616. Elizabeth I: The Fall of the Axe (Part 1)

Summary

The Rest Is History – Ep. 616: Elizabeth I: The Fall of the Axe (Part 1)

Original Airdate: November 10, 2025
Hosts: Tom Holland and Dominic Sandbrook
Guest: Ian Mortimer

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Overview

This episode marks the launch of a major series on Elizabeth I, focusing on the tumultuous early years of her life and the perilous court politics that shaped her. Tom Holland and Dominic Sandbrook, joined by historian Ian Mortimer, set out to explore Elizabeth’s improbable path to the throne, the traumatic fall of Anne Boleyn, and the seismic shifts in English power, religion, and dynasty. With gripping storytelling and sharp analysis, they dissect the Tudor family saga and its wider religious and international context.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. The Myth and Legacy of Elizabeth I

• Gloriana and Elizabethan Image-Building
  • Elizabeth’s legacy as "Gloriana" is discussed, as shaped by Edmund Spenser’s Faerie Queene and later cultural depictions.
    • “This is a queen who's all about glory... that image still has power because of Elizabethan propaganda.” – Dominic Sandbrook [04:00]
    • Her victory over the Spanish Armada in 1588 remains foundational to English identity, likened to Trafalgar and the Battle of Britain.
  • Elizabeth’s dual legacy:
    • “I think she’s easily one of the most adept and most effective of England’s rulers. But there are those who say she was indecisive, even vindictive..." – Ian Mortimer [08:25]
  • She is not only admired but "kind of loved," uniquely among English monarchs.

2. Elizabeth’s Precarious Childhood and Upbringing

• Survival Against the Odds
  • Elizabeth’s early life is described as a nightmarish fairy tale:
    • “She’s three when mummy has her head chopped off by daddy... then a stepfather abuses her, then she’s menaced by a half-sister who locks her up in the Tower.” – Dominic Sandbrook [10:25]
  • These traumas forge her political acumen and wariness, vital for her future rule.
  • The Tudor context: her birth as a girl was a bitter disappointment despite elaborate preparations for a heir.
    • “There is no national rejoicing... it’s a crushing disappointment that the newborn heir is not a boy, it’s a girl.” – Dominic Sandbrook [13:00]

3. The Weight of Tudor Kingship and Need for a Male Heir

• Henry VIII’s Motivation and Character
  • Henry VIII: Athletic, charismatic, but deeply insecure due to the contested legitimacy of the Tudor line.
    • “The Tudors should not be there. They're usurpers. The Wars of the Roses may not feel over. There are others who think they shouldn't be on the throne.” – Ian Mortimer [18:56]
  • The dynasty’s survival hinges on a “spare” son; Henry obsesses over this, setting the whole marital drama in motion.

4. The Marital Saga: From Catherine of Aragon to Anne Boleyn

• Catherine of Aragon’s Failure to Produce a Male Heir
  • Despite being beloved and competent (“she wins at Flodden, rules as regent”), her inability to have a son is fatal.
    • “He spells it out: If I have a daughter, once she marries, her husband becomes her governor, and then he basically governs the realm.” – Dominic Sandbrook [21:51]
• Anne Boleyn’s Rise
  • Anne is unconventional: not a classic beauty, not royal or truly aristocratic, but brings “French glamour, intellectual sharpness, and evangelical ideas.”
    • “She’s a spiky, acerbic, really interesting personality. And she knows how to play Henry.” – Ian Mortimer [29:25]
  • She withholds sex until marriage, prompting Henry to break with Rome to get an annulment.
    • “She tells him, ‘I would rather lose my life than my honesty.’” – Dominic Sandbrook [30:08]

5. The English Reformation Unfolds

• Henry’s Great Matter and the Break with Rome
  • Political and theological maneuvering—especially via Thomas Cranmer—enables Henry to declare himself Supreme Head of the Church of England.
    • “Thomas Cranmer and his scholars managed to convince Henry that his power as King is superior to the Pope’s.” – Dominic Sandbrook [34:12]
  • Anne is crowned Queen June 1, 1533, while visibly pregnant.

6. The Birth of Elizabeth and the Fallout

• Elizabeth as Disappointment and Political Pawn
  • Henry’s initial bitter disappointment is soothed by hopes for a future son, but Elizabeth’s legitimacy is precarious from the start.
    • “She’s described as a splendid image of chastity, but also as somewhat big with child..." – Dominic Sandbrook [37:39]
  • Acts of Parliament declare Elizabeth heir, disinheriting Mary and making any challenge high treason.
    • “If you call anyone but Anne and Elizabeth Queen or Princess—targeting Mary—that is high treason.” – Ian Mortimer [45:15]
• Mary’s Humiliation
  • Anne, “viciously” jealous, engineers Mary’s demotion from Princess to “the Lady Mary” and reduces her household, inflicting exile and public humiliation.
    • “She’s sent only with two attendants and refuses to acknowledge her own bastardy. Anne takes away all her jewels—like confiscating her iPhone!” – Dominic Sandbrook [46:11]

7. Anne Boleyn’s Decline and Fall

• Anne’s Failures and Henry’s Wandering Eye
  • Miscarriages and an increasingly “shrewish” reputation doom Anne at court; Henry is drawn to Jane Seymour.
    • “Ominously for Anne, Henry's eye is starting to stray. By 1535, he's off to Wolf Hall to meet Jane Seymour’s parents.” – Dominic Sandbrook [52:03]
• The Final Catastrophe
  • Devastating miscarriage follows Henry’s jousting accident; Catherine of Aragon’s death removes a rival but fails to save Anne.
  • The infamous arrest:
    • “She gets a summons from the Council, accused of adultery... taken by barge to the Tower, never sees Elizabeth again.” – Ian Mortimer [59:25]
• The Show Trial and Execution
  • Convicted of adultery (with five men, including incest charges with her brother), a sentence of burning or beheading.
    • “She’s put on trial in the Tower, the first Queen of England to face such a thing. But historians don’t think any charges are true.” – Dominic Sandbrook [61:30]
  • Anne agrees to annulment (rendering Elizabeth illegitimate) in hope of mercy, but no pardon comes.
    • “The poorest subject the King hath justice... At this, Anne only laughs. Her laughter is very bitter.” – Ian Mortimer [59:57]
  • Execution by swordsman on May 19, 1536; Anne’s final words hope to secure kindness for Elizabeth.
    • “She says: I pray God save the King and send him long to reign over you, for a gentler nor more merciful prince was there never... she doesn’t believe it. But she hopes it will help Elizabeth.” – Dominic Sandbrook [63:33]

8. Aftermath and Elizabeth’s Precarious Status

• Henry Marries Jane Seymour
  • Jane delivers the much-desired son, Edward, in 1537 (Jane dies shortly after).
• Where Does That Leave Elizabeth?
  • Now declared a bastard, stripped of the title Princess, and tied forever to the memory of her “traitor” mother.
    • “Elizabeth is now the daughter of somebody who's been erased from the annals as a traitor, an adulteress, and a witch. Where will this lead?” – Ian Mortimer [67:43]

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• "She has this thrilling peroration: ‘I know I have the body of a weak and feeble woman, but I have the heart and stomach of a king...’" – Dominic Sandbrook on Elizabeth at Tilbury [05:11]
• “She's not on the throne because everything went according to plan—her entire life is a hideous fairy tale.” – Dominic Sandbrook [10:25]
• "I think in part (Anne's cruelty to Mary) is jealousy of Mary’s lineage, but also because Mary refuses to play the game Henry wants.” – Dominic Sandbrook [46:41]
• “Shappuys, the imperial ambassador, describes Elizabeth’s ceremonial baptism. A herald at the church door proclaims her Princess of England.” – Dominic Sandbrook [44:41]
• “She’s accused of adultery with five men... then incest... conspiracy to kill her husband. None of it’s true. Henry wants her eliminated and goes to any lengths to do it.” – Dominic Sandbrook [61:30]
• “At her execution, Anne says, ‘I pray God save the King’... she doesn’t believe it, but she’s hoping it will encourage him to look more kindly on Elizabeth.” – Dominic Sandbrook [63:33]

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Timestamps for Important Segments

• Elizabeth’s image and the legacy of Gloriana: [03:14–08:25]
• Elizabeth’s traumatic upbringing: [10:25–13:00]
• The imperative for a male heir in Tudor politics: [18:56–21:51]
• Anne Boleyn’s rise and character: [25:03–30:37]
• The break with Rome / Reformation dynamics: [33:39–37:22]
• Birth of Elizabeth / Declaring heirs: [37:39–46:10]
• Mary's downfall and humiliation: [46:11–50:55]
• Anne Boleyn’s miscarriages and Henry’s affairs: [51:25–52:58]
• The fall of Anne Boleyn—trail, execution, and Elizabeth’s new status: [59:25–67:43]

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Tone & Style

The episode blends erudition with wit and subtle irreverence, giving historical figures vivid personalities. The hosts’ banter is sharp yet respectful of the subject, making the complex Tudor story accessible and resonant even to non-specialists.

