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François Ier et Henri VIII. Deux princes de la Renaissance (1515-1547)

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Roger Mettam
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Charles Giry-Deloison

Anne Boleyn and the «Entente Évangélique»

Eric W. Ives

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1The historian resembles no character in fiction so much as l'homme au masque de fer. The only notable difference is that the historian dons the mask voluntarily - often, indeed, without realizing it. Like the character in Dumas's novel, his field of vision and his perspective both become determined by the visor he wears - in the historian's case, the visor of expectation and selection.

2Of nothing is this more true than the study of relations between the early Reformation in England and the Reformation or rather the Reformations of Continental Europe. With a few notable exceptions, British scholars start with Luther, follow the spread of religious diversity in Germany and then pick up on developments in Switzerland and the Rhineland. France comes nowhere. At best there is a brief mention of Jacques Lefèvre d'Étaples and the Cercle de Meaux. Serious attention only begins with the Affair of the Placards, Jean Calvin and the antecedents of the Wars of Religion.

3Why British historians so generally ignore the early Reformation in France is very curious. No-one has any doubt about the centrality of AngloFrench political and diplomatic relations. In artistic, literary and social terms, Henry VIII's England was a colony of France and the francophone culture of the Burgundian Netherlands. But in the field of religion and ideas, the possibility, even, perhaps, the probability of a strong crossChannel link is ignored. It is the purpose of this essay to question this neglect and to argue that at a crucial stage, the development of English reform was significantly influence by an entente évangélique between England and France.

  • 1 For Anne Boleyn generally, see Eric W. IVES, Anne Boleyn, Oxford, Blackwell, 1986.

4This is not to deny that the major continental influences on English religion came from Germany and Switzerland, nor to undervalue Lollardy, England's native heresy. The question is, rather, whether these influences were by themselves adequate or sufficiently well targetted to bring about the distinctive change in England to a state sponsored Reformation. The contention of this essay is that an extra courtly dynamic was needed, that this was inspired by reform in France and that it was personified by Henry VIII's second wife, Anne Boleyn1.

  • 2 C.S.P.For., 1560-1561, no 870, p. 490.
  • 3 Lancelot de CARLES, «Histoire de Anne Boleyn jadis Royne d'Angleterre», ed. Georges ASCOLI, La Gra (...)

5Anne Boleyn was notoriously an ardent francophile. During the first of Henry VIII's wars with France she had spent eighteen months at the court of Margaret of Austria, but thereafter she served for more than seven years as a maid of honour to Claude de France, the first wife of Francis I. She was the same age as Claude and their relationship was evidently of some intimacy since Francis made a formal protest when Anne was peremptorily summoned home when diplomatic relations worsened in 1521; forty years later, Claude's sister Renée still spoke of Anne with affection2. Once back in England Anne stood out as wholly French - in style and elegance, in dress, in sympathy and in culture. In 1536 a secretary to the French ambassador in London paid her the highest compliment he could: «no one would ever have taken her to be English by her manners, but for a native-born Frenchwoman»3. If, therefore, Anne sympathized with a French approach to reform it would not be surprising.

  • 4 The seminal article on this is Maria DOWLING, «Anne Boleyn and reform», JEH, t XXXV, 1984, p. 30-4 (...)
  • 5 Samuel R. MAITLAND, Essays on subjects connected with the Reformation in England, London, Rivingto (...)
  • 6 Alfred F. POLLARD, Henry VIII, London, Goupil & Co., 1902, p. 163; cf. p. 154: «Her place in Engli (...)

6That Anne Boleyn should be taken seriously as a committed reformer is something which twentieth-century historians have only recently begun to realize4. Once her status as a Protestant martyr had been swept away in the Tractarian rejection of John Foxe, it became the habit of historians to decry her personal religion and accord minimal significance to any impact she might have had on religious reform5. For A. F. Pollard she was «the hope and the tool of the anti-clerical party»; the Oxford History referred to her as «an agent»6.

  • 7 Eric W. IVES, op. cit., p. 161-167.
  • 8 Graham D. NICHOLSON, «The act of Appeals and the English Reformation», in Law and Government under (...)
  • 9 Eric W. IVES, op. cit., p. 168.

7The inadequacy of such assessments becomes obvious after only a cursory survey. First of all, Anne Boleyn played a major part in encouraging Henry to assert his headship over the church. She introduced him to Tyndale's Obedience of a Christian Man, with its blunt declaration that kings rule by divine right and that the powers traditionally claimed by the church were a usurpation7 She stood behind Thomas Cranmer's approach to the universities of Europe and the investigations, led by Edward Fox, which produced the Collectanea satis Copiosa, that ur-text for English Reformation ideas and legislation8. This is not to say that Anne was an original radical thinker in her own right but that she backed those who were and who could give her what she wanted. She also used her influence with Henry to urge radical action - one may note, for example, that the negotiations over the Pardon of the Clergy in 1531 were carried out by her scarcely-adult brother, George9.

  • 10 Maria DOWLING, art. cit., p. 35,37-41.
  • 11 Eric W. IVES, op. cit., p. 303-304.

8Thus far it might appear that Anne was merely promoting her own advantage, but we must also note that she was a direct supporter of positive religious reform. In the first place, she set out, both before but particularly after becoming queen, to promote the careers of promising reformers, most notably by recruiting young Cambridge academics to be her chaplains and her agents10. She also exploited her influence with Henry, her prestige as queen and her direct stock of patronage to advance reformers to places of importance in the church. To say nothing of lesser positions, seven of the ten episcopal sees filled between the break with Rome and her own death were given to reformers who appear to have been her clients11. In this, Anne was one of a powerful group of similar patrons and persuaders. As John Foxe wrote of Henry VIII later:

  • 12 John FOXE, The Acts and Monuments of John Foxe, ed. Stephen R. CATTLEY and George TOWNSHEND, Londo (...)

«So long as Queen Anne, Thomas Cromwell, Archbishop Cranmer, Master Denny, Doctor Butts with such like were about him and could prevail with him, what organ of Christ's glory did more good in the church than he?»12

  • 13 Thomas CRANMER, Miscellaneous Writings and Letters, ed. John E. COX, Cambridge, Parker Society, t (...)
  • 14 BL, Cotton MSS, Otho C x, f° 260v° (L.P., vol. X, no 601).
  • 15 C.S.P. Sp., vol. V, 2, p. 85; L.P., vol. X, no 601.

9Reformers at the time certainly regarded Anne as a fellow sympathiser. Cranmer was both brave and forthright about this when he wrote to Henry at the time of her fall: «I loved her not a little for the love which I judged her to bear towards God and his gospel»13. At the same time Nicholas Shaxton wrote to Cromwell urging him not to abandon because of Anne's disgrace, a support for the gospel which she had so often urged on him14. Anne's reputation as a patron spread among reformers abroad and Chapuys, the Imperial ambassador in England regularly complained to his home government of «the concubine» being «the cause and nurse of the spread of Lutheranism in this country»15.

  • 16 Jean DU BELLAY, Correspondance du cardinal jean du Bellay, ed. Rémy SCHEURER, Paris, C. Klincksiek (...)
  • 17 L.P., vol. VIII, no 834,1056.
  • 18 Matthew PARKER, Correspondence, ed. John BRUCE and Thomas T. PEROWNE, Cambridge, Parker Society, t (...)

