Anne Boleyn facts

  • Anne Boleyn was Queen of England from 1533 to 1536 as the second wife of Henry VIII of England.
  • Anne was educated in the Netherlands and France, largely as a maid of honour to Claude of France.
  • Anne Boleyn returned to England in early 1522, in order to marry her Irish cousin James Butler, 9th Earl of Ormond; however, the marriage plans ended in failure.
  • In 1525, Henry VIII became enamoured of Anne and began pursuing her.
  • Henry and Anne married on 25 January 1533. On 23 May 1533, Cranmer declared Henry and Catherine's marriage null and void; five days later, he declared Henry and Anne's marriage to be good and valid. 
  • Anne was crowned Queen of England on 1 June 1533. On 7 September, she gave birth to the future Elizabeth I of England.
  • In April–May 1536, Henry had Anne investigated for high treason. On 2 May, she was arrested and sent to the Tower of London, where she was tried before a jury of peers and found guilty on 15 May. She was beheaded four days later on Tower Green.
  • Anne Boleyn was sometimes called 'The Great Whore', 'The Concubine', or 'the goggle-eyed whore' by her critics.
  • Anne's last name was sometimes spelled Bullen, Bolina, and Bollein because uniform spelling had not yet been adopted.
  • Katherine Howard, the fifth wife of Henry VIII, who was also charged with adultery and executed (although in her case the charges were not false), was Anne Boleyn's cousin.
  • Anne Boleyn's portrait is in the halls of Hogwarts in the movie Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone. Whether or not this was an intentional reference to the rumors that she was a witch is unknown.
  • Anne Boleyn's ghost is said to haunt the Tower of London.
  • Henry VIII never mentioned Anne Boleyn by name after she died. He always remembered his third wife, Jane Seymour, who died in childbirth, as his 'true' wife.