Calais – a bed of Tudor roses for Anne Boleyn….?

 

Calais was at one time English territory, and Richard III made his son John of Gloucester the Captain of Calais. John was as ill-fated as his father. Further back, Warwick (the “Kingmaker”) was another Captain, and in 1469 his elder daughter Isabel was married there to Richard’s older brother George, Duke of Clarence. The following year she gave birth during a terrible storm just outside Calais, and the baby died.

But it isn’t “our” period that is the concern of this article. Instead it’s events in the subsequent century, when Anne Boleyn finally submitted to Henry VIII’s endless flatteries and pleas. A momentous day for her…and one I guess she regretted for the rest of her short life. Being Henry’s queen was not the bed of (Tudor) roses she might have imagined.

The article is very interesting and well illustrated.