Anne Boleyn - Henry VIII's one true love?

The more I learn about the Tudor period, the more I realise how little I really know. I am happy to report that “A Dangerous Destiny” is progressing satisfactorily. However, as a prequel to the other two Luke Ballard books, I must now go back to the year 1546 and do the requisite research. I am so pleased I chose librarianship as a profession. My training has enabled me to find so much information about the Tudor period in which the books are set. My only regret is that I didn’t think to find a job researching Tudor history when I was working.

I’ve made two interesting discoveries today about Henry VIII and Anne Boleyn. The first is that when Henry’s inventory was finally done six months after his death in January 1547, there were eleven items, including large tapestries, that had belonged to Anne Boleyn – ‘The Late Quene’. Some people have wondered whether Henry simply forgot he had them or kept them for a reason. He had given instructions that Anne’s name was never to be mentioned. Many have thought that this is because he believed he was cuckolded and bewitched by her and there is plenty of evidence to back up that theory.

However, I wonder if, after Anne’s death, he might possibly have missed her vivid personality. Jane Seymour was everything that Anne was not. Pale, obedient, never arguing with her royal husband and, dare I say it, boring. It is tempting to speculate on how long she would have lasted had she not died in giving Henry his longed-for son.

Henry was a clever man with a hot temper who was quick to perceive slights where none were intended. Until a few weeks before Anne’s execution, the royal couple were described as being ‘merry together’. When Henry calmed down after the ‘investigation’ into Anne’s behaviour, did he perhaps conclude that Thomas Cromwell had sacrificed the Queen to save his own skin, because there was, in truth, nothing to find?

Being a pragmatic man, Henry might well have decided that there was no point in killing Cromwell, who was an extremely able administrator. So much so, that after Cromwell’s execution in 1540, Henry wished he had him back again. Besides, Henry needed a male child and it was clear to him that Anne was a failure in this field. Jane might – and did – do better. As we know, Anne’s only full-term child was Elizabeth and I like Alison Weir’s theory that Anne’s subsequent pregnancies might have been cut short because of Henry and Anne having blood antigen incompatibility.

The second discovery was that Henry and Anne used honeysuckles and acorns as their private motif. As with most things in the Tudor era, everything had significance. Honeysuckles have long been a symbol of love and devotion and acorns denote fertility, luck and prosperity. It is clear that for a very long time, Henry and Anne were happy together.

My personal opinion is that items such as tapestries are so large there is no way Henry could have ‘forgotten’ about them. I like to think that he kept Anne’s things to remind him of happier times before he became the much-married blood-soaked tyrant that history remembers.