616. Elizabeth I: The Fall of the Axe (Part 1)

How did Elizabeth I’s tumultuous early life in the court of her wife murdering father, Henry VIII, influence the rest of her life? What was the nature of the Tudor world she was born into? Why did Henry VIII so desperately desire a son? And, why did Henry and Anne’s marriage following his divorce from Catherine of Aragon, change the fate of Britain forever? Join Tom and Dominic as they discuss the story behind the birth of Britain’s greatest queen - Elizabeth I. From her father Henry VIII’s reign and early marriages, to Tudor court politics, and the ruthless execution of her mother, Anne Boleyn…. Hive. Know your power. Visit https://hivehome.com to find out more. Learn more at https://www.uber.com/onourway Join The Rest Is History Club: Unlock the full experience of the show – with exclusive bonus episodes, ad-free listening, early access to every series and live show tickets, a members-only newsletter, discounted books from the show, and access to our private Discord chatroom. Sign up directly at therestishistory.com For more Goalhanger Podcasts, head to www.goalhanger.com _______ Twitter: @TheRestHistory @holland_tom @dcsandbrook Video Editor: Jack Meek Social Producer: Harry Balden Assistant Producer: Aaliyah Akude Producer: Tabby Syrett Senior Producer: Theo Young-Smith Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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• 0:02Speaker 00

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• 2:09Tom Holland?

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  High above all, a cloth of state was spread and a rich throne as bright as sunny day, on which there sat, most brave embellished with royal robes and gaudious array, a maiden queen, that shone as titan's ray in blistering gold and peerless precious stone.

• 3:59Dominic Sandbrook?

  So that was the great poem The Fairy Queen by Edmund Spencer. And he is really laying it on, isn't he, Tom? In praise of perhaps the greatest of all English monarchs, Elizabeth I. Gloriana, as he calls her in the poem, a queen famous for her willpower, her courage, her beauty and her dedication to England and England's glory.

• 4:25Tom Holland?

  Yeah, well, I mean, the name Gloriana suggests that this is a queen who's all about glory. You know, that is absolutely the image that she still has today. And it derives from poems like The Fairy Queen. Elizabethan propaganda was incredible. And we would associate her with, I guess, a kind of golden age, the, the spring flowering of, of English literature. So Shakespeare and Spencer, of course, and Marlowe and the exploration of the globe by English sea dogs. So Sir Francis Drake and Sir Walter Raleigh. And of course, the defeat in 1588 of the Spanish Armada. And I guess that that is a triumph for English arms that ranks in the national mythology

• 5:10Tom Holland?

  alongside, I guess, Trafalgar, which we've just been doing recently and the Battle of Britain, wouldn't you say?

• 5:17Dominic Sandbrook?

  Yes.

• 5:17Tom Holland?

  I mean, it's kind of up there in the pantheon.

• 5:19Dominic Sandbrook?

  She's one of the genuinely Titanic figures of English history. I mean, the comparison with Nelson and Churchill is a good one because in each of those cases, they define themselves against what appears to be an overwhelming foreign adversary with a threat of invasion.

• 5:36Tom Holland?

  They do, yes. And more than that, they, like Nelson, like Churchill, Elizabeth finds the words of defiance that inspire her people and which I think still kind of have a power to stir the, the blood of a patriotic Englishman today. And Dominic, I see you smiling as I say that. So she has this thrilling paroration. I know I have the body of a weak and feeble woman, but I have the heart and stomach of a king and have a king of England too, and think foul score. That Parma or Spain or any Prince of Europe should dare to invade the borders of my realm.

• 6:16Tom Holland?

  And so she is speaking those words in August fifteen eighty eight as she rallies troops who've gathered at Tilbury in Essex in readiness for a landing on English soil of a Spanish army led by the Duke of Parma, who is the most feared general in Europe. But of course, Dominic, that landing never happens.

• 6:37Dominic Sandbrook?

  It doesn't happen. But I mean, that's like saying Bonaparte's invasion never happened and that doesn't diminish Nelson's greatness.

• 6:43Tom Holland?

  No, because it because the the Spanish Armada is defeated first of all by Protestant ships and then by Protestant wind.

• 6:50Dominic Sandbrook?

  Right, and by Protestant rhetoric before that, thanks to Elizabeth, surely.

• 6:54Tom Holland?

  Absolutely.

• 6:55Dominic Sandbrook?

  Yeah. And I guess that moment, so just as if you take the example of Nelson or the example of Churchill, both of those become legendary immediately. They become folk stories that that become foundational moments in in Britain's national identity. That's true of Elizabeth at Tilbury in England's national identity, isn't it? Right away, it is embedded in the national imagination.

• 7:16Tom Holland?

  Yeah, well, it's I mean, it's Aaron Spencer who's writing the fairy queen in the eighteen nineties. So, you know, less than a decade after that speech. And he portrays Elizabeth in all kinds of different ways. So there's Gloriana, but there is also this kind of Amazonian figure called Britta Mart, who is a she's a kind of peerless female knight, much better than than most of the male knights in the poem. And all who see her are awe struck by her. So to quote Spencer, it seemed that Bologna in that war likewise to them appeared with shield and armor fit. And this sense of of Elizabeth as a warrior queen, you get it in in paintings, in dramas, in novels and films.

• 7:58Tom Holland?

  So most recently, I guess, two thousand and seven, Kate Blanchett going the full Galadriel in Elizabeth, the Golden Age. So I I think that. Four and a half centuries on, she remains definitely, I think, the most generally admired of England's rulers. But I think also, she's kind of loved in a way that most English kings and queens tend not to be. So if you think of Judi Dench winning an Oscar in Shakespeare in Love, I mean, she's literally on the screen for about three minutes.

• 8:33Dominic Sandbrook?

  Yeah.

• 8:33Tom Holland?

  And that Oscar, I think, in part was for Elizabeth as well as for Judi Dench. And the idea is of her as a virgin queen who's married to her people, keeping England's enemies at bay, guarding them from civil war, good queen Bess, all of that. Do you think, I think she's kind of loved as well as admired?

• 8:51Dominic Sandbrook?

  I totally do. And putting my cards on the table, I think she is easily one of the most adept and most effective of England's rulers. And we did a series about Mary Queen of Scots, you know, another woman ruling at a similar time, who makes very, a series of very bad choices. Elizabeth makes a series of very good ones. She's very good at politics. That said, there is a counter argument, which some historians, you know, in the late 20th century began to develop, that actually, she's indecisive, she's vindictive. You know, this is the, this is the sort of portraits of Elizabeth that you get with the kind of, you know, she hasn't got any teeth.

• 9:27Tom Holland?

  Yeah, she's smelly.

• 9:29Dominic Sandbrook?

  Yeah, all of this kind of stuff, which is very much the late Elizabeth. But I suppose, you know, there is this tension between the two visions of Elizabeth I. On the one hand, she's brilliant, she's Gloriana. And then the other actually knows she has feet of clay, and she creates problems that end up, you know, escalating to the civil wars of the 17th century. That's the counter argument.

• 9:49Tom Holland?

  I mean, I think that in, whether you're, you're lauding her or damning her, I mean, I think there is no doubt that the best way to understand what makes her tick, what her kind of approach to politics and religion, to marriage, to parliament, to all these kind of strands within the Tudopolyty, the best way to understand what makes her distinctive is actually to look at her upbringing.

