by Karen Davies | Sep 15, 2022 | Blog, Gallery, History, Writing
When this giant spider crawled across the floor in front of me, I looked online and found it took its name, the Cardinal Spider, after Henry VIII’s chief minister Cardinal Wolsey. Legend says Wolsey was terrified of these giant spiders that used to crawl out of the fireplaces at Hampton Court. I was inspired to weave this little story into my writing.
unknown artist; Cardinal Thomas Wolsey (1471-1530); Royal College of Physicians, London.
‘So, what is Hampton Court like?’
‘Impressive,’ Thomas Boleyn replied. ‘The Great Kitchen has six fires, all with spits. It’s larger than some great halls, and the bathing chamber has hot water. It’s a palace for a King, not a Cardinal.’ His eyes were bright in the flickering candlelight as he looked at the stone mantle framing the fireplace. ‘The Cardinal Spider,’ he said, giving Anne a soft nudge and pointing to a giant brown spider. ‘Shall I tell them, or shall you?’ Then, continuing as though he had not asked, he said, ‘I rescued one from Wolsey. He’d climbed on a chair and was shouting to his page to stamp on it.’ Thomas threw his head back and laughed. ‘Before I put it out the window, I showed it to him. One of God’s creatures, I told him. I thought he was going to die right there and then. It gave Anne and me a chuckle. We named it the Cardinal Spider after Wolsey.’
by Karen Davies | Feb 11, 2022 | Blog, Gallery, History
In 1534, Hans Holbein, the King’s court painter, painted a miniature of the biblical King Solomon and the Queen of Sheba thought to refer to Henry’s establishment of the Church of England and the difficulties he had faced in obtaining a divorce. However, does this commission tell us more about Henry and Anne’s relationship than first meets the eye; their attraction and connectedness, which I am convinced was rooted in a meeting of minds.
I believe a fresh look at the biblical story of Solomon gives the miniature new meaning. By establishing the Church of England, Henry and Anne had succeeded in challenging the age-old pagan traditions the Catholic Church had emerged from, which had opposed biblical law for centuries.
King Solomon was the son of King David, the shepherd raised by God to become king of Israel after the death of King Saul.
Before his death, King David told his son, Solomon, that God had said to him that Solomon would build God’s house, as David had been a warrior king who had shed blood. Did Henry in 1534 now think of himself as a wise Solomon-type king whose destiny it had been to establish God’s true Church? It would appear so, as the miniature uses a biblical narrative to define Henry’s power as supreme governor of the Church.
However, the Holbein miniature becomes more interesting still when considering Solomon’s love affair with the Queen of Sheba because, Henry and Anne’s relationship somewhat mirrors their story. As Henry’s wife, one could assume that Anne played a role in the miniature’s commission.
Solomon challenges what marriage means to a king. At the beginning of his reign, King Solomon marries the Pharaoh’s daughter to prevent war. His councillors tell him that their issue can never rule Israel and Judah because their children will not be of pure blood. Here lies the first parallel. Like Solomon, Henry was young when he came to the throne and married Katherine of Aragon for diplomacy. However, some courtiers and nobles did not want an heir with foreign blood.
Later in his reign, Solomon meets and falls in love with the Queen of Sheba. Sheba proves to be his intellectual equal. Like Anne, the Queen of Sheba put the King to the test. At their first meeting, Sheba set Solomon riddles to solve, and she held off on a relationship with him until she was sure of him. Interestingly, the first riddle Sheba set Solomon was about fertility.
Solomon’s court elders disapproved of the relationship. Solomon says of Sheba. ‘I loved her above health and beauty, and chose to have her instead of light: for the light that cometh from her never goeth out.’
For her coronation in 1533, Anne chose the motto, ‘The moost Happy.’ Why she chose this motto has baffled historians. What I found striking when re-examining the miniature is its inscription on the side of the throne, which read: ‘Happy are thy men, and happy are these thy servants, who stand continually before thee, and hear thy wisdom (II Chronicles 9: 7). Could it be that the story of Solomon’s kingship had deep meaning for Anne and Henry and that Anne used it to convey her happiness in establishing God’s Church and becoming Henry’s Queen as did Henry at this time with his commission?
www.rct.uk/collection/912188/solomon-and-the-queen-of-sheba
by Karen Davies | Nov 11, 2021 | Blog, Gallery, History
Anne Boleyn and Henry VIII’s relationship has intrigued historians for centuries. Theirs was a relationship that changed the course of English history, but what do we know of Anne and Henry, the people?
Little survives of Anne as Henry had all of her portraits, emblems, and badges destroyed after her execution, and the letters she wrote him were stolen during her lifetime. Only a few personal things of Anne’s remain – her book of hours, currently on display at Hever Castle, and a letter said to have been dictated by Anne to Henry while she was in prison in the Tower of London. From these first-hand accounts of Anne Boleyn, we know she was an extremely pious reformer and that her views on faith and kingship had a profound effect on Henry.
Before Henry met Anne, he was staunchly Catholic. In 1521, the Pope honoured Henry with the title Fidei defensor or ‘Defender of the Faith’ in recognition for his Assertio Septem Sacramentorum (Defence of the Seven Sacraments). The king had written the piece in response to the German monk Martin Luther’s De Captivitate Babylonica Ecclesiae (The Babylon Captivity of the Church), which challenged some of the central doctrines of the Church and the authority of the Pope in Rome.
Martin Luther’s book and other reformist books such as William Tyndale’s The Obedience of a Good Christian Man were banned in England. Cardinal Wolsey, Henry’s chief minister, carried out book burnings at the open-air pulpit of St Paul’s Cathedral in London. If found with a copy, the person was labelled a heretic and faced the death penalty.
Martin Luther and William Tyndale believed in justification by faith alone. The belief that individuals had a direct relationship with God, and priests were not needed as intermediates. The Babylonian Captivity was a period in Jewish history when King Nebuchadnezzar of Babylon took the Jews captive and taught false worship. Martin Luther used it metaphorically to attack the Church. William Tyndale’s book discussed obedience to God and the right of kings as ordained by God directly from the Bible.
Anne owned a copy of Tyndale’s banned book, and in 1526 when the king wanted to marry her, she gave it to him in the hope that he would come to learn that his right to rule was ordained by God and therefore above the pope. I believe it says a lot about Henry and Anne’s relationship that she could share Tyndale’s book with him without fear of persecution.
Another very telling piece of evidence about Anne and Henry’s relationship is Anne’s book of hours, which contained prayers and psalms. It contains two messages between Anne and Henry. The first, written by Henry to Anne, reads: ‘If you remember my love in your prayers as strongly as I adore you, I shall hardly be forgotten, for I am yours. Henry R forever.’ Henry wrote this beneath an image of the wounded Christ, perhaps in a bid to convey he loved her so much it hurt.
Anne replied in a witty couplet beneath an image of the Angel Gabriel visiting Mary to tell her that she would have a son. ‘By daily proof you shall me find to be to you both loving and kind’. Perhaps she was assuring him she would give him a son.
These messages between Henry and Anne show they gave great thought and consideration to what they wanted to say to one another, using biblical stories metaphorically to convey their intentions.
In his fifth love letter to Anne, written in 1528, Henry thanks her for her New Year’s gift to him – a silver ship pendant. He thanked her, not only for the gift, but for the ‘fine interpretation’ and ‘the beautiful mottoes of the letter so cordially expressed.’ One can only wonder what fine interpretation and mottoes the king was talking about and why Anne sent him this unusual gift, where she got it from, and whether she had it specially commissioned.
Given the thoughtful way Anne and Henry communicated, and how deep-rooted their relationship was in faith, it is possible that Proverb 25.4 & 5 had something to do with her choice.
25.4 ‘Take away the dross from the silver, and there shall come forth a vessel for the finer. 5 Take away the wicked from before the king, and his throne shall be established in righteousness.
In marrying Anne and breaking with the Pope, the King was establishing his rule in righteousness with reform and an English Bible.
Two further points have influenced my thinking on this matter. In breaking with Rome, Henry declared himself head of the English Church in a series of Acts known as the Acts of Supremacy. I believe the choice of the word ‘supremacy’ supports Henry and Anne’s enthusiasm for reform because chapter one of the book of Hebrews is titled the Supremacy of the Son, meaning Christ. Henry was establishing himself as God’s anointed over his people in place of the pope, whom Anne and Henry and the reformers believed had usurped God’s authority.
The king also called his divorce ‘the great matter,’ which at first sight would appear to be a description of what was an important matter. However, closer examination of Anne and Henry’s communications identifies a pattern of symbolic communication between two highly intelligent people.
Proverb 25.2 reads: ‘It is the glory of God to conceal the matter: But the honour of kings is to search it out.’
In the Bible story of Esther, Queen Esther says: ‘My father told me it takes the glory of God to conceal the matter. And it takes the honour of Kings to search it out.’
This proverb aligns beautifully with the reformers’ cause, which was a quest for truth—the word of God or Church dogma? The reformers were urging the king to search out the true word of God with a Bible in English and to break with the pope.