10The evidence of Anne's involvement in reform is particularly clear in respect of monastic houses. Indeed, Henry VIII is reported as having cut off Jane Seymour's pleas for the monasteries with the warning not to interfere in his affairs as her predecessor had done16. Anne certainly took up the cases of particular houses where reform was urgent, such as the Cistercian house at Vale Royal and the Augustinian priory at Thetford17. There is reason to believe that her position was one with those reformers who wanted not to suppress the religious houses but to convert them to educational purposes. That was precisely what was done by Anne's chaplain Matthew Parker, (the future Elizabethan archbishop), when she appointed him to be dean of the collegiate church at Stoke by Clare in Suffolk. With her support the college was refounded to include a new grammar school with bursaries and provision for further scholarships to Cambridge and Anne became its patron18.

  • 19 «William Latymer's Chronickille of Anne Bulleyne», ed. Maria DOWLING, in Camden Miscellany XXX, (C (...)
  • 20 Ibid., p. 60-61 (Eric W. IVES, op. cit., p. 308-309).
  • 21 Ibid., p. 61 (Eric W. IVES, op. cit., p. 309-310).

11As well as evidence from Anne's lifetime, later reminiscences by another of her chaplains, William Latimer, also tell of her involvement in monastic reform19. Caution is needed, as with all Elizabethan material about Anne, because of the risk of anachronistic embroidery intended to present her as a Protestant heroine. But given that there is contemporary evidence of her interest in monastic reform, some credence can safely be given to Latimer, particularly where the context can be independently corroborated. Thus he tells of Anne acting against the famous relic, «the blood of Hailes», and we know that Anne and Henry were nearby at Winchcombe in Gloucestershire, in the summer of 1535 and intending to visit Hailes Abbey20. He further tells of Anne descending on the nunnery of Syon in an attempt to persuade the reluctant sisters to accept the royal headship. Again this can be dated-to December 1535-and it coincides precisely with a concerted attempt then being made to force the house to comply with the supremacy legislation21.

  • 22 Lucien FEBVRE, Au coeur religieux du XVIe siècle, Paris, SEVPEN, 1957, p. 66.

12Faced with this evidence, informed scholarship can have no doubt about Anne Boleyn's involvement with reform. What is more difficult to assess is precisely what is meant in her case by «reform». Indeed, what is meant when the term «reform» is applied to her contemporaries? Lucien Febvre's striking characterization of the first forty or fifty years of the sixteenth century as «magnificent religious anarchy» is as strikingly apposite to England as to the Continent22. Perhaps even more so, because of the added complication of Lollardy. The heresy had relatively few adherents and none of much importance, but Lollards had proved impossible to eradicate, and as well as anticipating a good deal of later Reformation thinking, they served to encourage a climate of more general questioning of the church. On the opposite side of the coin, the threat they represented engendered a hypersensitivity in many of the English clergy to any criticism at all, whether real or imagined. Even the mildest opinions risked being condemned as heretical.

  • 23 Arthur G. DICKENS, The English Reformation, London, B.T. Batsford, 2nd. ed. 1989, p. 91; Lollards (...)

13Into the tensions of this distinctive situation had come first the excitement of Christian humanism, especially the challenge to a more experiential Christianity based on the Bible. Then, within a year or two of Luther's theses, news of continental reform began to arrive, sometimes through personal contact, at other times in the garbled form of travellers tales but most of all by a steady influx of print23.

  • 24 Ernest G. RUPP, Studies in the making of the English Protestant Tradition mainly in the reign of H (...)
  • 25 MargaretM. PHILLIPS, Erasmus and the Northern Renaissance, Woodbridge, The Boydell Press, 1981, p. (...)
  • 26 Arthur G. DICKENS, The English Reformation, op. cit., p. 32.
  • 27 Susan BRIGDEN, op. cit., p. 346-347; Anthony FLETCHER, Tudor Rébellions, London and New York, Long (...)

14The most significant import was the vernacular Bible. On this the English hierarchy was paranoid because allowing the Bible to circulate in English was a central plank of the Lollard programme. Thus William Tyndale's New Testament translation (smuggled in from Worms from 1526) was bound to be both a best seller and a red rag to the ecclesiastical establishment - though later he made matters worse by the prefaces he included (which were sometimes pure Luther)24. Plenty of people, however, did not accept that it was heresy to allow the English to have the Scriptures in their own language. More than that, access to the Bible was widely seen as crucial for any revival of the spiritual life of the laity - a case formidably argued by Erasmus25. The Western Church had no general ban on vernacular translations; texts in German had been in print since 1466 and in French from 1477. So why not in English?26 But to conservatives - and the attitude continued to the reign of Mary - suppression was vital if orthodoxy was to be protected27.

  • 28 Susan BRIGDEN, op. cit., p. 109-118,264-266.

15The arrival of reformist tracts and vernacular bibles spread an awareness of the latest ideas, particularly justification by faith alone28. While converts talked to friends and neighbours, the more advanced (and braver) preachers forsook traditional devotional topics in favour of expounding the New Testament understanding of faith. The message of a God who freely accepts the sinner because Christ died on his behalf and who looks only for a full-hearted commitment in response, struck an immediate chord in hearts prepared by Lollardy or humanism or by the desire for a deeper religious experience.

  • 29 Ibid., p. 124,187-188.
  • 30 L.P., vol. VI, no 403.
  • 31 John FOXE, op. cit., v. 225-250; Jasper RIDLEY, Thomas Cranmer, Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1962, p. (...)

16More radical ideas were abroad also, particularly rejection of the miracle of the mass. Lollards had always denied transubstantiation and plebian heretics accused of the error generally came from that background. But in the 1520s sacramentarian tracts were for the first time printed abroad for the English market, and doubts about the mass began to be expressed by a minority of educated English reformers29. Others of them, however, remained vehemently opposed to such questioning; in 1532 Tyndale specifically advised saying as little as possible about «the presence of Christ's body in the sacrament... that there appear no division among us»30. Predictably moderation did not prevail. Six years later Cranmer and two other leading reformers were instrumental in sending a fourth to the stake for denying transubstantiation31.

  • 32 E.g. the argument at his trial re the sacrament English Historical Documents, vol. V, 1485-1558, e (...)

17The conclusion to be drawn from this «anarchy» must be that reform was a posture rather than a position. We are, moreover, dealing very largely with the commitment, belief and understanding of specific individuals, not with abstract or collective propositions. The term «reform» can only indicate a taxonomy of issues and positions on which individuals took or did not take individual stands, stands which shifted from time to time, one way and the other - one has only to look at Thomas Cranmer to be aware of that32. This fluidity was still further accentuated because the thinking of the continental reformers was itself continuing to evolve. Thus it is wholly premature to attempt to describe early reform in England in terms of coherent credal positions. The reformers themselves would have been hard put to agree on any comprehensive confession of faith.

18Given that this is so, the labelling of Anne Boleyn by her enemies as a «Lutheran» can be dismissed as an attempt to give a dog a bad name. What matters is to determine the particular positions she did or did not adopt. Some have already been noticed - her rejection of papal authority, her erastianism, her concern for the advancement of education and hence for the reform of the religious life. What more is known?

  • 33 BL, Cotton MSS, Otho C x, f°223, 224 v°, printed in George CAVENDISH, The Life of Cardinal Wolsey,(...)
  • 34 The summe of christianitie gatheryd out almoste of al plocis of scripture, by... Francis Lambert o (...)
  • 35 The story is told in his deposition dated 29 February 1536, L.P., vol. X, no 371.
  • 36 The sum of Christianity..., op. cit., sig. Dv.

19On the test issue of the mass and transubstantiation, Anne seems to have been wholly opposed to radical sacramentarian ideas. Immediately on being confined in the Tower she agitated to have the Blessed Sacrament in her closet and it became the focus of her personal preparation for death. The night before she died she took the oath on the sacred elements that she was innocent33. When Anne was asked to accept the dedication of Tristram Revill's translation of François Lamberts Farrago Rerum Theologicarum which rejected the sacrifice of the mass, she specifically refused, even though copies had already been printed celebrating «the felyshype whiche your grace hathe in the gospel»34. Revill, indeed, soon found himself under interrogation!35 Not that errors about the mass were likely to have been Anne's only objection to Revill's initiative; Lamberts book is a throughgoing exposition of the priesthood of all believers and includes the decidedly un-Henrician opinion that «nother emperoure, kynges, nor prynces or any other rulers may lawfully prohybyte that these thynges shulde nat be done and if they do prohybite they ought nat to be obeyed»36.

  • 37 See infra notes 50-57.

20Evidence of Anne Boleyn's attitude to justification by faith alone is more difficult to find. This is hardly surprising since the king's entrenched and public hostility to «only faith» would have made it difficult for his wife to have gone far in public even if she had inclined to the doctrine. Anne was undoubtedly aware of it; the books she owned put this beyond question37. It is also clear that she studied it; a treatise dedicated to Anne in January 1531 by a French epistolary expert, Louis du Brun, gives an eyewitness account of Anne engrossed in the epistles of St Paul:

  • 38 Louis DU BRUN, «Vng petit traicte en francoys pour bien coucher par escript epistres que Ion dit v (...)

«ce karesme dernier et le precedent Je vous ay tousiours veu (come pourlors Je conuersoys en ceste magnificque excellente et triumphante court) lire les salutaires Epistres sainct Paul ou est contenu toutte la maniere et reigle de bien viure en touttes bonnes meurs ausi que bien scaues et faictes par la continuelle lecture dicelles»38.

  • 39 Eric W. IVES, op. cit., p. 411.

21Her last recorded words were, perhaps, words of faith: «Jesus receive my soul; Oh Lord God, have pity on my soul; to Christ I commend my soul»39.

  • 40 BL Cotton MSS, Otho C x, f° 224 v° (see supra note 33).

22Against this, however, there is one disturbing piece of evidence. This is the first hand report by the constable of the Tower that Anne said to him that if she was executed: «I shal be in heaven for I have done many gud dedys in my days»40. Prima facie that would rule out all possibility that she believed in justification by faith. But what did Anne really mean?

23Taken literally, her words suggest the crude opinion that salvation came by personal merit, an arrogance which would have been as comprehensively condemned by a traditional confessor as by the reformers. If Anne believed that, she was at odds even with the penetential and purgatorial teachings of the traditional church!

  • 41 Eric W. IVES, op. cit., p. 410.
  • 42 Arthur G. DICKENS, The English Reformation, op. cit., p. 97; Susan BRIGDEN, op. cit., p. 265.
  • 43 Susan BRIDGEN, op. cit., p. 316.

24There are various possible resolutions. Perhaps not too much should be made of the remark; Anne was in shock at the time and talking wildly. Alternatively she may have been intent on stressing her innocence; human condemnation was irrelevant since Heaven knew the truth. That was certainly the way she faced death, «boldly», in no way abashed by her alleged offences or any impending purgatory41. Another possibility, perhaps the most likely, is that Anne was reflecting some of the more moderate approaches to justification by faith alone which were around in the 1530s42. These saw faith as necessarily expressing itself in good works. Hence «many gud dedys» would be evidence of that faith and so a ground for saying confidently that «I shal be in heaven». Anne may even have accepted the view that good works consequent on saving faith did bring a reward. If she held moderate positions of this kind, her understanding of faith would have been very much that of the later Robert Barnes - who like Anne also rejected sacramentarianism43.

  • 44 Antwerp, 1534, BL, C23, a8.
  • 45 L.P., vol. VI, no 458; Arthur G. DICKENS, The English Reformation, op. cit., p. 153.
  • 46 Eric W. IVES, op. cit., p. 314-315.

25Anne Boleyn's most positive reforming enthusiasm was, beyond any question, the Bible. Her personal copy of Tyndale's illicit English version of the New Testament still survives in the British Library44. It is the 1534 edition with the heretical annotations as well as the prefaces and looks very much like a presentation copy. Tyndale's former associate, George Joye, solicited her support for the Bible translators in exile in the Low Countries and it may be significant that it was after her fall that plans to place Latin and English versions of the Bible in every parish church and to encourage the laity «to read and look thereon... as the very word of God and the spiritual food of man's soul» were abandoned45. There is even a possibility that she possessed one of the earliest copies of Coverdale's banned translation of both Old and New Testaments46. Anne herself read the Bible openly. Louis du Brun tells how she always had a book in her hands:

  • 47 BL, Royal MS 20, B xvii, f° 1.

«Come sont translations de sainctes ecriptures approues et remplis de touts bonnes doctrines ou pareillement d'aultres bons livres de gens doctes, donnant remedes salutarires a ceste vie mortelle et consolations a l'ame immortelle!»47

26And that open reading of the Bible was in Lent 1529 and Lent 1530 when orthodoxy was still fully in place and Anne's own position was by no means impregnable.

  • 48 Sir Henry ELLIS, ed., Original letters, illustrative of English History, London, Harding, Triphook (...)
  • 49 Maria DOWLING, «WilliamLatymer's Chronickille... », art. cit., p. 62-63.

27Anne's commitment to the Bible led her to protect people in trouble for owning prohibited books and she gave her support to at least one English merchant abroad who «like a good Christian man» helped «the setting forth of the New Testament in English»48. Elizabethan memories had it that scriptural debate regularly took place at her meal-table and that she had the vernacular scriptures on permanent display for her household to read49. The evidence all points in the one direction; if one is compelled to assign a credal position to Anne, it must be that of an «evangelical».

  • 50 SOTHEBYS, Western MSS 7 December 1982, London, 1982, p. 73; Robert J. KNECHT, Francis I, Cambridge (...)
  • 51 Robert J. KNECHT, op. cit., p. 145.
  • 52 Antwerp, 1534 (BL, C18, c9).

28So much for the adjective évangélique in the title of this essay. What of Anne Boleyn and an entente with French reform? The tangible evidence is a remarkable series of books which link her with reformers across the Channel. The earliest, datable to between 1529 and 1532, is a manuscript French psalter which was specially produced for her at one of the ateliers in either Rouen or Paris which specialized in material for the French court The psalter derives from the 1515 Hebrew text of Felix de Prato, and the translation has been credited to the Picard scholar, Louis de Berquin, whom not even Francis I could keep from the flames of the Place de Grève50 Anne possessed a French reformist Bible, the 1534 two-volumed Antwerp edition of Jacques Lefèvre's translation, a text which the Paris Faculty of Theology was equally anxious to consign to the flames51. The actual copy survives today in the British Library with much of the original binding intact52. Along with Tudor roses, biblical quotations decorate the front and back of each volume: «Ainsi que tovs mevrent par Adam: avssy tovs seront vivifies par Christ»; «La loy a este donnée par Moysse: la grace et la verite par Iesv Christ». The evangelical Pauline tone is unmistakable.