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Summary

This enthralling first part traces the rise and fall of Anne Boleyn and the highly fraught context in which Elizabeth I was born and raised. From disappointment at her birth, through political machinations and brutal executions, the tale sets up Elizabeth’s ascent against the odds—a story of trauma, survival, and the forging of a legend. Tune into Part 2 to discover how the young Elizabeth navigates her perilous inheritance.

Transcript

[Tom Holland]

Thank you for listening to the Rest Is History. For weekly bonus episodes, ad free listening, early access to series and membership of our much loved chat community, go to therestishistory.com and join the club that is thereestishistory.com.

[Dominic Sandbrook]

This episode is sponsored by Hive.

[Tom Holland]

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[Dominic Sandbrook]

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[Dominic Sandbrook]

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[Tom Holland]

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[Dominic Sandbrook]

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[Dominic Sandbrook]

This episode is brought to you by TikTok. Believe it or not, history isn't just in textbooks.

[Tom Holland]

It comes to life every day on TikTok. Millions of people are exploring the history of music, fashion, food and art, and discovering new facts about the things they love.

[Dominic Sandbrook]

One scroll could take you from the roots of jazz to the flavours of ancient kitchens, and the next might reveal a quirky fact about how modern traditions came to be.

[Tom Holland]

Discover the past in new ways on TikTok, where curiosity never gets old. High above all, a cloth of state.

[Ian Mortimer]

Was spread and a rich throne as bright as sunny day, on which there sat most brave, embellished with royal robes and gorgeous array, a maiden queen that shone as Titan's ray in glistering gold and peerless precious stone so that was the great poem, the Fairy Queen by Edmund Spenser. And he is really laying it on, isn't he, Tom? In praise of perhaps the greatest of all English monarchs, Elizabeth I. Gloriana, as he calls her in the poem. A queen famous for her willpower, her courage, her beauty, and her dedication to.

[Tom Holland]

England and England's glory.

[Dominic Sandbrook]

Yeah, well, I mean, the name Gloriana suggests it, that this is a queen who's all about glory. You know, that is absolutely the image that she still has today, and it derives from poems like the Fairy Queen. Elizabethan propaganda was incredible. And we would associate her with, I guess, a kind of golden age, the spring flowering of English literature. So Shakespeare and Spenser, of course, and Marlow and the exploration of the globe by English sea dogs. So Sir Francis Drake and Sir Walter Raleigh, and of course, the defeat in 1588 of the Spanish Armada. And I guess that that is a triumph for English arms that ranks in the national mythology alongside, I guess, Trafalgar, which we've just been doing recently, and the Battle of Britain, wouldn't you say?

[Ian Mortimer]

Yes.

[Dominic Sandbrook]

I mean, it's kind of up there in the pantheon.

[Ian Mortimer]

She's one of the genuinely titanic figures of English history. I mean, the comparison with Nelson and Churchill is a good one because in each of those cases, they define themselves against what appears to be an overwhelming foreign adversary with a threat of invasion.

[Dominic Sandbrook]

They do, yes. And more than that, they, like Nelson, like Churchill, Elizabeth finds the words of defiance that inspire her people and which I think still kind of have a power to stir the blood of a patriotic Englishman today. And Dominic, I see you smiling as I say that. So she has this thrilling peroration. I know I have the body of a weak and feeble woman, but I have the heart and stomach of a king, and have a king of England too, and think foul scorn that Palmer or Spain or any prince of Europe should dare to invade the borders of my realm. And so she is speaking those words in August 1588, as she rallies troops who've gathered at Tilbury in Essex in readiness for a landing on English soil of a Spanish army led by the Duke of Parma, who is the most feared general in Europe. But of course, Dominic, that landing never happens.

[Ian Mortimer]

It doesn't happen, but, I mean, that's like saying Bonaparte's invasion never happened. And that doesn't diminish Nelson's greatness.

[Dominic Sandbrook]

No, because it. Because the. The Spanish Armada is defeated, first of all by Protestant ships and then by Protestant wind. Right.

[Ian Mortimer]

And by Protestant rhetoric before that, thanks to Elizabeth, surely.

[Dominic Sandbrook]

Absolutely, yeah.

[Ian Mortimer]

And I guess that moment. So just as if you take the example of Nelson or the example of Churchill, both of those become legendary immediately. They become folk stories that become foundational moments in Britain's national identity. That's true of Elizabeth at Tilbury in England's national identity, isn't it? Right away, it is embedded in the national imagination.

[Dominic Sandbrook]

Yeah. Well, I mean, it's Aaron Spencer, who's writing the Faerie Queen in the 1890s, so, you know, less than a decade after that speech. And he portrays Elizabeth in all kinds of different ways. So there's Gloriana, but there is also this kind of Amazonian figure called Britom, who is a. She's a kind of peerless female knight, much better than most of the male knights in the poem. And all who see her are awestruck by her. So to quote Spencer, it seemed that Bellona, in that warlike wise to them, appeared with shield and armor fit. And this sense of Elizabeth as a warrior queen, you get it in paintings, in dramas, in novels and films. So most Recently, I guess, 2007, Cate Blanchett going the full Galadriel in Elizabeth the Golden Age. So I think that four and a half centuries on, she remains definitely, I think, the most generally admired of England's rulers. But I think also she's kind of loved in a way that most English kings and queens tend not to be. So if you think of Judi Dench winning an Oscar in Shakespeare in Love, I mean, she's literally on the screen for about three minutes.

[Ian Mortimer]

Yeah.

[Dominic Sandbrook]

And that Oscar, I think, in part, was for Elizabeth as well as for Judy Dench. And the idea is of her as a virgin queen who's married to her people, keeping England's enemies at bay, guarding them from civil war, good Queen Bess, all of that, don't you think? I think she's kind of loved as well as admired.

[Ian Mortimer]

I totally do. And putting my cards on the table, I think she is easily one of the most adept and most effective of England's rulers. And we did a series about Mary, Queen of Scots, you know, another woman ruling at a similar time, who makes very. A series of very bad choices. Elizabeth makes a series of very good ones. She's very good at politics. That said, there is a counter argument, which some historians, you know, in the late 20th century began to develop, that actually she's indecisive, she's vindictive. You know, this is that this is the sort of portrait of Elizabeth that you get with the kind of, you know, she hasn't got any teeth.

[Dominic Sandbrook]

Yeah, she's smelly.

[Ian Mortimer]

Yeah. All of this kind of stuff, which is very much the late Elizabeth. But I suppose, you know, there is this tension between the two visions of Elizabeth. The first, on the one hand, she's brilliant, she's Gloriana, and then the other actually knows she has feet of clay, and she creates problems that end up, you know, escalating to the civil wars of the 17th century. That's the counter argument.

[Dominic Sandbrook]

I mean, I think that in whether you're. You're lauding her or damning her, I mean, I think there is no doubt that the best way to understand what makes her tick, what her kind of approach to politics and religion, to marriage, to Parliament, to all these kind of strands within the Tudor polity, the best way to understand what makes her distinctive is actually to look at her upbringing. Because one of the most extraordinary things about Elizabeth is that she ever gets to sit on the throne in the first place. So she becomes Queen on the 17th of November, 1558, and she's 25 years old. But for most of those 25 years, the prospect of her ascending the throne would have seemed an incredibly remote one, because her infancy, her childhood, her adolescence, her early adulthood kind of have the quality of a hideous fairy tale. So she's three when Mummy has her head chopped off by Daddy.

