![\"A](\"https:\/\/images.immediate.co.uk\/production\/volatile\/sites\/7\/2023\/10\/GettyImages-578315220web-cbc9914.jpg?quality=90&resize=620%2C413\" "\\"Charles")
\n<\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/picture>\n<\/div>When describing the celebrations at Greenwich, English chroniclers focused on the great lengths to which Henry had gone to impress his French guests. At a newly constructed banqueting house, a majestic triumphal arch led into a candlelit theatre with a spectacular ceiling, lit by candles and mirrors, creating the illusion of the heavens, with stars and planets and signs of the zodiac.<\/p>\n
French chroniclers, however, took a different tack. Henry\u2019s choice of dancing partner, they noted, was not the king\u2019s wife, Catherine of Aragon<\/a>, but \u201cMistress Boleyn, who was brought up in France with the late queen\u201d.<\/p>\n Six years later, in 1533, Henry and \u201cMistress Boleyn\u201d would complete the journey from dancing partners to husband and wife, instigating one of the most consequential marriages in British royal history. Theirs was a tempestuous relationship, one that both divided and electrified public opinion in England.<\/p>\n Yet, as the French diplomatic reports prove, Henry\u2019s subjects weren\u2019t the only ones watching their every move with alarm and incredulity; the king\u2019s love affair with Anne was the talk of Europe, too.<\/p>\n Just as importantly, Henry and Anne Boleyn<\/a>\u2019s marriage shaped \u2013 and was shaped by \u2013 European geopolitics. Almost every aspect of Henry and Anne\u2019s relationship maps onto international diplomacy. Theirs really was a love affair played out on a European stage.<\/p>\n Given Anne\u2019s background, it\u2019s perhaps hardly surprising that the French tracked closely her romance with the English king, nor that she would influence Anglo-French relations as queen.<\/p>\n Anne had, after all, spent almost seven years of her adolescence serving Queen Claude, the young wife of French king Francis I, as a demoiselle<\/em> (maid of honour).<\/p>\n During the formative period, Anne received a masterclass in what powerful women could achieve. Louise of Savoy, Francis\u2019s mother, and Marguerite of Angoul\u00eame, the king\u2019s sister, showed how far women could carve out their own roles to shape and steer events.<\/p>\n Claude, Louise and Marguerite were often together with the queen\u2019s demoiselles<\/em> in attendance, and what Anne saw and heard then influenced her for the rest of her life.<\/p>\n On his accession to the French throne in 1515, Francis appointed Louise to his privy council. She acted as regent when he was out of the country, conducted her own independent diplomacy and exercised a vice-like grip over the royal court. As for Marguerite, she was a shrewd, versatile politician, and an acute, discerning observer of all that went on.<\/p>\n During her time in France, Anne was also exposed to the many glories of a Renaissance court \u2013 and would go on to champion its social etiquette, taste and architectural models after she became Henry\u2019s queen.<\/p>\n All that, though, lay a long way in the future. For when, back in 1521, Anne left the French court for good and returned home to England, she was all but unknown to Henry VIII. In any case, Henry was then poised to join Charles V, Holy Roman Emperor and king of Spain, in a war against the kingdom she had just left: France.<\/p>\n Only when Henry and Charles quarrelled over the war effort, and Cardinal Wolsey<\/a> (lord chancellor of England) turned towards France, did the king begin to fall for Anne. By the beginning of 1526, eternal peace with France was the mantra \u2013 and Anne, chic and beguiling, was the epitome of everything French.<\/p>\n Henry was soon besotted with her and, when she insisted on marriage, the king spent six years seeking an annulment of his marriage to Catherine of Aragon. That quest would spark a full-blown international crisis.<\/p>\n Wolsey was among those tasked with delivering the divorce. Yet Anne always suspected the cardinal\u2019s commitment to the cause and, when he failed to secure the annulment, she engineered his downfall.<\/p>\n With Wolsey arrested and stripped of his office<\/a>, Anne, for all practical purposes, became Henry\u2019s chief minister. She now guided the king in his foreign policy, and took initiatives on her own account \u2013 or did so jointly with her father, Thomas, or brother, George, who went on six separate missions to France.<\/p>\n Following Louise of Savoy\u2019s example, Anne kept a close eye on diplomats sent abroad, several of whom were expected to report directly to her as well as to Henry.