Was Anne Boleyn a Victim of Sexual Harassment in the Workplace?

Karen Lindsey, author of Divorced, Beheaded, Survived: A Feminist Reinterpretation of the Wives of Henry VIII puts forth a very interesting opinion on the way we should view Anne Boleyn's time at court:

I was doing an article for Ms. about sexual harassment on the job and reading about Henry's wives in my free time, but it took a while to put together the fact that Ann Boleyn's position as lady-in-waiting to Henry's wife Catherine of Aragon was her job, and that, far from trying to lure Henry away from Catherine, she had spent over a year tactfully trying to repel his sexual advances. 

[..]

Today, Henry’s approach to Ann would be instantly identifiable as sexual harassment. Ann however, had no social or legal recourse against a the man who ruled the country. She continued, as so many women before and since have done, to dodge her pursuer’s advances while sparing his feelings. It didn’t work.

[...] 

It was a hellish position. Could she really tell the king to his face that she had no interest in him? She could reiterate her desire to keep her chastity and her honor, but clearly he didn’t respect that. She could ignore his letters and stay away from court, but he refused to take the hint. To offer him the outright insult he asked for would be to risk not only her own but her father’s and brother’s careers at court. She undoubtedly kept hoping he would tire of the chase and transfer his attentions to some newer lady-in-waiting.

But he didn't and she was trapped; there was no chance of her making a good marriage when every eligible nobleman knew the king wanted her.

Lindsey is correct that Katharine of Aragon's court was Anne's workplace. Service in a noble court was the 16th century's version of the corporate ladder.

The world of the nobility was a system of intricate social stratification where everyone sought employment from the rank above. The Babee's Book laid out this chain of service in example:

Even the duke's son preferred page to the prince, the earl's second son attendant upon the duke, the knight's second son the earl's servant, the esquire's son to wear the knight's livery, and the gentleman's son the esquire's serving-man. 

Those who were charming, talented, clever, or amusing, could be promoted with additional job duties and income, or move up to the household of a noble higher in rank. 

The duty of service to one's betters was bound up in religious faith. The Tudors believed that God had ordained the social order of the world. A person's status was the position to which God had called them, and so service to their superiors was as service to God.

Only those of the highest pedigree and social connections could hope to find a job serving the king or queen. Anne Boleyn was not titled, but she was the granddaughter of a duke. Her father was a very wealthy and well-connected man who had served as the king's ambassador, and Anne's mother had served Elizabeth of York. Securing Anne a job as a lady in waiting to Queen Katharine was a boon for their family.

Anne was employed in a series of royal households from the time she was a very young child, learning the social graces that would entertain those who employed her. She could dance, play instruments, engage in witty conversation, and was well-read enough to debate on intellectual topics. She was the consummate professional in her work, and remained chaste while she waited for her father to arrange a good marriage for her.

At one point, Anne took the bull by the horns and tried to arrange her own marriage with the son of the Earl of Northumberland. The results were disastrous, as far as her career was concerned. Once it was discovered what she was doing, she was banned from seeing the young man again and sent home to Hever in disgrace. She was fired, in other words.

Her family must have been livid. The match her father had been working on - perhaps unbeknownst to Anne - fell apart. Some scholars believe it might have had something to do with Anne's failed betrothal, but no records exist to explain it. The Butler family may not have wanted the union in the first place, which might have been engineered by Cardinal Wolsey to resolve an inheritance dispute. In any case, Anne now had no job, and no prospects for a husband.

Anne returned to court about a year later. We know nothing of the next two years or so, except what fragments can be deduced from the memories of Thomas Wyatt, as related by his grandson. 

There was, at this present, presented to the eye of the court the rare and admirable beauty of the fresh and young Lady Anne Boleigna, to be attending upon the queen. In this noble imp, the graces of nature graced by gracious education, seemed even at the first to have promised bliss unto her aftertimes. She was taken at that time to have a beauty not so whitely as clear and fresh above all we may esteem, which appeared much more excellent by her favour passing sweet and cheerful; and these, both also increased by her noble presence of shape and fashion, representing both mildness and majesty more than can be expressed.

She seems to have been very popular at court. Northumberland's son wasn't the only man who was attracted to Anne. Thomas Wyatt fell in love with her, according to his grandson's book, and several of Wyatt's poems seem to refer to Anne and his unrequited passion for her. But Anne was cautious of her reputation, and rejected Wyatt's advances.

King Henry seems to have noticed Anne in late 1525/early 1526. His favor came with a "promotion" offer for her: an appointment to serve his wife, Katharine of Aragon. Anne wrote the king a letter, thanking him for the appointment. But this promotion came with some drawbacks.

