Anne returned to England in early 1522, to marry her cousin James Butler, 9th Earl of Ormond; the marriage plans were broken off, and instead, she secured a post at court as maid of honour to Henry VIII's wife, Catherine of Aragon.

[17] An independent contemporary source supports the 1507 date: William Camden wrote a history of the reign of Elizabeth I and was granted access to the private papers of Lord Burghley and to the state archives.

[34] Anne stayed at the Court of Savoy in Mechelen from spring 1513 until her father arranged for her to attend Henry VIII's sister Mary, who was about to marry Louis XII of France in October 1514.

[35][36] In the Queen's household, she completed her study of French and developed interests in art, fashion, illuminated manuscripts, literature, music, poetry and religious philosophy.

[38] Though all knowledge of Anne's experiences in the French court is conjecture, even Ives suggests that she was likely to have made the acquaintance of King Francis I's sister, Marguerite de Navarre, a patron of humanists and reformers.

Marguerite de Navarre was also an author in her own right, and her works include elements of Christian mysticism and reform that verged on heresy, though she was protected by her status as the French king's beloved sister.

Sir Thomas Boleyn, being the son of the eldest daughter, believed the title properly belonged to him and protested to his brother-in-law, the Duke of Norfolk, who spoke to the King about the matter.

Henry, fearful the dispute could ignite civil war in Ireland, sought to resolve the matter by arranging an alliance between Piers's son James and Anne Boleyn.

[43] Her public début at a court event was at the Château Vert (Green Castle) pageant in honour of the Imperial ambassadors on 4 March 1522, playing "Perseverance" (one of the dancers in the spectacle, third in precedence behind Henry's sister Mary, and Gertrude Courtenay, Marchioness of Exeter).

[57] It is probable that Henry had thought of the idea of annulment (not divorce as commonly assumed) much earlier than this as he strongly desired a male heir to secure the Tudor claim to the crown.

[69] According to Maria Dowling, "Anne tried to educate her waiting-women in scriptural piety" and is believed to have reproved her cousin, Mary Shelton, for "having 'idle poesies' written in her prayer book.

[81] In 1532, Thomas Cromwell brought before Parliament a number of acts, including the Supplication against the Ordinaries and Submission of the Clergy, which recognised royal supremacy over the church, thus finalising the break with Rome.

On 23 May 1533, Cranmer (who had been hastened, with the Pope's assent, into the position of Archbishop of Canterbury recently vacated by the death of Warham) sat in judgement at a special court convened at Dunstable Priory to rule on the validity of Henry's marriage to Catherine.

[106] Henry now required his subjects to swear an oath attached to the First Succession Act, which effectively rejected papal authority in legal matters and recognised Anne Boleyn as queen.

She spent lavish amounts of money on gowns, jewels, head-dresses, ostrich-feather fans, riding equipment, furniture and upholstery, maintaining the ostentatious display required by her status.

[131] Whatever the cause, on the day that Catherine of Aragon was buried at Peterborough Abbey, Anne miscarried a baby which, according to the Imperial ambassador Eustace Chapuys, she had borne for about three and a half months, and which "seemed to be a male child".

Schofield claims that evidence for the power struggle between Anne and Cromwell comprises no more than "fly-by-night stories from Alesius and the Spanish Chronicle,[d] words of Chapuys taken out of context, and an untrustworthy translation of the Calendar of State Papers.

Sir Thomas Wyatt, the poet and friend of the Boleyns who was allegedly infatuated with her before her marriage to the King, was also imprisoned for the same charge but later released, most likely due to his or his family's friendship with Cromwell.

And to speak a truth, never prince had wife more loyal in all duty, and in all true affection, than you have ever found in Anne Boleyn: with which name and place I could willingly have contented myself, if God and your Grace's pleasure had been so pleased.

An anonymous manuscript of a poem O Death Rock Me Asleep that came into the possession of prolific 18th-century author John Hawkins, and now in the British Museum, was thought to be in the style of "the time of Henry VIII".

[174] Accompanied by two female attendants, Anne made her final walk from the Queen's House to the scaffold; she showed a "devilish spirit" and looked "as gay as if she was not going to die".

[182][183][184][185]It is thought that Anne avoided criticising Henry because she wished to save Elizabeth and her family from further consequences, but even under such extreme pressure, she did not confess guilt and indeed subtly implied her innocence in her appeal to those who might "meddle of my cause".

"[189] The execution, which consisted of a single stroke,[190] was witnessed by Thomas Cromwell; Charles Brandon, 1st Duke of Suffolk; the King's illegitimate son, Henry FitzRoy; and Sir Ralph Warren, Lord Mayor of London, as well as aldermen, sheriffs and representatives of the various craft guilds.

In his De Origine ac Progressu schismatis Anglicani (The Rise and Growth of the Anglican Schism), published in 1585, he was the first to write that Anne had six fingers on her right hand.

[201] Biographer Eric Ives evaluates the apparent contradictions in Anne's persona: To us she appears inconsistent—religious yet aggressive, calculating yet emotional, with the light touch of the courtier yet the strong grip of the politician—but is this what she was, or merely what we strain to see through the opacity of the evidence?

An example of Anne's direct influence in the reformed church is what Alexander Ales described to Queen Elizabeth as the "evangelical bishops whom your holy mother appointed from among those scholars who favoured the purer doctrine".

Anne was depicted as "sweet and cheerful" in her youth and enjoyed cards and dice games, drinking wine, French cuisine, flirting, gambling, gossiping and good jokes.

The Venetian diarist Marino Sanuto the Younger, who saw Anne when Henry VIII met Francis I at Calais in October 1532, described her as "not one of the handsomest women in the world; she is of middling stature, swarthy complexion, long neck, wide mouth, bosom not much raised ... eyes, which are black and beautiful".

[216] They included Queen Claude, of whose court Anne was a member, and Marguerite of Angoulême, who was a well-known figure during the Renaissance and held strong religious views that she expressed through poetry.

[226] In 18th-century Sicily, the peasants of the village of Nicolosi believed that Anne Boleyn, for having made Henry VIII a heretic, was condemned to burn for eternity inside Mount Etna.