_Henry the Eighth and Anna Bolene._
LXXXVII. The fame that befel Alexander the Sixth, and just in the
same way, happened to Henry the Eighth of England, and his wife, or
rather concubine, Anna Bolene. Both these personages were guilty of
great crimes, and the dishonesty of Anna Bolene, was as notorious
as the incontinence of Henry. The king, hurried away by a criminal
passion for that lady, in order to possess her, repudiated unjustly his
virtuous queen Catherine; and Ann was not only an accomplice in the
unjust divorce, but was afterwards proved guilty of adultery. This was
sufficient with respect to their incontinence, to render their fame
odious to posterity. But Nicholas Saunders, urged by his indiscreet zeal,
being desirous of heightening to the utmost the turpitude of them both,
confounded the certain with the incredible; from whence it followed,
that many of the vulgar among the Catholics, believed the incredible as
certain facts.
LXXXVIII. Saunders says, that the love of Henry for Ann was not only
illicit, but most enormously incestuous; because, that long before he
knew her, he had had criminal conversation, not only with her mother,
but also with a sister of her’s, named Mary. He adds, that Anna Bolene,
according to the testimony of her own mother, was the daughter of the
said Henry. To strengthen the foregoing assertion, he says, this unhappy
woman, was born two years after Thomas Bolene the husband of her mother,
had been absent from his wife at the court of France, whither he had been
sent on an embassy by Henry: that, upon his return to England, he was
desirous of repudiating his wife, but the king interposed to prevent it;
and the adultress confessed to her husband, that the child he found in
his house was the daughter of the king. According to this relation, the
correspondence between Henry the Eighth and Anna Bolene, was shocking and
incestuous in three particulars.
LXXXIX. With regard to Anna Bolene herself, he represents her, from her
tender youth, to have been an infamous prostitute; for, he says, that at
fifteen years of age, she surrendered her person, to the embraces of two
of the domestics in her father’s house; that soon afterwards she went to
France, where her prostitution was so public and scandalous, that they
called her by the opprobrious name of the English Mare: that, after a
while, she introduced herself into the palace of Francis the First, who
was then king of France, and that this prince, was universally known to
have made use of the English prostitute, for the gratification of his
lewd inclinations: that upon her return to England, she was admitted as
a domestic into the houshold of Henry, where he fell violently enamoured
with her; but his solicitations to obtain her as a mistress, proved
abortive; for Anna, feigning herself to be a most virtuous person, made
her pretensions to modesty subservient to her views of ambition; and
always replied resolutely to the king’s intreaties, that no man but her
husband should have the dominion of her virginity; and upon this, the
unhappy Henry, blinded by his passion, solicited and obtained a divorce
from his queen Catherine, to enable him to marry Ann.
XC. There is nothing in this whole relation, which does not appear either
very difficult to be credited, or absolutely chimerical. The triple
incest of Henry, is so much out of the common course, and so horrible,
that nothing can excite our belief of it, but proofs which are clearer
than the sun at noon-day. That the gallantries of the king of France with
Anna Bolene, which were so public and notorious, should not have come
to the knowledge of Henry, is by no means credible; for irregularities
of this sort, committed by princes, are generally well known at their
own courts, and are soon communicated to those of other countries, and
especially, when they are so near together as those of London and Paris.
Neither is it credible that Henry, after he came to know that Ann had
deceived him with respect to her being a maid, and when he had gratified
the first cravings of his appetite, should not take a disgust to, or, at
least, put her away from him: Henry, I say, who was so delicate in these
matters, that he repudiated his fourth wife Ann of Cleves, for no other
reason than his coming to understand, that before she espoused him, she
had been under an engagement to marry another person. According to the
chronology of the English History, this relation is not only improbable,
but even impossible; because this tells us, that Anna Bolene was born in
1507, and Henry the Eighth was crowned in 1509; that in 1514 Anna went to
France in the suite of queen Claudia, who was the sister of Henry, and
wife of Francis the First; that Thomas Bolene did not go ambassador to
France till the year 1515; and that the return of Anna Bolene to London,
is placed between the years 1525 and 1527. From this account, there
results two manifest contradictions to Saunders’s relation: the first is,
that Anna Bolene, could not at the age of fifteen, and before her going
to France, have been guilty of the turpitudes which he charges her to
have committed with her father’s domestics; because, before she was eight
years old she went to France, and did not return till she had attained
the age of eighteen or twenty: the second is, that Anna Bolene was born,
not only before Thomas Bolene went ambassador to France, but before he
could have possibly been the Ambassador of Henry the Eighth; for Henry
was not crowned till the year 1509, and Anna Bolene was born two years
before. Finally, not only the English chronology, but Alexander Natalis,
in the eighth volume of his Ecclesiastical History, and Father Orleans,
in the second volume of his Revolutions of England, together with various
Catholic authors, dissent from the account given by Saunders.