  • 53 Robert J. KNECHT, op. cit., p. 180.
  • 54 BL, Harley MS 6561.
  • 55 Alnwick Castle, Percy MS 465; Eric W. IVES, op. cit., p. 289-292. The manuscript derives from the (...)

29At Paris in about 1525, Lefèvre published anonymously the Épitre et Évangiles des Cinquante et Deux Dimanches, a set of readings, each with its own commentary. Again traditionalists objected; the Paris Faculty of Theology condemned the book and the Parlement set out to discover the author53 This time Anne possessed the text as a manuscript, under the title «The Pistellis and Gospelles for the LII Sondayes of the Yere»; her copy again survives in the British Library54. Another manuscript which belonged to Anne was a text and commentary on Ecclesiastes. Printed anonymously at Alençon (c. 1530), its reformist provenance is evident in the very title: Lecclesiaste Preschant que toutes chose sans dieu sont vanite. Anne's superbly illuminated copy was made some time after her marriage to Henry. It is now in the library of Alnwick Castle55.

30There are close similarities between the design of Anne's copies of the Lefèvre Epitre and Lecclesiaste. Each is in the Flemish tradition, and the two may have come from the same studio, possibly in London. They also share a common curiosity in that they are hybrid texts with the scripture readings retained in French but the commentary put into English. Why this should be so must be a matter of conjecture. Since Anne herself owned banned material by Tyndale, it is hardly likely that she feared the episcopal prohibition on vernacular scriptures. More likely is the need to protect the scribes and illuminators against heresy charges during the long period that the pages would have had to remain in their possession.

31There is, of course a major irony here, for the translated annotation or exhortation (both terms are used) was potentially far more religiously subversive than the biblical text Take the treatment in «The Pistellis and Gospelles» of chapter nine of The Epistle to the Hebrews which deals with the sacrificial death of Christ-something which, according to conservative theology, the priest re-presented to God every time the host was consecrated at mass. Lefèvre's commentary is:

  • 56 BL, Harley MS 6561, f° 74.

«The trewe hostie is Jesu Christ which hath suffered death and passion for to saue us, the which in shedding his precious blood upon us all, hath given us life and hath holy purged us of sin»56.

32Of course the question which neither Lefèvre nor Anne asked but which the Affair of the Placards would pose, even at the king of France's bedchamber was, «if Christ is the true host, is the host which the priest elevates a counterfeit?» Lecclesiate is equally dangerous, though prima facie that would seem highly unlikely given a text which sets out to demonstrate the folly of human existence. The danger, however, comes as the commentary transmutes the original into a sermon on the need for faith and faith as understood by the reformers:

  • 57 Alnwick Castle, Percy MS 465, f° 147v°, 148.

«Haue faith, for without faith God doth not profit us, nor can we accomplish nothing... There is nothing better than by true faith to take Jesuchrist of our side for pledge, mediator, advocate and intercessor. For who that believeth in him and doth come with him to this judgement shall not be confusyd»57.

33No word of the role of the Church, of the priest, of the whole penetential edifice of late-medieval Christianity, not even criticism. Saving faith marginalizes all such considerations.

  • 58 See supra note 47.
  • 59 The others are a music book and a Book of Hours (G. HARDOUYN, Paris, n.d.) [see Eric W. IVES, op. (...)
  • 60 Eric W. IVES, op. cit., p. 317; Joy SHAKESPEARE and Maria DOWLING, «Religion and Politics in mid-T (...)

34To these four works of French reformist origin must be added a copy of the poem Le Pasteur Évangélique, of which more later, as well as du Brun's Vng petit traicte en francoys with its vivid description of Anne engrossed in St Paul58 Six books or manuscripts in all showing signs of French reformist influence may not seem a great number, but only nine of Anne's books survive in all!59 And there is other evidence, too. At least three of her men travelled abroad on reformist book-buying expeditions and the daughter of her mercer still remembered in her eighties how Anne caused her father «to get her the gospells and epistles written in parchment in French, together with the psalms» - the former, perhaps, the Lefèvre text from which the British Library manuscript was produced60.

  • 61 Eric W. IVES, op. cit., p. 187,208,293.
  • 62 Ibid., p. 220,223,225; his watching the coronation service is an inference.
  • 63 Charles, duc d'Angoulême. John POPE-HENNESSY, The portrait in the Renaissance, New York and London (...)

35There was, thus, a strong literary connection between Anne Boleyn and French reform. To this we must add diplomacy. Anne was, for much of her career Francis I's unofficial resident in London and it is noticeable that she formed close links with those official envoys he sent who were of a reformist turn of mind. In 1529 she was very near to Jean du Bellay61. A later envoy, Jean de Dinteville, was given a deliberately prominent place in Anne's coronation procession which was also headed by twelve of his servants, and he joined Henry VIII himself in the private royal box to watch the actual ceremony and the ensuing banquet62. No doubt much of this was motivated by diplomatic concerns on both side, but the choice of de Dinteville would certainly have been acceptable to Anne. He belonged to a family of moderate but committed reformers and was a patron of Jacques Lefèvre whom he had recommended to be tutor to the French king's third son63.

  • 64 Eric W. IVES, «The Queen and the Painters: Anne Boleyn, Holbein and Tudor royal portraits »,Apollo (...)
  • 65 Arrived circa 17 September, see L.P., vol. X, no 356,420, 434.

36Acceptability clearly grew into something more. While de Dinteville was here, Hans Holbein the younger took on a commission to produce the famous painting known as The Ambassadors, featuring de Dinteville and his friend and fellow envoy Georges de Selve, bishop of Lavaur. Anne was very probably already Holbein's patron and the scheme of the painting contains clear references to the queen and her coronation64. Significantly, when Anglo-French relations were undergoing strain in 1535, it was again de Dinteville who was sent65.

  • 66 Eric W. IVES, op. cit., p. 306-307; the quotation is from BL, Cotton MSS, Vitellius, B xxi f° 156v (...)

37There is even an intriguing possibility that Anne, through her father, sought direct contact with reformers in France. Certainly a Boleyn agent, Thomas Tebold, was in Orleans in January 1536 reporting on the current state of persecution, before going on to Wittenberg. There he set up a close and, he prophesied, informative relationship with a French nobleman of Lutheran connections but with good links with France. He was also able to send back «a pistle of Clemont Marrott, an excellent poet in the French tongue which is fled France and in exilement for the gospel»66.

  • 67 Maria DOWLING, «William Latimer's Chronickille... », art. cit., p. 56.
  • 68 «Sermon très utile et salutaire du bon pasteur & du mauvais, prins & extraict du X chapitre de sai (...)
  • 69 BL, Royal MS 16 E, 13; Eric W. IVES, op. cit., p. 319.

38In addition to books and diplomats there were personal links between Anne Boleyn and French reform. Some are shadowy mentions in later hagiography, such as the protection afforded by the queen to a French refugee called «Mary»67. Other links are well attested, such as the gift to Anne of a personal text of the reformist tract, Le Pasteur Évangélique. This is a discourse on the tenth chapter of the Gospel of John where Christ contrasts the good shepherd and the bad and is better known as the Sermon du bon pasteur et du mauvais, the title under which it was published at Antwerp in 1541 as a work by Clément Marot68. The copy associated with Anne Boleyn once again belongs to the British Library69. It is a presentation item of fifteen folios in fine italic script and embellished with an acorn-wreath containing Anne's shield of arms set above her badge of the crowned falcon on the roses.

  • 70 C. A. MAYER, «Le'Sermon du bon pasteur', un problème d'attribution», BHR, t XXVII, 1965, p. 286-30 (...)

39Whether the text is by Marot has been questioned70. The poet's bibliographer, C. A. Mayer, attributes the piece to Almanque Papillon, an almost unknown associate of Marot and supposedly a valet at the court of Francis I. He further argues that Papillon wrote the piece specifically for Anne when he was residing in England. A link as direct as a poem written for her by a French reformer in England would certainly be a notable demonstration of an entente évangélique.

  • 71 The form «Ezechias», used in the poem, is the Greek name of the reforming Jewish king, Hezekiah. A (...)

40The British Library version is to date the earliest known text of the poem, not earlier than January 1533 or later than April 1536. After the sermon itself comes a four line petition for the gospel to have free course and a fourteen line prayer for Francis I, his three sons and Marguerite of Navarre. Twenty-five lines then follow eulogizing Henry VIII as the friend of Francis and a veritable Hezekiah reforming the Church, before a final sextet which is addressed directly to Anne Boleyn and prophesies that she will bear a son, the veritable image of his father71.

  • 72 Printed in C. A. MAYER, «Anne Boleyn et la version originale du 'Sermon du bon pasteur', art. cit. (...)

41Mayer's hypothesis is, therefore, congruent with the date of the British Library manuscript but other evidence casts doubt on his suggestion of English provenance. Three variant endings of the poem are known72. An anonymous pamphlet version, undated but evidently later than the death of the Dauphin in August 1536, omits all reference to the gospel and to England and follows the prayer for the French royal family with prayers for the duc de Guise and the cardinal of Lorraine, for the Conseil royal and for Montmorency and Chabot - a cast chosen more with an eye to insurance than to the promotion of a reformist tract! A manuscript of the poem in the Bibliothèque Nationale does contain the prayer for the gospel but omits the French royal family entirely and substitutes a prayer for Francis I and Charles V and their continued amity which must date the version to between 1538 and 1540. Finally, the 1541 printed edition has simply the prayer for Francis, his sons and his sister.

42Given this variety of ending, the question is whether the piece was written for a specific recipient or whether it was not, rather, a ready-made piece of reforming humanism which could be tailored for any likely patron. Indeed, acquaintance with the British Library version encourages the impression that the original coda was the prayer for the Valois family and that the Tudor eulogy is an addition. It certainly begins like one.

  • 73 Ibid., p. 341, lines 459-469.

«N'oublions pas vostre bon amy, France,
Qui vous voyant en extreme souffrance,
Des ennemys vainqueurs environnée,
Il ne vous a onques habandonnee,
Mais lors il print pour vous mervelleux soing
Se declarant tel qu'il fault au besoing.
Monstrez luy donc d'amytie le vray signe;
Car il en est sur tous voz amys digne.
C'est le treshault roy Henry d'Angleterre,
L'ung des meilleurs (ou ma foy constante erre)
Qui aujourd'huy regne entre les crestiens»73.

43In the light of these variants it is hard to see what reason there is to suppose that the poem was necessarily composed in England. An appropriately tailored version might just as well have been sent over in the diplomatic bag, either the surviving British Library manuscript or a text to be written out fair in London-a point of calligraphic topography which might repay investigation.

44It is also by no means clear that the attribution of Marot is wrong. Papillon's claim to authorship rests on a single late manuscript. Against it is the persuasive circumstance that the Faculty of Theology in Paris and the Antwerp reformist printers were alike convinced of Marot's hand. Certainly if the text is by Marot, then it was not written in England which, apparently, he never visited.

45Although the claim that Le Pasteur Évangélique was directly composed for Anne by an author resident in England does seem excessive, this does not destroy its standing as a powerful link between Anne Boleyn and French reform. It remains the case that the poet, either for himself or for an anonymous donor, did adapt the text specially for Anne and that one or the other went to the trouble of producing a presentation copy for her.

  • 74 Eric W. IVES, op. cit., p. 319-321.

46The link is equally explicit in another case of which a great deal more is known. It, too, involves a poet, this time Nicholas Bourbon of Vandoeuvre. Bourbon was already a noted humanist Latin poet when in 1529, at the age of twenty-six he was engaged by Marguerite d'Angoulême as tutor to her daughter Jeanne d'Albret. He became prominent among the scholars and reformers in Marguerite's circle, and a suspicion that his poetry strayed beyond the bounds of orthodoxy earned him a spell in gaol in 1534. He was nevertheless able to evade disaster which destroyed other early reformers and to die in his bed in about 1550, and he owed that, in no small way, to Anne Boleyn74.

  • 75 Nicholai BORBONII, Nugarum Libri Octo ab auctore recens aucti et recogniti, Lyons, 1538.

47The story of this can be reconstructed from a number of items in the second and greatly enlarged version of Bourbon's most famous work, the Nugae, that is «Trifles», which was published at Lyons in 153875. Officially the poet credited his release in 1534 to the intervention of Francis I and his second queen, Eleanor of Portugal, but his verses make it clear that this was in response to an appeal from Henry VIII and, more particularly, Anne Boleyn.

Ad Annam Angliae Reginam

  • 76 Ibid., Book VII, no 119, p. 411; cf. Book VI, p. 330; Book VII, no 90, p. 402 and no 110, p. 407.

Nullius sceleris caussa, set crimine falso
Quorundam, atque odio, carcere clausus eram.
Qui me adfligebant, ijs omnis fausta precebar:
Nempe, inconcussam spemque, fidemque tenens.
Cum tua me extremo pietas respexit ab orbe,
Adflictum eripens omnibus, Anna, malis.
Quod ni euenisset, tenebris ego uinctus in illis
Languerem infelix, et retinere adhuc.
Dicere nunc grates, nedum, O Regina referre,
Qui possum? fateor non opis esse meae.
Set, qui te igne suo totam inflammauit, IESV
Spiritus, ille, satis quo tibi fiat, habet76.

  • 77 Ibid., Book VII, no 113, p. 409; Maria DOWLING, «Anne Boleyn and reform», art. cit.
  • 78 Nicholas BORBINII, op. cit., Book V, no 21, pp. 284-285. Cf., ibid., Book VII, no 135-136, p. 419- (...)
  • 79 Ibid., Book VI, p. 330; Book VII, no 113, p. 409.

48Precisely how the English monarchs came to know of Bourbon's plight is not clear but the contact in England was Dr William Butts who doubled the roles of royal physician and Cambridge talent spotter for Queen Anne77 One possibility on the French side is Bourbon's patron, de Dinteville, who undoubtedly knew Butts as well as Anne and certainly received a somewhat enigmatic poem from Bourbon expressing gratitude78. Once released Bourbon decided to go to England, perhaps to capitalize on the link with the English court but more probably because of the deteriorating situation for reformers in France in the aftermath of the Affair of the Placards. Just as Clémont Marot removed himself to Ferrara, «Borbonius», as he latinized his name, went to London, suffering agonies from sea-sickness79.

