speaker 2 Yeah, and also Catherine of Aragon is the aunt of the Emperor Charles V, who rules Spain as Charles I,

Speaker 2 because Charles V is the grandson of Ferdinand and Isabella. And that kind of relationship between Catherine of Aragon and Charles V is going to play an important part in this story.

Speaker 1 And just on this, so Henry and Catherine of Aragon get on really well at first, don't they? They're actually quite a happy couple and everybody says, oh, things are great.

Speaker 1 But there is this one big issue. which is where is the heir?

Speaker 1 You know, everything is fine apart from that, actually. They do get on pretty well, by and large.

Speaker 2 Yeah, and Catherine's very competent. So basically, it's Catherine who wins the Battle of Flodden against the Scots, the great English victory.
She's a very

Speaker 2 competent ruler when Henry's off, you know, doing his wars in France. She's much loved by the English people.
No, she's a great hit, but she's got to give him a son.

Speaker 2 And Henry does take for granted, you know, people may be wondering, well, what's the deal with a son? Why not a daughter? There's a very precise reason why Henry doesn't want a daughter.

Speaker 2 And he spells it out.

Speaker 2 He said, you know, because he says that if he has a daughter, daughter, and then if she should chance to rule, she cannot continue long without a husband, which by God's law must then be her governor and head.

Speaker 2 And so finally she'll direct the realm. And this is going to be an issue for Elizabeth I.
I mean, it's not just Henry being a chauvinist thinking that. I mean, it's an issue for Elizabeth as well.

Speaker 2 And people who've listened to our series on Mary, Queen of Scots,

Speaker 2 who did marry very imprudently, you know, will see the force of this anxiety. So it really matters that Catherine gives Henry a son.

Speaker 2 And over the course of the first decade of his reign, Catherine does repeatedly get pregnant.

Speaker 2 But tragically for her, tragically for Henry, all her babies, with one exception, are either stillborn or die shortly after birth. And the exception that proves the rule is a girl.

Speaker 2 And this is Princess Mary, who is born on the 18th of February, 1516.

Speaker 2 But there's still no son.

Speaker 2 And already by 1519, foreign observers are kind of sounding the death knell for any prospect of Catherine basically giving Henry any more children, let alone a son.

Speaker 2 So the problem is very gallantly summed up by Francois Premier, Francis I, who says his wife is old and deformed, while he himself is young and handsome.

Speaker 1 I mean, that is harsh because basically she's not old. She's what is the late, she's late 30s or something, and she's definitely not deformed.

Speaker 1 I mean, she's quite a, you know, everybody said she's she's a she's you know catherine of arrogan was a perfectly you know attractive um woman although she is a bit older than henry and as time goes on there's a definite sense isn't there that he has well he's a bit bored of her but in a way that is actually standard for monarchs late medieval early modern monarchs i mean he's he's sleeping around isn't he but this is not a sign that he's a monster this is fairly established practice.

Speaker 2 Well, the other thing is that Henry has a son by one of his paramours. And so this reassures him that the problem isn't with him.
And by 1525, Catherine's 40.

Speaker 2 I mean, effectively by now, she is, you know, by the standards of the age, past childbearing age. And so this is a huge, huge problem for Henry.
And it is then in 1525

Speaker 2 that he meets. the woman who is going to upend everything,

Speaker 1 because this is a woman who is not content with being his bit on the side with being his concubine she wants to become his queen and this of course is a very very famous name in English history it's Anne Boleyn yes so Anne Boleyn she's the daughter of a diplomat called Sir Thomas Boleyn and she's spent a lot of time in Paris hasn't she which we'll come to her French fashion is a very important part of her repertoire but she's not you know she's conventionally when she's played on screen she's very pretty.

Speaker 1 But the odd thing is, she's actually not terribly pretty. People actually went out of their way to comment on it, to say it's amazing that Henry has fallen for this person who actually

Speaker 1 is not especially, you know, sexy and sensational.

Speaker 2 Yeah. So we can, I mean, to look at what the Venetian ambassadors have to say again.

Speaker 2 So one of them, he's writing in 1532, describes Anne as of middling stature, swarthy complexion, long neck, wide mouth, bosom not much raised, raised, and in fact has nothing but the English king's great appetite and her eyes, which are black and beautiful.

Speaker 2 The other thing that kind of causes eyebrows to be raised is, as you said, that she is not, you know, she's not of royal blood, she's not even really of aristocratic blood.

Speaker 2 You know, as you said, she's the daughter of a country squire, Sir Thomas Boleyn. And he's a kind of mucker with...
Henry VIII. He kind of hangs out with the lads.
He's a bit older than them, though.

Speaker 2 But I mean, he gets on well with Henry because he's all about, you know horses and hunting and sport he you know he'd he'd he'd wear a gilet he'd absolutely from that kind of class he drives a land rover he absolutely does yeah he does he's like fergie's father major ferguson that's kind of

Speaker 2 major ronald ferguson but he's not really the stuff of a royal father-in-law i mean it's just it seems a kind of mad idea i mean and it's not conventionally beautiful she's not of um you know the kind of pedigree that would mark her out as potential royal wife.