[Ian Mortimer]

Yeah.

[Dominic Sandbrook]

So that's not a good start. I mean, imagine growing up and finding out that that's. That's what's happened. She then ends up with a stepfather who sexually abuses her, and she is then menaced by a half sister who locks her up in the Tower of London and clearly wants to chop her head off, as her mother's head had been chopped off. But I think these traumas, these kind of the danger that she was kind of repeatedly in through her childhood and so on, I think it matters because, you know, the girl is mother to the woman, and they massively influence the kind of monarch that Elizabeth becomes. And they matter because, you know, Elizabeth ends up setting England on a course that will be massively decisive in the growth of England and of Britain and in the long run of the colonies that Britain establishes across the world. And, of course, Roanoke, the first English foothold in the New World, even though it doesn't last, but it is set up in Elizabeth's reign, and Virginia is named after Elizabeth. She's the Virgin Queen.

[Ian Mortimer]

Well, you know what, you mentioned Britomart. We've stayed in the Hotel Britomart in.

[Tom Holland]

New Zealand when we were on tour.

[Ian Mortimer]

So Elizabeth's Imprint is still, you know, is there on the other side of the world.

[Dominic Sandbrook]

Yeah. So I think that tracing the young Elizabeth before she becomes Elizabeth I, I think it's well wor doing and we'll set up some episodes that we'll be doing in due course on the Tudor Cold War, the Spanish Armada, maybe Shakespeare or, you know, we've got lots to come on that. So, as you say, it is amazing that she ends up becoming queen, but it is true that she is born a princess, the daughter of a king. And not just that. When she's delivered on the 7th of September 1533, between 3 and 4 of the clock afternoon, she does rank as the immediate heir to the throne. So at the beginning, she does seem destined to become Queen. Everything that could properly have been done to prepare her for her rival had been done. So on 26 August 1533, her mother, she was in the palace of Greenwich, downriver from London. She's gone to a very luxuriously appointed chamber. So David Starkey, in his great book on the young Elizabeth, Elizabeth Apprenticeship, describes it as a cross between a chapel and a luxuriously padded cell. So there are carpets everywhere, there are tapestries on the walls, there's an absolutely massive bed that amazing. I kind of read up on it. It belonged to the younger brother of the Duke of Orleans who was captured at Agincourt, you remember?

[Ian Mortimer]

Yeah. So he was a hostage, right?

[Dominic Sandbrook]

Yeah, forever. And he kind of ends up writing poetry in English as well as French. But it was his younger brother and his. And. And this, the younger brother, Duke Elnia, had been a hostage in England, so he'd obviously left this massive bed, which was nice of him. No men are allowed into this chamber. All the companions, the attendants, the midwives, they're all women. And so beyond the. This very female space, all the men are waiting. The King, the court, England, Europe, they're all on tenterhooks and letters have been written ready to proclaim the birth of what is hoped is going to be a prince. To the other courts of Europe, the King of France has been squared as a godfather. A massive tournament is scheduled to be held in celebration, but in the event, of course, they're all cancelled. There is no national rejoicing. I mean, it's true the baby is healthy, the mother hasn't died in childbirth. But these pluses do not make up for the fact that it's a crushing disappointment that the newborn baby, the heir to the throne of England, is not a boy, it's a girl.

[Ian Mortimer]

And what is worse the mother has promised her husband that it will be a boy. And the baby being a boy has been central to the relationship between the mother and father and indeed to England's history, as we'll see. Because, of course, you haven't named the parents yet, Tom. I know you've done that deliberately as an exciting reveal for the audience. So to explain why it matters so much that the child is a boy, that Elizabeth, and in fact Elizabeth isn't a boy, we need to go back to the parents, don't we? So let's kick off with the father. Who's the father?

[Dominic Sandbrook]

Well, the father, Dominic, it will amaze you to learn, is Henry viii. And I guess he's the only English monarch who can rival his daughter for kind of instant recognizability, wouldn't you say?

[Ian Mortimer]

I would say not only instantly recognizable, I would say the single most important ruler. I mean, not necessarily the best. I think Elizabeth has a good claim to be the best, but he's the.

[Dominic Sandbrook]

One that matters the most consequential, isn't he?

[Ian Mortimer]

Yeah, the most consequential ruler in England's history and indeed in Britain's history, I would say.

[Dominic Sandbrook]

So. When Elizabeth is born, he is 42, and he's a man of very imposing charisma and accomplishment. So he's been on the throne for 24 years, since he was a very young man. When he came to the throne, he was renowned as a kind of an elite sportsman. People went into rhapsodies over his athletic achievements. By now he is starting to run to fat. He hasn't gone the full obesity, but he's still a very imposing figure.

[Ian Mortimer]

He's poised between Damian Lewis and Charles Lawton, isn't he? He's not quite one or the other.

[Dominic Sandbrook]

So he's got red hair, he's very athletic. He's described as having an extremely fine calf to his leg, which obviously matters in the Tudor court, where a fine calf is very important. And the presence of Venetian ambassadors at the Tudor court is tremendous for historians because they give very kind of detailed accounts. So one of the Vegan ambassadors described Henry as gifted with mental accomplishments, as he is most excellent in his personal endowments. So he's fluent in Latin, in French and Spanish, he has very good Italian. He's kind of got rudimentary Greek. He's very musical. He, sadly, he didn't compose Greensleeves, but he is a composer. He plays the harp. Very good on the keyboards, so that's very impressive. And he also fancies himself as a theologian, so he had written a takedown of Martin Luther and the Pope had named him Defender of the Faith for this in 1521. And this is a title of which he's inordinately proud and which the British monarch still has to this day.

[Ian Mortimer]

So, yeah, it's the same. The Popes let themselves down after that, didn't they? But we've kept the title, which is important, this is.

[Dominic Sandbrook]

Yeah. So, yeah, there's lots to come on that score.

[Ian Mortimer]

So he's often seen, isn't he, as part of a trio of slightly larger than life monarchs who dominate Europe. But of the three of them, he is the junior, isn't he? The other two are Francis or Francois I of France, who's this sort of incredibly priapic. He's a roysterer in his own way, isn't he? And then Charles V, the Habsburg Emperor, who's absolutely not a roysterer. He is a very melancholy, brooding man, but he's probably the top dog. And then the French king.

[Dominic Sandbrook]

Oh, undoubtedly, I think, because, I mean, he's the Emperor. So he's got Germany, he's got the Low Countries, he's got much of Italy, but he's also the king of Spain.

[Ian Mortimer]

Yeah.

[Dominic Sandbrook]

And of course, Spain means that he's also the ruler of vast chunks of the New World.

[Ian Mortimer]

Yeah.

[Dominic Sandbrook]

So he's got all the silver coming in from the New World. So he is overwhelmingly the most powerful ruler in Europe, I think, then Francois and then, then Henry. But the thing about Henry is he's very, very good at punching above his weight. You know, he projects this kind of vibrant image.

[Ian Mortimer]

Yeah.

[Dominic Sandbrook]

And his weight is quite something. So that's, that's pretty good. And, and this makes him popular with the English. They feel they, they're not embarrassed to have him as a king. They feel he, you know, he, he's, he's giving them a good image, I think, is what they feel.

[Ian Mortimer]

I think that's the one thing that people always get wrong about him of the 8th when they say, oh, he's a monster. He's, he's this, he's that. At the time, people in England, they might have been frightened of him or they might have thought he was making strange and unpopular decisions, but nobody ever doubted that he was good at being a king and that he was good at standing up for England and that he, you know, embodied English independence and defiance and all of those kinds of things. I mean, he's, he's very good at it.

[Dominic Sandbrook]

He is, He's a massive, great slab of. Of beef on the English throne. And that's what the English like to see.

[Ian Mortimer]

Like, if Ian Botham was King of England.

[Dominic Sandbrook]

Well, I think Ian Botham's more. Charles Brandon, his mate.

