On 28th April 1536, just four days before Queen Anne Boleyn’s arrest, it was clear that something was going on at the Tudor court. The king’s council was tied up in long meetings, Cromwell was consulting an expert on canon law, and Henry VIII’s eldest daughter, Mary, was being told “to be of good cheer” because things were going to get better…
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It is very suspect indeed when the sources tell us Henry was consulting with his chief minister and a canon lawyer for days on end, when he was in long morning to evening sessions with his council and then Nicholas Carew bagged the prize that George Boleyn was hoping for, which was a blow to his sister and queen, the same Nicholas Carew who was a champion of Jane Seymour the kings new sweetheart and the courtier who informed the Lady Mary to be of good cheer for soon water would be turned into wine, all very suspect indeed! All this happening yet this king would have his country believe and Europe also in the not so distant future that his doomed wife was an adulterous wh*re capable of incest and plotting murder! It was the last charge that was more shocking I believe than the other two, that a woman could be so ungrateful so wicked to want to slay with her lovers the one man who was gods appointed on earth to rule, who had elevated her to the highest social position in the land, this queen was to go to her grave tainted with the awful stains of this and the sin of adultery plus the ungodly sin of incest, these charges had to be so awful as to justify her death, what Cranmer thought history is silent yet he must have been very sad so be informed by the king that he wished to undo this once longed for union, that he Cranmer had helped to bring about, he loved the queen he was one of her circle a man of the reformist learning, on her death he had burst into tears and called her the queen of heaven, we can see Henry’s council also must have been wringing their heads with worry, now their sovereign wanted out of his second marriage and worse she was an anointed queen, Henry V111’s servants really earned their pay in trying to please their monarch, as for Mary the kings daughter she must have felt supremely happy, one can understand her euphoria her mothers enemy was about to be evicted, and she could only muse on what form it would take, sadly for her mother it had come too late, but we can safely say this unhappy girl must have felt complete and utter joy for the first time in years, no one seemed to pay heed to the impact on what course the kings actions would have on his youngest daughter however, the little girl who slept the sleep of the innocent in her cot far away in the green countryside of Hatfield in Hertfordshire was soon to have her life altered forever, historians later argued that her mothers death did not impact Elizabeth much as she was too young to remember her, but it must have had a psychological effect which maybe was to manifest itself in the panic attacks she suffered from in her adult years, at the time this being a cruel age feelings were not considered important, there was no knowledge of mental trauma the hormonal changes teenagers go through and insanity although it was a recognised illness was really swept under the carpet, fear – terror was seen as a real human emotion but stress that causes most ills was not known of, stress really could have been the major cause of Anne Boleyn’s miscarriages, so the baby Elizabeth was deemed perfectly comfortable in her household away from the intrigues of the court and the plotting of her mothers disgrace carried on, years later when Elizabeth was queen she prevaricated about the subject of marriage which caused her council much quandary, their queen was in no hurry to marry yet the country needed an heir, in her Father’s Day Henry V111’s council had it the complete opposite having to try to extricate him from his cursed marriages, with his daughter her councils main concern was trying to get her to marry, did any of them ever wonder why?