Renaissance Politics

[Pascal]

Interesting topic!

I think the whole mess should have been avoided from the beginning -- once Katherine was no longer capable of having children, I think she should have voluntarily gone into a nunnery and let Harry remarry.

While I can grant that she truly loved Harry, she was foremost and truly a royal princess ... and understood the urgency of royal politics.  She could have acknowledged the political necessity for Harry to have a son to avoid future civil war and understood and accepted her role in it.  She knew that royal folk had to be guided by political reasons.

This would have in no way affected Mary's position as princess -- she would have kept her place in the succession.  I've never really understood why Katherine didn't adopt this course.

[Julianne]

Interesting topic!

I think the whole mess should have been avoided from the beginning -- once Katherine was no longer capable of having children, I think she should have voluntarily gone into a nunnery and let Harry remarry.

While I can grant that she truly loved Harry, she was foremost and truly a royal princess ... and understood the urgency of royal politics.  She could have acknowledged the political necessity for Harry to have a son to avoid future civil war and understood and accepted her role in it.  She knew that royal folk had to be guided by political reasons.

This would have in no way affected Mary's position as princess -- she would have kept her place in the succession.  I've never really understood why Katherine didn't adopt this course.

Actually, Catherine was offered this.  She refused. 
It was always the option of the Queen to decide she had received the "calling" and retire herself to the nunnery so that her husband may take on a younger bride.
This "arrangement" had been going on for centuries.

If there is anything I admire about Catherine of Aragon is that she stood her ground.  She was indeed the product of a rich and proud nobility and would not compromise her place and position.  She did martyr herself because of this.
She was also much loved by the English people and the first monarch of foriegn birth to be admired as much as she was.
It's truly a shame that her own daughter, Mary, the first woman to rule England in totality, didn't share in her mother's compassion for "her people".

[Welsh Wench]

Katherine claimed she was a virgin when she married Henry. He played the incest card since she was married to his brother but she claimed it was not consummated. All indications were that it was a happy marriage that she had with Henry.
Katherine may have been willing to overlook Henry's dalliances but something went wrong.
Henry became enamoured of Anne.

Now Katherine is probably thinking, 'Why should I make it easy for him?'
We see it today in divorce courts all the time.

Henry then used everything he could to free himself. Katherine dug in and refused to let go. If her marriage was declared nulll and void, her daughter Mary would be a bastard and not able to inherit.

Incest seems to be Henry's favorite trump card.

[Julianne]

Personally, I don't believe that Katherine's motivation was that at all.  I think she was a product of her upbringing and felt sincerely that she was doing the right thing.  Having her parents I can't imagine any other recourse for her then abiding by her royal oath.

Queens didnt "overlook" dalliances...it was a matter of course. And the Queen's of history themselves had their own "private lives".
As I mentioned before...Henry became obsessed with the male lineage.  He'd already produced royal male children albeit bastards.  Anne was ripe.  That is all.  She was quickly replaced.  I disagree that Henry was "enamored" with Anne...any more then he was "enamored" with the subsequent 4 wives....simply it was a question of healthy fertility.

All of the sucession laws were just power plays during Henry's lifetime.  It was a promise made to each wife to ensure that HER child would rule England.

As it is...we know what happened....each of Henry's children ruled accordingly and in their time.

[Dayna]

"...just a moral and ethical one."  Not sure it's even that.  I might be wrong but I'm pretty sure they haven't perfected a way to ensure which sex the baby will be now.  I DO know they weren't able to do that back then."

I thought this was referring not to finding out once the pregnancy was in place, but insuring that from the very beginning the sex of the child conceived, i.e. "I'm going to make a son tonight".

There are multiple ways of nudging the odds, although none are absolute.  One way is to do as Orthodox Jews do, abstain until 14 days after the start of menses, which seems to cause an increase in the proportion of male fetuses.  Also, the female achieving orgasm can boost the odds of a male sperm being the winner.

The most technological way is to spin the semen, therefore the heavier sperm sink to the bottom and the lighter ones float on top.  I don't recall which are which, I think it's the heavier sperm that are male, so by suctioning off that layer and using it to inseminate the woman makes the odds much greater of the offspring being male, but not guarantee.  This was at least 10 years ago that I read about this, it could be twice that long ago or more though.

Dayna

[Welsh Wench]

But how would he know she was fertile? She had never born a child.
As far as not enamoured, he did send her love letters.

http://englishhistory.net/tudor/lovelett.html

Of course, he could have been trying the tired old lines.

[Julianne]

Fertility was often measured by vitality in those times.  A young maid be she of royal blood or not would be a choice bride for any man given she had not any "infirmity". 

oh please......sexual reputations were garnered then as they are garnered now.  Much has been said about their "education" in France.  Perhaps more it was the urging of the Boleyn girls father that made them so ubequitiously ambitious.  Who knows?  Ultimately Anne gave birth the one of the greatest monarchs in all of history.
Anne Boleyn, while her fate was cruelly unfair, reaped what she sowed.
She made promises she couldn't deliver...and she paid dearly for them.

[Welsh Wench]

We can speculate, reason and discuss all we want but we will never really know the feelings and emotions of people who lived over four hundred years ago.

[Julianne]

But we can with our 21st minds and our love of the aforementioned subject successfully reason and speculate about the people that we choose to emulate today.  I just see no need to further romantisize the politics of the era.

[Welsh Wench]

And how nice we can all discuss, agree and disagree so politely on this fascinating subject.
Thank you everyone for respecting all viewpoints.

[brier patch charlie]

Is it true Anne had six toe's one one of her feet? I head this some were long a go.

[Welsh Wench]

http://fine-eyes.net/anneboleyn/myths.html

Myth: Anne Boleyn had six fingers on one hand and many growths (moles) on her body.

Reality: It is highly unlikely that this is true. Any deformation in the Tudor era was seen as a mark of disease or even God's disfavor, and Henry VIII would not have wanted the mother of his children to be thus marred. There is some evidence that there was an irregularity on one of her fingers, but even if this is true it is very far from having a sixth finger. This myth, present even during her lifetime, was probably spread by those who wanted to find evidence of her witchcraft or ties with Satan.

[Anna Iram]

No, there are a number of written accounts of Anne and none mention these particular features, though there is mention by one account of her having a large Adams apple, and another account of her having a double nail on one finger...who knows. Regardless, she was considered to have beautiful expressive dark eyes and a swans neck and those qualities were commented upon often

I don't think Anne was overly ambitious. What woman would not want to be the Queen and bear the heir to the throne? The fact is though it was not she that pursued the crown but the crown that pursued her. She was in love and secretly bethrothed when Wolsey discovered this and repoted to the King. Ending with his being shipped off to the front.

Did Henry love her? There are 17 letters to that effect. More letters in his own hand than are found of royal documents. Sadly, by the time she got him to marry her she was aging (30) yes that aging back then and constantly pregnant and increasingly unnatractive to Henry.

She did though make a great Queen. This bit is quoted from this site http: http://www.nellgavin.com/boleyn_facts/ lest you think these are my own words I'll color them:

Anne was notoriously supportive of religious upstarts, read - and defended - censored writings, and was considered to be the "patron saint" of Protestants, who were being persecuted at the time. Henry VIII broke with Rome and formed the Church of England in order to legitimize their marriage when the Pope would not grant him an annulment from Katherine of Aragon. Ironically, Anne still apparently worshipped as a Catholic until her death.



She convinced Henry that the Bible should be translated into English and made available to common people instead of just the clergy.



According to Alison Weir, no religious heretics were burned at the stake during the period of time that Anne was queen. However, Henry VIII had heretics burnt both before and after her tenure. We can only speculate on how many lives Anne saved.



Anne distributed a fortune in charity among the English people. George Wyatt (grandson of Thomas Wyatt) estimated that she distributed more than £1500 per year to the poor alone. I don't have figures for living wages during the reign of Henry VIII. However, by the reign of Elizabeth I, a family's acceptable wage was two pounds ten shillings per year. Acceptable wages were less than this during Anne's lifetime because, from Anne's reign to the Elizabethan period, food prices rose by 120%. £1500 per year went quite far in 1532 to 1536.

So based on this, we can estimate that thousands and thousands of people received assistance of some sort from Anne throughout her reign. She also sewed clothing with her own hands for distribution to the poor, and was known on at least one occasion to have personally tended to the ill on her travels. Few of her biographies mention her charitable acts at any length, and these were also not much publicized during her own lifetime.



...and this totally cracks me up. I think I would have liked Anne. I love a good sense of humour. She certainly needed it in her life.


Anne was considered by most of her contemporaries to be extremely intelligent, witty and charming. In addition, it appears that she had a rather droll, sometimes twisted, dark sense of humor. A sense of humor like that can be easily misinterpreted, and in Anne's case, probably was. An example of this might be Anne's reaction to the protests against King Henry's choosing her as his queen. For a short time she took as her motto, and had emblazoned on her livery, a Latin phrase, "Ainsi sera, groigne qui groigne," which translated into "Grumble all you like, this is how it's going to be." A few weeks later, the phrase was removed. Most biographies interpreted that act as "defiant" and "arrogant". However, my interpretation and reaction to it was completely different. Each time I saw it mentioned, I laughed out loud. I viewed it as an irreverent and cheeky means of using humor to express exasperation and to make a very valid point about all the talk and complaints. After she made that point by use of her servants, who were essentially all walking sandwich boards advertising her opinion on their livery coats - and without having harmed anyone - she removed the motto. Based on other information about her, that kind of humor would seem to be in keeping with her personality.

[Capt Gabriela Fullpepper]

"...just a moral and ethical one."  Not sure it's even that.  I might be wrong but I'm pretty sure they haven't perfected a way to ensure which sex the baby will be now.  I DO know they weren't able to do that back then."

As I stated above the amniocentethis will infact give 99.999% accuracy of the sex of the child but at a very high risk to miscarriage the child. The Dr incerts a needle into the mothers womb via her stomach and draws out the embreonic liquid around the fetus (It has to be 20 weeks along sometimes 18 will do) This fluid has the genetic make-up of the fetus. They can tell every chromosone about that fetus including its gender. This is how they test for down syndrome.

I have personal experience with this test.

[Lady L]

About a month or so ago, I watched something on the "Lost Royals". The show researched and tested DNA to find people who were living today, that had royal ancestory. They were the illigitimate descendants of royalty from way back. Interesting.