[Ian Mortimer]

Yes. Yeah, he completely is.

[Dominic Sandbrook]

He's an absolute ledge. Henry viii.

[Ian Mortimer]

But there's an issue, isn't there? So he may well be a bit of a legend, and yet at the same time, he's a worrier. He's insecure, and he's insecure for good reasons. And this is the other thing that I think is. I mean, I think this is absolutely central to understand the whole story. The Tudors, why he has six wives, why he breaks with Rome, all of this stuff. The fact is, the Tudors should not be there. They are usurpers. And, you know, we know the wars of the Roses are over, the Civil wars, but they don't. As far as they're concerned, they could still be in the wars of the Roses, because there are a lot of other people who think they shouldn't be here. They're just parvenus, their nouveau riche. What are they even doing on the throne?

[Dominic Sandbrook]

Yeah. And so that makes it absolutely essential that every Tudor king has a male heir, because otherwise the throne comes up for grabs again and civil war may break out.

[Ian Mortimer]

Yeah.

[Dominic Sandbrook]

So Henry's father, Henry vii, had defeated Richard III at the Battle of Bosworth. His reign had been, you know, there'd been all kinds of attempted coups, rebellions. Henry had put them down. And also he had done his duty by fathering sons. So his first son, Arthur, dies at the age of 15. But it's okay, because he has a spare. And that spare, of course, is the Henry who will go on to become Henry viii. And Henry not only inherits Arthur's title as Prince of Wales, but he also inherits Arthur's wife, Catherine of Aragon. And Catherine is the daughter of Ferdinand and Isabella, who are probably the most formidable Christian monarchs of their generation.

[Ian Mortimer]

I mean, that's a massive tribute to Henry VII's diplomacy. I mean, Henry VII, by the way, I think, is a brilliant king, and he has managed to get a deal for his sons that they will marry this. This princess.

[Dominic Sandbrook]

And he's punching above his weight there. I think there's no doubt that because.

[Ian Mortimer]

Ferdinand and Isabella, you know, their reputation is well known across Europe. They're the people who sent Columbus. They're the people who have made Spain a united country. You know, they are. Are presiding over a country that is rising to become, you know, world. A genuine world power. You know, with all these holdings in the New World and stuff. Yeah.

[Dominic Sandbrook]

I mean. I mean, in a way, the first genuine world power in history.

[Ian Mortimer]

So this is a brilliant deal that Henry VII has got for. I mean, this is the mad thing about ditching Catherine of Aragon. You know, you've got such a great deal in marrying Catherine of Aragon.

[Dominic Sandbrook]

Yeah. And also, Catherine of Aragon is the. The aunt of the emperor Charles V, who rules Spain as Charles the first, because Charles V is the grandson of Ferdinand and Isabella. And that kind of relationship between Catherine of Aragon and Charles V is going to play an important part in this story.

[Ian Mortimer]

And just on this. So Henry and Catherine of Aragon get on really well at first, don't they? They're actually quite a happy couple, and everybody says, oh, things are great, but there is this one big issue, which is where is the heir? You know, that everything is fine. Apart from that, actually, they do get on pretty well, by and large.

[Dominic Sandbrook]

Yeah. And Catherine's very competent. So basically, it's Catherine who wins the Battle of Flodden against the Scots, the great English victory. She's a very competent ruler. When Henry's off, you know, doing his wars in France, she's much loved by the English people. No, she's a great hit. But she's got to give him a son. And Henry does take for granted. You know, people may be wondering, well, what's the deal with the son? Why not a daughter? There's a very precise reason why Henry doesn't want a daughter. And he spells it out. He said, you know, because he says that if he has a daughter, and then if she should chance to rule, she cannot continue long without a husband, which by God's law, must then be her governor and head. And so finally, she'll direct the realm. And this is going to be an issue for Elizabeth. I. I mean, it's not just Henry being a chauvinist thinking that. I mean, it's. It's an issue for Elizabeth as well. And people who've listened to our series on Mary, Queen of Scots, who. Who did marry very imprudently, you know, we'll see the force of this anxiety. So it really matters that Catherine gives Henry a son. And over the course of the first decade of his reign, Catherine does repeatedly get pregnant. But tragically for her, tragically for Henry, all her babies, with one exception, are either stillborn or die shortly after birth. And the exception that proves the rule is a girl. And this is Princess Mary, who is born on the 18th of February, 1516. But there's still no son. And already by 1519 foreign observers are kind of sounding the death knell for any prospect of Catherine basically giving Henry any more children, let alone a son. So the problem is very gallantly summed up by Francois Premier Francis the First says his wife is old and deformed, while he himself is young and handsome.

[Ian Mortimer]

I mean, that is harsh because basically, she's not old. She's. What is the late. She's late 30s or something. And she's definitely not deformed. I mean, she's quite a. You know, everybody said she's a. She's, you know, Catherine of Aragon was a perfectly, you know, attractive woman, although she is a bit older than Henry. And as time goes on, there's a definite sense, isn't there, that he has. Well, he's a bit bored of her, but in a way that is actually standard for monarchs. Late medieval, early modern monarchs. I mean, he's sleeping around, isn't he? But this is not a sign that he's a monster. This is fairly established practice.

[Dominic Sandbrook]

Well, the other thing is that Henry has a son by one of his paramours, and so this reassures him that the problem isn't with him. And by 1525, Catherine's 40. I mean, effectively by now she is, you know, by the standards of the age, past childbearing age. And so this is a huge, huge problem for Henry. And it is then in 1525 that he meets the woman who is going to upend everything, because this is a woman who is not content with being his bit on the side with being his concubine. She wants to become his queen. And this, of course, is a very, very famous name in English history. It's Anne Boleyn.

[Ian Mortimer]

Yes. So Anne Boleyn, she's the daughter of a diplomat called Sir Thomas Boleyn and she's spent a lot of time in Paris, hasn't she? Which we'll come to her. French fashion is a very important part of her repertoire. But she's not, you know, she's conventionally. When she's played on screen, she's very pretty. But the odd thing is she's actually not terribly pretty. People actually went out of their way to comment on it, to say, it's amazing that Henry has fallen for this person who actually is not especially, you know, sexy and sensational.

[Dominic Sandbrook]

Yeah. So we can, I mean, to look in the. What the Venetian ambassadors have to say again. So one of them, he's writing in 1532, describes Anne as of middling stature, swarthy complexion, long neck, wide mouth, bosom not Much raised and in fact has nothing but the English king's great appetite and her eyes, which are black and beautiful. The other thing that kind of causes eyebrows to be raised is, as you said, that she is not, you know, she's not of royal blood. She's not even really of aristocratic blood. You know, as you said, she's the daughter of a country squire, Sir Thomas Boleyn, and he's a kind of mucker with Henry viii. He kind of hangs out with the lads. He's a bit older than them, though. But I mean, he gets on well with Henry because he's all about, you know, horses and hunting and sport. He'd wear a gilet. He'd absolutely from that kind of class.

[Ian Mortimer]

He drives a Land Rover.

[Dominic Sandbrook]

He absolutely does. Yeah, he does. He's like Fergie's father, Major Ferguson, that's kind of what. Major Ronald Ferguson. But he's not really the stuff of a royal father in law. I mean, it seems kind of mad idea. I mean, and is not conventionally beautiful. She's not of, you know, the kind of pedigree that would mark her out as a potential royal wife. And so the question is then, you know, what's she bringing to the party? How does she get Henry to think of her as a possible queen? And you mentioned her, her kind of French glamour. She has been at the French court a fair while. She's very smart, she's very sophisticated, she's very stylish. And in an age when French fashion kind of is the marker for people in England, she has. So Tracey Borman, she wrote a brilliant book on Anne Boleyn and her relationship to Elizabeth. She describes it as an irresistible je ne sais quoi. So she sings, she dances, she plays musical instruments much better than any of the ladies at the English court. She's sensationally well dressed. And while she loves fashion for its own sake, she also knows that fashion matters for someone who wants to be a queen. If you want to be a queen, you have to look like a queen. She's very good at that. She's also. She's very clever. And she, again, I think, is intellectual in a way. Henry's very smart. I think, you know, there's a meeting of minds there. And Anne, while she was at the French court, was strongly influenced by a very remarkable woman, Marguerite of Navarre, who's the sister of Francis the First. And she is very interested in Luther. She's very interested in all the kind of the trendiest, most cutting edge currents of religious thought that are Coming out of Germany at the time the Reformation is, is kind of kicking off. She has, I mean, she's not a Protestant, which in any way would, would be an anachronistic word at this point. Protestants as such don't exist yet. You know, she, she's, she's a reformer, she's an evangelical and she admires Luther. And Anne seems to have picked up various evangelical ideas from her. So these would include the idea that you could have a direct, unmediated relationship with God, that you don't need priests to kind of mediate between you and the divine. The urgent need for everyone, not just those who can read Latin, to have access to Scripture. So the idea that the Bible should be readily available in the vernacular and a sense that the Church is corrupt and that it needs to be reformed. And a particular anxiety about papacy that seems very corrupt and worldly. And Marguerite herself never goes so far as to say, well, we should, you know, cast off Papal Supremacy, we should bin the Pope. But I think Anne, certainly by the time she gets back to England from the French court, I think she's gone the full Luther. I think she's kind of buying into that.

[Ian Mortimer]

So what all that means is she's very stylish, she's very fashionable, she's continental, she's sophisticated. She's returned to England with the latest ideas that lots of people in England are only just struggling to get their heads around. She's clearly very poised, self confident, I guess she offers something that Catherine, who's always been a very dutiful wife, you know, perhaps slightly unassuming, I mean, by royal standards, you know, she offers something that Catherine doesn't and that also Henry's various kind of mistresses don't offer. She seems much cooler, doesn't she? She's spikier, she can be a bit difficult. Anne, you know, as in she's acerbic and she can be very scornful and scathing, but she's really, she's interesting.

[Dominic Sandbrook]

Well, and also she plays him brilliantly because most of the ladies in the court, you know, if Henry comes calling, they're very flattered and basically kind of give in to him. Anne doesn't. She's described as tantalizing him with her pretty dugs, but that's basically as far as it goes. And she tells him very forthrightly, I would rather lose my life than my honesty. And so she tells him, you know, if you want to sleep with me, then you're going to have to make an honest woman of me. And that means making. Making her Henry's queen.

[Ian Mortimer]

I mean, that is just a pause, a second. That is bonkers by the standards of the. I mean, people. All through English history, there have been kings with mistresses.

[Dominic Sandbrook]

Well, you're absolutely right. But there is a special circumstance, which is that Henry is married to a woman who he thinks can't give him a son. He suspects that and hopes that Anne can. And more than that, Anne has a way of cutting the Gordian knot around the marriage, because there is a huge issue around any prospect of divorce, because marriage, according to the Church, is a sacrament instituted by Christ himself. So what God has joined together, let no man put asunder. I mean, that seems absolutely black and white. How do you get round that? Well, Henry has come to believe that his marriage to Catherine is invalid and an offense to God, and that therefore God wants it dissolved. And in Henry's opinion, Catherine's failure to give him a son is clear evidence of divine anger. And he and his kind of tame clerics cite a verse from Leviticus in the Old Testament, if a man shall take his brother's wife, it is an unclean thing. Thing. He hath uncovered his brother's nakedness they shall be childless. And, of course, Henry has taken his brother's wife. Catherine was the widow of Arthur. Henry then married him. He'd got a special papal dispensation to do that, but he's now thinking that dispensation, you know, doesn't cut the mustard with God. And so he start. He's been pressing the Pope to grant him an annulment. And probably under normal circumstances, the Pope would have been happy to oblige. But the problem is, as we mentioned, Catherine is Charles V's aunt. And the Pope, given a choice, is always going to risk offending Henry rather than Charles V. Of course, because they.

[Ian Mortimer]

I mean, just to give people a sense of the context, Rome has just been sacked by Charles V's troops. Right. The Pope is effectively Charles V's prisoner. He's never gonna. He's never gonna offend Charles V. Yeah.

[Dominic Sandbrook]

And so this leaves Henry and his ministers in an absolute jam. And so it's called the King's Great Matter. How do you. How do you get a divorce when the one person who can grant that divorce, the Pope, is not going to give it to you? And so it's locked Henry into years of fruitless negotiations and frustration. I mean, it's kind of incredibly Brexit, you know, passengers endlessly going and being rebuffed. But now, not only is he attracted to Anne. Not only does he think she can give him the son that he so desperately wants, but she can also provide the key that would unlock the King's great matter. Because if, as Luther teaches, and Anne has come to think the Pope is the great whore of Babylon, the Antichrist, then who cares what the Pope thinks? Yeah. Doesn't matter.

[Ian Mortimer]

Yeah. So in many ways this is a win win for Henry because not only will he get the woman he wants if this all works out, but he will throw off foreign influence, become master in his own house, as it were, in, in religious terms. And also in the long run, of course, there was all that, all those monasteries. Very tempting.

[Dominic Sandbrook]

Yeah, well, there's, there's all kinds of goodies and prospects. And so Henry summons a load of scholars to weigh this up. They're English scholars and amazingly they tell.

[Ian Mortimer]

Him, yeah, brilliant, go for it.

[Dominic Sandbrook]

And the guy who takes the lead in this is a very brilliant scholar called Thomas Cranmer, who we'll be hearing about over the course of this series. He's going to be a key player. But basically, Thomas Cranmer and his fellow scholars demonstrate to Henry's satisfaction that his power as King is superior to that of the Pope's. And once that's been accepted by Henry, things then move very fast. So in 1531, the English church grants Henry the title of singular Protector, Supreme Lord and even so far as the law of Christ allows, Supreme Head of the English Church and clergy. So that's essentially shunting the Pope to one side. In the same year, Catherine is banished from court and her apartments are given to one of her former ladies in waiting, and that is Anne Boleyn. The following year, Anne is raised to the peerage in her own right, the first woman to be honoured in this way. And she's granted the Marquisate of Pembroke, which is an extinct title that Henry resurrects. And this matters because Henry can only marry someone of that rank. People who listen to the series we did on Mary Queen of Scots this July may remember that every time Mary Queen of Scots makes one of her unfortunate marriages, she has to raise her husband to be. To a dukedom so that he will be of. Of. Of worthy rank to be married to a queen. So basically, that's what Henry's doing with anne here. By December 1532, Anne knows she's pregnant. And so, you know, things, the foot really needs to be put down on the pedal. So on 25 January 1533, Henry marries her in his private chapel in Westminster, despite The fact that actually the annulment of his marriage to Catherine still hasn't come through, so effectively he's now bigamous. On 30 March, Thomas Cranmer is consecrated as the Archbishop of Canterbury and he gets the job because Henry knows that, you know, he's going to do what he needs the Archbishop to do, which is basically to absolutely affirm the legitimacy of what he's going through. So, at Easter 1533, again quoting the Venetian ambassador, the Marchioness Anne went with the King to high mass as Queen, and with all the pomp of a queen, clad in cloth of gold and loaded with the richest jewels, and she dined in public. Then, on 29 May, she sails from the palace of Greenwich up the River Thames to the Tower of London. She steps out from the boat, she goes round to the main entrance into the Tower, crosses the moat, she's greeted by Henry with a kiss, and the couple retire to apartments that Henry has had decorated in splendid magnificence specifically for Anne. Two days later, she makes her ceremonial entry into London dressed in white, and she is extolled as a splendid image of chastity. And on the 1st of June, 1533, she is anointed and the crown of St. Edward the Confessor is placed on her head. And this is the crown that is usually reserved for the monarch himself. So it is a signal honour.

[Ian Mortimer]

So the reason for this signal honor, presumably, is because it's very obvious to everybody now if she knew she was pregnant in December, it must be obvious to everybody now that she is expecting a child. And the general assumption is that this will be. The assumption based on nothing, is that this will be a son.

