‘I have received your letter by the Esquire Bouton, who presented to me your daughter, who was very welcome to me, and I hope to treat her in such a fashion that you will have reason to be content with it; at least be sure that until your return there need be no other intermediary between you and me than she; and I find her of such good address and so pleasing in her youthful age that I am more beholden to you for having sent her to me than you are to me’.
This letter demonstrates the remarkable regard in which Margaret held Thomas Boleyn and also the favour she showed his daughter. It is a mark of Anne’s intelligence that she made such a good impression so quickly and Thomas Boleyn must have felt that this letter confirmed his choice of Anne over her sister.
Thomas Boleyn was an excellent French speaker and Anne inherited his talent for languages. Although she knew little, if any, French before she left England she quickly picked up the language. Her first surviving letter, written to her father in the curious French of a beginner, shows the progress she had made in only a few short weeks. The fact that Thomas Boleyn preserved this letter amongst his papers until his death demonstrates just how proud he was of his daughter and of the impression she made in Brussels. The letter, as the first time that Anne’s voice is apparent in the sources, is useful to quote in full:
‘Sir, - I understand by your letter that you desire that I shall be a worthy woman when I come to the Court and you inform me that the queen will take the trouble to converse with me, which rejoices me much to think of talking with a person so wise and worthy. This will make me have greater desire to continue to speak French well and also spell especially because you have so enjoined it on me, and with my own hand I inform you that I will observe it the best I can. Sir, I beg you to excuse me if my letter is badly written, for I assure you that the orthography is from my own understanding alone, while the others were only written by my hand, and Semmonet tells me the letter but wants so that I may do it myself, for fear that it shall not be known unless I acquaint you, and I pray you that the light of [?] may not be allowed to drive away the will which you say you have to help me, for it seems to me that you are sure [?] you can, if you please, make me a declaration of your word, and concerning me be certain that there shall
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be neither [?] nor ingratitude which might check or efface my affection, which is determined to [?] as much unless it shall please you to order me, and I promise you that my love is based on such great strength that it will never grow less, and I will make an end to my [?] after having commended myself right humbly to your good grace. Written at [?Veure] by your very humble and very obedient daughter, Anna de Boullan’.
Anne’s French is eccentric and it is not always possible to understand what she meant to say but the length and content of the letter shows the progress she had made in the language and her enjoyment of her time at Brussels. She learned French quickly, as her father had hoped she would, and by 1514 it is clear that word had reached the English court of her fluency in the language.
When Anne arrived in Brussels in 1513, England was firmly allied with Spain and the Habsburg Empire against France. Both Maximilian and Ferdinand of Aragon had a common interest in their grandson, and common heir, the future Charles V. Charles was the son of Maximilian’s deceased eldest son Philip and Ferdinand’s eldest surviving daughter, Juana, Queen of Castile. Juana, although Queen of Castile in her own right through her mother, Isabella, had, by 1513, spent several years imprisoned on the grounds of insanity while her father ruled her kingdom on her behalf. Henry VIII, through his marriage to Catherine of Aragon the daughter of Ferdinand, naturally allied himself to their interests and, in 1511, had sent troops to aid Ferdinand in his war with France. In 1513 Henry joined the war personally and sailed to France with an army, besieging and winning two French cities. This was Henry’s first taste of war and he ‘returned to England back again with triumph and glory’. News of the victories would also have been celebrated at Margaret’s court and Anne would have been pleased with the continuing alliance between Margaret and her own country. Anne may also have been given the opportunity to meet Henry VIII for the first time when Margaret, Maximilian and Henry met at Lille during the war in late August 1513, although Anne’s presence is nowhere recorded at the meeting.
The betrothal between Margaret’s nephew and Mary Tudor had been agreed during the lifetimes of the couple’s fathers and Mary was always known in England as the Princess of Castile. Charles, as the heir to Spain, the Habsburg Empire and the Netherlands, was the greatest marriage prospect in Europe and Henry VIII was anxious for the marriage to be concluded as soon as he returned from France. According to Hall’s Chronicle he quickly set about making preparations to send Mary to Brussels when he received word from Margaret’s council that, while they would happily receive Mary Tudor in the Netherlands, they could not provide a dower for her without the further agreement of Ferdinand of Aragon. This was certainly a delaying tactic as ‘the kynge lyke a lovynge brother would not sende his syster wyldely without a dowar’.
Margaret was as dismayed and angry as Henry when she was told that Charles’s marriage to Mary Tudor could not take place in 1513 and she wrote to her father strongly urging him to continue in his alliance with England. Maximilian however refused to allow her to arrange the marriage and the following year, when Henry again attempted to send Mary to the Netherlands he was once again rebuffed. For Henry, this was the final straw and he began to look around for a new marriage for his sister and a new alliance. Ferdinand of Aragon had made a separate truce with France in April 1513 and by the spring of 1514 Maximilian was also considering a French alliance. Henry also decided on a French alliance, in spite of Margaret of Austria’s attempts to keep the English alliance in place.
Anne of Brittany, the woman who had supplanted Margaret as queen of France, died in January 1514, leaving her second husband, Louis XII of France a widower. Anne of Brittany bore her husband only two daughters and the aged Louis needed to remarry to secure the succession for his own son, rather than his son-in-law, Francis of Angouleme. There were rumours that Louis would seek to marry Margaret of Austria herself but, instead, perceiving the breakdown of Henry’s Habsburg alliance, Louis asked the English king for the hand of his sister. The marriage was quickly arranged, in spite of the thirty year age gap between the two parties, much to the dismay of
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Margaret of Austria. The marriage also had a profound effect on Anne Boleyn.
Word of Anne’s fluency in French had reached the English court by the time Mary Tudor’s French marriage was arranged and Thomas Boleyn was asked to recall his daughter so that she could go to France to serve the new French queen. Given the warm relationship between Thomas and Margaret, this was probably very far from his wishes for his daughter but he had no choice but to comply and wrote in 1514 requesting that Margaret release Anne from her household. Anne would have been dismayed to leave the most cultured court in Europe. She may also have borne the brunt of Margaret’s anger at the English alliance with France and the breaking of Charles’s betrothal. Certainly, news of Mary Tudor’s new betrothal was greeted with bitterness in the Netherlands. According to Hall’s Chronicle, ‘the Dutchmen heryng these newes were sory, and repented then that they receyved not the lady, and spake shamefully of this marriage, that a feble old & pocky man should mary so fayre a lady’. Margaret of Austria probably shared these sentiments and Anne’s last weeks in Brussels may have been uncomfortable. There was no time for her to return to England and she travelled directly to France to meet Mary Tudor. Anne had already spent over a year away from her home and it would have been a much more confident Anne who joined Mary Tudor at some point during the new French queen’s early days in France. Anne would also have been reunited with her sister, Mary, who had secured a place in Mary Tudor’s household and travelled with her from England.
If Margaret of Austria had been angered by news of Mary Tudor’s betrothal to Louis XII, the bride herself was completely dismayed. Louis XII was in his fifties and had long suffered from ill health, including gout. Mary Tudor on the other hand was only in her late teens and was renowned as the most beautiful princess in Europe. As the youngest of Henry VII and Elizabeth of York’s surviving children, Mary had always been spoiled by her brother and she had developed an independence unusual in a princess of her time. When she was told by her brother of the marriage he had arranged for her, she refused it. Finally, she and Henry reached a compromise of which she reminded him later:
‘For the good of peace and for the furtherance of your affairs you moved me to marry with my lord and late husband, King Louis of France, whose soul God pardon. Though I understood that he was very aged and sickly, yet for the advancement of the said peace, and for the furtherance of your causes, I was contented to conform myself to your said motion, so that if I should fortune to survive the said late king I might with your good will marry myself at my liberty without your displeasure. Whereunto, good brother, you condescended and granted, as you well know, promising unto me that in such case you would never provoke or move me but as mine own heart and mind should be best pleased; and that wheresoever I should dispose myself, you would wholly be contented with the same. And upon that, your good comfort and faithful promise, I assented to the said marriage, which else I would never have granted to, as at the same time I shewed unto you more at large’.
Henry would probably have said anything to ensure that his sister agreed to the marriage and he repeated his promise to Mary on the beach at Dover before she sailed for France. Mary Boleyn, who was waiting with Mary Tudor’s other attendants, may well have witnessed the princess’s distress as she took her leave of her brother at Dover on 2 October 1514 and she would have reported this to her sister when they were together in France.
It is unclear when Anne joined Mary Tudor in France. She may perhaps have been present at Mary’s marriage on 9 October in the cathedral at Abbeville. Her absence from a list of ladies retained by Louis XII to serve his wife suggests that she had not yet joined the French queen at the time of the marriage and she may have been retained by an angry Margaret of Austria. If this was the case, she missed the major trauma in Mary Tudor’s household when her husband sent all but a few of her English ladies home to England. While this was a trauma for Mary Tudor, the fact that both Mary and Anne Boleyn were amongst the few English ladies remaining with the
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French queen was advantageous to them and they would have found themselves often in close proximity to the queen.
In spite of her distaste for her elderly husband, Mary Tudor quickly settled into married life with Louis and she was an exemplary wife towards him. The great contrast between the aged king and his lively wife did however continue to cause controversy and it is possible that there were some rumours surrounding Mary Tudor’s behaviour. According to the sixteenth century writer, the Seigneur de Brantome, Mary’s relationship with the husband of her stepdaughter, Francis of Angouleme, caused particular comment. According to Brantome, Mary and Francis quickly fell in love with each other and they were close to consummating their relationship when Monsieur De Grignaux, a member of the court, noticed what was happening. According to Brantome, M. De Grignaux recognised the danger that Francis was in from the predatory Mary and warned him saying:
‘”What would you be at? See you not this woman, keen and cunning as she is, is fain to draw you to her, to the end you may get her with child? But an if she come to have a son, what of you? You are still plain Comte d’Angouleme, and never king of France, as you hope to be’.
Francis was attracted to Mary and it is possible that she may have shared something of this. However, she had very little time to even consider being unfaithful to Louis and she and her ladies lived quietly in Paris during her brief time as queen. Louis XII had been rejuvenated by his marriage to Mary, but it was a temporary recovery and, on 1 January 1515, he died after less than three months of marriage. Mary Tudor apparently fainted on hearing the news of her husband’s death.
As the widow of a king who had no sons, Mary Tudor was expected to spend time in mourning and seclusion whilst it was established that there was no possibility that she would bear the king a posthumous son. Anne Boleyn, as one of Mary’s attendants, shared in her mistress’s mourning and she retired with the French Queen to the palace of Cluny. Anne would have braced herself for a number of boring months in seclusion and it is unlikely that she, or any of Mary Tudor’s other attendants, had any idea of the dramatic events that would take place whilst Mary was supposed to be mourning for her husband.
When Mary Tudor had stood on the beach at Dover and begged her brother to remember his promise to her she already had her second husband in mind. Charles Brandon had been a childhood companion of Henry VIII and the king had created him Duke of Suffolk. Mary Tudor and Suffolk were attracted to each other in England and Mary later wrote to her brother describing Suffolk as one ‘to whom I have always been of good mind, as well you know’. Henry did indeed know of his sister’s affection for his friend and before sending him to France Henry insisted that Suffolk promised that he would not seek to marry Mary. Henry was satisfied with this promise and Suffolk arrived in France soon after Louis XII’s death in order to bring Mary home to England.
Anne and the other ladies were probably glad of the interruption to their seclusion afforded by the appearance of the English lords. For Mary Tudor, Suffolk’s arrival heralded a way out of her predicament. Francis of Angouleme, now Francis I of France, had been showing Mary unwanted attentions of which Anne and the other ladies would have been aware and alarmed. According to a letter sent by Mary to her brother: