Vulgar History - Anne Boleyn Part Two： Anne Boleyn In Love

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00:00:44.480 Hello and welcome to Vulgar History, a feminist women's history comedy podcast.

00:00:48.820 My name is Anne Foster.

00:00:50.020 I'm a historian and an author, and I've been into the Tudor era since I was a small child.

00:00:55.020 This season on the podcast, we're talking about the notorious Tudor era,

00:00:58.460 what the royal family was up to, and also what other people were doing at that time,

00:01:02.480 including people in other countries. Today is Anne Boleyn part two. So assuming you've listened

00:01:10.340 to part one, part one, we were talking about who is, who's this girl? Who's that chick? As Rihanna

00:01:15.320 would say, ended with she spent a bunch of time in France and now she's back in England. So I do

00:01:21.920 want to just shout out, there's two main sources I used for this episode of the podcast, Hunting

00:01:26.160 the Falcon by Julia Fox and John Guy, and also the biography Anne Boleyn, Adultery, Heresy, Desire

00:01:32.100 by Amy License. And I also did some other online sleuthing, which I'll get to in a bit. It's been

00:01:38.320 interesting reading various different Anne Boleyn biographies, because here's the thing, she's so

00:01:43.540 well-known. Stuff that happened to her is very famous, but there's so little information about

00:01:51.760 actually her and what she was thinking and why she did what she did so every biography kind of

00:01:57.220 puts it together in a different way and I'm going to put it together in a different way

00:02:01.140 and as we go along I'm going to kind of I'm going to sort of explain my approach to this episode

00:02:06.820 which is even in looking at these biographies I was only looking at information that came out

00:02:13.160 during her life because after she died the haters came out ferociously strong and many of the things

00:02:21.500 they said after that got put into other biographies that people did. So I will say that

00:02:27.720 Julia Fox, John Guy, and Amy Lyson's in their biographies, which I read, and there's other

00:02:31.380 great biographies too. They really do explain, here's what people were saying at the time versus

00:02:36.680 here's what people said afterwards. And so I just want to be here with Anne and what were people

00:02:42.080 saying at that time. So that's also a way that I can make this be only three episodes long instead

00:02:47.420 of a 25 episode season because we're right there with her. We're in the moment, feet on the ground

00:02:53.240 or like your Renaissance boots on the ground. In her case, her French bicycle on the ground. 0.51

00:02:57.800 Baguette in the basket, beret on. She spent several years in France and she came back and

00:03:03.800 she is just like, she's got a French accent and this is what's happening. So last time we heard

00:03:10.560 that Anne Boleyn was mentored by effectively half a dozen of the coolest feminists in Renaissance

00:03:15.740 Europe, most of whom were called Margaret. Her dad, Thomas Boleyn, one of, I'm going to say,

00:03:22.040 five total Thomases in the story. It might be six. Her dad kept getting more and more

00:03:29.100 prestigious positions. The Boleyns, they were still kind of new money, but they were making

00:03:33.380 their way around court, which is kind of a good time for them to be doing all this because Henry

00:03:38.620 the eighth was he saw himself as a renaissance man and he he was more open to giving people jobs 1.00

00:03:46.460 who didn't have like a thousand years of family heritage already so the boleyns were were up there

00:03:52.260 with some others so anne boleyn came back to england and between when i recorded part one

00:03:57.900 and now which is part two i did find out yet another assumption that a lot of historians have

00:04:05.220 has not actually been proven, which is, was she a lady-in-waiting to Catherine Maragon?

00:04:11.760 Some people say yes. Or was she a lady-in-waiting to King Henry VIII's sister,

00:04:16.360 Mary Tudor, the Duchess of Suffolk? We don't actually know. And so this is part of what's

00:04:21.820 really interesting and frustrating about reading about Anne Boleyn is that because of what she did

00:04:27.000 later, people wrote down a lot of what she did later in her life, but they had to kind of guess

00:04:33.500 what happened earlier on because people weren't paying that much attention to her so even people

00:04:37.380 who were writing records at her time or like 10 years later they're like well we know she was

00:04:41.560 around we know she was at these mass parties we know she was the member of someone's household

00:04:46.600 but like unclear was it Catherine of Aragon or was it Mary Tudor she just was on the scene and

00:04:52.260 truly we don't know in any case she was on the scene and just like in you know Gossip Girl or

00:04:59.100 something there's always a big party and all the main characters go to the parties and Anne

00:05:03.500 went to these parties, and in so doing, she met and fell in love with a man called

00:05:07.380 Henry Percy. So these two people met through Cardinal Woolsey, who, side note, is called

00:05:15.160 Thomas. And he was somebody else who came from not an old wealthy family, but he just got a lot of

00:05:22.680 education, and Henry liked him, and so he gave him this job of being cardinal,

00:05:27.880 which is kind of like the Pope's representative in England. That becomes important later.

00:05:31.720 the fact that he was not from a wealthy family comes up later wolsey some historians have said

00:05:38.340 his father was a butcher it seems more likely he was more like a merchant selling various things

00:05:45.040 i don't know why i keep thinking that he came up from like circus folk like carnivals like carnies

00:05:51.960 just when people talk about these people have these mysterious backgrounds i'm like oh circus

00:05:56.800 people i don't know but i'm probably going to say that in the episode so bear with me

00:06:00.840 So Cardinal Wolsey, he is, you know, I learned a lot about him when I was reading this stuff.

00:06:07.700 I know in the Tudors TV show, he's played by Sam Neill.

00:06:10.080 So that's kind of who I picture.

00:06:12.300 He liked to live large.

00:06:14.960 He owned a lot of properties and he owned a lot of things in those properties.

00:06:18.360 He liked to look good.

00:06:20.120 He had lots of outfits.

00:06:22.140 He was one of Anne's dad's friends.

00:06:24.260 He's a trust advisor, Henry VIII.

00:06:25.800 and Henry Percy, the Percy family is one of these families that's been there for a thousand years.

00:06:32.360 So Henry Percy got like a important job in Cardinal Wolsey's house. So he's like,

00:06:37.180 he's a nobleman. He's also sort of an in-law of Anne Boleyn because he's a cousin

00:06:43.540 of her sister's husband. So Anne Boleyn has a sister, Mary Boleyn. Mary Boleyn married at

00:06:50.020 this point to William Carey. Henry Percy, cousin of William Carey. William Carey.

00:06:55.800 So Henry Percy, I'm just going to call him Percy, Percy Jackson and the, what is it? Percy Jackson. So they're around the same age. They're both like in their early twenties. They're both born around the year 1500. And so his job is he's a page to Cardinal Wolsey. So Cardinal Wolsey's household, like he does everything large. He has 450 people or so in his household and only the top 10 guys get the job of being page.

00:07:21.160 So just kind of the guys whose families are the most important, which is why Henry Percy

00:07:25.280 got there. So Percy Jackson would be an incredible cash for Anne Boleyn because her whole family's

00:07:33.240 thing, as we talked about last time, was every member of the family would marry someone who's

00:07:37.700 like slightly more important and rich than the previous one. So this would connect the up and

00:07:42.860 coming new money Boleyn family to the wealthy Percy Jackson family, which has been there forever.

00:07:49.020 And so this would be an amazing marriage for them, for her.

00:07:52.660 And the Berliner family are really kind of a family business.

00:07:55.700 And the business is marrying their children to important people.

00:08:01.000 But there's a challenge.

00:08:02.720 There's a challenge to this, what seems like clearly was a love match.

00:08:06.540 Like these two just fell for each other.

00:08:08.620 But there's this class divide, right?

00:08:10.780 And you still have this in England, I have been told,

00:08:14.240 that just like either you're from one of these ancient families or you're not.

00:08:18.380 So even though the Boleyns were like on the rise, they had so many influential positions,

00:08:22.660 they had lots of money, they had nice outfits, they're not on the same level as Percy Jackson's

00:08:27.320 family. But still, so these two hot and 20-somethings secretly become betrothed.

