Sometime around 26th April 1536, six days before her arrest, Queen Anne Boleyn met with her chaplain Matthew Parker and made him promise to do something for her.
We have no idea what was said at this meeting, what Anne wanted him to do, but whatever was said was something that stayed with Parker and caused him to feel so bound to Anne’s daughter, who became Queen Elizabeth I in 1558, that he took the office of Archbishop of Canterbury during her reign even though he was in ill health and didn’t want the position. He served as Elizabeth I’s Archbishop of Canterbury from 1559 until his death in May 1575 at the age of seventy.
I really do feel that Anne knew that there was something going on and that the tide was turning against her.
i think she wanted him to protect her daughter in case something happened to hjer
SORRY FOR TYPOS HAD EYE DROPS IN
Mathew Parker like many of Annes friends deeply respected her and I think quite possibly she was giving her little daughter into the spiritual care of this man, she valued him quite highly and could well have imparted to him the danger she felt herself to be in, as her chaplain he would keep their conversation to himself and she knew she could trust him absolutely on this matter, but years later he could well have confessed to Elizabeth what her mother actually said to him, Anne was very pious and would have wanted her daughter to grow up with the same spiritual beliefs, I think it says a lot about Annes character that her chaplain devoted to her memory decided to stay in Elizabeths service and become Archbishop, even though he was old and poorly he was determined to do right by Anne, we have seen how Annes friends and servants were devoted to her even though her enemies vilified her for being a bad woman, if she had been that bad, surely she would not have been able to arouse such devotion in her friends and servants?
When Henry rid himself of Catherine he separated her from Mary. If Anne got an inkling that Henry had tired of her, though she could never have expected him to murder her, she may have expected that she would be separated from Elizabeth and that Elizabeth would need a protector in the same way as Mary had Chapuy.
An acute observation Clare, it’s only natural she would want Elizabeth to have someone to look out for her, she had seen the way Henry had treated Mary.