• 10:14Dominic Sandbrook?

  Mm hmm.

• 10:14Tom Holland?

  Because one of the most extraordinary things about Elizabeth is that she Gets to sit on the throne in the first place. So she becomes queen on the seventeenth of November, fifteen fifty eight, and she's twenty five years old. But for most of those twenty five years, the prospect of her ascending the throne would have seemed an incredibly remote one. Because her her her infancy, her childhood, her adolescence, her early adulthood kind of have the quality of a hideous fairy tale. So she's three when mummy has her head chopped off by daddy.

• 10:51Dominic Sandbrook?

  Yeah.

• 10:52Tom Holland?

  So that's not a good start. I mean, imagine growing up and finding out that that's that's what's happened. She then ends up with a stepfather who sexually abuses her.

• 10:59Dominic Sandbrook?

  Mm hmm.

• 11:00Tom Holland?

  And she is then menaced by a half sister who locks locks her up in the Tower of London. And Kelly wants to chop her head off as her her mother's head had been chopped off.

• 11:09Dominic Sandbrook?

  Mm hmm.

• 11:10Tom Holland?

  But I think these traumas, these kind of the danger that she was kind of repeatedly in through her her her childhood and so on. I think it matters because, um, you know, the girl is mother to the woman.

• 11:23Dominic Sandbrook?

  Hmm.

• 11:23Tom Holland?

  And they massively influence the kind of monarch that Elizabeth becomes. And they matter because, you know, Elizabeth ends up setting England on a course that will be massively decisive in the growth of of England and of Britain. And in the long run of the colonies that Britain establishes across the world. And and of course, Roanoke, the first English foothold in the new world, even though it doesn't last. But it is set up in Elizabeth's reign and Virginia is named after Elizabeth. She's the Virgin Queen.

• 11:55Dominic Sandbrook?

  Would you know what? Um, you mentioned Britimart.

• 11:59Dominic Sandbrook?

  We've stayed in the Hotel Britimart in New Zealand when we were on tour. So Elizabeth's imprint is still, you know, is there on the other side of the world?

• 12:07Tom Holland?

  Yeah. So I think that tracing the the young Elizabeth before she becomes Elizabeth the first, I think it's well worth doing. And we'll set up some episodes that we'll be doing in due course on the Tudor Cold War, uh, the Spanish Armada. Um, maybe Shakespeare or, you know, we've got lots to come on that. So as you say, it is amazing that she ends up becoming um queen. But it is true that that she is born a princess, the daughter of a king. And not just that, when she's delivered on the seventh of September, fifteen thirty three, between three and four of the clock afternoon. She does rank as the immediate heir to the throne. So at the beginning, she does seem destined to become queen. Everything that could properly have been done to prepare her for her arrival had been done.

• 12:51Tom Holland?

  So on the 26th of August, 1533, her mother, she was in the Palace of Greenwich, downriver from London. She's gone to a very luxuriously appointed chamber. So David Starkey, in his great book on the young Elizabeth, Elizabeth apprenticeship, describes it as a cross between a chapel and a luxuriously padded cell. So there are carpets everywhere, there are tapestries on the walls, there's an absolutely massive bed that amazing, I kind of read up on it, it belonged to the younger brother of the Duke of Orleans, who was captured at Agincourt, you remember?

• 13:26Dominic Sandbrook?

  Yeah, so he was a hostage, right?

• 13:28Tom Holland?

  Yeah, forever. And he kind of ends up writing poetry in English as well as French, but it was his younger brother and his, and this, the younger brother of Duke of Orleans had been a hostage in England since 1412 himself. So he'd obviously left this massive bed, which was nice of him. No men are allowed into this chamber, all the companions, the attendants, the midwives, they're all women. And so beyond the, this very female space, all the men awaiting the king, the court, England, Europe, they're all on tenterhooks and letters have been written, ready to reclaim the birth of what is hoped is going to be a prince to the other courts of Europe. The King of France has been squared as a godfather.

• 14:13Tom Holland?

  A massive tournament is scheduled to be held in celebration. But in the event, of course, they're all cancelled, there is no national rejoicing. I mean, it's true, the baby is healthy, the mother hasn't died in childbirth, but these pluses do not make up for the fact that it's a crushing disappointment that the newborn baby, the heir to the throne of England, is not a boy, it's a girl.

• 14:40Dominic Sandbrook?

  And what is worse, the mother has promised, you know, her husband. That it will be a boy and the baby being a boy has been central to the relationship between the mother and father and indeed to England's history as we'll see because of course you haven't named the parents yet Tom. I know you've done that deliberately as an exciting reveal for the audience. So to explain why it matters so much that the child is a boy, that Elizabeth, and in fact Elizabeth isn't a boy, we need to go back to the parents, don't we? So let's kick off with the father. Who's the father?

• 15:17Tom Holland?

  Well, the father Dominic, it will amaze you to learn, is Henry VIII. And I guess he's the only English monarch who can rival his daughter for kind of instant recognizability. Wouldn't you say?

• 15:28Dominic Sandbrook?

  I would say not only instantly recognizable, I would say the single most important ruler. I mean, not necessarily the best. I think Elizabeth has a good claim to be the best, but he's the one that matters.

• 15:38Tom Holland?

  The most consequential, isn't he?

• 15:39Dominic Sandbrook?

  Yeah, the most consequential ruler in England's history and indeed in Britain's history, I would say.

• 15:43Tom Holland?

  So when Elizabeth is born, he is 42 and he's a man of very imposing charisma and accomplishment. So he's been on the throne for 24 years since a very young man. When he came to the throne, he was renowned as a kind of an elite sportsman.

• 15:58Dominic Sandbrook?

  Yeah.

• 15:59Tom Holland?

  People went into rhapsodies over his athletic achievements. By now, he is starting to run to fat. He hasn't gone the full obesity, but he's still a very imposing figure.

• 16:10Dominic Sandbrook?

  He's poised between Damien Lewis and Charles Lawton, isn't he? He's not quite one or the other.

• 16:15Tom Holland?

  So he's got red hair, he's very athletic. He's described as having an extremely fine calf to his leg, which obviously matters in the Tudor court where a fine calf is very important. And the presence of Venetian ambassadors at the Tudor court is tremendous for historians because they give very kind of detailed accounts. So one of the Venetian ambassadors described Henry as gifted with mental accomplishments as he's most excellent in his personal endowments. So he's fluent in Latin, in French, in Spanish. He has very good Italian. He's kind of got rudimentary Greek. He's very musical. Sadly, he didn't compose green sleeves, but he is a composer. He plays the harp, very good on the keyboards. So that's very impressive.

• 16:58Tom Holland?

  And he also fancies himself as a theologian. So he had written a takedown of Martin Luther, and the Pope had named him Defender of the Faith for this in 1521. And this is a title of which he's inordinately proud and which the British monarch still has to this day.

• 17:16Dominic Sandbrook?

  So it's the same. The Pope, the Pope's let themselves down after that, didn't they? But we've kept the title, which is important.

• 17:22Tom Holland?

  This is, yeah. So, yeah, there's, there's lots to come on that score.

• 17:27Dominic Sandbrook?

