AN ONLINE EXPERIENCE
THE RISE AND FALL OF ANNE BOLEYN
A Three-Month Online INTERACTIVE Experience
Open to Everyone!
June-August 2024
WHO WAS ANNE BOLEYN?
LOVER? RELIGIOUS REFORMER? ICON? TRAITOR?
‘On 19 May 1536, a French sword stilled the beating heart of an English queen. Her name was Anne Boleyn, and she would become one of the most controversial and iconic queens in English history. In her lifetime, Anne was a force of nature; she captivated the heart and soul of a king, divided a court and ignited the Reformation on English soil, beginning a process that would transform the religious and social landscape of the country.’
Extract from In the Footsteps of Anne Boleyn,
by Sarah Morris and Natalie Grueninger.
Over the next three months, we will be running a series of talks and interactive Q&As that touch on some less often discussed aspects of Anne’s life: the rise of the Boleyns, Anne’s social circle, the people who attended her, accusations of witchcraft, her trial, and her controversial final letter from the Tower.
Along the way, we will be joined by authors and historians passionate about sharing their insight and research as, together, we explore several fascinating aspects of Anne Boleyn’s dramatic rise and fall.
ARE YOU READY TO JOIN US?
To book your place, click the button below:
Please note: If you cannot make any of the sessions, they will be recorded and uploaded on YouTube. Links to these videos will be sent out via email within a few days. You will be able to catch up or watch any of the sessions again at your leisure until the end of September
MEET YOUR HOSTS
YOUR EXPERIENCE CO-HOSTS
Sarah
Morris
Founder of ‘The Tudor Travel Guide‘ and ‘The Ultimate Guide to Exploring Tudor England‘. Co-author of ‘In the Footsteps of Anne Boleyn‘ and ‘In the Footsteps of the Six Wives of Henry VIII‘.
Adam
Pennington
Founder of ‘The Tudor Chest’ blog and podcast, historian, and author of ‘Henry VIII and the Plantagenet Poles—The Rise and Fall of a Dynasty‘, coming July 2024.
YOUR PROGRAMME
HERE IS WHAT YOU CAN LOOK FORWARD TO DURING THIS ONLINE EXPERIENCE…
Session One: The Rise of the Boleyns, with Claire Martin
Date / Time: 16 June at 8 pm (UK time) (EDT: 3 pm; PDT: 12 pm; AEST: 5 am)
From the fields of Norfolk to the royal court, via city commerce, local government, liberal education and numerous wedding bells, the Boleyn family worked their way out of the peasantry and emerged as just one of many newly prosperous and ambitious families seeking to make the best of a changing world. Most other families, however, would not make it all the way to the throne.
How did they do it? Who were those early and largely forgotten Boleyns who brought about such a seismic change in their fortunes, and how did they prepare for even greater success in the generations that were to come?
Dr Claire Martin is a historian specialising in the history of London and the late Medieval period. She has worked on a number of London companies, including the Woolmen and the Girdlers, and her PhD looked at London’s medieval transport industry.
She has previously written for BBC History Extra, and her first book, Heirs of Ambition: The Making of the Boleyns (The History Press, 2023), is the first in-depth look at the family of Anne Boleyn and their rise from Norfolk peasant farmers to one of England’s most prominent families. She is currently working, on behalf of The Yorkist History Trust, to publish the executors’ accounts and remarkably detailed probate inventories of the House of Commons Speaker, Sir Thomas Charlton.
Session Two: Anne Boleyn’s Cosmopolitan Circle, with Natalie Grueninger
Date/ Time: 30 June at 10 pm (UK time) (EDT: 5 pm; PDT: 2 pm; AEST: 7 am)
As the Boleyns rose to power, they gathered around them a circle of lively intellectuals who supported the Boleyn cause and the Reformation. While these names are familiar to us, in this talk, Natalie will look more closely at the Boleyn’s inner circle, their backgrounds, influence and how they were affected by the destruction of the Boleyn faction in May 1536.
Natalie Grueninger is an independent researcher who specialises in the life, reign and times of Queen Anne Boleyn. She’s authored and co-authored six books, including the ‘In the Footsteps’ series. Her latest book, ‘The Final Year of Anne Boleyn’, was published in November 2022.
Natalie has written for several history magazines, including Inside History and Tudor Places, and runs the website On the Tudor Trail.
