Claire | May 3, 2021
On this day in history, 3rd May 1536, Thomas Cranmer, Archbishop of Canterbury, crafted a careful letter to Henry VIII expressing his shock at the news of Queen Anne Boleyn’s arrest. As Cranmer was writing his very carefully worded letter, the investigation, if it can be called that, wasn’t going so well as the men […]
Claire | May 3, 2020
On this day in 1536, 3rd May, Queen Anne Boleyn had just 16 days to live and she was now imprisoned in the Tower of London, albeit in the lavish Queen’s apartments. Her good friend, Thomas Cranmer, Archbishop of Canterbury, had heard news of Anne Boleyn’s arrest, and wrote to King Henry VIII regarding what […]
Claire | May 28, 2018
On this day in history, just four days before the coronation of Queen Anne Boleyn, and just the day before the coronation celebrations kicked off, Thomas Cranmer, the recently appointed Archbishop of Canterbury, proclaimed the validity of the marriage of Henry VIII and Anne Boleyn. This proclamation at Lambeth Palace was the result of a […]
Claire | September 12, 2017
On this day in history, Thursday 12th September 1555, Thomas Cranmer, Archbishop of Canterbury, was tried for heresy at the University Church of St Mary the Virgin at Oxford. The court was presided over by James Brooks, Bishop of Gloucester and the representative of the Pope, and Dr Martin and Dr Storey, Queen Mary I’s […]
Claire | May 17, 2017
On the same day that George Boleyn, Sir Henry Norris, Sir Francis Weston, William Brereton and Mark Smeaton were executed on Tower Hill, the marriage of King Henry VIII and his second wife, Anne Boleyn, was annulled. At a special court at Lambeth Palace, in the presence of Sir Thomas Audley, Lord Chancellor; Charles Brandon, […]
Claire | May 16, 2017
On this day in history, Tuesday 16th May, Sir William Kingston, Constable of the Tower of London, reported to Thomas Cromwell that “this day at dinner the queen said that she should go to a nunnery and is in hope of life.” But the previous day, Anne Boleyn had been sentenced to death for high […]
Claire | May 3, 2017
On this day in history, 3rd May 1536, a very shocked Thomas Cranmer, Henry VIII’s Archbishop of Canterbury, wrote to the king regarding the arrest of his good friend and patron, Queen Anne Boleyn. In the letter, Cranmer wrote: “I am clean amazed, for I had never better opinion of woman”, but then tempered this […]
Claire | May 16, 2016
On 16th May 1536, Archbishop Thomas Cranmer, the man who had once been Anne Boleyn’s family chaplain and a man she had helped rise to prominence at the English court, visited Anne at the Tower of London. It was a visit that seemed to lift Anne’s spirits and give her hope that all was not […]