  So he's often seen, isn't he, as part of a trio of slightly larger than life monarchs who dominate Europe? But of the three of them, he is the junior, isn't he? The other two are Francis or Francois the First of France, who's this sort of incredibly priapic, he's a roister in his own way, isn't he? And then Charles the Fifth, the Habsburg Emperor, who's absolutely not a roisterer. He is, he is a very melancholy, brooding man, but he's probably the top dog and then the French King.

• 17:56Tom Holland?

  Oh, undoubtedly, I think, because, I mean, he's the emperor. So he's got Germany, he's got the Low Countries, he's got much of Italy, but he's also the King of Spain.

• 18:04Dominic Sandbrook?

  Yeah.

• 18:05Tom Holland?

  And of course, Spain means that he's also the ruler of vast chunks of the New World.

• 18:09Dominic Sandbrook?

  Yeah.

• 18:10Tom Holland?

  So he's got all the silver coming in from the New World. So he is overwhelmingly the most powerful ruler in Europe, I think. Then Francois and then, then Henry. But the thing about Henry is he's very, very good at punching above his weight. You know, he projects this kind of vibrant image.

• 18:25Dominic Sandbrook?

  Yeah.

• 18:25Tom Holland?

  And his weight is quite something. So that's, that's pretty good. And, and this makes him popular with the English. They feel, they're not embarrassed to have him as a king. They feel he, you know, he, he's, he's giving them a good image, I think, is what they feel.

• 18:38Dominic Sandbrook?

  I think that's the one thing that people always get wrong about him in the eighth. When they say, oh, he's a monster, he's, he's this, he's that. At the time, people in England, they might have been frightened of him or they might have thought he was making strange and unpopular decisions. But nobody ever doubted that he was good at being a king and that he was good at standing up for England and that he, you know, embodied English independence and defiance and all of those kinds of things. I mean, he's, he's very good at it.

• 19:03Tom Holland?

  He is. He's a massive great slab of, of beef. On the English throne, and that's what that's what the English like to see.

• 19:10Dominic Sandbrook?

  Like if Ian Botham was King of England.

• 19:12Tom Holland?

  Well, I think Ian Botham's more Charles Brandon, his mate.

• 19:15Dominic Sandbrook?

  Yes.

• 19:18Dominic Sandbrook?

  Yeah, he completely is.

• 19:19Tom Holland?

  He's an absolute ledge, Henry VIII.

• 19:22Dominic Sandbrook?

  But there's an issue, isn't there? So he may well be a bit of a legend, and yet at the same time, he's a worrier, he's insecure and he's insecure for good reasons. And this is the other thing that I think is, I mean, I think this is absolutely central to understand the whole story of the Tudors, why he has six wives, why he breaks with Rome, all of this stuff. The fact is, the Tudors should not be there. They are usurpers. And, you know, we know the Wars of the Roses are over, the civil wars, but they don't. As far as they're concerned, they could still be in the Wars of the Roses, because there are a lot of other people who think they shouldn't be here, they're just parvenus, they're nouveau riche, what are they even doing on the throne?

• 20:00Tom Holland?

  Yeah. And so that makes it absolutely essential that every Tudor king has a male heir. Because otherwise the throne comes up for grabs again and civil war may break out.

• 20:10Dominic Sandbrook?

  Yeah.

• 20:10Tom Holland?

  So Henry's father, Henry VII, had defeated Richard III at the Battle of Bosworth. His reign had been, you know, there'd been all kinds of attempted coups, rebellions. Henry had put them down, and also he had done his duty by fathering sons. So his first son, Arthur, dies at the age of 15, but it's okay because he has a spare. And that spare, of course, is the Henry who will go on to become Henry VIII. And Henry not only inherits Arthur's title as Prince of Wales, but he also inherits Arthur's wife, Catherine of Aragon. And Catherine is the daughter of Ferdinand and Isabella, who are probably the most formidable Christian monarchs of their generation.

• 20:53Dominic Sandbrook?

  I mean, that's a massive tribute to Henry VII's diplomacy. I mean, Henry VII, by the way, I think is a brilliant king. And he has managed to get a deal for his sons, that they will marry this this princess.

• 21:05Tom Holland?

  And he's punching above his weight there. I think there's no doubt.

• 21:07Dominic Sandbrook?

  There, because Ferdinand and Isabella, you know, their reputation is well known across Europe. They're the people who sent Columbus, they're the people who have made Spain a united country. You know, they are presiding over a country that is rising to become, you know, well, a genuine world power, you know, with all these holdings in the New World and stuff.

• 21:26Tom Holland?

  Yeah, I mean, I mean, in a way, the first genuine world power in history.

• 21:29Dominic Sandbrook?

  So this is a brilliant deal that Henry VII has got for, I mean, this is the mad thing about ditching Catherine of Aragon. You know, you've got such a great deal in marrying Catherine of Aragon.

• 21:40Tom Holland?

  Yeah, and also Catherine of Aragon is the aunt of the Emperor Charles V, who rules Spain as Charles I, because Charles V is the grandson of Ferdinand and Isabella. And that kind of relationship between Catherine of Aragon and Charles V is going to play an important part in this story.

• 21:59Dominic Sandbrook?

  And just on this, so Henry and Catherine of Aragon get on really well at first, don't they? They're actually quite a happy couple and everybody says, oh, things are great. But there is this one big issue, which is, where is the heir? You know, everything is fine apart from that, actually. They do get on pretty well by and large.

• 22:17Tom Holland?

  Yeah, and Catherine's very competent. So basically, it's Catherine who wins the Battle of Flodden against the Scots, the great English victory. She's a very competent ruler when Henry's off, you know, doing his wars in France. She's much loved by the English people. No, she's a great hit, but she's got to give him a son. And Henry does take for granted. You know, people may be wondering, well, what's the deal with a son? Why not a daughter? There's a very precise reason why Henry doesn't want a daughter. And he spells it out. He said, you know, because he says that if he has a daughter, and then if she should chance to rule, she cannot continue long without a husband, which by God's law must then be her governor in head, and so finally she'll direct the realm. And this is going to be an issue for Elizabeth I. I mean, it's not just Henry being a chauvinist

• 23:01Tom Holland?

  thinking that. I mean, it's an issue for Elizabeth as well. And people who've listened to our series on Mary, Queen of Scots, who did marry very imprudently, you know, will see the force of this anxiety. So it really matters that Catherine gives Henry a son. And over the course of the first decade of his reign, Catherine does repeatedly get pregnant. But tragically for her, tragically for Henry, all her babies, with one exception, are either stillborn or die shortly after birth. And the exception that proves the rule is a girl. And this is Princess Mary, who is born on the 18th of February 1516.

• 23:41Tom Holland?

  But there's still no son. And already by 1519, foreign observers are kind of sounding the death knell for any prospect of Catherine basically giving Henry any more children, let alone a son. So the problem is very gannantly summed up by Francois Premier, Francis the First. Says his wife is old and deformed, while he himself is young and handsome.

• 24:07Dominic Sandbrook?

  I mean, that is harsh because basically she's not old. She's what is the late, she's late 30s or something, and she's definitely not deformed. I mean, she's quite a, you know, everybody says she's, you know, Catherine of Aragon was a perfectly, you know, attractive woman, although she is a bit older than Henry. And as time goes on, there's a definite sense, isn't there, that he has, well, he's a bit bored of her, but in a way that is actually standard for monarchs, late medieval, early modern monarchs. I mean, he's, he's sleeping around, isn't he? But this is not a sign that he's a monster. This is fairly established practice.

