transcript
Speaker 1:
[00:02] Hello, I'm Professor Suzannah Lipscomb, and welcome to Not Just the Tudors from History Hit, the podcast in which we explore everything from Anne Boleyn to the Aztecs, from Holbein to the Huguenots, from Shakespeare to Samurais. Relieved by regular doses of murder, espionage and witchcraft. Not, in other words, just the Tudors, but most definitely also the Tudors. Today, for fans of Anne Boleyn, a visit to Hever Castle is a must. It's almost a shrine. It doesn't hurt that as castles go, Hever proves that small can be beautiful. There's something ineffable about watching the mist rise over its topreed garden on a winter's morning, or seeing the doves that perch in the golden wall rising above the moat, or crossing that drawbridge into the gorgeous little courtyard with a timber-framed interior. And after the changes made by William Wardolf Astor in the early 20th century, to walk around Hever is almost to feel like one is going back in time. But the reason that it has a special place in the hearts of Tudor aficionados is because this is actually and truly where Anne Boleyn, Henry VIII's second wife, grew up. One can almost imagine her as a dark-haired child running across the lawns. It was here that she received the education that so impressed the Archduchess of the Netherlands and probably here that she started learning the French that would give her such a prime position at the court of Queen Claude de France. Much later, after Anne's return to England and place at Henry VIII's court in the 1520s, it was here to Hever that she retreated when the sweating sickness ravaged London. It was here that she received from the king some of those letters that would change not only her fate, but that of the country. To walk us around Anne's childhood home, I am delighted to be joined by Dr Owen Emmerson. Dr Emmerson is Assistant Curator at Hever Castle. He has co-written five books and he has served as a historical consultant. Most recently on the BBC's adaptation of Hilary Mantel's Wolf Hall, The Mirror and the Light. Here's no stranger to Not Just the Tudors. I'm Professor Suzannah Lipscomb and you are listening to Not Just the Tudors from History Hit. Dr Owen Emmerson, welcome back to the podcast.
Speaker 2:
[02:46] It's an absolute pleasure to be back with you. Thank you for having me.
Speaker 1:
[02:50] It's always a joy to speak to you, Owen, and to plumb the depths of your knowledge. There are a few subjects on which you are more knowledgeable than Hever Castle and Anne Boleyn's life at it. So this is just going to be an absolute treat.
Speaker 2:
[03:07] Bless you.
Speaker 1:
[03:08] Can you describe Hever Castle for a start for those who haven't been and need to picture it in their minds eye?
Speaker 2:
[03:16] Absolutely. Hever is set in the Weald of Kent, which was a really important place of labour and leisure, I guess, in the 16th century at least, is where the iron industry was booming because of the amazing oaks that were very abundant across the county. But that also made it very, very popular as a leisure place for hunting. It's famously called the Garden of England. Its proximity to London makes it a very nice base for some very wealthy people, including the Boleyns. But the castle itself is sort of tucked away, by the River Eden, in almost a little basin. It's quite secluded, quite private. And to describe it is to sort of conjure every castle that any child has ever drawn really. It's, you know, a beautiful square keep with perfect little turrets either side of it. And it's actually quite small. It looks sort of bigger in pictures than when it's before you. But that is deceptive also, because when you actually enter its walls, it is a bit like a TARDIS. It feels bigger inside than it looks outside, if that makes sense. So it's almost perfectly square. It's situated within two moats, which are defensive. And it has a really amazing series of original defensive features, such as a drawbridge, three portcullises originally, and a series of gates, which remarkably we think date to its building in 1383.
Speaker 1:
[05:14] So yes, that's what I wanted to pick up next. So 1383 is when the work starts. Tell me about the sort of history of its construction.