Speaker 2 And so the question is then, you know, what's she bringing to the party? How does she get Henry to think of her as a possible queen? And you mentioned her

Speaker 2 kind of French glamour.

Speaker 2 She has been at the French court a fair while. She's very smart.
She's very sophisticated. She's very stylish.
And in an age when French fashion kind of is the marker for people in England, she has,

Speaker 2 so Tracy Borman, she wrote a brilliant book on Anne Boleyn and her relationship to Elizabeth. She describes it as an irresistible je ne c'est qua.

Speaker 2 So she sings, she dances, she plays musical instruments much better than any of the ladies at the English court. She's sensationally well-dressed.

Speaker 2 And while she loves fashion for its own sake, she also knows that fashion matters. for someone who wants to be a queen.
If you want to be a queen, you have to look like a queen.

Speaker 2 She's very good at that. She's also, she's very clever.
And she, again, I think is intellectual in a way. Henry's very smart.
I think, you know, there's a meeting of minds there.

Speaker 2 And Anne, while she was at the French court, was strongly influenced by a very remarkable woman, Marguerite of Navarre, who's the sister of Francis I.

Speaker 2 And she is very interested in Luther. She's very interested in all the kind of the trendiest, most cutting-edge currents of religious thought that are coming out of Germany at the time.

Speaker 2 The Reformation is kind of kicking off. She has, I mean, she's not a Protestant, which in any way would be an anachronistic word at this point.
Protestants, as such, don't exist yet. You know,

Speaker 2 she's a reformer, she's an evangelical, and she admires Luther. And seems to have picked up various evangelical ideas from her.

Speaker 2 So these would include the idea that you could have a direct, unmediated relationship with God, that you don't need priests to kind of mediate between you and the divine, the urgent need for everyone, not just those who can read Latin, to have access to scripture.

Speaker 2 So the idea that the Bible should be readily available in the vernacular, and a sense that the church is corrupt and that it needs to be reformed, and a particular anxiety about a papacy that seems very corrupt and worldly.

Speaker 2 And Marguerite herself never goes so far as to say, well, we should you know, cast off papal supremacy. We should bin the pope.

Speaker 2 But I think Anne, certainly by the time she gets back to England from the French court, I think she's gone the full Luther. I think she's kind of buying into that.

Speaker 1 So what all that means is she's very stylish, she's very fashionable, she's continental, she's sophisticated, she's returned to England with the latest ideas that a lot of people in England are only just struggling to get their heads around.

Speaker 1 She's clearly very poised, self-confident. I guess she offers something that Catherine, who's always been a very dutiful wife, you know, perhaps slightly unassuming, I mean, by royal standards.

Speaker 1 You know, she offers something that Catherine doesn't and that also Henry's various kind of mistresses don't offer. She seems much cooler, doesn't she? She's spikier.

Speaker 1 She can be a bit difficult, Anne, you know, as in she's acerbic and she can be very scornful and scathing, but she's really, she's interesting.

Speaker 2 Well, and also she plays him brilliantly because most of the ladies in the court, you know, if Henry comes calling, they're very flattered and basically kind of give in to him. Anne doesn't.

Speaker 2 She's described as as tantalizing him with her pretty dugs, but that's basically as far as it goes. And she tells him very forthrightly, I would rather lose my life than my honesty.

Speaker 2 And so she tells him, you know, if you want to sleep with me, then you're going to have to make an honest woman of me. And that means

Speaker 2 making her Henry's queen.

Speaker 1 I mean, that is just a pause a second. That is bonkers by the standards of the, I mean, people.
All through English history, there have been kings with mistresses.

Speaker 2 Well, you're absolutely right. But there is a special circumstance, which is that Henry is married to a woman who he thinks can't give him a son.
He suspects that and hopes that Anne can.

Speaker 2 And more than that, Anne has a way of cutting the Gordian knot around the marriage, because there is a huge issue around any prospect of divorce, because marriage, according to the church, is a sacrament instituted by Christ himself.

Speaker 2 So what God has joined together, let no man put asunder. I mean, that seems absolutely black and white.
How do you get around that?

Speaker 2 Well, Henry has come to believe that his marriage to Catherine is invalid and an offense to God, and that therefore God wants it dissolved.

Speaker 2 And in Henry's opinion, Catherine's failure to give him a son is clear evidence of divine anger. And he and

Speaker 2 his kind of tame clerics cite a verse from Leviticus in the Old Testament. If a man shall take his brother's wife, it is an unclean thing.
He hath uncovered his brother's nakedness.

Speaker 2 They shall be childless. And of course, Henry has taken his brother's wife.
Catherine was the widow of Arthur. Henry then married him.
He'd got a special papal dispensation to do that.

Speaker 2 But he's now thinking that dispensation, you know, doesn't cut the mustard with God. And so he's been pressing the Pope to grant him an annulment.

Speaker 2 And probably, under normal circumstances, the Pope would have been happy to oblige.

Speaker 2 But the problem is, as we mentioned, Catherine is Charles V's aunt, and the Pope, given a choice, is always going to risk offending Henry rather than Charles V.

