|
Anne Boleyn (, or )〔Jones, Daniel ''Everyman's English Pronouncing Dictionary'' 12th edition (1963)〕〔 entry "Boleyn"〕 ( 1501〔 – 19 May 1536) was Queen of England from 1533 to 1536 as the second wife of King Henry VIII, and Marquess of Pembroke in her own right.〔Ives, pp.158–59, p.388 ''n32'', p.389 ''n53''; Warnicke, p.116. Anne is also called "marchioness".〕 Henry's marriage to Anne, and her subsequent execution, made her a key figure in the political and religious upheaval that was the start of the English Reformation. Anne was the daughter of Thomas Boleyn, 1st Earl of Wiltshire, and his wife, Lady Elizabeth Howard, and was educated in the Netherlands and France, largely as a maid of honour to Claude of France. She returned to England in early 1522, to marry her Irish cousin James Butler, 9th Earl of Ormond; the marriage plans were broken up by Cardinal Wolsey, and instead she secured a post at court as maid of honour to Henry VIII's wife, Catherine of Aragon. Early in 1523 Anne was secretly betrothed to Henry Percy, son of the 5th Earl of Northumberland. In January 1524, Cardinal Wolsey broke the betrothal, Anne was sent back home to Hever Castle, and Percy was married to Lady Mary Talbot, to whom he had been betrothed since adolescence. In February/March 1526, Henry VIII began his pursuit of Anne. She resisted his attempts to seduce her, refusing to become his mistress – which her sister Mary had been. It soon became the one absorbing object of Henry's desires to annul his marriage to Queen Catherine so he would be free to marry Anne. When it became clear that Pope Clement VII would not annul the marriage, the breaking of the power of the Catholic Church in England began. In 1532, Henry granted Anne the Marquessate of Pembroke. Henry and Anne married on 25 January 1533. On 23 May 1533, Thomas Cranmer declared Henry and Catherine's marriage null and void; five days later, he declared Henry and Anne's marriage valid. Shortly afterwards, the Pope decreed sentences of excommunication against Henry and Cranmer. As a result of this marriage and these excommunications, the first break between the Church of England and Rome took place and the Church of England was brought under the King's control. Anne was crowned Queen of England on 1 June 1533. On 7 September, she gave birth to the future Queen Elizabeth I. Henry was disappointed to have a daughter rather than a son but hoped a son would follow and professed to love Elizabeth. Anne subsequently had three miscarriages, and by March 1536, Henry was courting Jane Seymour. Henry had Anne investigated for high treason in April 1536. On 2 May she was arrested and sent to the Tower of London, where she was tried before a jury of peers – which included Henry Percy, her former betrothed, and her own uncle, Thomas Howard – and found guilty on 15 May. She was beheaded four days later. Modern historians view the charges against her, which included adultery, incest, and witchcraft, as unconvincing. Following the coronation of her daughter Elizabeth as queen, Anne was venerated as a martyr and heroine of the English Reformation, particularly through the works of John Foxe. Over the centuries, she has inspired or been mentioned in numerous artistic and cultural works. As a result, she has retained her hold on the popular imagination. Anne has been called "the most influential and important queen consort England has ever had",〔Ives, p. xv.〕 since she provided the occasion for Henry VIII to annul his marriage to Catherine of Aragon, and declare his independence from Rome. ==Early years== Anne was the daughter of Thomas Boleyn, later Earl of Wiltshire and Earl of Ormond, and his wife, Lady Elizabeth Howard, daughter of Thomas Howard, 2nd Duke of Norfolk. Thomas Boleyn was a well respected diplomat with a gift for languages; he was also a favourite of King Henry VII, who sent him on many diplomatic missions abroad. Anne and her siblings grew up at Hever Castle in Kent. However, the siblings were born in Norfolk at the Boleyn home at Blickling. A lack of parish records from the period has made it impossible to establish Anne's date of birth. Contemporary evidence is contradictory, with several dates having been put forward by various historians. An Italian, writing in 1600, suggested that she had been born in 1499, while Sir Thomas More's son-in-law, William Roper, indicated a much later date of 1512. Her birth was most likely sometime between 1501 and 1507. As with Anne herself, it is uncertain when her two siblings were born, but it seems clear that her sister Mary was older than Anne. Mary's children clearly believed their mother had been the elder sister.〔The argument that Mary might have been the younger sister is refuted by firm evidence from the reign of Queen Elizabeth I that the surviving Boleyns knew Mary had been born before Anne, not after. See Ives, pp. 16–17 and Fraser, p. 119.