This ties in with what has been in dispute for the last 485 years: did Anne get her Almoner Skip to preach a coded sermon using the story of Queen Esther to warn her husband against the advice of his chief minister Thomas Cromwell? Some believe the address marked Cromwell out as Haman, the king’s wicked adviser, Anne as Queen Esther, and Henry as King Xerxes, and this was why Cromwell moved against Anne to bring her down.
In what is believed to be Anne’s final letter, written while she was imprisoned in the Tower of London and found amongst Cromwell’s papers after his execution, Anne uses the very same phrase Queen Esther used to King Xerxes when she begged for her life and the life of her people.
Esther says: ‘If I have found favour in thy sight, (O king) and if it please the king, let my life be given me at my petition, and my people at my request.’
In her letter, Anne says: ‘If ever I found favour in your sight – If ever the name of Anne Bullen has been pleasing in your ears – then let me obtain this request.’
It can be challenging for us to place ourselves in the Tudor world because our world is so different in many ways, but these things had huge meaning in the minds of Tudor people.
It is clear that Anne and Henry, before it all went so tragically wrong, communicated in a beautifully deep and meaningful way with one another.
by Karen Davies | Nov 9, 2021 | Blog, Gallery, History
On 15th May 1536, Anne Boleyn, the second wife of King Henry VIII, was found guilty of high treason.
The final writ of 18th May 1536, reads:
Anne, late queen of England, lately our wife, recently attainted and convicted of high treason towards us by her committed and done, and adjudged to death, that is to say by burning of fire according to the statute, law and custom of our realm of England, or decapitation, at our choice and will, remains in your custody within our Tower aforesaid. We moved by pity do not wish the same Anne to be committed to be burned by fire. We, however, command that immediately after receipt of these presents, upon the Green within our Tower of London aforesaid, the head of the same Anne shall be caused to be cut off.
The country was in shock. Never before had a Queen of England been put to death. But nothing about Anne’s rise or fall had followed a traditional path, and neither did the method of her execution chosen by King Henry VIII.
Many historians have speculated about why Henry chose a French swordsman to execute Anne when the traditional method of execution was the axe. So, why did he choose the sword?
Some historians say the King chose the sword for Anne as an act of mercy because the axe was not a clean, precise method of execution. Sometimes it took the axeman several attempts to sever the head. Some believe the King was protecting himself in the eventuality that it took several blows to decapitate Anne.
Other historians have said that Henry’s choice of a French swordsman was to mock Anne. She had spent her youth at the French court, which was said to be the most promiscuous in Europe, and she had been found guilty of adultery.
These arguments of mercy and mockery go against each other.
Recently, historians have said that Henry’s choice could be linked to his vanity as a ‘King Arthur’ type King. The Tudors had long positioned themselves as descendants from the line of Arthur. Henry’s father, Henry VII, had christened his heir Arthur, and Henry makes various references to King Arthur in court pageants and his restoration of Edward I’s roundtable. They believe Henry’s choice of the sword may represent Excalibur, the sword of truth.
However, I don’t believe Henry’s choice of the sword was to show Anne mercy or a symbol of Camelot. Instead, I think it entwined with their relationship and Anne’s faith that had bought her into conflict with those at court.
Queen Anne Boleyn was a pious reformer. She was a highly intelligent woman who understood the power of metaphorical thinking. Before her arrest, she had her Almoner, Skip, preach a coded sermon using the biblical story of Esther to fire a warning shot at the King’s chief minister, Thomas Cromwell. (SKIP’S SERMON)
Throughout her extraordinary rise to become Henry’s Queen, Anne championed reform. She read the Bible in English, the letters of Saint Paul, and William Tyndale, who translated the Bible into English and died for it. Anne gave Henry her copy of William Tyndale’s book The Obedience of a Good Christian Man to read when death was the penalty for owning such a book. After reading it, Henry famously declared: ‘this is a book for all Kings.’
In The Obedience of a Good Christian Man, Tyndale says: ‘It is the blind powers of the world that slay with fire, water and the sword, all who cleave to God’s word.’
The sword is an important biblical symbol given to King’s and referred to throughout the Bible.
The proverb Live by the sword, die by the sword has biblical origins. It comes from a conversation between Jesus and his disciple Peter just before Jesus’s arrest in the Garden of Gethsemane.
Psalm 22.20: Deliver my soul from the sword; my darling from the power of the dog.
I believe Henry chose the sword for Anne to let her know she was dying because of her faith, because she had interfered too far in matters of state that involved the Church.