00:08:34.360 And if there's something we like in this podcast, it's a secret relationship,

00:08:38.000 especially when it leads to a secret, sexy wedding. This does not, but this leads to a

00:08:43.820 secret, sexy betrothal. And this is an era in time where if you say in front of other people,

00:08:49.700 I want to marry you, that is binding. It's not just a casual thing you can say. Like if you

00:08:55.120 said that in front of witnesses, then that is what's called a pre-contract and it's legally

00:09:00.160 binding. The Boleyns, I presume, because we don't know, because no one wrote this shit down, 0.99

00:09:06.020 were excited because like, oh my gosh, we're going to be married in the Percy Jackson family. 0.99

00:09:10.180 Rick Riordan's going to camp for the wedding. It's amazing. Colonel Wolsey, not having it.

00:09:18.020 He was not a fan of this match. He doesn't like secret anything except for his own secrets.

00:09:25.500 He was involved in a lot of stuff. And one of the things was he was involved in kind of who

00:09:29.620 married who, and he wanted Anne to marry, if you'll remember from last episode, her Irish cousin,

00:09:34.360 James Butler because it was in Wolsey's best interests for some reason to have the Boleyns

00:09:40.340 and the Butlers ally with each other. So he needed her to remain single. For some reason,

00:09:45.680 he didn't say that out loud. What he did do is he called Percy into a room, yelled at him in

00:09:51.440 front of everybody. I don't know if it's the 450 people, but lots of other witnesses. And

00:09:56.220 he was like, you can't marry Anne Boleyn. He made Percy cry, apparently. Wolsey was like,

00:10:03.240 Anne Boleyn is trashy. She's just from the Jersey Shore, practically. Who's this garbage person 0.99

00:10:10.880 you've wiped up with a spatula from the sidewalk? And Percy is like, well, I mean, Anne Boleyn is 0.97

00:10:16.900 descended from the Earl of Ormond to her grandmother, Marga Butler. But Wellesie is just

00:10:21.420 like, she's trash. The Boleyns are in debt and they're too flashy and you're Percy Jackson and 0.99

00:10:27.620 you can't marry this garbage Anne Boleyn person. And Wellesie's like, I demand you end this 0.97

00:10:32.600 engagement. And Percy's like, but we sat in front of witnesses. So that's an unbreakable vow.

00:10:38.340 So Wolsey is just like, God damn it. And so he calls on Percy's dad. And together, using some 0.98

00:10:45.540 sort of Tudor era dad energy, which is probably hitting him, they forced Percy to break up with

00:10:53.820 Anne and made him promise to never see her again and made him marry this person called Mary Talbot,

00:11:00.860 who he had already been pre-contracted to before,

00:11:03.520 but they hated each other.

00:11:05.420 There's a lot of marriages in the Tudor era

00:11:07.160 between people who hated each other.

00:11:08.860 And this is what you see in a culture like this

00:11:11.560 where people like Anne and Percy

00:11:15.200 who are in love with each other can't get married.

00:11:17.900 Their dads choose everyone marries

00:11:20.280 and just they hate each other.

00:11:21.900 We'll see this numerous times in this episode.

00:11:25.160 Anyway, so this is like Kel Skandal for the Boleyn family.

00:11:29.060 Anne is now the other Boleyn sibling. She's like the black sheep of the Boleyn family. She's like

00:11:34.320 black in their name because they're up and coming. They're like playing by the rules. And then she 1.00

00:11:39.740 comes in and she's like, oui, oui, bonjour. I'm from France. And like, we have different rules

00:11:43.660 in France. And so Anne got in trouble because she tried to make a love match of her own instead of 1.00

00:11:54.100 letting her dad and Woolsey and the king decide who she was going to marry. And this is an example.

00:12:01.820 And again, we don't have any of Ambulance's diaries. We don't have, we only have a few

00:12:05.800 letters from her, but not from this era, certainly. Like, what was she about? What was she thinking?

00:12:10.160 But we see that she's somebody who is just kind of like, rules don't apply to me. She was really

00:12:15.560 well-educated, more so than a lot of other women and men, just people in this era. She was really

00:12:22.340 intelligent and she'd read so much sort of like philosophy she'd been around so many cool people

00:12:26.800 in Michelin and in Paris that she's just like the world is a big place and like why not just do what

00:12:34.920 you want why not do a crazy dance as Hilary Duff would say and she was right and everyone should

00:12:43.360 be able to do that but not her in this time in this way so she was effectively grounded um she 1.00

00:12:50.100 was sent away from royal court sort of as an example to everybody to all the other women and

00:12:54.740 men like don't make your own love matches like do what you're told don't think for yourself don't 0.60

00:12:59.100 be a cool strong independent lady so she's now about 23 years old and she is the least powerful

00:13:06.100 of the three Boleyn siblings so her sister Mary as I mentioned she was married to William Carey

00:13:14.180 And William Carey is an ambitious courtier, lots of connections, played in the movie The Other Boleyn Girl by Benedict Cumberbatch, so picture that.

00:13:25.480 And George continued to ascend as a courtier.

00:13:28.960 So like the dad, like the George was, and we are, we're not going to talk about George a lot in this series, but there is coming up later an episode about George.

00:13:38.240 So he, like he had the Boleyn charm as well, like clearly all three of them did.

00:13:43.600 like they just like stood in a crowd they had main character energy and so during the time that

00:13:48.940 Anne was trapped at home under house arrest her brother George got married to a woman called Jane

00:13:54.780 Parker and actually the episode of coming out later is going to be about George and Jane and

00:13:59.840 their relationship and what they got up to so Anne Boleyn is stuck at home like what's a girl to do

00:14:06.080 we don't know because we don't have any records but the sorts of things that people did do

00:14:11.640 And the stuff we know that she enjoyed later, she likes going riding on a horse.

00:14:16.040 She likes hunting.

00:14:17.020 She's really good at hunting, playing musical instruments, reading books, like really getting her reformation on, like really learning about religious stuff.

00:14:25.820 She might have spent some time, like the houses are not close to each other.

00:14:29.360 If you know where Heaver is related to other properties, but there's the closest nearby family is called the Wyatts.

00:14:36.040 They live in nearby Ellington.

00:14:37.780 So maybe she hung out with them a little bit.

00:14:40.260 That's foreshadowing. 0.72

00:14:41.640 because a Wyatt is going to show up in the store later.

00:14:44.640 So she's there at Huber for a while, 1526. 0.71

00:14:47.940 She's finally invited back to Royal Court.

00:14:49.440 She's probably around 25 years old at this time.

00:14:52.320 Now, there is a false narrative

00:14:55.820 that people in this era got married

00:14:58.880 when they were like 12 or 14 or something.

00:15:01.100 And people might've been pre-contracted or betrothed.

00:15:03.300 But the actual wedding,

00:15:05.900 the actual like getting together is in your mid twenties.

00:15:09.220 But the fact that she's not,

00:15:10.460 that she's completely single, especially like the pre-contract with Henry Percy is invalid

00:15:16.060 because he married somebody else. It's kind of odd for somebody of her family and station

00:15:20.080 to be fully single, age 25. And the Wyatts come back. So around this time, there is a guy 1.00

00:15:28.160 called Thomas Wyatt, who was in one of these unhappy Tudor marriages and publicly unhappy.

00:15:36.300 He had, in front of other people, repeatedly called his wife an adulteress.

00:15:41.420 He tried to get a divorce from her.

00:15:43.140 He wasn't allowed to. 1.00

00:15:44.840 So he's from this Wyatt family from Ellington, which is near Heber. 0.79

00:15:48.880 So maybe they knew each other from then.

00:15:51.180 They might have struck up a friendship at that point.

00:15:53.500 We don't know what Anne Boleyn thought about Thomas Wyatt.

00:15:57.500 We know a lot about what he thought about her because he wrote a lot of poems about being turned down by her.

00:16:03.740 so he helped plan a party there's so there's all these like big parties slash rpgs that people do

00:16:11.860 in the tutor era where they just kind of get them like the karaoke parties from last time so you

00:16:16.840 just get kind of the most famous people i imagine taylor swift's wedding was like this there's like

00:16:21.500 a fake castle built um this is going to be called the castle of loyalty so just a bunch of courtiers

00:16:28.360 would be wear various costumes and they would act out this thing where these like knights save these

00:16:32.720 maidens, there was a papier-mâché unicorn involved. And that was where I learned that

00:16:39.520 there was papier-mâché back then. So Anne was one of the maidens and Thomas Wyatt was one of

00:16:44.340 the party planners. Maybe because he's a poet, maybe he helped write the story. I don't know.

00:16:48.800 So at around the time that this castle of loyalty was held, Thomas Wyatt began pursuing Anne,

00:16:55.440 writing her poems. Again, there's no evidence she had any feelings back for him. And even if she did,

00:17:01.240 she would not have got with him like he was married um so all that she could have ever been 1.00

00:17:06.940 was his mistress and she was goddamn Anne Boleyn like she was a Boleyn like she's not just gonna 1.00

00:17:12.100 be the mistress of some guy some like random poet and it would be a step down for her socially from 0.95

00:17:17.900 where the Boleyns were currently so this was all like maybe about a year of him like trying to get

00:17:23.200 with her and her like maybe politely trying to like shoo him away he like vague booked some

00:17:31.420 poems that were probably about her but again we don't know exactly no one knows what happened

00:17:36.920 between them I think in my opinion probably nothing this guy Anne Boleyn has this effect on

00:17:43.020 people where she has such an aura she's such main character energy it's like I did an episode a few

00:17:51.400 years ago, a vulgar history about Cleopatra. And it really reminds me of that because

00:17:56.460 Anne Boleyn was so intelligent. She was so like, if you talk to her, like people talk about like

00:18:04.980 her eyes are so entrancing. It's like, when she looked at you, it's like, you're the only person

00:18:08.620 in the world, but she could talk to anyone about anything. Like she was just so socially capable

00:18:15.320 and friendly. And that just really draws people to you. And sometimes those men like Thomas Wyatt

00:18:20.700 just become kind of obsessed with you do you remember this is ages ago but millennials might

00:18:25.980 remember there was a thing where there was an author in like the 2000s who like left his wife

00:18:33.660 because he thought that Natalie Portman that he was dating Natalie Portman and Natalie Portman

00:18:38.660 was like I've never even met this guy like Natalie Portman had that effect on Moby also like sometimes

00:18:43.920 when people just have such aura like people lose their minds around them anyway while this was 0.98

00:18:49.760 happening her sister mary boleyn was also the mistress of henry the eighth so he was fucking 0.84

00:18:57.140 mary boleyn who was married and this is kind of the thing like he his previous mistress before 0.83

00:19:02.080 that was bessie blount who hadn't been married and then she had a son who was known to be the

00:19:07.580 illegitimate son of the king and then he married bessie blount after kind of some random non-entity

00:19:11.980 so then he's like my mistress should probably be married because we don't have to worry about this

00:19:16.320 illegitimate son situation. Mary Boleyn was pregnant. Was Henry the father of this child?

00:19:22.920 We don't know. She probably didn't know. Amy Lyson's in the biography that I read says,

00:19:29.560 maybe, but so it was a son and the son was called Henry, but Henry VIII never treated this child as

00:19:35.500 his because Mary Boleyn was married to somebody else. Like Henry VIII couldn't be like, oh yeah,

00:19:39.060 I fucked a married woman. But effectively he dumped her because he didn't want a pregnant 0.99

00:19:43.520 mistress so he was hot to trot he wanted a new non-pregnant mistress especially because he was 0.57

00:19:50.000 like a horny guy and his wife Catherine of Aragon who had been with for years and years and years

00:19:55.920 had uh stopped sleeping with him at this point for vaguely what one person wrote was kind of

00:20:02.940 like medical reasons but so maybe she had had like various um pregnancies you know just like

00:20:10.920 her insides were all kind of, they'd had enough of that. So she might've also been in early

00:20:16.400 menopause. So she wasn't sleeping with him. He wanted to fuck somebody because he was a horny guy

00:20:23.740 and he also wanted more children. And he was really anxious about why hadn't he and Catherine 1.00

00:20:29.300 had a surviving son. He's like, is this God's punishment? And if so, what did I do? Because

00:20:35.000 this is where Mary Beard, the historian, I read her saying this recently. It's something about

00:20:42.080 when we try to imagine ourselves in a past time period, it's like the people are so much like us,

00:20:47.240 like you can imagine yourself in all these situations. And then a thing happens where

00:20:51.260 you're like, oh, these people are nothing like us actually, like this is unfathomable to me.

00:20:55.740 So Henry VIII and Anne Boleyn and a lot of people in the story took the religion very literally,

00:21:03.420 very seriously and I know there's people like that in today's day and age I don't know any of

00:21:08.900 them are any of them listening to this podcast maybe and welcome but Henry was literally like

00:21:14.620 why didn't I have a son like this must be a literal punishment from God like I'm the king

00:21:18.780 God chose me to be king so what did I do wrong meanwhile there's a lot of war related

00:21:25.600 stuff happening with alliances involving the holy roman empire and france and england and

00:21:33.340 they're always just going around with each other but various things happen at this point that made 0.96

00:21:37.300 henry want to fuck with the french he's just like like king francis in france like that's my bro 0.93

00:21:44.660 we're like a similar age like i like him let's be allies us and the french so he's just like i feel 0.99

00:21:50.800 pro-French at the moment. So then he caught sight out his window of Anne Boleyn bicycling around

00:21:56.040 with her baguette and her beret. And he's just like, Ooh, she looks French. Who's that? So at

00:22:02.300 this point, Henry VIII is 34. She's probably about 23. And I want to say I have, I am on team Anne

00:22:08.480 Boleyn fully. I'm also on team Catherine of Aragon. I'm on team, I hate Henry. So some of the stuff

00:22:15.520 I'm going to say about Anne Boleyn, you might be like, how dare you say that about my queen? But

00:22:18.840 it's like no I love this about her I love that she spent like approximately seven years in France

00:22:23.760 aged what like 13 to 20 and came back with a full French accent only ever dressed in French her

00:22:31.020 mannerisms were all French she was just like I basically am French now because I was in France

00:22:35.460 for seven years you know I feel like we we might know people like that there was a time period

00:22:40.140 where Madonna spoke with a British accent like Anne was just like I'm basically French now like

00:22:46.300 don't worry about it like am I from Kent did I grow up there did I recently spend two years there

00:22:50.980 yeah but like philosophically I'm French and Henry VIII was like oh she looks French intriguing

00:22:58.740 we don't know if that's what drew him to her but his interest in her did coincide with him wanting

00:23:04.400 to publicly show his approval of the French but as I said also she has this like Cleopatra

00:23:11.720 aura she has this main character energy where it's just like I was trying to think about what

00:23:17.160 to compare her to and it's you know if you look at this past summer the Odyssey press tour you're

00:23:22.980 looking at the red carpets and it's like Charlize Theron is there Lupita Nyong'o is there and then

00:23:27.760 Zendaya comes out with goddamn angel wings on and it's just like what is happening like Anne Boleyn 0.99

00:23:34.140 the Zendaya and angel wings of the Tudor era it's just like every like all the young women 0.98

00:23:39.520 all the people her age they're all like educated they can play instruments and

00:23:43.260 they're all wearing similar outfits although hers was french but like she stood out because

00:23:47.800 she was just like oh you're the one like you're the main character you're the most interesting

00:23:51.220 one also she's so personable and friendly and easy to talk to in multiple languages especially

00:23:56.040 french so he starts pursuing her now he only just ended things a sexual relationship with her sister

00:24:04.600 which is i think and uh later on he has to get the pope to agree not ideal but so he starts

00:24:15.600 pursuing her and this is where some of the historians i've talked to on the podcast so far

00:24:19.540 this season tracy borman and kate williams i think both say this in their books she was not

00:24:25.040 into it she did not she didn't want to be thomas wyatt's or is that his name yeah thomas wyatt

00:24:31.700 Thomas number two she didn't want to be Wyatt's mistress she doesn't want to be his mistress it's

00:24:36.780 like why would she think that that's anything other than what he wants and why would he want 1.00

00:24:41.040 anything other than that like he's just like I just want to fuck this lady with her cool beret 1.00

00:24:46.520 on and so she like runs away to heave her she's just like I'm going to extricate myself from the 0.99

00:24:54.120 situation because this is getting real weird here royal court so later on there were historians

00:25:00.820 until I'm going to say the last 20 or so years who thought like oh yes she knew that she had to

00:25:05.920 play hard to get because she knew what she wanted from this relationship and I'm like no

00:25:10.300 as someone who's been in a similar relationship of like someone is interested and you're not

00:25:14.740 interested back in them it's like let's just try to politely remove ourselves from the situation

00:25:19.280 and hope their feelings go away like she wasn't playing hard to get she was trying to be hard to

00:25:25.220 get. She didn't want to be got. So she ran away to Hever and he wrote her letters. He sent her 0.99

00:25:33.920 presents. Presents makes sense in the sense in a Tudor era, but to me now they sound bizarre.

