The Boleyn Inheritance

Anne, Richmond Palace,
July 12, 1540

I have written to say that I agree with the findings of the inquiry, and they have all witnessed it, one after another, the great men who came here to argue with me, the ladies whom I had called my friends when I was Queen of England and they were desperate to serve in my court. I have admitted that I was precontracted, and not free to marry. I have even apologized for this.

This is a dark night for me in England. The darkest night I have ever faced. I am not to be queen. I can stay in England at the king’s unreliable favor, while he marries the little girl who was my maid-in-waiting, or I can go home penniless to live with my brother, whose spite and negligence have brought me to this. I am very much alone tonight.

This is the most beautiful palace in the kingdom, overlooking the river in its own great park. It was built by the king’s father as a great show palace in a peaceful, beautiful country. This wonderful place is to be part of the payment the king offers to be rid of me. And I am to have the Boleyn inheritance, their family house: the pretty castle of Hever. No one but me seems to find this amusing: that Henry should bribe me with the other Queen Anne’s childhood home, which he owns only because he beheaded her. Also, I can have a generous allowance. I shall be the first lady of the kingdom, second only to the new queen, and regarded as the king’s sister. We shall all be friends. How happy we shall be.

I don’t know how I shall live here. To tell the truth, I cannot imagine how my life will be after tonight, this dark night. I cannot go home to my brother; I should be shamed as a whipped dog if I were to go home to him and say that the King of England has put me aside, calling in archbishops to get his freedom from me, preferring a pretty girl, my own maid-in-waiting, to me. I cannot go home and say this. I cannot go home and face this shame. What they would say to me, how I would live as spoiled goods at my brother’s court, I cannot imagine. It is not possible.

So I shall have to stay here. There is no refuge for me anywhere else. I cannot go to France or to Spain or even to a house of my own somewhere in Germany. I have no money to buy such a place. If I leave England, I will have no rich allowance; they will pay me no rents. My lands will be given to someone else. The king insists that I live on his generosity in his kingdom. I cannot hope for another husband to offer me a home either. No man will marry me knowing that I have lain under the king’s heavy laborings for night after night and that he could not bring himself to do it. No man will find me desirable knowing that the king’s manhood shriveled at the sight of me. The king has volunteered to his friends that he was repelled by my fat belly and by my slack breasts and by the smell of me. I am shamed to the ground by this. Besides, since every churchman in England has agreed that I was bound to marry the son of the Duke of Lorraine, that will be an obstacle to any marriage I might want in the future. I will have to face a single life, without lover, or husband, or companion. I will have to face a lonely life, without family. I will never have a child of my own, I will never have a son to come after me, I will never have my own daughter to love. I will have to be a nun without a convent, a widow with no memories, a wife of six months, and a virgin. I will have to face life in exile. I will never see Cleves again. I will never see my mother again.

This is a hard sentence for me. I am a young woman of only twenty-five. I have done nothing wrong. And yet I shall be alone forever: undesirable, lonely, and in exile. Truly, when a king is a god to himself and follows his own desires, the suffering falls on others.