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Claire | May 23, 2013
We’ve spent the last few weeks in 1536, counting down to Anne Boleyn’s execution, but now we swing from 1536 to counting down to Anne’s coronation in 1533. On 23rd May 1533, Archbishop Thomas Cranmer announced the sentence of the special court that had met had Dunstable Priory, Bedfordshire, to examine Henry VIII’s case for
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Claire | May 17, 2013
On 17th May 1536, at Lambeth, Archbishop Thomas Cranmer, in the presence of Sir Thomas Audley, the Duke of Suffolk, the Earl of Oxford and others, declared that the marriage between Henry VIII and Anne Boleyn was null and void.1 This sentence of “nullity” meant that it was as if the marriage had never happened
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Claire | March 30, 2013
On this day in 1533, Passion Sunday, Thomas Cranmer, Archdeacon of Taunton, was consecrated as Archbishop of Canterbury in St Stephen’s College, Westminster Palace, by the bishops of Lincoln, Exeter, and St Asaph. His biographer, Henry John Todd, writes of how, before he took the oath of obedience to the see of Rome, he made
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Claire | March 23, 2013
On this day in 1534, Parliament passed the First Act of Succession and declared that the marriage of Henry VIII and Anne Boleyn was valid and that the succession would pass through the heirs of Henry VIII and Anne Boleyn. You can read all about the Act in my article The First Act of Succession
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Claire | March 7, 2013
On this day in history, 7th March 1530, Pope Clement VII issued the following bull: “Bull, notifying that on the appeal of queen Katharine from the judgment of the Legates, who had declared her contumacious for refusing their jurisdiction as being not impartial, the Pope had committed the cause, at her request, to Master Paul
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Claire | January 25, 2013
On this day in history, 25th January 1533, St Paul’s Day, King Henry VIII married Anne Boleyn in a secret ceremony at Whitehall. Nicholas Harpsfield, the Catholic apologist writing in Mary I’s reign, recorded: “The first whereof was that the King was married to [the] Lady Anne Bulleyne long ere there was any divorce made
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Claire | November 14, 2012
Tudor chronicler Edward Hall recorded in his chronicle: “The kyng, after his returne [from Calais] maried priuily[privily] the lady Anne Bulleyn on sainet Erkenwaldes daie, whiche mariage was kept so secrete, that very fewe knewe it, til she was greate with child, at Easter after.”1 He is saying that Henry VIII and Anne Boleyn were
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Claire | October 18, 2012
While researching for the recent webinar on Anne Boleyn’s pregnancies and miscarriages, I became intrigued by Anne Boleyn’s 1534 pregnancy, her second pregnancy and her first miscarriage, and thought you might be interested in it too. Before I explain what I mean by “mystery pregnancy”, I want to banish the myth that Anne Boleyn had
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