• 24:42Tom Holland?

  Well, the other thing is that Henry has a son by one of his paramours. And so this reassures him that the problem isn't with him. And by 1525, Catherine's 40. I mean, effectively by now she is, you know, by the standards of the age, past childbearing age. And so this is a huge, huge problem for Henry. And it is then in 1525 that he meets the woman who is going to append everything. Because this is a woman who is not content with being his bit on the side, with being his concubine. She wants to become his queen. And this, of course, is a very, very famous name in English history.

• 25:27Tom Holland?

  It's Anne Boleyn.

• 25:29Dominic Sandbrook?

  Yes. So Anne Boleyn, she's the daughter of a diplomat called Sir Thomas Boleyn. And she's spent a lot of time in Paris, hasn't she? Which we'll, we'll come to, her French fashion is a very important part of her repertoire. But she's not, you know, she's conventionally, when she's played on screen, she's very pretty. But the odd thing is, she's actually not terribly pretty. People actually went out of their way to comment on it, to say it's amazing that Henry has fallen for this person who actually is not especially sexy and sensational.

• 26:02Tom Holland?

  Yeah, so we can, I mean, to look in the, what the Venetian ambassadors have to say again. So one of them, he's writing in fifteen thirty-two, describes Anne as of middling stature, swolli complexion, long neck, wide mouth, bosom not much raised, and in fact has nothing but the English king's great appetite and her eyes, which are black and beautiful. The other thing that kind of causes eyebrows to be raised is, as you said, that she is not, you know, she's not of royal blood, she's not even really of aristocratic blood. You know, as you said, she's the daughter of a country squire, Sir Thomas Berlin. And he's a kind of mucker with Henry VIII. He kind of hangs out with the lads. He's a bit older than them, though. But I mean, he gets on well with Henry because he's all about, you know, horses and hunting and sport.

• 26:47Tom Holland?

  He'd wear a gilet, absolutely from that kind of class.

• 26:52Dominic Sandbrook?

  He drives a Land Rover.

• 26:54Tom Holland?

  He absolutely does, yeah, he does. He's like Fergie's father. Major Ferguson. That's kind of what, major Ronald Ferguson. But he's not really the stuff of a royal father-in-law. I mean, it seems a kind of mad idea. I mean, and he's not conventionally beautiful. She's not of, you know, the kind of pedigree that would mark her out as a potential royal wife. And so the question is then, you know, what's she bringing to the party? How does she get Henry to think of her as a possible queen? And you mentioned her, her kind of French glamour. She has been at the French court a fair while. She's very smart, she's very sophisticated, she's very stylish.

• 27:37Tom Holland?

  And in an age when French fashion kind of is the marker for people in England, she has, so Tracy Borman, she wrote a brilliant book on Anne Berlin and her relationship to Elizabeth. She describes it as an irresistible je ne sais quoi. So she sings, she dances, she plays musical instruments much better than any of the ladies at the English court. She's sensationally well dressed and while she loves fashion for its own sake, she also knows that fashion matters for someone who wants to be a queen. If you want to be a queen, you have to look like a queen. She's very good at that. She's also, she's very clever and she, again, I think is intellectual in a way. Henry's very smart.

• 28:22Tom Holland?

  I think there's a meeting of minds there. And Anne, while she was at the French court, was strongly influenced by a very remarkable woman, Marguerite of Navarre, who's the sister of Francis the First. And she is very interested in Luther. She's very interested in all the kind of the trendiest, most cutting edge currents of religious thought that are coming out of Germany at the time the Reformation is kind of kicking off. She has, I mean, she's not a Protestant, which in any way would be an anachronistic word at this point. Protestants as such don't exist yet. She's a reformer, she's an evangelical and she admires Luther. And Anne seems to have picked up various evangelical ideas from her.

• 29:04Tom Holland?

  So these would include the idea that you could have a direct, unmediated relationship with God, that you don't need priests to kind of mediate between you and the divine. The urgent need for everyone, not just those who can read Latin, to have access to scripture. So the idea that the Bible should be readily available in the vernacular and a sense that the church is corrupt and that it needs to be reformed and a particular anxiety about papacy that seems very corrupt and worldly. And Marguerite herself never goes so far as to say, well, we should cast off papal supremacy, we should bin the Pope. But I think Anne, certainly by the time she gets back to England from the French court, I think she's gone the full Luther.

• 29:48Tom Holland?

  I think she's kind of buying into that.

• 29:51Dominic Sandbrook?

  So what all that means is she's very stylish, she's very fashionable, she's continental, she's sophisticated, she's returned to England with the latest ideas that lots of people in England are only just struggling to get their heads around. She's clearly very poised, self-confident. I guess she offers something that Catherine, who's always been a very dutiful wife, you know, perhaps slightly unassuming, I mean by royal standards, you know, she offers something that Catherine doesn't and that also Henry's various kind of mistresses don't offer. She seems much cooler, doesn't she? She's spikier. She can be a bit difficult, Anne, you know, as in she's acerbic and she can be very scornful and scathing, but she's really, she's interesting.

• 30:34Tom Holland?

  Well, and also she plays him brilliantly because most of the ladies in the court, you know, if Henry comes calling, they're very flattered and basically kind of give in to him. Anne doesn't. She's described as tantalizing him with her pretty dugs, but that's basically as far as it goes. And she tells him very forthrightly, I would rather lose my life than my honesty. And so she tells him, you know, if you want to sleep with me, then you're going to have to make an honest woman of me. And that means making, making her Henry's queen.

• 31:03Dominic Sandbrook?

  I mean, that is, just to pause a second, that is bonkers by the standards of this. I mean, people, all through English history, there have been kings with mistresses.

• 31:11Tom Holland?

  Well, you're absolutely right, but there is a special circumstance, which is that Henry is married to a woman who he thinks can't give him a son. He suspects that and hopes that Anne can. And more than that, Anne has a way of cutting the Gordian knot around the marriage because there is a huge issue around any prospect of divorce. Because marriage, according to the church, is a sacrament instituted by Christ himself. So what God has joined together, let no man put asunder. I mean, that seems absolutely black and white. How do you get around that? Well, Henry has come to believe that his marriage to Catherine

• 31:52Tom Holland?

  is invalid and an offence to God, and that therefore God wants it dissolved. And in Henry's opinion, Catherine's failure to give him a son is clear evidence of divine anger. And he and his kind of tame clerics cite a verse from Leviticus in the Old Testament. If a man shall take his brother's wife, it is an unclean thing. He hath uncovered his brother's nakedness, they shall be childless. And of course, Henry has taken his brother's wife. Catherine was the widow of Arthur. Henry then married him. He'd got a special papal dispensation to do that. But he's now thinking that dispensation, you know, doesn't cut the mustard with God. And so he's been pressing the Pope to grant him an annulment.

• 32:36Tom Holland?

  And probably, under normal circumstances, the Pope would have been happy to oblige. But the problem is, as we mentioned, Catherine is Charles V's aunt. And the Pope, given a choice, is always going to risk offending Henry rather than Charles V.

• 32:54Dominic Sandbrook?

  Of course, because they, I mean, just to give people a sense of the context. Rome has just been sacked by Charles V's troops, right? The Pope is effectively Charles V's prisoner. He's never gonna, he's never gonna offend Charles V.