Speaker 1 Of course, because the, I mean, just to give people a sense of the context, Rome has just been sacked by Charles V's troops, right? The Pope is effectively Charles V's prisoner.

Speaker 1 He's never going to, he's never going to offend Charles V.

Speaker 2 Yeah. And so this leaves Henry and his ministers in an absolute jam.
And so it's called the King's Great Matter.

Speaker 2 How do you get a divorce when the one person who can grant that divorce, the Pope, is not going to give it to you? And so it's locked Henry into years of fruitless negotiations and frustration.

Speaker 2 I mean, it's kind of incredibly Brexit, you know, ambassadors endlessly going and being rebuffed. But now, not only is he attracted to Anne, not only does he think she can

Speaker 2 give him the sum that he so desperately wants, but she can also provide the key that would unlock the king's great matter.

Speaker 2 Because if, as Luther teaches, and Anne has come to think the Pope is the great whore of Babylon,

Speaker 2 the Antichrist, then who cares what the Pope thinks? Yeah. Doesn't matter.

Speaker 1 Yeah, so in many ways, this is a win-win for Henry, because not only will he get the woman he wants, if this all works out, but he will throw off foreign influence, become master in his own house as it were in in religious terms and also in the long run of course there's all that there are all those monasteries very very tempting yeah well there's there's all kinds of uh goodies and prospect um

Speaker 2 and and so henry summons a load of scholars to weigh this up they're english scholars and amazingly they they tell him yeah brilliant go for it and the guy who takes the lead in this is um a very brilliant scholar called thomas cranmer who we'll we'll be hearing about over the course of this series.

Speaker 2 He's going to be a key player. But basically, Thomas Cranmer and his fellow scholars demonstrate to Henry's satisfaction that his power as king is superior to that of the popes.

Speaker 2 And once that's been accepted by Henry, things then move very fast. So in 1531,

Speaker 2 The English Church grants Henry the title of singular protector, supreme lord, and even so far as the law of Christ allows, supreme head of the English church and clergy.

Speaker 2 So that's that's essentially shunting the pope to one side.

Speaker 2 In the same year, Catherine is banished from court and her apartments are given to one of her former ladies in waiting, and that is Anne Boleyn.

Speaker 2 The following year, Anne is raised to the peerage in her own right, the first woman to be honoured in this way, and she's granted the Marquisate of Pembroke, which is an extinct title that Henry resurrects.

Speaker 2 And this matters because Henry can only marry someone of that rank.

Speaker 2 And people who listened to the series we did on Mary Queen of Scots this July may remember that every time Mary Queen of Scots makes one of her unfortunate marriages, she has to raise her husband to be to a dukedom so that he will be of worthy rank to be married to a queen.

Speaker 2 So basically that's what Henry is doing with Anne here. By December 1532, Anne knows she's pregnant.
And so, you know, things.

Speaker 2 the foot really needs to be put down on the pedal.

Speaker 2 So on the 25th of January, 1533, Henry marries her in his private chapel in Westminster, despite the fact that actually the annulment of his marriage to Catherine still hasn't come through.

Speaker 2 So effectively, he's now bigamous.

Speaker 2 On the 30th of March, Thomas Cranmer is consecrated as the Archbishop of Canterbury, and he gets the job because Henry knows that, you know, he's going to do what he needs the Archbishop to do, which is basically to absolutely affirm the legitimacy of what he's going through.

Speaker 2 So at Easter 1533, again, quoting the Venetian ambassador, the Marchioness Anne went with the king to high mass as queen and with all the pomp of a queen, clad in cloth of gold and loaded with the richest jewels, and she dined in public.

Speaker 2 Then on the 29th of May, she sails from the Palace of Greenwich up the River Thames to the Tower of London. She steps out from the boat.

Speaker 2 She goes round to the main entrance into the tower, crosses the moat.

Speaker 2 She's greeted by Henry with a kiss, and the couple retire to apartments that Henry has had decorated in splendid magnificence, specifically for Anne.

Speaker 2 Two days later, she makes her ceremonial entry into London, dressed in white, and she is extolled as a splendid image of chastity. And on the 1st of June, 1533, she is anointed, and the crown of St.

Speaker 2 Edward the Confessor is placed on her head. And this is the crown that is usually reserved for the monarch himself.

Speaker 1 so it is a signal honor so the reason for this signal honor presumably is because it's very obvious to everybody now uh if she knew she was pregnant in december it must be obvious to everybody now that she is expecting a child and the general assumption is that this will be

Speaker 2 the assumption based on nothing is that this will be a son well it's so it's i mean she's been described as a splendid image of chastity but she's also being described as somewhat big with child uh and so you're right that this pregnancy reassures Henry, brilliant, you know, I now have I have

Speaker 2 a woman who can give me a son.

Speaker 2 And if Anne is pregnant with his son, then it's absolutely essential that everything is done to make clear that Anne is legitimately his wife and therefore his son will legitimately be the heir to the throne.

Speaker 2 And so it is on the 26th of August that Anne Boleyn, now the Queen of England, retires to her birthing chamber in Greenwich. And on the 7th of September, she goes into labour.

Speaker 1 Reiki, well, as we know, the result of this will be a little bit of a disappointment for Henry, and we will return after the break to find out how he deals with it.

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Speaker 1 Welcome back to the rest is history. So Anne Boleyn, she's just been crowned Queen of England.
All kinds of exciting political and theological developments going on in the background.

Speaker 1 She has gone into Labour. She has been delivered of a child.
Brilliant news. It is an heir at last for Henry VIII.
And it is a boy. Oh, no, it's actually not.

Speaker 1 Oh, girl, what a massive letdown.

Speaker 1 So here's the thing. You would think that Henry would be furious, and this would be, you know, curtains for Anne Boleyn.
And lots of people probably think, well, it is.

Speaker 1 But it isn't straight away, right? He doesn't completely give up on Anne Boleyn after this. I mean, I was about to say he's a reasonable man.
I mean, in many ways, he's not.

Speaker 1 But he must recognise there's a 50-50 chance that it would have been a girl.

Speaker 2 You know, he's disappointed, but he is disappointed, but also, you know, Anne's had a successful pregnancy. The baby's healthy.

Speaker 2 There's every prospect that she'll get pregnant again and give him a son.

Speaker 2 And also, he now has a legitimate princess. So that's better than nothing.
And so he's, you know, he in no way repudiates his baby daughter. He kind of shows her all kinds of marks of favor.

Speaker 2 So her name, the name he gives her, Elizabeth. And amazingly, Anne had wanted to call her Mary to erase Princess Mary from the, you know, from the ledger.

Speaker 2 And Henry says, no, I'm not, that's, that's, that's poor. So, but he chooses Elizabeth because it's a tribute to his mother, um, Elizabeth of York.
Elizabeth is then baptised in Greenwich.

Speaker 2 The mayor of London is rowed down there with 40 of the the city's worthies, you know, kind of movers and shakers.

Speaker 2 And Elizabeth doesn't get Francis I, the king of France, as godfather, which she would have done had she been a boy. But she does get Thomas Cranmer.

Speaker 2 And, you know, Archbishop of Canterbury, that's not bad.

Speaker 2 And of course, the Archbishop of Canterbury also is all, you know, it's a kind of imprimatur of legitimacy, suggests that God is saying she's not a bastard. So that's great.

Speaker 2 Then after the baptism, which Henry and Anne are not at it, that's not the custom. She's brought out.

Speaker 2 So Eustace Chapuis, the imperial ambassador, who's a very hostile witness to Anne, he describes what happens that a herald in front of the church door proclaimed her princess of England.

Speaker 2 Then in December, it's a very wintry day, drizzle falling on the streets of London.

Speaker 2 She rides with splendid ceremony through the capital, out of it, onwards towards the house that Henry has decided will be her official residence.

Speaker 2 And this is a palace called Hatfield, and it lies 20 miles north of London in rural Hertfordshire. And it's close to the capital, so easy for Henry to visit it.

Speaker 2 but it's also less likely to be swept by plague, which is always a consideration. So he's looking out for her.
And it's a pretty impressive place for a ball-month-old baby girl to have.

Speaker 2 So it's got a great hall. It's got fine apartments.
It's got a parkland full of deer. You know, it's a palace fit for a princess, I guess.

Speaker 1 Yeah. So Henry, he goes to visit her, doesn't he, in January?

Speaker 1 And by which point, it's very clear that if there were any question about her parentage, which there hasn't been, I mean, she looks a little bit like Henry because she's even got the red hair, hasn't she?

Speaker 2 Yes, and the violent temper, apparently.

Speaker 1 Right. I mean, to be fair, she's a baby.
I mean, that's pretty much the standard.

Speaker 1 And then

Speaker 1 the key thing in March,

Speaker 1 Parliament passes legislation that declares Elizabeth as Henry's heir. But there is a couple of twists, aren't there?

Speaker 1 So basically, if Henry dies before Elizabeth reaches the age of majority, then Anne will be regent and absolute governor of her children and of the kingdom.

Speaker 2 But also...

Speaker 1 If you call anybody but Anne and Elizabeth queen or princess, so the obvious target here is her half-sister Mary,

Speaker 1 then that is high treason. And you, you know, you can say goodbye to your head.

Speaker 2 Yeah. So great news for Anne, but terrible news for Mary, Henry's daughter by Catherine of Aragon, who is now very publicly and by act of parliament declared a bastard.
Yeah.

Speaker 2 And Anne is ecstatic about this because she detests Catherine of Aragon and she particularly detests Mary and is consistently vicious towards her. I mean, horrible to poor Mary.

Speaker 1 Can I say something actually on this front? There are some admirable things about Anne. You know, I like the fact that she's a Cerbic and that she's clever and that she's, you know,

Speaker 1 a bit of a personality and stuff. But she's horrible.
She's horrible to Mary, isn't she? In a way that she didn't have to be.

Speaker 2 Yeah.

Speaker 2 And I think in part it's

Speaker 2 jealousy of Mary's lineage. I think it's...