[Dominic Sandbrook]

Well, so it's. I mean, she's been described as a splendid image of chastity, but she's also being described as somewhat big with child. And so you're right that this pregnancy reassures Henry. Brilliant. You know, I now have. I have a woman who can give me a son. And if Anne is pregnant with his son, then it's absolutely essential that everything is done to make clear that Anne is legitimately his wife, and therefore his son will legitimately be the heir to the throne. And so it is on 26 August that Anne Boleyn, now the Queen of England, retires to her birthing chamber in Greenwich. And on the 7th of September, she goes into labour.

[Ian Mortimer]

Ricky. Well, as we know, the result of this will be a little bit of a disappointment for Henry, and we will return after the break to find out how he deals with it.

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[Dominic Sandbrook]

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[Ian Mortimer]

Welcome back to the Rest Is History. So Anne Boleyn, she's just been crowned Queen of England. All kinds of exciting political and theological developments going on in the background. She has gone into labor. She has been delivered of a child. Brilliant news. It is an heir at last for Henry viii. And it is a boy. Oh, no, it's actually not. Oh, girl. What a massive letdown. So here's the thing. You would think that Henry would be furious, and this would be, you know, curtains, frambolin. And lots of people probably think, well, it is, but it isn't straight away. Right. He doesn't completely give up on Amberlynn after this. I mean, he's. I was about to say he's a reasonable man. I mean, in many ways, he's not. But he must recognize there's a 50. 50 chance that it would have been a girl. You know, he's obviously disappointed, but.

[Dominic Sandbrook]

He is disappointed. But also, you know, Anne's had a successful pregnancy. The baby's healthy. There's every prospect that she'll get pregnant again and give him a son, you know, and also, he now has a legitimate princess, so that's better than nothing. And so he's, you know, he in no way repudiates his baby daughter. He kind of shows her all kinds of marks of favor. So her name, the name he gives her, Elizabeth. And amazingly, Anne had wanted to call her Mary to erase Princess Mary from the. You know, from the ledger. And Henry says, no, I'm not. That's. That's. That's poor. So. But he chooses Elizabeth because it's a tribute to his mother, Elizabeth of York. Elizabeth is then baptized in Greenwich. The mayor of London is rowed down there with 40 of the. The city's worthies, you know, kind of movers and shakers. And Elizabeth doesn't get Francis the First, the King of France, as godfather, which she would have done had she been a boy, but she does get Thomas Cranmer and, you know, Archbishop Canterbury. That's not bad. And, of course, the Archbishop of Canterbury also is all, you know, it's. It's a kind of imprimatur of legitimacy suggests that, that God is saying she's not a bastard. So that's great. Then after the baptism, which Henry and Anne are not at it, that's not the custom she's brought out. So Eustace Chapuys, the Imperial ambassador, who's a very hostile witness to Anne, he describes what happens that a herald in front of the church door proclaimed her Princess of England. Then in December, it's a very wintry day, drizzle falling on the streets of London. She rides with splendid ceremony through the capitol, out of it, onwards towards the house that Henry has decided will be her official residence. And this is a palace called Hatfield and it lies 20 miles north of London in rural Hertfordshire. And it's close to the capital, so easy for Henry to visit it, but it's also less likely to be swept by plague, which is always a consideration. So he's looking out for her. And it's, it's a pretty impressive place for a four month old baby girl to have. So it's got a great hall, it's got fine apartments, it's got a parkland full of deer, you know, it's a palace fit for a princess, I guess.

[Ian Mortimer]

Yeah. So Henry, he goes to visit her, doesn't he, in January. And by which point it's very clear that if there, if there were any question about her parentage, which there hasn't been, I mean, she looks a little bit like Henry because she's even got the red hair, hasn't she?

[Dominic Sandbrook]

Yes. And the violent temper, apparently.

[Tom Holland]

Right.

[Ian Mortimer]

I mean, to be fair, she's a baby. I mean, that's pretty much the standard. And then the key thing, in March, Parliament passes legislation that declares Elizabeth as Henry's heir. But there is a couple of twists, aren't there? So basically, if Henry dies before Elizabeth reaches the age of majority, then Anne will be regent and absolute governor of children and of the kingdom. But also if you call anybody but Anne and Elizabeth Queen or Princess, so the obvious target here is her half sister Mary, then that is high treason. And you, you know, you can say goodbye to your head.

[Dominic Sandbrook]

Yeah. So great news for Anne, but terrible news for Mary, Henry's daughter by Catherine of Aragon, who is now very publicly and by act of Parliament declared a bastard.

[Ian Mortimer]

Yeah.

[Dominic Sandbrook]

And Anne is ecstatic about this because she detests Catherine of Aragon and she particularly detests Mary and is consistently vicious towards her. I mean, horrible to poor Mary.

[Ian Mortimer]

Can I say something? Actually, on this front, there are some admirable things about Anne, you know, She's. I like the fact that she's acerbic and that she's clever and that she's, you know, you know, a bit of a personality and stuff, but she's horrible. She's horrible to Mary, isn't she, in a way that she didn't have to be.

[Dominic Sandbrook]

Yeah. And I think in part it's jealousy of Mary's lineage. I think it's. She's jealous on behalf of her own daughter, but it's also in large part because Mary refuses to acknowledge her own bastardy. She refuses to play the game that Henry, her father, wants her to play. And so Anne goes all out to try and erase the privileged status that Mary had previously enjoyed as Henry's eldest daughter. So on the 1st of October, 1533, which was only two months after Elizabeth's birth, Henry had summoned Mary and told her, you are no longer going to be a princess. From this point on, you're just going to be the lady Mary. And Mary understandably burst into tears. She's only 17 years old. I mean, you know, for a teenager. Teenagers hate anything. Humiliating things. Yeah, basically. The following month, Chapuy reported an even greater humiliation. So he writes, the King, not satisfied with having taken away the name and title princess from Mary, has just given out that in order to subdue the spirit of the princess, he will deprive her of all her people because they put notions into her head and stop her from obeying him, and that she should come and live as lady's maid with the little bastards. Little bastard is Elizabeth. So, I mean, what a humiliation. You know, you're stripped of all your own servants and you have to go and work as a servant for your, you know, this girl who's replaced you. I mean, absolutely terrible. So Mary is sent there only with two attendants, and she's obdurate in refusing to accept this. She says, I'm not going to accept, you know, this horrible little girl as a legitimate heir. She insists she knew no other princess in England except herself. And Anne is so infuriated that she takes away, you know, all Mary's jewels. It's like kind of confiscating her iPhone or something. And she tells the women supervising Mary to box her ears as a cursed bastard. So Nicola Tallis, who wrote another great book, Young Elizabeth, Princess, prisoner, Queen, she says, little wonder Mary spent much of her time weeping in her chamber.

[Ian Mortimer]

But that makes Mary sound like a drip, whereas Mary's not a drip. I like Mary. I think she has massive. She's got massive backbone. Mary she has a. She, obviously she's regarded as one of the great villains of English history because she lets herself down with her Catholicism. However, she has tremendous guts, I think, and she's a massive survivor.

[Dominic Sandbrook]

I don't. You see, I don't think that it's maudlin weeping. I think it's angry weeping.

[Ian Mortimer]

Yeah, I respect that.

[Dominic Sandbrook]

It's I hate you all kind of weeping. That's what it's like. And obviously none of this makes Anne any the more popular because we said how Catherine is very popular with the mass of the. Of the English people. And so Anne going out of her way to insult Catherine's daughter Mary, who's also very popular, you know, it's, it, it doesn't go down well at all. And Shapuys, unsurprisingly, completely agrees with this. It says, I do not understand why the King is in such haste to treat the Princess Mary in this way. If it were not for the importunity and malignity of the lady. Ian, I know he's biased, but he's, he's not wrong.

[Ian Mortimer]

Yeah, he's right.

[Dominic Sandbrook]

Now, I guess none of this would. Would have mattered had Elizabeth been a boy. I mean, Anne could have done then, in that case, she could have done whatever she liked. Nor if, in the wake of Elizabeth's birth, she had then been able to get pregnant again and give Henry the son that she wanted. But this does not happen because in the summer of 1534, absolute disaster. Anne loses a baby. It's gone almost a full term, and the rumor is that it had been a boy. Another year goes by and there are rumors of another miscarriage. And it is clear as well to people that Henry is getting a little bit fed up with Anne. So you said you like her. She's sassy, she's acerbic. But Henry, you know, he might begin with, he might have found that quite attractive, quite titillating. But I think by this point he's starting to find her bossy, arrogant, nagging, shrewish. And these are not qualities that he's particularly looking for in a wife.

[Ian Mortimer]

Do you know what? Sometimes Anne Boleyn, I said she was horrible, but sometimes she reminds me a tiny bit of myself, really.

[Dominic Sandbrook]

Imagine, well, God, Henry would have been lucky to get married to you. That has to be said, Dominic, that the odds of you giving Henry a son would be low. I think.

[Ian Mortimer]

Yeah. It's not a situation I've ever really pondered, like how would I perform as one of Henry VIII's wives. But actually, I think probably Although Anne Boleyn is the one I like least, she's probably the one I most like.

[Dominic Sandbrook]

Well, fortunately for you, you are not having to get pregnant by Henry. That's Anne's job. And ominously for Anne, by this point, Henry, his eye is starting to stray again. He's starting to have affairs. And as early as October 1534. So this is a few months after Anne's second miscarriage. Chapuys is reporting that Henry is paying particular attention to one lady in waiting. And this is a woman called Jane Seymour. And the following summer, so that's in 1535, Henry pays a visit to the Seymour house, which is in Wiltshire, I'm delighted to say.

[Ian Mortimer]

Oh, it's great to have watched in the Salisbury area back on the show.

[Dominic Sandbrook]

This is a place called Wolf Hall. So it seems that Henry is really quite keen on Jane Seymour if he's going off and, you know, meeting the parents and all that kind of thing. It's unclear exactly what it is that Jane has that Henry finds so irresistible. So Chapuy famously describes her as an enigma. She's modest, she's not particularly attractive. Chapuy describes her as not a woman of great wit. Tracy Borman in her book on Amberlynn, points out that enigma was Tudor slang for the female genitals. So perhaps Chapuys is hinting at something there. Unclear. But there's one definite advantage that she, that Jane does have over Anne, certainly in Henry's eyes, which is that she isn't always losing her temper with him.

[Ian Mortimer]

But the point about the appeal of Jane Seymour is surely that Anne Boleyn is, Is a. Is acerbic, is argumentative, is a bit of a nag, is a bit bossy, all of these things that make her very interesting. Jane Seymour was quite boring, but she basically is a people pleaser. Everything we know about her is she's a massive people pleaser. And she, Henry thinks, God, she's sweet, she's nice, she'll bring me a. Yeah, she'll bring me a cup of scented wine or whatever and, you know, nurse my ulcer.

[Dominic Sandbrook]

She'll find my friends abusing.

[Ian Mortimer]

Exactly, exactly.

[Dominic Sandbrook]

Yeah. So. But it's still not all over for anne. So by January 1536, she's pregnant again. And then on the 7th of January 1536, even better news, it is announced that Catherine of Aragon is dead. And Henry's reaction is, God be praised, Anne's brother, George. It was a pity the princess, I. E. Mary, did not keep company with her. So, I mean, really venomous really venomous. And you might wonder, well, you know, why this hostility? I think for George Boleyn, the hostility to Mary is it's not just dynastic. He, like Anne, has become a very, very passionate evangelical. So it kind of be anachronistic to call him a Protestant, but that's basically what he is by now. But Mary, she has stayed very devoutly, very defiantly loyal to the traditional Catholic faith. She, you know, she's loyal to the Pope. And of course, that loyalty is an expression of her loyalty to Catherine of Aragon. So she refuses to accept Henry's supremacy of the Church. And this, of course, in turn then enables her to say, well, I have, you know, I have every godly reason to deny the legitimacy of my half sister, you know, baby Elizabeth. And that means that for the Boleyns, Anne, George, or, you know, the rest of the crowd, their godliness, their evangelical identity is now kind of seamlessly interwoven with their dynastic ambitions and interests. So for, for them, it seems obvious that God is on the side of the Berlins and against Princess Mary and all these kind of awful Catholics. But of course, I mean, none of this matters if Anne can't give Henry what he so desperately wants. A son.

[Ian Mortimer]

Yeah, so the clock's ticking. I mentioned his ulcer. Actually, I was being anachronistic because he doesn't get this famous ulcer until the 24th of January when he has this jousting accident. He comes very close to death, doesn't he? He's knocked off his horse. People actually think he may have died. And with that, there is a serious, you know, for the first time, people think, gosh, he could actually have died and what happens next? You know, the future of the dynasty is not yet secure. There are a lot of people who think when he goes, great, we can get rid of the Tudors. I mean, they're a bit of an aberration. And we can get back to. We can find some Plantagenet air to take over.

[Dominic Sandbrook]

Yeah, we can get back to fighting.

[Ian Mortimer]

Yeah, exactly. Brilliant. Exactly. So, yeah.

[Dominic Sandbrook]

And so that fall, it has a kind of knock on consequence because five days later, 29th of January, Catherine Aragon is laid to rest in Peterborough Cathedral. And on the same day, Anne has a miscarriage. And she blames it on the shock that she felt on learning of the news of Henry's fall. But Henry thinks, no, this is the marker of a curse. Just as my first marriage was cursed, so now my second is cursed. And he says explicitly, I see that God will not give Me, male children. And Chapuy, you know, he is kind of delighted by this. And he writes to Charles V, the emperor, and he reports Henry's growing belief, and I quote Chapuis, that he had made this marriage seduced by witchcraft, and for this reason he considered it null.

[Ian Mortimer]

See, I think Henry, at this point, my sense is that he feels a little bit guilty. He actually, Catherine of Aragon has died. And although he will never admit it to himself, he has treated her abominably and she wasn't a bad person, she was a good wife for him. He's treated his own daughter atrociously. And Henry is a very vain man and he will never accept that he's behaved badly. So he pins all this on Anne, doesn't he? Don't you think that's what he's doing?

[Dominic Sandbrook]

Yeah, I think so. And I think also what's very unfortunate for Anne is that Jane Seymour, although she may be boring, you know, she's learnt from Anne how to play Henry. So in April, Henry sends Jane this purse of gold sovereigns and a letter, presumably, you know, pledging his troth. And she just kisses the letter very demurely and sends it back unopened and declares that she will only accept such gifts if she is married. So she's learned from the mistress, you know, how to play, how to do this, that April, the same, say, the same month Anne is in Greenwich and she has Elizabeth brought from Hatfield. And Elizabeth, by this point is two and a half years old. And Elizabeth has clearly been much on Anne's mind. So Anne has been ordering her all kinds of clothes. It's kind of dresses of orange and purple velvet and taffeta caps adorned with gold, obviously designed to kind of go with her complexion and her auburn hair. So Anne, again, being, you know, the great fashionista, and she's clearly worrying, I think by this point that Henry might strike against her at any moment, and what are the implications of this for her daughter? So on the 26th of April, she summons her private chaplain for a conversation. And this chaplain is a man called Matthew Parker, who is a very brilliant young evangelical scholar, typical of the kind of clergyman that Anne has been favoring. And Anne says to him, look, I don't know what's going to happen, but suppose the worst does happen. Please, will you promise to look after my daughter Elizabeth? And Parker vows, yes, your majesty, I absolutely will. And he holds true to that vow. So, years later in Elizabeth's reign, Parker reports the conversation he'd had with Anne at this point to Elizabeth. And he describes it as the last words that ever Her Majesty's mother spoke to me concerning her.

[Ian Mortimer]

Well, you say the last words because the end is coming for Anne, isn't it? And it comes on. Isn't there some story that there she's watching some form of sport, I can't remember what is, people playing tennis or something. And then she gets a summons in the council, you know, come, and you must come immediately. And she's accused of, to her shock, complete and utter shock, she is accused of adultery. And then she's taken off by barge from Greenwich to the Tower of London. She never even gets the chance to see her daughter before she goes, does she?