Speaker 2:
[05:22] So really interestingly, we worked with the brilliant Professor Simon Thurley back in 2020 to really try and nail down when Hever, as it appears today, was actually constructed. And we actually thought that it was built earlier than it was. We thought it was built in the 1270s by William de Hever, who certainly owned the lands at Hever and most likely also had a manor, though we can't really reconstruct what that manor looked like or where precisely it was located. But what Simon was able to do is to look at the fabric of the building, the style of it, the remaining structure inside, which is original to the stone walls or largely original to it at least. And he was able to conclude that it was built later in 1383 by a man called John the Cobham of Devonshire, part of the much wider and very prominent Cobham family. And I think it's best described as a physical manifestation of the fear of the time. There are a number of different castles that spring up under King Richard the Second, who grants licenses to crenellate existing manors. And it's perhaps no coincidence that John de Cobham is a tax collector in Sussex, who is moving slightly outside of his county during a very, very precarious moment for tax collectors because the Hundred Year War is raging, the Peasants' Revolt has just torn through Kent up to London, dragged Simon Sudbury, the Archbishop of Canterbury and chief tax collector out of the tower and beheaded him because of the huge rising taxation. And you can kind of understand in that context why a tax collector would want a really well-fortified little manor outside of the county that he is responsible for taxing.
Speaker 1:
[07:33] And when does it get tied up with the history of the Boleyn family?
Speaker 2:
[07:38] So we know that the first Boleyn to purchase at Hever was Jeffrey Boleyn, who we like to refer to as the pivotal Boleyn. His father was a small land owner in Saul in Kent. He owned a really quite small piece of land, which he used in a slightly nefarious way. We know about his life chiefly through the law courts because he was often fined for over ploughing his bit of land and for minor things such as illegally storing timbers. But I think that those small misdemeanours sort of highlight that this isn't an enormously wealthy family, that they are perhaps living slightly beyond their means or trying to at least. And it's Jeffrey, his son, Jeffrey Jr., who is the one that gets away. He moves to London. He becomes an apprentice to a hatter. He works his way up through the guilds and the Mercers' Company and becomes Lord Mayor of London and gains an enormous wealth for the family. This is sort of the origin of the family wealth. He marries incredibly well. And this is a pattern that the Boleyns will follow. They will marry up. And they are very good at marrying heiresses as well. So Hever actually comes into Geoffrey's possession slightly later on in his life. He had already bought Blickling Hall in Norfolk and we believe largely rebuilt that manor in Brick. And then he goes into a syndicate with his brother to buy what is an enormous estate at Hever just outside London. And eventually buys his brother Thomas out of that syndicate to own it in his own right. But only has a year or two to enjoy it. He does make some structural changes to the castle, such as getting rid of the medieval central hearth in the Great Hall and partitioning off a parlour for a bit more privacy. Sort of marking, I guess, the transition from more communal living into more private living that's emerging. But Hever, I would say from that point onwards, becomes a really, really foundational part of the Boleyn story, I guess. And it's certainly not the most prestigious property that they own or the largest. In fact, we know two generations on, Thomas Boleyn has amassed sort of 40 manors, many of which are huge, like Rochford Hall and Luton Hoo. And yet they always seem to gravitate to this small little castle, which acts, I think, as both a family home, but also sort of the centre of their social and political world.
Speaker 1:
[10:45] We assume that Anne was not born at Hever Castle, right?
Speaker 2:
[10:50] Yes. So this is a very opaque part of Anne's history, her birthdate. I've always been of the opinion that she was born around 1500 to 1501. But I do acknowledge that to be called Norfolkian, as she was by Matthew Parker, she has really to have been born before 1505, which is when Thomas and Elizabeth Boleyn inherit Hever Castle, when William Boleyn, Thomas's father, grants Elizabeth a lifetime's interest in Hever. And it's from that point that we believe the family moved to Kent. So really, Anne has to have been born, in my opinion, before 1505. I'm kind of open therefore to dates between those 1501 to 1505. I've become a little bit more malleable to the idea that it could be slightly later than I had anticipated. But we can be certain that by 1505 she is chiefly located in Kent. Most of Thomas Boleyn's correspondence locates him at Hever from this point onwards.
Speaker 1:
[12:05] So Thomas Boleyn is Anne's father who has married Lady Elizabeth Howard, the daughter of the Earl of Surrey, another marrying up situation. Tell me about Thomas Boleyn's career.