• 33:07Tom Holland?

  Yeah, and so this leaves Henry and his ministers in an absolute jam. And so it's called the King's Great Matter. How do you, how do you get a divorce when the one person who can grant that divorce, the Pope, is not going to give it to you? And so it's locked Henry into years of fruitless negotiations and frustration. I mean, it's kind of incredibly Brexit, you know, passengers endlessly going and being rebuffed. But now, not only is he attracted to Anne, not only does he think she can, you know, give him the son that he so desperately wants, but she can also provide the key that would unlock the King's Great Matter.

• 33:50Tom Holland?

  Because if, as Luther teaches, and Anne has come...

• 33:55Tom Holland?

  To think the Pope is the the great whore of Babylon, the Antichrist, then who cares what the Pope thinks? Yeah. Doesn't matter. Yeah, so in many ways, this is a win win for Henry, because not only will he get the woman he wants, if this all works out, but he will throw off foreign influence, become master in his own house, as it were, in in religious terms, and also in the long run, of course, there's all that, there are all those monasteries. Very tempting. Yeah, well, there's there's all kinds of goodies and prospect. And and so Henry summons a load of scholars to weigh this up. They're English scholars, and amazingly, they they tell him, yeah, brilliant, go for it.

• 34:39Tom Holland?

  And the guy who takes the lead in this is a very brilliant scholar called Thomas Cranmer, who we'll be hearing about over the course of this series. He's going to be a key player. But basically, Thomas Cranmer and his fellow scholars demonstrate to Henry satisfaction that his power as king is superior to that of the Pope's. And once that's been accepted by Henry, things then move very fast. So in 1531, the English Church grants Henry the title of Singular Protector, Supreme Lord, and even so far as the law of Christ allows, Supreme Head of the English Church and clergy. So that's essentially shunting the Pope to one side. In the same year, Catherine is banished from court, and her apartments are given to one

• 35:22Tom Holland?

  of her former ladies in waiting, and that is Anne Berlin. The following year, Anne is raised to the peerage in her own right, the first woman to be honoured in this way, and she's granted the Mark Quasate of Pembroke, which is an extinct title that Henry resurrects. And this matters because Henry can only marry someone of that rank. The people who listen to the series we did on Mary, Queen of Scots this July, may remember that every time Mary, Queen of Scots makes one of her unfortunate marriages, she has to raise her husband to be to a dukedom, so that he will be of of of worthy rank to to be married to a queen. So basically, that's what Henry's doing with Anne here. By December 1532, Anne knows she's pregnant.

• 36:07Tom Holland?

  And so, you know, things. The foot really needs to be put down on the pedal. So on the 25th of January 1533, Henry marries her in his private chapel in Westminster, despite the fact that actually the annulment of his marriage to Catherine still hasn't come through, so effectively he's now bigamous. On the 30th of March, Thomas Cranmer is consecrated as the Archbishop of Canterbury, and he gets the job because Henry knows that, you know, he's going to do what he needs the Archbishop to do, which is basically to absolutely affirm the legitimacy of what he's going through. So at Easter 1533, again quoting the Venetian ambassador, "The marchioness Anne went with

• 36:50Tom Holland?

  the king to high mass as queen, and with all the pomp of a queen clad in cloth of gold and loaded with the richest jewels, and she dined in public." Then on the 29th of May, she sails from the Palace of Greenwich up the River Thames to the Tower of London. She steps out from the boat, she goes round to the main entrance into the tower, crosses the moat, she's greeted by Henry with a kiss, and the couple retire to apartments that Henry has had decorated in splendid magnificence specifically for Anne. Two days later, she makes her ceremonial entry into London dressed in white, and she is extolled as a splendid image of chastity.

• 37:32Tom Holland?

  And on the 1st of June 1533, she is anointed, and the crown of St. Edward the Confessor is placed on her head, and this is the crown that is usually reserved for the monarch himself, so it is a signal honour.

• 37:48Dominic Sandbrook?

  So the reason for the signal honour presumably is because it's very obvious to everybody now, if she knew she was pregnant in December, it must be obvious to everybody now that she is expecting a child, and the general assumption is that this will be, the assumption based on nothing, is that this will be a son.

• 38:05Tom Holland?

  Well, so it's, I mean, she's been described as a splendid image of chastity, but she's also being described as somewhat big with child. And so you're right that this pregnancy reassures Henry, brilliant, you know, I now have, I have a woman who can give me a son.

• 38:25Tom Holland?

  And if Anne is pregnant with his son, then it's absolutely essential that everything is done to make clear that Anne is legitimately his wife and therefore his son will legitimately be the heir to the throne. And so it is on the 26th of August that Anne Boleyn, now the Queen of England, retires to her birthing chamber in Greenwich and on the 7th of September, she goes into labour.

• 38:52Speaker 00

  Righty, well, as we know, the results of this will be a little bit of a disappointment for Henry and we will return after the break to find out how he deals with it.

• 39:04Speaker 00

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• 41:20Dominic Sandbrook?

  Welcome back to the rest is history. So Anne Boleyn, she's just been crowned Queen of England. All kinds of exciting political and theological developments going on in the background. She has gone into labor. She has been delivered of a child. Brilliant news. It is an heir at last for Henry VIII and it is a boy. Oh, no, it's actually not. No, girl. What a massive letdown. So here's the thing. You would think that Henry would be furious and this would be, you know, curtains for Anne Boleyn. And lots of people probably think, well, it is. But it isn't straight away, right? He doesn't completely give up on Anne Boleyn after this. I mean, he's, I was about to say he's a reasonable man. I mean, in many ways he's not.

• 42:04Dominic Sandbrook?

  But he must recognize it's a 50/50 chance that it would have been a girl. You know, he's a bit disappointed, but.

• 42:09Tom Holland?

  He is disappointed, but also, you know, Anne's had a successful pregnancy. The baby's healthy. There's every prospect that she'll get pregnant again and give him a son. You know, and also he now has a legitimate princess. So that's better than nothing. And so he's, you know, he in no way repudiates his baby daughter. He kind of shows her all kinds of, of marks of favor. So her name, the name he gives her Elizabeth. And amazingly, Anne had wanted to call her Mary to erase Princess Mary from the, you know, from the ledger. And Henry says, no, I'm not, that's, that's, that's poor. So, but he chooses Elizabeth because it's a tribute to his mother, Elizabeth of York. Elizabeth is then baptized in Greenwich.

• 42:51Tom Holland?

  The mayor of London is rowed down there with 40 of the, the city's worthy. You know, kind of moves and shakers and Elizabeth doesn't get Francis the first, the King of France as a godfather, which she would have done had she been a boy, but she does get Thomas Cranmer and, you know, Archbishop Canterbury, that's not bad. And of course, the Archbishop of Canterbury also is all, you know, it's a kind of imprimatur of legitimacy. Suggests that that God is saying she's not a bastard. So that's great. Then after the baptism, which Henry and Anne are not at it. That's not the the custom. She's brought out. So Eustace Jappuis, the Imperial Ambassador, who's a very hostile witness to Anne. He describes what happens, that a herald in front of the church door proclaimed her Princess of England.

• 43:34Tom Holland?

