Anne Boleyn: Henry VIII's Obsession by Elizabeth Norton Page A

Henry never knew passion like that which he felt for Anne Boleyn and, almost from the moment that she first came to his attention, she was his truest love and his obsession.
    Anne Boleyn was well aware of Henry’s love for her and worked hard to ensure that she maintained his interest. Although she always stopped short of consummating the relationship she and Henry also developed some degree of physical relationship over time and this may have been on the occasion of their promise to marry. In one letter Henry ended with ‘wishing myself (especially of an evening) in my sweetheart’s arms, whose pretty duckies [breasts] I trust shortly to kiss’. Anne was not entirely chaste in response to the king’s ardent pursuit and it may have been all she could do to fend him off when she was with him. When Anne finally consented to be intimate with Henry she can never have imagined that it would be over five years before her marriage and the full consummation of their relationship would occur.
    Anne must have foreseen that there would be difficulties ahead although she cannot have known just how long the journey to marriage would be. On 5 May 1527, Henry gave a banquet in honour of the French ambassadors and publicly led Anne out as his partner for the first time. Twelve days later a secret ecclesiastical court opened in London to try the validity of the king’s marriage and, as Anne and Henry hoped, to clear the way for them to marry. In the spring of 1527 Anne believed that her marriage was imminent, providing that Henry could quickly obtain his divorce from Catherine of Aragon.

 
    CHAPTER 7
     
    THE KING’S GREAT MATTER
     
    Anne and Henry believed in 1527 that it would be a relatively simple matter to secure his divorce. Henry’s wife, Catherine of Aragon, had turned forty in 1525 and it was clear to everyone that she would bear Henry no further children. Henry and Catherine had only one surviving child, a daughter, Mary, and Henry believed that the entire world would agree that it was reasonable for him to make a new marriage to a younger and more fertile woman. He also knew that he had very good pretext for a divorce as Catherine was the widow of Henry’s elder brother, Arthur.
    Catherine of Aragon had married Arthur, Prince of Wales on 14 November 1501 at St Paul’s Cathedral. The marriage had been a major ceremonial event of the reign of Henry VII, Henry VIII’s father, and following their marriage, Catherine and Arthur travelled to Ludlow to rule his principality. The marriage was destined to be short lived however and Arthur died at Easter 1502, leaving Catherine a young widow and the young Henry VIII as prince of Wales. Neither Henry VII nor Catherine’s parents, Ferdinand of Aragon and Isabella of Castile, wanted to lose their alliance and the young Henry was quickly betrothed to his brother’s widow. The Bible was known to be contradictory on the subject of marriage with a deceased brother’s wife and, to ensure that the marriage was not invalid, a dispensation was obtained from Pope Julius II allowing the couple to marry when Henry came to the throne in 1509.
    Henry had been happy to marry Catherine in 1509 but, when he finally made the decision to marry Anne, he decided to use the possible doubts over his marriage to secure his divorce. In the Bible, Leviticus expressly states that a brother shall not marry his dead brother’s wife and, if he does, the couple shall remain childless. Henry and Catherine’s eldest son had died within a few weeks of his birth and, following this birth, Catherine experienced a sequence of miscarriages and stillbirths. The only exception was the birth in 1516 of Princess Mary but, as a girl, Mary was not enough for Henry. When he came to examine his marriage to Catherine he considered his lack of sons to be tantamount to childlessness. So he was confident that his marriage would quickly be shown to be against God’s law and thus invalid. The Bible was in fact less clear cut