Speaker 2 She's jealous on behalf of her own daughter, but it's also in large part because Mary refuses to acknowledge her own bastardy she refuses to play the game that Henry her father wants her to play and so Anne goes all out to try and erase the privileged status that Mary had previously enjoyed as Henry's eldest daughter so on the 1st of October 1533 which was only two months after Elizabeth's birth Henry had summoned Mary and told her, you are no longer going to be a princess from this point on you're just going to be the lady Mary.

Speaker 2 And Mary understandably bursts into tears. She's only 17 years old.
I mean, you know, for a teenager, teenagers hate. I mean,

Speaker 2 it's a humiliating thing. Yeah, basically.

Speaker 2 The following month, Chapuis reported an even greater humiliation.

Speaker 2 So he writes, the king, not satisfied with having taken away the name and title of princess from Mary, has just given out that in order to subdue the spirit of the princess, he will deprive her of all her people because they put notions into her head and stop her from obeying him, and that she should come and live as lady's maid with the little bastard.

Speaker 2 The little bastard is Elizabeth. So, I mean, what a humiliation.

Speaker 2 You know, you're stripped of all your own servants and you have to go and work as a servant for your, you know, this girl who's replaced you. I mean, it's absolutely terrible.

Speaker 2 So Mary is sent there only with two attendants and she's obdurate. in refusing to accept this.
She says, I'm not going to accept, you know, this horrible little girl as a legitimate heir.

Speaker 2 She insists she knew no other princess in England except herself. And Anne is so infuriated that she takes away, you know, all Mary's jewels.
It's like kind of obfuscating her iPhone or something.

Speaker 2 And she tells the women supervising Mary to box her ears as a cursed bastard. So Nicola Talis, who wrote

Speaker 2 another great book, Young Elizabeth, Princess Prisoner, Queen, she says, little wonder Mary spent much of her time weeping in her chamber.

Speaker 1 Yeah, but that makes Mary sound like a drip, whereas Mary's not a drip.

Speaker 1 i like mary i think she has massive she's got massive backbone mary she has a she obviously she's regarded as one of the great villains of english history because she lets herself down with her catholicism however she has tremendous guts i think and she's a massive survivor i don't you see i don't think that it's maudlin weeping i think it's angry weeping yeah i respect that it's i hate you all kind of weeping that That's what it's like.

Speaker 2 And obviously, none of this makes Anne any the more popular because we said how Catherine is very popular with the mass of the, of the English people.

Speaker 2 And so Anne going out of her way to insult Catherine's daughter, Mary, who's also very popular, you know,

Speaker 2 it doesn't go down well at all. And Chaparis, unsurprisingly, completely agrees with this.

Speaker 2 It says, I do not understand why the king is in such haste to treat the Princess Mary in this way, if it were not for the importunity and malignity of the lady, i.e. Anne.

Speaker 2 I know he's biased, but he's he's not wrong. Yeah, he's right.
Now, I guess none of this would have mattered had Elizabeth been a boy.

Speaker 2 I mean, Anne could have done then, in that case, she could have done whatever she liked, nor if in the wake of Elizabeth's birth, she had then been able to get pregnant again and give Henry the son that she wanted.

Speaker 2 But this does not happen because in the summer of 1534,

Speaker 2 absolute disaster. Anne loses a baby.
It's gone almost a full term. And the rumor is that it had been a boy.

Speaker 2 Another year goes by, and there are rumors of another miscarriage.

Speaker 2 And it is clear as well to people that Henry is getting a little bit fed up with Anne. So you said you like her, she's sassy, she's acerbic.

Speaker 2 But Henry, you know, he might, to begin with, he might have found that quite attractive, quite titillating. But I think by this point, he's starting to find her bossy, arrogant, nagging, shrewish.

Speaker 2 And these are not qualities that he's particularly looking for in a wife.

Speaker 2 do you know what sometimes anne boleyn i said she was horrible but sometimes she reminds me a tiny bit of myself really imagine well god henry would have been lucky to get married to you that has to be said dominic that the odds of you giving henry a son would be would be low i think yeah

Speaker 1 it's not it's not a situation i've ever really pondered like

Speaker 1 how would i perform as one of henry viih's wives but actually i think probably although anne boleyn is the one i leak i like least she's probably the one i most like well fortunately for you,

Speaker 2 you are not having to get pregnant by Henry. That's Anne's job.
And ominously for Anne, by this point, Henry, his eye is starting to stray again. He's starting to have affairs.

Speaker 2 And as early as October 1534, so this is a few months after Anne's second miscarriage, Chapuis is reporting that Henry is paying particular attention to one lady in waiting and this is a woman called Jane Seymour.

Speaker 2 And the following summer, so that's in 1535,

Speaker 2 Henry pays a visit to the Seymour house, which is in Wiltshire. I'm delighted to say.

Speaker 1 Oh, it's great to have Wiltshire in the Salisbury area back on the show.

Speaker 2 This is a place called Wolf Hall.

Speaker 2 So it seems that Henry is really quite keen on Jane Seymour if he's going off and, you know, meeting the parents and all that kind of thing.

Speaker 2 It's unclear exactly what it is that Jane has that Henry finds so irresistible. So Chapuis famously describes her as an enigma.
She's modest, she's not particularly attractive.

Speaker 2 Chapuis describes her as not a woman of great wit. Tracy Borman in her book on Anne Boleyn points out that Enigma was Tudor slang for the female genitals.

Speaker 2 So perhaps Chapuis is hinting at something there.

Speaker 2 unclear. But there's one definite advantage that Jane does have over Anne, certainly in Henry's eyes, which is that she isn't always losing her temper with him.

Speaker 1 But the point about the appeal of Jane Seymour is surely that Anne Boleyn

Speaker 1 is a Cerbic, is argumentative, is a bit of a nag, is a bit bossy, all of these things that make her very interesting. Jane Seymour is quite boring, but she basically is a people pleaser.

Speaker 1 Everything we know about her is she's a massive people pleaser. And she, Henry thinks, God, she's sweet.
She's nice.

Speaker 1 She'll bring me a, yeah, she'll bring me a cup of scented wine or whatever and, and, you know, nurse my ulcer.

Speaker 2 She'll find my friends amusing.

Speaker 1 Exactly. Exactly.

Speaker 2 Yeah.

Speaker 2 So, but it's still not all over for Anne. So by January 1536,

Speaker 2 she's pregnant again.

Speaker 2 And then on the 7th of January, 1536, even better news. It is announced that Catherine of Aragon is dead.
And Henry's reaction is, God be praised.

Speaker 2 Anne's brother George, it was a pity the princess, i.e. Mary, did not keep company with her.
So, I mean, really venomous, really venomous. And you might wonder, well, you know, why this hostility?

Speaker 2 I think for George Boleyn, the hostility to Mary is, it's not just dynastic.

Speaker 2 He, like Anne, has become a very, very passionate evangelical. So it kind of be anachronistic to call him a Protestant, but that's basically what he is by now.

Speaker 2 But Mary, she has stayed very devoutly, very defiantly loyal to the traditional Catholic faith.

Speaker 2 She's loyal to the Pope. And of course, that loyalty is an expression of her loyalty to Catherine of Aragon.
So she refuses to accept Henry's supremacy of the church.

Speaker 2 And this, of course, in turn then enables her to say, well,

Speaker 2 I have every godly reason to deny the legitimacy of my half-sister, you know, baby Elizabeth.

Speaker 2 And that means that for the Berlins, Anne, George, or, you know, the rest of the crowd, their godliness, their evangelical identity is now kind of seamlessly interwoven with their dynastic ambitions and interests.

Speaker 2 So for them, it seems obvious that God is on the side of the Berlins and against Princess Mary and all these kind of awful Catholics. But of course, I mean,

Speaker 2 none of this matters if Anne can't give Henry what he so desperately wants, a son.

Speaker 1 Yeah, so the clock's ticking. I mentioned his ulcer, actually.
I was being anachronistic because he doesn't get this famous ulcer until the 24th of January when he has this jousting accident.

Speaker 1 He comes very close to death, doesn't he? He's knocked off his horse. People actually think he may have died.

Speaker 1 And with that, there is a serious, you know, for the first time, people think, gosh, he could actually have died. And what happens next? You know, the future of the dynasty is not yet secure.

Speaker 1 There are a lot of people who think when he goes, great, we can get rid of the Tudors.

Speaker 2 i mean they're a bit of an aberration and we can get back to we can find some plantagenet um heir to take over yeah we can get back to fighting yeah exactly brilliant exactly so yeah and so that fall it has a kind of knock-on consequence because five days later 29th of january catherine of arrogan is laid to rest in peterborough cathedral and on the same day and has a miscarriage And she blames it on the shock that she felt on learning of the news of Henry's fall.

Speaker 2 But Henry thinks,

Speaker 2 no, this is the marker of a curse. Just as my first marriage was cursed, so now my second is cursed.
And he says explicitly, I see that God will not give me male children.

Speaker 2 And Chapuis, you know, he is kind of delighted by this. And he writes to Charles V, the emperor.

Speaker 2 and he reports Henry's growing belief, and I quote Chapuis, that he had made this marriage seduced by witchcraft, and for this reason he considered it null.

Speaker 1 See, I think Henry, at this point, my sense is that he feels a little bit guilty.

Speaker 1 Catherine of Aragon has died, and although he will never admit it to himself, he has treated her abominably.

Speaker 1 And she wasn't a bad person. She was a good wife for him.
He's treated his own daughter atrociously.

Speaker 1 And Henry is a very vain man. He will never accept that he's behaved badly.
So he pins all this on Anne, doesn't he? Don't you think that's what he's doing? Yeah, I think so.

Speaker 2 And I think also what's very unfortunate for Anne is that Jane Seymour, although she may be boring, you know, she's learnt from Anne how to play Henry.

Speaker 2 So in April, Henry sends Jane this purse of gold sovereigns and a letter, presumably, you know, pledging his troth. And she just kisses the letter very demurely and sends it back.

Speaker 2 unopened and declares that she will only accept such gifts if she is married. So she's learned from the mistress, you know, how to play, how to do this.