  Then in December, it's a very wintry day, drizzle falling on the streets of London. She rides with splendid ceremony through the capital, out of it onwards, towards the house that Henry has decided will be her official residence. And this is a palace called Hatfield and it lies 20 miles north of London in rural Hertfordshire. And it's close to the capital, so easy for Henry to visit it, but it's also less likely to be swept by plague, which is always a consideration. So he's looking out for her. And it's a it's a pretty impressive place for a four month old baby girl to have. So it's got a great hall, it's got fine apartments, it's got a parkland full of deer. You know, it's a palace fit for a princess, I guess.

• 44:18Dominic Sandbrook?

  Yeah. So Henry, he goes to visit her, doesn't he, in January? And by which point it's very clear that if there if there were any question about her parentage, which there hasn't been. I mean, she looks a little bit like Henry because she's even got the red hair, hasn't she?

• 44:30Tom Holland?

  Yes, and the violent temper apparently.

• 44:32Dominic Sandbrook?

  Right. I mean, to be fair, she's a baby. I mean, that's pretty much the standard. And then the key thing in March, Parliament passes legislation that declares Elizabeth as Henry's heir. But there is a couple of twists, aren't there? So basically, if Henry dies before Elizabeth reaches the age of majority, then Anne will be regent and absolute governor of her children and of the kingdom. But also, if you call anybody but Anne and Elizabeth queen or princess. So the obvious target here is her half sister Mary. Then that is high treason and you, you know, you can say goodbye to your head.

• 45:15Tom Holland?

  Yeah, so great news for Anne, but terrible news for Mary, Henry's daughter by Catherine of Aragon, who is now very publicly and by Act of Parliament declared a bastard.

• 45:25Dominic Sandbrook?

  Yeah.

• 45:26Tom Holland?

  And Anne is ecstatic about this because she detests Catherine of Aragon and she particularly detests Mary and is consistently vicious towards her. I mean, horrible to poor Mary.

• 45:38Dominic Sandbrook?

  Can I say something actually about on this front? There are some admirable things about Anne. You know, she's, I like the fact that she's a serb and that she's clever and that she's, you know, you know, a bit of a personality and stuff, but she's horrible. She's horrible to Mary, isn't she? In a way that she didn't have to be.

• 45:56Tom Holland?

  Yeah, and I think in part it's jealousy of Mary's lineage. I think it's, she's jealous on behalf of her own daughter, but it's also in large part because Mary refuses to acknowledge her own bastardy. She refuses to play the game that Henry, her father, wants her to play. And so Anne goes all out to try and erase the privileged status that Mary had previously enjoyed as Henry's eldest daughter. So on the first of October 1533, which was only two months after Elizabeth's birth, Henry had summoned Mary and told her, you are no longer going to be a princess. From this point on, you're just going to be the

• 46:40Tom Holland?

  Lady Mary. And Mary understandably burst into tears. She's only 17 years old. I mean, you know, for a teenager, teenagers hate, I mean, the most humiliating thing. Yeah, basically. The following month, Chappuis reported an even greater humiliation. So he writes, "The king, not satisfied with having taken away the name entitled princess from Mary, has just given out that in order to subdue the spirit of the princess, he will deprive her of all her people because they put notions into her head and stop her from obeying him, and that she should come and live as Lady's maid with the little bastard." The little bastard is Elizabeth. So, I mean, what a humiliation. You know, you're stripped of all your own servants and you have to go and work as

• 47:21Tom Holland?

  a servant for your, you know, this girl who's replaced you. I mean, that's absolutely terrible. So Mary is sent there only with two attendants and she's obdurate in refusing to accept this. She says, I'm not going to accept, you know, this horrible little girl as a legitimate heir. She insists she knew no other princess in England except herself. And Anne is so infuriated that she takes away, you know, all Mary's jewels. It's like confiscating her iPhone or something. And she tells the women supervising Mary to box her ears as a cursed bastard. So Nicola Tallis, who writes another great book, Young Elizabeth, Princess Prisoner Queen, she says, little wonder Mary spent much of her time weeping

• 48:06Tom Holland?

  in her chamber.

• 48:07Dominic Sandbrook?

  Yeah, but that makes Mary sound like a drip, whereas Mary's not a drip. I like Mary. I think she has massive, she's got massive backbone, Mary. She has a, she obviously she's regarded as one of the great villains of English history because she lets herself down with her Catholicism. However, she has tremendous guts, I think, and she's a massive survivor.

• 48:26Tom Holland?

  I don't, you see, I don't think that it's maudlin weeping. I think it's angry weeping.

• 48:31Dominic Sandbrook?

  Yeah, I respect that.

• 48:32Tom Holland?

  It's, I hate you all kind of weeping. That's what it's like. And obviously, none of this makes Anne any the more popular, because we've said how Catherine is very popular with the mass of the, of the English people. And so Anne going out of her way to insult Catherine's daughter, Mary, who's also very popular, you know, it's, it, it doesn't go down well at all. And Shapwe, unsurprisingly, completely agrees with this. It says, I do not understand why the king is in such haste to treat the Princess Mary in this way, if it were not for the importunity and malignity of the lady, i.e. Anne.

• 49:08Dominic Sandbrook?

  I know he's biased, but he's.

• 49:09Tom Holland?

  But he's not wrong.

• 49:10Dominic Sandbrook?

  Yeah, he's right.

• 49:11Tom Holland?

  Now, I guess none of this would, would have mattered had Elizabeth been a boy. I mean, Anne could have done then, in that case, she could have done whatever she liked. Nor if in the wake of Elizabeth's birth, she had then been able to get pregnant again and give Henry the son that she wanted. But this does not happen because in the summer of 1534, absolute disaster, Anne loses a baby, it's gone almost a full term, and the rumor is that it had been a boy. Another year goes by and there are rumors of another miscarriage.

• 49:45Tom Holland?

  And it is clear as well to people that Henry is getting a little bit fed up with Anne. So you said you like her, she's sassy, she's acerbic. But Henry, you know, he might, you know, to begin with, he might have found that quite attractive, quite titillating. But I think by this point, he's starting to find her bossy, arrogant, nagging, shrewish. And these are not qualities that he's particularly looking for in a wife.

• 50:10Dominic Sandbrook?

  Do you know what, sometimes Anne Boleyn, I said she was horrible, but sometimes she reminds me a tiny bit of myself.

• 50:15Tom Holland?

  Really? Imagine, well, God, Henry would have been lucky to get married to you. There has to be said, Dominic, that the odds of you giving Henry a son would be, would be low, I think.

• 50:25Dominic Sandbrook?

  Yeah. It's not, it's not a situation I've ever really pondered, like, how would I perform as one of Henry VIII's wives? But actually, I think probably, although Anne Boleyn is the one I like, I like least, she's probably the one I most like.

• 50:40Tom Holland?

  Well, fortunately for you, you, you were not having to get pregnant by Henry. So that's Anne's job and ominously for Anne, by this point, Henry, his eye is starting to stray again. He's starting to have affairs and as early as October 1534, so this is a few months after Anne's second miscarriage. Chapuis is reporting that Henry is paying particular attention to one lady in waiting. And this is a woman called Jane Seymour. And the following summer, so that's in 1535, Henry pays a visit to the Seymour House, which is in Wiltshire. I'm delighted to say.

• 51:19Dominic Sandbrook?

  Oh, it's great to have Wiltshire in the Salisbury area back on the show.

• 51:21Tom Holland?

  This is a place called Wolf Hall. So it, it seems that Henry is really quite keen on Jane Seymour if he's going off and, you know, meeting the parents. Kind of thing. It's unclear exactly what it is that Jane has that Henry finds so irresistible. So Chapuis famously describes her as an enigma.

• 51:47Tom Holland?

  She's modest, she's not particularly attractive. Chapuis describes her as not a woman of great wit. Tracy Borman, in her book on Amber Lynn, points out that enigma was tued to slang for the female genitals. So perhaps Chapuis is hinting at something there unclear. But there's one definite advantage that Jane does have over Anne, certainly in Henry's eyes, which is that she isn't always losing her temper with him.

• 52:14Dominic Sandbrook?

  But the point about the appeal of Jane Seymour is surely that Amber Lynn is a is a is a serb, is argumentative, is a bit of a nag, is a bit bossy, all of these things that make her very interesting. Jane Seymour was quite boring, but she basically is a people pleaser. Everything we know about her is she's a massive people pleaser. And she, Henry thinks, God, she's sweet, she's nice, she'll bring me a, yeah, she'll bring me a cup of scented wine or whatever, and, you know, nurse my ulcer.

• 52:44Tom Holland?

  She'll find my friends amusing.

• 52:47Dominic Sandbrook?

  Exactly, exactly.

• 52:48Tom Holland?

  Yeah. So, but it's still not all over for Anne. So by January 1536, she's pregnant again. And then on the 7th of January 1536, even better news, it is announced that Catherine of Aragon is dead. And Henry's reaction is, God be praised. Anne's brother George, it was a pity the princess, i.e. Mary, did not keep company with her. So, I mean, really venomous, really venomous. And you might wonder, well, you know, why this hostility? I think for George Berlin, the hostility to Mary is it's not just dynastic. He, like Anne, has become a very, very passionate evangelical. So we kind of be anachronistic

• 53:33Tom Holland?

  to call him a Protestant, but that's basically what he is by now. But Mary, she has stayed. Very devoutly, very defiantly loyal to the traditional Catholic faith. She, you know, she's loyal to the Pope. And of course, that loyalty is an expression of her loyalty to Catherine of Aragon. So she refuses to accept Henry's supremacy of the Church. And this, of course, in turn then enables her to, to say, well, I have, you know, I have every godly reason to deny the legitimacy of my half-sister, you know, baby Elizabeth. And that means that for the Bellins and George, or, you know, the rest of the crowd, their godliness, their evangelical identity is now kind of seamlessly interwoven with their dynastic ambitions and interests.

• 54:18Tom Holland?

  So for, for them, it seems obvious that God is on the side of the Bellins and against Princess Mary and, and all these kind of awful Catholics. But of course, I mean, it, none of this matters if Anne can't give Henry what he so desperately wants, a son.

• 54:36Dominic Sandbrook?

  Yeah. So the clock's ticking. I mentioned his ulcer, actually. I was being anachronistic because he doesn't get this famous ulcer until the 24th of January, when he has this jousting accident. He comes very close to death, doesn't he? He's knocked off his horse. People actually think he may have died. And with that, there is a serious, you know, for the first time, people think, gosh, he could actually have died. And what happens next? You know, the future of the dynasty is not yet secure. There are a lot of people who think when he goes, great, we can get rid of the Tudors. I mean, they're a bit of an aberration and we can get back to, we can find some Plantagenet heir to take over.

• 55:17Tom Holland?

  Yeah, we can get back to fighting.

• 55:18Dominic Sandbrook?

  Yeah, exactly.

• 55:19Tom Holland?

  Brilliant.

• 55:20Dominic Sandbrook?

  Exactly.

• 55:21Tom Holland?

  Yeah. And so that fall, it has a kind of knock on consequence because five days later, 29th of January, Catherine of Aragon is laid to rest in Peterborough Cathedral. And on the same day, Anne has a miscarriage. And she blames it on the shock that she felt on learning of the news of Henry's fall. But Henry thinks, no, this is the marker of a curse. Just as my first marriage was cursed, so now my second is cursed. And he says explicitly, I see that God will not give me male children. And Shapwe, you know, he is kind of delighted by this. And he writes to Charles the Fifth, the emperor.

• 56:04Tom Holland?

  And he reports Henry's growing belief, and I quote Shapwe, that he had made this marriage seduced by witchcraft. And for this reason, he considered it null.

• 56:14Dominic Sandbrook?

  See, I think Henry, at this point, my sense is that he feels a little bit guilty. He had Catherine of Aragon has died. And although he will never admit it to himself, he has treated her abominably. And she wasn't a bad person. She was a good wife for him. He's treated his own daughter atrociously. And Henry is a very vain man. He will never accept that he's behaved badly. So he pins all this on Anne, doesn't he? Don't you think that's what he's doing?

• 56:42Tom Holland?

  Yeah, I think so. And I think also what's very unfortunate for Anne is that Jane Seamer, although she may be boring, you know, she's learnt from Anne how to play Henry. So in April, Henry sends Jane this purse of gold sovereigns and a letter, presumably, you know, pledging his troth. And she just kisses the letter very demurely and sends it back, unopened, and declares that she will only accept such gifts if she is married. So she's learned from the mistress, you know, how to play, how to do this. That April, the same, so the same month, Anne is in Greenwich and she has Elizabeth brought from Hatfield. And Elizabeth, by this point, is two and a half years old. And Elizabeth has clearly been much on Anne's mind. So Anne has been ordering her all kinds of clothes.

• 57:27Tom Holland?

  It's kind of dresses of orange and purple velvet and taffeta caps adorned with gold, obviously designed to kind of go with her complexion and her auburn hair. So Anne, again, being, you know, the great fashionista. And she's clearly worrying, I think, by this point. That Henry might strike against her at any moment. And what are the implications of this for for her for her daughter? So on the 26th of April, she summons her private chaplain for a for a conversation. And this chaplain is a man called Matthew Parker, who is a very brilliant young evangelical scholar, typical of the kind of clergyman that Anne has been favouring.

• 58:10Tom Holland?

  And Anne says to him, look, you know, I don't know what's going to happen, but suppose the worst does happen. Please, will you promise to look after my daughter Elizabeth? And Parker vows, yes, Your Majesty, I absolutely will. And he he holds true to that vow. So years later, in Elizabeth's reign, Parker reports the conversation he'd had with Anne at this point to Elizabeth. And he describes it as the last words that ever Her Majesty's mother spoke to me concerning her.

• 58:40Dominic Sandbrook?

  Well, you say the last words because the end is coming for Anne, isn't it? And it comes on. Isn't there some story that there she's watching some form of sport? I can't remember what it is, people playing tennis or something. And then she gets some summons from the council, you know, come and you must come immediately. And she's accused of, to her shock, complete and utter shock. She is accused of adultery. And then she's taken off by barge from Greenwich to the Tower of London. She never even gets the chance to see her daughter before she goes, does she?

• 59:12Tom Holland?

  No, you know, there's no dilly-dallying. So after after the Tower, she goes and the boom of cannons announces to London her arrival in the Tower. And of course, this was where, three years earlier, she'd stayed for a couple of days with Henry in the Royal Courts before setting out across London for her coronation. And now she's being incarcerated there as a prisoner. And the first evening that she's there, she asks the constable of the Tower, shall I die without justice? I mean, she clearly recognizes, you know, the fate that is now threatening her. And the constable replies to her, the poorest subject the King hath hath justice. And at this, Anne only laughs.

• 59:53Tom Holland?

  And, you know, the laugh is laughter is very bitter because Anne does not receive justice.

• 1:00:00Dominic Sandbrook?

  So she's put on trial on the fifteenth of May in the Tower of London, isn't she? She's the first Queen of England ever to be subjected to a public trial. And the counts, so adultery, she's convicted of adultery with five different men. I mean, they're not messing around. Then the next count incest because she's accused of sleeping with her own brother, this evangelical guy, George Berlin. And then treason and conspiracy to kill her husband, to murder her husband. And the thing is, of course, you know, she's obviously innocent of these things, right? I mean, people never, historians don't think she'd plotted against her husband or that she'd slept with her brother or she committed, even when she committed adultery.

• 1:00:45Tom Holland?

  No, I don't think any historians think that they're true. Essentially, Henry wants her eliminated and he's prepared to go to any lengths to do it. And sure enough, you know, the sentence is read after her. Because thou hast defended against our sovereign, the King's grace, in committing treason against this person. The law of the realm is this, that thou shalt be burnt here within the Tower of London on the green, else to have thy head smitten off. And clearly in that, it's better to have your head chopped off than to be burnt alive. Anne is being offered a deal. Agree to what I want and you will have a merciful death. And the following day, sure enough, Anne is visited in the Tower by Cranmer. And Cranmer wins Anne's consent to the annulment of her marriage.

• 1:01:29Tom Holland?

  And this might seem surprising to people because effectively, of course, this serves to render Elizabeth now a bastard. But I think Anne is doing it. I mean, partly maybe she thinks, well, you know, I'll have my head chopped off. But I think, I think she thinks that by doing this, her life will be spared and that will then enable her to, you know, it will, it will ensure that at least Elizabeth will continue to have a mother. But there is no pardon.

• 1:01:55Dominic Sandbrook?

  Interesting point there, actually, Tom, which never really occurred to me that at that point, Henry could have pardoned her. I mean, he could have just said, send her off, like Catherine of Aragon, send her off to some country house. And then, although people would talk about him as having had lots of wives, his reputation as this kind of blue beard, who, you know, the wife killer, I mean, he doesn't have to kill her.

• 1:02:16Tom Holland?

  No, he doesn't. And and everyone finds it astonishing. So even Chapuis, who obviously hates Anne, I mean, he regards it as madness. So, you know, he says, may God permit that this may be his last folly. It's seen as as very aberrant behaviour, I think. But, you know, she has now declared and accepted that her marriage was invalid. And so the following morning, 17th of May, in Lambeth Palace, Kramer officially annuls Henry's marriage to Anne. And this means that Elizabeth, like her half sister Mary, is declared bastard and deprived of the title of princess. So from this point on, she will be called the Lady Elizabeth. And later that same morning, 17th of May, the five men who've been convicted

• 1:02:58Tom Holland?

  of adultery with Anne are led out onto Tower Hill. So before the mass of Londoners who've gathered there to watch the spectacle, and one by one, they are beheaded. And George Bellin goes first because he's of the highest rank, and the axe will be at its sharpest. So it's a kind of, you know, a measure of privilege there. And he speaks as a martyr for his evangelical beliefs. He says, I have been a setter forth of the word of God. So he's implying this is the reason that he's being eliminated. He does not defend his sister. And in fact, only one of the five men who are executed, who's a guy who Henry, you know, very close to, a man called Henry Norris, a long term favourite and friend of Henry's. He's the only one who does a decent thing and speaks out in defence of

• 1:03:42Tom Holland?

  Anne. So he said, in his conscience, he thought the Queen innocent of these things laid to charge, and he would die a thousand deaths rather than ruin an innocent person. But you know, this has no impact. It doesn't help Anne. And on the 19th of May, so two days later, it is her turn to meet death. Now, she does not die as the five men accused of adultery had done on Tower Hill, but within the tower itself. So there's a measure of privacy. A thousand people are gathered to watch it, you know, but she doesn't have the stinking rabble jeering and mocking her. A great scaffold has been erected next to the White Tower. It's been draped in black. She approaches it wearing a grey silk gown.

• 1:04:24Tom Holland?

  She's led to the scaffold. She climbs its steps and then she addresses the crowd. And she says, "I pray God save the king and send him long to reign over you for a gentler nor a more merciful prince was there never." I mean, obviously she doesn't believe this. And so people may wonder, well, why would she say it? And I think that, you know, the reason is, is that she is hoping it will encourage Henry to look more fondly on their daughter. And so it may well be that, you know, in her final moments, Anne's thoughts are of Elizabeth. So there isn't a block. She just kneels in the straw. She says her prayers and then she removes the hood that she's had. Um, and so that kind of opens up her neck. She, her hair is bundled up, put in a cap.

• 1:05:08Tom Holland?

  So her neck is now absolutely exposed. Lady in Waiting step forwards, blindfolds her and leans forwards. She's still saying her prayers. And then there's a French swordsman who Henry has specially hired for his expertise. Kind of slight mark of mercy, I suppose. And he quietly reaches down for his sword without making a sound. So Anne doesn't know when it's going to come. And then with very smooth, very silent precision, he brings the blade of the sword down onto Anne's neck. Her head is severed with a single blow. Anne, before her execution, had said that she had a little neck. So there's no kind of hacking and chopping at it. It's done very efficiently. And the head is then held up to the crowd.

• 1:05:52Tom Holland?

  And it's reported that her mouth continues to move in prayer for several seconds after her decapitation. Gosh, I wonder if that really happened. Well, I think it is possible. Uh, I mean, the whole question of what happens to you after your head is chopped off is a very interesting one and I gather much contested. So. Right, okay. Who, who, who knows? You know, they're, they're markers of mercy. They're the French swordsman. She hasn't been burnt to death. It's been in privacy, but it's still completely shocking. And I think that Henry's willingness to sanction the judicial murder of his queen, of Henry Norris's, you know, one of his closest friends, four other presumably innocent people as well, it speaks of his utter resolve to secure this great prize that he's been longing

• 1:06:34Tom Holland?

  for, which is a son. So on the 30th of May, he marries Jane Seymour and a year and a half later, on the 12th of October, 1537, she dies, but she has done what Henry married her for. So two weeks before her death, she had given him the male heir that he had been so, so desperate to obtain. And it's a boy called Edward.

• 1:06:59Dominic Sandbrook?

  But where does that leave Elizabeth? Because Elizabeth, Tom, is now being declared illegitimate. She's a bastard and she is the daughter of somebody who's basically been erased from the annals as a traitor and as an adulteress and as a witch. So where will this lead? Well, the good news is if you're a member of the Rest is History Club, you can find out right away and you can hear the rest of the episodes in this series, including the next one, which explores how the young Elizabeth survives the murderous snake pit of the court of Henry VIII. And of course, if you're not a member of the Rest is History Club and you want to hear the whole of the series right now, you can join our very own snake pit,

• 1:07:44Dominic Sandbrook?

  our very own murderous Tudor court at therestishistory.com. So wonderful news for everybody. Tom, that was absolutely brilliant. Thank you very much for that. At all to force and we'll see you all next time. Bye bye.

• 1:07:56Tom Holland?

  Bye bye.

• 1:08:08Speaker 04

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