Anne Boleyn

Anne Boleyn lost her head in the last episode of the second series of the Tudors. The series made her out to be a conniving, ambitious seductress who was vindictive and quite nasty. As a corrective I have been reading Women of the Reformation by Ellen O Clayton. The book is undated but feels Victorian. It gives a very different picture of Queen Anne. It agrees with the modern take that she was both beautiful and vivacious, but shows her as pious and loyal, and a leading figure in the introduction of reformed theology into England. Both versions find her innocent of the charges of adultery that Henry used to rid himself of her when his roving eye had strayed elsewhere.

What I had not realised was that her uncle was the Duke of Norfolk, still England's leading Roman Catholic. No wonder she invoked such anger from the Catholic party.