  • 80 For this paragraph see: ibid., Book II, p. 86-89; Book V, no 22, p. 285; Book VII, no 15, p. 378, (...)

49While in England, Bourbon moved busily amongst reforming and humanist circles but he lodged with Butts at Anne's expense and depended on Anne's patronage80. Characteristically she put him to work educating the youths of the Court, particularly those from a reformist background - including her nephew, Henry Carey, the future Lord Hunsdon.

  • 81 He may not have left until after the death of the duke of Richmond on 22 July, see Nicholas BORBON (...)

50Bourbon returned to France after Anne's fall in May 1536 with his appreciation of her unshaken, and he persisted in including the verses written in her honour in the enlarged 1538 text of the Nugae81. Nor was he the only French reformer to speak up for Anne posthumously. In 1538, Etienne Dolet, the Lyons printer-publisher who would eventually himself be martyred, published a forthright vindication of her innocence.

Reginae Utopiae
falso adulterii crimine danmatae, et capite mulctatae
Epitaphium

  • 82 Etienne DOLET, Epigram, Lyons, 1538, Book DI, p. 162 (quoted from Georges-Adrien CRAPELET, Lettres (...)

Quid? quod tyrannus crimine falso damnatam
Me jussit occidi, minus me jam laudas
Necnon velut turpe maledicta suffundis?
Nulla nota turpis sum, ob acceptum vulnus.
Nimirum honesta turpido est sine culpa
Mori, et innocentem cedere aliquando fatis82.

51Dolet, Bourbon, Marot, de Dintville, Lefèvre d'Etaples, the case for an entente évangelique is made. But two questions remain to answer. First, if Anne got her inspiration from French reform, where and when did she come under its influence? Second, what in particular did reform in France contribute to reform in England?

  • 83 Eric W. IVES, op. cit., p. 196-201.
  • 84 C.S.P. Sp., vol. V, 2, p. 91 (L.P., vol. X, no 699).
  • 85 For George's reformist interests see Eric W. IVES, op. cit., p. 305-306.

52Anne had no direct contact with France after December 1521 when she returned to England from the court of Queen Claude. Thereafter her only visit abroad was to the English outpost at Calais for one month in the autumn of 153283. Of course there were those close relations with reformist ambassadors such as de Dinteville. Then there was Anne's vicarious contact with France through her younger brother, George Boleyn, Viscount Rochford, to whom she was very close. He was an enthusiastic evangelical, so much so that he was always anxiously avoided by Eustache Chapuys because of his infuriating habit of attempting to draw the Imperial ambassador into contentious religions debate!84 Couple together Anne's enthusiasm for reform and for all things French, add George's regular diplomatic missions to France - 1529, 1533, 1534 and 1535-and it is easy to imagine that their shared evangelical interests might well become focussed on France. Certainly George would have had plenty of opportunity to meet reformers and to acquire books by them85.

53On the other hand one cannot make too much of the diplomatic connection, either missions by her brother or those to England by de Dinteville and others like him. George was first sent to Paris in 1529, by which time Anne was already promoting anti-papal policies and deep in St Paul. Any contact she had had by then with envoys from France must also have been slight. And even adding the later contacts does not produce a wholly convincing explanation of her positive enthusiasm for French reform.

  • 86 Ibid., p. 318-319.

54A more convincing alternative would be that Anne's contact with reform across the Channel went back to her days at the French court During her time with the archduchess at Brussels she must certainly have encountered Christian humanism. Later, Erasmus would be employed by her father, Thomas Boleyn, and in 1533 he associated father and daughter in the dedication of his exposition of the Creed86. Is it not equally plausible that in the household of Queen Claude, Anne encountered humanist reform in its more charismatic Fèvrist manifestation?

  • 87 Ibid., p. 4042.

55Certainly subsequent commentators thought so, and the link was specifically supposed to be between Anne and Francis I's sister Marguerite, duchesse d'Angoulême87. To someone like the Elizabethan Roman Catholic polemicist Nicholas Sander, there was no question about it-Marguerite corrupted Anne and Anne corrupted England. In fact there is no evidence for the assertion that Anne was ever part of Marguerite's household, but the letters she sent her subsequently do suggest that when Anne was waiting on the duchess's sister-in-law Queen Claude, they did meet. It would, indeed, have been surprising if they had not But the question is: «How close had they been?»

  • 88 Ibid., p. 196.

56Impressions are personal, but the tone of Anne's letters suggests to this author less an intimate friendship than a close acquaintance which the English intended to turn into something more. Even that could be an overestimate. Marguerite's own replies have not survived and the English completely failed to get her to accompany her brother to the meeting with Henry and Anne at Calais in 153288. As for any direct contact Anne could have had with the particular evangelical reform which began at Meaux in 1518, that was two hundred and ten kilometers from Blois where Claude's household spent most of its time, and Marguerite's own correspondence with Guillaume Briçonnet began only in the summer of 1521, when Anne had barely six months left in France.

  • 89 See infra, p. 103-119.

57A specific link between Anne's reformist interest and those of the king's sister thus appears not to be warranted by the present state of the evidence. The connections which can be documented are the connections of diplomatic traffic. But is it necessary to pose the alternatives as starkly as «Marguerite of Navarre» or «diplomacy»? The researches of Professor Nicole Lemaitre certainly suggest otherwise89. «Non-schismatic evangelical reform» was far more widely diffused and more dynamic than most British scholars have realized and certainly active enough in France during Anne's years of residence to have provided her with a formative experience sufficient to account for her later commitment to reform.

58Such a hypothesis cannot as yet be documented, although there is no doubt that Anne's evangelicalism had much in common with the Fèvrist understand mg of the gospel. But given the ambience of early reform in France, it would surely have been improbable if Marguerite were the only aristocratic woman to be seeking spiritual fulfilment, and if so, others may well have been in Claude's household where Anne could have met them. We might even speculate that she was affected by some decisive religious experience there, which would be perfectly compatible with the evident genuineness of her later religious feeling. To root Anne Boleyn's reformist interests in an actual experience of reform in France would certainly seem a more convincing explanation than one which sees Anne developing these interests in England and then turning to France for inspiration.

59There remains to consider the overall significance which attaches to the link between Anne and early reform in France. In the first place it was short-lived. There is little sign of any intimate links between English and French reform in the rest of Henry's reign. An obvious reason for this is that Anne's own period of power was so brief - seven years at most and barely three as queen. There was no effective successor of a reformed temper until Katherine Parr became Henry's sixth wife in 1543 and she, in any case, was neither Anne's equal in education or in admiration for all things French. The entente évangélique was very much personal to Anne.

  • 90 Susan BRIGDEN, «Popular Disturbance and the Fall of Thomas Cromwell and the Reformers, 1539-1540»,(...)

60A second factor was the change which was taking place in the religious context. The rapid spread of sacramentarianism in France meant that reform across the Channel got out of phase with developments in the less advanced England. After the Affair of the Placards there was increasingly less in common between the two. Henry VIII's sensitivity on the matter of the Blessed Sacrament was evident in and indeed well before the passing of the Act of Six Articles in 1539, and when reformers in Calais caught the sacramentarian contagion from France it was enough to trigger Cromwell's downfall90. But, with reform in England able to hope for royal patronage, it was generally willing to go at the pace Henry set. The line against sacramentarianism held and only in the last months of the king's life did rejection of the miracle of the altar threatened to get beyond control.

