Question from Elizabeth - Henry VIII mentioning Anne Boleyn after her death
Did Henry ever mention Anne Boleyn after her death? I know Elizabeth attended court periodically, and was said to resemble Anne quite a bit. Did Henry ever say anything to her about her mother?
According to the Italian historian Leti, when Elizabeth asked to meet Anne of Cleves through a letter submitted by her governess (presumably Ashley), Henry replied "that she had had a mother so different from the queen, that she ought to wish not to see her ..." But Leti is considered unreliable and many of his anecdotes are therefore suspect, although many biographers and historians dutifully reproduce them in their works on Elizabeth.
I don’t have my copy of Retha Warnicke’s “The Marrying of Anne of Cleves: Royal Protocol in Tudor England” on me at the moment but I believe she states in an early chapter that immediately after Anne’s death (and before Henry’s marriage to Jane Seymour), Henry made a reference to his former wife. He was reputed to have stated that he was not prepared to consider marrying a French candidate as he ‘had too much experience of French bringing up and manners’. This must have been a reference to Anne Boleyn.
Henry was responding to the proposal that he should take as his third wife a foreign princess. Although he was betrothed to Jane the day after Anne’s execution it appears that some, including Charles V, were advancing the idea of a foreign match for Henry. Hopes for such were quickly crushed when his union to Jane became widely known.
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According to the Italian historian Leti, when Elizabeth asked to meet Anne of Cleves through a letter submitted by her governess (presumably Ashley), Henry replied "that she had had a mother so different from the queen, that she ought to wish not to see her ..." But Leti is considered unreliable and many of his anecdotes are therefore suspect, although many biographers and historians dutifully reproduce them in their works on Elizabeth.
Alison Weir mentions this in her book on the six wives of Henry VIII.
I don’t have my copy of Retha Warnicke’s “The Marrying of Anne of Cleves: Royal Protocol in Tudor England” on me at the moment but I believe she states in an early chapter that immediately after Anne’s death (and before Henry’s marriage to Jane Seymour), Henry made a reference to his former wife. He was reputed to have stated that he was not prepared to consider marrying a French candidate as he ‘had too much experience of French bringing up and manners’. This must have been a reference to Anne Boleyn.
Henry was responding to the proposal that he should take as his third wife a foreign princess. Although he was betrothed to Jane the day after Anne’s execution it appears that some, including Charles V, were advancing the idea of a foreign match for Henry. Hopes for such were quickly crushed when his union to Jane became widely known.
Looks like Warnicke’s book is available to read online – the Anne Boleyn comment can be found on p.38:
http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=P1PrjR79wzgC&dq=retha+warnicke+marrying+anne+of+cleves&printsec=frontcover&source=bn&hl=en&ei=5WSRSfHsIJiq-gbzpLGPCw&sa=X&oi=book_result&resnum=4&ct=result#PPA38,M1
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