BOLEYN (BOLENA), Anna. – Second wife of Henry VIII of England, b. in 1504 (?), d. in 1536. Daughter of Thomas B., an English gentleman of modest and recent nobility, she was in her early youth a maid of honour at the court of Francis I of France. Having returned to England permanently in 1526 and received at court, she was soon noticed by King Henry VIII, who fell desperately in love with her. The events of this love affair were the determining cause of the English schism. The king was married to Catherine of Aragon and had had several children by her, of whom only Mary survived; but, determined to marry Anne Boleyn, he wished the previous marriage annulled: alleging the pretext that Catherine had been the wife of his elder brother Arthur, although a dispensation for the marriage to the sister-in-law had been sought and obtained from Pope Julius II, he insisted on its annulment. The long debate led to the king’s open rebellion against the Church and to his proclamation as head of the English Church. A group of rebel bishops pronounced the sentence annulling Henry’s marriage to Catherine and pretended to legalise the new marriage, which in fact had already been secretly celebrated, surprising the good faith of a priest to whom it had been made to appear that a regular annulment of the first marriage had been pronounced by the Pope.
A. B. thus became queen of England and was solemnly crowned by Cranmer, Archbishop of Canterbury, who had adhered to the schism. A few months later she gave birth to a daughter, Elizabeth, whom Parliament declared the legitimate heir to the throne, excluding Mary, born of Henry’s marriage to Catherine of Aragon.
Subsequent events annulled this deliberate act of Parliament; for A. B.’s reign was brief. After vain hopes of a new maternity, awaited by Henry in his anxiety to have a male heir, he fell in love with a court maid, Jane Seymour, and showed his evident weariness of A. B. Court intrigues, hostility aroused against the Boleyns’ favourites, brought serious charges of infidelity and even the nefarious one of incestuous relations with her brother. It cannot be said that proof of these charges was ever reached, since the only testimonies were extorted under torture. The king, however, believed them, and in a summary trial condemned A. B. and her alleged accomplices to death. The queen was beheaded on 19 May 1536 in the courtyard of the Tower of London, facing death with great dignity.