00:25:41.960 So he sent her, for instance, brooches. He sent her a bracelet with his portrait in it and with

00:25:47.320 a letter being like, so you can always look at me like, sir, no. He sent her a buck, like a dead

00:25:53.800 like animal carcass that he had killed to be like look what I like a cat bringing you a dead mouse

00:25:59.220 and I don't know I personally would see that as a bit of a threat 0.91

00:26:04.020 so she well you know why didn't she want to become the mistress of the king which is all he was 0.99

00:26:10.480 asking her for at this point like well she didn't she was single like her sister had become the

00:26:16.220 king's mistress but like when she got pregnant it's like that child has a father if I got pregnant 0.73

00:26:20.840 she'd just be this like she'd be like Bessie Blount and what happened to Bessie Blount is she 0.98

00:26:24.400 got married to this kind of nothing guy and Anne Boleyn had been raised her whole life to be like 0.96

00:26:29.200 the whole point of being a Boleyn is to marry as high as possible so she didn't want any part of

00:26:35.920 this meanwhile over in France so there's King Francis and his wife Claude you might remember

00:26:44.460 was Anne's former friend slash boss. She had died after, I mean, we don't know of what, because

00:26:51.520 you know, it's old in days. She died very young, probably from complications of constantly being

00:26:57.920 pregnant since age 15. This little Francis, the king of France, free to marry again. And so Woolsey, 0.58

00:27:04.760 who just like loves matchmaking, he's like, well, what about marrying Henry VIII and Catherine

00:27:09.340 of Aragon's daughter, Princess Mary. She's 12 years old. So a French delegation came over to

00:27:14.720 England to discuss this possibility. And whenever delegations go anywhere, between France and

00:27:20.900 England, there's jousts, there's parties, there's masks. Discussions were had. And Catherine of

00:27:27.980 Aragon was there because she's the queen. But there was, you know, those dances they do in

00:27:33.000 Tudor times, like, hey, nanny, nanny. Henry chose to dance with Anne. So this is kind of like his

00:27:38.440 declaration of interest in her and this is kind of her like her returning well she returned to

00:27:44.760 court kind of because he threatened her he he sent her various letters and one of them he was 0.98

00:27:50.080 like I marvel that you don't want to fuck with me and it was the word marvel he'd use in other 0.98

00:27:56.260 letters to write to people like I marvel that you don't want to be my minister of finance and then 0.99

00:28:01.840 he would like execute that guy like when Henry VIII said I marvel it's just like do what he says

00:28:06.840 you're going to be killed so she was back and she's like you know what sure let's do this so

00:28:12.760 there was this party and then henry afterwards claimed that he was told in these meetings

00:28:19.800 that the french people were like oh i don't know if we can marry the king to your daughter princess

00:28:25.520 mary because we the french henry's like totally not me just the french they were like concerned

00:28:31.740 that is the marriage legal between henry the eighth and catherine of aragon because she'd

00:28:35.660 previously been married to his brother, even though the Pope had written a dispensation

00:28:39.540 saying that was cool. And Wolsey was like, the French said, what? And Henry's like, yeah. So,

00:28:46.280 you know how I didn't have any sons with Catherine of Aredon? It's because I think our marriage might

00:28:50.800 have been illegal in the eyes of God because she'd been married to my brother before. And that makes

00:28:54.960 Mary maybe illegitimate. Like I'm just asking questions. So Wolsey was like, okay, okay.

00:29:02.040 reasonably he deduces that henry wants to marry someone else um he's like probably a french

00:29:10.360 princess such as princess claude's younger sister princess renee whenever i see the name renee

00:29:16.980 i think of renesmee from twilight and so i'm probably going to say that at some point so just

00:29:23.240 know that so wolsey's like okay like let's investigate like if we can nullify his marriage

00:29:29.260 the Catherine of Aragon, Henry Canberra, Menesmee. So while this is happening, the Pope,

00:29:37.800 Pope Clement, about whom more in a later episode, but his real name for his Pope was

00:29:44.780 Giulio de' Medici. Pope Clement was captured. There's a lot of capturing of people happening

00:29:51.180 in this next era. The French King at one point gets captured, the French King's sons get captured.

00:29:55.800 the Pope is captured and he's captured by Catherine of Aragon's nephew, Charles, the Holy Roman

00:30:02.060 Emperor. Last seen as the child Holy Roman Emperor, whose regent was Margaret of Austria

00:30:07.680 when Anne Boleyn was over there. So again, Charles is the son of Catherine of Aragon's sister,

00:30:13.600 Juana of Castile, aka Juana La Loca, and her husband, Philip the Handsome. But what this

00:30:19.900 means now is that the Pope has been captured by Charles. So the Pope has to do whatever Charles

00:30:26.540 says. Charles is Catherine's nephew. So the Pope is not going to agree to this divorce because

00:30:34.340 Catherine's family does not want this to happen. So meanwhile, Wolsey starts kind of a local

00:30:41.240 investigation into like church law to be like, could this marriage of Catherine and Henry maybe

00:30:47.660 have been illegitimate. And Anne just like peaced back out to heaver to be like, you know, just for 1.00

00:30:53.980 tactical reasons, just to kind of not be on the scene, to not be a distraction. Henry wrote her

00:31:00.320 so many letters while she was there, many of which we still have. In fact, he wrote her 17 letters

00:31:05.440 just in June and July. So that's not a letter a day, but that's like a letter every other day.

00:31:11.280 and he's just like please be with me like we don't have her replies and part of that is just

00:31:17.680 like we don't know you know where they went or if they're destroyed or whatever I think maybe she

00:31:22.180 didn't reply some of the letters he's he's being like oh stop playing hard to get it's like sir

00:31:26.480 she's being hard to get so like she had returned for that like hey nani nani party dance but she

00:31:33.860 hadn't really like agreed to be with him until she sent him a gift and we only have a description of

00:31:40.160 this gift. We'd never seen it, but what it was, was a model ship with a jewel on it. And on the

00:31:45.980 model ship is a woman being thrown around as though lost at sea. And Henry was like, I understand

00:31:51.580 what this means. It means you want to be with me as my wife. And if that's what she meant, then like

00:31:59.600 he understood that very well. But that seems to be what she meant because this is how she acts from

00:32:04.180 now on. So let's kind of pivot from Henry VIII being like, be my mistress and Anne Boleyn being

00:32:09.580 like no I'll only be with you if I can be your wife and being his wife means being the queen

00:32:13.960 and so when we get back to the whole like these people think in a literal bible way

00:32:18.640 Anne Boleyn was a very spiritual religious person and she might have felt like God wants me to do

00:32:24.980 this like God wants me to be the queen because the queen is like God chooses who's the king and

00:32:28.580 who's the queen and if she's in that role then she can like provide spiritual assistance to the

00:32:33.060 country and so she's like you know what she saw Margaret of Austria doing stuff she saw Claude

00:32:38.680 doing stuff. She saw Louisa Savoy, all these people. And she's like, I can do this and I will

00:32:44.520 go be queen and I will marry this guy. And now for a quick advertising break.