<\/p>\n As Jean du Bellay \u2013 one of several French diplomats Anne regarded as personal friends, greeting them in the French manner with a kiss on the cheek \u2013 explained, she and her father had set out to monopolise power. \u201cAll the other councillors have no credit except what it pleases la Demoiselle [Anne] to give them, which is as true as the Gospel.\u201d<\/p>\n Anne\u2019s ultimate aim was to secure a fresh treaty with the French going far beyond the Treaty of Westminster in its scope. This she achieved in the summer of 1532 via a series of interventions that Gilles de la Pommeraye, the new French ambassador, hailed as \u201cmore than his master, the king, could ever sufficiently acknowledge or repay\u201d.<\/p>\n The result was a full offensive and defensive alliance: a Treaty of Mutual Aid that saw Francis agreeing to assist Henry with troops and ships if he was attacked, and vice-versa. If Charles V placed a trade embargo on English merchants, Francis would do the same to Flemish merchants.<\/p>\n The treaty was a landmark moment in Anglo-French relations in the 16th century \u2013 and it seems to have marked a milestone in Henry\u2019s relationship with Anne, too, for the king now ordered Catherine of Aragon to quit the royal palaces for ever, leaving Anne to preside.<\/p>\n In a ceremony borrowed from Marguerite of Angoul\u00eame\u2019s creation as Duke of Berry in 1517, Henry made Anne Marquis of Pembroke in her own right (entitling her to sit in the House of Lords), with de la Pommeraye as guest of honour.<\/p>\n Things got even better for Anne at an Anglo-French summit staged at Calais and Boulogne in October 1532. Here, King Francis treated Anne as if she was already queen, dancing with her and sending her expensive gifts. The success of the summit was the trigger for Henry and Anne to begin sleeping together \u2013 and to marry.<\/p>\n That marriage first took place \u201cprivily\u201d in a clandestine (probably illegal) ceremony in November 1532, followed by a secret (but procedurally correct) repeat in January 1533. Yet Henry had still failed to secure papal approval of the divorce he so desperately sought. Here, once again, amicable relations with the French promised a solution.<\/p>\n After the summit in Calais and Boulogne, Francis invited Pope Clement VII to a conference in the south of France. Clement agreed to attend and to handle Henry\u2019s divorce case \u201cso dexterously that no harm will be done to him\u201d; in return, Henry promised to take no unilateral steps against the church until after the conference.<\/p>\n Francis genuinely believed that Clement had treated Henry shabbily. But various schemes for reconciliation between England and Rome, proposed by Jean du Bellay and others, were scuppered by Henry\u2019s strident repudiation of papal powers. Relations cooled further when Henry chose to marry Anne without first notifying his French ally.<\/p>\n They were about to get worse. When Francis secured papal approval for his second son Henry\u2019s marriage to Clement\u2019s niece, Catherine de\u2019 Medici, and held the nuptials before bringing up the question of the English king\u2019s annulment, Henry railed against him, calling him \u201ca traitor, a villain and the pope\u2019s gull\u201d. The two headstrong monarchs were now increasingly at loggerheads.<\/p>\n Much of the fallout coincided with Anne and Henry\u2019s honeymoon tour of Surrey. That intended moment of triumph was interrupted by George Boleyn rushing back from France with the news that Clement had censured Henry, declared his marriage to Anne unlawful and ordered him to return to Catherine.<\/p>\n Under French pressure, the pope allowed a temporary suspension of the sentence to give Henry time to comply. Anne \u2013 seven months pregnant with her daughter, Elizabeth \u2013 panicked, and she and Henry quarrelled.<\/p>\n Undeterred, Anne set about drawing up a plan for a new Anglo-French summit to be held in the summer of 1534. When Francis agreed, she sent her brother to France to finalise the arrangements, leaving Henry to commission eye-wateringly expensive renovations at the royal lodgings in Calais.<\/p>\n But Henry nurtured doubts, suspecting Francis to be too closely linked to Clement after the de\u2019 Medici marriage, so the plan came to nothing.<\/p>\n Still hoping for help from France, Anne was elated when, later in the year, Francis sent Philippe Chabot \u2013 Seigneur de Brion, the new admiral of France \u2013 to London at the head of a large retinue. Anne personally greeted him at Whitehall Palace as he disembarked from the king\u2019s great barge, The Lion<\/em>.<\/p>\n Henry entertained Chabot magnificently, but the admiral was cool. Staying for only 15 days, he skipped all but one of the tennis matches Henry laid on for him, and all but two of the banquets and masques.<\/p>\n Then, in late January 1535, Palam\u00e8des Gontier, Francis\u2019s secretary, made a proposal to Henry: if the English king barred his elder daughter, Mary, from the succession, Anne\u2019s daughter, Elizabeth, could be betrothed to Francis\u2019s third son, Charles, Duke of Angoul\u00eame. In return, Francis wanted unlimited subsidies to fund an invasion of Piedmont and Lombardy \u2013 an open-ended commitment to which Henry took exception.<\/p>\n Before Gontier returned to France, he spoke privately to Anne. As Gontier reported back to Chabot, she complained bitterly of Francis\u2019s vacillation, which had caused her husband doubts and was threatening their marriage. Only with unqualified French support, she believed, could Henry hold at bay the threat of papal sanctions against him.<\/p>\n Fighting back tears, Anne declared that Chabot should understand that he must find some remedy urgently \u201cso that she may not be hung out to dry and cast away. Already she sees her- self very close to both these fates and in more grief and trouble than before her marriage.\u201d<\/p>\n Anne had every reason to fear for her future. Soon after his sister\u2019s conversation with Gontier, George Boleyn returned to France, meeting Chabot in Calais several times, but he made no progress.<\/p>\n Realising the danger, he hastened to London and, instead of reporting first to Henry, headed straight for Anne\u2019s apartments to warn her. \u201cWrangling words\u201d followed in the Privy Council.<\/p>\n Subsequent events would bear out Anne\u2019s fears as the balance of power shifted. Thomas Cromwell<\/a> \u2013 Henry VIII\u2019s tough and resourceful minister, a man with oceanic ambitions who was increasingly briefing against the Boleyns \u2013 now found it possible to reassure Eustace Chapuys, ambassador of Charles V, that Anne\u2019s plans for a fresh Anglo-French league were on hold. Cromwell declared that he would persuade Henry never to send George to France again.<\/p>\n What Anne had really wanted \u2013 and George had attempted to secure \u2013 was to persuade Francis to break with Rome, like Henry. Yet she did so at the very moment when Francis was reasserting his Catholic orthodoxy in the face of rising Catholic-Protestant tensions across France, so that was always going to be a non-starter.<\/p>\n That Henry and Anne\u2019s relationship was inextricably linked with international diplomacy became ever more evident in the second half of 1535, when Pope Clement\u2019s successor, Paul III, sentenced the English king to be deprived of his kingdom.<\/p>\n Cromwell blocked Anne\u2019s attempts to appeal to Marguerite of Angoul\u00eame, and the unravelling accelerated in the new year. When, in January, Anne miscarried a male foetus, she claimed it was caused by anxiety over Henry\u2019s potentially fatal jousting accident five days before.<\/p>\n \u201cI see,\u201d Henry said unmoved, \u201cthat God will not give me male children.\u201d In response, Anne rounded on him for lusting over Jane Seymour<\/a>.<\/p>\n All of this is common knowledge. But there is more. With opinion in France turning against him, Henry opened a bidding war between Francis and Emperor Charles for his support. The Privy Council was split, but overall opinion swung against France. Cromwell led those wanting to restore the Habsburg alliance. He had his reasons: he alone fully understood the critical importance to the English economy of the overseas trade and credit markets that Charles controlled.<\/p>\n Still undecided, Henry made a show of continuing commitment to Anne over the Easter festival of 1536. He resumed dining and sleeping with her, and was making plans to take her to Dover to inspect the defences and afterwards to Calais where he had established a gun foundry.<\/p>\n Matters lay in the balance until 29 April, by which time Henry had read fully deciphered dispatches from Rome sent by Richard Pate, his ambassador to Charles V. One paragraph brought him up short: as Pate reported, Charles was actively considering enforcing Pope Paul\u2019s decree depriving Henry of his kingdom, a move to which Francis\u2019s agents had raised no objection. With Catherine now dead, a settlement with Charles was possible \u2013 and prudent, given the latest threats from Rome.<\/p>\n Did Henry\u2019s desire to reach an accord with Charles \u2013 who reviled Anne \u2013 make it inevitable that he would repudiate his queen? Cromwell wasn\u2019t sure, so he set about sealing her downfall. Within hours, his spies were reporting that they had overheard her conversing with a young musician, Mark Smeaton, in her privy chamber. Next day, Smeaton was arrested.<\/p>\n When revelations of a further damaging encounter between Anne and the king\u2019s groom of the stool, Henry Norris, came to light, the stage was set.<\/p>\n Playing into Cromwell\u2019s hands was the fact that Anne had reorganised the queen\u2019s \u2018side\u2019 of Henry\u2019s court on novel and (in malevolent eyes) subversive lines, adopting French protocol by which the sexes mingled freely in her privy chamber.