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Tudor Political Culture
By:Edited by Dale Hoak
Hardcover
(1995)
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State, Sovereigns & Society in Early Modern England: Essays in Honour of A.J. Slavin
By:Carlton, Charles (Edt), Woods, Robert L. (Edt), Robertson, Mary L. (Edt), Block, Joseph S. (Edt), Slavin, A. J. (Edt)
Hardcover
(1998)
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The Rise and Fall of Anne Boleyn
By:Retha M. Warnicke
Paperback
(1991)
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Political Rhetoric, Power, and Renaissance Women
By:Levin, Carole / Sullivan, Patricia Ann (Edt)
Hardcover
(1995)
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Sex and the Tudors
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EDITOR'S INTRODUCTION |
Four months after the death of their premature son, Henry VIII ordered his second wife, Anne Boleyn, to be executed as a witch and sexual heretic. Her demise, along with five members of the King's privy chamber, was a direct consequence of superstitions prevalent among Tudor Christians which bound together miscarriage and witchcraft, sin and forbidden sexual practices. Retha M. Warnicke of Arizona State University exposes the religious and social mind-set that led to Anne Boleyn's downfall.
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Anne Boleyn, second wife of Henry VIII and mother of Elizabeth I. Accused of sexual crimes, she was beheaded on 19 May 1536.
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 n January 1536, Anne Boleyn was delivered prematurely of a male child. That it was no ordinary miscarriage is an essential clue to an understanding of the events that culminated in her execution some four months later. The first major sign that this miscarriage was unusual is that it was not kept a secret, for unlike the other fetuses delivered by Henry VIII's consorts, information about its sex, age, and day of birth was made public. The chronicler Edward Hall, who had formerly noted only the arrival of live Tudor infants, dated its birth to early February and Charles Wriothesley, another chronicler, to 30 January.
Witches and sex crimes
Since the king's ministers also leaked information about the queen's delivery to the Imperial envoy, his dispatches must be studied to discover what it was the crown wanted this partisan of Catherine to know and when. As Eustace Chapuys had heard rumors even before he learned of her miscarriage that Henry had begun to accuse Anne of bewitching him, it will be useful to examine contemporary beliefs about witches and other sexual heresies.
Virtually all early modern Europeans believed in the existence of evil spirits; Satan was for them an actual demon who worked ceaselessly to lure mortals into becoming his followers. Among his worshippers, witches were considered such a menace that in 1542, less than six years after Anne's death, parliament enacted a statute that, among other prohibitions, specifically forbade the use of witchcraft to incite a person to illicit love. Although evidence from later English trials indicates that witches were commonly accused of maleficium, that is injuries, such as an animal's death or a person's illness, the kingdom's legends had references to their fantastic activities: they made pacts with the devil, brewed poisons, flew at night, and changed into werewolves, a feat that caused them to be associated with forests and to be described as hairy.
Universally, witches were decried for their use of aphrodisiacs and for their excessive lust. In medieval England, for example, several noblewomen had been accused of obtaining sortileges to entice men into marriage, one of the most recent incidents involving Elizabeth, wife to Edward IV. Witches also allegedly engaged in illicit sexual intercourse, for they reportedly committed a number of sexual acts that their contemporaries viewed as deviant. Although experts continued to argue about whether the union between witches and the devil, called sodomy, could result in normal childbirth, they agreed that witches gave birth to deformed children, made demonic sacrifices of infants, including their own offspring, and committed incest. Witches were also accused of afflicting men, even their spouses, with impotence, an act that was from the mid-twelfth century recognized by the canon law as a marriage impediment. For the following 300 years, these cases were, according to George L. Kittredge, "so numerous that this species of sorcery became an everyday matter" (G.L. Kittredge, Witchcraft in Old and New England, 1972).
The Buggery Statute
A discussion of sodomy and incest, which were closely associated with witchcraft, is relevant to an analysis of Anne's fall, since she was accused of enticing her brother into having relations with her and since he had violated the Buggery Statute. This legislation, which was passed in February 1534, declared buggery a felony because there was not then "sufficient and condigne puynshment... for [this] abhomynable vice... comytted with mankinde or beast." Undoubtedly, bestiality was included because of the belief that demons and witches changed into beasts and of the fear that a union between humans and animals might result in hybrid births.
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