"O Death, Rock Me Asleep," A Poem by Anne Boleyn?

O death, rock me asleep,

Bring me to quiet rest,

Let pass my weary guiltless ghost

Out of my careful breast.

Toll on, thou passing bell;

Ring out my doleful knell;

Let thy sound my death tell.

 Death doth draw nigh;

There is no remedy.

My pains who can express?

Alas, they are so strong;

My dolour will not suffer strength

My life for to prolong.

Toll on, thou passing bell;

Ring out my doleful knell;

Let thy sound my death tell.

Death doth draw nigh;

There is no remedy.

Alone in prison strong

I wait my destiny.

Woe worth this cruel hap that I

Should taste this misery!

Toll on, thou passing bell;

Ring out my doleful knell;

Let thy sound my death tell.

Death doth draw nigh;

There is no remedy.

Farewell, my pleasures past,

Welcome, my present pain!

I feel my torments so increase

That life cannot remain.

Cease now, thou passing bell;

Rung is my doleful knell;

For the sound my death doth tell

Death doth draw nigh;

There is no remedy.

For five hundred years, this poem has been attributed to Anne Boleyn, supposedly written during the dark days while she awaited her execution in the Tower. But is there any evidence the poem was written by Anne?

Martin Pope went to investigate the origins of this poem and discovered a manuscript version of it in a contemporary book of poetry, so we know it was written around 1536. But was it really written by Anne herself?

While Anne Boleyn was imprisoned in the Tower, strict instructions were given that every word the queen said was to be recorded. To ensure this, Anne was never to speak to the ladies guarding her without the presence of Lady Kingston, the wife of the Tower's constable.

Kingston's reports to the council about Anne's activities survive in the Letters and Papers of Henry's reign, albeit mutilated by a fire that occurred in 1731. Some may be lost - a historian writing prior to the fire mentions seeing documents that are no longer extant, including a letter from Anne angrily rejecting a plea deal.

Kingston never records that Anne wrote anything. He makes one mention of Anne asking if she had permission to write to Cromwell:

[Anne said] I shalle desyre you to bayre a letter from me . . . . . . . . . . [to Master] Secretory. And then I sayd, Madam, telle it me by [word of mouth, and I] wille do it. 

Apparently, Anne was not to be allowed writing materials, but was only allowed to pass messages through Kingston. Her brother seems to have been under the same restriction, because when he received a letter from his wife, Jane Parker, he had to reply verbally.

There is a letter "From the Lady in the Tower" purportedly from Anne to Henry, but it is not in her handwriting and is of doubtful authenticity. Kingston never mentions it, and considering the restriction just mentioned, it's unlikely to have been written by Anne.

If Anne was unable to write letters pleading for justice and her very life, it seems unlikely she was provided with paper and pens to write poetry. Kingston would have noted it in his daily reports, and a copy would have undoubtedly found its way into the Letters and Papers. But the council certainly wouldn't have released anything to the public that showed Anne in a sympathetic light.

None of this means it's impossible that Anne was the poem's author, of course. It is within the realm of possibility that Kingston's report of Anne writing the poem could have been lost in the 1731 fire - but it's unlikely.

During Anne's imprisonment, Henry wrote to Jane Seymour:

Advertising you that there is a ballad made lately of great derision against us, which, if it go abroad and is seen by you, I pray you pay no manner of regard to it. I am not present informed who is the setter forth of this malignant writing, but if he is found out, he shall be straightly punished for it.

The ballad Henry refers to hasn't survived. His agents were successful in wiping it out, but O Death, Rock Me Asleep has come down to us, preserved in manuscript form. It's doubtful we'll ever know its author, but the poem is evidence that the injustice Anne was suffering was known far and wide, and there were people who were sympathetic to her plight.

After Anne's execution, the council purchased from Kingston all of the personal items Anne had left behind in her apartments in the Tower, which were traditionally part of his payment. The council didn't want any souvenirs of the dead woman remaining. If a poem was found among her things, it would have been quietly destroyed.

O Death was soon set to music, supposedly by a former chaplain of Anne's.

Around 1583, another song was created, entitled Queen Anne's Lament, which may have been composed by Robert Johnson.

Defiled is my name, full sore,
through cruel spite and false report
that I may say for ever more
farewell my joy, adieu comfort.

Full wrongfully ye judge of me
unto my fame a mortal wound
say what ye list it will not be,
ye seek for that cannot be found.

It seems the sad fate that befell Anne Boleyn lingered in popular memory. Share on Tumblr

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.

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"She Said WHAT?" The Danger of Quotes and Historical Context

Anne dropped her pen into the ink bottle and rubbed her temples in exasperation. “I trow, that girl . . . She is my death, or I am hers.”

Emma rolled her eyes. “Let not Chapuys hear that, or he will write to the Emperor again that you threatened once more to kill Mary.”

-- Under These Restless Skies

Anne Boleyn is quoted as saying those words, and many writers paint them as a threat, perhaps made in the heat of temper. The problem is that we don't really know if Anne really said it, or in what context.


As with many of Anne's "quotes" the source is Eustace Chapuys, who faithfully reported every snippet of negative gossip about Anne to the imperial court. He insisted his sources were "trustworthy" gentlemen, but other accounts of the same incidents don't always corroborate his claims.

Because of his hostility to Anne, and his willingness to believe anything bad of her, we have to take his version of events with a large grain of salt. We're not even sure whether Anne supposedly said it in reference to Katharine of Aragon or Mary. (Weir says Katharine; Ives and Fraser say Mary. The Calendar of State Papers has it as Mary.)

But, let's assume that Anne said the words attributed to her in this incident. How should we interpret them? On their face, the words "She is my death and I am hers," sound very grim and foreboding. But taking words simply at their face value may not convey the actual intent of the one who spoke them.

How many of us have felt the need to add an emoticon on an email to assure the recipient that our words are meant as a jest? That's because the written word, stripped of facial expressions or context, can give an impression the writer did not intend. Without proper context, we cannot know what Anne meant.

The bluntness of the written word does not account for exaggeration or hyperbole. A friend of mine said a few times to her defiant teenage son that she brought him into this world and could take him back out. By no stretch of the imagination was this woman actually threatening to harm her son, but if her words were written five hundred years later, stripped of their context, would they be perceived as a sincere threat?

Another problem is that context is sometimes added by writers. Writer A quotes those words and adds a few of their own, indicating they were a threat. Writer B quotes Writer A's interpretation - and thus the "threat" enters history.

Layers of assumptions have been piled on these quotes. Because Anne is seen here as "threatening" Mary, some assume she must have hated the girl, and so maybe there's something to Chapuys' claims that Anne wanted to poison her ... These speculations can lead us down a dangerous path of erroneous assumptions based on conjecture.

How much of what we "know" about Anne Boleyn is based on these assumptions, passed down through writers quoting others?



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The Age of Anne Boleyn: The Letter to Her Father

Courtesy of The TudorsWiki

One of the argument surrounding the birth date of Anne Boleyn concerns the letter Anne wrote to her father in 1514, thanking him for sending her to the court of Margaret of Austria, and pledging to be obedient daughter who would make the most of the opportunity.

Many people see this as evidence Anne must have been born in 1501 or even 1499, because the handwriting and French is too good for a seven-year-old girl.

I tend to disagree. As many scholars have noted, the letter's French is bad. Anne made several corrections, and in some places, the words are unintelligible. In other words, it looks more impressive than it really is.

This is the text of the letter, as translated by Philip Sergeant:

Sir, — I understand by your letter that you desire that I shall be a worthy woman when I come to the Court and you inform me that the Queen will take the trouble to converse with me, which rejoices me much to think of talking with a person so wise and worthy. This will make me have greater desire to continue to speak French well and also spell, especially because you have so enjoined it on me, and with my own hand I inform you that I will observe it the best I can.

Sir, I beg you to excuse me if my letter is badly written, for I assure you that the

orthography is from my own understanding alone, while the others were only written by my hand, and Semmonet tells me the letter but waits so that I may do it myself, for fear that it shall not be known unless I acquaint you, and I pray you that the light of [?] may not be allowed to drive away the will which you say you have to help me, for it seems to me that you are sure [??] you can, if you please, make me a declaration of your word, and concerning me be certain that there shall be neither [??] nor ingratitude which might check or efface my affection, which is determined to [?] as much unless it shall please you to order me, and I promise you that my love is based on such great strength that it will never grow less, and I will make an end to my [?] after having commended myself right humbly to your good grace.

Written at [? Veure] by Your very humble and very obedient daughter, Anna de Boullan.

Education in the Tudor era was much different than today. It started earlier, and the expectations were more stringent than today. Few allowances were made for a child's age. These methods were apparently successful, because noble children of the era are recorded as having remarkable accomplishments for their ages.

In the letter, Anne asks her father to pardon her mistakes because the letter is the first she has composed by herself, something unlikely to have been written by a fourteen girl. (In comparison, her daughter, Elizabeth, was writing flawless letters in Italian by age ten, and knew several other languages.)

Princess Mary Tudor could play the virginals well enough to impress ambassadors at age four. At age nine, she was able to converse with Flemish ambassadors in Latin. Edward VI could conjugate Latin at age seven, and kept a diary from the time he was ten years old. Prince Arthur Tudor and Katherine of Aragon exchanged polite letters in Latin from childhood. Lady Jane Grey began her education at age three and learned Latin, Greek, French, and Italian while corresponding with some of the greatest scholars of the age. Henry VIII's handwriting was very clear, even as a child, when he inscribed his Latin copy of Cicero. The Folger Library has examples of children learning handwriting that are very sophisticated to modern eyes.






This is a letter from the eight-year old Henry FitzRoy to his father, asking for a harness for his horse to aid with his studies of Julius Caesar.

Courtesy of the Scottish Archive for Schools

To the left is a letter that Mary Queen of Scots wrote to her mother in French - her second language - at about the age of eight. While its handwriting is not as stylish as Anne's, it is neat and well-formed. It was the same handwriting she would use as an adult.

To the right is a letter that was written by Princess Elizabeth when she was ten years old. It's in Italian and shows even better handwriting than that of Anne Boleyn. Granted, there is quite a difference between seven and ten, but Elizabeth supposedly knew several languages at this point, which presumably required years of study.

Anne apparently excelled in her studies, because Margaret found her exceptionally bright for her "young age." This comment indicates that Anne was younger than the usual accepted age of thirteen for maid of honor.

While it's not certain proof, I believe the letter would have been well within Anne's abilities if she had been tutored since she was a toddler, as most noble children were.

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