61Yet the entente évangélique must not be dismissed as a private Boleyn phenomenon, as ephemeral as Anne's period of importance. The duration of Anne's influence may have been brief, but it was decisive. This was not merely in the detail of reformist issues advanced and reformist clerics promoted, but in Anne encouraging Henry to exploit the potential of his new power over the Church. Whether the king would have been as interventionist merely under the influence of Thomas Cromwell and Thomas Cranmer we cannot know; what is clear in the crucial years 1532-1536 is that the woman who was the one great passion of his life was there at the centre of his court, privileged, protected and busy prompting and supporting reform. Catholic memory damned Anne for the break with Rome and for the entrance of heresy in England, and it was right on both counts. And if this was so, then the conclusion must be that as the source of the queen's evangelical zeal, early reform in France had an indirect but vital part in ensuring that the royal supremacy took root in England. Although Anne's fall broke the connection with France where, in any case, circumstances were changing, in England there was no turning back, not even in the times of supposed conservative reaction.

62There is a further dimension. England was distinctive among the great powers of Europe in this commitment of the Court to reform. For that to be possible, reform had to have a courtly acceptability. That, English reform did not have, neither the home-grown Lollard variety nor the academic import from Germany. As a cultural colony of France, England needed to import its reformed religion in French packaging as much as it did its fashions. And that required not just an acceptable import but an importer, and who better placed than a queen who was both evangelical in mind and passion, and French to the core. The certificate of origin, produit de France, made moderate reform a thing for English gentlemen.

Notes

1 For Anne Boleyn generally, see Eric W. IVES, Anne Boleyn, Oxford, Blackwell, 1986.

2 C.S.P.For., 1560-1561, no 870, p. 490.

3 Lancelot de CARLES, «Histoire de Anne Boleyn jadis Royne d'Angleterre», ed. Georges ASCOLI, La Grande-Bretagne devant l'opinion française depuis la guerre de Cent ans jusqu'à la fin du XVIe siècle, Paris, J. Gamber, 1927, line 53-54. See Eric W. IVES, op. cit., p. 69-70.

4 The seminal article on this is Maria DOWLING, «Anne Boleyn and reform», JEH, t XXXV, 1984, p. 30-46. See also Eric W. IVES, «Anne Boleyn and the early reformation in England», HJ, t XXXVII, 1994, p. 389400.

5 Samuel R. MAITLAND, Essays on subjects connected with the Reformation in England, London, Rivington, 1849; James GAIRDNER, Lollardy and the Reformation in England: an historical survey, London, MacMillan & Co., 1908-1913,4 vol.

6 Alfred F. POLLARD, Henry VIII, London, Goupil & Co., 1902, p. 163; cf. p. 154: «Her place in English history is due solely to the circumstance that she appealed to the less refined part of Henrys nature». John M. MACKIE, The Earlier Tudors. 1485-1558, Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1952, p. 323.

7 Eric W. IVES, op. cit., p. 161-167.

8 Graham D. NICHOLSON, «The act of Appeals and the English Reformation», in Law and Government under the Tudors: Essays presented to Sir Geoffrey Elton on his retirement, ed. Claire CROSS, David LOADES and John J. SCARISBRICK, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1988, p. 19-30.

9 Eric W. IVES, op. cit., p. 168.

10 Maria DOWLING, art. cit., p. 35,37-41.

11 Eric W. IVES, op. cit., p. 303-304.

12 John FOXE, The Acts and Monuments of John Foxe, ed. Stephen R. CATTLEY and George TOWNSHEND, London, L & G. Seeley, 1837-1841,8 vol., vol. V, p. 605.

13 Thomas CRANMER, Miscellaneous Writings and Letters, ed. John E. COX, Cambridge, Parker Society, t XVI, 1846, p. 323-324.

14 BL, Cotton MSS, Otho C x, f° 260v° (L.P., vol. X, no 601).

15 C.S.P. Sp., vol. V, 2, p. 85; L.P., vol. X, no 601.

16 Jean DU BELLAY, Correspondance du cardinal jean du Bellay, ed. Rémy SCHEURER, Paris, C. Klincksiek (SHF), 1969-1973, 2 vol., vol. II, no 453, p. 506; L.P., vol. X, no 860, 1250; Eric W. IVES, art. cit., p. 396-400.

17 L.P., vol. VIII, no 834,1056.

18 Matthew PARKER, Correspondence, ed. John BRUCE and Thomas T. PEROWNE, Cambridge, Parker Society, t ΧΧΧΙΠ, 1853, p 4-5; John STRYPE, The Life and Acts of Matthew Parker, Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1821,3 vol., p. 16-18.

19 «William Latymer's Chronickille of Anne Bulleyne», ed. Maria DOWLING, in Camden Miscellany XXX, (Camden fourth series, vol. 39, p. 23-65), London, Royal Historical Society, 1990, p. 57-59.

20 Ibid., p. 60-61 (Eric W. IVES, op. cit., p. 308-309).

21 Ibid., p. 61 (Eric W. IVES, op. cit., p. 309-310).

22 Lucien FEBVRE, Au coeur religieux du XVIe siècle, Paris, SEVPEN, 1957, p. 66.

23 Arthur G. DICKENS, The English Reformation, London, B.T. Batsford, 2nd. ed. 1989, p. 91; Lollards and Protestants in the Diocese of York, 1509-1558, Oxford, Oxford University Press, 1959, p. 24-27; Susan BRIGDEN, London and the Reformation, Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1989, p. 109.

24 Ernest G. RUPP, Studies in the making of the English Protestant Tradition mainly in the reign of Henry VIII, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1947, p. 49-50; David DANIELL, William Tyndale: a biography, New Haven and London, Yale University Press, 1994, p. 326-329.

25 MargaretM. PHILLIPS, Erasmus and the Northern Renaissance, Woodbridge, The Boydell Press, 1981, p.60-61.

26 Arthur G. DICKENS, The English Reformation, op. cit., p. 32.

27 Susan BRIGDEN, op. cit., p. 346-347; Anthony FLETCHER, Tudor Rébellions, London and New York, Longman (Seminar Studies in History) 3rd. ed. 1983, p. 115. In 1578 William Allen still held that ideally «the sacred writings should never be translated into the vernacular», Alfred C. SOUTHERN, Elizabethan Recusant Prose, 1559-1582, London and Glasgow, Sands & Co., 1950, p. 233.

28 Susan BRIGDEN, op. cit., p. 109-118,264-266.

29 Ibid., p. 124,187-188.

30 L.P., vol. VI, no 403.

31 John FOXE, op. cit., v. 225-250; Jasper RIDLEY, Thomas Cranmer, Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1962, p. 174-176.

32 E.g. the argument at his trial re the sacrament English Historical Documents, vol. V, 1485-1558, ed. C. H. WILLIAMS, London, Eyre and Spottiswoode, 1967, p. 875-876.

33 BL, Cotton MSS, Otho C x, f°223, 224 v°, printed in George CAVENDISH, The Life of Cardinal Wolsey, ed. Samuel W. SINGER, London, Harding & Lepard, 2nd ed. 1827, p. 456,461.

