Anne Boleyn

Anne Boleyn, the second wife of Henry VIII and mother of Elizabeth I, was born around 1501, probably at Blickling in Norfolk or Hever in Kent. She was a daughter of the diplomat Thomas Boleyn, later Earl of Wiltshire, and Elizabeth Howard, daughter of the Duke of Norfolk. As a girl she served at the Habsburg court of Margaret of Austria in the Netherlands and then for several years in France in the household of Queen Claude, an upbringing that gave her unusual polish and a command of French manners and learning.

Returning to England in the early 1520s, Anne joined the household of Catherine of Aragon. By about 1526 Henry VIII was pursuing her, and she declined to become his mistress as her sister Mary had been. The king's determination to marry her became entangled with his case for annulling his marriage to Catherine, a dispute that dragged on from 1527 and ultimately drove the break between the English church and Rome. Anne favoured religious reform and promoted evangelical books and clerics at court.

In 1532 Henry created her Marquess of Pembroke in her own right, and the couple married secretly in January 1533. Thomas Cranmer, the new Archbishop of Canterbury, declared the king's first marriage null that May, and Anne was crowned queen at Westminster on 1 June 1533. In September she gave birth to a daughter, the future Elizabeth I. The expected son did not follow: subsequent pregnancies ended in failure, including a miscarriage in January 1536, and her position weakened as the king's affection shifted toward Jane Seymour.

In May 1536 Anne was arrested and charged with adultery with several men, incest with her brother George, and treason. Tried by a court of peers presided over by her uncle the Duke of Norfolk, she was convicted on evidence that historians have generally regarded as contrived. Her marriage was declared invalid, and on 19 May 1536 she was beheaded by a French swordsman within the Tower of London, the first English queen to be executed. She was buried in the Tower chapel of St Peter ad Vincula. Her daughter Elizabeth acceded to the throne in 1558.