Anne Boleyn: Henry VIII's Obsession Read Online Free

Brussels in 1513, England was firmly allied with Spain and the Habsburg Empire against France. Both Maximilian and Ferdinand of Aragon had a common interest in their grandson, and common heir, the future Charles V. Charles was the son of Maximilian’s deceased eldest son Philip and Ferdinand’s eldest surviving daughter, Juana, Queen of Castile. Juana, although Queen of Castile in her own right through her mother, Isabella, had, by 1513, spent several years imprisoned on the grounds of insanity while her father ruled her kingdom on her behalf. Henry VIII, through his marriage to Catherine of Aragon the daughter of Ferdinand, naturally allied himself to their interests and, in 1511, had sent troops to aid Ferdinand in his war with France. In 1513 Henry joined the war personally and sailed to France with an army, besieging and winning two French cities. This was Henry’s first taste of war and he ‘returned to England back again with triumph and glory’. News of the victories would also have been celebrated at Margaret’s court and Anne would have been pleased with the continuing alliance between Margaret and her own country. Anne may also have been given the opportunity to meet Henry VIII for the first time when Margaret, Maximilian and Henry met at Lille during the war in late August 1513, although Anne’s presence is nowhere recorded at the meeting.
    The betrothal between Margaret’s nephew and Mary Tudor had been agreed during the lifetimes of the couple’s fathers and Mary was always known in England as the Princess of Castile. Charles, as the heir to Spain, the Habsburg Empire and the Netherlands, was the greatest marriage prospect in Europe and Henry VIII was anxious for the marriage to be concluded as soon as he returned from France. According to Hall’s Chronicle he quickly set about making preparations to send Mary to Brussels when he received word from Margaret’s council that, while they would happily receive Mary Tudor in the Netherlands, they could not provide a dower for her without the further agreement of Ferdinand of Aragon. This was certainly a delaying tactic as ‘the kynge lyke a lovynge brother would not sende his syster wyldely without a dowar’.
    Margaret was as dismayed and angry as Henry when she was told that Charles’s marriage to Mary Tudor could not take place in 1513 and she wrote to her father strongly urging him to continue in his alliance with England. Maximilian however refused to allow her to arrange the marriage and the following year, when Henry again attempted to send Mary to the Netherlands he was once again rebuffed. For Henry, this was the final straw and he began to look around for a new marriage for his sister and a new alliance. Ferdinand of Aragon had made a separate truce with France in April 1513 and by the spring of 1514 Maximilian was also considering a French alliance. Henry also decided on a French alliance, in spite of Margaret of Austria’s attempts to keep the English alliance in place.
    Anne of Brittany, the woman who had supplanted Margaret as queen of France, died in January 1514, leaving her second husband, Louis XII of France a widower. Anne of Brittany bore her husband only two daughters and the aged Louis needed to remarry to secure the succession for his own son, rather than his son-in-law, Francis of Angouleme. There were rumours that Louis would seek to marry Margaret of Austria herself but, instead, perceiving the breakdown of Henry’s Habsburg alliance, Louis asked the English king for the hand of his sister. The marriage was quickly arranged, in spite of the thirty year age gap between the two parties, much to the dismay of So Pleasing in Her Youthful Age Margaret of Austria. The marriage also had a profound effect on Anne Boleyn.
    Word of Anne’s fluency in French had reached the English court by the time Mary Tudor’s French marriage was arranged and Thomas Boleyn was asked to recall his daughter so that she could go to France to serve the