〕 Most historians now agree that Mary was born in 1499. Mary's grandson claimed the Ormonde title in 1596 on the basis she was the elder daughter, which Elizabeth I accepted.〔Ives, pp. 16–17〕〔Fraser, p.119〕 Their brother George was born around 1504.〔Warnicke, p. 9〕〔Ives, p. 15〕 The academic debate about Anne's birth date focuses on two key dates: 1501 and 1507. Eric Ives, a British historian and legal expert, advocates the 1501 date, while Retha Warnicke, an American scholar who has also written a biography of Anne, prefers 1507. The key piece of surviving written evidence is a letter Anne wrote sometime in 1514. She wrote it in French to her father, who was still living in England while Anne was completing her education at Mechelen, in the Burgundian Netherlands, now Belgium. Ives argues that the style of the letter and its mature handwriting prove that Anne must have been about thirteen at the time of its composition, while Warnicke argues that the numerous misspellings and grammar errors show that the letter was written by a child. In Ives's view this would also be around the minimum age that a girl could be a maid of honour, as Anne was to the regent, Margaret of Austria. This is supported by claims by a chronicler from the late 16th century, who wrote that Anne was twenty when she returned from France.〔Ives, pp.18–20.〕 These findings are contested by Warnicke in several books and articles, and the evidence does not conclusively support either date.〔The date 1507 was accepted in Roman Catholic circles. The 16th-century author William Camden inscribed a date of birth of 1507 in the margin of his ''Miscellany''. The date was generally favoured until the late nineteenth century: in the 1880s, Paul Friedmann suggested a birth date of 1503. Art historian Hugh Paget, in 1981, first placed Anne Boleyn at the court of Margaret of Austria. See Eric Ives's biography ''The Life and Death of Anne Boleyn'' for the most extensive arguments favoring 1500/1501 and Retha Warnicke's ''The Rise and Fall of Anne Boleyn'' for her proposal of a birth year of 1507.〕 There are two independent contemporary sources for the 1507 date. Author Gareth Russell wrote a summary of the evidence and relates that Jane Dormer, Duchess of Feria, wrote her memoirs shortly before her death in 1612; in it the former lady-in-waiting and confidante to Queen Mary I wrote of Anne Boleyn: "She was convicted and condemned and was not yet twenty-nine years of age." William Camden wrote a history of the reign of Queen Elizabeth I and was granted access to the private papers of Lord Burghley and to the state archives. In that history, in the chapter dealing with Elizabeth's early life, he records in the margin that Anne was born in MDVII (1507). Anne's great great great-grandparents included a Lord Mayor of London, a duke, an earl, two aristocratic ladies, and a knight. One of them, Geoffrey Boleyn, had been a mercer and wool merchant before becoming Lord Mayor.〔Ives, p. 3.〕〔Fraser, pp. 116–17.〕 The Boleyn family originally came from Blickling in Norfolk, fifteen miles () north of Norwich.〔 At the time of Anne's birth, the Boleyn family was considered one of the most respected in the English aristocracy. Among her relatives, she numbered the Howards, one of the pre-eminent families in the land; and one of her ancestors included King Edward I of England. According to Eric Ives, she was certainly of more noble birth than Jane Seymour, Catherine Howard, and Catherine Parr, Henry VIII's three other English wives.〔Ives, p.4. "She was better born than Henry VIII's three other English wives".〕 The spelling of the Boleyn name was variable, as common at the time. Sometimes it was written as ''Bullen'', hence the bull heads which formed part of her family arms.〔Fraser, p.115〕 At the court of Margaret of Austria in the Netherlands, Anne is listed as ''Boullan''.〔 From there she signed the letter to her father as ''Anna de Boullan''.〔Ives, plate 14.〕 She is also referred to as "Anna Bolina"; this Latinised form is used in most portraits of her.〔 Anne's early education was typical for women of her class. In 1513 Anne was invited to join the schoolroom of Margaret of Austria and her four wards. Her academic education was limited to arithmetic, her family genealogy, grammar, history, reading, spelling, and writing. She developed domestic skills such as dancing, embroidery, good manners, household management, music, needlework, and singing. Anne learned to play games, such as cards, chess, and dice. She was also taught archery, falconry, horseback riding, and hunting.〔Wilkinson, p.12〕 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Anne Boleyn」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
|