[Dominic Sandbrook]

No, you know, there's no dilly dallying. So after the Tower she goes. And the boom of cannons announces to London her arrival in the Tower. And of course, this was where three years earlier, she'd stayed for a couple of days with Henry in the royal quarters before setting out across London for her coronation. And now she's being incarcerated there as a prisoner. And the first evening that she's there, she asks the constable of the Tower, shall I die without justice? I mean, she clearly recognizes, you know, the fate that is now threatening her. And the constable replies to her, the poorest subject, the King hath. Hath justice. And at this, Anne only laughs. And, you know, the laugh is. Laughter is very bitter because Anne does not receive justice.

[Ian Mortimer]

So she's put on trial on 15 May in the Tower of London, isn't she? She's the first queen of England ever to be subjected to a public trial. And the counts, so adultery. She's convicted of adultery with five different men. I mean, they're not messing around. Then the next count, incest, because she's accused of sleeping with her own brother, this evangelical guy, George Boleyn, and then treason and conspiracy to kill her husband, to murder her husband. And the thing is, of course, you know, she's obviously innocent of these things, right? I mean, people never. Historians don't think she'd plotted against her husband or that she'd slept with her brother or she committed. Even she committed adultery.

[Dominic Sandbrook]

No, I don't think any historians think that they're true. Essentially, Henry wants her eliminated and he's prepared to go to any lengths to do it. And sure enough, you know, the sentence is read out to her because thou hast defended against our sovereign the King's Grace, and committing treason against his person. The law of the realm is this, that thou shalt be burnt here within the Tower. Of London on the green, else to have thy head smitten off. And clearly in that it's better to have your head chopped off than to be burnt alive. Anne is being offered a deal. Agree to what I want and you will have a merciful death. And the following day, sure enough, Anne is visited in the Tower by Cranmer. And Cranmer wins Anne's consent to the annulment of her marriage. And this might seem surprising to people because effectively, of course, this serves to render Elizabeth now a bastard. But I think Anne is doing it. I mean, partly, maybe she thinks, well, you know, I'll have my head chopped off. But I think. I think she thinks that by doing this, her life will be spared and that will then enable her to, you know, it will. It will ensure that at least Elizabeth will continue to have a mother. But there is no pardon.

[Ian Mortimer]

Interesting point there, actually. Thomas never really occurred to me that at that point Henry VIII could have pardoned her. I mean, he could have just said, send her off like Catherine of Aragon, send her off to some country house and then, although people would talk about him as having had lots of wives, his reputation is this kind of Bluebeard, who, you know, the wife killer. I mean, he doesn't have to kill her.

[Dominic Sandbrook]

No, he doesn't. And everyone finds it astonishing. So even Chapuys, who obviously hates Anne. I mean, he regards it as madness. So, you know, he says, may God permit that this may be his last folly. It's seen as very aberrant behavior, I think, but, you know, she has now declared and accepted that her marriage was invalid. And so the following morning, 17th of May, in Lambeth Palace, Cranmer officially annuls Henry's marriage to Anne. And this means that Elizabeth, like her half sister Mary, is declared bastard and deprived of the title of princess. So from this point on, she will be called the Lady Elizabeth. And later that same morning, the 17th of May, the five men who've been convicted of adultery with Anne are led out onto Tower Hill. So before the mass of Londoners who've gathered there to watch the spectacle, and one by one, they are beheaded. And George Boleyn goes first because he's of the highest rank and the axe will be at its sharpest. So it's a kind of, you know, a measure of privilege there. And he speaks as a martyr for his evangelical beliefs. He says, I have been a setter forth of the word of God. So he's implying this is the reason that he's being eliminated. He does not defend his sister and in fact, only one of the five men who are executed, who's a guy who Henry, you know, very close to a man called Henry Norris, long term favorite and friend of Henry's. He's the only one who does a decent thing and speaks out in defense of Anne. So he said in his conscience he thought the Queen innocent of these things laid to charge and he would die a thousand deaths rather than ruin an innocent person. But, you know, this has no impact, it doesn't help anne. And on the 19th of May, so two days later, it is her turn to meet death. Now she does not die, as the five men accused of adultery had done on Tower Hill, but within the Tower itself. So there's a measure of privacy. A thousand people are gathered to watch it, you know, but she doesn't have the stinking rabble jeering and mocking her. A great scaffold has been erected next to the White Tower. It's been draped in black. She approaches it wearing a grey silk gown she's led to the scaffold, she climbs its steps and then she addresses the crowd and she says, I pray God save the King and send him long to reign over you for a gentler nor a more merciful prince. Was there never. I mean, obviously she doesn't believe this and so people may wonder, well, why would she say it? And I think that, you know, the reason is that she is hoping it will encourage Henry to look more fondly on their daughter. And so it may well be that, you know, in her final moments, Anne's thoughts are of Elizabeth. So there isn't a block, she just kneels in the straw, she says her prayers and then she removes the hood that she's had. And so that kind of opens up her neck. Her hair is bundled up, put in a cap, so her neck is now absolutely exposed. Lady in waiting, step forwards, blindfolds her and leans forwards. She's still saying her prayers. And then there's a French swordsman who Henry has specially hired for his expertise. Kind of slight mark of mercy, I suppose. And he quietly reaches down for his sword without making a sound, so Anne doesn't know when it's going to come. And then with very smooth, very silent precision, he brings the blade of the sword down onto Anne's neck. Her head is severed with a single blow. Anne, before her execution had said that she had a little neck, so there's no kind of hacking and chopping at it is done very efficiently. And the head is then held up to the crowd and it's reported that her mouth continues to move in prayer for several seconds after her decapitation.

[Ian Mortimer]

Gosh, I wonder if that really happened.

[Dominic Sandbrook]

Well, I think it is possible. I mean, the whole question of what happens to you after your head is chopped off is a very interesting one and I gather much contested, so.

[Ian Mortimer]

Right, okay, interesting.

[Dominic Sandbrook]

Who knows? You know, there are markers of mercy. The French swordsman, she hasn't been burnt to death, it's been in privacy, but it's still completely shocking. And I think that Henry's willingness to sanction the judicial murder of his queen, of Henry Norris, you know, one of his closest friends, four other presumably innocent people as well. It speaks of his utter resolve to secure this great prize that he's been longing for, which is a son. So on the 30th of May, he marries Jane Seymour. And a year and a half later, on 12th October, 1537, she dies. But she has done what Henry married her for. So two weeks before her death, she had given him the male heir that he had been so, so desperate to obtain. And it's a boy called Edward.

[Ian Mortimer]

But where does that leave Elizabeth? Because Elizabeth, Tom, is now being declared illegitimate. She's a bastard and she is the daughter of somebody who's basically been erased from the annals as a traitor and as an adulteress and as a witch. So where will this lead? Well, the good news is, if you remember the Rest Is History Club, you can find out right away and you can hear the rest of the episodes in this series, including the next one, which explores how the young Elizabeth survives the murderous snake pit of the court of Henry viii. And of course, if you're not not a member of the Rest Is History Club and you want to hear the whole of the series right now, you can join our very own snake pit, our very own murderous Tudor court@the restishistory.com so wonderful news for everybody. Tom, that was absolutely brilliant. Thank you very much for that at all de force. And we'll see you all next time. Bye bye.

[Dominic Sandbrook]

Bye bye.

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[Empire Podcast Hosts]

George Orwell was one of the most impactful voices of the 20th century, but do you know what? His life story is just as interesting as the things he wrote.

[Dominic Sandbrook]

I'm William Durimple.

[Empire Podcast Hosts]

And I'm Anita Arnand and we are the hosts of Empire, a goal hanger show about world history and on Empire. We're currently in the middle of a gripping four part series about the life of George Orwell.

[Dominic Sandbrook]

Orwell's early life was wrapped up in the British Empire. He was born in India to an opium trading father and in his 20s he served as a colonial police officer in Burma.

[Empire Podcast Hosts]

His later life crystallized his hatred of totalitarianism. As an idealistic writer, he traveled to fight with the Republicans against Franco's fascists in the Spanish Civilization Civil War, and he witnessed the horrors of the Blitz.

[Dominic Sandbrook]

These experiences led him to write his most famous novels, animal farm and 1984, giving us enduring phrases like Big Brother is watching you.

[Empire Podcast Hosts]

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