Portrait Of Elizabeth I So Called The Sieve Portrait By Cornelius Ketel, C. 1580-83

Portrait of Elizabeth I so called “The Sieve Portrait” by Cornelius Ketel,  c. 1580-83

The Tudors vs. History:  20/?

William Peto, along with being the confessor of the Princess Mary, was “a friend of Thomas More”; in the future he would become a “one-time member of Reginald Pole’s Italian circle”. More about his sermon, here.

– source for “” quotes: Fires of Faith, Eamon Duffy

Two years after this sermon (which heavily implied Anne deserved the end of ‘Jezebel’, whom, in the parable, was murdered by a mob; by being pushed out of a high-storied window), Henry VIII passed an act that made the slander of his marriage to Anne Boleyn punishable by high treason.  Parliament the same year, also passed a decree that “in the event of the King dying before [Anne Boleyn], the latter is to be regent and absolute governess of her children and kingdom.” By November 1534, the Treasons Act was passed, which made it high treason to “maliciously wish, will or desire by words or writing, or by craft imagine, invent, practise, or attempt any bodily harm to be done or committed to […] the queen’s [person], or to deprive them of any of their dignity, title or name of their royal estates.”

(further requests in this series available upon commission/ ko-fi / tip jar*)  

Jodie Turner-Smith and Mark Stanley as Anne Boleyn and Henry VIII in Anne Boleyn (2021)

Anne Boleyn’s Pregnancies | Dec 1533 - July 1534 Premature Birth/Stillborn (2/3)

“Anne had rapidly become pregnant in December 1532, and she was pregnant again just over a year later, three or four months after Elizabeth was born. Henry associated virility and sexual potency with having children; the birth of Elizabeth reassured him, as did the second pregnancy, and he was quite happy that he would have a son this time. By April, the queen’s condition was obvious, and a portrait medal was struck to commemorate the anticipated birth of a son. Henry’s confidence was seen in the highly elaborate cradle which was ordered from his own goldsmith, with Tudor roses, precious stones, gold-embroidered bedding, and cloth of gold baby clothes. 

By the summer of 1534, Anne was well advanced into her pregnancy, and in June, she was reported to be in good health. The baby was due around the end of July, but before the Queen could take to her chamber, something went terribly wrong and it was born prematurely; it was either stillborn, or died very soon after birth. Anne gave birth to her child when she was about eight months pregnant, and the baby would have been near full-term; the physical and emotional pain that Anne must have felt at this loss is heartbreaking. The physical effects that this may have had on Anne include insomnia, loss of weight, and withdrawal from the world; she may also have experienced ‘empty arms syndrome’, the feeling that she should be holding her child.  

The king left Hampton Court in all haste and abandoned his grieving wife. The silence of the royal nursery and the empty silver cradle, perhaps, too much for the a hardened king - and one well versed in loss - to bear. Anne had promised Henry sons and heirs, but had only delivered a daughter and a dead child, which may well have been a boy. In the king’s eyes, she had failed him; with Henry’s insecurities awakened, there would be no room for further disappointments.”

“Has Anne Boleyn in these pages appeared the creature of evil which her enemies (and it must be borne in mind that it is almost entirely from the writings of her enemies that we have to disentangle her history) represented her to be? If so, the attempt which has been made to consider her without prejudice has failed. That she was proud, ambitious, a foe to her foes, even to vindictiveness, given to speaking her mind, careless of speech, gaiety-loving, is evident. But she was also brave, true to her friends, lavish with her gifts where liking or charity led her, sincere in her religious opinions, and withal a woman of genuine intellectual power. In the cruel, immoral, avaricious, treacherous and lying age of the Tudors, she crosses the scene a brilliant, perplexing […] figure, and vanishes into the darkness, still only in her youthful womanhood. History — considered in the light of a record of personages, not of peoples — would be more intriguing were there more in it such as Anne the Queen.”

— The Life of Anne Boleyn (1924), Philip W. Sergeant  

My love. My Queen.