The Six Wives of Henry VIII

by Alison Weir

The most famous portrait of her is that in the National Portrait Gallery, a copy of a lost original, painted between 1533 and 1536. The Gallery portrait, as well as other versions (notably at Windsor Castle, Hever Castle, and the Deanery at Ripon), once formed part of a long gallery set of royal portraits, popular in Elizabethan and Jacobean times.

She loved gambling, played both cards and dice, had a taste for wine, and enjoyed a joke.

Whatever the extent of Anne’s sexual experience in France, however, she was certainly much more discreet than her sister Mary, for no breath of scandal attached itself to her at the time.

In 1525, the King’s interest in Anne reawakened. He was intrigued by her grace and her sharp wit, while her sophistication and sexual allure were in delightful contrast to Queen Katherine’s piety and grave dignity. Anne was twenty-four, Katherine approaching forty: in every way Anne was in direct contrast to his ageing wife. He himself was still magnificent, larger than life, in his middle thirties, and ripe for an affair. When he looked at Anne, he found himself drawn to her as he had been to no woman before her; and in view of the ease with which he had made his past conquests, he did not doubt that he would succeed in seducing her.

Anne was now constantly in the King’s company. She ate with him, prayed with him, hunted with him, and danced with him, but she did not sleep with him.

It was a brief idyll: when the weather was fair, Henry and Anne would ride out hunting or hawking every afternoon, not returning until late in the evening, or would go walking in Windsor Great Park. At other times they occupied themselves with the pastimes they both enjoyed: cards and dice, music, poetry, and dancing.

There is no evidence, however – despite rumours to the contrary – that Anne Boleyn surrendered to the King before the autumn of 1532.

This is substantiated, not only by the King’s repeated denials that she was his mistress in the sexual sense, but also by the fact that, once the affair was consummated, Anne became pregnant immediately and conceived regularly thereafter. Of course, there were rumours that she had borne children in secret before then, but they were without foundation, for it is certain that if Anne had conceived during these early years, the King would have moved heaven and earth to have the child born in wedlock, and many people would have known about it.

Towards Anne Boleyn Katherine never betrayed any sign of jealousy, even though she believed – and continued to believe even after Henry’s outright denial of the fact in November 1529 – that he and Anne were lovers.