Speaker 2:
[12:20] He has a remarkable career. I think he's had a really bad rap actually over the years in particularly in popular culture. He's often portrayed as an incredibly ruthless, scheming individual who will stop at nothing to get wealth and power. Actually, he inherits an enormous portfolio of properties. He is enormously wealthy. Way before either of the Boleyn daughters catch the king's eye. And he is the best French speaker at the English court. His career under Cardinal Warsey sees him being a foundational figure in planning and executing the Field of Cloth of Gold summit in France in 1520. And moreover, he is, you know, a key diplomat at the court of Henry VII and Henry VIII. And I, we know also that he is a proficient at jousting. And to a young Henry VIII, I almost think that he would have appeared as a sort of a comrade in arms almost. The king and Thomas would have jousted together. He was a really integral part of the functionality of Henry's court, both at court and beyond in wider Europe. He is stationed with Archduchess Margaret of Austria and at the French court too. So he's very, very well connected. Most of the reports that we have of his dealings abroad show him in a really, really positive light. He's quite, he's got quite a lot of ingenuity in sort of dealing with issues. So yeah, I think, I think he's a really, really fascinating individual and far more, far more likable than popular culture would allow for, I think.
Speaker 1:
[14:20] And I suppose Kent is the place to be for him because, as you said, it's relatively close to London, because it provides that fertile hunting grounds, which the new king is so attracted to, but also because as a diplomat, having somewhere that is quite close to the channel to travel to continental Europe is probably quite important for him as well.
Speaker 2:
[14:48] Very much so. Hever quite literally sits at the centre of his world. It's about half a day's ride to a day's ride to Greenwich, which during Henry VIII's early years is his favourite palace, and pretty much the same distance to Dover from where his diplomatic missions will set forth from. So, to have your family situated at the centre of that political world is really important. And I think we can see so much of the correspondence that we have of Thomas coming to and from Hever. I think it shows that Hever has quite an important place in their world. And I think its size is part of the reason that it remains so popular, because you can't really have many visitors to stay at Hever if all of the family are in situ. There's pretty much just enough. When we take into consideration also that Thomas Boleyn's mother, Lady Margaret Butler, who was the coheiress to the Eldom of Ormond, is also in residence pretty much permanently from 1519. She's situated with the family at Hever. So there's not a lot of room for guests. And therefore, if you're strategizing, if you're having potentially quite difficult and even illegal conversations about faith, about reform, it sort of serves as an ideal location in which those conversations can play out with a bit of security and safety, I think.
Speaker 1:
[16:30] What do we know of Anne's time there as a child? How long is she there? And do we have any details?
Speaker 2:
[16:38] We know next to nothing from the historical record, sadly. We can deduce that her childhood from 1505 through to 1512 is primarily, I think, situated at Hever. There are clues which sort of tie Anne to this spot. For example, her younger presumably brother, Henry Boleyn, almost certainly died in his infancy. There is a cross which marks his grave in the chapel at Hever. And also another brother is buried at nearby Penshurst, which is the larger estate which abuts to Hever. Now, we know that from 1520, Thomas Boleyn became steward of Penshurst after the downfall of the Duke of Buckingham. But Thomas's grave is similarly very small indeed. And I think this might tell us that he was again in his infancy when he died. Perhaps he had been boarded out at this stage to the larger property to share a tutor. That was a fairly common practice. And we know that the Duke of Buckingham's son was born at the turn of the century. So it could be that Thomas the elder, taking the name of his father, which was fairly common, had been boarded out maybe in around 1507, 1508 and had sadly died. But there are sort of little moments that you can pick out in Thomas's correspondence, for example, where he is being a very dutiful steward to the property that he owns and the properties that he's responsible for, that we can tie the family quite tightly to that location. Wonderfully, Sophie Bacchus Waterman, in her beautiful research on Elizabeth Boleyn, located for the first time, to my knowledge, Elizabeth's signature. And what really struck me about seeing it for the first time was that she quite clearly taught her children to write. There are so many synergies between Elizabeth's signature and the writing of her children. So I think we can say with some degree of certainty that Elizabeth played a foundational role, as so many women did in the early education of her children. They probably had a tutor at Hever. But beyond that, we really are sort of relying on comparative work to reconstruct what the childhood of Anne and her siblings would have been like. We sadly don't have diaries. We don't have that kind of detail.
