Under analysis, the case presented by the Crown in May 1536 collapses. But one decisive argument for innocence remains–the evidence the Crown was unable to produce. The queen would normally be attended, day and night. In no way could she pursue a liaison unaided. But where was Anne Boleyn’s accomplice? Here is ‘the dog that did not bark’. Anne could simply not have behaved as alleged.
Clearly informed by his friend Nicolas Bourbon, the French reformer Etienne Dolet published an epigram declaring Anne falsely condemned and beheaded for adultery. Chapuys did not believe her guilt–‘condemned on presumption not evidence, without any witness or valid confession’ was his conclusion.
Innocent but a prisoner, guiltless but condemned, Anne awaited her fate. [S]he called for Kingston to hear mass with her soon after dawn on Thursday [18 May], It was then that, at the damnation of her immortal soul, she swore on the sacrament that she had never been unfaithful to the king. She did so twice–before and after receiving the body of Christ–and the constable duly passed on her oath, as she knew he would.
After her last speech, all shred of hope she might have held on to slowly left her body and soul as she kneeled down and prayed to God one last time. The act itself by the swordsman was swift and smooth— God did take mercy on her after all. Anne Boleyn, the woman who had changed the course of history, was now dead. Despite Henry’s efforts to destroy her reputation, she would forever be immortalised, in all her intelligence and strength, in the injustice of her death.
— Thorns, Lust, and Glory: The Betrayal of Anne Boleyn, Estelle Paranque
♕ “For her chaplains, ‘lanterns and light of my court’, she chose men won to reform: Matthew Parker, Robert Singleton, William Latimer, Nicholas Shaxton and others.”
♕ The French ambassador Du Bellay reported that “none of the other [councillors] have any credit at all [with Henry VIII] unless it pleased the Young Lady to lend them some.”
♕ She was a patron of Hans Holbein.
♕ She secured the release of, and later patronized, the poet and reformer Nicholas Bourbon as tutor for Henry Carey, Henry Norris (the Younger), Henry Dudley, and one of the sons of Nicholas Harvey.
♕ “Her London silkwomen, Anne Vaughan and Joan Wilkinson, were fervent gospellers.”
♕ “The Act attainting Elizabeth Barton and her supporters of high treason pardoned all those not specifically named in the statute; the King made the decision at ‘the humble suit and contemplation of his most entire and well-beloved wife Queen Anne.’”
♕ "Richard Hilles lamented her loss in 1541 as one of the ‘sincere ministers of the word’ who had been taken away.”
♕ “True to Christian humanism, she backed education, acting as a generous patron to students and giving annual subvention to Cambridge and Oxford.”
♕ Anne was friends with Princess Renee of France in her youth.
♕ “Of ten bishops appointed during her time as Queen, seven were her own evangelical clients.” ♕
19th May 1536 → “She gracefully addressed the people from the scaffold with a voice somewhat overcome by weakness, but which gathered strength as she went on. She begged her hearers to forgive her if she had not used them all with becoming gentleness, and asked for their prayers. It was needless, she said, to relate why she was there, but she prayed the Judge of all the world to have compassion on those who had condemned her, and she begged them to pray for the king, in whom she had always found great kindness, fear of God, and love of his subjects. The spectators could not refrain from tears.”
Many of her garments were embroidered with naturalistic designs such as strawberry leaves - a typically English motif.
Are any examples still existing? In portraits, perhaps? Google gives me modern dresses embroidered w strawberries.
There’s at least two Tudor era examples. It’s not as easy to recognize the flowers and leaves in embroidery without the berries, so there’s probably more out there without the strawberries themselves.
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