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00:34:56.060 and we're back. But Wolsey still didn't know. Wolsey still thought that Henry wanted to marry

00:35:01.620 Renesmee. So Wolsey went to France to try and like make some Renesmee related alliance stuff.

00:35:07.700 By the time he got back, Anne and Henry were inseparable. Now we don't know, well actually

00:35:13.120 we do know quite a bit about their relationship just as people witnessed it. They were certainly

00:35:17.640 passionate with each other and at this point they were inseparable. So Anne Boleyn may have not

00:35:24.560 wanted to be with him on the first place but when she was in she was just like let's fucking do this

00:35:29.060 let's go but it was all super weird because Catherine of Aragon was still there in the same

00:35:35.560 castles so each woman kind of got a different wing where they could be with like their servants

00:35:40.680 and tried to avoid Catherine but Catherine kept popping up like an unwanted chaperone

00:35:45.100 when Anne and Henry were alone together then news Clement the Pope there's a couple of details in

00:35:52.440 this episode that charmed me absolutely this is one of those details pope clement remember he'd

00:35:58.200 been captured by catherine's nephew charles he escaped by quote wearing a long beard where did

00:36:05.840 he get the beard from did he grow the beard how like the people where he was being held just saw

00:36:12.980 a guy with a beard walk by and like well that can't be the pope pope doesn't have a beard

00:36:16.540 anyway this was a successful escape for him so theoretically he could now act independently

00:36:23.040 of emperor charles but effectively he still kind of had to do what charles says

00:36:28.800 what clement the pope did is he wrote a paperwork dispensation

00:36:32.740 in response to one of henry's requests and so he wrote a dispensation saying okay henry you can 0.96

00:36:38.320 marry a woman even if you fucked her sister but you can only marry again if your first marriage 0.93

00:36:44.860 is declared invalid and the Pope did not do that. So it's kind of like one step towards Henry being 0.98

00:36:50.300 able to marry Anne, but like the crucial thing is that Henry is still actively married to Catherine

00:36:56.020 Maragon at this point. Then illness comes to town. There's a lot of plagues happen. This is the

00:37:01.860 mysterious sweating sickness. And if you want to hear a lot about that in 2020, when COVID was

00:37:08.180 first around, I did a bunch of pandemic episodes about like past pandemics in history. And I did

00:37:13.360 episodes about sweating sickness. It's this mysterious thing that came and went and it's

00:37:16.940 never happened again and no one really knows what it is. It's a disease where like you come down

00:37:21.060 with it in the morning and you could be dead by night. It's like intensely scary. This is maybe

00:37:25.900 what Henry's brother Arthur had died of. So Anne came down with sweating sickness and she went back

00:37:31.060 to Hever to recuperate. Henry wrote her more letters and as she was recovering, Colonel Woolsey,

00:37:39.040 who still just thought that like Anne Boleyn is like Henry's mistress. He didn't know that Henry

00:37:42.360 wanted to marry Anne. So Woolsey was deciding who to give an important job to. So there's this Abby

00:37:48.080 and the head nun had died and he had to choose a new head nun. And one of the options was Eleanor

00:37:53.240 Carey, the sister-in-law of Mary Boleyn. So Anne Boleyn's sister-in-law. And the other option is

00:38:00.220 this woman called Isabella Jordan and Woolsey liked Isabella Jordan. But then it turns out Eleanor

00:38:05.380 Carey was found to have had two illegitimate children by two different priests and was now 0.83

00:38:09.640 fucking with a third priest so it's kind of like that's not the best choice this is not the sort of 0.94

00:38:15.160 head nun we want so anne and henry were like we'll go eleanor has a sister called anne carrie 0.99

00:38:21.480 but wolsey chose his pick isabella and this really pissed off henry and anne henry was just like

00:38:29.000 wolsey's gotta go i marvel wolsey he might have said that you chose this person to be the head

00:38:33.980 nun so anne had kind of supplanted wolsey in terms of like who henry listened to at this point

00:38:39.640 so finally Anne got over her sweat and she was she came back to royal court and if you watch the

00:38:47.600 tv series the part where Natalie Dormer playing Anne Boleyn reunites with Jonathan Rhys-Meyers

00:38:52.700 as Henry VIII it's a really horny scene and now um like her almost dying made Henry even more

00:38:58.280 intent about wanting to be with her and wanting to marry her so now she had her own private suite

00:39:03.640 of rooms connected to his through secret sex doors actually these rooms used to be well they

00:39:10.080 were not secret sex doors before they were just um secret bro doors because wolsey used to live

00:39:15.740 there and now she took over wolsey's room so she literally had supplanted him and also i do want to

00:39:19.780 say ann and henry were not having sex at this point because any children they had had to be

00:39:26.240 legit so while she was recovering and before that like and loved to read and she we know some of the

00:39:34.200 books she owned and she was really into reading about like the new reformed religious ideas and

00:39:39.580 to say this in the most basic way possible as i understand it the catholic church was wildly

00:39:44.400 corrupt at this time see for instance colonel wolsey and all of his stuff he owned rich people

00:39:51.300 could buy like the way out of sin like everything was just kind of like all about like fancy outfits

00:39:58.320 and not really about like the faith and so the reformed idea was to like have more of a relationship

00:40:03.660 between people and god instead of having this intermediary who you had to bribe and annos into

00:40:09.040 this so in 1528 there was a whole thing where um there's this book called obedience by william

00:40:18.100 Tyndale which is a reformist book and she apparently had loaned it to one of her ladies

00:40:23.240 in waiting and then her husband found it and he was like what you've been reading reformer books

00:40:27.880 Herman my pills so the husband went to Henry but Anne had already gone there and she was like

00:40:34.280 oh yeah no Henry I think you'd like this book actually it's about reform religion and how

00:40:39.020 kings have more power than the pope and stuff and Henry read it and he did in fact like it

00:40:44.520 so right now we're in the spring slash summer of 1529 and henry started thinking like huh maybe we

00:40:51.600 should reform the religion of england in which i am in charge of as the king this is the second

00:40:56.920 detail i love so there's still the whole situation about like was henry's marriage to catherine

00:41:03.420 legitimate or not so pope clement rips off his fake beard and then he assigns

00:41:10.500 Cardinal Wolsey, who's like his representative in England, and this other guy, Cardinal Campeggio,

00:41:16.360 to investigate if the marriage between Henry and Catherine was legitimate. Cardinal Campeggio

00:41:21.880 is my favorite character. He was told, like, make this take as long as possible and ultimately try

00:41:30.700 to not make a decision. And he's like, bet. He took months to get there. So he had legitimate

00:41:37.780 like arthritis and issues and made it hard for him to travel but he like made this trip take as

00:41:41.820 long as possible there's time for henry the eights to send anne boleyn's cousin francis brian who's

00:41:46.800 like one of the important courtiers all the way from england like onto continental europe

00:41:51.360 to where commedia was to be like do you need assistance do you need more and commedia's like

00:41:56.400 no no i got it i'm fine like he took so long he finally arrives as late as possible months later

00:42:02.540 they actually start this like court to like investigate the situation it was like he arrived

00:42:08.660 in may and by the end of july campeggio was like you know great investigations everyone but let's

00:42:13.680 take a summer holiday and it never convened again so henry blamed wolsey for this whole thing going

00:42:20.840 badly wolsey was at this point actually stripped of you i said he had all these homes and like all

00:42:25.680 this stuff and like outfits jewels all this property was taken away from him um he was also

00:42:31.960 fired from his job. He was going to be put on trial for treason, which is what Henry VIII did

00:42:36.460 with people who pissed him off, but Wolsey conveniently died before that could happen.