<\/p>\n No one disputes that these sexually charged allegations were the chief cause of Anne\u2019s downfall. However, by charting the queen\u2019s considerable influence on Anglo-French relations in the 1520s and 30s, we believe we have given her and Henry\u2019s story an intriguingly fresh dimension.<\/p>\n Late 1521-22<\/strong><\/p>\n Anne Boleyn returns to England after spending seven years in France, where she has been exposed to the glories of the Renaissance court.<\/p>\n Henry VIII agrees to join Habsbury ruler Charles V in a war against Francis I of France within two years.<\/p>\n 1526<\/strong><\/p>\n Having discarded Elizabeth Blount and Mary Boleyn as mistresses, Henry VIII turns to Mary\u2019s younger sister, Anne.\u00a0<\/p>\n Cardinal Wolsey, Henry VIII\u2019s principal adviser, pursues warmer relations with the French.\u00a0<\/p>\n 1529<\/strong><\/p>\n Anne, doubting Wolsey\u2019s commitment to obtaining Henry\u2019s divorce from Catherine of Aragon, helps engineer his downfall. Anne is now effectively Henry\u2019s chief minister.<\/p>\n Summer 1532<\/strong><\/p>\n Anne helps secure the Treaty of Mutual Aid, a full defensive and offensive alliance between England and France. On 1 September, the day the Treaty is ratified, Henry creates Anne Marquis of Pembroke.<\/p>\n October 1532<\/strong><\/p>\n At an Anglo-French summit at Boulogne and Calais, Francis I dances with Anne and sends her expensive gifts.<\/p>\n November 1532<\/strong><\/p>\n Anne and Henry married in an unofficial, clandestine ceremony. They are formally (but still secretly) wed on 24 or 25 January 1533.<\/p>\n January 1535<\/strong><\/p>\n Henry turns down a French offer to marry his daughter Elizabeth to Francis\u2019s third son, Charles, in return for military subsidises for France.<\/p>\n January 1536<\/strong><\/p>\n Anne miscarries a male foetus. An impatient Henry declares: \u201cI see that God will not give me male children.\u201d<\/p>\n By April 1536<\/strong><\/p>\n Henry learns that Charles V is considering enforcing Pope Paul III\u2019s decree that the English king should be deprived of his kingdom \u2013 with no objections from Francis\u2019s agents.\u00a0<\/p>\n 2 May<\/a> 1536<\/strong><\/p>\n Anne is arrested on charges of adultery, incest (with her brother, George) and treason. She is put to death on 19 May.\u00a0<\/p>\n <\/p><\/div> <\/section> John Guy and Julia Fox are historians and authors. Their latest book, Hunting the Falcon: Henry VIII, Anne Boleyn and the Marriage That Shook Europe<\/em>, was published by Bloomsbury in September 2023.<\/strong><\/p>\n![\"A](\"https:\/\/images.immediate.co.uk\/production\/volatile\/sites\/7\/2023\/10\/2RAT1YJ-2web-ca03e7d.jpg?quality=90&resize=620%2C413\" "\\"A")
\n<\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/picture>\n<\/div>![\"A](\"https:\/\/images.immediate.co.uk\/production\/volatile\/sites\/7\/2023\/10\/GettyImages-95002087web-29fa5cf.jpg?quality=90&resize=620%2C413\" "\\"Anne")
\n<\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/picture>\n<\/div>![\"A](\"https:\/\/images.immediate.co.uk\/production\/volatile\/sites\/7\/2023\/10\/GettyImages-1314591689web-329e261.jpg?quality=90&resize=620%2C413\" "\\"A")
\n<\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/picture>\n<\/div>International crisis<\/h2>\n
![\"A](\"https:\/\/images.immediate.co.uk\/production\/volatile\/sites\/7\/2023\/10\/R9G595web-69ceea0.jpg?quality=90&resize=620%2C413\" "\\"Cardinal")
\n<\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/picture>\n<\/div>![\"A](\"https:\/\/images.immediate.co.uk\/production\/volatile\/sites\/7\/2023\/10\/GettyImages-464441685web-8c7ed2f.jpg?quality=90&resize=620%2C413\" "\\"King")
\n<\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/picture>\n<\/div>Queen before her time<\/h2>\n
![\"A](\"https:\/\/images.immediate.co.uk\/production\/volatile\/sites\/7\/2023\/10\/AKG1007063web-b3da5da.jpg?quality=90&resize=620%2C413\" "\\"The")
\n<\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/picture>\n<\/div>Personal greetings<\/h2>\n
Souring relations<\/h2>\n
![\"An](\"https:\/\/images.immediate.co.uk\/production\/volatile\/sites\/7\/2023\/10\/GettyImages-113494960web-778e08b.jpg?quality=90&resize=620%2C413\" "\\"Hans")
\n<\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/picture>\n<\/div>Henry under attack<\/h2>\n
![\"A](\"https:\/\/images.immediate.co.uk\/production\/volatile\/sites\/7\/2023\/10\/GettyImages-520723983web-3a3c73b.jpg?quality=90&resize=620%2C413\" "\\"\u00c9douard")
\n<\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/picture>\n<\/div>International relations<\/h4>\n
How Anne and Henry\u2019s marriage mirrored Anglo-French diplomacy<\/h6>\n
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