Anne Boleyn

Anne Boleyn was Henry’s second wife for only three years (nicknamed "Anne of the Thousand Days") when she was beheaded on May 19, 1536. The pope’s refusal to give Henry VIII permission to divorce Catherine of Aragon so that he could marry Anne Boleyn was “the occasion” for the birth of the Church of England in 1534. Anne was convicted of adultery and treason which were very likely fabricated charges. Her real crime was that she gave Henry a daughter rather than the male heir Henry desperately wanted. Their child, Elizabeth, would one day rule England as Virgin Queen for 45 years. If you watch Netflix's "The Tudors," the impression it gives of Anne Boleyn is that she was a conniving, unprincipled political opportunist. She may have been that, but she was also a quiet supporter for the religious Reformation ongoing in England at the time (starting with John Wycliffe - the Lollards - 150 years earlier). Anne was a “furtherer of the godly [Protestant] cause; the evidence is clear from the late 1520s, when she recommended the writings of William Tyndale to the King, and in her years of power she consistently saw to the promotion of clergy such as Thomas Cranmer, Hugh Latimer and Nicholas Shaxton who were already marked out as evangelical enemies of the old religion” (Diarmaid MacCulloch). Along with Wycliffe, Erasmus, Tyndale, Luther, Cranmer, and Cromwell, Anne Boleyn played her part in what came to be called the English Reformation.


Chuck Collins

Chuck is the Director for the Center for Reformation Anglicanism

https://anglicanism.info
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