As Karen Lindsey notes, Anne was in a very delicate situation with Henry's favor. Having his interest meant her family's advancement, and indeed, her father and brother received a steady series of gifts, grants, properties and titles, including his long-desired title of Earl of Ormond. Anne herself was showered with gowns and jewels, and fawned over by the court, seeking her favor so she might help advance them as well. Rejecting the king outright would have cut off this flow, and perhaps even set the Boleyn family back to being worse off, if the king became angry about it.

  In February 1526, Henry made a public declaration of his interest in Anne, hoping the fawning attention of the court would pressure her into giving into his advances. Anne was suddenly thrust into the international spotlight as Henry's love interest, and suddenly had dozens of new "friends" seeking her favor and trying to use her for their own advancement. And, of course, they encouraged her to accede to the king's wishes. But Anne held firm to her principles. She would not sleep with any man outside the bonds of holy matrimony.

Henry now spent more time in his wife’s quarters than he had in years, but it was to visit Anne where she couldn’t escape his attentions.

In May, it got so bad that Anne actually quit her job as a lady in waiting and retreated to Hever, where she refused to answer Henry’s letters and sent back his gifts. Henry’s letters to her at this point are full of pouting complaints that she won’t write back to him. He claims not to understand it.

I cannot sufficiently marvel at, because I am sure that I have since never done any thing to offend you, and it seems a very poor return for the great love which I bear you to keep me at a distance both from the speech and the person of the woman that I esteem most in the world...

Henry still wouldn’t take “no” for an answer and chased after her. He went to stay with a cousin of Anne, Nicholas Carew, whose house was a convenient distance from Hever so he could ride over at his leisure. Anne could not refuse to receive him at the house. She refused wherever she had agency, but in this she did not. No one could refuse the king admittance.

When Anne did return to court, she had to face a great deal of hostility. Those still loyal to Katharine of Aragon despised Anne for "luring" the king away from his wife. Anne had enemies she'd never even met, people who hated her for everything she represented, who twisted her words and spread malicious gossip about her throughout Europe. Courtiers who smiled at her and bowed whispered behind their hands. Families were divided as religious reformers sided with the Boleyn faction, and the conservatives sided with Katharine.

But the greatest problem was that no man would seek Anne's hand in marriage while the king was pursuing her, certainly, and not after he lost interest, either. Few people believed Anne was still a virgin, and her reputation was in tatters around Europe. Around the time the king decided he wanted to marry her, Anne may have realized herself that she would marry the king, or have to remain unwed, a burden on her family. 

Thomas Boleyn has been portrayed as grasping and heartless, selling his daughters like a common pimp, but truthfully, he had little say in the matter, either. It wasn't only his fortunes at stake, but the entire future of the Boleyn family. If he'd had a choice, he probably would have wished Anne would give in and become the king's mistress, because Henry tended to find respectable husbands for the women he bedded once he was done. But Anne's religious convictions were too strong for that.

Anne was, indeed, trapped. She could not risk offending her "boss" and losing her job with her entire family's future at stake. Whether she liked it or not, she had to keep the king's favor. It was upward toward the throne or utter ruin. Anne Boleyn never really had a choice.

Share on Tumblr

Henry Percy: Anne Boleyn's First Love?

If things had transpired just a little differently, Anne Boleyn might have gotten married in 1522 and lived out her life quietly as the Countess of Northumberland.

Henry Percy was born in 1502, the eldest son of the Earl of Northumberland. As a young boy, he was sent to the household of Cardinal Wolsey. He rose in the ranks until he was one of Wolsey's secretaries. When the cardinal went to court, wrote Wolsey's biographer, George Cavendish, Percy would linger with the ladies in the queen's chamber. That's where he met Anne Boleyn.

We know Anne was at court by February 1522, because she is recorded as playing the part of Perseverance in a court masque. It's believed Anne had been recalled from the French court because her father was negotiating her marriage with James Butler, Earl of Ormond. Anne's father and Ormond had an ongoing inheritance dispute that the marriage was intended to solve.

Anne Boleyn's grandmother was Lady Margaret Butler, daughter of the 7th Earl of Ormond. When he died, he had no sons, and so the daughters split the inheritance. Thomas Boleyn felt he should have inherited the Ormond title through his mother, but a cousin actually living on the lands, Piers Butler, more-or-less claimed the title for his own, and there wasn't much Thomas Boleyn could do about it, considering Piers Butler had the backing of the Irish lords.

Wolsey had the idea of marrying Anne to Piers Butler's son, James, was a way of settling the dispute. It's uncertain of whether Anne knew about these negotiations at the time. Cavendish says she didn't, and from what we know of Anne's moral standards, she wouldn't have begun a relationship with Percy if she knew she was about to be married to another man.

Just how far this relationship went is a matter of speculation. Cavendish writes that a secret love grew between them, and they agreed to marry.

In the Tudor era, a betrothal was legally binding. It could be as simple as saying in front of witnesses that the couple intended to marry, or for the upper classes, drawing up contracts which detailed the financial obligations involved. Subsequent marriages were invalid if it was determined that either party had been pre-contracted to another person without it being invalidated by a papal dispensation. While a betrothal could be broken, leaving the couple free to marry another, a betrothal with a consummation afterwards was much more difficult to dispense with, which is why Henry VIII had a proxy consummation after the proxy betrothal of his sister, Mary Tudor Brandon.

Did Anne and Percy ever say the "magic words?" Both later swore that there had never been a legally binding betrothal between them. Both of them were trained courtiers who knew how to communicate without technically ever saying dangerous words. It's entirely possible they had an understanding without ever crossing that line.

Cavendish claims it was the king who discovered the relationship and ordered Wolsey to break it off because he wanted Anne for himself. But all evidence points to the king becoming interested in Anne around 1526, years after this incident occurs.

In reality, it was likely Anne's father and the cardinal who put a stop to the match. The cardinal would likely have been concerned at seeing the solution to the irksome Boleyn-Butler inheritance issue being dismantled, and Thomas Boleyn likely wouldn't have wanted to see his daughter entangled with a man of high title, but low financial prospects. Percy's family also had a match in mind for him, and were likely displeased he was putting that at risk.

Cavendish records that Wolsey summoned Percy and chastised him in front of a hall full of servants, and disparaged Anne - something he was unlikely to do if the king was actually driving the situation because of his own interest in Anne.

I marvel not a little of thy peevish folly, that thou wouldest tangle and ensure thyself with a foolish girl yonder in the court, I mean Anne Boleyn. Dost thou not consider the estate that God hath called thee unto in this world? For after the death of thy noble father, thou art most like to inherit and possess one of the most worthiest earldoms of this realm. [...] Ye have not only offended your natural father, but also your most gracious sovereign lord, and matched yourself with one, such as neither the king, nor yet your father will be agreeable with the matter.

And hereof I put you out of doubt, that I will send for your father, and at his coming, he shall either break this unadvised contract, or else disinherit thee for ever. The king's majesty himself will complain to thy father on thee, and require no less at his hands than I have said; whose Highness intended to have preferred [betrothed] her unto another person, with whom the king hath travailed already, and being almost at a point with the same person, although she knoweth it not, yet hath the king, most like a politic and prudent prince, conveyed the matter in such sort, that she, upon the king's motion, will be, I doubt not, right glad and agreeable to the same.

According to Cavendish, Percy wept and protested:

... in this matter I have gone so far, before many so worthy witnesses, that I know not how to avoid myself nor to discharge my conscience.

Wolsey then responded that he and the king knew what to do in such circumstances, and ordered Percy never to speak to Anne again or face the wrath of the king.

Anne was sent home to Hever for about a year, and Percy was married to Mary Talbot after a long period of negotiation.

Percy's marriage to Mary Talbot was not a happy one. Their families had been planning the marriage since 1516, but it wasn't concluded until after the Anne Boleyn incident. We're unsure of the date - it occurred sometime between 1523 and 1526. Gerald Brenan, author of The House of Percy says that there was a mutual dislike between the couple from the start.

Percy submitted to the union, and was "sick in mind and body." It sounds like he was depressed over his situation. His earldom was broke, in deep debt to the crown. Percy surrendered the responsibility for managing his estates and finances to Wolsey. The cardinal received the income from it to pay the debts and gave the couple a pitifully meager allowance to live on. The financial pressures could not have helped the situation between Percy and his wife.

According to Brenan, the locals resented Percy for his perceived lack of generosity toward them, and so he and his wife were unpopular with their people. Wolsey employed the servants - and possibly even Percy's new wife - as spies to keep a close eye on Percy's activities. Brenan writes that they lied to the cardinal about Percy's spendthrift ways, and so Percy was constantly harangued with chastising letters.

Worse, Percy was faced with insurgents and outlaws on the borders of his lands that he was expected to combat and bring to heel. Organizing force against them was one thing, but when he had to execute them, it was quite another. One young boy stirred his pity, but he feared his own influence wasn't enough to obtain mercy. He entreated friends to approach the king on his behalf. They were successful and the boy's life was spared, but this got Percy in further difficulty with Wolsey.

You should not use so cantellous and colourable dealing with one that thus tenderly hath brought you up and set you forward...

Like his health, Percy's relationship with his wife, Mary Talbot, never improved. In 1529, she became pregnant and fled back to her father's home. Her child was stillborn, and Mary herself almost died. Wolsey persuaded her to return to her husband after she recovered, but Mary became convinced that Percy was going to have her poisoned.

Wolsey never had a chance to sort out that one because the king decided the cardinal wasn't working in his best interest to get him the annulment he wanted so he could marry Anne Boleyn. Percy was the one sent to arrest the cardinal, the man who had managed his affairs and treated him like a child all of these years. By all accounts, Percy treated Wolsey kindly as he escorted the cardinal toward what would probably have been his doom. But Wolsey died before he could face the king's "justice."

Soon afterward, Mary Talbot sought an annulment of her own, having gone back to her father's house again. Apparently, during one of her quarrels with her husband, Percy had mentioned he had once wanted to marry Anne Boleyn. Mary took that as an admission of a pre-contract between himself and Anne, and if she could force the issue, it might be a way out of her detested marriage.

Anne Boleyn decided to confront the matter head on, and asked the king to launch an investigation into it. Percy was summoned before the council. There, before the Archbishop of Canterbury, he solemnly denied there had been a betrothal between himself and Anne Boleyn.

Was he telling the truth? Some writers have posited that Percy gallantly denied his betrothal to Anne so she could marry the king, even though it meant condemning himself to continue a hellacious marriage with his hated wife. But the real answer is likely more mundane. Anne and Percy probably had an understanding, but didn't go so far as to technically commit themselves. Percy swore it on the sacrament, which wasn't a thing undertaken lightly in those days. It's highly unlikely he would have lied on the host and risked the damnation of his soul.

Only a scant three years after Anne's marriage, she was charged with adultery and treason. As a peer, Percy was summoned to be a juror in her trial. Percy had to know she was doomed, just like the cardinal he had escorted a few years before, and there was nothing he could do to save her. What emotional cost this may have had to him, we will never know, but it is recorded that after he said the required word, "guilty," he collapsed and had to be carried from the court.

His ordeal was not over. After the jury dutifully found Anne guilty, the king decided he wanted an annulment. His marriage would be ended by a blade in only a few short days, but Henry was determined to erase the marriage completely and bastardize his daughter, Elizabeth, too. (Ironically, if Anne was never married to Henry, she couldn't have committed adultery, but no one stopped to question that little technicality.) Percy was dragged out again and asked whether or not there was a pre-contract.

This time, there was likely a good deal of pressure on Percy to "admit" there was. Percy held firm. He wrote a statement, addressed to Cromwell:

I perceave by Sir Reginald Carneby that ther is a supposed Pre-contract between the Queen and me. Wherfor I was not only examined upon my othe before the Archbishoppes of Canterburie and York, but also reccaved the blessed Sacrament upon the sayme, before the Duke of Norfolk, and others of the Kynges hignes Council learned in spiritual law; assuring you, Mr. Secretary, by the said othe and bessed bodye, which affore I receaved, and herafter entend to receave, that the same may be to my damnation if there were any contract or promise of marriage betweane her and me.

At Newingtone Grene, the XII daye of May, in the 28th year of the reigne of our Soveraigne Lord, King Henry the VIII. Your assured NORTHUMBERLAND.

It ultimately didn't matter. What the king wanted, he would get. Cranmer was sent to the Tower to speak to Anne and emerged with the "evidence" he needed to annul the king's marriage. What it was is unknown. The document merely states that she admitted to an impediment that was "unknown" to the king at the time of their marriage. 

Anne died stripped of her title of queen, stripped of her title as wife. She was, once again, Anne Boleyn, as she had been in those heady days of 1522, when Percy had fallen in love with the girl who had beautiful black eyes.

Percy returned home, ill and perhaps heartsore. Taking stock of his own life, he realized it was highly unlikely he'd have children of his own. He had intended to leave his earldom to the children of his brother, but when their father took part in the Pilgrimage of Grace, they could no longer inherit. The estate would revert to the crown when he died. 

Percy tried the only thing he could to help his nephews. Instead of waiting for his death, he gave the estate to the king outright. In this way, he bypassed the inheritance rules that barred the boys from getting the estate, and prayed the king or the next monarch might be kind enough to confer the estate on them if they earned favor. Percy also hoped that by gifting the king his vast holdings, the king might be generous enough to pay off his debts, or perhaps allow him the income from one of his earldom's offices, so he didn't have to live in such miserable poverty. But the king refused. 