Speaker 1:
[19:30] So Sophie's work also testifies to Elizabeth's agency, or we have a sort of some indication of how she's involved in running the estate, which gives us a sense of her as a woman who can take responsibility. And Thomas Boleyn obviously speaks French, has a humanist outlook. So between them and from the evidence we have of Anne later, when she has obviously some French by the time she turns up in Mecklen, we can deduce that there is a good education happening at Hever for Anne and her siblings, I suppose.
Speaker 2:
[20:11] I think so. I think, you know, you mentioned the fact that Elizabeth is incredibly, you know, very much involved in the running of the estate and the other estates too. She's obviously enormously competent in that regard. Thomas is away a lot of the time, you know, part of the nature of his job is that he's on embassy. So I think the fact that William Boleyn made her co-owner of Hever, looking beyond the financial aspect of it, because it was part of her dower, I think it showed that they were absolutely aware of how competent she was. And Thomas is very much of the humanist circle. We know that he commissions Erasmus to dedicate several works to him. And the education of women was really at the forefront of humanist thought at this time. Slightly depressingly, it tended to be, the sentiment was that women were the first educators of men, and therefore you needed to invest in women to ensure that men got a great education. But a byproduct of that was that women were being educated to a much higher degree in these kind of households than they had previously. And I think if we look at Margaret of Austria's recognition of how bright she is for her age, how quickly she's adapting to a much higher degree of education in Mechelen. I mean, she's being educated alongside Charles V, the future Charles V and his siblings. So yeah, I think the level of education that she was getting really stretched and provided amazing opportunities for her ahead. And that must have begun at Hever. And I would love to be able to go back to those moments, to hear what kind of languages were spoke within its walls. We know that her written comprehension when she gets to Mechelen requires some work, that we don't really have a clue about what her spoken comprehension would have been. And I have a feeling that French would have been a fairly dominant language through those early years.
Speaker 1:
[22:44] Yes, I think that's right. I mean, the letter that we have from there suggests that she has precisely got the conversational French but hasn't learnt to write it properly before.
Speaker 2:
[22:52] Exactly.
Speaker 1:
[22:53] You mentioned Penzhurst. So can we talk a bit about the relationship with the other properties nearby? Penzhurst is one, of course. Allington is another. One of the possibilities of her youth is that she knows a man who will grow up to be one of the most brilliant men at Henrysham Court, Thomas Wyatt, the poet and diplomat and many other things. Do you feel that we have any sense at all, any sure evidence of connections between them in her youth?
Speaker 2:
[23:31] This is such a great question. And Thomas, I think we can say, beyond all doubt, was very, very attached to Anne. You know, she appears several times, not explicitly, but definitely implicitly in his writing. And Allington is 15 miles away from Hever. If anyone's ever been to Allington Castle, it looks like a slightly larger version of Hever. They're built roughly around the same time. So I feel sure if we look at the connections that Anne's family has to other major families, the Gages, the Duke of Buckingham, Pennshurst you mentioned there. This is, I think, a very well connected family to some other very important families in the local Weald. So I feel almost certain that there must have been quite an early connection there between the families. Thomas's correspondence, I think, really gives us a window into this because he really took seriously his responsibilities as a steward of his territory, as it were. Quite often find him re-roofing properties such as Pennshurst or restructuring bridges that have fallen into disrepair. He's a really sort of good steward of the area. These families did have responsibilities and they had to work together because often these features overlapped on to differing territories. You can get a sense of how these families are connected by the work that they have to do, which is collaborative. So, yeah, I wish we had more sort of documentary evidence of Thomas and Thomas Wyatt and Anne's earlier relationship to one another. But I think it very likely that the proximity they have suggests a familial connection, at least. If we look ahead, for example, to the peril that another Anne of Hever, Anne of Cleves, finds herself in during the Wyatt Rebellion, it is precisely because of her proximity to Allington Castle under Thomas Wyatt the Younger that she becomes the focus of suspicion much later on. So I think that gives you an idea that the Crown is recognizing that proximity poorly means a good connection. So I think we, you know, I think we can apply that to Anne Boleyn and Thomas Wyatt the Elder here too.
Speaker 1:
[26:17] Hever now is rather different from Hever in 1510. Can you give me a sense of Hever as Anne would have known it? Like how much do we know about the castle as she experienced it?
Speaker 2:
[26:35] We know quite a lot actually, which is really exciting. And we know this because after Anne of Cleves died, the property was chiefly let out for the next sort of 250 years to tenant farmers. And we have floor plans that survive from the 1830s, which were recorded before alterations were made. And they were recorded by the architect as he came to inspect the property. And what they reveal are completely typical layout, layouts of chambers that really hadn't changed since the 1380s. And although Hever now has a really beautiful veneer that's slightly a pastiche, I guess, from the Edwardian period under William Wardorf Astor, who renovated the castle extensively, we do still have the footprint of the Boleyn family home. He didn't change the layout of the castle in any way, which was a testament, I think, to his love of the property and his respect for its history. So what we know, therefore, is that in Anne's time, this was a house completely divided by status and function. If you walked through the gatehouse, to your left, the west wing was the family range. It consisted of a chattelain's office at the bottom with a parlor, which are butted to the large great hall. And upstairs, we had a nursery, a great chamber, which was the sort of the heart of the family home, and a best bed chamber, which led to the keep with three additional chambers. The east side, which was not actually connected to the familial suite, contained a dairy, a larder, kitchens, a buttery, and above it, servants' dormitories. And to get from one wing of the castle to the other, the servants had to go out into the courtyard, across a flagstone path, into the family household. The exception to that being, there was a corridor through the screen's passage, from the kitchens into the great hall, where they could serve food. So this is very much a house divided by status. And there really isn't much accommodation for anyone outside of the family. We do know, however, that there are many outbuildings. So later on, there will be host houses added to accommodation. There was a vast Tudor stables at the front of the castle, which had six additional bed chambers above the stools beneath. And there were various little cottages scattered around the castle itself. So it kind of would have felt like a village almost surrounding the castle itself. But what we can say with a real great deal of certainty is that if Anne visited today, she would recognize the outside of her castle, absolutely. And she would be able to go through the series of rooms that she once called home and would know precisely where she was. They might look a little different. They might have kind of a different, you know, appearance. But much as 10 Downing Street has different wallpaper with different Prime Ministers, you can still absolutely know where you are oriented in your former home. So Hever is a remarkable survival in that regard.
Speaker 1:
[30:24] So is that the key difference? If, say, we pick the Great Hall, for example, we say, Oh, look at that gorgeous panelling and the tapestries and the minstrels gallery and those incredible doors and locks. And is that stuff that is a later edition, I know the wonderful changes of the early 20th century. Do we know anything about what the Great Hall itself would have looked like before?
Speaker 2:
[30:50] Yeah, we do. And the hall in its present state tells the story of its evolution. So originally the Great Hall would have been one bay wider than it is at present. And it would have been open to a crown post roof. So as you entered it, it would have felt very much like you were entering the Barron's Hall at Penzhurst, which is only about 50 years earlier than Hever's Great Hall. So a vast crown post roof above you, double the height that it is presently and far greater than it is currently. At the back of the Great Hall, as you walk in, you'll notice a beautiful screen, which was added by Geoffrey Boleyn to partition off a parlour for a bit more privacy behind. We know that there would have originally been a central hearth, as Penzhurst, Barron's Hall does still have today, at the centre. We know that Thomas Boleyn and Elizabeth got rid of that feature and inserted a side fireplace for a bit more warmth, comfort and a less smoky existence, I guess. And we know that Anne of Cleves sealed that space and made use of that beautiful crown post roof to insert a long gallery above it. There was always a minstrels gallery between the Screens Passage and the Great Hall. But that has a beautiful ornate carved appearance now that Astor put in. And he also inserted a wonderful carved surround to that 16th century fireplace, covered it in pomegranates and falcons, very apt, and inserted the Boleyn family crest. So all of those features tell us everything we need to know about how this house evolved according to the needs and tastes of the differing families that live there. It is the same space, but it's just changed in appearance and functionality over the centuries.
Speaker 1:
[32:57] And how about Anne's bedroom? For a long time, Hever has identified one little space as Anne's bedroom. And I know there's been a lot of research and thinking about that in recent years.
Speaker 2:
[33:09] Yeah. So our earliest reference to it being called Anne Boleyn's bedroom is much earlier than you might think. It comes at the end of the 17th century. So it's fairly early naming of that space as being Anne Boleyn's bedroom. Beyond that, we can't link it in any meaningful documents to being her bedchamber. But if we look at the typical layout of a medieval home, so we've done extensive comparative work about how chambers function, how they feed into one another. The most likely usage for it, being in the West Wing, which gets the most daylight throughout the day, is the solar of the house. Typically you get a nursery, you get a great chamber, which is like the living space, and then you get the best bedchamber after that. And it sort of divides the children from the parents, and they converge in the middle for education and for private dining and for entertainment. So, logically, it does make sense that the children would be separated slightly from their parents. And perhaps that tradition in the late 17th century, where it was called Amberlyn's Bedroom, does have some legs. We have renamed it. It's now just called the Nursery, because we do want to acknowledge the fact that there were other children at Hever. And over the past sort of three or four years, as a consequence of Simon's research, we have been thinking about how to represent the castle, how to retain Anne's story, because so many people come to the castle to experience Anne, but also to give them more, because there is so much more to Hever than Anne. She had siblings, she had parents, she had a grandmother that lived at Hever. And there were some amazing visitors to Hever as well. Probably not Henry, but some other really key individuals visited Hever, and we want to tell their story too.
Speaker 1:
[35:24] You've painted this picture of a household that's much attended by servants. Do we have any data on that? I mean, how many servants would have been?
Speaker 2:
[35:33] So I would love to know precisely who served at Hever. By trade and by training, I'm a social and cultural historian, and much of my career has been focused on Anne, but a lot of my education was focused on in inverted commas, ordinary people. We know the name of one servant who is Robert Cranwell. He is the steward at Hever. It's Robert Cranwell who writes to Cromwell to inform him of Thomas Boleyn's death much later. But beyond that, we really don't have names. We don't have the details that I would absolutely adore to have. Much later in the castle's history, wonderfully, we do have the names of servants, particularly the servants of the Astor family who occupied the castle in the Abwardian period and beyond. But if we look realistically at the kind of accommodation that Hever had, we're probably talking about eight permanent staff that reside at Hever and who serve the family. It's not a huge retinue of staff. It's absolutely nothing like they would experience a court, but they would have cooks, they would have people to attend to their household, they would have people that would attend to them. But beyond that, we really have to sort of piece together the kind of individuals and the number of individuals that served at comparative properties. And so yeah, we're probably looking at between eight to 12 staff. And that would include groomsmen. You know, the stables are a much missed part of Hever, in my opinion, they were dismantled in the 1890s, just before the Astors acquired the castle. But having a stable of that size really tells you, I think, that they were constantly using horses, not just for business, for traveling, but also for leisure. You know, they had at least six horses permanently at Hever, because that's precisely what the structure reveals to us. So, yeah, I would love to find more details. We do know that their rector was John Barlow at Hever. They have a very close relationship with him, particularly Anne, later on. And very unusually, for a parish priest, he will go to Rome for the Boleyns. So we can get an idea of the closeness that they had with their staff through the connection they have to John Barlow, I think.
Speaker 1:
[38:26] John Barlow is the one who says she's reasonably good looking, isn't he?
Speaker 2:
[38:29] He is, yeah. He's, yeah. It's not the most flattering description. But, you know, maybe an honest one. I like to think that he was using that to complement her many, many other attributes. But yeah, certainly a trusted acquaintance to not only go over to Rome to sort of get the temperature of what's going on there, but also to go to the diversities to secretly look at alternative routes for the family and to get the opinions of scholars on the matter. I think it really reveals a great amount of trust of the people in their circle.
Speaker 1:
[39:17] And of course, the estate at Hever is right next to the church of St Peter and St Paul in Hever. So it makes sense that that relationship with the rector is close. Is there anything else we ought to know about that sort of symbiosis between church and castle?
Speaker 2:
[39:33] Yeah, really interestingly, we don't have a space which we can properly say was an internal chapel at Hever. Most manors would have a chapel within them. There is the possibility that what is now a rather gaudy 1970s sink bathroom, which you and I have explored before, might have served as a sort of private oratory, a place of prayer, a closet. Very excitingly, we're doing a lot of work on that space at the moment with the wonderful buildings creator of the tower, Alfred Hawkins. But I think chiefly, their place of worship was the local church, and it's in that space that Thomas is buried. He has a really beautiful tomb with a brass atop of it, which is one of the earliest depictions of a night in full garter robes. It's a really wonderful monument to the man. And of course, Henry Boleyn, his young son, is buried next to him. So there must have been a very, very close relationship. It's just a small short stroll up the hill to the church. And I think that was a well-worn path for the Boleyns. All of them appeared to have been incredibly pious. We don't often associate Anne Boleyn with piety. And yet, among her most abundant remaining possessions are texts, which are inherently religious in their nature. I think this is a problem of how her story is depicted or has been depicted across the centuries, less in terms of her influence on the question of the great matter, much of which does play out at Hever and is located at Hever for a good amount of time during the King's great matter. But I think it's abundantly clear that this is an incredibly pious individual who is constantly questioning. And the question of how reformist she was is one that is of eternal fascination to us, I think.
Speaker 1:
[41:52] Yes. So Anne is back at Hever. She leaves in 1512, 1513 to go to the continent. At what point does she return? What kind of periods of time can we identify her being at Hever in late years?
Speaker 2:
[42:09] So we find Anne at court. We know that she is sent back from the court of Claude and Francis. The reason given is that she's going to marry her cousin, James Butler, which is partly true. That's the reason that Wolsey gives to Francis. There is another reason and that's because Henry is shifting in alliance again, favouring the emperor, moving away from Charles. And actually, Anne's disappearance from the French court almost gives the game away because Francis does question why she has left. We believe she then enters the service of Catherine of Aragon. And the next time that we can firmly locate Anne at Hever, frustrationally doesn't have a date. We know that she doesn't marry her cousin, but we know that there was an attachment to Henry Percy, the heir to the Uldum of Northumberland. And we only know much of this through George Cavendish, who very frustratingly doesn't give us dates. He was the gentleman usher to Cardinal Walsie, and it's here that we get the most detail about what happened, that the agreement that Anne and Henry Percy had formed had been broken by Walsie, and that she had been sent to Hever. And he describes her smoking there, not physically, but emotionally. He's, you know, kind of fuming in annoyance. And he locates this breakup of this potential union as the reason that Anne dislikes Cardinal Walsie so much. I think it's that reason that Cavendish gives us this detail, and that's perhaps why it's not dated, and it doesn't, you know, give us a firm date. It's probably around 1523, around that date. But we can tie Anne much more firmly at Hever in around 1527, and between that date and 1529, Anne appears to be repeatedly at Hever. Really, I guess, though, that she's not seen at court, at certain junctures of the great matter. I think, also, we have to consider that she might be retreating to Hever to get a bit of space from the king and from the intensity of what's happening to her. It's this period that Henry is bombarding her with a series of 17 surviving letters, there may well have been more. And it's through these letters that we see the courtship playing out, I guess, between Henry and Anne. They've often been called love letters. I think it's very difficult to recognise them solely as that because we don't have Anne's replies. And I do tend to agree with Natalie Gruniger, the wonderful historian who recognises them as much as love letters as a negotiation process between Henry and Anne. I'd love nothing more than to have Anne's replies. And we can tie four of them firmly to Hever, not least because Henry speaks about Hever in one of them. But I do want to just add an air of caution. It has often been assumed that all of them were sent to Hever. And I do question that because although we can tie four of the 17 to Hever, and in fact we can tie one of the letters that Anne sends to Cardinal Wolsey to Hever too, because it's sent just after she's recovering from the sweating sickness in 1528 and thanking him for a gift that he sends to Hever. I do just want to caution that there are other properties that she might have been at besides Hever. I'd love to be able to say that they were all sent there, but we can't actually say that. But we do know, for example, that Fox and Stephen Gardner are required to stop a Hever to inform Anne, both on their way to and from Rome, to inform her about what's going on. She might be away from court, but she's an active participant in the great matter. And Hever, therefore, is a really important part and site of that story, I think.
Speaker 1:
[46:40] Absolutely. And we can imagine, therefore, that she is writing responses to Henry's letters, we assume. I mean, we know that she's sending him things, we just don't know if she replies to all 17 or whatever. But we can imagine that some of that activity is happening at Hever. And that's quite a thing to imagine, isn't it?
Speaker 2:
[47:03] It really is. And I love little details that we get from these letters as well. We know that Henry is actually reluctant to put certain parts into writing. And he says that her brother, who is acting essentially as a messenger, will inform her of more. So there are little details there that really tell us that this is not the whole story, that there is more being conveyed verbally than these letters allow for. And you're completely right to say that Anne definitely didn't reply to all of them because he does rebuke her for not replying to some of them. So there is a lot of work I think that still needs to be done on what these letters actually mean because they have for a long time been interpreted as the beginnings of a great love story. But I think that is because they've been read in certain contexts and at different times when there were different expectations of Anne's story than perhaps we understand it today. I'd love just to have one of those replies to get a much better understanding of what she felt, where her agency was in all of this. Because I don't necessarily think this is a remarkable love story, or at least that's not the whole story. I think there were huge expectations on Henry's part of Anne. And I think there certainly must have been a reluctance at first. We know, very, very interestingly, counter to this narrative of Thomas Boleyn pushing his daughters in front of the king, that, via Eustache Apui, who's spoken to Thomas Howard, Anne's uncle, that Thomas and he are quite reluctant in the matter. And there might be a number of reasons for that. It might be that Mary Boleyn, who had something of a relationship, though we're not quite sure how much of a relationship with Henry, you know, didn't necessarily gain much from the relationship and that it didn't yield much for the family or for Mary. It might also be that it threatens their prominence in the family, because Thomas was very much the head of the Boleyn family and the Duke of Norfolk was very much the head of it all. But having a queen in the family superseded both of them. Very interestingly, Thomas Boleyn isn't actually at court much during Anne's reign, certainly not at the end of her reign. We quite often find him at Hever. So I think this does evidence that there is a great deal of uncertainty from the Boleyn end, which isn't necessarily well recorded. So I'm really cautious about what they thought and certainly what Anne thought.
Speaker 1:
[50:03] Well, that notion of caution is well taken, but we have established some very good facts about the place that Anne knew, returned to, that was the heart of the Boleyn world. Thank you so much for giving us just a bit more of a sense about how this beautiful castle played out in this most incredible of stories. Is there anything else that we absolutely must know before you go, Owen?
Speaker 2:
[50:36] Thank you. I mean, it's always a joy to talk about Hever. I suppose, beyond the fact that we've got a really exciting exhibition on at the moment, which looks at Anne Boleyn's image via portraiture and by possessions as well, I just wanted to give you a flavor of where we're headed at Hever, really, because after next year, where we're going to be focusing on the great matter and Hever's role within it, visitors will be able to explore Anne Boleyn's story perhaps more fully than they have hitherto before. But we are, as a curatorial team, going to be focusing much of our time for the next four years on the other Anne of Hever, Anne of Cleves, and her remarkable 17 years at the castle and the amazing innovations that she made there. And also we're going to be taking visitors back further than ever before and representing certain spaces that would have been known to the Cobbums of Hever too. So we are expanding beyond Anne whilst keeping more of her at Hever than I think visitors will ever have explored before. So it's a really exciting time to be working there. And I'm hoping that it will be an incredibly exciting place to visit for many years to come.
Speaker 1:
[52:03] Absolutely. And I think it's so right that you're directing attention to Anne of Cleves. And when we're talking about agency and Anne's, there's a lot of it on display at Hever. And that's a very recent finding that it's actually her work that's put that long gallery there, for example. So you're going to have to come back and tell us all about that in the future, Owen.
Speaker 2:
[52:23] I will look forward to doing so enormously. She is one of my favorite heroines of history. And I can't wait to explore her history more with you and others.
Speaker 1:
[52:33] Fantastic. Thank you so much for your time today, Owen.
Speaker 2:
[52:36] An absolute pleasure. Thank you.
Speaker 1:
[52:39] Thank you for listening to this episode of Not Just the Tudors from History Hit. Thanks also to my researcher, Max Wintle and my producer, Rob Weinberg. We are always eager to hear from you, including receiving your brilliant ideas for subjects we can cover. So do drop us a line at notjustthetudorsathistoryhit.com. And I look forward to joining you again for another episode next time on Not Just the Tudors from History Hit.