00:42:42.060 So he died of what seems to be, you know, like vomiting, diarrhea type situation,

00:42:46.940 but he was being escorted to his trial by Henry Percy, Percy Jackson and the Olympians,

00:42:53.520 whose marriage he had broken up with Anne Boleyn. So there were rumors that like, was he

00:43:00.700 poisoned I think why not like he died in a very convenient time for himself or he might have

00:43:08.220 poisoned himself knowing Henry's going to execute him is another possibility so Henry and Anne are

00:43:14.740 together yet not married and they're also angry because they thought that this would all have

00:43:19.480 been like a really quick thing to have sorted out and it was not a new guy was hired to replace

00:43:24.820 Woolsey who's called Thomas Moore if we're tracking that's the third Thomas or the fourth Thomas

00:43:30.220 We're about to get another one because Henry also got a new advisor, Thomas Cranmer, and Team Thomas Thomas.

00:43:37.680 With Henry, they worked a new, fresh approach at us.

00:43:39.860 It's just like, okay, we keep making the same argument to the Pope.

00:43:42.320 He keeps not saying it.

00:43:43.860 Maybe there's another argument we could make so that the Pope will give us permission to dissolve,

00:43:48.200 to say that the marriage to Catherine was illegitimate.

00:43:52.800 So meanwhile, one of their new strategies was Henry's squad, including George Boleyn, popular courtier.

00:43:58.900 went on to like universities and like found like all kinds of different learned scholars to give

00:44:03.960 their opinions. Like, is this marriage legal or not? Which means that like all of Europe knew

00:44:08.460 that this was going on. And my other favorite character arrives and he's like, we're in the

00:44:15.280 era of the Vulgar History Podcast. And I'm so pleased that this person is going to appear in

00:44:20.500 numerous episodes because it's Spanish ambassador Eustace Chapuis this bitch I love he is like if 1.00

00:44:32.180 you imagine a Spanish version of Ellen Cumming as the host of the traitors Eustace Chapuis 1.00

00:44:39.280 comes on the scene and he's just like he's got spies he's making deals with people he's getting 0.58

00:44:48.700 he's got inside info in every room of every house he knows exactly what's happening and he writes

00:44:53.120 it all down like TMZ like he's just like the records he kept of this era are so crucial to

00:45:01.400 us understanding this era he was not on team Anne Boleyn he was on team Catherine Aragon because

00:45:06.300 he's from Spain he was sent there for her best interest so he always only calls Anne Boleyn

00:45:10.860 the concubine which is like I think could be a good RuPaul's Drag Race name

00:45:16.720 workshop it I don't know but he gets all the tea and I love him a lot after I was reading about what 1.00

00:45:25.800 he did in Anne Boleyn's life and I was just like let me just double check how long did this bitch 0.97

00:45:29.420 live such a long time messy bitch living for drama Eustace Chapuis I salute you thank you for all of 0.99

00:45:37.080 your messy messy journals so one of the things that he reported is that so Catherine Aragon it 0.94

00:45:42.640 was important to her that she like mended and made henry's shirts because like her mother isabella

00:45:48.380 had done that for her father ferdinand and so henry's like you know i'm divorcing her but like

00:45:53.560 it's important not divorcing he's like i'm trying to say our marriage is illegitimate but it's

00:45:57.700 important to her that she makes my shirt so like i'm gonna let her keep making my shirts

00:46:00.500 and belen found out about this and she flipped out um she's furious about it and this is like

00:46:09.620 another detail so there's like the beard situation there's campeggio delaying and the third detail i

00:46:15.500 love in this story reported by messy bitch uses chapui so one of anne boleyn's ladies in waiting 1.00

00:46:23.600 so she like had her own suite of rooms right she had all of her sort of household stuff she had 1.00

00:46:28.240 ladies in waiting most of which were her relatives because the boleyns were intermarried to like all 0.97

00:46:33.640 these other families. Elizabeth Stafford was married to Thomas Howard. He was a horrible 0.83

00:46:40.560 husband to her. He was abusive. This is one of these shitty Tudor marriages. And Thomas Howard 0.99

00:46:46.160 had taken up with a mistress. It was kind of a real parallel to Henry with Anne Boleyn while he

00:46:52.880 still married to Catherine of Aragon. So Elizabeth Stafford was on team Catherine of Aragon,

00:46:57.780 but because she was Anne's aunt, she was serving in her household. And so she helped smuggle

00:47:02.060 messages to Catherine. And this is where I had to do some real historical digging because

00:47:08.020 various sources I was looking at describe this in various ways. One said that she hid a letter

00:47:14.320 in an orange. And I thought, how do you do that? And then another one said that she had sent

00:47:21.780 Catherine of Aragon a gift of poultry and an orange and a letter. And I was like, okay,

00:47:27.700 I need to go back to the source.

00:47:31.220 So I looked up and found the actual letters

00:47:33.600 from Eustace Chapuis, translated into English,

00:47:36.760 to see what he had recorded.

00:47:39.360 And what he said, 0.99

00:47:41.080 quote from my favorite messy bitch, Eustace Chapuis, 0.99

00:47:44.220 a few days ago, the Duchess of Norfolk, 1.00

00:47:46.640 that's Elizabeth Stafford, 0.69

00:47:48.100 sent the queen a present of poultry 0.99

00:47:49.800 and with it an orange,

00:47:52.280 inside of which was a letter.

00:47:56.480 So...

00:47:57.700 So you tell me, listeners, how do you hide a letter inside of an orange?

00:48:06.720 I find it very intriguing.

00:48:09.660 Anyway, so she, Elizabeth, was kind of like not really an Anne side, but she had her reasons.

00:48:16.480 Anyway, so, and also her husband, Thomas Howard, the third Duke of Norfolk.

00:48:20.960 We'll be hearing about him more later on.

00:48:23.300 Meanwhile, Anne and Henry, so every summer, there's like the summer progress.

00:48:27.700 where the king and queen just kind of like ride around town and like visit the villages and like

00:48:31.420 go to stay in all their various different castles and stuff. And Catherine had always

00:48:38.940 gone with them in this like super awkward situation. But this time during the summer

00:48:44.420 progress, they went to Windsor Castle and then Anne and Henry left Windsor, Catherine still there.

00:48:50.880 She was sent instructions to leave her royal lodgings and to go stay at a faraway home

00:48:56.080 with far fewer servants like yeah dumped was basically what she was told but she's still

00:49:00.620 technically married to henry because they're still waiting for the pope to decide on all this stuff

00:49:05.160 so that fall like that autumn so there's kind of two things like first of all the people

00:49:12.600 of tutor era london and england like they're busy making ends meet doing the jobs making meals

00:49:19.080 raising children like whatever they're doing like to them who the queen is it's just like well who's

00:49:24.620 the woman in the jewels next to Henry that's the queen like whatever but Catherine had always been

00:49:29.900 quite popular she'd been the queen for a really long time um and Anne like just hearing that

00:49:37.340 she was sort of supplanting Catherine made her just instinctively unpopular

00:49:42.300 so allegedly and this is the sort of thing it wasn't Chaput it was somebody else I don't super

00:49:48.560 trust it but they said allegedly um some of the women of London along with some men dressed as

00:49:54.500 women, which is some real French Revolution vibes, went to attack one of Anne's homes and she barely

00:50:00.420 escaped, which is like probably not that. But the fact that somebody reported that and it was

00:50:05.980 believed does imply that Anne was not super popular at this point. So Anne Boleyn at around

00:50:13.860 this time, she has various mottos throughout her life. And her motto for a while was inspired by

00:50:20.860 um Margaret of Austria's motto and her motto is this is how it is no matter who complains

00:50:27.720 um and she had this actually sewn onto her servants clothes but so this was a paraphrasing

00:50:35.600 of Margaret of Austria's who had recently died and her motto was like it was like this is how

00:50:41.120 it is no matter who complains long live burgundy so when Catherine's fans saw servants with this

00:50:48.940 motto on it they would yell long live burgundy as sort of like a um rebuttal so eventually they

00:50:56.700 would call that to anne as she passed and eventually anne got her servants back into

