Anne and Henry: The Most [un]Happy

The romance of Henry and Anne, one that would supposedly schism a faith yet end in beheading, has become an object of myth. Anne is often depicted as a seductress, enchanting Henry in her plot to become queen. Anne was by all accounts charming and cunning, but history’s cruelty often forgets that her circumstances would have rendered her unable to refuse neither Henry’s nor her ambitious male relatives’ demands. Henry and Anne’s wedded motto would be “the Most Happye,” yet their fate would be anything but. 

One famous 1726 print by William Hogarth, seen below, depicts Henry gazing at Anne in the foreground, with a spited Queen Catherine of Aragon in the background as well as Lord Henry Percy (1502–1537), a man thought to be Anne’s old lover, and Cardinal Thomas Wolsey (1473–1530), who would be an enemy of Anne.

King Henry the Eigth [sic] & Anna Bullen, 1726

The unraveling of Henry and Anne’s marriage is another object of historical fascination, captured in two nineteenth-century cartoons by George Cruikshank seen below. The cartoons are illustrations from the 1847 historical romance novel Windsor Castle, by William Harrison Ainsworth, whose plot follows Henry courting Anne. 

Each Cruikshank cartoon sets up Henry and Anne as foils and objects of one another’s jealousy. In the first illustration below, Anne spots Henry lusting after Jane Seymour, a woman he would marry only days after Anne’s execution.

“Anne Boleyn receiving proof of Henry’s passion for Jane Seymour”

In the second illustration, Henry spies upon Anne throwing a handkerchief picked up by Sir Henry Norris (1482–1536). Norris would be one of five men executed alongside Anne, all accused of being her lovers.

“Henry perceiving Norris pick up Anne Boleyn's handkerchief at the jousts”

While these images, both alluding to respective affairs, seem almost satirical, they speak to the dangers of court romance. Impossible standards were thrust against women’s purity, with a simple accusation of their downfall, whereas powerful men like Henry were free to have mistresses and dispose of women at will.

The final two items in this section are two twentieth-century editions of love letters between Henry VIII and Anne. In addition to love letters,  the volumes also included letters pertaining to other matters. In the opening displayed below, Anne wrote to Cardinal Wolsey asking him to intercede with the divorce proceedings (the legate) between Henry and Catherine of Aragon.

A letter from Anne to Cardinal Thomas Wolsey, on his efforts pertaining to the divorce of Henry and Catherine of Aragon.

A love letter from Henry VIII to Anne Boleyn.

Reading each letter, one sees two historical characters with timeless emotions of desire and intrigue. This tragic love story has enticed generations of readers and history buffs, and the modern reprints of the surviving letters between Henry and Anne are proof of the story’s appeal.