She’s the creator and host of the popular ‘Talking Tudors’ podcast and the founder of Women’s History Circle, which is dedicated to amplifying women’s voices and promoting the work of women creatives with a passion for history. Natalie is deeply interested in the lives of medieval and Tudor women and the networks they built and used, especially those with other women. She’s an avid bibliophile and a lifelong learner. When not at her desk, she can often be found indulging in her insatiable passion for travel. Natalie lives in Sydney with her husband, two teenage children and a cheeky cavoodle.
Session Three: Anne Boleyn’s Household, with Nicola Clark
Date/ Time: 14 July at 8 pm (UK time) (EDT: 3 pm; PDT: 12 pm; AEST: 5 am)
In the early 1530s, Anne Boleyn found herself in an unprecedented position. She was both the King’s mistress, and yet not the King’s mistress; queen-in-waiting, but with no defined timeline as to when the ‘waiting’ part might end. There was no established model for this. Should the Crown provide her with a full royal household? Who should staff it? This talk explores the transition between the households of Queens Catherine of Aragon and Anne Boleyn, following as Anne’s establishment gradually eclipsed Catherine’s. We’ll discuss the difficulty of the archive for Anne’s household and of piecing together its membership. Finally, we’ll relive Anne’s fall from the perspective of those who served her.
Dr Nicola Clark is a Senior Lecturer in Early Modern History at the University of Chichester and writes about women in the Tudor period. Her first book, Gender, Family, and Politics: The Howard Women, 1485-1558, was published by Oxford University Press in 2018, and her second book The Waiting Game: The Untold Story of the Women who Served the Tudor Queens comes out with Weidenfeld & Nicolson in April 2024. She also writes for public audiences, with work featured in History Today and History Extra, and has appeared on television as part of the BBC’s The Boleyns: A Scandalous Family, and More4’s Royal Scandals.
Session Four: Anne Boleyn’s Coronation, with Adam Pennington
Date/ Time: 28 July at 8 pm (UK time) (EDT: 3 pm; PDT: 12 pm; AEST: 5 am)
Anne Boleyn’s coronation was the pinnacle of six long, uncertain years of waiting, endless wrangles with Rome, and a resulting schism in the country between an emergent pro-Aragonese and pro-Boleyn faction.
The stakes were high, and to assert the King’s dominance, Anne Boleyn’s coronation was not only a splendid affair but one that broke with centuries of tradition; the King had her crowned with St Edward’s Crown, normally an honour reserved only for the reigning monarch.
However, Anne’s rise was controversial, and her procession through the streets of London divided opinion. In this talk, Adam Pennington will explore the ways in which Henry sought to assert the righteousness of Anne as his new queen through pomp, display, and ceremony. He will also speak about the coronation itself, whose ceremonies create a right of passage, symbolising the monarch’s transition from human to divine.
Adam Pennington is a historian, author and co-director of Simply Tudor Tours. Adam’s primary platform is The Tudor Chest, a popular blog and social media presence that primarily focuses on Tudor history but with a great deal of Plantagenet and modern royal knowledge thrown in for good measure. His childhood home looked directly over Nonsuch Park, home of one of Tudor England’s greatest and sadly now lost treasures – Nonsuch Palace. At the heart of Adam’s passion for Tudor history sits Anne Boleyn. He is an unapologetic Anne Boleyn obsessive and is on a mission to get to the bottom of that most challenging of topics, what she truly looked like! Adam is also an author, his first book, ‘Henry VIII and the Plantagenet Poles: The Rise and Fall of a Dynasty‘ is due for release from Pen and Sword publishing this summer, with a second book ‘Consorts – A History of Plantagenet and Tudor Royal Spouses‘ due for release in 2025.
SESSION FIVE: Anne Boleyn and Accusations of Witchcraft – Where does the truth lie? with Sylvia Barbara Soberton
Date/ Time: 4 August at 8 pm (UK time)(EDT: 3 pm; PDT: 12 pm; AEST: 5 am)
Despite the recent surge in Anne Boleyn-themed books and articles, scholars still cannot agree on the subject of Anne and witchcraft. There are two polarising schools of thought: one is that Anne had “the physical characteristics of a witch,” based on the hostile account of Nicholas Sander, and the other is that she was never “branded a witch in her own lifetime.”
In this talk, based on her recently published paper, Sylvia Barbara Soberton will demonstrate that neither of these two views is correct and that there is enough compelling evidence to refute them both. It is time to return to the original source material and re-evaluate this part of the narrative of Anne Boleyn’s life.
