On 28th May 1533, Henry VIII’s Archbishop of Canterbury, Thomas Cranmer, proclaimed the marriage of Henry VIII and Anne Boleyn valid.
This was following the ruling of Cranmer’s special court at Dunstable that Henry VIII’s first marriage, to Catherine of Aragon, was invalid and therefore annulled.
All this was great news for Henry and Anne because they’d been busy organising Anne’s coronation, which began on 29th May 1533 with a lavish river pageant.
Of course, Catherine of Aragon never recognised the annulment of her marriage or her new title of Dowager Princess of Wales.
As Anne resided in the Tower of London just three years later, she must have looked back to those glory days in 1533 when she was Henry V111’s adored mistress, they had been planning the coronation which took place the next day, a lavish river boat procession had been organised, wine was to flow in the streets she had even requested Queen Katherine’s barge which was decorated with her amoral arms from Spain, Henry had broken with Rome just for her, he had overturned the politics of a thousand years and had risked not only war from Spain but civil war in his own kingdom, he had proved he would do everything for her, and so he had, she had climbed the very pinnacle of power and then been abandoned, disgraced her queenship had been stripped from her, and now she faced death, she knew that the bountiful month of May had been for her the very month of both her triumph and tragedy, she thought she had faced a dazzling future, in fact it had brought her closer to her own reckoning.