A rector that visited him shortly afterward found Percy in very sad circumstances. He was penniless, with only two servants to attend him, and severely ill. The rector wrote he expected Percy to be dead by the time the letter arrived, and indeed, his prophetic words were correct. The "Unhappy Earl" as he is called, died on June 29, 1537. Money had to be persuaded from the king to bury the poor man properly. Today, no trace remains of his tomb.

Mary Talbot spent years trying to get her dower funds from Percy's estate. She never remarried. Little is known of the rest of her life except that she was once accused of being a sympathizer of Mary Queen of Scots. She died in 1572.

Percy would have been glad, at least that his nephew did, eventually, earn back the earldom.

Share on Tumblr

"Declare I Dare Not" Henry's First Public Declaration of Love for Anne Boleyn

An earlier joust in which Henry wore
embroidered Ks to honor Katharine

February 7, 1526

Shrovetide was a holiday that was somewhat like Mardi Gras today. The Tudors celebrated before the beginning of Lent with sports competitions, masques, and feasts. The custom probably began with the practical intention of finishing up the last of the foods that would be forbidden to them during Lent, and from there evolved into a time of one last celebration before the proscribed period of self-denial. They would confess and be shriven of their sins on Shrove Tuesday, and then enter the season of fasting and penitence.

The court celebrated Shrovetide 1526 with a joust, one of Henry's favorite sports. Upon assuming the throne, one of his first orders of business was to install tilt yards at his favorite palaces. He rode in the jousts himself, despite the obvious danger. Kings had been killed in jousts before, and two years prior, Henry himself had once almost been blinded or killed when he forgot to put down his visor and a lance shattered against his temple, sending splinters inside into his unprotected eyes. But Henry wasn't the kind of fellow to let the prospect of civil war from leaving England without an heir spoil his fun.

This joust was held at the lists at Greenwich, and the king decided to use the occasion to make a statement about his feelings for Anne Boleyn. He rode out onto the field with an embroidered tabard bearing an image of a burning heart with the slogan Declare Je Nos, "Declare I Dare Not." It was a calculated move which said exactly the opposite.

It wasn't the first time Henry had used the joust to announce his feelings for a woman. In 1522, he had ridden at the Shrovetide joust bearing the slogan, Elle Mon Coeur a Navera, "She has wounded my heart," which some researchers believe referred to Mary Boleyn, but there's no proof of it - the affair seems to have ended by 1520 when Mary Boleyn married.

Interestingly, the masque after the 1522 Shrovetide season gives us the first documentary evidence of Anne Boleyn's presence at court, when she played Perseverance in the Chateau Vert masque. However, there's nothing to suggest Henry had any interest in Anne at that point.

And so, four years later, he rode out with another romantic slogan of intent emblazoned on his costume, and every head turned to whisper in another courtier's ear. At this point, everyone would have assumed it was another mistress Henry was seeking. It would have been interesting, and people would have already been planning to seek this woman's favor for their own benefit, but it wouldn't have been particularly noteworthy. Henry had approached several women for liaisons. His interest would drift elsewhere if the woman didn't seem to return his affections. Such dalliances rarely were recorded in dispatches to foreign courts.

This is why there is such scant evidence of Henry's interest in Anne Boleyn until 1527, when he began trying to make her his queen. If the Vatican had not stolen Henry's love letters and saved them in their archives, there wouldn't be much at all to document the early stages of Henry and Anne's relationship.

The king knew his every word fell on a thousand eagerly listening ears, and his every movement was watched avidly by the court. He had to have ordered the tabard embroidered with his message in advance, with the express intent of making a statement with it. He wanted to make his interest in Anne public.

Why did he decide to do this? Anne had refused to become his mistress, and Henry did not yet have the intent to make her his queen. Usually, Henry quickly lost interest if a woman indicated she wouldn't welcome further advances. But this case was different. Did he hope that the court's fawning attention and the pressure to keep his favor that came with it would convince Anne to acquiesce to his desires?

Whatever the king hoped to accomplish with this public declaration of his pursuit of her, Anne made it clear she would only surrender her virginity to her husband. Her duty was to make an advantageous marriage, and while the king was interested in her, no noble would risk his anger in asking for her hand. Flattered Anne might be at the attention, but this made finding a husband much more difficult. At this stage, she probably hoped Henry would lose interest soon, but she had to be very fearful of offending him and harming her family's prospects at court.

It was a delicate balance the court had to walk, especially those who had captured the king's eye. Share on Tumblr