34 The summe of christianitie gatheryd out almoste of al plocis of scripture, by... Francis Lambert of Avynyon. And translatyd and put in to prynte in Englyshe by Tristram Revel, London, Robert Redman,? 1536, translator s preface sig. + iii.

35 The story is told in his deposition dated 29 February 1536, L.P., vol. X, no 371.

36 The sum of Christianity..., op. cit., sig. Dv.

37 See infra notes 50-57.

38 Louis DU BRUN, «Vng petit traicte en francoys pour bien coucher par escript epistres que Ion dit vulgairement lettres missives», Londres, 6e none de Janvier 1530 (1531), BL, Royal MS 20, B xvii, f° 1.

39 Eric W. IVES, op. cit., p. 411.

40 BL Cotton MSS, Otho C x, f° 224 v° (see supra note 33).

41 Eric W. IVES, op. cit., p. 410.

42 Arthur G. DICKENS, The English Reformation, op. cit., p. 97; Susan BRIGDEN, op. cit., p. 265.

43 Susan BRIDGEN, op. cit., p. 316.

44 Antwerp, 1534, BL, C23, a8.

45 L.P., vol. VI, no 458; Arthur G. DICKENS, The English Reformation, op. cit., p. 153.

46 Eric W. IVES, op. cit., p. 314-315.

47 BL, Royal MS 20, B xvii, f° 1.

48 Sir Henry ELLIS, ed., Original letters, illustrative of English History, London, Harding, Triphook and Lepard, 1824-1846, 3 series, 11 vol., vol. 1,2, no 46.

49 Maria DOWLING, «WilliamLatymer's Chronickille... », art. cit., p. 62-63.

50 SOTHEBYS, Western MSS 7 December 1982, London, 1982, p. 73; Robert J. KNECHT, Francis I, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, (1982) rééd. 1988, p. 202-205. For the following, see also M. D. ORTH, «Radical beauty: Marguerite de Navarre's illuminated Protestant catechism and confession», SC], t XXIV, 1993, p. 383-425.

51 Robert J. KNECHT, op. cit., p. 145.

52 Antwerp, 1534 (BL, C18, c9).

53 Robert J. KNECHT, op. cit., p. 180.

54 BL, Harley MS 6561.

55 Alnwick Castle, Percy MS 465; Eric W. IVES, op. cit., p. 289-292. The manuscript derives from the printed text

56 BL, Harley MS 6561, f° 74.

57 Alnwick Castle, Percy MS 465, f° 147v°, 148.

58 See supra note 47.

59 The others are a music book and a Book of Hours (G. HARDOUYN, Paris, n.d.) [see Eric W. IVES, op. cit., p. 292-293 and 295-297] and the Tyndale New Testament

60 Eric W. IVES, op. cit., p. 317; Joy SHAKESPEARE and Maria DOWLING, «Religion and Politics in mid-Tudor England through the eyes of an English Protestant Woman: the Recollections of Rose Hickman», BIHR, t LV, 1982, p. 97.

61 Eric W. IVES, op. cit., p. 187,208,293.

62 Ibid., p. 220,223,225; his watching the coronation service is an inference.

63 Charles, duc d'Angoulême. John POPE-HENNESSY, The portrait in the Renaissance, New York and London, Bollingen Foundation and Phaidon Press, 1966, p. 250-252.

64 Eric W. IVES, «The Queen and the Painters: Anne Boleyn, Holbein and Tudor royal portraits »,Apollo, t CXL, 1994, p. 36-45.

65 Arrived circa 17 September, see L.P., vol. X, no 356,420, 434.

66 Eric W. IVES, op. cit., p. 306-307; the quotation is from BL, Cotton MSS, Vitellius, B xxi f° 156v° (L.P., vol. X, no 458). Mrs Jean Fox has kindly helped me with Tebold's career.

67 Maria DOWLING, «William Latimer's Chronickille... », art. cit., p. 56.

68 «Sermon très utile et salutaire du bon pasteur & du mauvais, prins & extraict du X chapitre de sainct Jehan. Compose & mis en rithme françoise par Clement Marot», in Clément MAROT, Psaumes, Antwerp, 1541.

69 BL, Royal MS 16 E, 13; Eric W. IVES, op. cit., p. 319.

70 C. A. MAYER, «Le'Sermon du bon pasteur', un problème d'attribution», BHR, t XXVII, 1965, p. 286-303 and «Anne Boleyn et la version originale du'Sermon du bon pasteur7 d'Almanque Papillon», BSHPF, t CXXXII,1986, p. 337-346.

71 The form «Ezechias», used in the poem, is the Greek name of the reforming Jewish king, Hezekiah. An identification with the prophet Ézéchiel is incorrect, pace Maria DOWLING, «Anne Boleyn and reform», art. cit., p. 43 and id. «Anne Boleyn as Patron», in Henry VIII: A European Court in England, ed. David STARKEY, London, Collins & Brown, 1991, p. 110.

72 Printed in C. A. MAYER, «Anne Boleyn et la version originale du 'Sermon du bon pasteur', art. cit., p. 340-342.

73 Ibid., p. 341, lines 459-469.

74 Eric W. IVES, op. cit., p. 319-321.

75 Nicholai BORBONII, Nugarum Libri Octo ab auctore recens aucti et recogniti, Lyons, 1538.

76 Ibid., Book VII, no 119, p. 411; cf. Book VI, p. 330; Book VII, no 90, p. 402 and no 110, p. 407.

77 Ibid., Book VII, no 113, p. 409; Maria DOWLING, «Anne Boleyn and reform», art. cit.

78 Nicholas BORBINII, op. cit., Book V, no 21, pp. 284-285. Cf., ibid., Book VII, no 135-136, p. 419-420.

79 Ibid., Book VI, p. 330; Book VII, no 113, p. 409.

80 For this paragraph see: ibid., Book II, p. 86-89; Book V, no 22, p. 285; Book VII, no 15, p. 378, no 113, p. 409, no 142, p. 421422; Maria DOWLING, «William Latymer's chronickille... », art. cit., p. 56. Hundson was a major figure at the court of his cousin Elizabeth I, Anne's daughter.

81 He may not have left until after the death of the duke of Richmond on 22 July, see Nicholas BORBONII, op. cit., Book V, no 20, p. 284.

82 Etienne DOLET, Epigram, Lyons, 1538, Book DI, p. 162 (quoted from Georges-Adrien CRAPELET, Lettres de Henri VIII à Anne Boleyn, Paris, Imp. de Crapelet, 2nd. ed. 1835, p. xiv). I owe this reference to the kindness of Dr Catherine Davies. «Utopiae » plays on the ambiguity of ou-topos- «no place», and eu-topos = «happy or fortunate place».

83 Eric W. IVES, op. cit., p. 196-201.

84 C.S.P. Sp., vol. V, 2, p. 91 (L.P., vol. X, no 699).

85 For George's reformist interests see Eric W. IVES, op. cit., p. 305-306.

86 Ibid., p. 318-319.

87 Ibid., p. 4042.

88 Ibid., p. 196.

89 See infra, p. 103-119.

90 Susan BRIGDEN, «Popular Disturbance and the Fall of Thomas Cromwell and the Reformers, 1539-1540», HJ, t XXIV, 1981, p. 257-278.

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