Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 01.djvu/439

 prince died at Middleham, and Richard and Anne were childless. It was a bitter disappointment, and no doubt tended to make the ill-won throne still more insecure. Whether it affected Anne's health we do not know; but she did not outlive her son a whole year. Her end, according to some accounts, was hastened by foul play; and there seems to be no doubt that even while she was alive a shameful rumour was propagated that after her removal Richard might possibly marry his niece Elizabeth, daughter of Edward IV, and so defeat the designs of Richmond. After she fell ill, Richard abstained from her bed, alleging that he was advised to do so by physicians. It is said, also, that he complained to several nobles of her barrenness, and thereby created a belief that she would not be allowed to live long. Nevertheless, it is clear that her illness lasted some time. Her death occurred on 16 March 1485, the day of a great eclipse of the sun.

Three portraits of Anne exist, two of them drawn by her chaplain, Rous of Warwick, in an illuminated roll, now in the Herald's College. The third is in a similar roll, belonging to the Duke of Manchester. She seems to have been a lady with well-formed regular features and long flowing hair.



ANNE (1507–1536), the second queen of Henry VIII, was the daughter of Sir Thomas Boleyn, afterwards earl of Wiltshire and Ormond. He was the grandson of Sir Geoffrey Boleyn, a prosperous London merchant, who was lord mayor in 1457, and who purchased the manor of Blickling in Norfolk from the veteran Sir John Fastolf. Thrift seems to have prepared the way for the future greatness of the family. Sir Geoffrey married a daughter and coheir of Lord Hoo and Hastings. His son, Sir William Boleyn of Blickling, married Margaret, daughter and coheir of Thomas Butler, earl of Ormond; and their son, Sir Thomas, married Elizabeth, daughter of Thomas Howard, earl of Surrey, who, for his services at the battle of Flodden, had his father's dukedom of Norfolk restored. These were the parents of Anne Boleyn, who, according to Camden (Introduction to Annals of Eliz.), was born in 1507. She had a brother named George, afterwards Viscount Rochford, and an elder sister named Mary, some parts of whose personal history appears to have been confounded with her own. Both sisters spent some of their early years in France, and it would seem that Anne, then seven years old, must have accompanied her elder sister Mary when she went thither in the suite of Henry VIII's sister Mary, who was married to Louis XII in 1514. Mary Boleyn was in England again in 1520 when she married William Carey; while Anne, who became, as Cavendish observes, ‘one of the French queen's women,’ remained in France till the end of 1521 or beginning of the year 1522, when, owing to the hostile intentions of England towards France, she was called home. She took part in one of the court revels in March 1522; and it is certain that she soon found more than one admirer besides the king. Sir Thomas Wyatt, the poet, paid her marked attention, though he was at the time a married man. Little respect was shown to conjugal ties by Henry VIII's courtiers. The king himself had before this time dishonoured Anne's sister Mary, whom he married to William Carey; and it is something to say for Anne in the midst of that exceedingly corrupt court that she did not yield in the same manner. A more honourable suitor appeared in the person of Lord Henry Percy, heir to the earldom of Northumberland; but when his attachment became manifest, Wolsey put a stop to it by the king's direction. He called the young lord before him in his gallery, reproved him for his indiscretion in entangling himself ‘with a foolish girl in the court,’ and informed him that the king had been arranging to marry her to some one else, finally sending for the earl, his father, who threatened to disinherit him for his presumption.

The king had in truth planned a marriage for her while she was still in France, and it was to this that Wolsey no doubt alluded, and not to any secret design of Henry to marry her himself; for the occurrence can be proved by the most conclusive evidence to have taken place as early as 1522, that is to say, within a year of her return from France. That Cavendish, from whom we derive our knowledge of the fact, should have interpreted it otherwise, is not wonderful, as he wrote many years afterwards, and knew nothing of the earlier project. The intended match was with the son of Sir Piers Butler, Earl of Ormond, and is frequently mentioned in the State Papers of 1520 and 1521 as a convenient project for reconciling two rival families in Ireland. It was, however, dropped not long after Anne's return from France. In April 1522, which was just after her first appearance at the English court, her father received two separate grants of lands and