00:50:59.520 the regular clothes soon after i don't know that was because of the yelling or just because like

00:51:03.480 she had the motto on for mourning reasons again we don't know her motivations so june 1532 this

00:51:10.880 has been on for years this like henry wanting to marry anne they thought this would be solved very

00:51:17.920 quickly. And it has now been years of sexless courtship. And then in June, 1532, if you remember

00:51:26.020 Percy Jackson, Anne's former pre-contracted fiance. So he had been forced to marry this woman,

00:51:34.620 Mary Talbot. They hated each other. Mary Talbot sought an annulment in their marriage. And she

00:51:40.540 said, well, our marriage wasn't legal for the same reason Henry's and Catherine's isn't,

00:51:45.000 sort of but she's saying actually no it's a different reason but it's an annulment not a

00:51:50.340 divorce that's a similarity but she said the grounds were that Percy Jackson had a pre-contract

00:51:56.100 with Anne Boleyn which this whole thing it's like well if there had been a pre-contract Henry needed

00:52:02.440 to do that because that could make it challenging for him to marry Anne so Percy Jackson was brought

00:52:07.040 in he was personally questioned by Henry VIII and he said nope there I never had a pre-contract

00:52:12.560 with Amberlynn. Nope. And later on, uh, he wrote, he's like, may God forgive me. Like I perjured

00:52:18.700 myself today, but he didn't want to be killed. And so the Perseys remained married and, and,

00:52:25.460 and Henry, at least that impediment was not in their way. So it had been four years and finally

00:52:32.280 Henry is just like, God damn it. Let's just do it. Let's just like, what's the phrase? It's like 0.99

00:52:37.640 ask forgiveness later instead of permission before or something so he's just like this is 1.00

00:52:45.260 happening i'm sure the pope's gonna side with us eventually so let's just get married fuck it so 0.95

00:52:51.060 he's gonna have another big party with the french and in order to bring anne to like sit at the main 1.00

00:52:56.620 table with the french people and stuff she had to have more of a fancy title so he created her 0.99

00:53:02.280 the Marquis of Pembroke 0.99

00:53:03.880 so in her own right

00:53:06.020 which is

00:53:06.920 similar to how

00:53:08.580 one of her mentors

00:53:09.260 Margaret of Angeloume

00:53:10.360 had been created

00:53:11.100 the Duke of Barrie

00:53:12.120 so this made Anne Boleyn

00:53:13.700 the first woman

00:53:14.500 to be elevated

00:53:15.340 to the hereditary Peeridge

00:53:16.880 and it elevated her enough

00:53:19.860 that she could join him

00:53:20.640 on this visit to France

00:53:21.620 so Francis

00:53:24.080 had gotten married

00:53:25.380 like Claude

00:53:26.180 had died a bit ago

00:53:27.900 he had now married

00:53:29.040 guess who Eleanor

00:53:30.020 the sister of

00:53:32.280 Charles, the Holy Roman Emperor. So this is one of the little girls who Anne had been educated with

00:53:38.740 during a time in Mechelen with Margaret of Austria. So it all comes back to that.

00:53:43.220 More importantly, Eleanor is the niece of Catherine of Aragon. So she just flat out refused to see

00:53:48.860 Anne Boleyn because Catherine of Aragon is her cousin and family royalty is very deep amongst

00:53:56.080 them. But still, Anne Boleyn made her international debut as Henry's partner. And again, in France,

00:54:01.640 like she wore her French, her best beret. She spoke French. She impressed everybody,

00:54:06.720 her aura, her main character energy, and it all went really well. And like Francis seemed to be

00:54:13.460 like, sure, you know what? She seems nice. And so they ended this visit and their

00:54:19.300 years long abstinent courtship with a super secret, sexy exchange of vows.

00:54:27.900 so super secret sexy marriage and they began sleeping together so one of henry the eighth's

00:54:36.000 letters to her back when she's like heaver was just like oh i can't wait to like kiss your 0.91

00:54:39.340 bubbies which is like breasts so it's like oh so maybe they were doing sex stuff before this 0.84

00:54:44.580 and maybe they were but it might have just been he just might have written that like there's lots 0.94

00:54:49.040 of stuff there's a lot of fun you can have without having like penetrative sex but these two had

00:54:57.100 avoided that until now because they didn't if ann was going to be pregnant they wanted it to be

00:55:01.280 like legitimate so these secret vows they started sleeping together and she was pregnant almost right

00:55:08.320 away henry just like really moved quick he's like okay catherine of aragon should only now be

00:55:14.380 referred to as dowager princess of wales which is the title of the widow of his dead brother because

00:55:21.320 she she was the widow of his dead brother but for like decade plus she was the wife of him

00:55:26.960 so because i was pregnant and they wanted to make sure that everyone knew that this was legitimate

00:55:32.000 they had a second wedding ceremony january 25th 1533 with witnesses i already knew it happened

00:55:39.360 and when i say everybody it's like again like the working people of england were just like

00:55:43.120 didn't know like this didn't really affect them amberlyn was pregnant but and obviously but she

00:55:51.920 was like visibly pregnant by April and Henry publicly revealed they were married. And so

00:55:57.160 she made her debut wearing Catherine Aragon's queen outfits with her queen jewels at church

00:56:03.440 for Easter. Henry's new famous Thomas, Thomas Cranmer, opened a new investigation into the

00:56:10.720 legitimacy of the marriage between him and Catherine Aragon because Campeggio was not

00:56:16.120 involved. This only took one week and it was found that the marriage was in fact illegitimate.

00:56:21.920 So this meant Henry's married to Anne, the marriage to Catherine was illegitimate, and it's time for Anne, like visibly pregnant, to have a coronation to get a crown and to be officially the queen. And this all happens. It's a huge deal. There's boats, a parade, pageants, cannons, a gala dinner. Anne was ascendant. And everybody was really confident that the child she was pregnant with was going to be a son.

00:56:49.560 so her baby like she's the coronation was four months pregnant she's due in three months and

00:56:55.640 like she got a really sweet note from her ex-mentor marguerite of angelume who also was

00:57:01.420 about to have a baby wishing her well king francis from france sent approval of the marriage by

00:57:07.240 sending her like a litter so like a thing you can be carried on and three mules and he's like this

00:57:13.980 is the traditional way that pregnant women are carried around and ann belin apparently got in

00:57:18.140 right away and she's like oh how great so she's getting ready to be a mom she's setting up her 0.99

00:57:23.900 queen era she's been accepted by at least france and she escalated things so like she had ladies

00:57:31.000 waiting on her before but now she's like the queen so she has like a queen's household 0.98

00:57:34.680 so by now the ladies in waiting around her included her sister-in-law jane parker and other 0.91

00:57:41.560 Boleyn cousins like a person called Jane Seymour who we'll hear more about later and all other 1.00

00:57:50.040 Boleyns like the whole Boleyn family dynasty just like got various positions around court

00:57:54.540 like our aunts and uncles like lots of people were doing really well and there's also another

00:57:59.760 Thomas on the scene is this number five number six um Thomas Cromwell who's the one from Wolf

00:58:05.360 Hall the book by Hilary Mantel in the PBS miniseries so Thomas Cromwell used to work

00:58:11.000 under Wolsey. Um, but he was just like one of these guys who's like, again, not he's from

00:58:15.580 circus folk or whatever, but he was just like intelligent and helpful and useful. And so he

00:58:20.940 just kind of like worked his way up. And so he's like on team Anne Boleyn at this point,

00:58:25.480 he was one of the people who had helped arrange the whole Marquis of Pembroke scenario. And he

00:58:30.300 was one of the party planners for her coronation. So July 11th, Pope Clement, remember him of the

00:58:40.680 fake beard. So he was just like, what is Henry doing? I guess it took this long for him to find

00:58:45.060 out about it. So he issued a message saying like the marriage to Catherine of Aragon is not

00:58:52.860 illegitimate, is legitimate. The Anne Boleyn marriage is not legitimate. And then he released

00:58:58.960 a press release saying like Catherine of Aragon must be restored. Anne Boleyn must be put away.