Speaker 2 That April, the same, so the same month, Anne is in Greenwich and she has Elizabeth brought from Hatfield. And Elizabeth by this point is two and a half years old.

Speaker 2 And Elizabeth has clearly been much on Anne's mind. So Anne has been ordering her all kinds of clothes.

Speaker 2 It's kind of dresses of orange and purple, velvet and taffeta caps adorned with gold, obviously designed to kind of go with her complexion and her auburn hair. So Anne again being, you know,

Speaker 2 great fashion Easter. And she's clearly worrying, I think, by this point,

Speaker 2 that Henry might strike against her at any moment. And what are the implications of this for

Speaker 2 her daughter? So on the 26th of April, she summons her private chaplain for a conversation.

Speaker 2 And this chaplain is a man called Matthew Parker, who is a very brilliant young evangelical scholar, typical of the kind of clergyman that Anne has been favoring. And Anne says to him, look,

Speaker 2 I don't know what's going to happen, but suppose the worst does happen. Please, will you promise to look after my daughter Elizabeth? And Parker vows, yes,

Speaker 2 Your Majesty, I absolutely will. And he holds true to that vow.
So years later in Elizabeth's reign, Parker reports the conversation he'd had with Anne at this point to Elizabeth.

Speaker 2 And he describes it as the last words that ever Her Majesty's mother spoke to me concerning her.

Speaker 1 Well, you say the last words because the end is coming for Anne, isn't it? And it comes on,

Speaker 1 isn't there some story that she's watching some form of sport? I can't remember what it is, people playing tennis or something.

Speaker 1 And then she gets a summons from the council, you know, come and you must come immediately. And she's accused of,

Speaker 1 to her shock, complete and utter shock, she is accused of adultery. And then she's taken off by barge from Greenwich to the Tower of London.

Speaker 1 She never even gets the chance to see her daughter before she goes, does she?

Speaker 2 No, you know, there's no dilly-dallying. So after the Tower she goes and the boom of cannons announces to London her arrival in the Tower.

Speaker 2 And of course, this was where three years earlier she'd stayed for a couple of days with Henry in the royal quarters before setting out across London for her coronation.

Speaker 2 And now she's being incarcerated there as a prisoner. And the first evening that she's there, she asks the constable of the tower, shall I die without justice?

Speaker 2 i mean she clearly recognizes um you know the the fate that is now threatening her and the constable replies to her the poorest subject the king hath hath justice and at this anne only laughs and you know the laugh is laughter is very bitter because anne does not receive justice so she's put on trial on the 15th of may in the Tower of London, isn't she?

Speaker 1 She's the first Queen of England ever to be subjected to a public trial. And counts, so adultery, she's convicted of adultery with five different men.
I mean, they're not messing around.

Speaker 1 Then the next count, incest,

Speaker 1 because she's accused of sleeping with her own brother, this evangelical guy, George Boleyn. And then treason and conspiracy to kill her husband, to murder her husband.

Speaker 1 And the thing is, of course, you know, she's obviously innocent of these things, right?

Speaker 1 I mean, people never, historians don't think she'd plotted against her husband or that she'd slept with her brother or she'd committed, even she committed adultery.

Speaker 2 No, I don't think any historians think that they're true. Essentially, Henry wants her eliminated and he's prepared to go to any lengths to do it.

Speaker 2 And sure enough, you know, the sentence is read out to her: because thou hast offended against our sovereign the king's grace in committing treason against his person, the law of the realm is this: that thou shalt be burnt here within the Tower of London on the green, else to have thy head smitten off.

Speaker 2 And clearly, in that, it's better to have your head chopped off than to be burnt alive. Anne is being offered a deal.
Agree to what I want and you will have a merciful death.

Speaker 2 And the following day, sure enough, Anne is visited in the tower by Cranmer and Cranmer wins Anne's consent to the annulment of her marriage.

Speaker 2 And this might seem surprising to people because effectively, of course, this serves to render Elizabeth now a bastard.

Speaker 2 But I think Anne is doing it. I mean, partly, maybe she she thinks, well, you know, I'll have my head chopped off.
But

Speaker 2 I think she thinks that by doing this, her life will be spared. And that will then enable her to, you know, it will ensure that at least Elizabeth will continue to have a mother.

Speaker 2 But there is no pardon.

Speaker 1 Interesting point there, actually, Thomas. Never really occurred to me that at that point, Henry VIII could have pardoned her.

Speaker 1 I mean, he could have just said, send her off, like Catherine of Aragon, send her off to some country house.

Speaker 1 And then, although people would talk about him as having had lots of wives, his reputation as this kind of bluebeard whom, you know, the wife killer, I mean, he doesn't have to kill her.

Speaker 2 No, he doesn't. And everyone finds it astonishing.
So even Chapui, who obviously hates Anne, I mean,

Speaker 2 he regards it as madness. So, you know, he says, may God permit that this may be his last folly.
It's seen as

Speaker 2 very aberrant behavior, I think. But, you know, she has now declared and accepted that her marriage was invalid.

