Anne Boleyn or Nan Bullen was the second wife and queen consort of Henry VIII and the mother of Queen Elizabeth I of England. Henry's marriage to her was the cause of considerable political and religious upheaval.
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Born in about 1500, Anne was the daughter of Thomas Boleyn, Earl of Wiltshire, and Elizabeth Howard, daughter of the Duke of Norfolk. Having spent some time at the French court, she was the object of much admiration, and first came to the king's attention when his permission was sought for her to marry. Anne's elder sister, Mary, had previously been Henry's mistress, and may have borne him a child. Anne, however, was reluctant to remain merely a mistress. When, in 1532, Henry created her Lady Marquess of Pembroke, it was the first time a woman had ever been created a peer in her own right.
Henry's infatuation with Anne led him to seek a way out of his existing marriage. On January 25, 1533, before announcing the decision that his first marriage, to Catherine of Aragon, was invalid, he secretly wed Anne (or maybe not -- he was never reluctant to revise history when it suited his purpose). In any event, the marriage was not made public knowledge for some months, but Anne was already pregnant and gave birth to Elizabeth in September of that year. Unfortunately for her, her next three pregnancies all ended in miscarriage or stillbirth, and she failed to produce the male heir that Henry needed to satisfy the needs of the succession. The only thing standing between Anne and disaster was that Henry was reluctant to divorce her while his first wife Catherine alive, because there was a large faction in England that believed (although they dared not say so in public) that in the eyes of God he was still married to her. But in January 1536 Catherine died, and then there was no saving Anne.
Henry's advisors, seeing how he had become disenchanted with Anne, hatched a plot to remove her. In May, 1536, she was accused of treason (in the form of alleged adulterous affairs with several men, including a court musician, Mark Smeaton, and her own brother, Lord Rochford). On the evidence of Smeaton's false confessions, obtained by torture, she was convicted. She was beheaded at the Tower of London on May 19, 1536. At her special request, a sword was used for the execution, and the executioner was brought from France.
Anne is the title character in the 1969 film Anne of the Thousand Days which stars Genevieve Bujold (Anne), Richard Burton (Henry VIII), and Anthony Quale (Wolsey). It was nominated for nine Academy Awards and won the one for best costumes.
