THE BOLEYN INHERITANCE

[BitTiredNow]

By Philippa Gregory - just finished it - in 2 days - not bad considering I am on my own with 3 under 4 - has anyone else read it? I was GRIPPED

Anne had several stillbirths around 6 months pregnant after giving birth to Elizabeth with no problems at all and may have been Rh negative, unfortunately for her.

Her last stillbirth/miscarriage, however, was pretty much the nail in her coffin, the baby having been far along enough to be clearly identified as a male infant.

More was asked if he bore Anne any ill will and in his response he predicted quite correctly - her behaviour having grown more and more drastic during his tenure in Henry's court - that she would soon meet a similar fate to his own.

I don't suppose old Henry's sperm was up to much. He probably had had the clap at one point or another... I read a hint in one book that her last (still-born) baby may have had a form of spina bifida. Not that we'll ever know.

The logic for calling her a witch for killing off his chances of having sons doesn't work though - a witch would have ensured she bore enough children to hold his interest and control him. Not lose so many babies he'd lose patience and kill her.

she also had the problem of power going a wee bit to her head and acting accordingly.

I can't bear Philippa Gregory's portrayal of women as total chattels. They weren't completely, they still had some self-determination. Mary comes across as such a sap, when what we actually know of her, is that she shagged 2 kings, slept her way around the French court before being either dismissed in disgrace or discreetly withdrawn before being dismissed in disgrace, comes home, marries someone she fancies who is below her in social terms, becomes the king's mistress, loses her husband, then secretly marries someone else she fancies without the permission of the king or queen. She sounds a right go-er. Not a pathetic bossed-about victim, like the book portrays her. And Anne was the unchallenged head of the family from her engagement to Henry until the coup that unseated her. She wasn't just a chattel, a pawn in the Howard family, she was an active player in the politics of the court, a player so influential that the only way her influence could be destroyed, was to kill her off altogether. In terms of who she was and where she'd come from, she was absolutely extraordinary.

oh I know, I know, it's fiction and I ought not to mind, but I just thought that the way the Boleyns were portrayed was so inaccurate, that she should have just called them something else. Why call these charaacters Boleyn? Why not just the Smiths?

Or Grey .

Well, Anne's daughter was of course a master of mollifying men who got on her case about marrying, because she knew of course that the law would be on her husband's side if she did.

And it's arguable that she came to equate marriage with death at a very early age, for obvious reasons .

Although yes women were powerful figures, they were still technically and in many cases, legally, under the final power of their closest male kindred.

Yes I'm sure Elizabeth didn't marry for a very strong, deep seated reason! It wasn't just politics (her memory of her mother has always been written off by male historians who assumed that she had no attitude at all about her, but recently a ring which she wore every day (it was taken off her finger when she died) was discovered to have a portrait of Anne in it in a secret compartment).

(BTW that thing of making Anne Marquis of Pembroke as opposed to Marchioness, was technically and legally putting her on the same level as a man - IE totally in charge of the incomes and business of the Pembroke estates, even if she married. None of her male relatives could touch it. Not even Henry could touch it, legally.)

In modern terms, the Tudors were chavs and certainly dysfunctional. Henry's legacy was 3 children inside his marriages (more outside) by 3 different women, countless broken relationships and friendships, violent deaths for two of his wives and his children constantly being disinherited and re-established in the line of succession. Not to mention he didn't exactly leave England rolling in it when he popped his clogs even though he managed to almost bankrupt or destroy a 1000-yr old religion.

No wonder Elizabeth I shunned marriage even at the cost of no children .

Yet Henry was still her overlord, at the end of the day .

Elizabeth was also old enough to remember the execution of Kathryn Howard and of course, the death of Catherine Parr of childbed fever, in addition to the numerous women around her who died during or after childbirth.

I can't remember which, however, of her male court contemporaries wrote that she was just like her father and 'determined to be ruled by no one.'

Yes, newyear, despite Henry VII's having been such a bloody miser.

Henry being the King could have easily taken the Marquis-ness (is that the right word?) from Anne if he'd felt like it even if it was hers in law. He took Hampton Court from Cardinal Wolsley fast enough...

Henry VIII spent most of his money either fighting the Scots (whom Katherine of Aragon defeated for him the first time) or showing off to the French King. Nice work if you can get it.

And he took plenty of peoples' rents from their properties, monies and heads if they crossed him.

Let's not forget the Countess of Salisbury's execution on Tower Green because he was outraged by her son.

Grim.

The biography I'm reading is by Eric Ives - I can highly recommend it!

I think it's a bit harsh to call the Tudors chavs. Whatever you say about them, they were actually extremely cultured, educated people, interested in the arts, politics, philosophy, theology, etc. They were respected for their learning and educated by the foremost scholars of the day. They make the present Royal Family look hopelessly philistine (not difficult though, I grant you.)

Yes but he sequestered people's properties because he didn't like them, not because they were women.

He was vile. And yet he's always had an inexplicably quite good press.

Well their behaviour (although probably perfectly acceptable in their circles in those days) is a little dysfunctional, let's say that. I imagine the Tudor children were throughly educated as would befit a prince and princesses. It's interesting to think that they would have probably been happier speaking or writing in French or Latin rather than English.

they just had some, erm, challenges when it came to relationships.

something Mary, Queen of Scots, appeared to have inherited from her Tudor grandmother.

I think people are fascinated by Henry and his excesses as much as anything. Or is it more a case of the Tudor dynasty being taught in schools in place of say, the War of the Roses a hundred years previously or the Civil War a century later, so Henry has just seeped into people's consciousness more?

Henry was positively tame compared to the kings of France!

I did like Anne of Cleves portrayal in the book though. Very good expression of what life would have been like for a woman of those times. No more say over your future than a prize cow!

The Tudors have been done to death though, I'd love to read about another era.

and Cleves had even more to fear if/had she been sent back to her brother.

she played her cards well.

I felt sorry for Anne of Cleves but she did quite well out it in the end. She had reasonable independence, her own house and an income. Ok, she wasn't allowed to re-marry on a trumped up excuse of a pre-betrothal but at least she kept her head.

The Wars of the Roses have a lot of material that could be covered equally well. The rumours about Perkin Warbeck, the Princes in the Tower, Duke of Clarence drowning.

or perhaps a book about Henry VIII's maternal grandmother, Elizabeth Woodville.

Or even Woodville's own mother, Jacquetta, who created a huge scandal by marrying without the king's approval and, being an extremely wealthy widow, paying what was then a staggering fine for having done so.

Ditto Katherine of Valois.