Sylvia Barbara Soberton is a writer and researcher specialising in the history of the Tudors. She is best known for The Forgotten Tudor Women book series, which concentrates on shifting the perspective from famous figures like Henry VIII’s six wives to the lesser-known, but no less influential, women of the Tudor court.
Sylvia has written ten books to date, and her newest titles include The Forgotten Years of Anne Boleyn: The Habsburg & Valois Courts, Ladies-in-Waiting: Women Who Served Anne Boleyn and Medical Downfall of the Tudors: Sex, Reproduction & Succession. Her ground-breaking research on the women who served Anne Boleyn was profiled in Smithsonian Magazine, The Express and History of Scotland Magazine. Sylvia is a regular contributor to the Ancient Origins website and magazine. She also talks about her books and research on podcasts such as The Tudors Dynasty, Not Just the Tudors, Talking Tudors and many more.
Session Six: The Trial of Anne Boleyn, with Sarah Morris
Date/ Time: 18 August at 8 pm (UK time) (EDT: 3 pm; PDT: 12 pm; AEST: 5 am)
The events of May 1536 have been discussed at length. The tale that led to the trial and execution of Anne Boleyn and the men who died with her is well known. However, some years ago, while researching Le Temps Veindra: A Novel of Anne Boleyn, Sarah stumbled across a fascinating paper which dissected the very nature and procedure of the case against Anne and how her trial was used as an ‘engine of state’ to facilitate her removal rather than as a tool to protect the innocent and condemn the guilty. She has long wanted to delve more deeply into this illuminating subject and shall use this paper as a springboard for a talk centred around this dramatic and final chapter in Anne’s life.
Dr Sarah Morris is an author, historical researcher and storyteller. Her passion is retelling Tudor tales of people and events through the lens of the places where those events unfolded. Founder of The Tudor Travel Guide and co-founder of Simply Tudor Tours, Sarah’s mission is to help inspire people to learn about and visit heritage locations steeped in sixteenth-century history.
In 2016, her research was instrumental in leading to the rediscovery of the ‘Anne of Cleves’ Heraldic Panels’ a nationally important example of a rare royal domestic interior from the sixteenth century. She has written three books, Le Temps Viendra: A Novel of Anne Boleyn, Vols. One & Two; In the Footsteps of Anne Boleyn and In the Footsteps of the Six Wives of Henry VIII. TV Appearances have included Anne Boleyn and Mary Boleyn: A Tale of Two Sisters, shown on Yesterday TV and a documentary about Mary I on Les Secrets D’Histoire for France 2.
Day Seven: Anne Boleyn’s Letter from the Tower, with Sandra Vasoli
Date/ Time: 25 August at 8 pm (UK time) (EDT: 3 pm; PDT: 12 pm; AEST: 5 am)
During my live interview with Sarah Morris, we will discuss the enigma of the letter, which is preserved in the British Library, dated 6 May 1536. Just days before her execution, this document, written to Anne’s husband, King Henry VIII, is a heartbreaking entreaty insisting on her innocence of the charges of which she had been accused. The origin of the letter has been passionately debated for over 400 years.
Who wrote it, and under what circumstances? Why was it found in Cromwell’s possession and not the King’s? Did Henry ever see it? And how did it find its way to the British Library? All these questions will be explored and debated in our chat. We will also look at a written statement alluding to the possibility that, as the end of his life approached, Henry VIII expressed grief and regret over his treatment of Anne (whom he acknowledged to be innocent) and his handling of Elizabeth his daughter. We will touch upon this shocking revelation.
Join us and determine for yourself what you believe to be true!
Sandra Vasoli grew up in a historic area just outside Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, in the US. Earning a Bachelor’s degree from Villanova University. Sandra loves visiting the sites frequented by her stories’ heroes. Highlights include the opportunities to hold the beautiful Book of Hours, in which Anne and Henry wrote messages of love to one another, and the rare privilege of visiting the Papal Archives in the Vatican Library twice to view the original love letters Henry penned to Anne over 480 years ago. That extraordinary experience forms the subject of her next ongoing project.
Her books include her most recent novel, Truth Endures, Anne Boleyn’s Memoirs; an epic historical mystery: Pursuing A Masterpiece, and the definitive study of a mysterious letter purportedly authored by Anne Boleyn as she awaited execution: Anne Boleyn’s Letter From the Tower. All three books are published by CrownedFalcon Press.
To book your place, click the button below: