Anne Boleyn's copy of the New Testament in English (Antwerp, 1534). © Trustees of the British Library.

It is clear that Anne was very much involved in presenting Henry VIII with ideas of and support for the Royal Supremacy, and unsurprising that among the many insults he threw at Anne Boleyn and her family, Eustace Chapuys accused them of being outright 'Lutherans'. After her execution during the reign of her daughter, Anne was lauded by Protestant propagandists for her contributions to the cause of reform. William Latimer, Anne's chaplain, sent an account of her religious activities to her daughter Elizabeth, while Alexander Ales (a Scottish reformer at the English court in 1536) wrote an account of her fall to her which blamed it on enemies of the Reformation. Edward Foxe even makes a place for the queen in his Acts and Monuments, otherwise known as the Book of Martyrs:

So long as Queen Anne, Thomas Cromwell, Archbishop Cranmer, Master Denny, Doctor Butts, with such like were about him [Henry VIII], and could prevail with him, what organ of Christ's glory did more good in the church than he?¹

The way in which this is phrased is indicative, for it treats Anne as one reforming influence among others. Anne Boleyn was not simply interested in the Royal Supremacy as a means of becoming queen; she was also interested in reform more generally for its own sake. Quite apart from anything else, there was no need to couple the Supremacy with interest in other religious change; Henry VIII himself, after all, did not share the reforming interests of his wife and minister.

The first question to be asked is - is this any more than Protestant propaganda? There are obvious reasons why, in the reign of Elizabeth I, Protestants might wish to glorify Anne Boleyn. Further to this, Latimer and Ales' accounts were both for the benefit of Elizabeth, while Ales actually sent an address for any contributions she might wish to send!² However, given Elizabeth's own silence on the subject of her mother, there is no compelling reason why Protestants should have had to treat her as anything more than a side-issue in the Reformation; a catalyst rather than a participant. Furthermore, there is considerable contemporary evidence to support the image of Anne as a reformer.

The main instrument of Anne Boleyn's influence as queen was patronage, and she made good use of this in religious affairs. Men such as Thomas Cranmer, Hugh Latimer, Nicholas Shaxton (at the time an evangelical; he would later renounce such views), Thomas Goodrich and John Skip (all mentioned by William Latimer) were very much Anne's protégés. Seven out of the ten bishops appointed between 1532 and 1536 were reformers and her clients; given Henry's own religious conservatism, this must surely be significant. This influence continued to be significant after the crisis of May 1536; the majority of reforming bishops in 1547 were still those who had been supported by Anne Boleyn.³

Anne Boleyn's copy of 'The Ecclesiaste' (Antwerp, 1534). © Trustees of the British Library.

These individuals varied considerably among themselves - given the fluid nature of the 1530s (the term 'Protestant' only began to be used in 1529!), this is hardly surprising. By no means did all of them become Protestants, and indeed Anne herself did not go so far. That she believed in reading the Bible in the vernacular is certain; her copy of William Tyndale's New Testament in English still survives, for example, as does her French Bible translated by Jacques Lefèvre d'Etaples. We also have her copies of 'The Ecclesiaste' and 'The Pistellis and Gospelles for the LII Sondayes in the Yere'; again, scriptural texts in French. The latter appears to have actually been commissioned by Anne. Given the priority accorded to the Bible, the best label to describe her is probably "evangelical" - she probably falls very much in the French Christian humanist tradition. Although she left France when its evangelical tradition was very much in its infancy, she had a grounding in French culture; it would have been her natural milieu.⁴ She kept up with new religious literature and works; Latimer actually travelled abroad in the spring of 1536 for this very purpose.⁵

It is also important to remember what Anne was not. She was certainly not a full-blown Protestant; very few in England were at this stage. When Tristram Revell, for instance, tried to dedicate his translation of a work denying transubstantiation to her, she rejected the request.⁶ On the other hand, she did help Richard Tracy, whose father's will seemed to question prayers for the dead. Similarly, there is a strong emphasis on faith in the texts which she focussed on; interestingly, her French Bible had on the back cover of the second volume of her text: "La loi a été donnée par Moses: La grâce et la vérité par Jésus Christ", with (at a push) possible emphasis on the idea of justification by faith and at the least a focus on the power of the Word which was the hallmark of an evangelical. Indirectly, she went a long way towards shaping the later Reformation - Cranmer, for example, was extremely important to the Reformation and started out as a Boleyn protégé; Cromwell was also a Boleyn ally, as evidenced by the working relationship between the two; and of course the long reign of her daughter Elizabeth ultimately ensured that the English state became an essentially Protestant one.

Interestingly - another indication of the limits of her religious radicalism, but perhaps also the potential of her influence - Anne took a different view on the use and endowment of monasteries from Cromwell. In 1533, she tried to save Catesby Priory from closure and offered to buy it herself; and she preferred to convert the smaller monastic houses, as a general rule, to better uses rather than to dissolve them outright. Certainly, she was not an uncritical supporter, but she was favourable in particular to using monastic wealth to encourage funding for education and (particularly) the universities - and indeed, to turn some into educational establishments as well.⁷ A sermon given by Anne's almoner, John Skip, in April 1536 corroborates this very strongly⁸ - and, given the timing significantly, reads like a very strong attack on Cromwell for his own view - while Latimer and Alexander Ales both point out these differences. (Given that Elizabeth, as Queen, was to benefit from taking back property which Mary I had returned to the Church, we can probably trust the truth of the references!) Indeed, according to Latimer the abbots and priors approached the queen in the belief that she was a supporter. They received a 'robust' reply, but those which offered money or support for students at universities or for preachers received a much more favourable reply.⁸ All of this runs counter to Cromwell's (and eventually the king's) policy, of course, and it was a very significant source of tension between the queen and the secretary by the time of her fall in 1536.

The queen's focus on education is also well-attested, with annual subventions to Oxford and Cambridge (not including support for poor students) of up to £80 each. (At the time, a very significant sum of money indeed.) She also managed to secure their exemption from clerical taxation. On a smaller scale, Anne took a keen interest in the reform by Matthew Parker of the collegiate church of Stoke, as Ives points out:

The reforms included, as well as regular preaching, the appointment of a lecturer on the Bible to teach four days a week English and Latin, a new grammar school with a well paid master and facilities for fee-paying as well as for free pupils, and finally eight or ten choral scholarships which could lead to a six-year bursary at Cambridge. Here is the model of what the redeployment of Church endowments might have achieved.⁹

In this context, it is interesting to note that Anne does seem to have protected individuals with views considerably more radical than her own. Robert Barnes, for example (an unambiguous Protestant), was able to return to England in 1534 unmolested and preach openly in London.¹⁰ This can be seen as tolerance; more likely, given the climate of the age, it accurately reflects the blurring of the varieties of evangelical belief at the time. Anne may well have given some consideration to justification by faith alone, though there can be no proof of this either way; she may well have questioned prayers for the dead. She certainly did not question the Real Presence in the Eucharist. But her religious position, whatever it was exactly, was an individual one. Religious divisions were very far from clear-cut at this stage; the most that could be clearly discerned was differing tendencies or broad thrusts rather than clear-cut doctrinal positions. In this context, Anne and Cromwell, along with Cranmer, Latimer, Foxe and so forth, were all reform-minded; and their influence in these years, particularly that of Anne, was vital in creating the network which allowed an essentially Protestant regime to assume power in 1547.

Notes

¹ Ives, p. 302

² Ives, p. 63

³ Ives, p. 303; Weir, p. 279

⁴ Ives, pp. 317-8

⁵ Fraser, p. 215. The timing of his return in May 1536 was unfortunate; by this time Anne had already fallen.

⁶ Warnicke, p. 154

⁷ Ives, p. 308-11; Warnicke, p. 160

⁸ Ives, p. 330

⁹ Ives, p. 330

¹⁰ Weir, pp. 278-9