Anne Boleyn
Anne Boleyn
Queen of England · Marquess of Pembroke
1501 – 1536
Biography
Educated at the French court and accomplished, witty, and ambitious in equal measure, she held Henry VIII at a calculated distance for seven years while he obtained his annulment from Catherine of Aragon. The marriage that finally took place in 1533 produced one daughter — the future Elizabeth I — and no surviving sons. Within three years she was tried on charges of adultery, incest, and treason that historians have generally judged fabricated, and beheaded at the Tower of London with a sword brought specially from Calais.
Events
The Act of Supremacy, passed by Parliament in November 1534, declared Henry VIII supreme head of the Church of England and severed jurisdictional ties with Rome. The break originated in Henry's refusal to accept Pope Clement VII's denial of his annulment from Catherine of Aragon and his determination to marry Anne Boleyn; it produced the dissolution of the English monasteries, the seizure of perhaps a fifth of the kingdom's wealth, and the foundation of the Anglican church.
Also there: Henry VIII, Catherine of Aragon
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