Speaker 2 And so the following morning, 17th of May in Lambeth Palace, Cranmer officially annuls Henry's marriage to Anne.

Speaker 2 And this means that Elizabeth, like her half-sister Mary, is declared bastard and deprived of the title of princess. So from this point on, she will be called the Lady Elizabeth.

Speaker 2 And later that same morning, the 17th of May, the five men who've been convicted of adultery with Anne are led out onto Tower Hill. So before

Speaker 2 the mass of Londoners who've gathered there to watch the spectacle, and one by one they are beheaded.

Speaker 2 And George Boleyn goes first because he's of the highest rank and the axe will be at its sharpest. So it's a kind of, you know, a measure of privilege there.

Speaker 2 And he speaks as a martyr for his evangelical beliefs. He says, I have been a setter forth of the word of God.
So he's implying this is the reason that he's being eliminated.

Speaker 2 He does not defend his sister.

Speaker 2 And in fact, only one of the five men who are executed, who's a guy who Henry, you know, very close to, a man called Henry Norris, a long-term favorite and friend of Henry's.

Speaker 2 He's the only one who does the decent thing and speaks out in defense of Anne.

Speaker 2 So he said, in his conscience, he thought the queen innocent of these things laid to charge, and he would die a thousand deaths rather than ruin an innocent person. But, you know, this has no impact.

Speaker 2 It doesn't help Anne. And on the 19th of May, so two days later, it is her turn to meet death.
Now, she does not die as the five men accused of adultery had done.

Speaker 2 on Tower Hill, but within the tower itself. So there's a measure of privacy.

Speaker 2 A thousand people are gathered gathered to watch it, you know, but she doesn't have the stinking rabble jeering and mocking her. A great scaffold has been erected next to the White Tower.

Speaker 2 It's been draped in black. She approaches it wearing a grey silk gown.
She's led to the scaffold. She climbs its steps, and then she addresses the crowd.

Speaker 2 And she says, I pray God save the king and send him long to reign over you, for a gentler nor a more merciful prince was there never. I mean, obviously, she doesn't believe this.

Speaker 2 And so people may wonder, well, why would she say it? And I think that, you know, the reason is, is that she is hoping it will encourage Henry to look more fondly on their daughter.

Speaker 2 And so it may well be that, you know, in her final moments, Anne's thoughts are of Elizabeth. So there isn't a block.
She just kneels in the straw.

Speaker 2 She says her prayers, and then she removes the hood that she's had.

Speaker 2 And so that kind of opens up her neck. Her hair is bundled up, put in a cap.
So her neck is now absolutely exposed. Lady in waiting step forwards, blindfolds her, and leans forwards.

Speaker 2 She's still saying her prayers. And then there's a French swordsman who Henry has specially hired for his expertise, kind of slight mark of mercy, I suppose.

Speaker 2 And he quietly reaches down for his sword without making a sound, so Anne doesn't know when it's going to come.

Speaker 2 And then with very smooth, very silent precision, he brings the blade of the sword down onto Anne's neck. Her head is severed with a single blow.

Speaker 2 Anne, before her execution, had said that she had a little neck, so there's no kind of hacking and chopping at it. It's done very efficiently.

Speaker 2 And the head is then held up to the crowd, and it's reported that her mouth continues to move in prayer for several seconds after her decapitation.

Speaker 1 Gosh, I wonder if that really happened.

Speaker 2 Well, I think it is possible. I mean, the whole question of what happens to you after your head is chopped off is a very interesting one, and I gather much contested.

Speaker 1 Right, okay.

Speaker 2 Who knows? You know, there are markers of mercy. The French swordsman, she hasn't been burnt to death.
It's been in privacy, but it's still completely shocking.

Speaker 2 And I think that Henry's willingness to sanction the judicial murder of his queen, of Henry Norris's, you know, one of his closest friends, four other presumably innocent people as well.

Speaker 2 it speaks of his utter resolve to secure this great prize that he's been longing for, which is a son.

Speaker 2 So on the 30th of May, he marries Jane Seymour, and a year and a half later, on the 12th of October, 1537, she dies. But

Speaker 2 she has done what Henry married her for. So two weeks before her death, she had given him the male heir that he had been so, so desperate to obtain.
And it's a boy called Edward.

Speaker 1 But where does that leave Elizabeth? Because Elizabeth, Tom, is now...

Speaker 1 been declared illegitimate. She's a bastard and she is the daughter of somebody who's basically been erased from the annals as a traitor and as an adulteress and as a witch.

Speaker 1 So where will this lead? Well, the good news is if you're a member of the Restus History Club,

Speaker 1 you can find out right away and you can hear the rest of the episodes in this series, including the next one, which explores how the young Elizabeth survives the murderous snake pit.

Speaker 2 of the court of Henry VIII.

Speaker 1 And of course, if you're not a member of the Restus History Club and you want to hear the whole of the series right now, you can join our very own snake pit, our very own murderous Tudor Court at the RestusHistory.com.

Speaker 1 So wonderful news for everybody. Tom, that was absolutely brilliant.
Thank you very much for that. It's Order Force.
And we'll see you all next time. Bye-bye.
Bye-bye.