00:59:05.140 All this must happen within 10 days of receipt of this letter or else Henry VIII will be

00:59:09.920 excommunicate it. And if Henry doesn't do this, the Pope called upon Charles, all the other

00:59:17.340 Christian princes of Europe and Henry's own subjects, like the people of England to make

00:59:22.980 him comply. He's just like calling on the everyday people to just like rise up against Henry. Henry

00:59:28.780 wrote back like, I'm going to appeal this decision. Thank you so much for your consultation.

00:59:33.220 august 26th ann goes to greenwich for her laying in which is like when you're going to have the

00:59:39.840 baby you get the rooms ready and stuff and she gave birth on september 7th and it's a girl

00:59:46.020 everybody had thought it was going to be a boy it's a girl surprising i don't want to say

00:59:52.240 disappointing um but there were supposed to have been celebratory jousts um they had pre-written

01:00:00.440 up some scrolls that had like, there's the birth of a new prince. And then I put Prince S, but like

01:00:04.980 two S's didn't fit because it was all already spaced out. Um, messy bitch used to ship who he 1.00

01:00:09.980 was like, ha ha, these guys and their dumb scrolls. The physicians, astrologers and sorcerers who had 1.00

01:00:15.400 predicted a son were all like reprimanded. Like, why'd you give this bad prediction?

01:00:20.280 But as far as we know, and again, we don't know, but like Henry and Anne weren't too upset

01:00:26.580 because they're living in the moment. They don't know what happens later.

01:00:29.260 like this is proof she's fertile she can give birth to babies like hopefully she'll get pregnant

01:00:36.000 again soon and she'll have a son next time the baby was named elizabeth um named after both henry

01:00:42.680 and ann's mothers so this baby was born september 7th and she was pregnant again two months later

01:00:48.720 just like rihanna pregnant back to back so by christmas she's pregnant again during this

01:00:54.740 pregnancy, early in this pregnancy, a whole thing happened that we did an episode about

01:00:59.060 two weeks ago. Elizabeth Barton is this prophetess who had said like, if Henry VIII marries Anne

01:01:07.680 Boleyn, he's going to die. Like kingdom will crumble and all this stuff. This was all getting

01:01:13.280 so intense. Like people were really hyped up about this. So Henry had Parliament make a law

01:01:18.600 that it was illegal to speak negatively about the marriage of a king and queen.

01:01:22.800 it was also illegal to say anything negative about henry or anne if you were found to have

01:01:27.520 done so you could have all your possessions taken away and you would be arrested elizabeth barton

01:01:32.740 was subsequently executed in march parliament passed the act of succession which declared

01:01:39.780 mary princess mary officially illegitimate she's now just lady mary um and baby elizabeth was the

01:01:45.100 new heir and this whole like there's so many laws about like you have to respect anne as queen which

01:01:50.680 really implies that people weren't like you don't need laws if people are already doing something

01:01:55.640 so there's this new law that anyone in england could be made at any time to recite a pledge of

01:02:01.680 allegiance to henry and anne and if they did it possessions taken away you'd be arrested

01:02:06.220 anne belen was also named regent in case henry had to go out of town

01:02:10.500 and she was also named the absolute governess of her children and the kingdom in the event of

01:02:15.820 Henry's death. So this is like, if you're looking at the ascent, if you've got a bar graph of Anne

01:02:22.020 Boleyn getting more and more power and influence, this is the highest she's ever been. And part of

01:02:29.540 this is because she's pregnant and everyone assumes this time it's going to be a son.

01:02:35.000 So that March, some sort of illness struck her household and we don't know what it was

01:02:40.040 and does not seem to have come down with it as far as people could tell at that time.

01:02:44.440 and preparations began for a nursery for her expected new baby this is the point at which

01:02:50.280 her motto was the most happy which she spelled m-o-o-s-t-h-a-p-p-i which I love it's a whimsical

01:03:00.120 spelling the most happy and this is where if you know about all the stuff about Anne Boleyn and

01:03:06.960 what did she look like and all these images of her so a metal slash coin was going to have been

01:03:12.640 made so there's like the lead outline of it it says the most happy and it's a picture of Anne

01:03:19.080 Boleyn and this was going to be like distributed to everybody to celebrate the birth of this prince

01:03:23.680 and it's a little bit like everybody was hopeful everything's going proceeding as though there's

01:03:29.820 going to be the sunborn a little bit of me it's like having this medal that says the most happy

01:03:33.940 like summoned up this meme like you know that meme of Cassie from Euphoria where she's like

01:03:38.900 i have never been happier and she's crying like do that at britz and bone being like i am the most

01:03:44.700 happy but everything everything depended on this being a son and the haters were obviously going

01:03:51.720 all in on ann like she was feeling she was the queen henry said she was the queen but it's just

01:03:57.460 like that wasn't enough like she was not being treated like one she felt so and also worried

01:04:04.540 part of the reason why people didn't support her and Anne also worried because now Lady Mary formerly

01:04:08.780 Princess Mary um was popular because Catherine of Aragon was popular and so she was worried that

01:04:14.660 Princess Mary like too many people support her and Catherine of Aragon at one point and like she

01:04:20.120 went from like forbidding Catherine and Mary from seeing each other to like trying to make amends 0.99

01:04:25.580 with her to be like I'm your stepmother but like Mary was just like fuck you and yeah so here's 0.98

01:04:32.880 the thing so the nurses being prepared everything like the most happy like jousts are being planned 1.00

01:04:38.040 there's no records though of a suite being prepared for ann to do her laying in the thing

01:04:43.400 that happens right before you have a baby based on this timeline that would probably have happened

01:04:48.660 around july and by august no child had arrived and there's no records of a miscarriage or a

01:04:57.220 stillbirth. So what happened? Usa Chapuis, her once doesn't know. And here's the thing,

01:05:05.700 like he hated Anne Boleyn. If there had been some sort of like stillbirth or miscarriage,

01:05:10.880 like he would have been like, oh, that's a sign from God that he doesn't want this marriage to

01:05:14.540 succeed. Like even he didn't say anything. So it's like, what happened here? Maybe the virus

01:05:20.660 that had affected her household or the illness, maybe it was rubella or chickenpox, which can 1.00

01:05:24.540 cause miscarriages. Maybe there was a miscarriage, just no one talked about it. She seems to have

01:05:29.820 been, if she was pregnant, she lost this child very close to the due date, perhaps at about

01:05:36.780 eight months or so. But maybe she had not been pregnant at all. Maybe it was one of these

01:05:44.740 like psychological pregnancies. Maybe it was like a cyst. Maybe just no one talked about it.

01:05:53.060 And we don't know what happened, but a son was not born, at least alive.

01:06:00.180 The most happy medal was decommissioned.

01:06:03.460 We still have sort of what it looks like because the stencil of it exists, but they'd never struck that medal.

01:06:10.440 And rumors started swirling that Henry had his eyes on another woman to be his maybe mistress.

01:06:16.060 He's just over it.

01:06:17.360 He and Anne had been trying to make this work for so long, they finally got together.

01:06:21.420 um and then he is not the most happy so at this point so we're 16 months after ann's coronation

01:06:33.480 and as much as she was like before like on the bar graph like the pinnacle of success like now

01:06:39.180 things are starting to look a little more precarious and next week we will conclude

01:06:46.620 the saga of Anne Boleyn with what happens next. And so I do want to let you know a few announcements.

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01:08:06.640 going to be one coming up at the end of this month where I'm going to be talking with an

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01:10:07.860 murder so stay tuned for that as well and yeah next week we're going to be getting into the

01:10:15.940 conclusion of the Anne Boleyn three-part miniseries but Anne Boleyn month continues

01:10:21.400 you know we're going to have part three we're going to have the Anne Boleyn astrology talk

01:10:25.860 and we'll be doing some more wrap-up stuff that we'll talk about next time so until then my

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Vulgar History - October 07, 2026

Anne Boleyn Part Two： Anne Boleyn In Love

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